Psalm 79:8 O remember not against us former iniquities: let your tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low. Prayer book Version, "Oh remember not our old sins." Because a man cannot forget his old sins, he is very disposed to think that God cannot forget them either. And this he will do in face of the repeated assurances of God's Word, that his forgiving includes his forgetting. Three very striking figures are used to assure us that God will not keep the memory of the sins which he has forgiven and blotted out. 1. It is as if they were thrown "behind his back." 2. It is as if they were "cast into the depths of the sea." 3. It is as if they were removed from us "far as the east is from the west." We can never really think that God will bring up against us what he has forgiven. The fear that he will only tells of the state of our own hearts. We may, therefore, consider - I. THE REASONABLE USE WE MAY MAKE OF THE MEMORY OF PAST SINS. This may be applied to both national and family sins. Israel was required to keep in memory the sins of its forefathers, and prophets made it part of their work to remind Israel of those bygone iniquities. So we may be sure that some moral value lies in such memories. This much we can see: they keep us (1) impressed with the sovereignty of Divine grace; and they bring us (2) the safeguard of a proper fear of ourselves. In view of the sins of the past, we are plainly the monuments of Divine grace; all boasting is excluded. We can have no claim before God. He must mercifully have passed by transgression and sin in order to "clear the guilty." He loved us because he loved us, and no more can be said. Divine grace triumphed in bringing salvation to such as we were. See St. Paul's plea: "Such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11). And the thought of our past sins brings a worthy humbling, and a holy fear. What we have been we might fall back upon again; and we can only be kept steadfast by the sustainings of Divine grace (comp. Psalm 78:8). Nothing checks self confidence, the self-trusting that destroys dependence, like recalling our wilful past. We have fallen - the thought makes us fear lest we should fall again; and forces from us the cry, "Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe." II. THE UNREASONABLE USE WE MAY MAKE OF THE MEMORY OF PAST SINS. Dwell chiefly on one point. We are always wrong, and we always act unworthily, when we think of our past sins without thinking also that they are forgiven, blotted out, put away; so far as God is concerned, done with, irrecoverable. It honours God for us to use the memory of our past sins in order to make us more watchful and humble; but it never honours God for us to worry over sins that he has forgiven, and put wholly away from him. We ought to enter into the full joy of his forgiveness. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: O remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low. |
    |