It Is Finished- Part 8

“It is Finished” - Forgiveness and Freedom

Micah 7:18-20, “Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever. Because He delights in unchanging love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities under foot. Yes, You will cast all their (our) sins into the depths of the sea. You will give truth (faithfulness) to Jacob and unchanging love to Abraham, which You swore to our forefathers from the days of old.”

It is easy for us to understand forgiveness and that God will forgive our sins. Where it says that He will tread our iniquities under foot is also translated that He will subdue or sins. That is a different concept than most of us have dealt with. We can comprehend the forgiveness part but we have a hard time wrapping our minds around the fact that God Himself will subdue our sins. He will break their power over us. The New Covenant promises us that God will do the battle by His Spirit with in us. The Holy Spirit is our greatest gift and Jesus has sent Him to do in us what we cannot do for ourselves. He is the One who wooed us to Christ Jesus and showed us the cost of the cross. He will do nothing that is not part of that cross and the grace that it bought. Think for a moment, if the Holy Spirit is in you, and you throw yourself on mercy of the Holy Spirit, trusting Him completely, believing that He is able to fulfill all that God commands us, what enemy could stand against us? What temptation could you not withstand? The Holy Spirit simply asks that we come to Him, believing that He has the all power and authority to break sin’s dominion over us.

Just as Christ’s sacrifice and perfect obedience are sufficient to cleanse us and save us, so His Holy Spirit subdues or treads our sins underfoot and crushes their dominion over us, through faith in the New Covenant promises. There is no formula or 6 steps for you to follow. You must simply take His promises, believe they are for you, and allow the Holy Spirit to do the work. Our part is simply to trust that He will do everything Christ sent Him to do. He then will convict us, open our eyes to see God’s Word and to hear the eternal truths that it speaks. As we respond, He will move in to change us, warn us, chasten us. He will remove temptation from our hearts and often times, He will make the living Christ so real to us that it drives the desire to sin against Him far away from us. But all this is response to trusting Him to do the work. Because each of us are as individual as our finger prints, the way that He deals with us is just as individual. We must trust His work in our lives. We must yield to His wooing us and call us to the Father and Son.

Remember in our earlier studies that God has promised to give us a new heart. A heart that desires to obey God. Jeremiah 24:7 promises, “I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.” And again He promises in Ezekiel 36:26-27, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” Do you see in these promises that it is God who is doing the work. He is giving us the new heart. 

This is the new birth that John 3 is talking about when Jesus said that we must be born again. He is the One who does this work as we believe the promise. Do you see how important faith is in all this? It is a matter of believing that what God has promised is true and that God will do it. Like we saw yesterday with Abraham, we must become fully persuaded. This is the hard part for us. So many times we are moved by what is going on around us and the natural circumstances. We must lift our eyes to heaven, to the very source of our life. We must become fully persuaded that what He has promised, He will do. Then we must humble ourselves to quit trying to make it happen in the flesh and allow the Holy Spirit to do the work in our spirit, which will then bring the flesh to the death of it’s will.

Let’s worship and pray. Father, You are the awesome God, Creator of heaven and earth. You are worthy of all praise, glory, power, dominion! We come in praise of You, O Lord. Thank You for the New Covenant that was bought by the blood of our Lord Jesus. Thank You that in Him all Your promises are yes and amen! Father, open our eyes to the work of the Holy Spirit and what He is doing in our lives. Help us to see and yield and not fight against Him, as He causes all things to work together for our good. We ask this in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.

Dr. Alan Wiggins

Associate Pastor 

www.nbcornerstone.com