Emergency Locator on Raft Compared to Not Being Able to Hide Sin
A big part of his prayer is confession. Nehemiah confessed his sin. He owned the problem. They were sins not simply of commission but of omission. Trying to hide our sins from God is impossible. He knows all about them. Numbers 32:23 reminds us that, “…you may be sure that your sin will find you out.” We need to recognize that all sin, those things we have blatantly done or carelessly committed, or things that we have left undone, must be identified and confessed.
I read a story about some Boeing employees who decided to steal a life raft from one of the 747s they were working on. They were successful in getting it out of the plant but they forgot one thing. The raft comes with an emergency locator that is automatically activated when the raft is inflated. So, when they took the raft out on the River, they were quite surprised by a Coast Guard helicopter homing in on the emergency locator. Their sin found them out.
From a sermon by Stephen Sheane, Nehemiah 1 - Rebuilding a Broken World, 3/3/2010