When God Chooses to Forget
The perfect, all-knowing God makes an extraordinary choice – He chooses not to remember the forgiven sins of His people. This seeming paradox reveals the heart of the Gospel message. When we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us, treating us as though our transgressions never occurred. He removes them “as far as the east is from the west,” establishing a new relationship with His people through Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross. This divine forgetfulness applies not only to our past sins before conversion but also to our ongoing stumbles as Christians, allowing us to walk in true freedom and joy with our Heavenly Father. The key, nonetheless, is that His forgiveness first requires our repentance and confession. The opposite truth also applies: “He that covers his sins shall not prosper, but he that confesses and forsakes them shall find mercy.” Proverbs 28:13.
Automatically Generated Transcript
[00:00:00] This topic is just a small slice to do with the whole idea of God’s perfection and God’s giving us a righteousness, and that righteousness being one that means he does not remember our sins. One of the things that we have to be prepared to be given an apologetic against is when people from outside say, you people, your Christian message has got lots of contradictions in it, one thing we do have to admit to them is there are aspects of the Christian faith which we do not know how to put together. Because we have to leave things with God. The answer when people point out some is, this is one of those spots where I’m telling you what the scriptures reveal, and I’m telling you what the gospel is.
[00:01:05] And what I can’t explain everything about that and one of those areas where people do point out a contradiction has to do with God and the fact that He is all knowing and all and that he never makes mistakes or it ever goes back on anything. And yet there are passages where God sent a correction to the messenger about the message that he’d sent them on. There was the prophet who went in to tell the king he’s going to die and the prophet went back on his way out and the king rolled over towards the wall. He was sick and he cried out to God and God decided to answer his prayer for help. It stopped the messenger and sent him back to reverse the message. Now if you’ve been telling everybody God never makes any mistakes, how is it that God did not know? I think he did know. But somehow God chooses to react and
[00:02:19] relate to us in a way that has to do with giving room for our humanity to relate to him. Another example is when God gives his commandments and people obey them or disobey them and sometimes God is upset by the sins and what he actually does is send messengers down to earth to investigate. Now if God knows everything, he doesn’t need anybody to investigate, he knows it from beginning to end. But that’s exactly what happened with Abraham and Lot. They had to split up because they had too many cattle and they couldn’t be together in the same areas for those reasons and Lot went down to Sodom. Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities in that plane that were really having terrible morals. Judgment came to them and it wasn’t the judgment that comes at the end of the age when
[00:03:23] everybody’s judged but it was then and there because there was volcanic reactions and the whole of the plane there got wiped out. And the Bible talks about it as God sending down some messengers. One of them actually included the second person of the Trinity so we’ve come to see from how the Scripture speaks and this particular person is coming to investigate and to see whether that news which has reached heaven and God has heard isn’t true. God actually doesn’t need to have any inspection. He knows a lot from the beginning to the end but he chooses to relate to us. Just as in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, God came walking in the Garden of Eden. I think it was the same person who came to visit Sodom. I think that is the pre-incarnate Christ.
[00:04:22] Christ is his name having taken on humanity but before he took on humanity as the second person of the Trinity, the Son, he didn’t have a body but he nonetheless was busy and he would come down to earth and he’d do things and on that occasion he was amongst those that God sent down to investigate Sodom and Gomorrah. He is someone who operates on behalf of the Father as he did in the Garden of Eden when after Adam and Eve had sinned. The Bible tells us that God was walking. It didn’t tell us exactly what form he was but God was walking in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden and God called out, Adam where are you? Do you think that he didn’t know? Of course he knew but it was that call to call the humans to come out from behind the hiding they were doing. So a shame
[00:05:22] they were of their realisation about themselves as sinners and God has a way of dealing with us which takes into account our humanity needing him to deal that way yet he’s all-knowing. Now it’s not a contradiction it’s a part of the very mysterious thing that in eternal God who’s all-powerful knows everything deals with us whom he has put onto this world in order to learn to walk with him to please him and if we fail to confess it and and ask for forgiveness and he he deals with us in a way that leaves us able as humans to have a relationship to him and that’s all a part of why some people think it’s a contradiction it’s not. It’s just there’s a mystery in the whole idea of an eternal God relating to us feeble humans. Now one of the areas where there’s a contradiction has to do
[00:06:25] with the fact of what happened when Jesus died. If I were to explore further I won’t take the time, but I would ask of you, what was the very thing in Jesus’ death that caused us to be forgiven? What was it of his dying on the cross that is made at the heart of the gospel message, that made it the very reason why you can be converted and I can get into God’s good books because of what happened to Jesus? Well, it was what happened in those hours of darkness when he bore our sins and God the Father punished Christ the Son. The reason why Jesus took on humanity was that he would be punishable in our place. He took on humanity, he’s the God-man, and he bore our sins on the cross and God punished him. But then something happened. What happened after that? All sorts of miraculous events occurred that happened. As Jesus had died on the cross, suddenly there
[00:07:38] were people getting up out of tombs. There was quite a rash of people who were the saints from Old Testament days who’d been buried from different ages and they came to life again and got out of their tombs and they came walking into Jerusalem, the capital city, and they appeared to many, the Scriptures tell us. What was all that about? They actually were there for a season and then they went back and laid out again. Their time for resurrection hadn’t come, but it was something that just happened that’s indescribable. It’s beyond our capacity of reason to explain. Something else that happened was the sudden darkness at a time of day when it should have been bright and light. There wasn’t any people who tracked back to see whether that was the time when there was some lunar eclipse or something that caused the darkness, but it wasn’t. It was some spectacular, inexplicable darkness that God
[00:08:43] put on the world when His Son bore your sins and mine on the cross and suffered for them. In that moment, He cried out, or at the end of the moment, the end of His suffering when the darkness was over, He said, my God, my God, why did you forsake me? How you have forsaken me? It’s an exclamation. Now, in that moment, God punished those sins, was very aware of your sins being punished in Christ. But a part of the miracle that happened is things that we’ll find, and I’ve got a few verses. I don’t know how many I can get through because I’ve already used up some of my time. But please go to the first one, which is Jeremiah chapter 31 and verse 31. There’s something I think is marvellous to see in the scripture. It’s just a little point, but it’s marvellous nonetheless. Behold, the days are coming to clear the Lord. It’s about the promise of the new covenant for the house of Israel. Behold, the days are coming to
[00:09:54] I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke though I was a husband. Declares the Lord to the Israelites. For this is the covenant that I will make. It’s the new covenant that’s going to come about through Jesus. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord. I’ll put my law within them. Now by the way that’s enormous news, put my laws within you because up to then where were the laws with regard to people, they were outside of them. They were given by Moses, they’re on the table of tablets of stone but they were there to measure them from the outside in. Here the new covenant is a question that
[00:10:56] I’ll put my laws within them and as the verse goes on I will write it in their hearts. So the new covenant is an arrangement that God has that the time is coming instead of having everybody try and keep the law that’s outside of them. He’s going to put his laws in them. It’s a spiritual thing that will happen and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall each one teach his neighbour and teach his brother saying know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more. Now there’s enormous things in there. First of all did you notice that the thing about the new covenant days, we’re in them now, that the most important thing is
[00:11:58] knowing the Lord. Do you know the Lord? Do you know Jesus? Is he yours? Have you come into that special relationship with him? Knowing the Lord is what counts but also along with that as far as your sins is concerned he says I will remember their sins no more. Why that’s a difficult thing for the people who want to get everything in the Bible to you know be exactly right according to their reckonings is that God is all-knowing and there’s nothing he doesn’t knows. The word for it is omniscient. There’s no doubt elsewhere the Bible teaches all knowingness the omniscience of God and I remember their sins no more. There is not anything that can happen in the world but one he didn’t know ahead of time and two he knows after time. I will remember their sins no more. Now what on earth is this
[00:13:01] about? It looks like a contradiction. It’s just a part of the truth of the Gospel for which we cannot actually rationally explain the eternal God takes on not remembering our sins. I’m rather grateful for it, I don’t know about you. The whole business of being a Christian is not forever being, oh woe is me, you don’t know how bad are sins I’ve done, I’ll never really get clear of them. When you hear people say that you know they’ve never really got converted properly. Because if they’re in the new covenant, which is what happens when you come to Christ and you ask him for the forgiveness of sins, God forgives all your sins and the ones passed, we’re talking about first of all, and he chooses never to hold them against you again. And a part of the joy of the forgiveness of sins is just the sheer fact that you come into the sunlight, you come into the happiness of being right with heaven. We use
[00:14:18] the phrase making peace with God, peace with God. Another way of describing it is it’s talking about being justified by your faith. Justified means God treats you just as if I’d never sinned. He treats you as sinless. How does he do that? I will be their God and they shall be my people and no longer shall each one teach his neighbour, saying no the Lord and we’ll have an equality in the church that every one of us who’s come to know Jesus knows the Lord. There’s something that we have in common that makes us the people of God that we’ve come to know him. For they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and I’ll remember their sin no more. Frankly, for me, from my ears and my thinking, that is fantastic. The peace with God you come into when you come to Jesus and know him as your Saviour is one where you can stand up straight, you can lift your head and you know you have
[00:15:37] peace with heaven, you’ve got peace with God and you don’t have to worry about the things that you had to get forgiven for. Now the way I’m saying this might be asking some of you to think to yourself but what about when you became a Christian but then you had a few times you backslid and where you didn’t live up to what you were hoping to be as a Christian. In fact, you found yourself out as many times doing wrong things. Thank the Lord sometimes after we become Christians he intensifies our consciences and only makes what I’m describing worse in the sense that we get to see how much of what we do has been wrong all the time but we didn’t know how bad it was before. That is a Christian experience, by the way, if that’s happening to you. It’s actually good that the Lord is sensitising you to what he really likes and what he doesn’t, to what his laws mean and what they don’t. But what about those sins? Does he remember them before you’re converted but he’s
[00:16:45] been watching you and he’s got a list of all your failures. Now if I were to stand here and teach that it would be a dreadful thing for me to do because one of the ways that we go on as Christians is the provision that God has made for us to be forgiven even after having come to know the Lord. And if it were not for that we wouldn’t last too long trying to be a Christian. Sometimes there’s people you meet who tell you that they can’t really do well as a Christian because they can’t get over their bad sins. I know that means they haven’t come to see the gospel fully because the gospel is that God has erased your sins, he’s forgiven your iniquity and he will remember the sins no more and even the ones that you make afterwards. Now I have a whole list of verses as Jared said and I sort of think that I’ll jump to ones near the end if you don’t mind of my big long list. I get very optimistic about what I can put in one sermon. Alright so let’s go down a bit
[00:18:06] and let’s see if we can get 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 21. Am I giving you a promise? Okay, oh quick. 2 Corinthians 5.24. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And that’s the general statement by coming to Christ instead of a sinner in the eyes of heaven and all the angels and everyone. We are now someone who have taken on the righteousness of God. The only way that’s possible is that God did not choose to remember your sins. How’s that possible? Because God being God can choose not to remember them if he so chooses and he does. But it not only applies to the ones in the past before we got converted, it applies later. Let’s see if I haven’t jumped the verses. What we’ll do is we’ll go to 1 John 1.9. Now this is a favourite verse of all of us as Christians because if it weren’t for this verse, we would be in the dumps. We would be aware of how we haven’t lived as well as we should.
[00:19:35] But it says if we confess our sins, by the way the word confess has the understanding, has the meaning of say the same with confession is when there’s come an accusation and you say, yeah, that’s true. When we confess our sins, when we’re pricked and God comes to us as Christians by his spirit and there’s such a thing as that sense of conviction that Christians have when they’ve stepped out of line. And when we confess our sins, it is that we say, God, you’re right, I’m sorry, you’re correct and I was wrong. He is faithful, now this is the interesting bit, and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Some of the verses I’ve jumped over are ones that say that when we get to the judgment, God is going to declare us sinless. There is a judgment for Christians about your lives. It’s not one that makes you guilty in the sense of being kicked out, not go to heaven. But there’s also the sense in which wants to be
[00:20:51] decided at the judgment is whether or not any given person, let me tell you, is one who is righteous by God’s doing or one who’s not. And God is faithful if there comes something in your life as a Christian and you failed and you confess it to him and you say, God, that I was wrong, you were right. He is faithful to his promise, he keeps it, and just in his character to instate you as someone who is though you didn’t sin it, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And one of the first lessons you have to learn after you’ve come to know the Lord, I can’t help but be amazed at how when I see young Christians, they all go through the same story. They come to Christ and they think they’re going to be a super-Christian, they’re going to do good things for God, but then they have a fail. And they think, oh, I’ve dashed it, I’ve ruined it, I can’t make this Christian business. But what they don’t know is that God
[00:22:03] God already knew that we’d have bad habits or that we’d have temptations or that we’d have weaknesses, and that we’re going to have lots of folks and any boasting that we did as to how wonderful a Christian we’re going to be was really quite stupid. Because we’re starting from the beginning and we have to learn, there will be many times we step out a line. But if you confess your sins, God is faithful to his promise. And just, because what I’m trying to get around to announcing now, is just because he punished those all sins on the cross when Jesus died. It wasn’t only the ones that people had done in the past. It wasn’t only, after all, Jesus died on the cross long before you were even born. Maybe if you made you guilty of Adam and Eve’s sin, well then that could have been known by God. But I think it’s because he knew ahead of time all your little problems.
[00:23:05] And he forgave the lot. And when you continued as a Christian, you still fell back into some of those problems. If you come and confess them to him, just him, not to a man behind a curtain or a official in a church, but just confess to Jesus your sins. He is faithful and just because Jesus died for them too. And somehow in that moment of his death, God knew ahead of time for all the sins of the world. And Jesus’ death was completely a cosmic thing also for the fact that creation had fallen away from what it was intended to be. Jesus’ death included that he was dying for all that sin was and had done and will do in people’s lives. And it cleanses from all, not just a little all unrighteousness, so that you come out of the confession with you still having the righteous status. And the Holy Spirit communicates to you that sense that you know you’re clear still. Sometimes
[00:24:21] our memories don’t hang on to the promises of God well enough and we could be the ones clinging to the memory of being wrong. And one of the things you have to do as a young Christian is learn to believe this verse, that when you confess your sins, God won’t remember them anymore. And you are still righteous. And don’t go around wallowing as though you’re unrighteous. But accept what God says. There’s a moment when you just have to believe what he said and put your rest in it. And this is in the mystery. I think that what this idea that God chose not to remember the sins that Jesus died for as ours applies to even today when we trip up and fall. And he chooses not to hold them against us. It’s not like he’s put it in the cupboard and you’ve the little stack in his cupboard of all your sins building up higher and higher. He chooses not to remember them. And there’s a whole
[00:25:33] host of verses. I was going to take it through one by one. It would have taken all night, but I’ve taken more than I should time wise. But one verse says, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. It’s not like they’re going to come crashing back again if you confess your sins. Even after you’ve come to Christ, even after the initial forgiveness that he gave you in the start, he removes those sins. And God being God can choose not to remember them. He can choose to relate to you, which is necessary for our limitations as a human, by him choosing not to remember. Do you get it? I think that’s amazing. It’s an amazing understanding to have. And when you walk with God and every time the Bible tells us the Holy Spirit is like a, he’s like a, he illumined. It gets your conscience working even more than before you’re converted. He gets your
[00:26:45] conscience to bring up the point if you’ve stepped out of line. But then when you go to him and say, Lord, I’ve been wrong here. Please forgive me. He chooses to treat you as though it never happened. He’s the only one who can do that. When you have friends and they do something against you, you might decide to, I think you should decide to forgive them, but you still remember it. When you’re a child and you do something against the family, and Dad and Mum love you and they forgive you, but they still remember it. But with God, he has the capacity, because he is God, to choose not to remember your sins anymore as far as the east is from the west. So far has he removed our transgressions from us. Or another verse says that he’s buried them in the deepest of seas. Only God can do that and it’s a part of his grace and longliness to forgive us and to reinstall us again and again.
[00:28:00] The heart of being a Christian is knowing Christ and the continuance of being a Christian is walking with Christ and keeping a clean slate in terms of not that you don’t fail but that you confess anything he pricks you with, he brings to your attention. And so what a fantastic thing it is that God can then relate to us and you have such a clear conscience, though you know you’ve probably been guilty many times he didn’t even speak up. And how many times when you’ve been a young Christian you do lots of the wrong things without even realising it’s wrong. And part of the Christian journey is that God begins to tell you, teach you a little bit about what is wrong and what is not more and you get more, you actually do more confessing as you grow as a Christian because the Lord is beginning to help you to get all cleaned up. And do you know the result of that is that when you get to the judgment
[00:29:03] that it speaks for the fact that you have indeed known the Lord and he’s kept you in relationship with him all the way along and he says well done my good and faithful servant. You know there isn’t any of us that deserve that being said of us, you understand that, that Jesus is going to be able to say it because he’s not going to remember how spilled up of sins. If indeed we don’t confess them then he pricks us, there will be a moment of judgment for Christians, it’s not a judgment that will get you thrown into hell but it is one which will influence your status in heaven and what rewards you do or don’t get. And so when we talk of the judgment the New Testament does teach that there’s a separate moment for Christians than the general moment for everybody which is whether they go to hell or not but the separate moment for Christians is when we haven’t listened to the Holy Spirit prompting us
[00:30:10] and we’ve stuck to our sinful ways and even though we are converted and know the Lord and he wants to take us to heaven and he’s promised he will, in those ones we will get to account for at the judgment of Christians. I won’t elaborate about that but that’s another big topic. But isn’t it fantastic just as Jesus walked in the garden of Eden and he says, Adam where are you? Of course he knew he was behind the bush on my head but he was calling to him to come out from behind his hiding so he can confess his sin. We don’t actually get told whether Adam and Eve owned up to about their role in the fall. We know they got chased out of the garden of Eden and the whole human race and suffered as a result but we don’t know what really developed there. But all through the scriptures God is a righteous God dealing with unrighteous humans whom he wants to take as righteous if they’ll but confess their sins.
[00:31:19] There’s more I can say but that’s enough for one night and let me have a prayer. Heavenly Father I do thank you for the fact that you promise, Lord, that you won’t remember our sins anymore. You promise as far as the east is from the west. So far have you removed our transgressions from us. They’re not entities that go untangled around our necks. They’re gone, totally gone. Oh Lord if there’s someone here who struggled with their awareness of their sins, may your ability to forget our sins and forgive our sins enable them to lift their heads and walk with joy before you. If there’s someone who has sins unrecognized let them see those sins. If that’s true of any of us, Lord, and we need to get you to show us shine a light, something that we’ve been doing isn’t right, then Lord shine your lights. That we might have a chance to confess those sins and for you to be able to be faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to remember them no more. That is fantastic. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.