By  Author & Blogger Tim Challies

Sometimes it’s better to show than to tell. Sometimes it’s more effective to rely on illustration than description. Maybe this is especially the case when we are distressed, ashamed, or sorrowful, when emotions threaten to displace reason. In those moments, God comforts us not only with descriptions of what he does with our sin, but also with vivid illustrations. Are you distressed by what you’ve done? Do you hear whispers that you have sinned beyond God’s desire or ability to forgive? Let these illustrations comfort you. Listen to – no, see! – all that God does with your sin.

God throws your sin into the sea (Micah 7:19). Here is a clear reference to the Exodus when God rescued his people by drowning Pharaoh and his army in the sea. John MacKay says, “The Egyptians were prevented from catching up with the fleeing Israelites and reversing their deliverance. The freedom of the people of God will not be marred by some consequence of their past sin catching up with them to spoil their delight in the provision God has made for them.” Not a single Egyptian soldier crawled onto the bank to continue to torment Israel. Not a single one of your sins will continue to torment your soul.

God treads your sin underfoot (Micah 7:19). God doesn’t only drown your sins in the sea, but he also stomps them under his feet. Richard Phillips explains the illustration this way: “God responds to our sins the way a protective parent destroys a snake in the children’s playground.” He throws it to the ground, stomps on it, reduces it to nothing. He grinds it underfoot until it is dead and gone.

Your sin has been so thoroughly dealt with that it is as if God tossed it behind him where he can no longer see it.

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Frank Retief was pastor at St James Church Cape Town for 31 years, having planted the church in 1968 with his wife Beulah.  He became the Presiding Bishop of the Church of England in South Africa until he retired in 2010.  Frank remains active in ministry through preaching, teaching, pastoral work & writing, and has authored a number of books.

Mystery of the Son

Luke 10 v 22. “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

The Son of God has within Himself everything that we sinners need for our salvation. He is endowed by the Spirit of God. That means He has the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of God.

He has all these qualities and more, entrusted to Him by his Father so that He could become our mediator. He is the great Fountain out of which flows the Father’s grace and love to needy sinners. His riches are inexhaustible. He is so great that only the Father can truly know Him. Only God can penetrate to the essence of the being of Christ.  Likewise, so great is the Father that no one but the Son can know who He is. These are great mysteries.

But consider this, when Jesus was on earth none of these things were discerned by the disciples. It is true they caught glimpses of his uniqueness from time to time, but of His true greatness they knew very little. Imagine you were a listener to Jesus’ conversation when he uttered the words printed above. If you were Jewish you would be astounded that such claims could come from the mouth of a human being. If you were not a Jew but a Gentile you would shrug it off as the ramblings of a deluded person. But what if these words are true?

In that case the one person who truly knows God, came to earth and lived among us. Would it not make sense to hear him out and make a decision based on fact and not emotion?  But this is exactly what the people of Jesus’ day did not do. They argued with him at every point.

But at the end of the day, God is the One who opens the eyes of those who believe and they are saved. Why does God not open everybody’s eyes?  We do not know.  The important question is are your eyes opened, do you believe and do you live accordingly?

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By Trevor Bradley                                  Picture provided courtesy of www.trailblazer.co.za

However tall the mountain looms.  As the song says “through it all, He is Lord… Lord of all”.  Why then, I ask myself, is my heart so prone to doubt?  Why do I allow him, the deceiver/liar, such a foothold?  Why do I land up in the space of fear, which is driven by doubt, only to have Him come yet again, and again, and yet again, to speak and bring peace, to my troubled, unbelieving heart?  Why do i forget His blessings and interventions, His amazing miracles on my behalf so easily?  

Read Mark 6 vs 32-52.  Firstly 5000 people are fed out of a basket containing but 5 loaves and 2 fish.  Then right after that, a storm that threatens to take the lives of the disciples, were it not for the intervention of the Lord.  Yet as we further proceed through the Gospels, we see not too far down the road, when a bunch of soldiers arrest Jesus, those very witnesses run.

I don’t want to dwell on lack of faith here.  Rather what I want to say is this: No matter if it is a storm or if it be a situation of “supply”, He will come through for you, to settle or provide.  He will be there, even if your heart is in the place where at first you cry ” is that you LORD?” I read in 2 Timothy 2 vs 13 where He says this (paraphrased for effect)

“If we have little or no faith, yet He will remain faithful – for He cannot deny who He is and what He has promised”.

So today, WHATEVER the mountain that stands before you, know this, as that song goes: ” Saviour, He can move the mountains, My God is Mighty to save… He is mighty to save”.

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