Micah 7:19. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

The Depths of the Sea

We truly have a merciful God.  He forgives, over and over.  His mercies are new every day.  You cannot wear out the forgiveness of God.  He turns again and again and has compassion on us.  We should never take the mercy of God for granted and sin willfully against a righteous God.  Sometimes we really don’t understand the true extent and breadth of forgiveness we received because of Calvary.  The Lord took our sin and subdued it, or put it under and far away.  I cannot think of any more far-reaching location on this earth than the depths of the sea.  The Mariana Trench, in the Pacific Ocean, is located off the Mariana Islands just east of the Philippines.  It is over 36,000 feet deep with a pressure over 1000 times more than on the earth’s surface.  God took our sins and placed them in just such a place.

Forgetting the Past

The picture Micah is creating is that God has put our sin far, far away, under the blood of Christ, never to be brought up again.  We don’t have to worry about God bringing our sin back up.  He has forgotten about it.  It is under the blood.  Others may remember it on this side of heaven, but you can be sure it will never be brought up over on the other side.  Realizing that God will never remember sin this side of heaven, or in heaven when we get there, it is silly for us to not forgive others and forget their sin, as well.  We need to use God’s garbage disposal of the sea and forget about the hurts and failures of this life.  The apostle Paul said part of forgetting the things that are behind is the process of pressing forward to the cross of Christ.  If your past is haunting you, you need to focus more on the Lord and what he has done for you.

Christ Took Our Sin to Hell

When Christ became man, he had one purpose–to take on our sin as a sacrificial lamb of God and carry our sins into the depths of hell.  Hell is a far more out of reach place than the Mariana Trench.  For three days, Christ was separated from the Father for the first and only time in eternity.  God could not be in the presence of sin and so the separation was critical as the sacrifice was made.  The death on the cross was not the main thing Christ was concerned with when in the garden.  Christ was not killed by the Roman soldiers.  He gave up his life and commended his spirit into God’s hand when it was time to do so.  He then took upon himself our sins, as the God-man; and took them to hell where they were left in the depth of the deepest lake ever known, the Lake of Fire and Brimstone, which is mentioned in Revelation 21:8.  Praise the Lord he left our sin where sin belongs; in hell with the devil and his angels.

The Lake of Fire – God’s Garbage Dump for Sin

Let’s consider what Christ truly did for us when he buried our sins in hell.  He gave us what we could never get on our own and restored our fellowship back to God.  Adam condemned man to death with his sin in the garden.  Death does not kill just the physical body, it also causes the soul of the unsaved to drown for all time in the Lake of Fire and Brimstone.  Sin, ultimately, can only go to one place in the end, and that is hell.  You can either have Christ take your sin there or you can take it there.  The choice is yours.  Christ made the payment for your sin.  Christ wants to save you from hell.  Why not just trust him today if you have never been born again.  You need to get rid of sin and bury that garbage in the depths of the sea of God’s forgetfulness.  Christ is the only one that can do that.  He was the only man to live a perfect life and do what Adam and his race of man could never do.  Why not trust him today if you never have.  If you are saved, thank God today for burying your sin in that sea.