II. 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.

1. 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 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.

2. 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.

3. Since, then, God Almighty hath thus put the means of our salvation, in a manner, in our own power, by leaving us at 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.)

1. This is abundantly evident from innumerable passages of Scripture.

2. From observation of the conduct of mankind, it is evident that they have sinned against the Lord.

3. From the many dreadful threatenings which are written in the Word of God.

4. This is evident from all the judgments which God hath brought upon the children of men from the beginning of the world until now.

5. From the consent of all nations, it is evident that we have sinned against the Lord.

II. How YOUR SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT. It will find you out for your conviction and conversion, or for your condemnation and destruction.

1. 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.

2. Under afflictive dispensations of Divine Providence.

3. At the approach of the king of terrors.

4. Your sins, if you die impenitent, will find you out at the tribunal of Christ, in the judgment of the great day.

5. The sins of the impenitent will find them out in hell, to all the ages of eternity.

III. THE ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY THAT SOONER OR LATER YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT.

1. That men's sins shall find them out is absolutely certain, because the nature and perfections of God require it.

2. The Word of God asserts it.

3. Conscience forebodes it.

4. God's moral government attests it.

5. Those who have gone before, in every past age of the world and period of the Church, in their experience have found it.CONCLUSION.

1. Be sure to find out sin.

2. Find out your sin, so as to get a soul-humbling and a heart-breaking view of it.

3. Endeavour to find out your sins in such a manner as shall influence you to make a free confession of them unto the Lord.

4. 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.

5. Be excited to wash in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

6. 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.)

I. 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.

II. 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.

III. 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?

IV. 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.)

2. But not in this way only do men's 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 man's 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" (Judges 1:7; Revelation 16:6). 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.

3. Then, too, men's sins often find them out, though no visible sign or token may betray this fact to the 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 man's 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.

4. 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 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.)

I. Here was the sin of SELFISHNESS. "Bring us 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.

II. The sin of COWARDICE, too, was probably here. Timorousness provoked insult, and invites attack.

III. 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.

IV. Here was THAT IN WHICH ALL OTHER SINS MAY BE SUMMED UP: DISOBEDIENCE TO GOD.

(J. W. Lance.)

I. WHY?

1. Because of the absolute perfectness of God's law, which covers every detail of a human being's life, and threatens a penalty for every dereliction.

2. Because of the perfect administration of that law, which notes every offence and secures the punishment of every offender.

II. WHEN?

1. Sometimes in this life, by civil law, by general censure, and by reproaches of conscience.

2. Sometimes at death, when the hallucination of the world is removed, and conscience asserts its authority.

3. Always at the judgment, when Satan no longer can deceive, when the standard of duty is applied, and the sinner's 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.)

1. 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.

2. 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.

II. THE CERTAINTY THAT OUR SIN WILL FIND US OUT.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.)

2. Next, to speak of Scripture. I might quote texts innumerable to prove that what I say Scripture says also.

3. 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 day's 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 God's 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?

4. 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 fool's 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 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 God's 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.)

I. And the first thing which must make it sure that sin will be found out, is — THE PRESENCE. OF GOD.

II. The second thing which makes it sure that sin will be found out, is — THE POWER OF GOD.

III. And the third thing, which makes it sure that sin will be found out is — THE PURPOSE OF GOD (Ecclesiastes 12:14).

(R. Newton, D. D.)

II. 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 God's eternal law of right.

III. 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.)

II. We may make the subject one of wider and more general application, and find THAT THIS SAYING IS UNIVERSALLY TRUE.

1. By the very constitution of man's 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 man's individual sins, even the most secret, will find him out.

2. 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.)

II. 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 God's bar, having squared his conduct when on earth, according to God's commandment, for Christ's 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 believer's 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 God's 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 God's 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.)

(J. N. Norton, D. D.)

II. 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.)

1. 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.

2. 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.

II. 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 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 —

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. The fourth and last ground which I shall mention of men's 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.

III. 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.

1. For this world; there are various ways by which it comes to be disappointed here: as(1) The very confidence itself of secrecy is a direct and natural cause of the sinner's 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 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 eyes of his reason. And he who shuts his own eyes lies so much the more open to those of other men.(2) 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.(3) 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.(4) 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.(5) God sometimes lets loose the sinner's 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.(6) 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 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 God's 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.)

I. It is natural to reflect on THE PROBABLE INFLUENCE UPON US OF SINS COMMITTED IN OUR CHILDHOOD AND EVEN INFANCY, WHICH WE NEVER REALISED OR HAVE ALTOGETHER FORGOTTEN. Children's 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.

II. 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 man's spiritual history.

III. 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.

IV. 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.

V. 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 God's presence and obstructs the channels by which He gives us grace.

(J. H. Newman, D. D.)

1. They will excuse and justify their sins as if there were no evil in them.

2. They will carry the matter so quietly as that it shall be hid from the eyes of the world, while in the meantime God's watchful eye is still upon them, though they do not regard it.

3. 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.

4. 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.

II. TO SHOW IN WHAT RESPECTS SIN SHALL FIND OUT THE SINNER.

1. By discovering and bringing to light their works of darkness.

2. By presenting sin in its native colours to their awakened consciences.

3. By giving them the due reward of their works.

III. Snow WHENCE IT IS THAT SIN CERTAINLY WILL FIND OUT THE SINNER. How can it be otherwise, if we consider —

1. 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.(1) Conscience within their own breast is as a thousand witnesses, whose testimony one cannot get denied.(2) The omniscient God, whose eye is always upon the sinner.

2. God has said it.

3. There is a watchful eye of Providence over the world that never closes, but takes notice of all men's actions at all times and in every place. Use

1. Of information. This lets us see —(1) That an evil conscience is a sad companion, and guilt lying within the breast unrepented of will break out sadly at length, to the sinner's confusion. Many a secret blow it gives the sinner, that the world knows not of.(2) God is a just God, and will not be mocked, nor can He be blinded. Use

2. Of warning,(1) 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.(2) 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.(3) 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 Lord's 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,

I. 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 —

1. Sins which men will not own to be sins, the Lord makes to find out the sinner. Crucifixion of Christ.

2. Secret sins to which no man is witness, the Lord makes them find out the sinner.

II. THE TIME IN WHICH THE LORD MAKES SIN TO FIND OUT THE SINNER. Times and seasons are in the Lord's 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.

III. 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 sinner's own feet carry him to the place of this heavy meeting, while he has no mind of any such thing.

1. God can make sin find out the sinner sometimes, where he can have least support under the awful meeting with his sin. Joseph's brethren.

2. 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.

3. 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.

IV. 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 —

1. By the natural product of the sin, by which the sin is made to discover itself.

2. By some act of indiscretion and folly in the sinner himself.

3. By some unforeseen accident which the sinner by his own utmost diligence could not prevent. Man's 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.

V. THE WAY AND MANNER OF SIN'S 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.

1. Ofttimes sin finds the sinner unexpectedly and surprisingly when they are not looking for it.

2. Often does the way which sinners take to hide their sin prove the way of its finding them out.

3. 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.

4. God's 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 men's 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. Jeroboam's 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.Here consider —

1. That no man can sin without witnesses. This has been already illustrated under the third head.

2. 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.(1) 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.(2) God will do it. For He hath said it, His truth is engaged for it.(3) It lies upon God's honour to make sin find out the sinner.(4) 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.

(T. Boston, D. D.)

II. THE CERTAINTY OF THIS FINDING OUT.

III. TO ILLUSTRATE THE TEXT, BY ADVERTING TO THE TIMES AND OCCASIONS WHEN MEN ARE USUALLY FOUND OUT BY SIN.

1. 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!

2. Sin finds men out at the time of conversion.

3. That sin fails not to find out the sinner, if not sooner, at least in the day of adversity, sickness, and death.

(J. Jacques, B. A.)

(J. W. Diggle, M. A.)

(G. B. Cheever, D. D.)

(H. W. Beecher.)

     1075   God, justice of
     5812   concealment
     6650   finding

Numbers 32:1-33

     5910   motives, examples

Numbers 32:1-38

     7266   tribes of Israel