All right, Joshua chapter seven,
let's pray. Heavenly Father, bless our gathering
here. Make it into your glory and to our benefit. In Christ's
name we pray it, amen. Okay, beginning, just a minute. Oh, I'm in the wrong chapter,
that's why I can't find it. beginning of verse seven, verse
seven of Joshua chapter seven. And Joshua said, ah, sovereign
Lord, why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan
to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? If only we had been content to
stay on the other side of the Jordan. Oh Lord, what can I say
now that Israel has been routed by its enemies? The Canaanites
and the other people of the country will hear about this and they
will surround us and wipe out our name from the earth. What
then will you do for your own great name? Now remember, this
is the story of the defeat of the Jews at the hands of a small
town called Ai. And this defeat had come about
because of the sin of Achan. He had taken for himself some
of those things which God had reserved specifically for himself. He had told them that when they
went into Jericho, they were to destroy the city, put to the
sword every human being and every living thing, and then all of
the valuable materials that they found, which would normally be
called the spoils of war, they were to give into the treasury
of the Lord. But Achan saw some gold and some
silver and a pretty robe from Babylon, and he couldn't resist,
and he took it. And over the past few weeks,
we've been looking at the result of those sins. We've been noticing
that sin is never without consequence. Now we know that through the
blood of Jesus Christ, all our sins are gone. and shall never
be brought up again in the court of God with regard to eternal
things. But in our life, sin, and in
particular what the Bible refers to as presumptuous sin, sin done
when you know full and well what you're doing is wrong, it is
full of purpose and design, It is, in a sense, if we wanted
to compare it to our children when we were raising them, when
you told them something to do and they defiantly said no. That kind of sin God most certainly
deals with one way or another. And there's only one way that
sin is ever properly dealt with, and that is death. Now, in some
cases, even among believers, this results in the death of
their bodies. They are not lost. They go to
be with Christ. But God puts an end to the life
that they have here. Now, we might think, well, didn't
Paul say, I prefer to depart and be with Christ? So why would
it be considered a punishment for the Lord to end the life
of a believer here on earth? I am certain that the believer
himself, closing his eyes to this world and opening it in
the next, feels no sense of punishment, simply because he's in the presence
of the Lord. Nonetheless, looking at it in
terms of a warning, and this is one of those things we just
have to accept it even though we might not be able to fully
rationalize all of it. But the scriptures speak of blessing
people with a long life. And Paul, even when he said,
I desire to depart and be with Christ, he went on to say, but
I have fruitful labor here. Who would want to be forced to leave the field
of battle before one's term of service was over. One of the
things that, in watching war movies, of course, generally
speaking, they make war movies about the heroes of war, they
don't make movies out of the cowards, but one of the things
that is interesting when you read history or watch movies
or whatever, in most wars, at least in just wars, the men were
anxious to go to war, they signed up In some wars, they had to rely
on a draft because the war was so unpopular. But in the Civil
War, as soon as war was declared, men on both sides flocked to
enlistment centers. And then, if for one reason or
another, someone was going to be given leave to go home and
no longer have to go to war, they resisted it. They felt as
though they were not fulfilling their responsibilities. They
felt they would be perceived as cowardly. Recently, I watched
a movie called, was it Heartbreak Ridge? I think it was called,
but it was about a conscientious objector in World War II. He would not pick up a gun. but
he insisted that he be allowed to serve as a medic. He said,
I'm not afraid to face the enemy. I want to. I want to serve my
country. And he is actually the only one
to ever receive the Congressional Medal of Honor without shooting
a gun. because of the heroic things
he did. But at one point, he had been wounded badly enough,
he could have gone back home. You know, you get wounded badly,
okay. You've done your duty. He wouldn't take it. Now, in
the same sense, as much as we may desire to depart
and be with Christ, we also don't want to leave this field of battle.
until the Lord says, or we could say like Paul did, I have finished
my course. I'm done. Secondly, if the Lord
is pleased to take the life of one of his own, and normally
you'd notice this simply because it was earlier in life than would
be expected, you know, just suddenly and no one saw it coming kind
of thing. It serves as a warning to those
left behind. I can't remember exactly when
this was. I can't remember while I was still at 13th Street or
not long afterward, but there was a man in the church who did
what, yes, a believer could do it, and that is he began an affair
and carried on this affair for some time. Now, it wasn't noised
about. I knew nothing about it until
much later, but I would assume that he was in his 40s or 50s.
Well, you know, West Virginia and Kentucky, you've got mountains,
and when they make highways, they dig, in order to reduce
some of the up and down, they dig these big notches in mountains
to put the highway through. And then they put up a sign,
watch out for falling rock. This guy's driving along. In
all my life, I'd never heard of anybody even being hurt by
falling rock. I had seen some falling rock,
but no one was there when it fell. He's driving his fancy
sports car. I'm assuming he was having midlife
crisis type things, you know, and out there, smash. Just flattened
him and his car. Now that's kind of a... All things are providential,
but you know what I mean. I mean, that's kind of like God
pointing his finger right down out of the sky. You don't do
that. Was this man lost? Well, not because of that particular
sin. Otherwise, David's a lost man.
For he did even worse than what this particular fellow did. Nonetheless,
God deals with it and not only does it take from the midst of
believers someone who could prove troublesome and thus spare the
church some agony, it also serves as a warning to all of us. Be
careful. What you do will not alter your
eternity, but eternity is not all there is. There is the here
and now, and it has significance. So, here I want to look at, though,
the way sin should be dealt with. That is, how we, as believers, should come to God with regard
And in this case, Joshua went there, and what was on his mind
was their disastrous defeat at the hands of AI. Now, what he
first did, and you know what? I just realized that clock back
there is not working. Because so far, no time has passed
since I got started. And I have no way of knowing
what time it is. In 915, just get up and start milling around
and I'll know it's time to quit. I mean 1015. At any rate, Joshua
goes to the Lord and In fact, in verse 6 it says,
Now a great defeat had come upon them. Flush with victory over
Jericho, a larger and more fortified city, They even counseled that they
didn't have to send all the men to A.I., and yet they go to A.I.,
this small town routs them, 36 of their men are killed, and
they come back, and Joshua is distraught. So distraught, it
said he tore his clothes and fell face down on the ground.
Now I do not know exactly why tearing one's clothes became
a symbol of great grief and shock, but that's what it was. And when
you consider clothes were not easy to come by, they were expensive,
then for Joshua to do that certainly showed the level of his grief
And it said the elders of Israel did the same and sprinkled dust
on their head. And once again, I don't know
why they would do that. But they would just throw dust
up, you know, and it fell on their head. Who knows? Quite
possibly there is that this arose from like Job, who said, naked
I came from the womb and naked I will return. And then the Lord
in Cursing Adam said, from dust
you came to dust you will return. And maybe both of these things
were symbolizing death. Naked I came in the world, naked
I'll leave. I came from dust, I'll return. Sin always involved death, sometimes
the death of the body, sometimes It's the death of something else.
It could be the death of a relationship, the death of close fellowship.
Within the assembly, the sin of one, the blatant, willful
sin of one can, as Paul says, grieve the Spirit. And what Joshua is noticing here
He knew nothing about what Achan did. One thing he did know, they
had just been defeated. That shouldn't happen. Never. It never should have happened.
And that led him to come before the Lord there at the Ark of
the Covenant, the place where atonement was made. And you know, as a church, if we ever come to the point whether individually or as a
congregation, we sense that, I don't know another way to put
this, but you'll know what I mean, the Lord is not with us. Whenever it feels like we can't
hear the gospel, we're sitting there, we know what's being said
is the gospel, but we aren't really hearing it. if trouble arises within the
ranks, if there's divisions. Now, division is a sin in and
of itself, but sometimes it's a consequence of sin. But whether in our own hearts
individually or we observe it within a congregation, we need to go before the Lord.
And we need to do so. in the attitude of humility and
repentance, for we know this, if something like that is wrong, somebody or a lot of somebodies
are truly doing wrong. And so he says, and here's how
Joshua approaches the Lord. Now he's there at the Ark of
the Covenant. He knows sin must be involved. This could not have
happened apart from sin. So he goes before the Ark of
the Covenant, that symbol of Jesus Christ and Him crucified,
right along there with the throne, sovereign grace right there.
He goes there. Now Joshua is the leader of the people. He
does not say, well, I am, the king of Israel right now. I mean,
it wasn't really a king, but for all intents and purposes,
he was the singular leader, so he could call him a king. And he knew that, or probably
figured he himself hadn't done anything contrary to what had
been told to him. Nonetheless, he goes there in
a full sense of guilt. Now in this, Joshua pictures
Christ. For though he did no sin, knew
no sin, always did what pleased the Father, our sins were laid
on him. And when he came before God,
when he went into that temple, not made with hands, the true
temple in heaven, to the real park of the covenant,
so to speak, he went there taking in his own blood. confessing
our guilt as his guilt. And so Joshua is going in there,
though, I imagine he's thinking, I did what the Lord said. Nonetheless,
he bears in himself the responsibility. There's another lesson taught
here. Someone mentioned to me how this
text of scripture had been used in the past to teach corporate
responsibility, or corporate guilt, I guess, in sin, or corporate
responsibility. Sometimes I hear theological
terms and I don't know exactly what they mean. Here's something
I do know, though. While no one is responsible for his sin other
than the person who did it within the church, there is corporate
consequences for sin. You are not responsible for what
I do, but you're affected by it. Isn't that so? You know, so often
in my prayer, particularly in prayers of confession, when I
feel particularly sensitive to whatever
it is I may have done. So often my fear is that this
church would suffer for what I did. That scandal, shame would fall
upon the entire congregation because of me. And even when
not confessing to any particular sin, I have often prayed, Lord,
don't let me be an occasion of sorrow to this congregation. And all of us should have that
attitude. There is no one in all the world
that I love more than the people in this congregation. In some
sense, I love all my brothers and sisters in Christ the same,
and yet I cannot help but have a special affection for this
group where the Lord sent me, and that I should ever in any
way bring you shame, sorrow, grief, disappointment, doubt. That would nearly be more than
I could bear, if not more than I could bear. Why? Our sin affects our brothers
and sisters. Some people, because of their
belief in sovereign grace, they'll say, oh, if I sin, it doesn't
matter. And Brother Tim James, who is
a master with words, he answered it exactly right. He says, you're
right. Or no, he said, you're wrong. It matters. It just doesn't
count. Our sin matters. It matters in
this world. It matters to our brothers and
sisters. It matters to the unbelieving world who sees it. Now, it doesn't
count. God has not written it down in
his eternal book against us. It will not be brought up on
the day of judgment. So it doesn't count, but it sure
matters. He says, in verse seven, Joshua said, why did you ever
bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the
hands of the Amorites to destroy us? Now here he is asking, and
I appreciate the honesty of Joshua's question here. And you know,
in prayer, we should be honest with the Lord. We must be. And we may as well be, he already
knows what's on our heart anyway. It's not like we're giving him
information that he doesn't already have. In fact, the Lord is the
only one with whom you dare speak freely. I mean completely freely. Because if you hide some what
you consider inappropriate things in your heart, he knows them
as well and has heard them as loudly as if you'd spoken them
with your mouth from a podium like this. But here's his question. Why
did you begin something and not finish it? Remember, Paul said, he who began
a good work in you will perfect it to the day of Christ. And
a similar principle was what Joshua had believed. God started
this work. He started it according to His
promise. It looks like He stopped. Why? There's got to be a reason. And then He goes, if only we
had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan. Maybe He's questioning. Maybe
this was a question of mine. Maybe the Lord didn't tell me
to cross. Maybe it wasn't time yet. Maybe that was my presumption. Maybe I should have been content
to stay on the other side until I had a clearer revelation of
what should be done. See, Joshua is not so proud,
though he has been exalted to the highest place there in Israel,
he is not so proud to think that maybe this is his fault. Verse eight, O Lord, what can
I say now that Israel has been routed by its enemies? What can I say? Now, I don't
think he's saying, what can I say to you? He's saying, what am
I going to say to any other city we come up against or any foreigner
What can I say to those who mock us? We make a great boast, don't
we? We make strong boasts. We say that as sinful as we are
in the eyes of God, not one of our sins is taken note of. in
eternal matters. We believe that in Christ Jesus
we are without sin in sight of God, the judge of all the earth.
We believe that when we die we shall go to be with Him. We may
boast, and I don't mean boast in the prideful sense, it's just
a declaration. We may say such things as that
by the work of God we've been made to love righteousness and
hate iniquity. We might go on to to preach as
I do, the church will be 100% victorious in the work that the
Lord sent them to do. But what are we to say when it looks like the church
is on the run and in defeat? What will we say to the world?
And I suppose we Christians in the United States know a little
bit about what this means. Because right now, looking at
it the eyes of the flesh, The world is growing stronger and
more outwardly expressive of its hatred
of God and God's people. And more and more of the church,
that group that claims to be followers of God through Jesus
Christ, the rebellious faction of that is becoming stronger
and stronger, joined in league with the world, joining in league
and persecuting the church, that which we would recognize as true
followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I know we can't know all
the believers there are, but as a percentage of the world
population is not very big. But even we seem to be decreasing
in some regard. And the world will say, you all
had your day. But like every religion, you
come and then you go. What can we say? Now, as believers in our Lord Jesus
Christ, here's one thing we can say. This may be a dark chapter,
but it's not the end of the book. It was a pagan king, but he said
something pretty wise to an Israelite king. He said, a man putting
on his armor should not boast like a man taking it off. In
other words, don't make your big boast going in the battle.
You better wait till it's over and find out how it really ends
before you go bragging about the greatness of your army. And
we, the only reason that we feel confident to boast a victory
is because Christ has been victorious and he will give us the victory.
But right now, it doesn't look like that. And so Joshua says,
what are we going to say? And then he has a concern for
the Jews. He said, the Canaanites and the
other people in the country will hear about this, and they will
surround us and wipe out our name from the earth. Wouldn't it be awful to discover
that because of something you had done, the local assembly you attend,
had been brought into such scandal that eventually it ceased to
exist. The church that I pastored in
Owensboro, that kind of happened to that church, not because of
me. It was actually the founding
pastor. And the real scandal was not so much him, but his
wife. But he was well-known in Owensboro,
a town of 30,000 to 40,000, somewhere in there. And his wife got involved in
scandal. He could not let it go and made
it a matter of public record in the court because he sued
the man for alienation of affection and all this. And from that point,
the church just started doing this. and nothing could keep it alive. Wouldn't that be awful to think
that something you had done had brought one of the Lord's assemblies
into such disrepute? The world held it in more contempt
than it normally does. And then his concern for the name of the
Lord It could be that our name's white
from the earth, and then it says, what then will you do for your
own great name? There is a place in the scriptures,
and I cannot think of the reference exactly right now, but the Lord
is prophesying through the prophet of all that he will do for Israel. And he makes this statement,
and it's humbling. That is all that he'd do in rescuing her
from defeat at the hands of the enemies, and I believe it was
the captivity and all that. And he said, it is not for you
that I do this, but for the sake of my own great name. For I cannot allow it to be polluted
among the peoples of the earth. He said, I'm going to save you.
And this shows, you know, the Lord in his dealings with us. Sometimes, you know, he does
express himself as a as a human would express himself. He said,
I'm not doing this for you. I'm not doing this because your
repentance has been enough or your punishment has been enough
or anything like that. I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for me. Because
I've set my name on you, and if I let you perish, it will
reflect poorly on my name. And all that we had as much concern
for the name of the Lord. Joshua is an example of the Lord
Jesus Christ who bore our sins in his body on the tree, and
he's an example of us. Let us be careful of our lives
and how we live them. Let us seek help from the Lord
to live ourselves or behave ourselves decently. Paul says, as in the
daylight, not in the dark places where people go if they want
to misbehave, that let us in everything have in mind the honor
of the name of our God, because we bear His name. I remember
talking to one of my children one time, wasn't about any specific
conduct or anything, just some general exhortations, and the effect
that sin and stuff can have on reputations. And he said, don't
worry, Dad. I know whose son I am. Do you know whose son you are? Oh, how important that we're
careful not to bring shame on the family name of God. All right,
you are dismissed.