"Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out."
By John Nevins Andrews
THESE words of solemn admonition were addressed by Moses to the two and a half tribes that proposed to remain on the east side of Jordan. He feared that they would depart from God and fail in the fulfillment of their solemn vows. He knew that if such should be the case, they would bring upon themselves lasting sorrow and final ruin. See the case as stated, Num. 32. "Be sure your sin will find you out." "Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4. "All unrighteousness is sin." 1 John 5:17. These are Bible definitions of this terrible evil. Sin is a very short word, but every kind of evil thing is embraced in its meaning. It is that terrible moral disease typified by the laws concerning leprosy. Lev. 13:14. Like that, it is a disease that never gets well of itself. Like the leprosy, also, it is a contagious disease. The sinner contaminates the very atmosphere. He introduces pollution where all before was comparative purity. The society of the sinner is calculated to lead others to sin. There is more reason for us to fear such influences, than there is to fear the infection of the leper. Like the leprosy, it is a terrible disease. It eats up its victim alive. The leprosy, while its victim is alive, will eat up a man's hands, his arms, his feet, his limbs, and, atom by atom, it will prey upon the man till it reaches his vitals. And sin will not only do the same thing, but far worse. It will poison the blood, destroy the eyes, ruin the stomach, benumb the sensibilities, render the brain incapable of action, break down the vital powers, turn the hair gray, make the countenance wear a look of malice, of pride, or of deceit, or of sensuality, cover the body with sores, fill the mind with pollution, stain the conscience with guilt, bring the transgressor to a premature grave, and at the judgment consign him to the second death, in the lake of fire. The leprosy is a disease that cannot be hidden. You may conceal it, possibly, for a time, but it will, without fail, after a little, reveal its existence. Your hands will show it. The fingers, in spite of your best endeavors, will consume and drop off. The face will show it. It will appear upon your forehead; it will discover itself in the sight of all. But it is an easy thing to conceal the leprosy compared with the task of concealing sin. God has put a voice in everything to rise up and bear testimony against this abominable thing which his soul hateth. And so at the moment when we least anticipate such a result, some little thing proves the secret spring that lays open our whole lives, and reveals all our hidden iniquity. Sin promises great advantage. We may have by it vain honors, unjust gain, and unlawful pleasures. Try it, says sin. You can get these in no other way. The wrong connected with the transgression will only make the acquisition more valuable to you. Moreover, I will conceal the shame of your wrong, by hiding it from the knowledge of men. Oh, vain and empty promise! Rather I should say, Oh, monstrous and satanic deception and falsehood! The things promised are only placed before you as the bait is used to lure the wild beast to the trap. Sin takes no care to fulfill its promises. The pleasures which sin offers, you may entirely fail of obtaining. The sting of a guilty conscience you will certainly feel. That is the manner that wrong-doing adds to our joys. And, as to hiding your guilt, you will find the only thing that sin hides is the trap that it is trying to lure you into, and that, when once you are fast therein, you are exposed to the gaze of the world. Sin cannot be hid. Even we could conceal it from men, the eye of God cannot be escaped by us. Sin is that one thing which God cannot suffer men to commit without taking notice of it. Indeed, if you wish to bring the eye of God upon you, venture upon the commission of some deed of evil. You will find that your sin was not only naked and open to the sight of the Almighty, but that the recording angel stood in your immediate presence and wrote down every thing pertaining to your sin. You may hide yourself in sheol, but God's hand shall reach you there. The Death and sheol shall both give you up. Amos 9:2; Rev. 20:13-15. You shall then be no longer concealed in the darkness of sheol. You shall appear before God. There shall you meet the books of record with an exact statement of all your sins. Were you disposed to deny the record, there are the angels of God as witnesses, who, unseen by you, beheld all your evil deeds. Even your raiment stained by your sin shall bear witness against you. And if the Judge shall bid you hold up your hands, the stain of your wrong acts upon them shall bear witness to your wicked life. And as if all this were insufficient, conscience, that may have long slumbered in your heart, shall now be awakened with such terrible powers of reproof, and with such perfect remembrance of your whole life of evil, that your tongue shall be silenced and your lips sealed from one word of excuse or extenuation. And then added to this, the eyes of the Judge shall be upon you that shall pierce you through. The eyes of Him against whom you sinned, and which witnessed every act of your sinful course, shall be so insupportable as even to be dashed in pieces by the fall of mountains would bring infinite relief. At this awful tribunal every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Oh, that they had confessed before! Oh, that they had bowed the heart and bent the knee while it was possible for them to find pardon! Oh, that they had put away their sins by that repentance which God can accept! Oh, that they had been cleansed from their leprosy by the great physician of souls! The gospel offered them pardon. It bade them cease to do evil, and learn to do well. It bade them seek God with brokenness of heart and contrition of spirit. It taught them to be converted and become as little children. It insisted that they should put away all evil from them; that they should remove the stains, the spots, and even the wrinkles from their raiment; that they should cleanse their hands and purify their hearts. It offered to make them new creatures in Christ Jesus; it offered to establish truth in the inward parts, and to wash them till they were whiter than snow, so that they should be found unblamable and unreprovable in his sight. It promised the forgiveness of sins, the restoration of lost innocence, and the remembrance of their guilt no more. Alas! all this so freely promised and so urgently pressed upon the guilty conscience, was neglected for a more convenient season, till mercy ceased to plead, and the gospel no longer offered its gracious blessings to sinful men. The gospel having done its work, the law of God which had waited to give men a chance to repent and be pardoned, now waits no longer. "The strength of sin is the law." 1 Cor. 15:56. Now sin finds out the transgressor. Now the law of God gives terrible force to men's guilt. Each man's own transgression returns upon him, with the weight of a mountain, to crush him in perdition. The law of God, which men have transgressed, must now be vindicated, and the lake of fire make an utter end of sinful men and of sinful deeds. Not one sin shall then pass unremembered and unpunished. Shall our sins be effectually hidden by the work of our High Priest, or terribly punished in the lake of fire?