Sin Comes Home To Roost     (June 12, 2016)

“But if you fail to [help your brother Israelites conquer their portion of promised land], you will be sinning against the Lord; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out.” (Numbers 32:23)

​

          On this day, June twelfth, nineteen-hundred thirty one, exactly eighty-five years ago, “Scarface” Al Capone was arrested after a period of seven years in which he terrorized the city of Chicago as the infamous boss of one of Chicago’s most powerful crime syndicates. Though he was guilty of running a multi-million dollar enterprise that involved illegal gambling, prostitution and liquor sales, it was not his arrest for these immoral activities that brought him to justice—rather it was a failure to pay back taxes. You see, the profits from his business dealings in the United States had led this son of a poor immigrant barber from Naples, Italy to amass a fortune worth close to one-hundred million [$100,000,000] dollars in nineteen-thirty one [depression-era] dollars! And, of course, being illegal income, he had neither reported it nor paid taxes on it, so he was convicted for tax-evasion and sentenced to eleven years in federal prison during which time, ironically, his health began to fail due to the symptoms of long-term untreated venereal infections. In the same way that Moses warned those in the passage cited above their “sin would find them out,” Al Capone’s sin returned home. When he died at the age of forty-eight, his doctor said his mental capacity was a twelve-year old child.
          The passage cited above is from the book of Numbers, and had nothing directly to do with gangsters or criminal activities, but in it, Moses warned the trans-Jordan tribes of Reuben and Gad to keep their promise to the Lord and their fellow Israelites by crossing the Jordan River to help them capture their portion of promised-land. If they failed to do so, their sin would find them out, that is, they would not escape. They could be sure that, one day, they would suffer the consequences of their sin.
          This important principle, of course, applies far beyond the borders of Israel and their conquest of Canaan and far beyond Al Capone and his criminal enterprise. It stands as a warning to each and every one of us that our sin always comes with consequences— it will not remain unaddressed forever. That is why the writer of the Proverbs advised: “Whoever conceals their sin does not prosper,but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” (Proverbs 28:13)