Your Sins Will Find You Out

Your Sins Will Find You Out
by Nathan Battey

The following is an excerpt from the Expositor's Dictionary of Texts, Volume 1, p. 140.

             MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF SINGLE SINS

' Be sure your sin will find you out'—NUMBERS XXXII. 23.

"FEW men are great saints. There is always a something; I am not speaking of willful or admitted sins— sins against the conscience (they of course exclude a man altogether from any hope), but of a defect of view and principle, a perversion of character. This is the common case even with the better sort of Christians; they are deformed in stature, they are not upright, they do not walk perfectly with God.  And you cannot tell why it is; they have ever lived religiously, they have been removed from temptation, had good training and instruction, and they fulfill their calling, are good husbands or wives, good parents, good neighbors – still when you come to know them well, there is in them this or that great inconsistency. This consideration, moreover, tends to account for the strange way in which defects of character are buried in a man. He 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 even 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 & but the coming to light of sins committed long before we knew him."

Upon reading this article I was reminded of the words of Psalm 118:5-9

“I called on the Lord in distress;
The Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.
6 The Lord is on my side;
I will not fear.
What can man do to me?
7 The Lord is for me among those who help me;
Therefore I shall see my desire on those who hate me.
8 It is better to trust in the Lord
Than to put confidence in man.
9 It is better to trust in the Lord
Than to put confidence in princes.”

There have always been, and always will be, men who appear to be one thing on the outside and something different on the inside.  Of such were the religious leaders of Jesus’ time; they were “like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27). We must take heed to build our faith on Christ (Matthew 7:24-27) and His word (Romans 10:17), knowing that men will let us down.