Leave Left Behind Left Behind

Leave Left Behind - Left Behind by Steve Keeler

Psalms 103:8-12

"The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to

anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not

always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger

forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins,

nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as high

as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His

lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as

the east is from the west, so far has He removed our

transgressions from us."

We need to strive to be like this when we forgive

others. It's not that you have no memory of what

happened. But to truly forgive someone means you will

treat that person as if he or she had never done the

wrong in the first place.

Hopefully we would all agree that forgiving one

another, and forgetting, makes for stronger and

healthier relationships. It improves the quality of our

relationships in church, in our families, with the people

we live with and around everyday.

But have you ever wondered, does God really forgive

and forget? As Christians we know He forgives, and we

deeply appreciate that forgiveness!

But once we are forgiven, what does God do with the

memory of that sin? Does God forget? Can God

forget?

I might also ask: what do we do with the memory of our

past sins? Paul tells us in Corinthians that we are to

examine ourselves to see how we are doing in our walk

with God.

When we do this we come to better understand our

need for repentance and forgiveness. In this process of

examination many of us will remember past sins, sins

that we have repented of and have been forgiven of.

For some of us those memories are encouraging,

because they show us that we have changed and

grown.

But for some, those memories in conjunction with

current sins and faults that we come to see in our self

examination, can discourage us and bring us down.

Today we go over a very important aspect of

forgiveness, which is forgetting.

Today, I want to look at what God's Word says He

does with our past sins. Then we will take a look at the

wonderful example of the apostle Paul.

Hebrews 10:16, speaks of God's Covenant between

Him and His people in this way:

"This is the covenant that I will make with them after

those days, says the lord: I will put my laws upon their

heart, and on their mind I will write them, He then says,

and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember

no more."

We all know that God forgives our iniquity, our sin, by

the shed blood of Jesus Christ. But that is not all He

does for us!

This verse tells us "their sin I will remember no more."

God doesn't just forgive which in itself is a marvelous

and wondrous gift, no, He goes beyond that. He

forgives and He forgets!

Forgiven, forgotten, forever. Amen!

He will not call our sins to remembrance; they will not

ever enter His mind. Once God forgives us it is as if the

sin never happened.

Listen to God in Isaiah 43:25

"I, even I, am the one who wipes out your

transgressions for My own sake, and I will not

remember your sins."

God, in His marvelous mercy, blots out our sins as a

benefit to us to be sure, but also for His own sake

because He earnestly desires to make us part of His

eternal divine family.

We have His guarantee that when He blots out our

sins, they really are blotted out. He will never bring

them up; they will never enter His mind. It will be as if

they never occurred! I don't know about you, but I find

that incredibly comforting.

Let me give you another example of what I'm talking

about, this is what Isaiah 65:17 says; "For behold, I

create new heavens and a new earth; and the former

things will not be remembered or come to mind."

The time is coming quickly when the evils of this world

will not be remembered.

They won't enter God's mind or ours. God is going to

wipe away every tear and every sorrow, including

those that we have brought upon ourselves and

inflicted upon others by our sins.

These and other scriptures show us that our loving

God is forward thinking. He is able to look beyond our

faults to what we can be, and with His help, what we

will be.

We need to have the same mind. We also need to look

beyond our past, and even beyond what we are right

now, to see where God is leading us.