If you would open your Bibles,
Joshua chapter 7. Now keep in mind that the chapters
and verses in our Bible, while they are very handy, they are
not inspired. That is, you know, I say chapter
seven, but as Joshua was writing this, he didn't write chapter
seven. It's handy so that we can all find our place in the
Bible quickly. Sometimes where they make chapter
divisions seems reasonable. Sometimes it's just, well, actually it can sometimes
separate things that ought to be taken together. But it's important
to note that the story that's related to us in Joshua 7, it comes right on the heels of
the story in chapter 6, where they conquer Jericho. Now, I say conquer Jericho. The
Lord conquered Jericho. And they went in and took the
spoils. And one of the things that was told to them, that is
one of the commandments of God that was told to them as they
went in to Jericho or approached it, he says, when you overtake
it, he says, you kill everyone and everything. I know that sounds
brutal, but there's a spiritual lesson in that to wit that seen
as these are representative, that the Jews were representative
of believers in the land of promise, which means, you know, in Immanuel's
land, so to speak. Everything that's contrary to, looking at it in a spiritual
sense, everything that's contrary to the gospel must go. It must be gotten rid of. Now,
in geopolitical wars, it's brutal killing. And we may, in ourselves,
as we look at it from modern eyes, we say, we don't do that
kind of barbaric war. And I don't know that that's
altogether true. I've never been on the battlefield.
But some horrible things happen there. But the point that God
was making in commanding the Jews to kill everyone, men, women,
children, wipe them out, every living thing, eliminate it, was
that if those things are allowed to remain, they will pollute
the people of God, not racially, their ways, their false gods. Well, the Canaanites, remember,
among the Canaanites in the land of Canaan was the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah. And those weren't the only cities
carrying on like that. He said, these must be eliminated. And in truth, they never did
get rid of everybody in the land of Canaan. And it was those who
remained who were allowed to live. They became the troublemakers
in the land of Israel and caused problems for those Jews. But not only were they to destroy
every living thing, any valuable thing they found. gold, silver,
whatever. Remember, there's nobody to own
it anymore. And that was typical in warfare.
You conquered a city, and you wiped everybody out. You took
all the stuff. But the Lord said, all the valuable
things, he said, belong to me. You put them in the treasury
of, well, it wouldn't have been the temple, but the tabernacle.
Now when God says that something is his in a specific sense, we
know the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. So we understand
that. There's nothing that God doesn't
own. But there are things within the world and people within the
world that he calls especially his own. And When God does that, that thing
is considered holy. Now, we misunderstand, most people
anyway, misunderstand the concept of holiness because one aspect
of it is emphasized to the ignoring of nearly every other aspect.
If you say holy, most people think it concerns a elevated moral life. But that's not the primary meaning
of holy. The meaning of holy, and it's
always in a religious context, but it means something set apart for God. Now, when I say for
God, of course we think of our God, but that same word, same
words are used with reference to other gods. You know, I've
heard people say, well, he's a Hindu holy man. And what that
means is he is set apart to the pursuit of Hinduism. Well, God's chosen people are
called holy. Every believer, in fact, if we
want to look at it entirely from the perspective of God, every
one of God's elect, whether they have believed yet or not, they
are holy unto the Lord. It doesn't mean they're any better
than those who have not been chosen. It doesn't mean that
they're It doesn't mean that they are believers, though every
one of them will become one. They were holy to the Lord before
they existed. Because in his mind and in his
purpose, he had set them apart from all the rest of humanity
for his purpose. Now, we wouldn't be inclined
to go out in the world and say we're holy. And I don't recommend
that we do that because, again, the meaning of holy is misunderstood.
But all of God's elect are holy. And when God said that these
valuable items in the city of Jericho, actually the word he
used, in some places it's called accursed, In others, it simply
means something devoted to God. And of course, an accursed thing
is devoted to God in judgment. But he says, these things, they're
mine. Don't keep any of it. Every valuable thing you find
in that city goes into the treasury. And then we get to chapter seven. Jericho's been defeated. everyone
there has been put to the sword except Rahab and her household
and all the spoil has been gathered and put in to the treasury or
so the people think. Now rather than read this entire
chapter because we're going to kind of do a survey of the entire
chapter and then in the coming weeks look at a few particulars
but let me just tell you the story you're probably aware of
it. It begins with the words, but
the Israelites acted unfaithfully in regard to the devoted things. Achan, son of Carmi, son of Zimri,
the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah, took some of them.
So the Lord's anger burned against Israel. This fellow Akin, we don't know
anything about him other than what we find in this chapter. But he, let's not be quick to
condemning, he did what every one of us would be tempted to
do in his position. He's been among the fighting
men and the walls fell, and he went in with his sword, and he
put to the sword those he was supposed to, and he's doing like
everybody else, looking through all the spoil, and he sees some
gold, and he sees a really nice robe, and he sees some silver. Now probably, he didn't keep
all of it that he saw or found, but he kept some of it. And when he got back to his place,
He buried it. Now, that lets us know already
Achan knew he wasn't supposed to do it. You don't hide what
you think is perfectly legitimate. But I imagine his thought was,
well, you know, I'm given 90% of what I found to the Lord's
treasury. So, you know, that ought to do. And I'll keep a
little for me. when the Israelites went to the
next city, which was a small city compared to Jericho. So much so, they only sent 3,000
men. But when they got there, they
got routed. They went there full of confidence. If we can do Jericho, this is
gonna be a piece of cake. And if the Lord was faithful
to tear down the walls of Jericho for us, no doubt this little
city, Ai, going to be easy. But the men of Ai defeated them. And in the process, 36 men died. And Joshua went before the Lord. I mean, you can imagine now,
they were, you know, and I don't know how much time transpired
between Jericho and AI, but I'm sure they were still flush with
the victory at Jericho, you know, and thinking everything's good,
all right, this whole business is taking a promised land, it's
going to be an easy thing. We just march from city to city,
if there's walls there, they'll fall down and we'll go in and
wipe out the people and all the stuff, you know, and gather the
stuff and the treasure and we'll take possession and it's going
to be easy. And the second battle, they lose. And when they go back to camp,
Joshua is just, he's bewildered. And so he along with some of the
elders, did what was typical in times of great distress. He
went before the Lord and he tore his garments. Now, I know what
that symbolizes. I don't know why it symbolizes
that, but it symbolizes great grief. Whenever something horrible
happened, people would rend their garments. Now, in those days, That didn't mean that they were
exposed altogether. Men wore kind of like a tunic
thing under their outer garment. But nonetheless, it was not the
way they would publicly walk around. But in his distress,
Joshua tore his garments and he prayed, what's happening,
God? You've caused us, you've made us to lose. How is this
going to look? How are we going to answer the people of this
land? when they discover that a small
city has put us to rout. And the Lord says to Joshua,
there's a reason this happened. And in verse 11, God said to
Joshua, Israel has sinned. They have violated my covenant,
which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted
things. They have stolen. They have lied. They have put them with their
own possessions. That is why the Israelites cannot
stand against their enemies. And so he told Joshua to go out
and consecrate the people and then bring them tribe by tribe,
then family by, well, you know, there would be tribes and then
groups within the tribes and then individual households, but
they were to cast lots. And if the lot fell on a particular
tribe, everyone could go. Then they were to cast lots among
the various heads of that tribe. And if the lot fell on one, well,
all the others could go home. And they kept whittling it down
until finally the lot fell on Achen. And I can imagine that Achen
who thought he had carefully hidden what he had done, as the
Lord's will revealed in the casting of lots got narrower and narrower. And then it's down to his father's
household, and there he stands with his brothers, and he's thinking,
uh-oh. And they cast the lot, and it
falls on Aitken. and he is found out. And Joshua
says to him, give glory to God, what did you do? And Achan did
confess what he had done, that he'd sinned against the Lord,
that it was wrong. And this is a shocking thing
to think about. We tend to think, well, if somebody
confesses, you just let it go. Nothing happened. He confessed
his sin, he openly admitted what he did, and under God's instruction,
they took him and his entire family outside the camp, and
gathered all their belongings, his tent and everything. They
stoned all of his family to death, and then burned everything they
had and their bodies to dust. utterly wiped them out. Now that's brutal. Every bit
as brutal as what they did to Jericho. Because with Jericho,
they put everyone in it to death. Now they put together the useful
spoils for use, but they burned the city. And in the end, It
looks like Achan suffered the same fate as did Jericho. Now as we look at this general
overview, and in the weeks to come, take notice of some particulars,
there are a few things that we have to keep in mind in order
to understand the significance of this story. First of all,
this story is about us. It's about us, the elect, the
redeemed, the called, the believing. It's about us. We must not view
Achan as some unholy, vile sinner or spiritual anomaly who is lost. He is part of the family of God,
certainly as, you know, when you look at him as a member of
the Old Covenant and he's crossed the Jordan, which pictures us
passing from death unto life by Christ, and so he is to be
taken, if you want to give his spiritual significance, he is
a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a story to tell the church or to teach
the church that they must cast all the unbelievers out of their
membership. That's not what it's about. This
is about how God deals with sin among His people. Secondly, we
must not view this as sin in a generic sense. Why? Well, if he was just talking
about sin, any old sin, then all of us would be stoned to
death and burned to dust. There is a specific sin involved
here, which if left undealt with, will loot the entire congregation. And it's something that the church
must deal with if it finds it. Now, we wouldn't immediately
deal with it in terms of, like, casting someone out or something
like that. But here's the sobering point is, when believers are
found in such circumstances as Achan was found, God does something
about it. Now as I was preparing for this, it was sobering to think of these
things because we are believers in God's free and sovereign grace
and we believe that by the grace of God we shall receive all the
blessings of God without reference to how we lived. But we make a mistake if we think
that our conduct in this life does not affect this life. When we enter the presence of
God, either by death or by the return
of the Lord, we will appear before Him faultless and full of joy. and how we lived our lives will
have no effect on whether we are faultless and full of joy
in His presence. But our conduct in this life
in particular, and we'll get to exactly what Achan's sin represented,
but in particular, the sin of taking to oneself that which
God has called his own. Taking that. God would not, and
in the way people speak of, he would not and could not leave
that unaddressed. Paul speaks of the book of Galatians,
of the legalism that had been allowed into the church. And
he made this statement, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. And we don't use the word leaven
much anymore, but it was the yeast that made dough rise, made
bread rise. And while it's a good idea, I
suppose, when you're cooking dough or making dough that you
get the the yeast spread throughout the dough, but whether or not
you do, it will find its way throughout the dough. And there
are certain attitudes and actions which, if they are left unaddressed
within the church, it begins to infect the entire church. It will make its way. But this
is not sin in the generic sense, and how do we know that? We are
all guilty of it. Each one of us, if our hearts
and in particular our private actions, if they were known to
all, it would probably be surprising to everybody. And I imagine if you are truly
a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, your conduct surprises
you. We are, as Brother Tim James
said, we are a veritable warehouse of unbelief and sin. It's part
of, well then the reason for that is, everything that we were
before God saved us, we still are. Nothing's been taken away,
something's been added. The new birth does not change
our old birth, our natural birth. We are still the same person
in every respect as we were before, except in spiritual things. Our
spirit's been made alive unto God. We know him, we know the
truth, and yet those two natures are constantly at battle. There's
never any time in which the spiritual nature utterly overcomes the
fleshly nature, or the fleshly nature utterly overcomes the
spiritual nature. So we can't be talking about
the simple, it almost sounds awful to use that word, but the
common transgressions that we are guilty of, and the sin that
taints everything we do. When we gather for worship like
this, You know, this is the right thing
to do. This is what we should do, isn't
it? We're supposed to gather for worship like this. We're
doing the right thing. But what we are doing, even as we are
doing it, is so shot full of sin because we can't just bring
our spirits here. We're trying to worship God from
the Spirit, but like Paul says, O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from this body of death? I read somewhere that
that was possibly a reference to a form of punishment that
they would give to those, to murderers and to those who killed,
and take the corpse of the one that they killed and tie it to
them arm for arm, leg for leg, and they would walk around carrying
that rotting corpse with them. And that's what Paul's saying.
It certainly makes sense because this is probably how you feel.
Everywhere you go, that dead, rotting carcass of flesh goes
with you. And even if from the Spirit you
are worshiping with the sweet-smelling savor of Christ, there is a putrefying
smell of death with it. So we're not talking about just
the natural common sins. Achen did was a crass, brazen,
high-handed act of rebellion against the God who had chosen him, redeemed him, and
called him. Now, it might look like this was God
punishing Achen. It was not. How do we know? Well, God does not punish His
people. He chastens them and He disciplines
them. You say, what's the difference?
Well, it's in the words themselves. Punishment begins with the word,
you know, P-U-N, punitive. You know what punitive is? That
means you pay for what you did. When the Lord deals in chastening
and discipline with His people, even if it includes that They
die. It's not a punishment. They are
not paying the price due unto their sin. Why? That was already
handled at Calvary by the Lord Jesus Christ. There is never
wrath from God. See, punitive things, punitive
judgment is an expression of wrath. It's an expression of
justice. It is the outcome of condemnation.
And Paul's rather clear, there is no condemnation to them who
are in Christ. So when God deals with His people because of their
sin, if He brings upon them hardship of any kind, up to and including
the death, their removal from this world, He is not expressing
wrath. The other two words, chastisement
and discipline. Chastening, the purpose of chastening
is to make us chaste or pure, is to bring us back, is to purify our thoughts toward
Him. Discipline, to make us a disciple. In fact, discipline is not so
much a reactive thing at all, that is, it's not so much God
saying, well, you did this, so I'm gonna have to do this for
your sake. When a guy joins the military,
they send him to boot camp. Why? Because they're mad at him?
Because he did something wrong? No. It's to prepare him for what
lies ahead. Because when he goes to boot
camp, he's not ready for what lies ahead. And the discipline
of the child of God is basically to wean him from his natural
love of the world. It is to focus him. It is to
strengthen him on the inner man. And sometimes it's very difficult
to go through. But it's not because the believer did something wrong.
It's to make him able to handle what lies ahead for him. Why did God deal with Achan as
he did? Well, first, it was designed
to restore God's honor, which had been besmirched by what Achan
did. What Achan did was directly against
God. It was not against the Jews.
It was against God. And in so doing, he had challenged
the God of Israel. And God is not some grandfatherly
figure that chuckles at the rebellious acts of his grandchildren as
though it's not significant. He must show himself holy, high,
honorable, fearful among his people. And there was an act of God's
grace in what was done to Aitkin. God prevented Achan from ever
doing that again. Now, Achan, he confessed what
he did. He confessed that it was a sin
against the Lord. And I have no reason to doubt that his repentance
over that matter was genuine. But God knew Achan. And he knew
probably, now I'm, I'll admit I'm speculating here, but I'm
just trying, looking at it in the light of all the other stories
we read in the scriptures and in the light of our own experience.
He knew that in the next city or the one after that, Achan's
heart, his fleshly aspect would overcome him again. And he'd
do it again. He'd dishonor God. God saw to
it, it never happened again. And I want you to think of this. Someday, now we sin, we sin a
lot. We sin grievously. Someday, God's gonna say to it,
we never do that again. See, that's why death is not
a bad thing for the child of God. Death is not the gateway
to eternal bondage. Death is the gateway to everlasting
freedom. And freedom from that which is
the worst sort of bondage there is, the bondage to sin. And when it happens, it may not
be for any specific thing we did. It is the natural consequence
of sin in this world. We're all headed to a grave.
But while what happened to Akin seems brutal, merciless, it was
the best thing God could do for Akin. And he said, why the rest
of the family? They didn't do it. Well, we don't
know that. We don't know who all was in there. Quite possible
everyone in the family, you know, they were all grown and they
all knew about what went on and they were all kind of involved
in keeping it hidden. Of course, the spiritual truth
is they got, you know, the Lord said this thing is bad enough. Every remnant of it has got to
be destroyed. Every remembrance of it. There's
nothing of Achan left. Nothing that can be connected
to him is left when the Lord is done. Now, thinking again
of us as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, of those who are
every bit as capable of doing the kind of thing that Akin did,
is it not blessed to know that in time, God will eliminate everything
connected to us as natural people in this world? There will be
no memory of it, nothing. In the New Covenant, part of
its character is this, there's sins and iniquities I will remember
no more. It doesn't mean that God forgets
something, because God can't forget. The word also indicates,
you could paraphrase it, I'll never bring it up again. The old song, Simon and Garfunkel
sang it, but I guess it's an old English folk song. Are you going to Scarborough
Fair? And one of the lines is, remember
me to one who lives there. And that's the old way of the
use of remember. In other words, remind that person
of me. And God says, I'll never remind
you of your sin. It'll never be brought up again.
The you that you are now, and I hope you got a chance to listen
to Eric's message last week. It was this point, Eric, I think
fits well. The you that you are now will
be destroyed, and it'll never be brought up again. The only
you that will survive is the you that God created. creates anew in the new birth. All right.