Joshua chapter seven, verse 19. And Joshua said unto Achan, my
son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and
make confession unto him, and tell me now what thou hast done. Hide it not from me. Last study,
we considered the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the severe consequence
that comes with it. There's a consequence for sin.
There's no greater way, I suppose, for a man or a woman's sin to
be exposed than when they attempt to rob God of the glory that
belongs specifically and exclusively to Him. That's exactly what free
will works of man does. It attempts to rob God of the
glory of His salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's
just no other way to say that. Religion today takes that which
belongs to God, that which belongs to Him alone,
and that being His glory, And they take it for themselves by
saying that they themselves do something to merit or to, that God would be mindful of
them in any way. God had commanded that all the
silver, all the gold, and all the brass and the iron be taken
from the spools of Jericho to be consecrated. That word simply
means dedicated, set aside, allocated, and reserved. And it was to be
brought into the treasury of the Lord. It belonged to the
Lord. Well, He was the one that gave
it to Jericho. And He said, Take the spoils of Jericho, all the
gold and the silver and the brass and the iron, it's to be brought
into the treasury of the Lord, it's mine. It all belonged to
God, everything does. It all belongs to God by way
of creation. God gets the glory for everything. He gets all the glory for every
victory against the enemies of his people, as we read a moment
ago in Exodus 15. That's what Moses and them were
saying. You're glorious in holiness. You get all the glory. God defeated
Pharaoh and his army, and it's God defeated Jericho. It's God who fights for us, and
it's always victorious. And all things belong to God,
especially the glory of saving sinners. The earth is the Lord,
and the fullness thereof. The world and they that dwell
therein, it all belongs to Him. To take what rightly belongs
to God is to believe that you have a right to it. And the only thing that any of
us have a right to is judgment, wrath, and eternal condemnation. And I don't want what I deserve. I want mercy and grace and forgiveness. So before I move on to the teaching
of our text tonight, I want to spend just a little time more
discussing the sin that still battles in our flesh against
the spirit within us. Paul said, there's a war going
on in my members. And Paul was a believer and he
was speaking to believers. This is not talking about men
and women who don't know God, have no interest in the things
of God, or interest in the things of Christ our Savior. I'm talking
about men and women who profess to know God. We considered last time that
none of us truly know the hearts of others. I don't know what
was in Akin's heart any more than I know what's in your heart,
or you know what's in mine. God, through the prophet Jeremiah,
tells us something about the heart that's within all of us.
He said the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked, and who can know it? Only the Lord can know our hearts.
And that's why it says that the Lord searches the heart and the
Lord tries the reins and gives every man according to his ways
and the fruit of his own doings. And we can fool one another and
we can even fool ourselves, but we can't fool God. And there is great consequence
for sin. And if we're honest with ourselves,
we ourselves have been guilty of the same covetousness of Achan. Even as believers, we're guilty
of many, many sins. So do we lose our salvation every
time we sin? Do we backslide, slide back,
and then backslide again? That's how some people preach.
Did not Christ pay for all our sin? Past, present, and future. Will God hold us accountable
for sin that Christ has put away? And again, many will say that
such teaching promotes sin, even in the believer, but I say not
so, not so. The true child of God, like Job,
and like Isaiah, and like David, and the Apostle Paul, and all
of God's children, for that matter, will every time take sides with
God against themselves, and they'll hate and they'll abhor their
sin within. There's nobody that hates my
sin worse than I do, and I'm sure it's the same with you.
And God's people will, with great sorrow, repent, knowing that
they find themselves in jeopardy of suffering great loss like
Achan did. But not only that, but in disappointing
the Lord who loved them and gave Himself for them. I never wanted
to displease my parents, and it broke my heart when I did,
and I often did. But I a thousand times more don't
want to, my God. and my Savior. But there is great
consequence to our sin, and it will not give a believer a license
to sin. It'll make them strive, and it'll
make them endeavor to please their great God and Savior who
loved them, who chose them and gave Himself for them. The love,
the honor, and desire to please Christ who put away the very
sin that they're guilty of is what they desire most of all.
Only God knows the heart of the professing believer, but I'll
confess to you that there's a whole lot of bacon in me. Yet that is what I trust Christ
the most for, putting away my sin, even the sin that I am right
now guilty of. And isn't that such a comfort?
Isn't that a place to find rest? As Bro. Montgomery used to say,
now that's a bed I can stretch out on and that's a cover that
I can cover myself up in. I know that I'm obligated to
observe the moral law of God. When you teach these kind of
things, people call you antinomian. The dictionary describes an antinomian
as one who believes that they're excused from the obligation of
observing the moral law because of God's grace. But the true
child of God will not continue in sin that grace may abound. No, sir. And as I said, I know
I'm obligated to keep the moral law, but I also know that I can't
keep it perfectly. And that's what God requires.
And I know most assuredly that Christ kept it perfectly for
me. And that's what I put my trust
in. And that's why I put my trust
in Him. I put my trust in Christ doing
for me, and I say this all the time and it's so true, I trust
in Christ doing for me what I cannot and what I will not do for myself. For I know that in me that is
in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. For to will, to will to
do what's good is present with me, but how to perform that which
is good I find not. For the good that I would, I
do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now, if I do
that, I would not, it's no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth
in me. And I find in a law that when
I would do good, evil is present with me, for I delight in the
law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind and bringing me in captivity
to the law of sin, which is in my members. Oh, wretched man,
that I am. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ,
our Lord. So with the mind, I myself serve
the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin. Now those
were Paul's words in Romans chapter seven. Let me ask you, was Paul
a saved man when he wrote those words? It might not seem as though he
was, but he was. And he knew the one who could,
and the one who would, and the one who did deliver him from
his sin. All of it. All of it. Can't reiterate that enough.
All our sin, past, present, and the sin we haven't even committed
yet. None for whom Christ shed his blood will die in their sin. And we are very good, at least
we think we are, of judging those who we believe know God and those
we don't, but we're not. And let me tell you right now,
I'm speaking to me. And I think I'm beginning to
understand what John Newton meant when he said, if I ever reach
heaven, I expect to find three wonders there. First, to meet
some I would not have expected to be there. And secondly, to
miss some that I would have expected to be there. And thirdly, the
greatest wonder of all is that to find myself there. Is that
not the case with you? Did you notice how Joshua addressed
Achan in verse 19? He didn't address him as a sinner,
though that's what he was. And he didn't address him as
a disobedient man, even though he was just that. And he didn't
address Achan as a wretched, covetous, unfaithful man, though
it's obviously who and what Achan was. And in and of myself, so
am I. But Joshua, a type of the Lord
Jesus Christ, addressed Achan as my son. That's what God calls His people,
sons and daughters. That's what Paul said in 2 Corinthians
6, verse 17. The Holy Spirit through the apostle
Paul said, come out from among them and be ye separate. But
even when we fail, friends, in Christ, God says, I will be a
father unto you and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith
the Lord God Almighty. Joshua told Achan, he said, my
son, give glory to God. Make a confession unto him, unto
God. As to what you've done, Joshua said, don't hide it from
me, for you're not hiding it from the Lord. All things are
naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
And that's exactly what Achan did. He confessed his sin and
his transgressions, though he suffered great consequences and
loss. And you know, my mind immediately
races to the words of the beloved John who wrote, if we confess
our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. He's faithful and just to do
so. and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And if we say
that we've not sinned, we make him, we make God a liar and his
word is not in us. I'm so thankful that David reminds
us of the same thing. He said, for God knoweth our
frame, he remembereth that we are dust. And He has mercy on
us in Christ, having punished our sin and our iniquity and
all our transgressions in Him. What God has consecrated, what
God has made holy is for His glory, and His glory is tied
up 100% in the salvation of His elect by the blood and the death
and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ
we're dead to sin, but there's still an old man within, old
nature, whatever you want to call it. It's there. I hate it. Wish it wasn't. And it wars within the members
of a child of God. So let's don't be quick to judge
those who fall into sin, and I'm again talking to myself.
Let's never be quick to claim the glory belongs to God alone
for ourselves either. That was Achan's sin. It's nothing
short of an attempt to diminish the value of God's glory in the
person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that
God declares to be holy and consecrated in this world is linked with
Christ and what he's accomplished for his people. In Exodus and
Leviticus, God set aside, God consecrated, that's what the
word means, that no work be done on the Sabbath. And what's that
talking about? Well, that's referring to the
rest that Christ has accomplished for His people. See, it goes
back to Him. No work for us to do. Our work's
finished. Christ finished that righteous
work, that holy work that God accepts. We can't provide it. He provided it for us. In Exodus,
God set the holy priesthood in their holy garments. He consecrated
them, set them apart, which are the garments of salvation, that
perfect and holy robe of righteousness provided to His people by the
Lord Jesus Christ, who is our great and holy high priest. God is first and foremost holy. And God speaks in of atonement
that is most holy unto the Lord, referring to that propitiatory
work of the Lord Jesus Christ, wherein God's justice and God's
wrath were satisfied and causes Him no longer to be angry with
the sinner. God no longer angry with you
if you're in Christ. All His wrath and judgment has
been exhausted on His Son. In the New Testament, God declares
that the elect were chosen, set apart to be holy. That's only
accomplished in and by the holy and perfect work and righteousness
that Christ did for His people. No other way, no other way can
we provide what God requires. God speaks of His holy hill in
Zion. That's talking about His church.
There are holy people. And He's placed His Son as the
head. God's holy temple is the church,
the temple made without hands in which God dwells. In Psalms
and in the book of Acts, God speaks of His Holy One. That's
referring to Christ. He is the Holy One. And we are
holy in Him. He says, Be ye holy as I am holy. And in Christ we are. God speaks
of His holy promise, referring to His covenant of promise. And in this covenant, wherein
every one of His elect, every one of His people are made heirs
of God and join heirs with Christ. God calls all His works holy.
He calls all His works righteous. Why? Because He's holy. And He's the holy one who did
them all. The marriage bed is holy and
undefiled. A physical love between a husband
and a wife is holy because it pictures what marriage truly
is. And what is that? It's a picture of the unity and
the oneness of the relationship between Christ and His church.
Paul said it's a great mystery. But not so much a mystery when
you look at Christ and His church. All these things carry the same
message. God is holy. God is holy. And the whole of
salvation and the glory of it is the Lord's. And He will not
share it with another. And why would we want to share
it? Achan stole and hid in his tent
that which God decreed holy and consecrated. set aside for himself,
and that being the silver, the gold, the brass, and the iron.
And in the Scriptures, silver refers to the blood and the perpetuary
sacrifice of Christ. Gold often refers to the royalty
of the Lord Jesus and the royalty of the priesthood of the believers. And Peter also refers to the
trying of our faith as being much more precious than gold.
These things are symbolic. And they all go back to Him,
back to the Lord Jesus Christ. Brass. We spoke about this in
our study of numbers when Moses made the serpent of brass. Brass
refers to judgment and the ability to withstand the fiery wrath
of God. And that's why those who looked
upon that fiery serpent of brass lived. picturing how the wrath
and judgment and justice of God fell on Christ, our substitute,
and not on us. Arm. I-R-O-N. It's hard for a
Kentuckian to say that. Arm. Arm refers to solidity and hardness
of God's strict and holy justice as well as the hardness of sin
and enmity within man by nature. And all of these things, as I
said, point and refer to the work of Christ in and for His
people. In Isaiah chapter 60, I won't
turn you there, verse 17, listen to this verse. The prophet Isaiah,
writing of the salvation of God's elect people, said this. He said, for brass, I will bring
gold. And for iron, I will bring silver. And for wood, brass. And for
stones, iron. And you know, you just read that
in passing, and you think, what in the world is he talking about?
Well, I'm going to tell you. In other words, for brass, for
judgment, that's what he's speaking of. He said, I'm going to bring
gold. I'm going to bring Christ, the royal king of kings. In place of judgment, I'm giving
you Christ. Isn't that what substitution
is? For arm, the hardness of your sin, the enmity against
me, I'm gonna bring silver, the precious blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And for wood, I'll bring brass,
the wood and hay and stubble that's within us all that is
easily burned up. And he said, I'm gonna send brass
that can withstand my fiery wrath. And for stones, the hardness
of men's hearts, I'll send iron to satisfy my own heart and strict
justice." That's what Christ has done for
us. Christ is our silver, He's our
gold, He's our brass, and He's our iron. And He's the only one
and the only way that God's judgment and justice and wrath against
us and our sin can be appeased and satisfied. No other way. A sinner may say, I want to satisfy
God's justice. You can't, but Christ did. You
can put your trust in him. Now look at verse 20. And Achan
answered Joshua and said, indeed, I have sinned against the Lord
God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. Now, according to
Achan's confession here, he understood something of the character and
the nature of sin. He understood that sin, all sin,
is against God. You know, somebody can do us
wrong or mistreat us or do something unjustly and we say that so-and-so
sinned against me. No, their sin was against God. Achan said, I've sinned against
the Lord God of Israel, the true God, the only God. The true and
living God. All sins against God. That's
what David said. He said, against thee and thee
only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. It's against
God alone that we do evil. And in verse 19, Joshua said,
give glory to the Lord. How does confession of sin give
glory to God? You ever thought about that?
Well, first it clears God to deal with the sinner in a manner
that's just and right in His sight. And secondly, it bows
to God in the very principle that the judge of all the earth
shall do right, even if it means death for the offender. Thirdly, it glorifies God in
the fact that grace and mercy are His to withhold or to give.
That's what David said. He said, you're right, you're
justified when you speak against me. Sin is what I am. You're right if you judge me
and condemn me. But that's what mercy and grace
is. To confess our sin is to glorify
God in the thing which He declares to be His glory. And Achan saw,
And Achan coveted, and Achan took, and Achan hid that which
belonged only to God. And that's exactly what Eve did. And that's the deception of sin. And that's what is prevalent
in religion today. Salvation had been stolen from
God. It's been hid in the tents of
men. All that Christ has accomplished, men have taken it for themselves. Why is it that men will not have
salvation if it's completely in God's hands? I don't understand
that at all. Why is it that men will not have
this salvation that is completely of the Lord? If we can't do something to merit
salvation, we can certainly do something to lose it. But men
have taken the finished work of Christ and declared it to
be unfinished. Now you think about that. They
say that you have to do something to make it effectual, that you
have to add your work and your will to it. That's saying that
Christ's work is unfinished. Men have taken the gold of Christ's
royalty and declared themselves to be kings of their own domain
and destiny. Men have taken the gold of faith,
which is the gift of God, and made it to be an act of their
own free will. Men have stolen the silver of
Christ's precious blood and made salvation dependent upon a decision
that they've made or a work that they've done. And they've stolen the brass
of God's judgment and taken it away based on the notion of their
own presumed merit. They've taken away the brass
of judgment accomplished on Calvary by the Lord Jesus Christ and
have by their own work of righteousness made it so that they've been
forgiven of all their sin. And they're robbing God of His
glory. Men have taken the iron of the
solid union the believer has with Christ and made the accomplishment
of Christ to be conditioned on the iron of their own free will. And God won't have it. Notice close to Achan's confession
in verse 21. Great value found in what he
confesses here, if God be pleased to show it to us. Verse 21, he
says, when I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment and
200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of 50 shekels weight,
then I coveted them and I took them. And behold, they are hid
in the earth in the midst of my tent and the silver under
it. Here we see that Achan didn't
steal the brass and the iron. How is that significant? Well,
the significance is in their value to man. Though the brass
and the iron was holy unto God, it was of little value to Achan
or any other man, any other sinner, any other woman. It was certainly
secondary to the silver and the gold. Men don't consider God's
judgment and oneness with Christ of great importance because they
believe that God's love and Christ's death are universal to all. When something is supposedly
born and given to everyone, the whole world, it loses its value
to the majority. If it's free to all, then what's
it worth? That's how men think. Therefore,
the value of the love of God and the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ are secondary to their own supposed royal standing. If God loves everyone and Christ's
death paid the sin debt of the whole world, then God's love
and Christ's death are valuable to no one. And this is, I think, also seen
in the placement of the silver. It was hidden in the dirt. under
the gold that was wrapped in that beautiful Babylonian garment. The silver, as I said, representing
Christ's precious blood cast in the dirt. It's of no value
and it's viewed to be common as dust. How else can it be viewed
if it's universal? To make the blood of Christ and
the love of God universal for everyone makes it anything but
precious. the garment of our own self-righteousness,
the garment of Babylon, the Blabilonius garment, and wraps the stolen
royalty and faith given to us in and by and through Christ.
Self-righteousness, oh, it's an ugly thing. The Babylonian garment was marked
for destruction like everything else in Jericho except for those
things that God had declared holy. And yet it's the first
thing mentioned that caught the eye of Achan. And it's the same
for all of us by nature. And what a picture this is of
the reality that men will steal that which belongs to God and
they'll cover it with their own righteousness which is fitted
for destruction. But the holiness of God does
not catch the eyes of fallen men and women because it cannot
be seen. Why can't it be seen? Well, it's
either hidden in the dirt of humanity or it's wrapped in the
Babylonian garment of human merit. That's why. And what a warning
this is to the lost, dying and religious world. And what a warning
it is also to the child of God. Oh, may we be quick to give God
all the glory. If we don't, there's a great
consequence. A great consequence awaits. It'll be burned up even if we
ourselves are saved. That's what happened to A.T. The child of God has been taught
to cry, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us. We don't want the
glory that belongs to Christ alone, we just bask in the glory
of it. Under thy name give glory, for
thy mercy and for thy truth's sake. It's not our decision,
it's not our righteousness, it's all Christ. Christ is all in
all, that's what that means. Help us, O God of our salvation,
for the glory of Thy name, Joshua, Jesus, not our name, and deliver
us and purge away our sins for Your name's sake, for Your honor,
for Your glory. It's all Yours. It belongs to
You. Paul said, to the praise of the
glory of His grace. Not our works. Doesn't say anything
about our works. It says our works is filthy rags. To the praise of the glory of
His grace, for by grace are you saved, and that's not of yourself.
It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should bow. To the
praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted. How am I accepted?
He made me accepted. How did He make me accepted?
In the beloved, in the Lord Jesus Christ. And thou art worthy, O Lord,
to receive glory and honor and power, for thou, not us, has
created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. God's holy. God gets all the
glory. And may God make it so for his
glory and for our good and for Christ's sake.