BE SURE YOUR SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT
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Numbers 32:23 |
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| …behold, ye have sinned against the Lord: and be sure your sin will find you out. KJV |
…you will be sinning against the Lord; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out. NIV |
There was once a little boy who came to work for me before I could speak the Bemba language. His name was Buseko, which means Happiness. He could speak Swahili, but he did not know Bemba. I bought him a New Testament so that he and I could read the Scriptures together each morning, before we started work for the day. He would carry his Testament with him everywhere, it was his prized possession, and he would read it whenever he did not have work to do. Other people began to tell me that when I was away working, he would sit on the doorstep of the house reading his Testament and looking so happy. Before I could really speak Bemba, he had come to know the Lord Jesus as his Saviour and was showing others by his happy and contented clean life, that the Lord was his Friend too. That made me very happy.
Later when I got married, I had to employ more helpers to assist me with all the work that had to be done, and they would all gather to hear the Word of God each morning before they started their work.
One morning when we had finished praying and they had all left the room, I noticed a little white mound on the carpet on which we all knelt to pray. I called them back and asked them to kneel where they had knelt earlier. When they did, the youngest of them looked very frightened, and the others began to laugh, because they could see what had happened.
When he had knelt with his head on the floor, his top pocket had spilled all the salt that he had stolen from the kitchen, and the tell-tale sign had been left behind on the carpet. His sin had found him out. He was pretending to be good, but he was deceiving me, or at least, that is what he thought. Who do you think he was really deceiving? Was he deceiving himself? Yes, he was! God says:
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Galatians 6:7-8 |
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| Be not deceived, (for you cannot mock God) for whatsoever a man (or woman, or boy, or girl) sows, that is what he will reap. He who sows to the flesh, shall from the flesh reap corruption, and he who sows to the Spirit, shall from the Spirit reap life everlasting. KJV |
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man (or woman, or boy, or girl) reaps what he sows Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. NIV |
Our verse today talks about our sin finding us out. That is what happened to that little boy. I am glad he was found out when he was small, for it might have taught him that he cannot hide from God, and he may well have continued to live a life thinking that he could get away with it.
But I feel sad when people, who should know better, enjoy sinning, thinking that they will never be caught, for harvest day is coming, and all the seeds that you and I have sown in our life time will be shown by the kind of plants they will have produced. So, we must be very careful to sow the seeds that will produce the crop that we would be happy to show to everyone, and best of all to God.
Written by A.M. Ross