Numbers 32:23

I. Every sin brings its punishment.

II. Every sinner will ultimately be found out by his sin, and be obliged to confront it.

III. There is a way of escape from the punishment of sin. It must be one or the other—salvation by faith in Christ, and sin put away by an atoning sacrifice, or sin finding us out either in time or eternity.

A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit, No. 1080.

The text leads us to consider the consequences of a single sin, such as a breach of their engagement would have been to the Reubenites and Gadites.

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 excellencies 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, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iv., p. 37; also Selection from the same, p. 331.

References: Numbers 32:23.—G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 43; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 120; J. Wells, Bible Echoes, p. 79; R. Newton, Bible Warnings: Addresses to Children, p. 138; C. Kingsley, Village Sermons, p. 52; T. Hammond, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 333; G. Lifting, Thirty Children's Sermons, p. 34; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1916; R. C. Trench, Brief Thoughts and Meditations, p. 1. Numbers 32:38.—Parker, vol. iv., p. 64. Numbers 33:1-49.—Ibid., p. 24. Numbers 33:50-56.—Ibid., p. 32. Numbers 34:1-12.—Ibid., p. 41. Numbers 35:33.—A. Lindesie, The Gospel of Grace, p. 11. Deuteronomy 1:6.—Parker, vol. iv., p. 69. Deuteronomy 1:19.—Parker, vol. iv., p. 76.