We just spent time at the ocean. We even had to deal with the threat of Tropical Storm Darby. (Darby ain’t got nothin’ on Tennessee thunder and lightnin’) Still, the ocean, while beautiful, is quite intimidating. How you ever pondered just how deep it is? Explorers have mapped several of the deepest regions. In fact, they call these areas “deeps.”
There’s the Murray Deep, the Campbell Deep, and so on. The deepest of these deeps, Challenger Deep, lies some 149 miles southwest of Guam. Parts of it descend more than seven miles below the oceans surface. The great Marianas Trench cuts through it like a jagged scar. Even in our most technologically sophisticated submarines, it takes hours to descend to the bottom, and only a handful of explorers have dared to try.
With that in mind, I read the words of the prophet Micah: You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea, Micah 7:19.
I think the prophet Micah chose this word picture to reassure us of the truth that God forgives. Because Jesus lived a perfect life in our place, Jesus rose victorious from that death...God has dismissed our sins entirely. Let that soak into your bones.
No matter what you’ve done—or failed to do. No matter how often you have sinned or how awful your guilt has been, you are fully forgiven in Jesus.
Checking out the magnitude, the depth and expanse of the ocean, if I were to lose my wedding ring while gazing into the deep blue sea, I could forget about seeing it again. The word “unrecoverable” comes to mind. The Lord casts our sins into the sea and they are unrecoverable! So let them be.
Do you live married to your guilt or shame? Then before you leave his page or click on the next email, ask your heavenly Father to drown those things in the ocean of his forgetfulness. And every time you visit the ocean or even view a picture of the great deep, let it remind you of the depths of the Lord’s great love for you.