THE GRAVE OF OUR SINS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 10, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 10.

THE GRAVE OF OUR SINS.

Among the wonderful symbols of God’s forgiveness and separation of sin from His people is that of the vast and fathomless sea. How many of the secrets of history has it buried! How many treasures lie entombed there which will never be yielded up to the scrutiny of man! What unexplored mountain ranges, what vast cavernous abysses, and what unfathomable valleys there are underneath its wave-tossed and ceaselessly rolling surface! What an impenetrable tomb it is of the buried hopes of persons and families, and even nations!

But its abyssmal and unexplorable depths are to the child of God a symbol of hope, nay, more, of assurance. Let us quote to its conclusion the precious promise of last week: “Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger forever, because He delighteth in mercy. 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.” Micah 7:18, 19.

What does this mean but that God will forever banish the sins of those who come to Him—our sins—can we not say it together, reader? Go out and look upon the mighty ocean, stretching away thousands of miles in every direction beyond the extent of vision. It compasses the earth. It is the most unexplorable thing in the world. When within it is lost a weighty substance, there is no place where it is so unfindable. And our sins are weighty. Have we not learned it when through the years we were bowed down as a burdened beast, and at times crushed to the earth in hopeless despair by their intolerable weight? Do you still bear them?—O, give them to God, and He will cast them into the great sea, where the strong currents of His mighty love will bear them on into the great depths and caverns of eternal oblivion!

But attach to them no shore-line, tie them to no life-buoy. Cut every cord which binds the sin to heart, or life, or habit, or occupation, and give all to God, and let Him cast them into “the depths of the sea.”

Tempted and tried Christian, take home the promise to thy heart. When Satan would conjure up the phantoms of the sins of old, when he would reawaken lust in the flesh by the memories of the past, when he would almost make you believe that your sins were still with you, rely upon God’s promise. Say to the tempter that it is written that Jesus Christ died for your sins, that He forgave them when you confessed, that they are cast into the depths of the sea, that they are gone, gone forever, buried by the everlasting goodness and mercy of God in the depths of oblivion, and that none knoweth their sepulcher save Him who has put them even out of His own sight.