You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance. (Psalm 90:8)
How many conversations and interactions with people, strangers and loved ones alike, have we forgotten? I’m sure the count is innumerable — at least from our vantage point. Yes, key events in our life — things that have had an enduring affect upon us — tend to stand out in our mind, but even then, I doubt we remember it exactly as it happened. So then, Time has a way of altering facts and, as I mentioned, concealing from our mind conversations and deeds long forgotten. However, God has not forgotten.
There is, in fact, a verse of Scripture that should send shudders down all our backs; on Judgement Day, everyone will have to give an account for every idle word spoken. As Messiah said, “By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:37). If this is true for what we have spoken, imagine what it will be like to give an account for things we have done — including those things that we forgot about long ago. As Moses said, all of our iniquities and secret sins are laid bare in the light of His countenance.
In consideration of this, anyone with half a brain should be alarmed because, as He has said, He will by no means clears the guilty; in fact, He visits “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7). In other words, He doesn’t forget even when we do. But there is also hope to be found in this situation; the One who doesn’t forget and ignore our disobedience is also quick to forgive us when we are repentant. He will not forget or ignore our cries of remorse and pleas for mercy. As it is written, “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19); “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
It would seem that there are those words and deeds that the Eternal God chooses to forget — the sins of the past that have been acknowledged and abandoned by men with repentant hearts. May it be that we all turn quickly from actions that are displeasing to Him that He may forgive and forget our iniquities and that we may walk, “O Lord, in the light of Your countenance” (Psalm 89:15).
Blessings and Shalom,
Bill
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