Okay, beginning in verse 19.
Then Joshua said to Achan, my son, give glory to the Lord,
the God of Israel, and give Him praise. Tell me what you have
done. Do not hide it from me. Achan
replied, it is true I have sinned against the Lord, the God of
Israel. This is what I have done. When I saw in the plunder a beautiful
robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold
weighing 50 shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are
hidden in the ground inside my tent with the silver underneath."
Now, last week we began looking at these few verses. And we're
wanting to take note of exactly what confession is, confession
of sin, and what confession accomplishes. Because for the most part, people
don't know what it is. They don't know what it is actually
to confess sin. They know part of it, but they
don't know all of it. And they don't know what it accomplishes,
or more importantly, what it doesn't accomplish. Now, we know,
we remember what Aitken did when they attacked the city of Ai.
Excuse me, when they attacked Jericho, he had taken some of
the valuable things, the gold and silver and a nice robe Babylon,
beautiful clothing. And he kept it for himself when
the Lord had said that those things were his and they were
to be put into the treasury. So, I believe it was last week
we pointed out that there are things which are specifically
holy to the Lord. It's not because there are better
things than other things. It's simply because it's said
with clarity, these are mine. Now, in the bulletin today, I
quoted one of my favorite Scriptures, and I think that, Brother Eric,
it was one of the Scriptures you used when you preached here
a few weeks ago, where the Lord, speaking to Jacob and Israel,
and He says, Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you
by name. You are mine. Now the psalm says
the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. So for the Lord to speak to Israel,
the nation, in this fashion, you are mine, must mean something
more than when God would say the earth and everything in it
is mine. And so when he puts that particular That special
emphasis, you are mine, and in particular, it says you are mine
because I've redeemed you and I've called you by name. Now
there is a scripture in the New Testament that many who deny
the sovereignty of God's grace, they'll throw it up in the face
of those who do, and where it talks about denying the Lord who bought them. And saying, see, here it says
the Lord can buy someone and yet them be or deny the Lord
and be lost. Well, they're not distinguishing
between buy and redeem. And I also understand why they
failed to make this connection. The word translated Lord there
is not the one that is normally used in the Greek New Testament
when we read about the Lord Jesus Christ. The word translated Lord,
where it says the Lord that bought them, is the word, we get our
word despot from it. And this is speaking of our Lord
Jesus, our Lord, and realize the concept of Lord under the other Greek word that's
normally used, krios, speaks of authority and all the responsibilities
that come with that authority. To give you an idea of what a
lord is, if you look back in English history, you know, they
had the kings and then they had the lords. And the lords, you
know, they were had authority over a certain part of England.
But they not only had the authority, they had the responsibility to
care for those who lived in that area, fighting a military. I'm not saying that all of them
did it well, but that's what they were supposed to do. They were
not only rulers, they were caretakers. And our Lord, he is the Lord,
the ruler, he has authority. He said, all authority in heaven
and earth has been given to me. So he's got that authority. But
there has also been laid upon him a responsibility of care
upon God's people. Now, a despot, no. You know what a despot is? He
just comes in and takes over, really. He is a despot. The whole idea there is about
power and grasping and taking. And it doesn't imply any sense
of care. It's just someone who, by the
greatness of his power, rules. And the despot, our Lord Jesus
is a despot, in a sense, over the entire universe. He bought
it by his obedience. All of it belongs to him. Every
little particle of this universe is owned, lock, stock, and barrel
by the Lord Jesus. And there be many in our world
who will not even recognize this despot as Lord. They deny that he is Lord. They
deny his rightful ownership of that. But, back to this, the
Lord redeemed people, and that's more
than simply buying them, because redemption means paying a price
to set someone free. Now, buying something, Now, we
don't buy slaves anymore. We're not allowed to. And that's
good. There never should have been slavery at any point in
history. You know, when people say, well,
the Bible allowed for it. No, it didn't. Anymore than the
Bible allows for a lot of things that if you just read the rules
and regulation, you might think the Bible's saying it's all right.
No, God never said slavery's okay. He wrote rules regarding
it so that slaves wouldn't be so terribly abused. But he never did say it's okay
for one human to own another human. But our Lord by redemption paid a
price to set us free. But if you buy someone, like
when you buy a slave, you buy them to bondage. So everyone
in the world is in bondage to that despot. But by redemption, God has chosen
out of all those slaves a people that he will call his own And
he makes them especially his own by paying a price that redeems
them from their bondage. Now, a lot of people wouldn't
understand if I said this out of context, but we are not in
bondage to God if we are believers. You say, you mean there's nothing
we're supposed to do? Of course there's stuff we're supposed
to do. I'm not talking about that. Bondage is not the same thing
as being under authority. Bondage is being under a power
that you cannot resist, a power from which you cannot break free.
We are children of God. We are sons of God, if we're
a believer. And sons are not in bondage.
They may be told things to do, but they're not in bondage. Their
sonship does not depend on them, on their performance. Their place at the table is not
reserved for them because of any accomplishments they make. They are sons because they are
born of a father. or they are adopted by the Father. And by His sovereign declaration,
they have been made sons. We are redeemed. Redeemed. And therefore we are His, and
that's why we are referred to as a holy people. Now, I'm glad
you don't know everything I do, and I'm glad you don't... I bet
you're glad I don't know everything you do. That's just life, isn't
it? But if we did know everything
about each other, holy is not likely a word we would attribute
to one another. I find it hard to use that word
with regard to myself. Holy unto the Lord. I say I find
it hard. I don't find it hard now that
I know what the word means. Most of the time you say holy,
people think you're talking about being especially moral, especially
righteous. That's not what the word means.
The word means set apart to God. And that's why the scriptures
say, for of God are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto
us righteousness, holiness, and redemption. I am holy unto the Lord because
Jesus Christ redeemed me. God chose me. He said, you're
mine. He redeemed me by his son. And
he called me by my name through his spirit. And in that way, I am made holy
unto the Lord. Now, there's other applications
of the word holy or sanctified, or they all come from the same
Greek word, but that is the essential holiness
of God's people. Now, when God sent them to Jericho,
well, the whole city belonged to him, didn't it? And he proved that it belonged
to him. He did with it exactly what he wanted to do. He destroyed
it with the exception of that part of the wall in which was
contained some of his holy ones, Rahab and her family. And then there was things which
he declared to be his, which he in a sense declared to be
holy, and that was the gold and the silver and so forth. And
that was to be put in the treasury. Now, Achan's sin. It was not theft in the normal
sense of the word. I know, yes, it was, but that's
not what made it so bad. Nor was it just that he stole
from the Lord. Because, I think we mentioned
this last week, no matter what sin you commit, no matter who
it is in this world that is harmed by your sin, it is a sin against
the Lord. What made Achan's sin so horrible
that the Lord punished the congregation of Israel with defeat at the
little city of Ai? What made it so horrible is that
he, Achan, took for his own use that which God had called holy
and for his own use. And any time we take that which
God has specifically called His own, set apart for the purpose
or whatever purpose He sets it apart for. For example, I'll
give you another example of how this same sin could have been
committed. The whole city was devoted to God. That's the word,
or you could call it devoted. In other contexts, it's called
accursed. But nonetheless, the whole city
was God's. Now, what if when they had gone
in there and they were told, kill every living thing in there,
what if when they had gone in to do that, they were, you know,
stabbing away and everything, and some, you know, fellow among
the Jewish congregation Well, they practiced polygamy, but
say he saw what he considered to be an attractive young woman,
and he said, well, I'm not killing her. I'm going to take her back.
She's going to be my wife. Or what if he'd have been a single
man, just a young man? He said, this is going to be
my wife. So he wasn't breaking the rules,
you know, the common rules of marriage. There was only going
to be one wife. What if he had taken? One of the women. Or what if another fellow had
said, I need some servants in my household, and this guy here,
he's obviously big and strong. I'm not going to kill him, I'm
going to put him in chains, and then he's going to be a servant
in my household. It would have been the same thing
as when Achan took that gold, because God said, everyone in
there belongs to me, kill them. And you weren't allowed to do
anything else with them. Now, the gold and the silver, that
nice, beautiful robe. They all picture things which
are considered holy unto the Lord. And we could, we don't
need to take the time to go into detail, but they represent, they
are in other scriptures used as pictures of the various aspects
of salvation. And, you know, I believe it's
in the book of Revelation, at one place the saints in heaven,
they shout, salvation to God. Not meaning that God needs saving. but that we recognize that the
work of salvation is his and his alone. Jonah, I like what
Spurgeon said, Jonah, in the seminary of the great deep, there
in the belly of the whale, well, actually it's great fish, not
a whale, big fish, in the belly of the whale, way below the waves,
down there in that seminary, what did he learn? Right at the
end, I believe it's at the end of the first chapter, salvation
is of the Lord. And we become like Achan if we
take any of those aspects of the salvation of sinners and
take them to ourselves as though it belongs to us. As though our salvation is in
any way ours to glory in. You know, Paul said, God forbid,
actually the words are just, may it never be, that I should
boast in anything other than the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. Now his point there, he didn't
say, God forbid, that I would ever boast in anything other
than the fact that I believe in Jesus. in His cross. That's not what He said. He said,
I don't glory in my faith. I don't glory in my works. I
don't glory in my knowledge. I glory in only one thing, Christ
and Him crucified. That's two things. No, that's
one thing. They go together. The blood and righteousness of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I glory in that. Not
meaning I'm taking the glory from it. I render all glory to
it. If I am to make a boast before
God, I am not going to boast in what I've done, I'm going
to boast in what Christ has done. And Achan, when he took that
gold silver and that pretty robe, he took from God that in which
God glorifies himself the most. When he confessed it, what was
the purpose of this confession that he was called upon to give? Verse 19, Joshua said to Achan,
my son, give glory to the Lord. Real confession is more than
simply telling what you've done, though
it involves that. And I believe that in the way
it's described here, we can say true confession is not to come
before the church and tell the church what you have done. I
know some churches, you know, if anybody's guilty of a notable
sin, and I'm thinking, well, you know, to God, all sins are
kind of notable. He's taken note of them. What if it's something
really bad? They think that someone needs
to come up in front of the congregation and tell the congregation what
they did. Here's what I think is a good
general rule. What God has left private, keep
private between you and him. If God didn't let the word get
out, there's no reason for you to go and tell others about it. One reason you don't want to
do that, and this is a sad part of our nature, if I tell you
my sins, that can be used by our own wicked flesh or by the
devil or whatever. You would say, well, he did it
and got away with it. No, there's no virtue in telling
other sinners what sins you have done. You'll notice when Achan made
confession, I don't know if anybody else was around, but Joshua said to him in verse 19,
tell me what you have done. Who does Joshua represent? The
Lord Jesus. That's who we confess to. And
that's all we need to confess to. And confession, the purpose
of it is to bring glory to God and to bring glory to God in
two ways. First of all, when we confess
our sins to him through the Lord Jesus Christ, we are acknowledging
his right, for lack of a better way to put it, we're acknowledging
his right to make the rules. We are acknowledging that indeed
he is the Lord. That what we have done was wrong,
and it was wrong precisely because it was contrary to what He told
us to do. One of the things that worldlings, one of the arguments
they're using now to justify the most obvious rebellions against
God going on in our day is Love is love? Like you think,
yeah, love is love. Love is not sex. And that's the
issue going on. Love is love. What problem does
God have with any committed loving relationship? You know what they're
doing? When they do that, they're using
human reasoning to put God's declarations under judgment.
And then they're saying things like, well, you know, when the
old timers wrote this, when Moses and Paul spoke out against homosexuality
and things like that, they were just expressing what was, you
know, the culture of their day. Well, then why, you know, does
it carry the significance of thus saith the Lord? This is
what God says. Often, God's commandments. They'll certainly not make sense
to our flesh, but we obey what God has said
precisely because He's the one that said it. And when we fail
and confess, confessing is not only admitting that you did something,
you're admitting that what you did was wrong, and that it was
wrong precisely because God said, this is prohibited. And that
glorifies God. Secondly, it glorifies God in
any discipline, chastening or whatever,
I don't use the word Punishment, because I've told you that with
believers there's truly no punishment, because punishment means paying
the price. You know, when a guy's a murderer,
and they, you know, they used to use electric chair, now they
got the, you know, lethal injection, whatever. When they put him to
death, that's a punishment. They're making him pay the penalty
of his crime. We, believers, don't pay penalties
for our sins. Why? Christ has already paid
the penalty. But our Father will discipline
us. He will chasten us. And let me see. In Psalm 51, when
David confesses his sin, he says in verse four, against you, you
only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Now look
at this. So that you are proved right when you speak and justified
when you judge. He said, I confess that what
I've done, it's sin and it was done right in your sight and
against, you're the one I've sinned against. And I say this
so that whatever happens to me, whatever you do to me in response
to this sin, I will have justified your reaction. If you speak a word I'm guilty. And if you lay upon me a discipline,
a hard, hard time, a difficulty, I can hardly bear. You'll be
right if you do it. I agree. I agree. You know, when the believer,
when a sinner calls upon the name of the Lord.
And this involves, that's a short phrase for a whole lot of details,
but that involves the confession of our sinfulness. And you know,
if we honestly confess our sin before God, we are saying, God,
if you sent me to hell, you'd be right to do it. I couldn't
bring up an accusation against you. I couldn't say you've treated
me more harshly than I deserve. Do you really believe you're
bad enough for God to send you to hell? I'd like to say, yeah, that's
the way I am. I must confess because I'm still
in the flesh. I think pretty highly of myself
compared to what I really am. But from the Spirit, I acknowledge,
I know and understand that whatever God did to Christ in my behalf
is what my sins deserve. And if he had not sent his son
for me, if he had left me out of that you are mine phrase,
And if He laid on me my iniquity, charged it to me and punished
it in me, I could not make a just accusation against Him. That
glorifies God. Now, we can know this. Those that do confess their sins,
God will not punish them. That is, when they confess in
that fashion, God will not condemn them eternally for their sins,
though he will respond to sin in a way to correct his people.
That brings us to another point. Confession does not absolve us
from sin. Now, the Roman Catholics, of
course, what they call confession isn't what we described as confession. But they think that that sacrament
of confession, that act of going to a priest and telling them
what you've done, and how, I always wonder, how
do they ever get done telling a priest their sins? Because
once they got done, they'd have to start confessing of all that
was going on while they were confessing their other sins.
You'd never get done. But they only mention what is
notable to them. And then what does a priest do? As I understand it, he gives
them something to do, a ritual or a work or something, and through
this confession slash performance, they receive absolution for their
sins. Confession does not bring absolution. Look over at 1 John, and this
is what people would throw up in our face if we just said that
without some context. In 1 John chapter 1, verse 9,
we read this, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just
and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. And they go, see, confession
brings or causes purification. That's not what that scripture
says. Now, it says that if we confess, he will forgive and
purify. It says he will, but he doesn't
do it on the basis or under the merit of our confession. Back up a few verses. Verse seven,
if we walk in the light, He is in the light. We have fellowship
with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us
from all sin. It's not confession that purifies,
it's the blood of And that's an important distinction.
Now maybe you already understood that, or you've never really
thought of it in those terms, but it's good for us to clarify
these points, because we might think that if, oh, I've sinned,
so if I go to God and I tell Him and confess and tell Him
I'm sorry and all that, then God's not going to do anything
in response. That's not what confession does.
If we confess our sins, we know this, If we truly confess them, there
will be no eternal consequences of them. But just as with David, there
may be lifelong consequences from sin. When we confess sin, we don't
do it to get out from under any kind of discipline. You know,
maybe if you've had to raise kids, you catch them doing something
wrong. Or you think they have, and you
say, did you so-and-so? And they may feel horribly guilty
about it. And they may own up to it. Does
that mean you don't discipline them? You might say, well, I appreciate
your honesty. But now you've got to learn not to do this again. depending on what generation
you came from. If you came from the generation of my parents,
it resulted in a spanking, if it was serious enough, or a timeout. I got a kick out of one comedian
who said, timeout. He said, man, when I was a kid,
timeout meant dad took time out from his busy day to give me
a whooping. But whatever method it is, disobedience
is met with discipline. God has never said it's okay
to disobey. Grace does not give us license.
Grace delivers us from the eternal consequences of sin and brings
us into fellowship with God and transforms us from slaves into
sons. But know this, when you Rebel
against your father in his house, your heavenly father. He is too
loving to let you go uncorrected. That make sense? Well, we'll
leave off there.