"Be sure your sins will find you out!" It sounds rather final doesn't it. Not "your sins might find you out." Not "your sins will probably find you out," or "some of your sins will find you out." But "Your sins will find you out." And that is from God's Word.

It's a warning. It is a warning to sinners. It is saying, "Be careful, if you sin you are in trouble." So don't say you haven't been warned, because you have. If you sin, your sins will find you out.

Oh, you probably think I am not talking to you, right. You say, "I am not a sinner. I live a good life. I don't murder and cheat on my spouse or steal." But haven't you read the Sermon on the Mount. If you merely hate your neighbor, you have killed them in God's eyes. If you look upon another in lust you have as good as committed adultery with them in God's eyes. Or if you wish you had your neighbors house or car you have as good as stolen it in God's eyes. We have all sinned and fallen short of God's glory. God is telling us that this is a morally sound universe, and in this universe our sins will return to haunt us.

But people don't believe that their sins will find them out. That is why they keep sinning the way they do. They think that either God doesn't see or God doesn't care. But that is not the case. God sees and God hears. Your sins will find you out. "How?" you may ask.

First your sins will find us out in our public lives. The prisons are full of people who thought their sins would not find them out. They thought they could get away with robbing, stealing, killing, selling drugs, and so on. It doesn't matter what the crime was, if found them out. White collar crime, blue collar crime, whatever. They discovered that if you do the crime, you do the time.

Some people's sins are not crimes by our society's laws, but their sins still found them out. The divorce courts are full of people who discovered that if you cheat on your spouse you are killing your marriage. And there are many people who face the crises of life alone because they alienated their families or their God. If you betray a friend you may not be hauled off to jail, but that friend won't trust you anymore.

Your sins will find you out. It is true that not everyone who sins is found out in their public life. Sometimes people commit crimes and they are never caught by earthly authorities. So what of these people?

If your sins don't find you out in your public life, they will find you out in your inner life. The old saying is that there is no trust among thieves. If you wrong others you will expect them to wrong you. Because they are not trustworthy they expect others to be untrustworthy. Slowly their mistrust consumes them. In the same way some people allow hatred to eat them up in side until they are nothing but and empty shell.

Then of course there is the conscience. Each of us has one. And when you have sinned and you know it, your conscience will not let you forget. Guilt is probably the number one cause to mental illness in our day. Not all of that guilt is justified but some of it is.

Your sins will find you out in your inner life. Your conscience will prick you and pain you. And your mistrust and hatred of others will eat away at you until it leaves you an empty shell. But to be honest there are some people who don't listen to their conscience. What of them?

If your sins don't find you out in you public life or your inner life, they will definitely find you out in the after life. To every person is appointed a time to die, and then the judgment. There will be a final reckoning for all. And all the deeds we have done will be known. The ones we have managed to hide from others. Those private sinful thoughts that all humans have. Even those sins that we have hidden from ourselves. And there will be a judgment for those sins.

You may be able to hide things from other people, or even from yourself, but you can't hide them from God. And all that is not Godly will be thrown into the lake of fire. All unrighteousness and injustice will be done away with. Because God will make creation pure once again by purging it of all impurity.

And on that day your sins will find you out. God's judgment will roll down like a mighty wave. And all that is unjust and impure will be washed away from creation.

Your sins will find you out. Once there were two men who thought their sins would not find them out. So these two men set about a life of crime. They were convinced that they would get away with it. So they broke the laws of God and the laws of the land they lived in.

And guess what. Their sins found them out. They were caught in their crime. The authorities hauled them away, tried them, and sentenced them. The sentence for their crime was death. Not a merciful death, but a form of death that was slow and painful and humiliating.

They were to be stripped naked and publicly executed. And the people would spit upon them and hurl insults at them. But as they were being executed, the crowd wasn't ridiculing or insulting them. There was somebody else there. Another was being executed with them and the people were venting all their anger on him.

They were ridiculing this other one. And they said, "If you are the Son of God, save yourself." One of the criminals joined in and said tauntingly, "Go ahead, Mr. Son of God, save yourself and us while you are at it." But the other criminal replied, "Can't you see that we deserve to die but he is innocent." Then he turned to Jesus and said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus said, "Today, you will be with me in Paradise."

We have all committed crimes against God. And our sins will find us out. They may not find us out like they did those two thieves on the crosses beside Jesus. But they will find us out. If not in this life then most definitely in the next. Because God has a record of all that we have done to offend the moral order of this universe.

But there is one in our midst who can forgive those sins. One who can wipe that record clean. Jesus the Son of God can save us just as he saved that thief dying on the cross beside him. It doesn't matter how awful our sin is. If we will just confess it to Jesus as that thief did and call on Jesus to help us, Jesus will wipe it away.

These two thieves demonstrate two ways of living. One is to die in sin and face eternal punishment. The other is to turn to Christ for forgiveness. Which way do you choose; which cross is yours? Will you mock Christ by refusing his love and forgiveness. Or will you say, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."