Come now, let us reason together

‘Come now let us reason together,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be white as snow.’ Isaiah 1:18

I love the book of Isaiah because it is the most prophetic of the books of prophecy in that it predicts and foretells the word of God in extraordinary ways.  Isaiah lived during the time of the Assyrian attacks against the nations in the region including taking Israel into captivity. However he predicts the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians which did not happen till over a hundred years later and the return from exile by the hands of Cyrus, nearly two hundred years before the event. He also prophesies the coming of the Messiah and prophesies his character and wonderful redemptive work not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles.

The verse above is a favourite of mine because when we first visited Uganda many years ago we went to a small rural church thatched with banana leaves. Here we were introduced to a man called Come Now. When we asked why he was called this he said his mother had read this verse on the morning he was born and that is why she named him Come Now. You don’t tend to forget things like that.

In the same way we don’t tend to forget how wonderful God’s forgiveness of our sins is. Isaiah was promising the rebellious nation of Judah that if they would only repent and turn from their wicked ways then God would forgive their sins and they would be white like snow. I am sure you have looked over a snowy landscape and seen the beauty of it. All the humps, bumps and imperfections are covered in a beautiful layer of snow. As my son once remarked, ‘even bags of rubbish look beautiful covered in snow.’

This is the same as our sins when every imperfection is forgiven and covered over with the layer of grace and mercy and we can see them no more. When God forgives our sins we must let go of them and not hang onto them in any way. They are gone forever, never to return. God remembers them no more and neither must we.