Joshua 7
Our reading will be Joshua 7,
verses one through 26. Let’s hear God’s word together.
But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted
things. For Achan, the son of Carmi,
son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some
of the devoted things. And the anger of the Lord burned
against the people of Israel. Joshua sent men from Jericho
to Ai, which is near Beth-Avon, east of Bethel. And he said to
them, go up and spy out the land. And the men went up, spied out
Ai. And they returned to Joshua and
said to him, do not have all the people go up, but let about
two or 3,000 men go up and attack Ai. Do not make the whole people
toil up there, for they are few. So about 3,000 men went up from
the people And they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of
Ai killed about 36 of their men and chased them before the gate
as far as Shebarim and struck them at the descent. And the
hearts of the people melted and became as water. Then Joshua
tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before
the ark of the Lord until the evening. He and the elders of
Israel, And they put dust on their heads and Joshua said,
alas, oh Lord God, why have you brought this people over the
Jordan at all? To give us into the hands of
the Amorites, to destroy us? What would that we have been
content to dwell beyond the Jordan? Oh Lord, what can I say when
Israel has turned their backs before their enemies? For the
Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and
will surround us. and cut off our name from the
earth. And what will you do for your great name? The Lord said
to Joshua, get up. Why have you fallen on your face?
Israel has sinned. They have transgressed my covenant
that I commanded them. They have taken some of the devoted
things they have stolen and they have lied and have put them among
their own belongings. Therefore, the people of Israel
cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before
their enemies because they have become devoted for destruction.
I will be with you no more unless you destroy the devoted things
from among you. Get up, consecrate the people
and say, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, thus says the Lord,
the God of Israel. There are devoted things in your
midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your
enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you.
In the morning, therefore, you shall be brought near by your
tribes. And the tribe that the Lord takes by lot shall come
near by clans. And the clan that the Lord takes
shall come near by households. And the household that the Lord
takes shall come near man by man. And he who is taken with
the devoted thing shall be burned with fire. He in all that he
has because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord and
because he has done an outrageous thing in Israel. So Joshua rose
early in the morning and brought Israel near tribe by tribe, and
the tribe of Judah was taken. And he brought near the clans
of Judah and the clans of the Zarahites were taken. And he
brought near the clan of the Zarahites, man by man, and Zabdi
was taken. And he brought near his household,
man by man, Achan, the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah. of the tribe of Judah was taken.
Then Joshua said to Achan, my son, give glory to the Lord God
of Israel and give praise to him and tell me now what you
have done. Do not hide it from me. And Achan
answered to Joshua, truly, I have sinned against the Lord, the
God of Israel. And this is what I did. When I saw among the spoil,
a beautiful cloak from Shinar and 200 shekels of silver, and
a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels. Then I coveted them and took
them and see they are hidden in the earth inside my tent with
the silver underneath. So Joshua sent messengers and
they ran to the tent and behold, it was hidden in his tent with
the silver underneath. And they took them out of the
tent and brought them to Joshua and to all the people of Israel.
And they laid them down before the Lord. And Joshua and all
Israel with him took Achan the son of Zarah and the silver,
and the cloak, and the bar of gold, and his sons, and his daughters,
and his oxen, and donkeys, and sheep, and his tent, and all
that he had. And they brought them up to the
Valley of Achor. And Joshua said, why did you bring trouble on
us? The Lord brings trouble on you today. And all Israel stoned
him with stones. They burned them with fire and
stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great
heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the Lord turned
from his burning anger. Therefore, to this day, the name
of that place is called the Valley of Acre. This is the word of
the living God, and it is written for our instruction. This morning,
we were thinking, when we read Numbers chapter 16, and remember
the people complained against Moses, they complained against
Aaron, and God opened up the earth and swallowed them. To
me, that’s like having a switch up here at the trap door. You
know, and putting a box in the back that says complaint department.
And when you see somebody walk up to it, you hit the switch
at just the right moment. There they go flying into the
cellar or something like that. And you wonder, how do we tell
these stories to our children? You know, so often we have these
little kiddie songs that we listen to. We make the story of Noah
really cute. We make the story of David and
Goliath really cute. But now think about those stories
in light of how we’ve been reading Joshua. This was a holy war,
a holy battle. When our kids were little, we
used to listen to different music in the car. I think Dante’s Inferno,
one of the levels of hell is a Chuck E. Cheese. One of the other levels of hell
in Dante’s Inferno ought to be having to listen to kiddie songs. I think there are some cassettes
that went flying out the window and they’re somewhere along the
side of I-95. But we found some interesting
kids’ songs that help teach the Christian faith. One is a fellow
from Canada named Jamie Solace. I can tell you the name afterwards
if you’re interested. These are really good Bible songs. Here’s
the one about Dothan. Yes, he wrote one about Dothan.
Out there in the wilderness, I’m not gonna sing it. Out there
in the wilderness, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, Never name your children
this if you want people to admire them. They were the rebellious
kind who knew what to do but would not mind. They saw what
the Lord had done for Aaron, priestly garments he was wearing,
and they desired him, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. The Lord
took a very dim view of this, and he told his people, don’t
go near them. Move your tents away from theirs if you don’t
want what’s coming to them. The Lord told the ground to open
wide. and close up again when they’re
all inside, because these men would not obey the way the ground
did on that day. The Lord expired them, Gulp,
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. And there’s a song about tonight.
This doesn’t make the veggie tales list, right? This doesn’t make kids praise
from the 80s that I had to listen to. Israel fought at Ai. Israel got beat. All because
of Achan’s sin, They went down to defeat. Get rid of sin in
the camp. Get rid of sin in the camp. For
then you’ll win the fight. Yes, then you’ll win the fight.
Are you hiding something? Have you made it right? Make
sure you confess your sin before you sleep tonight. Get rid of
sin in the camp. Isn’t that a little better for
our kids? The truth of God’s word and the
reality of all that he is and requires of us. Two interesting
Bible songs there. Well, we want to think tonight
about this passage and we want to think of the post-mortem,
the look back, if you will, on the battle of Ai. What went wrong? We want to think about the seriousness
of sin. We want to think about the wrath
of God. Why all this trouble? Well, verse
one tells us, Very well, the people of Israel broke faith
in regard to the devoted things for Achan, the son of Carmi,
took some of the devoted things and the anger of the Lord burned
against his people. And before we dive into this
passage, before we start pointing all our fingers at Achan and
what he did, I want you to take notice in verse one of the corporate
responsibility. God holds Israel responsible. Achan did the deed. Achan coveted,
he took, he hid, he lied, he buried. But who does God hold
responsible? He holds Israel responsible.
And if it were not for Moses’ prayers and intervention and
God coming and saying, here’s the plan of how we’ll fix this,
Israel would have been wiped out in the desert, right there
in the beginnings of the promised land. And has this not happened
a bunch of other times? Think about the bronze serpent.
Think about the ground opening up and swallowing Dathan and
Korah and all those who rebelled against Moses and Aaron. Many,
many times God has sent judgment to a sinning Israel. And so he holds the entire nation
responsible. One person did this, millions
held captive. Sounds unfair. But we remember
that our God is a God of corporate responsibility. Remember Adam,
sinned in the garden. Were you in the garden? No, you
weren’t. Did you eat the forbidden fruit? No, you didn’t. But are
we held responsible? for that original sin. Yes, we
are. And so we need to understand
this corporate responsibility for sin. You see it in verse
one. Israel, the people of Israel, broke faith. Doesn’t say Achan
did. People of Israel did. Look down
at verse 11. Israel, he says to Joshua, Israel
has sinned. They have transgressed my covenant
that I commanded them. They have taken some of the devoted
things they have stolen and lied and put them among their own
belongings. Therefore, the people of Israel
cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before
their enemies because they have become devoted for destruction.
Notice the days. Pronouns good here. Lots of lots
of days, meaning Israel. They broke faith. They acted
treacherously or With infidelity, they took the things that God
said to either put in the treasury or put to the match and the flame,
and he zeroes in on them for their sin. So that’s the overview
here, this post-mortem on what happened to Israel, what happened
to Ai, why’d they lose the battle? So I wanna think about this passage
with a couple Ds. The first is they’re defeated.
If you read verses two to five, you’ll see that Jericho, It’s
been checked off the list. So Joshua’s got his list. I think
Joshua’s gonna conquer about 13 cities in his career. So he’s got his little list on
his clipboard. Jericho, check. Next up, AI. As you’re making
your way in the promised land, AI is next. And so, unknown to the people of God,
Achan has done this thing. And so they make battle plans.
And notice the parallels to Jericho. He sends spies. The spies bring
back a good report, we can do this. And so this ought to be
a quick skirmish, a little dust up, okay? They ought to be home
by seven and watching Andy Griffith. Right? They ought to be at home
by seven with their feet up on the Ottoman. They ought to take
care of business because they’ve done so well already. God has
been with them as they crossed the Jordan, as they entered the
promised land and took care of business at Jericho. This should
be a dust up, but instead we find them running for their lives. And notice what it says. This
is where the parallel with Jericho ends. The people of Jericho’s
hearts melted. But now it’s the hearts of the
Israelites melting like water. Why the change? Well, because
they sinned against God. Or Achan sinned against God. God is going to hold them accountable.
So Israel is defeated. That’s one D. The next D is distress. Joshua and the elders cannot
believe this little battle has been lost. They cannot believe
that the army of Israel came running like chickens back into
the camp. They were chased. And so Joshua
and the elders lament, they, they fall on their faces and
the dust of the earth before God, they put dust on their heads.
And our passage tells us that Joshua cried out to God, Lord,
why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all? Why did
you give us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? We would have been content to
dwell beyond the Jordan. What can we say? Israel has turned
their backs before their enemies, the Canaanites and all the inhabitants
of the land. They will hear of it and they
will surround us. They will cut us off, cut off
our name from the earth. And what will you do for your
great name? Joshua is in a great distress
as are the elders. He’s really saying, I don’t get
it, Lord. You’ve brought us out of Egypt. You sustained us through
the, 40 years of wilderness. You took care of us at the Jordan
River. You’ve taken care of us with Jericho. And now this. It’s almost as if Joshua’s whining. It’s sanctified whining. He says
a lot of the right things. But it leads us to the third
D, the disclosure of Almighty God. So they’re defeated. There’s
distress. And now this disclosure. God
is going to break it down for them. All right. This is the
Monday morning or the Monday night football chalk talk. God
is going to give to Joshua and therefore to Israel. This is
why you lost the game. This is why you lost the battle.
In verses 10 to 15, explain this. The Lord simply says to Joshua,
get up, get out of the dust, brush your hair, get that mess
out of your hair. I don’t want to see it. Israel has sinned. That’s the problem. It wasn’t
that Israel failed to pray. That’s what some people say.
This is what happens when you get overconfident. You won a
battle of Jericho and you’re on a high. And so you think you
can do anything for the Lord. And so you just do work for the
Lord without praying. That’s not in the passage at all. It
sounds nice. It sounds pious and it’ll preach,
but that’s not what happens here. Or, uh, they got too big for
their britches and they got overconfident. Some men trust in chariots. We
trust in the name of the Lord our God, except at the battle
of Ai. That’s not in the passage either. No, because God makes
it very clear in verse 10. The reason you lost Israel is
because you have sinned. You have transgressed my covenant
that I commanded you. You have taken some of the devoted
things you have stolen and you have lied. And so these five
sins that he lists, covenant breakers, Sinners, transgressors,
stealers, liars. These are the reasons that you’ve
lost the battle. And then you skip over to verse
20 where Achan breaks down his own sin. Truly I’ve sinned against
the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I did when I saw
among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar. When I saw among
the spoil 200 shekels of silver. That’s a bunch of silver, you
know. When I saw among the spoils a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels,
I coveted them. I took them and they are hidden
in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath. God discloses the reason that
they’ve lost the battle, the reason that they’re in trouble.
It’s because there is sin in the camp. And so it leads to
death. That’s the weight of sin. Remember
the wages of sin is death. There will be an end to Achan
and all that he possesses just as there was an end to Jericho
and all her inhabitants. The only people spared in Jericho
were Rahab and her family because they had faith in Yahweh and
they put the scarlet cord in the window. But the wages of
sin is death and so the end to Achan will be the same end that
Jericho faced. His family will be put to the
sword and they will be burned with fire. Well, they’ll be stoned. Verses 16 to 26 tell us about
this awful, awful event. And we have to say to ourselves,
but for the grace of God, there go I. If it were not for the
grace of God, we would be under that heap. of wrath, we would
be under that heap of curse. We would be saying to ourself,
I’ve wrecked the church. It is my sin that has wrecked
the church. It is my sin that has wrecked the family. It is
my sin that has wrecked the marketplace. It is my sin that is offended
Almighty God. And so when Israel is defeated
and Joshua is under distress, God reveals or discloses to him
the sin of Achan. the sin of the people and the
wages of sin is death. So we scratch our heads and say,
well, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t like this. Uh, did Aiken really
do something deserving of death? And that’s where our Bible math
is wrong. See, we’ve got it in our minds
that God is nice and that God pats us all on the head and says,
good little boy, good little girl, you’re so wonderful. I’m
so privileged to have you in my kingdom. And that’s not the
way it is at all. God makes a covenant with his
people. He made one with Adam. He made one with Abraham. He
made one with David. On and on through the Bible,
God makes covenants and God, it says very strongly, you obey
my words. And if you obey my words, you
live. If you disobey my words, you die. And so then we disobey
God, God. And he says, OK, death. And you
say, wait a minute, that’s not fair. And he says, but that’s
the bargain we struck. That’s the deal we made. And
he over and over sees that that Adam and Eve are covenant breakers.
David’s a covenant breaker. We are covenant breakers. Only
Christ, his son, who lived an obedient life as a covenant keeper. And we thank the Lord that when
God continues to get rid of sin in the camp, we think that’s
an Old Testament concept. We say that angry Old Testament
God never appears in the New Testament. Well, yes, he did.
He hauled his own son outside the camp. He hauled him outside
the city gates of Jerusalem. He took him outside the camp
and he placed, just as the Old Testament priest did with the
scapegoat, all the sins of the people of God onto Jesus. And instead of stones being heaped
on Jesus, it was the wrath of almighty God. And it was such
a horrendous wrath that the night before his death, he sweated
blood in the garden. Lord, if there’s another way,
take this cup from me. And so, Is this harsh? It is. And is this just Old Testament
God? No, this is New Testament God,
too. He did not hold back on his own son. We did not receive
the lashes, but we deserve them. We did not receive the stripes,
but they were ours. We did not receive the piercings,
but they were meant for us. We did not receive the cup of
God’s wrath that was meant for us, but Jesus took it. What about curses in this life
for our sins. Yes, we are forgiven. Yes, we
will make it to heaven. But could we die for sinful behavior? We sure could. You can get diseases. You can live in the consequences
of your sin. I think of King David after Bathsheba. That child left this life. Probably no greater punishment.
David over and over sinned against God in many different ways. And
his sin was, it affected Israel, didn’t it? It affected corporately.
You sin in your family, it affects your home. You sin in the church,
it affects the whole congregation. And so we need to recognize,
we need to see that sin in the camp of the saints is a dangerous,
dangerous event. Now we say sometimes, Oh, Jesus
has forgiven us, and oh, we’re in the church, and the church
is to be a place of forgiveness. But remember, the church is also
to be a place of purity. We receive into membership those
whose professions of faith are credible, those who are bearing
fruit in their lives, and then we expect you to maintain that
level of behavior. Do we expect you to be perfect?
No, we trust that you’ll sin, and you’ll come to God for forgiveness,
that you’ll live by the Spirit, and God will be at work in your
life. We understand all those things and trust all those things.
Achan later, I think it’s in the book of Chronicles, is referred
to as the Troubler of Israel. The Troubler of Israel was put
outside the camp, and it’s the same in the church. We have a
joke sometimes pastorally, so-and-so’s a Troubler of Israel. And those
Troublers of Israel can tear up the church. Their me first
attitude, their my attitude can be very difficult. And so we
have to think of these things. It’s the same in your home too,
though. You need a home full of peace. Maybe you have a child
that just won’t obey mom and dad. A child who is not just
they forget to take out the garbage and stick their tongue out to
you. I mean, nasty, right? Rebellious. Sometimes we have
to keep our homes sacred as well. And so these are important things
for us to think and consider. But we thank God for his son,
the Lord Jesus. Though the wages of sin is death,
the free gift of God through Jesus is eternal life. Let’s
go to God in prayer together. Our Lord, we thank you for these
hard stories. We thank you that they really
took place. They were written for our instruction, for our
warning. And we thank you that in them we always see mercy.
We always see Christ. But we see ourselves, this is
a mirror. We covet. Our eyes light up when we see
things. Your provision is never enough. We’re like the leech. More, more, more. Never satisfied. So Lord, forgive us and help
us. Help us to be satisfied with your goodness and your providence,
and especially to be satisfied in Jesus, our great savior. It’s
in his name we pray. Amen.