#5: Your Sin Will Find You Out

I. Introduction
A. This sermon series is on Bible truths we need to know to be victorious in the sexual struggle.
B. Some of these truths are comforting and some are disturbing. Some today only want to focus on the comforting truths. But, as we saw in our study of Hebrews, the Bible uses both to address us about our struggles with sin. Especially when it comes to sin, we need to be disturbed.
II. Our tendency to want to hide
A. The tendency to hide can be seen in mankind since Adam and Eve:
1. Genesis 3:8 “They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”
2. And then there’s Genesis 3:12–13 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
B. And we do the same things today, don’t we? We cover up our sin. We hide behind justification of our sin. Sometimes we even convince ourselves on some level that we are innocent: Prov.30:12 “There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.”
C. We go to great lengths to hide our sin.
III. You can’t hide from God. The Bible really wants us to know this:
A. Psalm 94:9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?
B. Prov.15:3 The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the evil and the good.
C. Job 34:21–22 “For his eyes are on the ways of a man, and he sees all his steps. 22 There is no gloom or deep darkness where evildoers may hide themselves.”
D. Pr.15:11 Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD, how much more the hearts of men!
E. Jeremiah 16:17 "For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity concealed from My eyes.
F. Hebrews 4:13 “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
G. This is about the most uplifting and comforting truth that there could be, but it is also the most haunting and terrifying truth that I can imagine
H. You might lock your door, you might whisper, you might erase your history, you might do all sorts of things to hide your sin. But you can’t hide from the Lord. You can't escape God's view. You can't get away with sin.
1. He sees the heart and the thoughts and the motives and hears the words uttered in private.
2. He sees through our facades and into our hearts so that the deepest secrets of our inner thoughts and desires are known by Him. We see dimly, so we miss a lot. And because of our sinfulness, we miss even more of our own sin. But God sees it. He sees every detail. He sees all of the ugliness, all of the pride, all of the selfishness, all of the garbage in our hearts.
I. There is no place to hide. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try.
IV. People in the Bible who tried to hide their sin
A. We already talked about Adam and Eve.
B. Then came Cain. In Gen.4:8 Abel covers up the murder of his brother but God knows what he’s done.
C. Joseph’s brothers threw him into a pit and sold him into Egyptian slavery. They covered it up by bringing their father his coat covered with animal blood. But God knew and eventually made sure their sin got exposed.
D. Then there was Achan hiding the stolen idols from Jericho under His tent — but God didn’t allow the secret to be hidden.
E. And remember Jonah — he just walked away from what he’d done hoping it would all go away, hoping to avoid God. He gets on the boat as if everything is normal, as if he’s just taking a trip. But he can't escape. God comes after Him. God sends a storm and then a big fish to get him.
F. Perhaps the most blatant episode of hiding one’s sin in the Bible is King David and his attempts to cover his tracks after committing adultery with Bathsheba one night.
1. First he sent her home, hoping that was the end of it. But then she send word that she was pregnant.
2. So, David calls Uriah back from the war zone, hoping he will sleep with his wife and think the baby is his. But Uriah refuses to sleep at home while his fellow soldiers are experiencing the hardships of battle.
3. Then David resorts to killing Uriah (or haivng him killed).
4. Davvid did all this to cover up his sin! He had absolute power to cover up. Or so he thought.
5. “BUT the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.” – 2Samuel 11:27
6. You see, no matter how clever you are, there is Someone more clever than you, Someone who is better at exposing sin than you are at hiding it.
7. David describes his experience in Ps.32:1–5: Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
8. God will not let us be happy in our sin. If He does, then we have to wonder whether we are actually His children:“If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” – Hebrews 12:8
G. The cover-up is often worse than the original sin. How many scandals in American history were made much worse by a cover-up?
H. The Bible is filled with story after story of those who tried to hide their sin but God exposed it (e.g. Ananias & Sapphira).
1. And guess what? The same thing will happen to everyone who tries to hide their sin.
2. God not only knows all things and sees our actions and looks into our hearts, He also exposes sin.
V. Oh! the foolishness of thinking or acting like God does not see!
A. The enemies of God often claim that the Lord does not see (e.g. Ezekiel 9:9-10), but we know that’s not true.
B. The expression, “Your sin will find you out.” comes from Num.32:23.
1. The Israelites were finally coming to the end of their journey to the promised land.
2. As they drew close to the Jordan River to cross over into Canaan, the tribes of Reuben and Gad looked around and said, “You know, the land on this side of the river would be perfect for us, since we have so much livestock!”
3. So they went to Moses and asked if they could inherit the land east of the Jordan. They said, “Look, let us stay behind and build pens for our animals. Then we’ll cross the Jordan and join the rest of you to fight against the Canaanites.”
4. Moses agreed with their proposal, but warned them about the temptation some of them might face to stay with their wives and children and renege on their promise to rejoin the other tribes for battle: “But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the LORD, and be sure your sin will find you out.” – Numbers 32:23.
5. And he wasn’t just referring to them. He knew that this is what God was like.
C. It is not that we actually think God cannot see, of course. But sometimes we act like He doesn't see. Like somehow we are going to get away with something.
D. But God will expose our sin.
1. 1Cor.4:5 “The Lord...will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.”
2. Luke 12:2–3 “Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.”
VI. Conclusion
A. The Bible is against sexual immorality. That is very clear. But some folks act as if that’s all the Bible has to say about the subject. And that is blatantly false.
1. God isn’t opposed to sexuality (though often Satan wants us to think God is against it).
2. God is the One who created it, and blessed it, and said, “It is very good.”
3. After each day of creation the Bible tells us that God saw that what He had made was good. But after making Adam and Eve, and leaving them naked together in the garden, with the instructions to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, it says that God saw that it was very good.
4. Sexual intimacy is designed by God to be a way for husband and wife to show love to one another. It is a means of giving oneself to the other and delighting in one another.
5. And He is a part of it. It is His blessing that makes it wonderful and sanctifies it.
B. But mankind likes to abuse what God created, using it for purely selfish pleasure.
C. But there is no right of privacy befpre the living God: “Wherever you go, He is there” (Psalm 139:7-12) – even behind closed doors, even under the covers.
1. “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to [God]; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to [Him].” (Ps.139:11-12)
2. He is there. And He sees. There is no hiding from Him.
3. When the holy God looks upon the sexual joy of a husband and wife loving one another and loving Him, He smiles and says, “It is very good.”
4. But when He looks and sees immorality or perversion or selfishness going on, He knows that too.
D. Last week we talked about the truth: No one can serve two masters. We saw that we’re going to have to choose. We can’t have both. God is jealous when we melt before sexual beauty instead of melting before His beauty. He refuses to share us with another lover.
E. The Lord is there for us, ready to forgive, ready to help. We must bring our sin to Him and lay it at the foot of the cross.
1. “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” – Ps.32:3-5
2. Proverbs 28:13 “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”
F. In John 3:19 we are told: “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”
1. The question each one of us must answer is: Do we want to live in darkness in order to hide our evil works, or do we want to come into the light of Christ and repent of our sin, and experience Holy Spirit transformation?
G. The worst thing we can do is keep on praying as if everything’s fine, as if we’re in no need of repentance. Then we’re just hiding our sin and lying to God (1John 1:10). That kind of prayer just makes matters worse.
1. Psalm 66:18 “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”
2. We can’t just come in prayer and ask for His blessing and think that He does not notice the things we’ve been doing or the thoughts we have been entertaining.
3. Is.1:15 "So when you spread out your hands [in prayer,] I will hide My eyes from you, Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.” (Cf. 1Pet.3:7)