Out of the Slimy Pit

Have you ever had a word picture in Scripture just jump off the page at you and communicate more than it ever has before? I love it when that happens, and I love seeing pictures of Jesus in the Old Testament. I was reading a beautiful, familiar passage in the book of Micah about God’s loving and forgiving nature:

“Where is another God like you, who pardons the guilt of the remnant, overlooking the sins of his special people? You will not stay angry with your people forever, because you delight in showing unfailing love. Once again You will have compassion on us. You will trample our sins under your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean!” (Micah 7:18-19 NLT). 

I have heard lessons and songs (like Audio Adrenaline’s “Ocean Floor”) that focus on God throwing our sins into the depths of the ocean, but I have not thought much about the previous phrase until this morning. It says God will “trample our sins under [His] feet.” Think about that picture --- of something being trampled underfoot. It has been stomped on, run over, covered with dirt, footprints, garbage, and slime; it is ripped, wadded, torn, and crushed; it is completely worthless, only good for the trash bin, which is where our sin belongs. This is how God treats our sin.

But this is also how God treated Jesus when He was on the cross. Paul writes that “God made him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us…” (2Cor 5:21 NIV). If God tramples our sin underfoot and Jesus became our sin, then Jesus was trampled underfoot for us. This brings new light and appreciation to me for the line in Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche’s song “Above All” that describes Jesus as being treated “like a rose trampled on the ground.” Jesus --God in flesh, the name above all names, the One who lived a perfect life, completely sinless and blameless ---was trampled on the ground because He became sin for us.

In the Psalms, David wrote that God “lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him” (Ps 40:2-3 NIV). We are the ones who should have been in the trash heap because of our sin. We were in the slimy pit, the mud, and the mire that David describes. We should have been trampled, mistreated, torn, and crushed, but instead, God lifted us out of that mess and Jesus received that treatment instead of us.

God trampled our sins under His feet. That’s a fairly easy picture to grasp. That Jesus was trampled as our sin –not so easy to grasp. He loves us that much and sees such great value in us –not because of anything we’ve done, but just because He made us and we belong to Him. Know today that Jesus loves you so much that He was willing to become trampled like garbage in the street, like a rose thrown on the ground so that you could be lifted out of the slimy pit. We need to help each other stay out of that slimy pit because of what it cost to get us out of it. And like David, let us keep a hymn of praise to God on our lips for all He has done for us, and may many others come to trust Him when they hear our stories of being delivered from that slimy pit!