Tuesday, November 14, 2023
The Cover-Up
“But if you fail to keep your word, then you will have sinned against the Lord, and you may be sure that your sin will find you out.” (Numbers 32:23 NLT)
Some years ago, I read a humorous article about someone who decided to rob a Baptist church in North Carolina. But he was more than six feet tall and weighed 235 pounds. And when he tried to escape with his loot through a bathroom window, he got stuck. It took four police officers pushing and pulling him to get him out of the window.
His sin found him out.
Moses warned the children of Israel, “But if you fail to keep your word, then you will have sinned against the Lord, and you may be sure that your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23 NLT).
He knew this from firsthand experience.
After Moses killed an Egyptian who was beating one of his fellow Hebrews, he probably thought the Hebrew people would applaud him. He may have been hoping they’d say, “That Moses is something! He’s the grandson of Pharaoh, but he risked everything to help us. He’s our new hero.”
However, things didn’t go as Moses had hoped.
The next day when he saw a couple of Hebrews fighting, he walked up and tried to settle the dispute. But one of them said, “Who appointed you to be our prince and judge? Are you going to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?” (Exodus 2:14 NLT).
Moses thought he had hidden his sin, but he suddenly realized that everyone knew. He also realized that he was in trouble. When Pharaoh heard about it, he tried to kill Moses. So, Moses fled for his life into the wilderness.
Moses lost everything: his position, his people, and his reputation. But he hadn’t lost God. He did the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time. His timing was horribly off—by about forty years. Though Moses was gifted to be a leader, he wasn’t quite ready yet.
His heart was in the right place, but he went about it the wrong way. He made a huge mess for himself, and it seemed as though everyone had turned against him. But God had not turned against Moses. And what looked like the end of his life actually was the beginning of a new one.
He found a family that befriended them. He married one of the daughters in the family and ended up watching her father’s sheep. He probably thought that was where he would die.
But God had other plans. Moses was a leader in training.
It has been said that Moses spent forty years in Pharaoh’s court finding out he was a somebody. He spent forty years in the wilderness finding out he was a nobody. And then he spent forty years finding out what God can do with a somebody who realizes they are a nobody.
Are you trying to cover up something right now? Is there some secret sin in your life? If so, then just come out with it and confess it, because sooner or later, it will be exposed. Nothing is hidden from God.
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