{"id":4750,"date":"2022-09-24T00:49:09","date_gmt":"2022-09-24T05:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/exegetical-and-hermeneutical-commentary-of-numbers-3223\/"},"modified":"2022-09-24T00:49:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-24T05:49:09","slug":"exegetical-and-hermeneutical-commentary-of-numbers-3223","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/exegetical-and-hermeneutical-commentary-of-numbers-3223\/","title":{"rendered":"Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Numbers 32:23"},"content":{"rendered":"

But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out. <\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n

23<\/strong>. be sure your sin will find you out<\/em> ] lit. ‘know your sin, that it will find you.’ The rendering of the E.V., which has passed, as a proverbial expression, into our current language, is based upon an ancient notion that sin, like a curse, has so to speak an individual existence. The sinner cannot escape its consequences; it will search and find him wherever he may hide himself. Cf. Gen 4:7<\/span> ‘sin coucheth at the door.’<\/p>\n

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

Be sure your sin will find you out – <\/B>literally, know ye your sin that it will find you out. Moses implies that their sin would eventually bring its own punishment along with it.<\/P><\/p>\n

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

Num 32:23<\/span><\/p>\n

Be sure your sin will find you out.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The great sin of doing nothing<\/strong><\/p>\n


I. <\/strong>What was this sin? A learned divine has delivered a sermon upon the sin of murder from this text, another upon theft, another upon falsehood. If you take the text as it stands, there is nothing in it about murder, or theft, or anything of the kind. In fact, it is not about what men do, but it is about what men do not do. The iniquity of doing nothing is a sin which is not so often spoken of as it should be. A sin of omission is clearly aimed at in this warning–If ye will not do so, be sure your sin will find you out.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>It was the sin of idleness and of self-indulgence. We have cattle: here is a land that yields much pasture: let us have this for our cattle, and we will build folds for our sheep with the abundant stones that lie about, and we will repair these cities of the Amorites, and we will dwell in them. They are nearly ready for us, and there shall our little ones dwell in comfort. We do not care about fighting: we have seen enough of it already in the wars with Sihon and Og. Reuben would rather abide by the sheepfolds. Gad has more delight in the bleating of the sheep and in the folding of the lambs in his <\/strong>bosom than in going forth to battle. Alas, the tribe of Reuben is not dead, and the tribe of Gad has not passed away! Many who are of the household of faith are equally indisposed to exertion, equally fond of ease.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>This sin may be viewed under another aspect, as selfishness and unbrotherliness. Gad and Reuben ask to have their inheritance at once, and to make themselves comfortable in Bashan, on this side Jordan. What about Judah, Levi, Simeon, Benjamin, and all the rest of the tribes? How are they to get their inheritance? They do not care, but it is evident that Bashan is suitable for themselves with their multitude of cattle. Some of them reply, You see, they must look to themselves, as the proverb hath it, Every man for himself, and God for us all. Did I not hear some one in the company say, Am I my brothers keeper? Soul-murder can be wrought without an act or even a will; it is constantly accomplished by neglect. Yonder perishing heathen–does not the Lord inquire, Who slew all these? The millions of this city unevangelised–who is guilty of their blood? Are not idle Christians starving the multitude by refusing to hand out the bread of life? Is not this a grievous sin? But oh, says another, they can conquer the land themselves. God is with them, and He can do His own work, and therefore I do not see that I need trouble myself about other people. That is selfishness; and selfishness is never worse than when it puts on the garb of religion.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>But with this there was mingled ingratitude of a very dark order. These children of Gad and Reuben would appropriate to themselves lands for which all the Israelites had laboured. God had led them forth to battle, and they had conquered Sihon and Og, and now these men would take possession of what others have struggled for, but they are not to fight themselves. This is vile ingratitude; and I fear it is common among us at this very day. How come we to be Christians at all? Instrumentally, it is through those holy missionaries who won our fathers from the cruel worship of the Druids, and afterwards from the fierce dominion of Woden and Thor. Are we to receive all, and then give out nothing at all? Are we to be like candles burning under bushels? Are we to waste our life by much receiving and little distributing? This will never do. This will not be life, but death. Remember the Dead Sea, and tremble lest thou be like it, a pool accursed and cursing all around thee l The text, when spiritually interpreted, says concerning our personal service in the conquest of the world for Christ–if ye do not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find you out.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>Again, we may view this from another point of view. It is the sin of untruthfulness. These people pledged themselves that they would go forth with the other tribes, and that they would not return to their own homes until the whole of the campaign was ended. Now, if after that they did not go to the war, and did not fight to the close of it, then they would be guilty of a barefaced lie. It is a wretched thing for a man to be a covenant-breaker. It is sacrilege for any man to lie, not only unto man, but unto God. I would speak very tenderly, but if any man has been converted from the error of his ways, by that very conversion he is bound to serve the Lord. Now, if he lives only to make money and hoard it, and he does nothing for Gods Church and for <\/strong>poor sinners, is not his baptism a lie? Once more, and I will have done with this painful subject. What would their sin be?<\/p>\n

5. <\/strong>According to Moses it would be a grave injury to others. Do you not <\/strong>notice how he put it to them? Moses said unto the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben, Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here? What an example to set! If one Christian man is right in never joining a Christian Church, then all other Christian men would be right in not doing so, and <\/strong>there would be no visible Christian Church. Do you not see, you non-professing believers, that your example is destructive to all Church life?<\/p>\n

6. <\/strong>Moses goes on to remark that if these people did not go forth to war, they would discourage all the rest. Wherefore discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the Lord hath given them? It is no slight sin to discourage holy zeal and perseverance in others. May we never be guilty of killing holy desires even in children! How often has a burning desire in a boys heart been quenched by his own father, who has thought him too impulsive, or too ardent! How frequently the conversation of a friend, so called, has dried up the springs of holy desire in the person with whom he has conversed! Let it not be so. Yet without cold words our chill neglects may freeze. We cannot neglect our own gardens without injuring our neighbours. One mechanic coming late among a set of workmen may throw the whole company out of order for the day. One railway truck off the rails may block the entire system. Depend upon it, if we are not serving the Lord our God, we are committing the sin of discouraging our fellow-men. They are more likely to imitate our lethargy than our energy. Why should we wish to hinder others from being earnest? How dare we rob God of the services of others by our own neglect?<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>Notice what was the chief sin in this sin? Of course, if the Reubenites did not keep their solemn agreement to go over Jordan, and help their brethren, they would sin against their brethren; but this is not the offence which rises first to the mind of Moses. Moses overlooks the lesser, because he knows it to be comprehended in the greater; and he says, Behold, ye have sinned against the Lord.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>It is disobedience against the Lord not to be preaching His truth if we are able to do so. The hearer of the gospel is bound to be a repeater of the gospel.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>We are certainly guilty of ingratitude, if, as I have already said, we owe so much to other men, and yet do not seek to bless mankind; but chiefly we owe everything to the grace of God, and, if God has given us grace in our own hearts, and saved us with the precious blood of the Only-Begotten, how can we sit <\/strong>still, and allow others to perish?<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>There would be sin against God in the conduct of these people, if they did not aid in the conquest of Canaan, for they would be dividing Gods Israel. Shall the Lords heritage be rent in twain? God meant them all to keep together. Can it be that any of us are dividing the Church of God; that is, dividing it into drones and workers? This would be a terrible division: and I fear that it exists already. It is apparent to those who are able to observe; and it is mourned over by those who are jealous for the God of Israel. Half the schisms in Churches arise out of the real division which exists between idlers and workers. Mind this. Be not sowers of division by being busy-bodies, working not at all.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>We have now reached the last point, and the point that is most serious: what will come of this sin of doing nothing? What will come of it? Be sure your sin will find you out.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>It would find them out thus: they would be ill at ease. One of these days their sin would leap upon their consciences as a lion on its prey.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>When conscience was thus aroused, they would also feel themselves to be mean and despicable. Their manhood would be held cheap by the other tribes.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>They would be enfeebled by their own inaction. How much of sacred education we miss when we turn away from the service of God!<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>Their sin would also have found them out, had they fallen into it, because they would have been divided from the rest of Gods Israel. Those who are nonworkers lose much by not keeping pace with those who are running the heavenly race. The active are happy: the haled of the diligent maketh rich in a spiritual sense. There is that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty: I am sure it is so in a spiritual sense.<\/p>\n

5. <\/strong>To come more practically home, if you and I are not serving the Lord, our sin will find us out.<\/p>\n

(1)<\/strong> It will find us out perhaps in this way. There will be many added to the Church, and God will prosper it, and we shall hear of it: but we shall feel no joy therein. We had no finger in the work, and we shall find no comfort in the result.<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong> It may be that you will begin to lose all the sweetness of public services. By doing nothing you lose your appetite.<\/p>\n

(3)<\/strong> I have known this sin find people out in their families. There is a Christian man: we honour and love him, but he has a son that is a drunkard. Did his good father ever bear any protest against strong drink in all his life? Every man should labour by precept and example to put down intemperance, and he who does not do so may be sure that his sin will find him out. Here is another. His children have all grown up thoughtless, careless, giddy. He took them to his place of worship, and he now inquires, Why are they not converted? Did he ever take them one by one and pray with them? If we do not look after Gods children, it may be that He will not look after ours. No, says God, there were other peoples children in the streets, and you had no concern about them, why should your children fare better? Be sure your sin will find you out. (C. H. Spurgeon<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sin will come to light<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>God certainly shows His purpose to punish sin by the way He causes woe to come on some sinners here. The drunkard, the glutton, and the cheat, the liar and the lewd, are nut the only examples. Most frauds are exposed. Nearly all murders are <\/strong>brought to light. Men may plot very secretly, and think their crimes are hid. But Providence calls on stones and beams of timber, on tracks and pieces of paper, to be witnesses of the crime. Then all that class of sins which are not punishable by human laws, God often punishes with a loss of respect, esteem, or confidence.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>Men might be sure that their sin will find them out by the sore judgments which God sometimes sends on men for their sins. On this matter we should exercise candour, caution, and charity, and not call that an angry judgment which is but a dark doing of love. Still there are on earth sore and marked judgments. Look at the history of Achan, of Korah, &c. Of thirty Roman emperors, proconsuls, and high officials, who distinguished themselves by their zeal and rage against the early Christians, it is recorded that one became speedily deranged after an act of great cruelty; one was slain by his own son; one became blind; the eyes of one started out of his head; one was drowned; one was strangled; one died in a miserable captivity; one fell dead in a manner that will not bear to be told; one died of so loathsome a disease that several of his physicians were put to death, because they could not abide the stench that filled his room; two committed suicide; a third attempted it, but had to call for help to finish the bloody work; five were assassinated by their own servants or people; five others died the most horrible deaths, having many and strange diseases; and eight were killed in battle, or after being taken prisoners. Men have more to do with sin than to commit it.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>One may escape detection and strange judgments, and still his sins may find him out in the fears, and clamours, and remorse of conscience. Remorse is remorseless. Like fire, it burns all around it. No man can protect himself against his sins flashing him in the face at any moment. The Bible, preaching, singing, praying, a marriage, a trial in court, the sight of the man he has injured, or one that looks like him, or anything may arouse his conscience into fury at the most inconvenient time.<\/p>\n


IV. <\/strong>But even if one escape all these things, yet if he dies unpardoned his sins will find him out in the next world (Luk 12:2<\/span>; 1Ti 5:24<\/span>; Ecc 10:20<\/span>). Why do not men admit the force of these truths, and act accordingly? The reasons are very clear.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Some think their sins will not find them out because God has not yet called them to account (Ecc 8:11<\/span>). Such men forget that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, &c. (2Pe 3:8-10<\/span>).<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>In this world sinners often forget their sins, and think God has also forgotten them (Psa 10:11<\/span>). But God forgets nothing.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Some think their sin will not find them out because they doubt whether God is holy and just, and whether He takes notice of human actions (Psa 94:5-7<\/span>). But that is practical atheism (Pro 15:3<\/span>; Ecc 12:14<\/span>).<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>Some think their sin will not find them out because God is merciful. But mercy rejected can save no man. All the cooling fountains can do no good to him who does <\/strong>not drink of them. Oh, sinner, be sure your sin will find you out. You may now live in ease and in error. You may now harden your heart in pride. But you must meet your sins at Gods tribunal. Remember that. Oh! be wise–be wise unto salvation. (W. S. Plumer, D. D<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Avoiding the mischief of wrongdoing<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>Our sin will certainly find us out. Some men indeed are so hardened in wickedness, so totally lost to conscience and reflection, that they are long able to hide themselves, as it were, from sin. Such persons may live <\/strong>long before their sin finds them out. It must wait for opportunities-a time of sickness or a time of distress, when a mans wickedness has drawn some heavy calamity upon him. Then his sin will be sure to find him out. It will hold up a frightful mirror before him, and show him that himself has been the cause of all he suffers.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>Sin being thus represented as a merciless creditor, of an unforgiving temper, demanding debts with the utmost rigour, let us see how we may best avoid the mischief it threatens.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>As we are assured in the text that our sin will certainly find us out it is the part of wisdom to be beforehand with it and find it out first. Sin can never find us out but at some great disadvantage–when it is strong and we are weak ; when habits of wickedness have been formed, and we have suffered some mischief from them; or when our spirits are low, and we feel the world sinking under us. But on the other hand, if we take the active part, and endeavour to find out sin first, we prevent this bad effect. It is in this case as in others of the same kind. If we are in debt, our debts, that is, our creditors, will find us out. But when we are beforehand, and find out our debts ourselves, and take methods to pay them, we avoid all the <\/strong>bad consequences we should otherwise incur. He who can number a few figures may count his debts. They are, or may be, plain before him. But the deceit and treachery of the heart lie deep; and it is often a difficult matter to come at our sins. The case is this: we not only suffer our passions and appetites to lead us into sin, but we use our reason, which God has given us for better purposes, to excuse our wickedness. Repentance is the grand condition of the gospel; and the first act of repentance is to find out our sins. When we think of Zaccheus, let us remember the happy fruits of finding out our sin. When we think of Judas Iscariot, let us tremble at the dreadful consequences of suffering it to find us out.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Being thus convinced of the necessity of finding out our sin, the next great step to be taken is to endeavour to obtain pardon for it. Whatever difficulty there may be amidst the many corruptions and doublings of our hearts in finding out our sins, the method of obtaining pardon lies plain before us.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Since, then, God Almighty hath thus put the means of our salvation, in a manner, in our own power, by leaving us at <\/strong>option whether we will accept or not the terms He hath offered; let us not be so lost to ourselves as to go on in any sinful course till at length our sin find us out, but let us manfully endeavour to find it out first. Infidelity, where proper means of obtaining evidence has been neglected, is certainly a high offence. (W. Gilpin, M. A<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The sinner detected<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>That you have sinned against the Lord.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>This is abundantly evident from innumerable passages of Scripture.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>From observation of the conduct of mankind, it is evident that they have sinned against the Lord.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>From the many dreadful threatenings which are written in the Word of God.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>This is evident from all the judgments which God hath brought upon the children of men from the beginning of the world until now.<\/p>\n

5. <\/strong>From the consent of all nations, it is evident that we have sinned against the Lord.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>How your sin will find you out. It will find you out for your conviction and conversion, or for your condemnation and destruction.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Your sin will find you out at the bar of conscience, under the dispensation of the gospel of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Under afflictive dispensations of Divine Providence.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>At the approach of the king of terrors.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>Your sins, if you die impenitent, will find you out at the tribunal of Christ, in the judgment of the great day.<\/p>\n

5. <\/strong>The sins of the impenitent will find them out in hell, to all the ages of eternity.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>The absolute certainty that sooner or later your sins will find you out.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>That mens sins shall find them out is absolutely certain, because the nature and perfections of God require it.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>The Word of God asserts it.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Conscience forebodes it.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>Gods moral government attests it.<\/p>\n

5. <\/strong>Those who have gone before, in every past age of the world and period of the Church, in their experience have found it.<\/p>\n

Conclusion.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Be sure to find out sin.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Find out your sin, so as to get a soul-humbling and a heart-breaking view of it.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Endeavour to find out your sins in such a manner as shall influence you to make a free confession of them unto the Lord.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>Be so stirred up by finding out y our sins as to implore forgiveness from God through the merit and intercession of His Son Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

5. <\/strong>Be excited to wash in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

6. <\/strong>Endeavour to find out your sin, and to be so affected with the sight of it as to forsake it and flee from it in time to come. (John Jardine<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Unhelpfulness<\/strong><\/p>\n

What the text teaches is not merely that harm done to others will recoil on the head of the wrong-doer, but that help withheld will do the same. It assumes that our brethren have a right to positive assistance at our hands. And it solemnly warns us that if we deny them that assistance, our sin will find us out.<\/p>\n


I. <\/strong>Take the case of a parent who neglects the Christian nurture of his children. He allows them, suppose, to grow up uneducated, sending them to work when they should be at school, and preferring the petty earnings they bring him to their mental and moral well-being. Or he allows them to take up with dangerous companions, without making any effort to restrain them. Or, though not unheedful of their physical comfort and intellectual culture, he neglects to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. What is the almost certain issue? Does this negligent parent receive from his children honour, love, obedience, cheerful help? Or if he does obtain some measure of deference while they are of tender years, and dwell under his roof, what happens when they become grown men and women, and he an old man in need of sympathy and aid? Alas! the cold indifference with which they then regard him, the grudging parsimony with which, if he is poor, they contribute to his scanty maintenance, the shame and sorrow which they bring on his grey hairs by their ingratitude and wickedness–these things but too surely prove that his sin has entailed an answerable punishment.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>Take the case of those rich members of a community who neglect to provide instruction for the untaught children of the poor. In the cost of the crimes which those unheeded ones begin in youth, and perpetrate with aggravations in riper years, their sin is finding them out. In the cost of police and prisons and heavy poor-rates, it is finding them out. In the organised and protracted strikes, which reveal the crass ignorance and pitiable credulity of their dupes, and threaten to palsy the industrial enterprise of the country, it is finding them out. And should a season of wild political excitement or of widespread commercial stagnation arrive, with its provocations to turbulence and lawlessness, it may find them out in a way yet more terribly retributive.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>Take the case of a corporation or a community which declines or delays to adopt measures cf sanitary improvement. It is sad to think that the majority of men are without a conscience as regards the violation of physical laws, though that is as truly a sin against God as their violation of moral laws. But whether men arc alive to their guilt in this respect or not, certain it is that their sin is in hot pursuit of them, and will ere long seize and rend them with its deadly fangs. The prosperous inhabitants of a town cannot suffer their poorer neighbours to dwell in overcrowded and unwholesome tenements, without having themselves to smart for such selfish neglect. If the poor are tempted, amid their physical discomforts, to resort to the deceitful solace of intemperance, it must fall to the rest of the community to pay for the pauperism and crime which intemperance begets. If the poor are ruined in health and made reckless in habits by the scenes of filth and vice which environ them, it must fall to those in better circumstances to sustain the burdens and hazards which an idle and turbulent populace never fail to create. And when fever or pestilence breaks out in the squalid hovel, who shall guarantee the health of the sumptuous mansion?<\/p>\n


IV. <\/strong>Take the case of a Christian Church which neglects to adopt aggressive measures for the reclamation of the irreligious multitudes around it. Every successive year adds to the numbers who never enter a house of prayer. And now, instead of the grand moral spectacle which our working-men once presented–men humble in station, but high in moral excellence; scant of secular lore, but mighty in the Scriptures–we behold throngs of workmen who are not only indifferent about religion, but positively profane and sceptical. Bespeaks not this a lack of aggressive effort on the part of our churches and congregations? Could there be now such a vast outlying mass of irreligion, had each of our churches, in place of abiding within its own pasturage, gone over the river to help those neglected ones in their combat with evil? And shall not this sin find the churches out? It is finding them out. Already are there thousands upon thousands in our land who hate every Christian Church with a perfect hatred, and who would shout with diabolic triumph over their destruction. (J. M. McCulloch, D. D<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Our sins finding us out<\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>First, our sins find us out when there is a direct connection of cause and effect between the sin and the punishment, and in the most literal sense of the word, we eat the fruit of our own doings. The delirium tremens <\/em>which overtakes the drunkard, the premature decrepitude or forlorn old age of him who has laid waste his youth by sensual excesses, the rags with which the sluggard is clothed, the shameful fall which so often the proud prepares for himself, what are all these but mens sins finding them out, the sin having all along been big <\/em>with the punishment, and in due season bringing it forth–according to our own proverb, Old sin, new shame, old and new being linked with one another by indissoluble bonds, and sooner or later making this relation between them to appear?<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>But not in this way only do mens sins find them out. Oftentimes there is no such connection of cause and effect; but there is that conformity between the sin and the punishment, that unmistakable resemblance between them, which it is impossible to ascribe to blind chance. Scripture, and not Scripture only, is full of examples in this kited. It is measured to men exactly as they have measured to others; the very cup they have held to the lips of others being by and by held to their own. The deceiver is deceived; the violator of the sanctities of another mans home beholds his own trampled on and violated in turn. The wicked king, that slew the prophets and left their very bodies unburied, is himself slain and east forth with the burial of an ass. So marvellous is the conformity between the sin and the suffering, that there is wrung from the sufferer, sometimes in the hearing of all the world, but oh t how much oftener in the secret of his soul, a confession of the same: As I have done, so God hath requited me (Jdg 1:7<\/span>; Rev 16:6<\/span>). Others may miss the connection, may not so much as guess that there is one; but he knows only too well whose hand it was that smote him; from what wing the arrow which pierced him has been drawn.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Then, too, mens sins often find them out, though no visible sign or token may betray this fact to the <\/em>world. All may outwardly stand fair; there may be no breach in the worldly prosperity, nay, this may be ampler, more strongly established than ever; while yet there may be that within which forbids to rejoice, which takes all the joy and the gladness out of life–the memory of that old sin which was as nothing when committed, but which now darkens all, the deadly arrow poisoning the springs of life, which will not drop from the side, which no force, no art of mans device, can withdraw. Is there not here one whose sin has found him out? Neither let us assume that it is only the wicked whose sins thus come round to them again. God is faithful, and will not allow His own children to escape altogether, any more than the children of this present world. The cup of suffering may be filled more fully for some than for others; but it shall come round in due time to all.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>What shall we say to all this? If earlier or later, first or last, our sins do thus so often overtake us even here, shall we not put far from us so evil a thing and one which has such a fatal power of thus coming back on him that wrought it? It may be that it is too late for this ; but there is still something which we can <\/em>do. We can, so to speak, take the initiative; turn the table on our sins, and instead of waiting for them to find us out, we, earnestly seeking, by aid of that candle which the Lord has lighted in us, may find out them; and then we have the sure word of promise that, if we will judge ourselves, we shall not be judged of the Lord. (Archbp. Trench<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sin its own punishment<\/strong><\/p>\n

The consequences of a mans sin are often, and for a length of time, felt by others rather than himself. The anxious husband has to bear the burden laid on him by the thriftless wife; the widowed mother that which is imposed by the extravagance of the thoughtless son. The sin, so to speak, born into life, leaves its proper parent, travels sometimes far away, finds out the innocent, and afflicts them; but nevertheless, in due time, it will come home to the sinner himself.<\/p>\n


I. <\/strong>Here was the sin of selfishness. Bring us<\/em> not over Jordan. A deliberate proposal, involving schism in the body, separation, isolation, to carry out mean and selfish ends. Suppose this request had been granted; though things might have gone well with them for a time, yet in the end, cut off by their own act from sympathy and aid, exposed to the attack of numerous foes, they would have reaped the bitter fruit of what they had sown: and so throughout life, no one more fails of his end, no one more certainly brings on himself what he seeks to avoid, than the selfish man.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>The sin of cowardice, too, was probably here. Timorousness provoked insult, and invites attack.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>Here was the sin of indolence. Nothing more certainly than indolence cuts itself off from the ease and enjoyment it seeks. Its grows, too, so strong by yielding to it, that at length freedom from toil ends in bitterest bondage.<\/p>\n


IV. <\/strong>Here was that in which all other sins may be summed up: disobedience to God. (J. W. Lance<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The unfailing detective<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sinner and his sin change places after he has committed it. Before its commission he pursues sin; after its perpetration sin pursues him, and is sure to find him.<\/p>\n

I. Why?<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Because of the absolute perfectness of Gods law, which covers every detail of a human beings life, and threatens a penalty for every dereliction.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Because of the perfect administration of that law, which notes every offence and secures the punishment of every offender.<\/p>\n

II. When?<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Sometimes in this life, by civil law, by general censure, and by reproaches of conscience.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Sometimes at death, when the hallucination of the world is removed, and conscience asserts its authority.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Always at the judgment, when Satan no longer can deceive, when the standard of duty is applied, and the sinners record is unfolded. In the Hades of the lost, where the sinner shall reap in kind, in degree, and in quantity what he has sown. (Hom. Monthly<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The certainty of sin finding us out<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>What is meant by our sin finding us out?<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>By the expression Our sin, we may in the first place understand any particular sin of which we may have been guilty; any gross and single act of injustice, profaneness, licentiousness, falsehood, or the like, which at any time may have been committed by us. But we must not confine the expression to this meaning; for it more properly signifies all the collective sin of which we have been guilty; the sin, as it were, of our whole lives.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Now, in what sense is it said that this our sin will find us out? To understand the force of this expression, we must remember that sin necessarily brings certain evil consequences. It entails them on the sinner. Now these consequences are three: fear, shame, and death. Sin necessarily brings these evils with it in its train. Evil pursues sinners; and whatever they may think or feel, their sin will one day find them out.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>The certainty that our sin will find us out.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>In the first place, the perfections of God absolutely forbid that sin should go unpunished. Omnipresent: Omniscient: Holy: Just. True and faithful to His word.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>In the second place, the many remarkable instances of sin being detected and punished in this world, strongly confirm the truth under consideration. Achan: Gehazi: Ananias and Sapphira. Has it not sometimes happened, that a man has even become his own accuser? Unable to bear the clamours and stings of conscience, he has confessed his own guilt, and has given himself up to punishment. Now what do these things prove, but that God will certainly bring to light the hidden things of darkness? We see how easily He can do it. He thus directs sin to find out some sinners here, to convince us that it will find out every sinner hereafter.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>But, in the third place, should a doubt yet remain on our minds, the appointment of a day of final retribution may and must entirely remove it. (E. Cooper, M. A.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Retribution<\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>Does not common sense tell us, that if God made this world, and governs it by righteous and God-like laws, this must be a world in which evil doing cannot thrive? God made the world better than that, surely! He would be a bad law-giver who made such laws, that it was as well to break them as to keep them. The world works by Gods laws, and it inclines towards good and not towards evil; and he who sins, even in the least, acts contrary to the rule and constitution of the world, and will surely find that Gods laws will go on in spite of him, and grind him to powder. God has no need to go out of His way to punish our evil deeds. Let them alone, and they will punish themselves. Is it not so in everything? If a tradesman trades badly, or a farmer farms badly, there is no need of lawyers to punish him; he will punish himself.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Next, to speak of Scripture. I might quote texts innumerable to prove that what I say Scripture says also.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>You know that your sins will find you out. Look boldly and honestly into your own hearts. Look through the history of your past lives, and confess to God, at least, that the far greater number of your sorrows have been your own fault; that there is hardly a days misery which you ever endured in your life of which you might not say, If I had listened to the voice of God in my conscience–if I had earnestly considered what my duty was–if I had prayed to God to determine my judgment right, I should have been spared this sorrow now! Am I not right? Think again of your past lives, and answer in Gods sight, how many wrong things have you ever done which have succeeded–that is, how many sins which you would not be right glad were undone if you could but put back the wheels of Time? They may have succeeded outwardly; meanness will succeed so–lies–oppression–theft–godlessness–they are all pleasant enough while they last, I suppose: and a man may reap what he calls substantial benefits from them in money, and such-like, and keep that safe enough; but has his sin succeeded? Has it not found him out? found him out never to lose him again? Is he the happier for it?<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>And lastly, you who, without running into any especial sins, as those which the world calls sins, still live careless about religion, without loyalty to Christ the Lord, without any honest attempt, or even wish, to serve the God above you, or to rejoice in remembering that you are His children, working for Him, and under Him–be sure your sin will find you out. When affliction, or sickness, or disappointment come, as come they will if God has not cast you off; when the dark day dawns, and your fools paradise of worldly prosperity is cut away from under your feet, then you will find out your folly; you will find that you have insulted the only friend who can <\/strong>bring you out of affliction. Then, I say, the sin of your godlessness will find you out; if you do not intend to fall, soured and sickened merely by Gods chastisements, either into stupid despair or peevish discontent, you will have to go back to God and cry, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son. Go back at once, before it be too late. Find out your sins and mend them–before they find you out, and break your hearts. (C. Kingsley, M. A<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The warning against sin<\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing which has much to do with leading people to commit sin, is the thought that they can do it in secret, and not be found out. Many a boy is tempted to play truant, instead of going to school, because he thinks that his father and mother will never know anything about it. Many a robber breaks into a house at night, and steals what he wants, because he thinks that no one sees him, and so his sin will never be found out. But here in our text, we have a warning against sin because it is sure to be found out.<\/p>\n


I. <\/strong>And the first thing which must make it sure that sin will be found out, is–the presence. Of God.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>The second thing which makes it sure that sin will be found out, is–the power of God.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>And the third thing, which makes it sure that sin will be found out is–the purpose of God (Ecc 12:14<\/span>). (R<\/em>. Newton, D. D.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Murder will out<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>The common fault. In every human being there are two sides, one seen by the world, and the other known only to himself and God. We perform before our fellow men; but to ourselves and God, ones true <\/strong>character is revealed. Few men and women commit great crimes. But people who commit great crimes first begin with the little faults, such as white lies, or white dishonesty, or white speculation, with other peoples money. You know how hard it is sometimes to heat anything in your oven or on your fire; but when you obtain the first degree of heat, it is much more easy to get the second, the third, and the fourth. So it is hard at first to prevail upon yourself to do wrong, but after the first step has been taken it is very easy to go on with the second and the third. Dalliance with sin is a common fault.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>The sure result–Be sure your sin will find you out. When sin has found you out, you often resolve to give it up, yet you go to it again. Many people forsake sin as a man who goes to his work forsakes his house, but comes to it again after a season. And your sin finds you out in that you keep on doing the wrong, each year consenting to neglect something good, and more pleased to do something evil. Your sin finds you oat because as rust destroys your iron tools and vessels, so sin rusts your inward character. A splendid oak tree is blown down in a great gale of wind. But was it the wind that ruined the monarch of the forest? No; the wind merely completed the ruin. The cause of the destruction began years ago, when a drop of water settled itself in a crevice of the oak tree and gradually worked its way within until ultimately the rain and the outside air got into the heart of the wood, and it became diseased, corrupt, anal hollow. So when we see a man fall, we know it is a cankering and corrupting sin which has been surely finding him out. Sin will surely find you out because it is opposed to Gods eternal law of right.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>Thank God, there is a cure for sin; but no outward salve can heal its wounds. No external restraint, no prison, no muzzle of human device will keep you from it; the only cure is a new creation in your heart; and this God promises to every human heart that asks it. God cures us of our sin-disease, not only effectually but with tenderness. (W. Birch<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The entail of evil<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>Notice the fact that this appeal, in regard to a <\/strong>great spiritual truth, is not made in the first instance to individuals, but to two tribes in their national capacity. The life of a tribe, or of a people, is a reality. A tribe, a nation, a Church, a people, cannot commit a wrong act or follow a wrong course, without, as a tribe, or nation, or Church, or people, suffering the consequences of its act. The sin which a nation commits is found out in the long-run. It brings forth its own natural fruits. One generation is to the next generation as spring is to autumn, and as boyhood is to manhood. And just as a man suffers for his carelessness, his folly, his dissipation, in youth, so does a generation suffer for its predecessors.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>We may make the subject one of wider and more general application, and find that this saying is universally true.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>By the very constitution of mans being, the sin of the individual who commits a wrong reappears in his own mind and character. Not only every act, but every thought or purpose or desire which passes through the mind, gives a tinge to the mind itself. In the attitude and character of the mind itself, every mans individual sins, even the most secret, will find him out.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>There may be some who will be more influenced by another consideration, and that is, that his secret sins wilt grow and gather, until in some way or other they will discover themselves in act, and find him out. (A. Watson, D. D<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The sinner found out by his sin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both the unconverted who resist not evil, and the converted who resist it but imperfectly, not aiming at the total renewal of their nature, offer a parallel case of guilt to that of the unbelieving Israelites. And we are now to examine how the warning of the text appears to each class–Be sure your sin will find you out.! Now we suppose that the delusion which chiefly hardens the sinner in the commission of the crimes he so daringly perpetrates, is the hope that he may commit them in secrecy and with impunity. There can be no doubt that it detection followed immediately on the commission of crime–night throwing no mantle of darkness round the culprit, and accomplices unable to <\/strong>screen him from public scorn–those monstrous forms of wickedness would not so often appear which disfigure the annals of our race. But such a speedy retribution would go counter to the whole tone and texture of the revealed plan of salvation. Sins punished as soon as committed cannot be repented of, and therefore cannot be pardoned. If then, long-suffering is to be shown, if remission of human guilt is to be proclaimed through the interposition of a Mediator,. judgment must not follow so speedily upon crime. And it is this delay, rendered necessary for the display of mercy, that men interpret as if it meant indifference. We must, therefore, fling open the mysterious portals that enclose the future world, and reveal to the gaze of the sinner the destinies of the lost, ere we <\/strong>can hope successfully to urge him to commence the great business of religion. Who among you is deluding himself by the hope either of secrecy or impunity? Be sure your sin will find you out! You are pursued by the sin which yourselves have committed! That which before had no being, has received an individual, a personal existence by your own act, and is afterwards mysteriously connected with you, following your footsteps and tracking you in all your journeyings. Nay more, each sin which ye commit may be said to swell the numbers of the throng of pursuers that are behind, making it less possible for you to escape. Noiselessly they follow you. And ye yourselves have witnessed some of the results that follow on the sinner being overtaken by his sins. For what is it but sin finding the sensualist out, when he sinks beneath the ravages of premature decay, a virtual suicide? What is it but sin finding the gambler out, when with tottering reason and broken fortunes he finds a dishonourable grave, bequeathing nothing but an unhonoured name to those who once called him husband and father? And what is it but sin finding the dishonest trader out when, though he once stood high in public estimation, his reputation and his gains are proved to have been alike unfairly won, and he is sent an exile from scenes where he once moved a king? Happy for him if these temporal calamities, which are but heralds of others more fearful, would drive him to take refuge beneath the Saviours Cross, while yet the avenger has not fastened on his soul. If the sinner passes through life with his future tormentors always on his track, how can he, if found among the impenitent, hope to escape? But the text contains indirect notices of the future life which need a fuller examination. I gather that there will be an exact adaptation between the crime and its punishment–the punishment being nothing else than the crime itself re-appearing in another state of being to take vengeance on him who committed it.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>But we must now proceed to the second point we proposed to examine, how the text may be applied to the case of one who is truly a child of God. The believer who stands at Gods bar, having squared his conduct when on earth, according to Gods commandment, for Christs sake, shall not come under any measure of condemnation. If pronounced righteous then, his justification will be complete. But is he never impeded in his Christian course by the habits he had formed while living without God in the world? Those habits are gradually being overcome by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The roots of that sin, not yet eradicated, send up their bitter fruit, even when the sin itself has long disappeared. And thus his former sin, though pardoned, finds the believer out. Nor is this all. Sin will mark the believers course all through, and greater infirmities will appear in one than in another. There may be spiritual indolence–a desire to pass lightly over some infirmity, as if it did no great violence to Gods law–a fixing of the heart on something which forthwith becomes an idol, excluding Jehovah from His proper place. And then this sin finds the believer out. The child, or the husband, or the friend, who was too much loved, is taken away, that nothing may interfere with the total surrender of the soul to God. Or the uninterrupted prosperity which caused a forgetfulness that all things come of God, is brought suddenly to an end, and the storm sweeps over the stream of life which before flowed calmly along, that Gods voice may be heard bidding the tempest subside. Oh! the believer should never feel the rod, without searching for the sin that brings the chastening. I am sure that God keeps a stricter reckoning, in this world, with the righteous, than with the ungodly. (J. P. Waldo, M. A<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Our sin finding us out<\/strong><\/p>\n

Audley was an old English usurer, who used to lend money to the thoughtless young men of his day, at ruinous rates of interest. He counted out the pounds for them, with many well-affected remonstrances on their extravagance, but his pity never led him away so far as to make him forget his securities. As long as he knew a debt to be safe, he was quite indifferent as to delay of payment, and many an unsuspecting victim was lulled into false security by the old usurers apparent unconcern; and they were only awakened, on some dark and unfortunate day, by the terrible discovery that interest and principa1 had swallowed up all their estates. Such is the ruinous percentage which thousands will be called on to pay to the great Enemy of Souls, for what are commonly described as the pleasures of sin. There is a presumption on the part of such as wilfully disobey God, which, sooner or later, will receive its due recompense. The most dangerous and deadly quality of sin is its deceitfulness: so deceitful, indeed, that it can conceal itself even from conscience. But nothing can be hidden from God. Hundreds of well-authenticated facts have occurred in all ages, enforcing the declaration that sin will be sure to find out the guilty. Even if sin be undiscovered in this life, the appointment of the great day of retribution, at the last, puts the matter of final exposure beyond the possibility of doubt. (J. N. Norton, D. D<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sins detection and punishment<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>Let us notice the emphatic expression, Your sin. There are <\/strong>shades of moral character, and some sins are of deeper dye than others. There are sins peculiarly characteristic of some people. It is important that we should inquire what is our sin–the sin that is more especially peculiar to any of us. Your sin is that which is most agreeable in its commission to your circumstances and constitutional temperament–that sin which you can commit with the greatest facility, and against which you have the least power of offering resistance–that sin for which you study to find out the most plausible excuses. What is the cause of your carelessness as regards your spiritual and eternal condition? That cause, whatever it may be, is your sin.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>Let us now consider the certain detection and punishment of sin. It has often been remarked that murder will out. Blood has a voice which will make itself heard sooner or later. The blood of the first victim of violence cried from the ground on which it was shed, and it appealed to the God of justice in heaven for vengeance. Let us watch and pray, lest we eater into temptation. The young are especially exposed to danger from pride and vanity: let them guard against the beginnings of sin. (S. Walker<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Concealment of sin no security to the sinner<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>That men generally, if not always, proceed to the commission of sin, upon a secret confidence of concealment or impunity.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>That no man is induced to sin, considered in itself, as a thing absolutely or merely evil, but as it bears some resemblance or appearance of good in the apprehensions of him who commits it.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>The other assertion to be laid down is, that God has annexed two great evils to every sin, in opposition to the pleasure and profit of it; to wit, shame and pain. He has, by an eternal and most righteous decree, made these two the inseparable effects and consequents of sin. They are the wages assigned it by the laws of Heaven; so that whosoever commits it, ought to account shame and punishment to belong to him as his rightful inheritance.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>The grounds and reasons upon which men take up such a confidence. And, no doubt, weak and shallow enough we shall find them all; and such as <\/strong>could never persuade any man to sin, did not his own love to sin persuade him much more forcibly than all such considerations; some of which are these that follow. As–<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Men consider the success which they have actually had in the commission of many sins; and this proves an encouraging argument to them to commit the same for the future; as naturally suggesting this to their thoughts, that what they have done so often, without either discovery or punishment, may be so done by them again.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>A second ground, upon which men are apt to persuade themselves that they shall escape the stroke of Divine justice for their sins, is their observation of the great and flourishing condition of some of the topping sinners of the world.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>As we have shown holy mightily men are heartened on to their sins, by the successful examples of others as had as themselves or perhaps worse; so the next ground upon which such are wont to promise themselves security, both from the discovery and punishment of their sins, is the opinion which they have of their own singular art and cunning to conceal them from the knowledge, or, at least, of their power to rescue them from the jurisdiction of any earthly judge.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>The fourth and last ground which I shall mention of mens promising themselves security from the punishment of their sins, is a strong presumption that they shall be able to repent, and make their peace with God when they please; and this, they fully reckon, will keep them safe, and effectually shut the door against their utmost fears, as being a reach beyond them all.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>To show the vanity of this confidence, by declaring those several ways by which, in the issue, it comes certainly to he defeated; and that both with reference to this world and the next.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>For this world; there are various ways by which it comes to be disappointed here: as<\/p>\n

(1)<\/strong> The very confidence itself of secrecy is a direct and natural cause of the sinners discovery. For confidence in such cases causes a frequent repetition of the same action; and if a man does a thing frequently, it is odds but some time or other he is discovered; for by this he subjects himself to so many more accidents; every one of which may possibly betray him. He who has escaped in many battles, has yet been killed in the issue; and by playing too often <\/strong>in the mouth of death has been snapped by it at last. Add to this, that confidence makes a man venturous, and venturousness casts him into the high road of danger and the very arms of destruction. For while a man ventures, he properly Shuts the <\/strong>eyes of his reason. And he who shuts his own eyes lies so much the more open to those of other men.<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong> There is sometimes a strange, providential concurrence of unusual, unlikely accidents, for the discovery of great sins; a villainy committed perhaps but once in an age, comes sometimes to be found out also by such an accident as scarce happens above once in an age.<\/p>\n

(3)<\/strong> God sometimes makes one sin the means of discovering another; it often falling out with two vices, as with two thieves or rogues; of whom it is hard to say which is worse, and yet one of them may serve well enough to betray and find out the other. How many have by their drunkenness disclosed their thefts, their lusts, and murders, which might have been buried in perpetual silence, had not the sottish committers of them buried their reason in their cups? For the tongue is then got loose from its obedience to reason, and commanded at all adventures by the fumes of a distempered brain and ,a roving imagination; and so presently pours forth whatsoever they shall suggest to it, sometimes casting away life, fortune, reputation, and all in a breath.<\/p>\n

(4)<\/strong> God sometimes infatuates and strikes the sinner with frenzy, and such a distraction, as causes him to reveal all his hidden baseness, and to blab out such truths as will be sure to be revenged upon him who speaks them. In a word, God blasts and takes away his understanding, for having used it so much to the dishonour of Him who gave it; and delivers him over to a sort of madness, too black and criminal to be allowed any refuge in Bedlam.<\/p>\n

(5)<\/strong> God sometimes lets loose the sinners conscience upon him, filling it with such horror for sin, as renders it utterly unable to bear the burden it labours under, without publishing, or rather proclaiming it to the world.<\/p>\n

(6)<\/strong> And lastly, God sometimes takes the work of vengeance upon Himself, and immediately, with His own arm, repays the sinner by some notable judgment from heaven; sometimes, perhaps, He strikes him dead suddenly; and sometimes He ,smites him with some loathsome disease (which will hardly be thought the gout, whatsoever it may be called); and sometimes, again, He strangely blasts him in his <\/strong>name, family, or estate, so that all about him stand amazed at the blow: but God and the sinner himself know well enough the reason and the meaning of it too. Justice, we know, used to be pictured blind, and therefore it finds out the sinner, not with its eyes, but with its hands; not by seeing, but by striking; and it is the honour of the great attribute of Gods justice, which He thinks so much concerned, to give some pledge or specimen of itself upon bold sinners in this world; and so to assure them of a full payment hereafter, by paying them something in the way of earnest here. (R. South, D. D<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The consequences of sin<\/strong><\/p>\n

The <\/em>text leads us to consider the consequences of a single sin, such as a breach of their engagement would have been to the Reubenites and Gadites.<\/p>\n


I. <\/strong>It is natural to <\/em>reflect on the probable influence upon us of sins committed in our childhood and even infancy, which we never realised or have altogether forgotten. Childrens minds are impressible in a very singular way, such as is not common afterwards. The passing occurrences which meet them rest upon their imagination as if they had duration, and days or hours, having to them the semblance, may do the work, of years.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>What is true in infancy and childhood is in its degree true in after-life. At particular moments in our later life, when the mind is excited, thrown out of its ordinary state, as if into the original unformed state when it was more free to choose good or evil, then, in like manner, it takes impressions, and those indelible ones, after the manner of childhood. This is one reason why a time of trial is often such a crisis in a mans spiritual history.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>To these single or forgotten sins are not improbably to be traced the strange inconsistencies of character which we often witness in our experience of life.<\/p>\n


IV. <\/strong>Single sins indulged or neglected are often the cause of other defects of character, which seem to have no connection with them, but which, after all, are rather symptomatic of the former than themselves at the bottom of the mischief.<\/p>\n


V. <\/strong>A man may be very religious in all but one infirmity, and this one indulged infirmity may produce most disastrous effects on his spiritual state, without his ever being aware of it. His religious excellences are of no avail against wilful sin. The word of Scripture assures us that such sin shuts us out from Gods presence and obstructs the channels by which He gives us grace. (J. H. Newman, D. D<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The sins of sinners finding them out<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>Sinners are in their hearts utterly averse to be found out by their sins, and they have many shifts for that vain purpose.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>They will excuse and justify their sins as if there were no evil in them.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>They will carry the matter so quietly as that it shall be hid from the eyes of the world, while in the meantime Gods watchful eye is still upon them, though they do not regard it.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>They will deny it when charged upon them, and so cover one sin with another. They wipe their mouth and say we have done no wickedness. Oh what pains do many take to ruin their own souls. Credit before the world is bought at prodigious rates of soul, and consciences, lies, and perjury.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>They will keep out of the way, where their sin is most likely to find them out. They live strangers to themselves, dare not examine themselves impartially.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>To show in what respects sin shall find out the sinner.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>By discovering and bringing to light their works of darkness.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>By presenting sin in its native colours to their awakened consciences.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>By giving them the due reward of their works.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>Snow whence it is that sin certainly will find out the sinner. How can it be otherwise, if we consider–<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>That none can sin without witnesses, who will surely at length discover the sin. Let sinners choose the most secret place for their works of darkness, they have always two witnesses present with them.<\/p>\n

(1)<\/strong> Conscience within their own breast is as a thousand witnesses, whose testimony one cannot get denied.<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong> The omniscient God, whose eye is always upon the sinner.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>God has said it.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>There is a watchful eye of Providence over the world that never closes, but takes notice of all mens actions at all times and in every place. Use<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Of information. This lets us see–<\/p>\n

(1)<\/strong> That an evil conscience is a sad companion, and guilt lying within the breast unrepented of will break out sadly at length, to the sinners confusion. Many a secret blow it gives the sinner, that the world knows not of.<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong> God is a just God, and will not be mocked, nor can He be blinded. Use<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Of warning,<\/p>\n

(1)<\/strong> To take heed when you think you stand, lest you fall. The way of sin is down the hill, it is easy to go downward, but there may be broken bones before you get up again.<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong> Please not yourselves in that you get your sins covered and hid from the eyes of men. For though you may prosper a while in that course, yet your feet may slip at last.<\/p>\n

(3)<\/strong> Let us all labour to find out our sins, lest they find us out. To inquire more particularly than we have yet done into the Lords making sin find out the sinner. This is one of these things in which the providence of God does shine most illustriously; upon which unbiassed spectators must say, This is the finger of God, and verily there is a God to judge upon the earth. Consider here,<\/p>\n


I. <\/strong>The general kinds of sin, which the Lord makes to find out the sinner. As for open sins confessed by the sinner, I need not speak of these, the sinner meets with them every day. But–<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Sins which men will not own to be sins, the Lord makes to find out the sinner. Crucifixion of Christ.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Secret sins to which no man is witness, the Lord makes them find out the sinner.<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>The time in which the Lord makes sin to find out the sinner. Times and seasons are in the Lords hand, and the time fixed by His providence is always the best time, and whoso considereth circumstances will be obliged to own it. The best time for his own honour, and for the conviction of the sinner in mercy or in wrath.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>The place, where sin finds out the sinner. Many times there is much of God seen in this, and God reserves the discovery always to the fittest place. And He can make the sinners own feet carry him to the place of this heavy meeting, while he has no mind of any such thing.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>God can make sin find out the sinner sometimes, where he can have least support under the awful meeting with his sin. Josephs brethren.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Where they may have least help to shift, their sins finding them out. Companions in sin are ofttimes farthest to seek when their help is most needed, and some time or other they will all prove physicians of no value.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Where it will confound the sinner most and pierce his heart most keenly. God makes secret sins, which no eye has seen committed, find out the sinner publicly before many witnesses, and in the face of the sun.<\/p>\n


IV. <\/strong>The means by which the Lord makes sin find out the sinner. There is much of God seen in this also. He never wants means to discover the most secret sins, which He wishes to bring to light. Sometimes this is done–<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>By the natural product of the sin, by which the sin is made to discover itself.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>By some act of indiscretion and folly in the sinner himself.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>By some unforeseen accident which the sinner by his own utmost diligence could not prevent. Mans capacity is but narrow, there are many things which he cannot foresee. When he goes out of the way of God, he may, ere he be aware, be caught fast in such a snare as will hold him till his sin finds him out.<\/p>\n


V. <\/strong>The way and manner of sins finding out the sinner. This many a time is such as must needs make men to say, This is the finger of God. Providence appoints the meeting, and wonderfully brings matters about for the keeping of it.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Ofttimes sin finds the sinner unexpectedly and surprisingly when they are not looking for it.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Often does the way which sinners take to hide their sin prove the way of its finding them out.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Sin always finds out the sinner securely, that there is none escaping, no getting beyond it, but the sinner is hedged in on every side.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>Gods writing the sin upon the punishment, so that the sinner shall be forced to say, As I have done, so God hath requited me. Thus God makes mens sins so to find them out, that they cannot fail to see that He remembers such a sin against them. Sometimes the punishment is the same in kind with the sin: as in the case of Adoni-bezek. Sometimes there is a visible likeness between the sin and the punishment. The Sodomites burned with lust, and God sends fire and brimstone on them to burn them to ashes. Sometimes there is a certain relationship betwixt the sin and the punishment. Jeroboams hand withering, the belly of the adulteress swelling, and her thigh rotting. Finally, sometimes there is a direct contrariety betwixt the sin and the punishment. Thus God threatened the Israelites: Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies, which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things; and tie shall put a yoke of iron on thy neck, until He have destroyed thee. Adam would be like God, and he became like the beast that perisheth. I shall now confirm the doctrine.<\/p>\n

Here consider–<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>That no man can sin without witnesses. This has been already illustrated under the third head.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Consider that God both can and will make sin find out the sinner. How then can the sinner escape? Many a time atrocious crimes escape among men, because such as would cannot find them out, and such as can will not do it. But there is neither cannot nor will not with God in this case.<\/p>\n

(1)<\/strong> God can do it. For He hath everything necessary to qualify Him to find out the guilty. He is privy to the most secret wickedness.<\/p>\n

(2)<\/strong> God will do it. For He hath said it, His truth is engaged for it.<\/p>\n

(3)<\/strong> It lies upon Gods honour to make sin find out the sinner.<\/p>\n

(4)<\/strong> History and observation afford abundant testimony to this grand truth, in the events that have appeared and do appear in the world in all ages. Many a practical commentary has Providence written on our text in the shame and ruin of many a man and woman ; although the brightest piece of it is reserved to be written out at the last day, when thousands of blanks that are in it shall be filled up. <\/em>(T. Boston, D. D<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sin finding the sinner out<\/strong><\/p>\n


I<\/strong>. <\/em><\/strong>Inquire what it is to be found out by sin. The expression is singular as well as striking, and means to be overtaken by convictions; to be alarmed, and brought under a sense of condemnation and danger, on account of sin. A man may be said to be thus found out when he feels the awful consequences of sin in his conscience, when his peace is disturbed by the recollection of his iniquities, when he feels the fatal sting of them in his soul. When a mans sins find him out, convictions fasten as a worm upon his mind; and conscience, though before unheeded, or perhaps silenced and kept down by numberless worldly cares and pleasures, rises up, as it were, with renewed vigour and tormenting energy, and at length forces the sinner, with wretched Ahab, to exclaim, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? The sinner is made alive to the evil of sin. The effects of sin, as they frequently overtake the sinner in this world, are generally serious and painful; but, considered in a more extended view, as reaching through eternity, and as having to do with our everlasting doom in the world of spirits, they must be unutterably awful. They are not only ruinous to a mans present peace, and injurious to the body, but pernicious, fearfully pernicious, to the soul. Oh, let us think of our sins while we are privileged to hear the sound of a Redeemers name! Let us implore forgiveness while mercy exhibits to our view the atoning blood of the Cross!<\/p>\n


II. <\/strong>The certainty of this finding out.<\/p>\n


III. <\/strong>To illustrate the text, by adverting to the times and occasions when men are usually found out by sin.<\/p>\n

1. <\/strong>Sin is sometimes made suddenly to overtake and find out the sinner by an unexpected stroke of Providence. One circumstance often calls up another to remembrance, or discovers events with which it is connected, involving crimes and guilt which have been long buried in concealment, and long time escaped detection. How singular and striking the case of the brethren of Joseph!<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Sin finds men out at the time of conversion.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>That sin fails not to find out the sinner, if not sooner, at least in the day of adversity, sickness, and death. (J<\/em>. Jacques, B. A<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The punishments of the wicked<\/strong><\/p>\n

Experience proves that the punishments visited upon an iniquity are often greater than the advantages or pleasures which that iniquity could possibly have secured. A man gains 50 by forgery, and his whole life becomes an utter wreck. A youth rejoices for a moment in the indulgence of his appetites, and consequences of a lifelong duration are entailed on him. Sometimes, also, the punishments are delayed until long after the actions occasioning them are forgotten. This is not infrequently the case. Years roll away, and the transgressor settles down quietly and respectably in life. The calm joys of home, the lapse of time, the eagerness for new pursuits, have obliterated from his memory the recollection of the long-gone, sin, when suddenly up rises, from the dark background and <\/strong>abysm of the past, the grim spectre of an unavoidable retribution. A doctor once asked a man dying of cancer, whether he could recollect ever having done an injury to the breast in which the cancer had formed. Yes, he replied; some thirty years ago I had a heavy fall, which sorely bruised this breast. That fall of thirty years ago, said the doctor, is the occasioning cause of your cancer now. So is it with the cancerous consequences caused by sin. They repose silently for many years, and then, long after the occasioning iniquity is forgotten, they break forth in fatal, calamitous, irrepressible malignity. Terrible, slow, subtle, long-delayed, are the punishments accorded to sin in this present life; and no transgressor can ever be quite sure that the remote, perhaps forgotten, iniquity of long ago will not, ere life is over, be punished by exposure, shame, and ruin. And these long-delayed punishments often come, not by degrees and after many warnings, but suddenly and with violence. At the meridian of the brightest summer day the avalanches come down irresistibly, overwhelmingly. Moreover, it is not active and heinous misdoings alone whose footsteps are thus dogged by the pursuing Nemesis. Extravagance, rashness, folly, negligence, procrastination, are often attended by terrible consequences. Most people have their opportunity in life, and every man his day. But if the day is unused, it cannot be recalled. And daily experience teaches that there is a certain bound and limit to imprudence and misbehaviour and negligence which, being transgressed, there remains no <\/strong>place of repentance in the natural course of things. Every life, like every year, has its cycle of seasons, and when the season is passed it is for ever and irrecoverably gone. Moreover (and the consideration is of serious moment), the punishment for neglecting opportunity or for committing iniquity is final. Considered in their temporal duration, the punishments visited upon vice and negligence are everlasting. Nor does it make the smallest difference to the fact and the certainty of these consequences whether we believe in them or not. Men may ignore consequences, but consequences come all the same. Considerations such as these appear to shed some light upon the vexed question of punishments after death. By thoughtfully reflecting upon the method of Gods dealings here and now, men may fairly conjecture what will be the method of Gods dealings with them hereafter, seeing that the same Unchangeable God presides over the destinies both of the embodied and the disembodied man. And, in this present world, we find that mere folly, wilfulness, feebleness of will, want of exertion, entail consequences almost as pernicious as those which attend upon actual transgression. We find, moreover, that the plea of ignorance or inexperience does not avert the retributions which await the transgressor. So, to this extent at least, the misdoings and the negligences of mans mortal state may be punished everlastingly, in that eternity may prove too short for the full undoing of the ravages inflicted on the soul, by wrongs committed or duties omitted, during the temporary period of its habitation in the body. And if this be so–if the same principles which permeate natural punishments in this world extend to the punishments of the world to come–then it follows not only that the disbelieving or the ignoring of these punishments will neither moderate nor avert them, but also that habits of disbelief may induce practical neglect of laws, resulting in heavy retribution. Pain and suffering are facts which doubters may discuss or condemn, but can neither prevent nor divert. The belief in future punishments has an evident and direct tendency to diminish those punishments, and even to lead to an escape from them altogether, inasmuch as it assists in prevailing upon men to avoid the causes of evil upon which the tread of punishment follows ; whereas doubt of, or disbelief in, future punishment tends toward a recklessness of living calculated to make hell in life here, even if hereafter there were no life in hell. (J. W. Diggle, M. A<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sin never forgotten<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let a man try to forget any dreadful thing of which he hates the remembrance, and the more he tries to forget it, the more surely he remembers it, the more he bodies it forth, and every thrust he makes at it causes it to glare up anew, reveals some new horror in it. Doubtless, this peculiarity in our mental constitution is destined to play a most terrific part in the punishment of mens sins in eternity; for there can be nothing so dreadful as the remembrance of sin, and nothing which men will strive with more intense earnestness to hide from and forget, than the recollection of their sins; and yet every effort they make at such forgetfulness only gives to such sins a more terrible reality, and makes them blaze up in a more lurid light to the conscience. Oh, if they could but be forgotten! But the more intense is the earnestness of this wish, the more impossible becomes the forgetfulness, the more terribly the dreaded evil stands out. There are cases, even in this life, in which men would give ten thousand worlds, if they possessed them, could they only forget; but how much more in eternity! The man that has committed a secret midnight murder, how often, think you, though perhaps not a human being suspects it, would he give the riches of the material universe, if he bad them at command, could he but forget that one moments crime! But it is linked to his very constitution; and every time he tries to cut the chain, he does but rattle and rouse the crime out of its grave into a new existence. (G. B. Cheever, D. D<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Lifes mistakes<\/strong><\/p>\n

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up to-morrow. He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause. (H. W. Beecher<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

i.e. The punishment of your sin; as that word is very oft used. <\/P> <\/p>\n

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

But if ye will not do so<\/strong>,…. As they promised they would, and Moses insisted on it that they should:<\/p>\n

behold, ye have sinned against the Lord<\/strong> making such a request, and not fulfilling the conditions on which it was granted:<\/p>\n

and be sure your sin will find you out<\/strong>; fly in their faces, accuse them in their consciences, charge and load them with guilt, and bring deserved punishment upon them: sin may be put, as it often is, for the punishment of sin, which sooner or later will find out and come upon the impenitent and unpardoned sinner.<\/p>\n

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

23. But if ye will not do so. He makes a solemn protestation that they will deal wickedly, if they break their promise: and at the same time denounces punishment against them, as if he were summoning them before the tribunal of God. But, although he speaks conditionally of that particular engagement, whereby the two tribes had voluntarily bound themselves, still we may derive from his words the general doctrine, that, unless we abide by our promises, God will always be the avenger of fraud and treachery. The expression, “Sin will find you out,” is more emphatic than as if he had simply said, You shall not escape God’s hand; for the meaning of it is that vengeance is so connected with sin, that it cannot be severed from it. Thus, in Gen 4:7<\/span>, it is said, “Sin lieth at the door,” to lay hold at length of the guilty. For, such is our propensity to sin, that we too often find from experience that we are encouraged to audacity by God’s forbearance, whilst we think that we have escaped, if He makes as though He saw us not for a time. <\/p>\n

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

23<\/strong>. <\/strong> Be sure your sin will find you out <\/strong> Know ye your sin that it will find you out. <\/em> The sin here spoken of would be their refusal to aid their brethren in the conquest of Canaan proper the country west of the Jordan should they refuse to co-operate with the other tribes in its reduction. The finding out <\/em> would consist in the signal punishments with which they would be providentially visited.<\/p>\n

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

Num 32:23<\/span><\/em><\/strong>. <\/strong>Your sin will find you out<\/em><\/strong><\/strong> The LXX render this, and ye shall know your sin, when evils fall upon you; <\/em>which is not the meaning of the Hebrew. The sense is, the punishment of your sin will sooner or later overtake you; <\/em>or, ye shall not continue unpunished. <\/em>The heathens themselves had the same idea. Sooner or later God justifies his providence in punishing the wicked. See Homer, Iliad iv. ver. 160. Odyss. ii. ver. 31. Horace, Carm. lib. iii. Ode 3. <\/p>\n

REFLECTIONS.<\/strong>Though Moses had just suspicion for his fears, yet their reply seems to shew that they were groundless. A faithful minister watches with godly jealousy over the people; and his care and love of them appear even in suspicions which may arise from mistake or misinterpretation. <\/p>\n

1. They engage to follow their brethren, and never to forsake them till they are comfortably settled: yea, offer to go before them; so far are they from being cowards or discouraging them. Only they would secure their wives and children, and cattle, till their return; and, content with their present lot, desire no part beyond Jordan. Note; <\/em>It is always good to hear before we judge. Men may be actuated by the noblest motives, whose conduct, nevertheless, may be liable to such misrepresentation. <\/p>\n

2. The proposal is consented to on these conditions: they shall go armed before the Lord to fight his battles, and never think of quitting the camp till the land is subdued; otherwise, sin would overtake them and punish them accordingly. Note; <\/em>Sin will find us out if we are false and faithless, and we shall surely suffer for it.Thus the matter is compromised, and they engage for ready obedience and punctual performance of the agreement. The most serviceable, about 40,000 men, accordingly followed Israel into Canaan till the land was divided, whilst the rest, by consent no doubt, were left as a guard to the country which they occupied. <\/p>\n

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

DISCOURSE: 183
THE CERTAINTY THAT SIN WILL FIND US OUT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Num 32:23<\/span>. Behold, ye have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find you out<\/em>.<\/p>\n

THE fear of punishment, if not the best, is certainly the most common preservative from sin. Under the Mosaic dispensation it was the principal motive with which the divine commands were enforced. Nor did St. Paul, though so well acquainted with the liberal spirit of the Gospel, think it wrong to persuade men by the terrors of the Lord. The words before us therefore may, not improperly, be addressed to us [Note: The tribes of Reuben and Gad had solicited permission to have the land of Jazer and of Gilead for their portion, instead of any inheritance in the land of Canaan. Upon their promising to fight in conjunction with the other tribes until the whole of Canaan should be subdued, Moses acceded to their proposal; but warned them withal, that, if they receded from their engagement, they should assuredly meet with a due recompence from God.].<\/p>\n

We may take occasion from them to consider,<\/p>\n

I.<\/p>\n

In what manner we have sinned against the Lord<\/p>\n

It would be endless to attempt an enumeration of all the sins we have committed. We shall confine ourselves to that view of them which the context suggests
[The sin against which Moses cautioned the two tribes was, unfaithfulness to their engagements, and a preferring of their present ease to the executing of the work which God had assigned them. Now we promised at our baptism to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil [Note: See the Church Catechism.]. These promises then<\/em> made for us, we have renewed at our confirmation and at the Lords table: but how have we kept the covenant which we have thus solemnly entered into? Have we not maintained that friendship with the world which is enmity with God [Note: Jam 4:4<\/span>.]? Have we not rather sought to please than to mortify our carnal appetites [Note: Tit 3:3<\/span>.]? Has not the god of this world led us captive at his will [Note: Eph 2:2<\/span>; 2Ti 2:26<\/span>.]? And is not such a life one continued violation of our baptismal engagements?]<\/p>\n

But the sin referred to in the text, will scarcely bear any comparison with ours
[The Israelites were to maintain a warfare with men; we, with the devil [Note: Eph 6:12<\/span>.]. They were to fight for an earthly portion; we, an heavenly [Note: 1Co 9:25<\/span>.]. They might have urged that their<\/em> aid was unnecessary, when God<\/em> was engaged; and that, after all, the prize was an inadequate reward for such fatigue and danger. But, can we hope to conquer without exerting our own powers? Do we suppose that God will subdue our enemies without our concurrence? Or can we say that the prize held forth to us is not worth the contest? If our engagements be more solemn, our work more noble, and our reward more glorious than theirs, our sin in disregarding all must be proportionably greater: yet who amongst us must not confess that he has forgotten all his vows? Behold then, we may say to all, Ye have sinned against the Lord.]<\/p>\n

Nor are we to suppose that our sin will always pass unnoticed<\/p>\n

II.<\/p>\n

What assurance we have that our sin shall find us out<\/p>\n

Sin may be said to find us out when it brings down the divine judgments upon us
[Conscience, stupified or seared, often forgets to execute its office; nor speaks, till God, by his providence or grace, awaken it Sometimes years elapse before it reproves our iniquities [Note: Gen 42:21-22<\/span>.]: sometimes it testifies to our face as soon as our sin is committed [Note: Mat 26:74-75<\/span>; Mat 27:3-4<\/span>.]. Whenever it thus condemns us, our sins may be said to find us out. But the expression in the text imports rather the visitation of God for sin. There is a punishment annexed to every violation of Gods law [Note: Eze 18:4<\/span>.]; and sin then finds us out effectually when it brings that punishment upon us.]<\/p>\n

That it will find us out, we have the fullest possible assurance
[The perfections of Gods nature<\/em> absolutely preclude all hope of impunity. If he be omnipresent, he must see; if omniscient, remember; if holy, hate; and if just, punish the violations of his law. If he be possessed of veracity and power, he must execute the judgments he has denounced.<\/p>\n

The declarations of hit Word<\/em> abundantly confirm this awful truth [Note: Isa 3:11<\/span>; Rom 2:9<\/span>; Psa 21:8<\/span>; Pro 11:21<\/span>.]. Sin leaves a track which can never be effaced; and evil, however slow-paced, will surely overtake it [Note: Pro 13:21<\/span>; Psa 140:11<\/span>.]. However scoffers may exult in their security, their ruin is fast approaching [Note: 2Pe 2:3<\/span>; 2Pe 3:4<\/span>; 2Pe 3:9<\/span><\/u> and Deu 29:19-20<\/span>.].<\/p>\n

The remarkable instances<\/em> of sin being detected and punished in this world afford a strong additional testimony. David and Gehazi, though so studious to conceal their guilt, had their iniquity marked in the punishment inflicted for it [Note: 2Sa 12:9-12<\/span>; 2Ki 5:26-27<\/span>.]. When, according to human calculations, it was above two millions to one that Achan would escape, the lot fell on him by an infallible direction [Note: Jos 7:14-18<\/span>.]. How much more then shall the most hidden things be brought to light hereafter!<\/p>\n

The appointment of a day of final retribution<\/em> puts the matter beyond a possibility of doubt. For what end can there be such a period fixed, but that the actions of men may be judged? And for what end can they be judged, but that every man may receive according to his deeds [Note: Ecc 12:14<\/span>.]? We may then emphatically say to every sinner, Be sure your sin<\/em>, &c.]<\/p>\n

Infer,
1.<\/p>\n

How earnest should we be in searching out our own sins!<\/p>\n

[We think little of evils which have been committed by us long ago, and imagine that they are effaced from Gods memory as well as from our own: but every action, word, and thought, is noted in the book of his remembrance. He sees the transactions of former years as if they had this moment passed. All our iniquities are viewed by him in one accumulated mass; nor does he abhor them less than in the very instant they were committed. Let us not then pass them over, or palliate them, as youthful follies. Let us remember how exactly the Lords threatenings were executed on the Israelites in the wilderness [Note: Num 32:10-13<\/span>.]; and endeavour to avert his judgments while space for repentance is allowed us. Let us mourn over our innumerable violations of our baptismal covenant Let us lament our solicitude about a present portion, our aversion to fight the Lords battles, and our indifference about the heavenly Canaan. We must repent of these things, or lie under the guilt of them for ever [Note: Psa 50:21<\/span>; Luk 13:3<\/span>.].]<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

How thankful should we be that a way of escape is provided for us!<\/p>\n

[It is not sin lamented, but sin unrepented of, which will find us out. There is a city of refuge provided for those who will flee to it [Note: Heb 6:18<\/span>.]. The man, Christ Jesus, is an hiding-place from the impending storm [Note: Isa 32:2<\/span>.]. If we flee to him, we may be sure that sin shall NOT find us out. Every perfection of the Deity<\/em> is pledged to save a believing penitent [Note: 1Jn 1:9<\/span>.]. We are confirmed in this hope by the most positive declarations of Scripture<\/em> [Note: Isa 44:22<\/span>; Mic 7:19<\/span>; Heb 8:12<\/span>.]. We have most authentic and astonishing instances<\/em> of sin forgiven [Note: 2Sa 12:13<\/span>; Luk 7:47<\/span>; Luk 23:43<\/span>.]; and the day of judgment<\/em> is appointed no less for the complete justification of believers than for the condemnation of unbelievers [Note: 2Th 1:9-10<\/span>.]. Let this blessed assurance then dwell richly on our minds. Let it encourage us to take refuge under the Saviours wings [Note: Mat 23:37<\/span>.]. Let an holy confidence inspire those who have committed their souls to him [Note: 2Ti 1:12<\/span>.]. And let all rejoice and glory in him as able to save them to the uttermost [Note: Heb 7:25<\/span>.].]<\/p>\n<\/p>\n


<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

Num 32:23 But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out.<\/p>\n

Ver. 23. Be sure your sin will find you out.<\/strong> ] The guilt will haunt you at heels, as a bloodhound, and the punishment will overtake you, as it did that Popish priest in Lancashire, who being followed by one that found his glove, with a desire to restore it him, but pursued inwardly with a guilty conscience, leapt over a hedge, plunged into a mirey pit behind it, unseen and unthought of, wherein he was drowned. Or as it did that other priest, who, having escaped the fall of Blackfriars, A.D. 1623, where two of his fellow shavelings, a<\/em> with about a hundred more, perished, and taking water, with purpose to sail into Flanders, was cast away, with some others, under London Bridge, the boat being overturned. b<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

a<\/em> A contemptuous epithet for a tonsured ecclesiastic. <\/p>\n

b<\/em> Jac. Rev., De Vit. Pontific., <\/em> 312.<\/p>\n

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

Sin the Detective<\/p>\n

Be sure your sin will find you out.Num 32:23.<\/p>\n

1. When the children of Israel arrived at the kingdom of Moab, on the eastern bank of the Jordan, they found large tracts of pasture-land especially suited to the tribes who were rich in flocks, like the tribes of Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh. These tribes begged Eleazar the priest to obtain from Moses permission for them to settle there permanently. But Moses answered with indignation, Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here? He reminded them how the cowardice of the spies had before brought down on the nation the anger of the Lord. The men of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh told him that they had no intention of deserting their brethren. They only wanted to settle their wives and daughters in the land, and then the men of war would go and fight the battles of the other tribes. Moses was content with the answer, and assigned them the land they wanted; but he gave them a warning to keep their promise: to abandon their brethren was to sin against God. And he added the words of the textwords which go to the heart of every reader as direct as any in the BibleBe sure your sin will find you out.<\/p>\n

This is one of those passages in the inspired writings which, though introduced on a particular occasion and with a limited meaning, express a general truth, such as we seem at once to feel as being far greater than the context requires, and which we use apart from it. Moses warned the Reubenites and the Gadites, that if they, who had already been allotted their inheritance, did not assist their brethren in gaining theirs, their sin would find them out, or be visited on them. And, while he so spoke, He who spoke through him, God, the Holy Spirit, conveyed, as we believe, a deeper meaning under his words, for the edification of His Church to the end; viz. he intimated that great law of Gods governance, to which all who study that governance will bear witness, that sin is ever followed by punishment. Day and night follow each other not more surely than punishment comes upon sin. Whether the sin be great or little, momentary or habitual, wilful or through infirmity, its own peculiar punishment seems, according to the law of nature, to follow, as far as our experience of that law carries us,sooner or later, lighter or heavier, as the case may be.1 [Note: J. H. Newman.] <\/p>\n

2. The truth of the text is that our sin will not be done with us when we are done with it; that, however short a time we give to sin, however hastily we flee from it, however skilfully cover our retreat by plunging into a thicket of engagements and good deeds, our sin will track and dog us through every turn of life until it finds us out and pulls us down and compels us to understand that every evil done is evil to him who did it.<\/p>\n

It is strange, at first sight, that those texts which warn men that their sins will be punished in this life are just the most unpleasant texts in the whole Bible; that men shrink from them more, and shut their eyes to them more than they do to those texts which threaten them with hell-fire and everlasting death. Strange! that men should be more afraid of being punished in this life for a few years than in the life to come for ever and ever;and yet not strange if we consider; for to worldly and sinful souls, that life after death and the flames of hell seem quite distant and dimthings of which they know little and believe less, while this world they do know, and are quite certain that its good things are pleasant and its bad things unpleasant, and they are thoroughly afraid of losing them.2 [Note: C. Kingsley.] <\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

The Detection of Sin<\/p>\n

Every sin brings its punishment. This is a matter of Divine law. It is inflexible. There has never been any deviation from it, and it was scepticism respecting this law that ruined the world. Satan circumvented our first parentshe caused Eve to doubt the reality of this fact: Ye shall not surely die. He denied the inflexible law, that he who sins must suffer.<\/p>\n

1. The text does not say when our sin will be detected. It does not say, Be sure your sin will find you out at once. It says, Be sure your sin will find you outif not in life, yet ultimately. It is only a question of time, nothing else. When travelling in Switzerland one is often interested in observing what a space of time frequently elapses between the shout you raise and the echo which comes back from the distant mountain-tops. You cry, Ho! There is a dead silence, and you think your voice is lost in the space. Oh no. Those waves of sound are travelling, and, if you wait, the voice will come back again, and by and by the mountain-heads fling back, Ho! Ho! and you find that, after all, it was only a question of time. Your own voice was bound to return to you.<\/p>\n

My Lord Cardinal, said the unhappy French queen to Richelieu, God does not pay at the end of every week; but at the last He pays.<\/p>\n

In 1693, Louis xiv. of France destroyed the tombs of the emperors at Spiers by the hand of an officer named Hentz; and on the very same day in 1793exactly one hundred years afterwardsby one Hentz, the representative of the people, the tombs of the French kings at St. Denis were broken open, and the ashes of Louis xiv. were the first to be scattered to the winds.1 [Note: J. Wells.] <\/p>\n

2. The text says that, whether late or soon, detection is sure. There is something about these words which we cannot get away from. We know, of course, that in highly civilized countries, with the most complete police machinery, a large amount of crime escapes detection. In less civilized earlier times, when communication was difficult, the amount of undetected crime must have been infinitely greater. If we leave our crimes and think of lesser sins and offencessuch as thieving, untruth, sins of the fleshthere must be a large amount in every community which the eye of man fails to detect and his hand to punish. For one forgery which is discovered and punished there are thousands of cases of adulteration and trade deceptions which are not only unpunished but unsuspected. And indeed it is obvious, from a cursory glance at life, that God did not intend all our offences and shortcomings to be detected and punished by mankind. There would be no freedom of action, no freedom of development, no independence of character, if it were not so. But we cannot on that account escape from the consequences of sinning. Moses does not say that the sin of these tribes would be detected. There was no reason to say so. It would be clear and palpable enough. Men could not settle down in selfish comfort and refuse to fight their countrys battles in secret. They must do it openly and before all eyes. But their conduct would not escape punishment, even if it were not revenged by their fellow-tribes. It would find them out, and work its consequences. It would cut them off from sympathy and union with their nation. They would cease to be Israelites and part of a great people.<\/p>\n

The difference between the committal of a crime and the punishment which the community inflicts through its judges and its courts, and the committal of a sin and the punishment which follows, is both great and deep. A crime is not necessarily the same thing as a sin; it often is, because God is revealing Himself in the progressive life of humanity; and accordingly the laws which govern the community and which are therefore expressions of its life, may also be partial expressions of the nature and the will of God; but in committing a crime a man puts himself over against the community; in committing a sin, he puts himself over against God. A man may break the law of the community without breaking also the law of God. There is another difference. A crime may be undetected, and therefore unpunished; all the vigilance and the machinery of the law may be unable to bring a criminal to justice. But even those of us who do not understand how it works out, have an unerring instinct of the truth that all sin is and must be punished, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen. Because we have thought that such punishment for sin does not follow in this life, we have got into the way of postulating a future hell in which those punishments shall be exacted, measure for measure, and from which none shall come forth until he has paid the last farthing.1 [Note: E. W. Lewis.] <\/p>\n

In Greek history we read of a man named Ibycus who lived five centuries before the birth of Christ, and was a popular poet in his own generation. While travelling through an unfrequented region near Corinth, he was set upon by a band of robbers and mortally wounded. As he was on the point of expiring he saw a flock of cranes that happened just then to be flying overhead, and in the absence of any human helper, he called aloud with his last breath upon those birds of the air to avenge his cruel death. Not long afterwards there was a great gathering in the theatre of Corinth, which, like all the theatres of ancient Greece, stood open to the sky. Among the crowd sat one of the murderers of Ibycus. The drama was going on, when suddenly a flock of cranes appeared on the horizon. They drew nearer and nearer until at last they seemed to stop and hover in the air above the heads of the audience. The conscience-stricken murderer, seized with terror, instinctively exclaimed, Behold the avengers of Ibycus! His words were overheard, and he was seized and put on trial. He confessed the guilt of himself and his accomplices, and all of them were sentenced to death.1 [Note: J. C. Lambert.] <\/p>\n

The ancients said that Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance, was slow in her movements, being lame of her feet; but though she was slow, she never failed to catch her victim, for while he was sleeping she was still pursuing. And they believed that nature herselfthe very birds of the air, the very waves of the sea, the very trees of the wood, the very stones of the streetwould cry aloud to prevent a crime from being concealed. In Hoods powerful ballad, The Dream of Eugene Aram, which is founded on an actual case, we have a kind of allegory of this very truth. Eugene Aram had murdered a man and cast his body into the riverA sluggish water, black as ink, the depth was so extreme. Next morning he visited the place, and this was what he saw<\/p>\n

I sought the black accursd pool<\/p>\n

With a wild misgiving eye;<\/p>\n

And I saw the Dead in the river-bed,<\/p>\n

For the faithless stream was dry!<\/p>\n

Upon this he covered the corpse with heaps of leaves; but now a mighty wind swept through the wood, and once more laid his secret bare before the eyes of the sun.<\/p>\n

Then down I cast me on my face,<\/p>\n

And first began to weep;<\/p>\n

For I knew my secret then was one<\/p>\n

That earth refused to keep!<\/p>\n

Or land, or sea, though he should be<\/p>\n

Ten thousand fathoms deep.<\/p>\n

In the year 1800, France being then at war with us, a Danish vessel, suspected of being in the French service, was captured at Kingston, West Indies. But the charge could not be proved. The sailors of the warship Abergavenny, then at the same station, were amusing themselves with catching sharks. On opening a shark, they found in its maw a pocket-book containing bills of lading which proved that the captured vessel belonged to the enemy. The captain when pursued had thrown his pocket-book into the sea, and the shark had devoured it. The captains sin found him out through the maw of the shark, and his ship became a British prize.1 [Note: J. Wells.] <\/p>\n

There is a coal mine in England where there is a limestone formation continually going on. The water that trickles through the rock is fully charged with lime, and then, as the water drains off, it leaves a slab of pure white limestone; but as the miners are at work the black coal dust rises, and then falls again on this limestone, and forms a black layer. But during the night when they are not at work, the dust does not fall and there comes a white layer. Then the next day, of course, there is a black layer. And if the men keep the Lords Day, and do not work, it can be seen, because there is a white layer three times as thick as any other. There is the whole of the Saturday night and there is the whole of the Sunday. The miners call that limestone the Sunday rock, because you have only to look at that to tell whether they have been at work on Sunday or not. As their work goes on there is the record in the limestone.2 [Note: A. G. Brown.] <\/p>\n

The floods ariseO God! the floods arise,<\/p>\n

And wash my slain from out their burial sands;<\/p>\n

O hide me from the onslaught of their eyes,<\/p>\n

The frightful siege of their unhallowed hands.3 [Note: Anna Bunston.] <\/p>\n

II<\/p>\n

Sin Itself the Detective<\/p>\n

1. The text does not teach simply that every sin will be found out. It is no mere general expression about the discovery of sin. Its meaning is particular and personal. It is, Be sure your sin will find you out. That is a very singular expression. There is the idea of the detective. The sin is following the mantracking him year after year; and then there comes a moment when it puts its hand on the mans shoulder, and says, Now I have caught you. Be sure your sin will find you out. It is not a man arresting his sin: it is his sin arresting him. It is not a man discovering his crime: it is his crime discovering him. Here is a very successful sinner, who throws everybody off the track. He goes in and out among Christian communities, and nobody suspects him. He moves in a good circle of society, and manages so to talk and so to act that no one entertains a suspicion of his being a hypocrite. Yet there is one who has followed the man like his shadow: there is one who has turned with every turning, and kept the track like a bloodhound of keenest scent. It is the mans own sin. It has tracked him everywhere, and at last lays hold of him with a shout of triumph, and says, Now I have found you out.<\/p>\n

Hindered by opposing circumstances, counterworked by happy influences, delayed by time, retarded by distance, sin is an influence that works its way towards a man, moving on after him unseen, till it finds him, till it finds him out. In some shape it yet confronts him, and he recognizes it. He and it parted company in boyhood, in youth, a lifetime ago; and he thought it neutralized, dead and buried and forgotten; but it still lives, and will rise like a spectre beside himit will find him out. It may not interfere with affection, with trade, with prosperity; it may stand beside all these in abeyance. And it may be just through these that it will find him out, as Jacobs did. Even individual sins, like Jacobs or like Davids, avenge themselves; and, much more, a course of sin. Sin finds a man out in the usual recognized penalty; or it finds him out in the fear that it is going to find him out, in the unquiet, foreboding conscience; or it finds him out in the bitter compunction and sorrow for the wrong he has done, and the loathing of himself when he thinks of it; orand this is the way to be dreaded most of allit will find him out in the hardening of his mind, and the deterioration of his character. For it is vain to think that you can do evil, and reap no consequences from it; that you may commit sin, and have done with it. The hand of the dyer is not more certainly imbued with the colours in which he works than the soul takes on the complexion of the thoughts in which it indulges.1 [Note: A. B. Davidson.] <\/p>\n

A man goes on, for years perhaps, and no one ever discovers his particular failings, nor does he know them himself; till at length he is brought into certain circumstances which bring them out. Hence men turn out so very differently from what was expected; and we are seldom able to tell beforehand of another, and scarcely ever dare we promise for ourselves, as regards the future. The proverb, for instance, says, Power tries a man; so do riches, so do various changes of life. We find that, after all, we do not know him, though we have been acquainted with him for years. We are disappointed, nay, sometimes startled, as if he had almost lost his identity; whereas, perchance, it is but the coming to light of sins committed long before we knew him.1 [Note: J. H. Newman.] <\/p>\n

George Eliot has taught this lesson more powerfully perhaps than any other writer of modern times. Again and again she shows how a single sin, committed long years ago, not merely bears its appointed fruit, but comes back at last to the author of it laden with these accumulated results, and casts them down at his feet, saying, These fruits of sin are yours. The poor, shivering soul would like to disown them then; but he cannot. They are all his. His own iniquities have taken him, and he is holden with the cords of his own sin. He set the stone rolling, and now it has returned upon him. He broke through the hedge of the Divine law, and the serpent that was lurking there has bitten him.2 [Note: J. C. Lambert.] <\/p>\n

2. The name that is usually given to this detective power of sin is Conscience. Some sinners are never found out in the world around, they are not openly punished; but for all that they dont escape. They carry a detective within from whom they might escape if they could tear out their very nature. Conscience finds them out. And how conscience does worry the sinner with remorse! A fox was once caught in a trap, but in the morning was found only one of his legs. The wise creature when caught concluded that it would be better to limp back to his den with three legs than, having four legs, to perish in pain. He turned upon his leg and gnawed it through. That fox teaches us the exact meaning of remorse; for the word means to bite backwards, to gnaw oneself. Sin finds the sinner out when conscience devours the soul. That heathen New Zealander understood this, who gave back a shilling he had stolen from the white man, because of the quarrelling going on inside him, as he said, between the good man and the bad man.<\/p>\n

And now I can recall the time gone by,<\/p>\n

The pure fresh sky<\/p>\n

Of spring, neath which we first met, he and I,<\/p>\n

The smell of rainy fields in early spring,<\/p>\n

The song of thrushes, and the glimmering<\/p>\n

Of rain-drenched leaves by sudden sun made bright,<\/p>\n

The tender light<\/p>\n

Of peaceful evening, and the saintly night.<\/p>\n

Sweet still the scent of roses; only this,<\/p>\n

They had a perfume then which now I miss.<\/p>\n

Yea, too, I can recall the night wherein<\/p>\n

Did first begin<\/p>\n

The joy of that intoxicating sin.<\/p>\n

Late was the day in April, gray and still,<\/p>\n

Too faint to gladden, and too mild to chill;<\/p>\n

Hot lay upon my lips the last nights kiss,<\/p>\n

The first of his;<\/p>\n

I wandered blindly between shame and bliss;<\/p>\n

And, yearning, hung all day about the lane,<\/p>\n

Where, in the evening, he should come again.1 [Note: Philip Bourke Marston.] <\/p>\n

Some of you may, like myself, have seen Vesuvius. Sometimes it looks the quietest mountain you can imagine. There are green slopes. There are people dwelling at its foot. The vine festoons its flanks, and all is loveliness. Yes, but wait a little. It opens its red mouth, and its crater vomits forth smoke and fire and ashes, and now down its flanks there comes the burning, glowing tide of molten lava. Hell seems let loose from its deep caverns. So it is with a mans conscience. It may for years be quiet and still, with perhaps an occasional murmur, faint and fleeting; but there comes a day when the sinners sins confront him. Then does conscience do her work.2 [Note: A. G. Brown.] <\/p>\n

3. What are the methods which sin the detective uses?<\/p>\n

(1) Sin finds out the sinner, first, with shameful memories. The sinner may flee from the past, but he cannot alter it, and the waters of Lethe are fabulous. Teach me, bitterly exclaimed Themistocles to the man who offered to improve his memory, teach me to forget. Here there is no forgetting. The past always stands as you have made it. There are men who from the first have resisted temptation and refused to stoop to folly, who have lived a wise, honourable, aspiring life; but you are not one of these and never can be. If you have spent your youth in a shameful, low, animal, selfish, misguided fashion, no power on earth or in heaven can alter that. You can never live your youth over again. You know what it might have been, you know also what it is. However much you repent, however thoroughly you reform, you cannot undo that piece of your life and replace it with conduct you could now look back upon with pleasure. The shuttle you once so recklessly and eagerly shot across your life has woven into it a pattern which shall now for ever characterize your early life.<\/p>\n

Psychologists tell us that memory never really loses anything. Things pass from our consciousness and seem to be utterly forgotten; but they are only lying below the surface of the mind, ready to rise again into vivid life in their own time. Now and then we get slight hints of these mysterious potentialities of our being. Events long buried in the abyss of our forgotten years suddenly come back to us like half-remembered dreams. Some unwonted circumstance serves as the key to a secret spring, and straightway the locked chambers of the soul fly open.<\/p>\n

What worse torment could be imagined than to be compelled to remember all ones past sins, to be compelled to see them in their naked hideousness, to be compelled to acknowledge them in their far-stretching consequences as ones very own? Medival theologians pictured the abode of the lost as a vast furnace filled with leaping tongues of flame. Dante pictured it, no less awfully, as a realm of thick-ribbed everlasting ice, the breath of which was sufficient to freeze both body and spirit. But think of the state of a man whose sins have found him out, who has to say, Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.1 [Note: J. C. Lambert.] <\/p>\n

A fine scholar once told me that he had done plenty of things to regret at school; but one only was a real burden to him. Once, he said, myself and some others had been doing something wrong, and the thing had awakened suspicion, and was likely to be discovered. I went boldly to the headmaster and asked him to put it in my hands, as I thought I could find it out if anybody could. He said, I willingly put it into your hands. I need not say that it never was found out; but it is the only thing for which I was really punished. I am ashamed of myself whenever I think of itand I think of it incessantly, and would give anything if I could tell the whole business to the world and be flogged for it. His sin was not found out, but it found him out, and stuck to him through life.2 [Note: A. W. Potts.] <\/p>\n

What shall blot<\/p>\n

The memories of bitter years,<\/p>\n

Of joys which have been, but are not,<\/p>\n

And floods of unforgotten tears?<\/p>\n

The painful records graven clear<\/p>\n

On carven rock or deathless page;<\/p>\n

The long unceasing reign of fear,<\/p>\n

The weary tale of lust and rage;<\/p>\n

The ills whose dark sum baffles thought,<\/p>\n

Done day by day beneath the sun?<\/p>\n

That which is done, the old sage taught,<\/p>\n

Not God Himself can make undone.<\/p>\n

For that which has been, still must live,<\/p>\n

And neath the shallow Present last.<\/p>\n

Oh, who will sweet oblivion give,<\/p>\n

Who free us from the dreadful Past?1 [Note: Sir Lewis Morris, Poems, 102.] <\/p>\n

(2) Sin finds out the sinner not only by bitter memories of the past but also by an unhappy and ineffective present. It cripples and incapacitates us for present duty and enjoyment. In our past our present is rooted, and from it we are wholly derived. Let no doctrine of regeneration delude us into the belief that at any moment we please we can leap into a wise, virtuous, refined, godly character. It is not so. If we give entertainment to evil thoughts now, they will not be forbidden entrance when we would exclude them. If we accustom ourselves to look at things from a worldly, frivolous, impure point of view, that attitude will continue when we would fain be heavenly-minded. The child is allowed to become self-willed, indolent, sensual, passionate, crafty, and all the spiritual strength of the man is consumed in repressing these pitiful vices.<\/p>\n

When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters<\/p>\n

And the horror of our fail is written plain,<\/p>\n

Every secret, self-revealing on the aching whitewashed ceiling,<\/p>\n

Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?<\/p>\n

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,<\/p>\n

We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,<\/p>\n

And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.<\/p>\n

God help us, for we knew the worst too young.2 [Note: Kipling, Barrack-Room Ballads, 64.] <\/p>\n

4. There are two lines along which sins follow us from the past. Their consequences appear in our life or in our character. They bring misery or they bring moral degradation. Sins which involve transgression of the laws of bodily health bring visible retribution.<\/p>\n

(1) In our life.If there are any who think lightly of sin and who are encouraged in sin by an implicit understanding that no great harm will come of it, let them be assured that their sin will find them out. Higher thoughts will one day visit them, higher aims will one day win their spirit, a nobler view of life will present itself to them; and how are they to respond to those new and higher calls if their nature is debased by sin? You do yourself incredible wrong. There are duties in life, social domestic, personal, which you will despise yourself if you cannot discharge, and you will not be able to discharge them if in youth you do not act your part well and keep yourself unsullied by the contamination of sin. There are enjoyments in life for which sin unfits you. I do not speak of the highest enjoyments, but of natural enjoyments, in the same kind as those you now crave, and which are possible only to those whose conscience is laden with no evil remembrances, whose nature is contracted and withered by no familiarity with sin, who can give themselves to enjoyment with the freedom, fearlessness, and abandonment which are reserved for the innocent only. In vain will you strive to leave your past behind you. If you sin, then no more at all can you have that fineness of feeling which only ignorance of evil can preserve, no more that high and great conscientiousness which once broken is never repaired, no more that courage and wisdom which accompany an upright and steady career, no more that respect from other men which instinctively departs from those who have lost self-respect.1 [Note: Marcus Dods.] <\/p>\n

One of the shortest and most telling sermons I ever heard, was by a friend who had charge of an hospital. Going round his wards with him one Sunday morning, we came to a young man, whose secret sins had found him out. As the young doctor laid bare his hideous sores, he said in a slow and solemn tone, Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. I felt as if I had been present at the last judgment.2 [Note: J. Wells.] <\/p>\n

(2) In our character.Some mens sins, as St. Paul says, go before to judgment, and some follow after; and these latter are the sins which we should dread, and which are the most baneful in their results. Such sins eat into the character. They necessitate duplicity. There is no real brightness in the lifeno openness, no straightforward look, no real manliness. O what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. The incessant dread of detection falls like a pall over the life. The incessant necessity of concealment involves ever fresh deception, and makes the life a prolonged lie. The mind cannot be at ease; the thoughts are never free and disengaged; and this makes secret sins so injurious intellectually. Men of mark in literature have led dissolute lives, have been intemperate and immoral. No doubt this has had a baneful effect upon their work. It has made, perhaps must make, the highest work beyond their reach. He that would write an heroic poem, says Milton, must live an heroic life; but I question very much if any good intellectual work has ever been produced by the author of an undetected crime or the perpetrator of an undiscovered fraud.1 [Note: A. W. Potts.] <\/p>\n

A well-known theologian has argued against the identity of consequence and punishment in the following words: Two men are equally guilty of drunkenness and profligacy. But one of them is a man of robust constitution: he has wealth and leisure. He sins and sins flagrantly; but he shoots in the autumn, hunts in the winter, and spends his summer in his yacht on the coast of Scotland or of Norway. The other has weak health, and is compelled by his circumstances to lead a sedentary life. The one, notwithstanding his vices, lives till he is seventy, and is vigorous to the last; the other is the victim of miserable diseases, and dies an ignominious death long before he is fifty. Where is the equality in the visible penalties of sin? The eternal laws appear to receive the bribes of the rich and to trample on the helplessness of poverty. Such an argument is specious, but misleading. The consequences of sins against bodily health are of course counteracted by attention to the laws of bodily health. And if the sinner does not transgress these laws he will not suffer in his body. But this merely brings out more conspicuously the much-neglected fact that the chief punishment and consequences of sin must be looked for in the character. All outward disaster, all disease and wretchedness that sin works in the life, are but the outward sign of the ruin it works within. It is there the gravest consequences are found; there, in the callousness, the carnality, the cruel selfishness, the wholly degraded nature of the sinner that the true character and the lasting consequence of sin are to be seen.2 [Note: Marcus Dods.] <\/p>\n

Single sins indulged or neglected are often the cause of other defects of character, which seem to have no connection with them, but which after all are rather symptomatic of the former, than themselves at the bottom of the mischief. This is generally acknowledged as regards a sceptical temper of mind, which commonly is assailed by argument in vain, the root of the evil lying deeper, viz. in habits of vice, which, however, the guilty parties strenuously maintain to be quite a distinct matter, to relate to their conduct, and to have no influence whatever upon their reason or their opinions.1 [Note: J. H. Newman.] <\/p>\n

Some time ago a man came to see me whose nobler spirit had been awakened. He told me that he realized the beauty and the truth of the ideal; that a great longing had been born within him to reach to it, and to follow its gleam; but that the more he tried, the more was he conscious of an incapacity, which seemed to clog his feet, and fetter him to low things. He wanted to run the race and gain the prize, and he was trying to break himself free from the past, and lay aside every weight; but there seemed to be a weight which he could not lay aside; which clung to him; hampered his feet; tripped him up; baffled him; until he was almost despairing. What is the explanation of this experience? I found as we talked together that my friend had been in past years guilty of consistent sin; not gross sin in our worldly sense, but consistent sin; he had gradually formed a habit of choosing the lower; he never seemed to be any the worse for it; nobody ever found him out; but all the time, in the silence and in secret, his sin had been finding him out; and now it had found him.2 [Note: E. W. Lewis.] <\/p>\n

Soon, the broken law avenged itself;<\/p>\n

For, oh, the pity of it! to feel the fire<\/p>\n

Grow colder daily, and the soaring soul<\/p>\n

Sunk deep in grosser mire.3 [Note: Sir Lewis Morris, Poems, 48.] <\/p>\n

5. But it is always possible to evade the lash of conscience and ignore the loss of character as long as sin is spoken of generally. It is necessary to have the memory fixed on some particular sin, to have the attention drawn to some particular habit.<\/p>\n

Im willin a man should go tollable strong<\/p>\n

Agin wrong in the abstract, fer thet kind o wrong<\/p>\n

Is ollers unpoplar an never gits pitied,<\/p>\n

Because its a crime no one never committed;<\/p>\n

But he musnt be hard on partickler sins,<\/p>\n

Coz then hell be kickin the peoples own shins.4 [Note: Russell Lowell.] <\/p>\n

(1) Take drunkenness. This sin always finds the man out. He may take never such pains at the commencement to be unnoticed and unseen. I believe all drunkards commence with very quiet tippling. Ah yes, but it is a sin that will find him out. It brings its own punishment. The sin looks out of his bloodshot eye, and grasps his hands until they tremble as with palsy.<\/p>\n

Of all the evils that oppress, and outrage, and destroy mankind, are there many, are there any, greater than intemperance? For proof turn to our gaols, asylums, police courts, lodging-houses, newspapers, streets, and our churchesyes, and our churches. It is an evil very great, very common, very real, very ruinous. It is an individual, a social, a national evil. It is an evil which produces an amount of misery, and poverty, and wretchedness, which no figures can possibly set forth. It injures the body, it blunts the finer feelings of the soul, it clouds the intellect, it ruins the health, it unfits for daily life. It brings poverty, it blights the home. It destroys peace of mind and the prospects of heaven. It dishonours our national name, it wastes our national wealth, it cripples our trade, it feeds our gaols and asylums. It kills directly 60,000 and indirectly 120,000 every year. It transmits its evil influence to succeeding generations, for the children of drinkers are injured in health. It is the chief highway into darkest England.1 [Note: J. H. Atkinson.] <\/p>\n

(2) Take a less obvious sin. Take Resentfulness. Suppose that a man is naturally resentful and unforgiving. He may, in spite of this, have a great number of excellences, very high views, great self-devotion to Gods service, great faith, great sanctity. I can fancy such a person almost arguing himself out of his own conviction, that he is fostering the secret sin in question, from his consciousness of his own integrity, and his devotional spirit in the general round of his duties. His sin may have ten thousand palliations; it may be disguised by fair names; it affects the conscience only now and then, for a moment, and that is all; the pang is soon over. The pang is momentary, but the ease and satisfaction and harmony of mind, arising from the persons exact performance of his general duties, are abiding guests within him. He forgets, that in spite of this harmony between all within and all without for twenty-three hours of the day, there is one subject, now and then recurring, which jars with his mind,there is just one string out of tune. Some particular person has injured him or dishonoured him, and a few minutes of each day, or of each week, are given to the indulgence of harsh, unforgiving thoughts, which at first he suspected were what they really are, sinful, but which he has gradually learned to palliate, or rather account for, on other principles, to refer to other motives, to justify on religious or other grounds. Solomon says, Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour; so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.<\/p>\n

(3) Take that sin which is specially referred to in the text. It is the sin of omission, the sin of not doing. The children of Reuben, of Gad, and of Manasseh, are warned that their sin will find them out if they do not cross the Jordan in company with their kinsfolk, if they simply sit still in their own fields and vineyards on its eastern bank. And let us not forget what the Lord has said concerning the judgment in the day when He shall come in His glory. He tells us that in that day He will separate men as a shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats; that He will set the one on His right hand and the other on His left; and that to those on His left hand He will sayDepart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels. These shall go away into eternal punishment. But who are these upon whom such a doom is pronounced? What had they done? They had done nothing. And that was their sin, and for that they are punished. Christ, identifying Himself with a suffering and needy humanity, saysI was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me.<\/p>\n

III<\/p>\n

The Entrance of the Gospel<\/p>\n

1. We are under a Dispensation of grace, and are blessed with a certain suspension of this awful law of natural religion. The blood of Christ, as St. John says, is of such wonderful efficacy as to cleanse us from all sin; to interpose between our sin and its punishment, and to wipe out the former before the latter has overtaken us.<\/p>\n

The past is not, in any effective sense, irrevocable. We may yet make it, in large measure, what we will. For detached experiences are in themselves mere unintelligible fragments. It is when they are taken as parts of a whole that they have their meaning. And what is the whole of which our past is a part? Is that irrevocably fixed beyond our control? Nay, our past as well as our future shall be what we shall make it. It is a fragment that awaits interpretation, nay, awaits its full being, its true creation, from the whole.1 [Note: P. H. Wicksteed.] <\/p>\n

2. We are very apt to compare the laws of the material world and the laws of the spiritual world; and, when we detach some analogies, we are ready to identify the two. Happily, the laws of the one are not the laws of the other. If the laws of the spiritual world were the same as those of the natural world, we should all inevitably perish. Our sin would be beyond remedy, and infallibly find us out to its bitterest conclusions. If you touch fire, you will invariably be burned. If you cast yourself from a precipice, you will certainly be broken to pieces. The laws of the natural world operate inexorably. And, no doubt, just because we have a mental constitution, there are there also laws which operate regularly. But because one of the laws of our mind is that we are free and can will, and because we are in the hands of a great God who is also free and merciful, and can introduce a higher law than even the law of our constitution, we have hope. It is one of the laws of our nature, that that in us which we may call our self can be detached, as it were, from our nature, and set up against it, so as to resist it in its evil, and command it. And if this, which we call the self in us, be enfeebled through evil, and unable of itself to rise up against sin, the influence of God operating through the life and history of Christ can awaken it, and animate it with a Divine powerChrist dwelling in our hearts.<\/p>\n

3. If it is a fact that sin has its punishmentif it be true that, go wherever I may, my sin follows me and will find me outHow am I to be saved? I will tell you. You have, first of all, to find your sin out instead of waiting for sin to find you. You say, How can I do that? Discover it by the law. If you have any doubt whether you are a sinner or not, run through the Ten Commandments, and then look at them in a spiritual light, remembering that he who sins in desire virtually sins in action. Then turn to the third chapter of Romans, and see whether it condemns you or not. Do not spare yourself. Drag your sins out of their hiding-places. Call them by their right names. Say to the iniquity of your heart, Come, sin, if I do not find you out you will find me out. If I do not drag you from your lurking-place you will drag me into perdition. Out with your sin and judge yourself as in the sight of God. And then, when you have settled the question that you are a sinner, and a sinner who deserves punishment, go and take all the hideous load to Christ. This is the only way a man can be saved. Get your sins found out; and when you have seen them, though they appear like a very mountain of guilt, say, in the language of the hymn<\/p>\n

I lay my sins on Jesus,<\/p>\n

The spotless Lamb of God.<\/p>\n

The punishment of sin is inevitable. As sins against natural laws are invariably punished, as fire burns, no matter whose be the hand that is in it, so sin uniformly and in every case brings spiritual degradation. The laws of our spiritual nature are self-acting, as are the other laws with which we have to do. No sin is committed without leaving its mark. But you say, There is repentance. You know little of the power of sin if you thus glibly promise yourself repentance. Listen to the confession of one who has a foremost place in English literature, and who was not judged by his contemporaries to have sinned to any dangerous extent. Of a change in my condition there is no hope. The waters have gone over me. But out of the black depths I would cry out to all those who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth, to whom the flavour of his first sinful enjoyment is delicious as the opening scenes of life, or the entering upon some newly discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive willto see this destruction and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied out of him and yet not to be able to forget a time when it was otherwise, to bear about the piteous spectacle of his own self-ruins; could he feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be deliveredit were enough to make him dash aside the most pressing or subtle temptation. What can such a man make of repentance? Is he not more likely to class himself with those who seek it when the door is shut; who know that others have abandoned sin and have entered into life, but that they are shut out in outer darkness? Repentance is not at our beck; and to sin for a little longer in the expectation that you can repent at pleasure is a complete misunderstanding of the surest laws of your nature. Repentance is never easy, and every day becomes more difficult.1 [Note: Marcus Dods.] <\/p>\n

Thy mercy greater is than any sin,<\/p>\n

Thy greatness none can ever comprehend:<\/p>\n

Wherefore, O Lord, let me Thy mercy win,<\/p>\n

Whose glorious name no time can ever end:<\/p>\n

Wherefore I say all praise belongs to Thee,<\/p>\n

Whom I beseech be merciful to me.<\/p>\n

4. What, then, has Christ accomplished for us? Does He stand between the sinner and the natural consequences of his sin? To answer this question we have but to look to the first sinner saved after His death, the thief who hung beside Him on the cross. What this sinner received from Christ was not immunity from the consequences of sin, but assurance of Gods favour and of Christs friendship. Of the natural results of his life of crime there was no reversal, no mitigation. Christs power was not put forth to unfasten the criminal from the cross he had earned. There are cases in which this inevitable law is obscured. For in life much is sown besides our sin of which we reap the fruit, and sometimes by the foresight of friends or by the providence of God we are saved from the results of our own deeds. What others do for our good has its result. But the one thing we can calculate on is that we must reap as we have sown, and that Christs work does not interfere with this law.<\/p>\n

The work of Christ does mainly these two things for us. It secures us the pardon of God, and it creates a new spirit within us.<\/p>\n

(1) It secures the pardon of God.The pardon of God, though it does not check consequences or reverse natural law, gives us very different thoughts about the consequences of our sins, and sets us in a new relation to them. The pardon of God carries with it restoration to His favour, but not exemption from punishment. A lad takes out his fathers favourite horse and in trying to leap a fence breaks the horses neck and his own collar-bone. Pained as he is while lying in the field he fears his fathers anger more than the setting of the bone. And when he is taken home he is delighted to be assured that his father is filled with pity and readily accepts his contrite apologies. And the restored sense of his fathers love, which his fault had clouded, knits the bond between father and son more firmly than ever. But this happy sense of pardon does not lessen the actual pain of his broken bone, though it may help him to bear it. So is it when we return from sin to God. His pardon does not shield us from the consequences of our sin, but it makes our whole being different.<\/p>\n

In the days of Csar Augustus there lived a great pirate, for whose head a large reward was offered. He said to himself, I shall surely be caught, now that a hue and cry has been raised against me; Csars warships are scouring the seas, and will hunt me down. He disguised himself, and got into Csars presence, and claimed the reward for the pirates head. But where is it? Csar asked. Here it is, he said, I am the pirate. He threw himself at Csars feet, implored mercy, and offered to serve in the imperial navy. And he was pardoned. Be like him, except in one point. Do not disguise yourself, but tear off every disguise, and, confessing your sin, make the name of Jesus your only plea. Find out your sin, before it finds you out. Like the Prodigal inform against yourself before God.1 [Note: J. Wells.] <\/p>\n

(2) It creates a new spirit within us.We find in ourselves new forces arrayed against sin, and these forces at once set in motion a new series of consequences and results which counterwork the results of sin. At every point the penitent sees traces of his sin, but every day the new life which Christ gives him is sowing for him seeds which will spring up in happiness, in service, in all that blesses human life. The new life which Christ gives does not at once abolish sinful tendencies, but it gives us power to fight against them; it does not on the spot emancipate us from all the bonds we have formed by sin, but it communicates a hope and a strength which, we feel, will one day effectually deliver us.<\/p>\n

O my Saviour Christ, Christ my Saviour! who will grant that I may die rather than again offend Thee! Christ my Saviour, O my Saviour! Lord, let a new manner of life prove that a new spirit hath descended on me; for true penitence is new life, and true praise unremitted penitence, and the observation of a perpetual Sabbath from sin, its occasions, fuel, and danger. For as penitence destroys old sins, so do new sins destroy penitence.1 [Note: Bishop Andrewes.] <\/p>\n

What shall I do? Make vows and break them still?<\/p>\n

Twill be but labour lost.<\/p>\n

My good cannot prevail against mine ill;<\/p>\n

The business will be crossed.<\/p>\n

Oh, say not so! thou canst not tell what strength<\/p>\n

Thy God may give thee at the length;<\/p>\n

Renew thy vows, and if thou keep the last,<\/p>\n

Thy God will pardon all thats past.<\/p>\n

Then once again<\/p>\n

I vow to mend my ways;<\/p>\n

Lord, say Amen,<\/p>\n

And Thine be all the praise!<\/p>\n

Literature<\/p>\n

Atkinson (J. H.), The Sin of Doing Nothing.<\/p>\n

Boston (T.), Sermons, 232, 239, 246<\/p>\n

Brandt (J. L.), Soul Saving, 187.<\/p>\n

Brown (A. G.), In the Valley of Decision, 61.<\/p>\n

Dods (M.), Christ and Man, 188.<\/p>\n

Kemble (C), Memorials of a Closed Ministry, i. 103.<\/p>\n

Kingsley (C), Village, Town, and Country Sermons, 52.<\/p>\n

Lambert (J. C), in Great Texts of the Old Testament, 237,<\/p>\n

Lewis (E. W.), Some Views of Modern Theology, 217.<\/p>\n

Macleod (A.), The Child Jesus, 196.<\/p>\n

Matheson (G.), Moments on the Mount, 43.<\/p>\n

Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv. 37.<\/p>\n

Newton (R.), Bible Warnings, 138.<\/p>\n

Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 56.<\/p>\n

Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 296.<\/p>\n

Trench (R. C), Brief Thoughts and Meditations, 1.<\/p>\n

Wells (J.), Bible Echoes, 79.<\/p>\n

Christian World Pulpit, xix. 333 (Hammond).<\/p>\n

Preachers Magazine, xvi. (1905) 429 (Cowl).<\/p>\n

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

if ye will: Lev 26:14-46, Deu 28:15-68 <\/p>\n

be sure your sin: If the persons concerned prevaricated, and so imposed on men, or if they afterwards refused to fulfil their engagement, God would most certainly detect and expose their wickedness, and inflict condign punishment upon them. Of all the ways, says Dr. South, to be taken for the prevention of that great plague of mankind, Sin, there is none so rational and efficacious as to confute and baffle those motives by which men are induced to embrace it; and among all such motives, the heart of man seems to be chiefly overpowered and prevailed upon by two, viz. secrecy in committing sin, and impunity with respect to its consequences. Accordingly, Moses, in this chapter, having to deal with a company of men suspected of a base and fraudulent design, though couched under a very fair pretence, as most such designs are, endeavours to quash it in its very conception, by secretly applying himself to encounter those secret motives and arguments, which he knew were the most likely to encourage them in it. And this he does very briefly, but effectually, by assuring them, that how covertly and artificially soever they might carry on their dark project, yet their sin would infallibly find them out. Though the subject and occasion of these words are indeed particular, yet the design of them is manifestly of an universal import, as reaching the case of all transgressors, in their first entrance on any sinful act or course. Gen 4:7, Gen 44:16, Psa 90:8, Psa 139:11, Psa 140:11, Pro 13:21, Isa 3:11, Isa 59:1, Isa 59:2, Isa 59:12, Rom 2:9, 1Co 4:5 <\/p>\n

Reciprocal: Gen 39:9 – sin Gen 42:21 – they said Num 34:14 – General Jos 7:18 – was taken 1Ki 2:9 – with 2Ki 7:9 – some mischief will come upon us 2Ch 18:34 – he died Jer 2:17 – Hast thou Hos 7:2 – their own Jon 1:7 – and the Zec 1:6 – did<\/p>\n

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

Num 32:23. Your sin will find you out The punishment of your sin. Sin will certainly find out the sinner, sooner or later. It concerns us therefore to find our sins out, that we may repent of them, lest our sins find us out to our confusion and destruction.<\/p>\n

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n

32:23 But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin {i} will find you out.<\/p>\n

(i) You shall assuredly be punished for your sin.<\/p>\n

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes<\/b><\/i><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out. 23. be sure your sin will find you out ] lit. ‘know your sin, that it will find you.’ The rendering of the E.V., which has passed, as a proverbial expression, into … Continue reading “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Numbers 32:23”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/bible-commentary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}