A Painful Lesson - Joshua 7
Intro:
A scientist, unjustly accused and convicted of a major crime, found himself sentenced to
hard time in a prison out in the Arizona desert. His cellmate turned out to be another scientist.
Determined to escape, the first man tried to convince his colleague to make the attempt with him.
He refused. After careful planning the scientist made his escape.
Before long the heat of the desert, the lack of food and water, and complete disorientation
in the hostile wilderness almost drove him mad. He was soon forced to return to the prison. He
reported his terrible experience to the other scientist who surprised him by saying, "Yes, I know.
I tried it too and failed, too, for the same reasons."
The first scientist responded bitter, "For heaven’s sake, man, when you knew I was going
to make a break for it, why didn’t you tell me what it was like out there?"
His cellmate responded with a shrug, "Who publishes negative results?"
There is some truth in that little story. Even in the church, we often don’t talk about sin.
And when we ignore that, we condemn others to make the same mistakes and suffer hardship.
Today we are going to look at Joshua 7, a very blunt chapter about sin and its consequences. Let
me set the context:
Broad Context:
The Israelites are across the Jordan and have begun the conquest of the promised land.
God has promised them victory, and has promised to be with them at every step of the journey.
Today, in chapter 7, something goes desperately wrong. Let’s read the chapter to find out what
that was and what we can learn from it for our lives today.
Read Joshua 7.
Immediate Context:
Verse 1 gives us an overview of the basic plot. Then the rest of the chapter provides us
with the details.
To understand what is happening here we need to glance back at chapter 6:17-19. Joshua
gave clear instructions, and fair warning, to all the Israelites about the plunder of the city of
Jericho, which as we read in chapter 6 God miraculously delivered into their hands. In keeping
with Jewish worship, the first and best were to be offered to the Lord, and that is why the plunder
of Jericho was off limits. There is a whole sermon in that point alone - do you give God your
best or your left-overs? - but I’ll save that for another day... We know that Joshua had
dedicated everything in the city to the Lord, and we also know from verse 1 of chapter 7 that
Achan disobeyed. He sinned, and essentially stole from the Lord.
Ai
But Joshua doesn’t know this yet, so he simply continues the conquest of the promised
land, sending some spies up to the next city. They report that this next city is going to be a
breeze, a cakewalk. "only send up 2 or 3 thousand men". But as we read, those soldiers were
driven back, defeated, and 36 of them were killed.
Don’t miss the contrast. The Israelites had just defeated the mighty walled city of Jericho
- they burned it to the ground. Everyone had heard about it; the Israelites were un-beatable!
They were undoubtedly on a great national high, convinced of their invincibility, sure of victory.
And then this little skirmish turns into a national disaster. Men die, at the hands of a far weaker
enemy. The spies said "2000 or 3000" - Joshua went high and sent 3000 just to be sure. And
they were soundly thumped by a smaller and weaker army: a "few men" (7:3).
Joshua’s Reaction
The people melt back in fear. Joshua turns immediately to God, throws himself to the
ground in front of the Ark of the Covenant. And he prays, a rather self-centered prayer - listen:
(7:7-9). It is actually a very defeatist prayer, assuming the worst, assuming it is all over. God has
left them there and maybe even played a cruel joke on them to bring them all this way only to
deliver them into death at the hands of their enemies. He feels (rightly) that God has abandoned
them and turns in desperation to God.
Have you ever felt that way? Abandoned by God. Alone, in danger, defeated, even
tricked cruelly by God? Felt like saying, "OK God, you told me to do this, you commanded me
to obey, I did what I was supposed to, now where are You???" If you have, you are not alone -
that is clearly how Joshua felt.
God’s Response:
I love God’s response to Joshua: "Joshua, get off your face." Pretty blunt! To the point!
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself, quit wallowing in self-pity and this poor-me nonsense. There is
sin here and you’ve got to deal with it." And then God gives Joshua detailed instructions about
how to deal with the sin, make amends, and get back on track.
Sometimes God is that blunt with us. "You are sinning. Smarten up. Yes, your life is a
mess. And the reason is because you are messing around with something that I’ve commanded
you not to. Get off your face and deal with it, so that you and I can be in relationship again and
so that I can bless you, fight your battles, bring you freedom and victory and accomplish my will
in and through you.
It isn’t always that simple, or that black and white. Just like it wasn’t for Joshua - he
didn’t know Achan had stolen the stuff, Achan wasn’t one of the 36 warriors killed, Joshua
wasn’t the reason for the nation’s sudden loss of heart. It was complex, difficult. But God cut
right through all that and said, "Hey, there is sin here. Let’s deal with it."
And just like it isn’t always that simple, it isn’t always that obvious. Sometimes we
continue on, going about life, and we don’t see some huge battle lost like at Ai. Life isn’t a
complete mess, but we also know it isn’t quite the way it should be. We fail to recognize that we
are going through life on our own strength and not in God’s, and thus miss out on all that He
desires for us. It isn’t always that life falls apart, or that we can’t see any good, but nevertheless
we are missing out. Sin destroys our fellowship with God, it makes us unable to enter His
presence and live life under His blessing, until we are reconciled with God and forgiven by Him.
This is why our lives often fall short of what God desires for us, because we don’t deal with our
sin - we rationalize it, we look around at others and decide we aren’t as "bad" as them and
accept society’s standard of right-ness instead of God’s, we decide it isn’t hurting anyone but us.
And then we go through life with no power, with very few pockets of joy, without knowing the
fullness and goodness of walking in a relationship with God. We miss out. We grieve God. We
settle, we get comfortable, we get blinded to the possibilities, and we end up merely existing
instead of living to the full, as God desires for us.
My friends, it is time for that to stop. It is time for us to "get off our face and deal with
the sin in our lives."
When it comes right down to it, the cause of all the bad things is sin. Not that you sinned
personally, and thus xyz happened, like every bad thing is a punishment for some particular sin
we committed. But our world is contaminated - our experience is difficult, we struggle through
life having to face all kinds of things we would rather not face. There is pain and grief and
rejection and tears and heartache. And it is all because of sin. There won’t be any of that in
heaven - that is our great hope - because there will not be any sin in heaven.
That is why this story is so instructive to us. The families of those 36 men suffered. The
entire nation of Israel suffered. All because of what? Sin. In this case, sin of one man. The
consequences were felt by all.
This isn’t a message you and I want to hear. We prefer to live in our fantasy world that
our sin is nobody else’s business, that it only effects us and even then it isn’t really harmful.
We’re like the man on a boat who cut a hole in the side of the ship underneath his bunk, and
when the other sailors confronted him he said it was none of their business since it was only
under his bunk. Believing that our sin only affects us is simply a lie we choose to believe
because we want to, because otherwise we might have to change, we might have to be authentic
with one another and share our struggles and our sins and walk together towards holiness.
I know that is a scary thought. It is scary for me, too.
Here is what I really want to say: the alternatives are so much better! If only we had a
clear taste of what life would be like without our sin, without our reliance on ourselves, without
this self-imposed isolation and loneliness and feeling like we have to do it all ourselves, we
would see the fear melt away and the risks suddenly pale in comparison to what we would gain.
That is the message I really want us to grasp - GOD’S WAY IS FAR BETTER!!!
You know what it is like to carry a secret. It is a heavy, heavy burden. We even have an
expression in our culture, "wow it feels good to get that off my chest...", which describes the
relief we feel when we let others in on our secret struggles and allow them to walk beside us to
overcome those.
My friends, let it go. Please let it go. Give up the areas of life that are sinful, give them
over to God, ask the Holy Spirit for freedom and power to resist, let a fellow Christian come
alongside and support and encourage and counsel and hold accountable.
I could stand here and go on and on about how awful sin is, how bad we are for doing it,
how much we deserve to be punished. But I would much rather talk about how much better it is
to do it God’s way - how much better it is to be free than to be in jail - how much sweeter it is to
walk through life with a clean conscience instead of one plagued by guilt - how much greater is
communion with God than self-sufficiency. It is a better way.
And so I beg you. Leave the sin behind. Confess it to a fellow Christian you can trust.
Leave it at the cross of Jesus. Here it is plain and simple: sin destroys; Jesus forgives. You and
I have a choice of which place to walk in. Choose life. I know that isn’t easy, I know you have
all kinds of reasons why you shouldn’t do that. But let me be completely blunt: none of those
reasons are valid. Yes it’s hard, but all the reasons not to give our sin over to God are excuses
that paralyze us from being obedient, (repeat?). And they rob us of the joy and life that God
wants for us. Yes it is hard, but it is better.
Achan’s Confession (sort of...):
Much of the rest of the chapter describes this long process of identifying who the guilty
party was. Why do you think God did it this way? I don’t know exactly, but I wonder if it
wasn’t God giving Achan every opportunity to come forward on his own, before being caught.
Can you imagine how Achan felt as the process was going on? As it got closer, and closer, and
closer... until finally he was caught. I wonder, and it is pure speculation, what might have
happened if he had stepped forward earlier? Would he have met with the same fate? I don’t
know in Achan’s case, but I do know about today. The sooner you and I face our guilt, the better
it is for us. When we lie, cover it up, pretend it isn’t that bad, let someone else take the fall, it
only makes it worse. When we hold on to our sin, refuse to give it up, refuse to let the Holy
Spirit come and cleanse us, we sink deeper and deeper into the sin and walk further and further
from God, and that makes it worse. I don’t think Achan confessed as much as he got caught, and
I think that made a difference.
Achan’s sin wasn’t the simple taking of things he shouldn’t have taken. When God first
speaks to Joshua back in vs. 11 He tells us what is at the heart of the sin: "Israel has violated my
covenant." In other words, God says that what has happened has destroyed the relationship
between God and His people. That is a very healthy way for us to look at our sin - it is a
rejection of our relationship with God. We tend to think it isn’t such a big deal - it is only a little
lie, it’s just a picture on the computer screen, it’s not gossip it’s information, well he/she hurt me
first so I have a right to get them back. But when we leam to see our sin for what it really is - a
rejection of God. a turning of our back on His love and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross - then
we start to see it through God’s eyes. Then we leam to lean on Him for help to overcome
temptation instead of giving in.
How Could this Happen to a Nice Guy from a Good Family?
In verse 21, Achan tells us how he got caught up in sin. It is worth reading: (vs. 21). The
process hasn’t changed in all these years - Achan saw, he wanted, and he took. The same thing
happens to us - we see, we desire, we sin. That is how temptation works, that is how we get
caught up in things that are wrong. First we become aware of the possibility, then we feel the
desire, and then we find ourselves doing the wrong thing.
Three men applied for a job driving a truck over a mountain route. The first guy said,
"I’m such a good driver, I can come within one foot of the edge without losing control." The
second guy said, "Oh yah, well I can come within six inches of the edge and not lose control."
The man doing the hiring looked at the third man, and asked him how good of a driver he was.
He replied, "Well, I’m a good enough driver to know not to try to drive close to the edge at all. I
stay as far away from the danger as possible."
We need to do the same thing. We have to make changes in our lives, to the places we go
or the people we are around or the movies we watch or the magazines we read or the websites we
visit. Don’t go to places where you are tempted - get away, whatever the cost. Don’t drive close
to the edge, stay as far away as possible.
The Consequence of Sin:
Joshua confirms the confession and retrieves the devoted things and lays them out before
the Lord. And then comes the part we don’t like - Achan is destroyed. He is killed because he
violated the terms of the covenant. He knew this was the consequence because Joshua had
forewarned them all in the last chapter. Let me read vss. 24, 25.
The text isn’t really clear about what exactly happened. It says Israel stoned him
(singular), and then it says they stoned and burned them (plural). Most Christian interpreters
agree that this means that all Achan’s family (except his wife, who is not mentioned) was stoned
with him. But I was intrigued to leam that Jewish scholars reach a different conclusion. They
appeal to Deut. 24:16 which clearly states that children are not to be put to death for their
father’s sin, and conclude that the plural "them" refers to the animals and tent and the other
things that had been contaminated. I find that an appealing interpretation, and at the very least it
reminds us that if Achan’s family did perish they did so as guilty accomplices - as people who
knew about the stolen stuff buried underneath their family tent and went along with it - and not
as innocent bystanders.
Our first reaction is that this is pretty extreme. Stoned and burned because of a little bit
of stolen property? But we forget that death is always the result of sin. Romans 6:23 tells us that
the wages of sin is death. For Achan it was immediate physical death. But even for us, every
time we sin something dies. Maybe it was a blessing of God, maybe it was an opportunity to
serve Him, at the very least what died was an opportunity to choose God instead of sin. And that
brings me back to my main point - GOD’S WAY IS BETTER - IT IS A WAY OF LIFE AND
NOT DEATH! When we sin, something dies. God wants life for us.
Yet There Is Hope:
The Israelites named the place "The Valley of Trouble." It served as a constant reminder
of the consequence of breaking the covenant of God.
But listen to this: Hosea 2:15 ’There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make
the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt."
That sums it up for me. God will make the "valley of trouble" into a "door of hope." He
will bring life out of death.
That is what He wants to do this morning. He wants us to come before Him in
confession and repentance and allow Him to cleanse us and make us new and keep us from
death. I want to ask you to do that, to invite Him to seek out your heart and reveal to you the
places of sin, and then bring them before Him to cleanse you and set you free. I’m going to do
that also, I’ve been doing it in preparation for today, and now I’m going to do it again with all of
you. Why? Because I want life. I want to walk in holiness. I want God to convict me of my sin
and purify me and make me righteous in His sight.
God’s way is better. Living a Holy life is better than living a life of sin.
