But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find you out. Numbers 32:23
The American city of Las Vegas is guilty of false advertising. To promote tourism, the city that offers its visitors whatever they want in sinfulness brags in its advertising that ‘what you do in Vegas stays in Vegas’. Not true! The books that the righteous God in Heaven is keeping are recording every dime wasted at Vegas crap tables, every prostitute propositioned there, and every other sinful act besides, and they will all be unveiled and dealt with at the Great White Throne. We know this, and most Christians believe that this is the meaning of our text today: be sure your sin will find you out. It is not.
Yes, it is true that God will uncover every one of every sinner’s secret sins, and Gospel preachers are correct to warn sinners of this when they herald the message. But that is not the message that Moses was delivering when he spoke these eight words: be sure your sin will find you out. The Reubenites and Gadites had promised him that they would cross to the west of Jordan to fight with their brethren to take the promised land, even as they were leaving their families and flocks on the east of the Jordan. Moses was not telling them that God would find out whether they had kept their promise; that would be no secret to anybody. What he was telling them was that not keeping their promise would be a sin, and that sin would visit them and make them pay. Sin still does that.
I recall the late Gospel preacher Peter Orasuk telling us about suffering from hepatitis, a disease he had contracted during his years of abusing drugs. Peter was a wonderfully effective speaker whose testimony thrilled saint and convicted sinner as he told how God had forgiven him of his sins. But his sins were not so forgiving, and Peter died much too early. Every one of us have those things in our lives of which we are not proud, things that left a lasting impact on us. And for many of us, we are still paying for those sins of our unsaved past in a variety of different ways. There is also a warning here that the sins that we commit now as Christians can also come back to exact a bitter toll. If we are disobedient to God’s Word and the Holy Spirit’s leading, there is wonderful restoration available. But the sin of disobedience may well have some wages to pay.
How much better to live in obedience to our Lord than to suffer the regrets and losses of not doing so. Sins that we don’t commit cannot find us out. – Jim MacIntosh