Joshua 14
Results of Compromise – Joshua 7
I’ve tried to give you a background in the historical experience of the
nation
You recall in Joshua 6 how the walls of
Therefore, using this same analogy of Jericho’s walls, we like Joshua,
having a mandate from God, having an honesty to follow out His will, come to
the wall, find the wall is there, find no other solution except wait, and I’ve
dubbed this point the critical point of faith.
You oftentimes will come in your personal life to critical points; a
critical point means a point where you come dead center and just have to stop,
everything comes to a halt, you can’t move forwards, or backwards, or sideways,
there’s no way out of it, you just have to stop. If you haven’t had one of these experiences
yet, cheer up because you’ll get one. I
don’t know of any Christian who has been a Christian more than 10 or 15 years
who hasn’t had at least one good [can’t understand word] for this kind of a
problem where there’s no way of getting yourself out of it, except if you want
to bypass through entering some human viewpoint solution, or you just have to
wait until the wall comes tumbling down.
But the thing of it that God is trying to teach you something in these
experiences, like He tried to teach the nation
There are two basic principles to learn again and again; I think that
every Christian problem centers on these two things, namely will God do it for
me, and secondly, can He do it for me. There’s a question of His capacity, His
omnipotence, is God able to do that which He has promised? That’s one problem. And you have to be honest with yourself, you
cannot say yes to that question if you really don’t know this. And this is where I really urge you to be
honest in your Christian life. If you
can’t make that statement honestly, don’t make it. You just admit that I do not believe at this
point that God is able, and then work from there. But don’t try to bypass it, oh yes, and go
through some self-hypnosis, oh yes, I believe God is able, I believe God is
able,
I believe God is able, I believe God is able. That’s just self-hypnosis and a cheap
solution. You just admit that you have
your doubts whether God is able at this point.
Usually when you face your doubt like that, immediately you realize it’s
wrong.
The other problem is more sophisticated and that problem is yes you
believe God is able to do the problem, tackle the wall, but you don’t believe
He’s going to do it for you right at that moment and that’s another problem,
and that’s where you have to really wrestle with God in prayer. And this is the battle described in Eph.
6. Turn there before we start Joshua 7. This is why the spiritual battle is described
in terms of prayer in the epistle to the Ephesians. One of the great weapons the Christians have
and all too often fail to use, v. 17-18.
“And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is
the Word of God,” there’s your main verb, but then it’s followed by a
participle in verse 18, “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the
Spirit, and watching,” second participle.
Note those participles, praying and watching are present participles and
as present participles they modify the main verb; they describe the conditions
that accompany the verb “take” in verse 17.
So you have “take” and while you’re taking it consists of this, praying
and watching, praying and watching, praying and watching, praying and watching. This means mental alertness.
Now this is why, even though it may be difficult for some of you to work
with some of the problems that are given that we have been working with. Don’t be disturbed, but on the other hand,
don’t take a pious attitude saying I don’t need this. It seems to me that a Christian always should
be mentally alert, not that you have to be a junior, that’s not what we’re
talking about, mental capacity, all I’m saying is that you should be alert at
least to go out to the limits of the brains that God has given you. Because it seems to me if you’re going to
look at verse 18 at all seriously, how else can you watch; “be on the alert
with all perseverance and supplication.”
It seems to me that requires mental alertness; it seems to me that’s a
prerequisite. And therefore Christians
who are mentally alert, can they be spiritually alert. I do not see how they can be. If Christianity in how you think and you’re
not clear how you think, then how can you be spiritually perceptive? I can say that there can be people who are
mentally perceptive who are not spiritually perceptive, yes; but I highly doubt
whether there is such a thing as spiritual perception without some form of
mental perception. If there isn’t then
we’re back to Kierkegaard and a leap of faith.
So you have to say that mental perception is a prerequisite for the
Christian life.
This is the battle, it’s the battle of prayer, it’s the battle when we
come to a wall at the critical point of standing there, even though it starts
falling in on you and staying there dogmatically and stubbornly, claiming the
promises of God that the wall is going to come down, even though you have to
battle this over, maybe it takes months, maybe it takes years. In Joshua’s case it took seven days to work
in this situation.
Now let’s go back to Joshua 7 and see another problem. Last time we saw the problem that God was
able and God was willing to do this.
Tonight we come to another problem.
It’s interesting how the historian wrote history here. He wrote the history to reveal certain
principles of our personal relationship with the Lord. Now we come to another problem, and this is a
problem that you get over and over again in the Christian life, and that’s the
problem that God is able to do it and I believe God would be willing to do it
but I don’t really have the assurance God is willing to do it because I’m not
really assured that I’m in His will. So
here you come to a problem, again we have a wall, if you want to use this
analogy, and you come down to the wall, but you’re not so sure that God is
going to make the wall topple this time because you’re not so sure that you’re
not over here, in other words you have no assurance that you’re operating in
His will to begin with. And if you’re not sure that you’re operating within His
will then you can’t have this certainty and this confidence that He’s going to
topple the wall. He’s going to topple
the wall on His terms, not yours. So
therefore if the wall doesn’t come tumbling down there’s a problem of are you
or are you not at this point in the will of God.
Beginning in 7:1 we have one of the most famous incidents in the history
of Israel about compromise, about the hidden sins and why walls don’t come
tumbling down sometimes. Much as we
profess to believe the promises, the walls still don’t come down and something’s
wrong. This is the classical
illustration of history; all the old time great preachers used to spend a lot
of time on Joshua 7 because Joshua 7 is the famous Achan incident, the problem
of compromise. “But the children of
Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing; for Achan, the son of Carmi,
the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed
thing; and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of
Israel.” The thing you want to remember
is verse 27 of the previous chapter.
They’d just been through a titanic victory; they’ve just seen the walls
come toppling down and now this.
Look at the contrast between 6:27 and 7:1. Look what happens: in verse 27 all is
tremendous, “So the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame was proclaimed
throughout all the country. [7:1] But…” and now there’s a tone. If you were a musician playing this you’d
have some chromatic thing here to illustrate discord. There is a problem of discord here, there is
just a “But” introduced into the whole thing that ruins it. “But the children of Israel committed a
trespass in the accursed thing.”
Remember the accursed thing is what?
The accursed thing is the charem principle
of holy war, that something has been devoted to God, it has been offered to
God, and it is God’s and it’s going to be destroyed by God, “the accursed
thing.” The city of Jericho and all that
was in it was accursed, it is charem,
it was turned over to Him and therefore it was to be burned and to be destroyed
and offered as one great offering, the whole city was to be offered up to
Jehovah as the first fruits of the conquest of the land. This is His property. Remember what the accursed thing means
because you won’t understand what follows; if you don’t keep in mind the
accursed thing is that which has been already set apart for God by His people.
So we’re introduced now to the problem of God’s justice, His willingness
to do something on our behalf because there’s something wrong. And the last thing we’re going to see
operate, even through this whole passage is this: God is just, and the
definition of justice the Bible gives you is impartiality. God is absolute holy, both for the children
of God and those who are non-Christians.
Both believer and non-believer must abide by God’s absolutes. Impartiality means God does not favor, in
this sense, His children. So if we’re
going to be believers in absolutes we’re going to have to say yes, the
absolutes hold for the non-Christian and they also hold for the Christian; they
hold for both Christian and non-Christian, otherwise you get into the problem
of God isn’t just. So that if you’re
going to say that you have a just God you’re going to have to say that His
absolutes extend for both His children and those who aren’t His children, the
definition of an absolute. And here is
where this comes forth.
But the thing to notice about verse 1 and this is the thing that sort of
keys you to the application to the Christian life, and to us as a congregation,
is notice the number of the subject. If
you look at the subject of the verb “commit a trespass” it’s plural, but the
explanation involves only one person.
What about this? This should
immediately raise questions. Learn to
observe when you read Scripture and this just immediately hit you. What’s going on here? The whole thing starts out with “the children
of Israel,” plural, “committed a trespass,” and then it’s immediately followed
up by explaining and “Achan … took of the accursed thing.” So who did it? Did the people of Israel commit this sin or
did Achan commit the sin? And we’re
introduced here to the problem of group, and here we’re introduced to
humanity. You cannot live your life
alone as an isolated individual, you are part of humanity and this holds with
regard to Adam, it holds with regard to the [can’t understand word] humanity in
Christ and it holds with your social associations, with your associations with
other people.
This is part of the feature of humanity given in Scripture. This is what it means to be a man; it means
that you are inevitably involved in social relationships, whether you like it
or not and you are held partly responsible for those who are involved in that
special relationship. In other words,
you can look at it this way. The way
most Christians look at it’s like this, four lone rangers fighting their forces
in four different directions and the connection between them is not there. This is anti-Scriptural. And by the way, there’s nothing about
individual spirituality, it’s always grouped. And so the Bible pictures this,
that there are relationships and there’s a net here, and you can’t have one
person foul up without influencing the others within that net or within that
group, within that association. You
can’t do this. No man is an island and
no believer is an island.
And this is the principle we’re going to learn right in this chapter to
start with. Achan is one of these lone
people but Achan is involved socially with the total nation and when Achan gets
out of joint, the total nation gets out of joint. You say well aren’t you just discovering this
in the Old Testament. No, I’ll show you
it carries and holds forth to a local congregation in the New Testament. In 1 Cor. 5 we have the same thing
stated. Here it’s obviously referring to
a local congregation. And it says the
same thing, and this shows why, if you are in a group and there is a person in
that group that violates God’s will in a very flagrant way, you are implicated,
because you are associated with the group in that that person exists.
I Cor. 5:1-7, “It is commonly reported that there is fornication among
you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that
one should have his father’s wife. [2] And you are puffed up, and have not
rather mourned, that he that has done this deed might be taken away from among
you. [3] For I verily, as absent in the
body but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present,
concerning him that has done this deed. [4] In the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, when you are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our
Lord Jesus Christ, [5] To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of
the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. [6] Your
glorying is not good. Know ye not that a
little leaven leavens the whole lump? [7]Purge out, therefore, the old leaven,
that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.” And that’s the principle, a
little leaven leavens the whole lump, and you’ll find this in the Old
Testament, you find it in the New Testament.
I don’t care what Christian organization you’re with, you can be with
Child Evangelism, Campus Crusade, you can be involved in a local church,
whatever the group is, you are automatically subject to verses 1-7.
This is a principle that always, always, always, always works, and that
is if you are in fellowship with a group of Christians you are involved totally
with them and every member in that group.
And so in this case the Corinthian church is held partially responsible
for this one man. Remember this is a sin, one sin committed by one man inside a
whole congregation, and yet when Paul comes he [can’t understand word] the
congregation. Why? Because in our social relationships every man
is depending on everybody else. What the
Bible is saying here is it’s telling us something that we badly need, and that
is that each one of us needs each other, and that what’s happening here is that
this one man has committed a sin; he’s gone into fornication and the other
believers should have helped him at this point by leading him out of this. They should have had a ministry in his life
and they didn’t; they neglected their ministry; they neglected the fact that
this man was not an island and could not live by himself. And they had an obligation as fellow men
within this social unit, they had an obligation to help him in this area and
they didn’t. In fact the thing that you
get from these first seven verses is they could care less. There’s no interrelationship at all, and yet
they are held by God responsible.
This is why Paul, isn’t it interesting here in verses 1-7, where in
verses 1-7 do you ever read of Paul personally addressing the one man? Isn’t this remarkable. In the first seven verses he’s got one man he’s
supposed to be dealing with, but who does he talk to? The whole church. Why?
Simply because of this relationship, no man is an island; we are
racially united with one another. And
this we’ve got to get back to; this is Biblical and I think Christians have
absorbed a lot of non-Christianity and they define spirituality as something
totally and completely individual, automaton.
Let’s go back to Joshua and you’ll see something else that’s strange,
that is until you understand this principle that’s strange, and that is that in
verses 2-5 we read of a peculiar behavior pattern, not on the part of
Achan. Let’s look at this; we’ve got
Joshua, we’ve got the spies, we’ve got Achan, we’ve got the people; four steps
that we’re looking at. Now watch what happens
in verse 2-5: “And Joshua sent men from
Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-aven, on the east side of Bethel, and spoke
unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed
Ai. [3] And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, Let not all the people
go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai; and make not
all the people to labor there; for they are but few. [4] So there went up there of the people
about three thousand men; and they fled before the men of Ai. [5] And the men
of Ai smote them about thirty and six men; for they chased them from before the
gate even unto the place of destruction [Shebarim], and smote them in the going
down; wherefore the hearts of the people,” that is Israel, “melted, and became
as water.”
You say what’s wrong, something’s happened, why are they so shook about
a casualty list of only 36? It’s simple,
they didn’t have any loses at Jericho.
God had promised total victory, no casualties, and you might think it’s
trivial to be concerned with 36. No it
isn’t because they recognize that something has happened; it’s obvious by what
has happened something’s gone wrong here.
But I want you to notice that it doesn’t dawn on them till something is
wrong until after it’s happened. I want
you to notice too from these texts, if you look at them carefully, that which
went wrong went wrong from verse 2, not verse 5. Verse 5 is where it comes
forth in all of its ugliness. Something
was wrong by the time verse 5 occurs.
But I want you to notice there’s something wrong even in verse 2.
Remember I said that it’s characteristic of the historian who wrote
Joshua to write it in triplet form; I told you that throughout this book the
whole structure of the book is first the Lord speaks, then Joshua speaks, then
the people obey. You get this in every
chapter except here…except here! The
triplet is broken and the historian is trying to tell you something. They didn’t consult the Lord. There’s no consultation of the Lord over Ai
at this point; none whatever. There’s no
consultation, Joshua doesn’t consult the Lord, Joshua doesn’t have any word
from God to give to the people, there’s nothing, no communication here. The whole triplet is smashed, it’s
incomplete.
Now I’ll show you later on the triplet reappears in the rest of the
chapter, so this is another chapter that has this triplet in it, the triplet
structure, but it doesn’t begin this way.
This is an abnormality if you’re at all familiar with the book of
Joshua. Every page you look, you should
look for this triplet. That’s the theme
of the book, but then you come here it just should hit you like cold water,
there’s something wrong here. So in
verse 2 what the author under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is trying to
tell us is apparently Joshua himself is out of it here. Joshua himself is not alert, he’s just had
the titanic victory of Jericho, and then he reasons and says well, Ai’s
smaller, we had no trouble with Jericho, let’s go.
Then there’s something else wrong, not only is Joshua having
questionable difficulties here, but the spies come back and they report
something that doesn’t make sense either, because if you look at verse 3-4,
when the spies come back there are two things that are missing. First of all it says don’t make “all the
people to labor there; for they are but few.”
And it looks like what happened is the spies have a salvation by works
system going. In other words, it depends
on the work of the individuals and so they don’t think it depends… granted a
presupposition of spirituality by works, since it depends on men’s works, just
send a few men.
Turn to chapter 8, verse 25, when they finally hit Ai you’ll notice that
there were 12,000 people in there, 12,000 people in the city of Ai. And when you’re fighting an offensive war
against a fixed fortification you never start with less men, you always start
with more men. This is always a tactic
used, so it’s a completely wrong military decision to start with. So here you’ve Joshua not consulting the
Lord, we’ve got a [can’t understand word] military decision made, completely
undermanned, sending 3,000 men against 12,000 who are obviously behind walls, and
you’ve got a wrong decision there. Furthermore
there’s something else wrong with the spies because there’s no report of
assurance from God. What do I mean by
this? Turn back to Joshua 2, remember
when the spies came back from Jericho how they told it? Verses 23-24, “So the two men returned, and
descended from the mountain, and passed over, and came to Joshua, the son of
Nun, and told him all the things that befell them. [24] And they said unto
Joshua, Truly the LORD has delivered into our hands all the land.” See, there’s divine viewpoint to this. Where’s the divine viewpoint about the report
of the spies in chapter 7? Nothing. So
here you have another problem. It’s not
a dogmatic statement that they’re wrong, it’s just that it leaves a taste in
your mouth that something is not right, it just doesn’t fit right, and it
doesn’t fit with the rest of the text. There’s something off-Q here.
So Joshua is out of it in verse 2, the spies are out of it in verses
3-4, and by verse 5 the people are out of it.
But notice who is missing so far, Achan.
Achan had done his act before all of these; these all follow after. Achan did his over at Jericho, not at
Ai. Achan goofed back then. But I want you to see what happens, “a little
leaven leavens the whole lump.” And this
thing, whatever it is, is spreading forth through the whole congregation. It’s getting everybody mixed up, even Joshua
is not thinking clearly at this point.
Why is this? Because of this
racial solidarity that we have. You see
this operate again and again in Scripture; you have a group of Christians
together, whether it’s a local congregation and one is out of kilter, it’s as
though God almost spreads the pollution around and it affects everybody in the
group until that problem is dealt with.
So we have this situation in Joshua 7.
Now Joshua 7:6-9, this is Joshua’s reaction before the Lord. I want you to notice the fact that at this
point faith is gone; it’s quite obvious at the end of verse 5 there’s no faith
left any more, it’s shot. And this
should tell you something about faith.
Here at Lubbock Bible Church we stress again and again that faith is
built on absolute certain truth. That’s
true, but we don’t stop there; it’s not just impersonal truth, it’s a
person. Jesus said “I am the way, the
truth and the life,” and it means therefore if you’re going to be adjusted to
the truth, you’re going to have to be adjusted to the person who is the truth,
Jesus Christ. And therefore without this
personal relationship to the truth you can’t believe. Now it’s as simple as that.
In other words, what we’re saying, there are two parts to faith. Faith is based on knowledge which you must
have in order to believe, there’s no question about this. But there’s something more than just
knowledge required and that is there must be an inner attitude of submission to
that which you know to be true. If you
don’t have this willingness to submit you can’t believe. In other words, there’s a problem of sin. There are two areas, the knowing and the area
of law; both of these are involved in faith and right here you have a key
instance of it verse 5, that these people at this point have no faith, not
because they don’t know God. They don’t
have faith here, not because it’s something involved in how they know,
they don’t have faith here because it’s sin.
There’s a ruptured personal relationship and they can’t believe. So faith comes through these two areas. This is why 1 John 1:9 is necessary in order
for you to believe; you can’t believe without using 1 John 1:9. There must be total complete cleansing from
sin or you can’t believe. Why can’t you
believe? Can you really honestly say
you’re going to go before the Lord and God is going to do thus and such for
you? How can you say that? You can’t because your heart says no He isn’t
because He’s not pleased with you. So
until that problem is dealt with you can’t believe.
So we have these two aspects of faith.
In verses 6-9 Joshua recognizes this and he starts to pray. And recall too that there was only one defeat
Joshua had ever witnessed of this magnitude.
Do you know what it was? Forty
years ago at Kadesh-barnea. Joshua knows
what’s happened, he only lost 36 men here but he knows what’s happened. Something has happened. So “Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the
earth upon his face before the ark of the LORD until the evening, he and the
elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads. [7] And Joshua said, Alas, O
Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over the Jordan to
deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? Would to God we had
been content, and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan! [8] O Lord, what shall
I say, when Israel turns their backs before their enemies? [9] For the
Canaanites and all the inhabitants of this land shall hear of it, and shall
surround us, and cut off out name from the earth. And what wilt thou do unto thy great
name?”
The thing to notice about this prayer, the first thing, it refutes a lot
of liberal theories about the history of Israel. I have read over a lot of material I covered
in seminary about this business of how does the liberal explain the presence of
Israel in history. They always wind up
in the end explaining that the idea of Israel somehow caused Israel… the idea caused Israel to do what she did, this
Idea with a capital “I,” wherever
this idea came from nobody tells you.
But the idea just floats around in history and something latched onto
Israel and Israel took off, just because of this idea that floats around. The “Idea” here is not sufficient to lead
anybody in history and this is the proof of it right here. What happens to their idea in verse 5, do you
find them stimulated because they had some philosophical ideas. Bologna!
They’re not stimulated by an “idea,” they’re down on their knees, and so
is Joshua in verse 7. There is no “idea”
operating here. The point is they don’t
have any “idea,” they don’t have anything; they’ve reached the limit of their
resources. So this seems to me to have
just torpedoed their whole concept of the [not sure of word, sounds like:
liberalizing] of Israel. If they [can’t understand words] the testimony of God
is precisely the opposite; Israel would never have gone on, Israel is the
nation that would have least gone on by any idea inherent in itself. It couldn’t have because the very idea here
is being torpedoed, they don’t have any confidence, there is absolutely no
confidence at this point and they’re crying out for God to help them.
And then in verse 7 also notice his attitude. Even Joshua’s attitude is afflicted here;
even Joshua at this point in verse 7 is using some of the language, if we had
time we could go back over to Num. 14, it’s almost identical; he’s saying oh
God, why did we ever get involved in this mess, and he’s giving up. There’s no “idea” here, there’s no great
assurance that they’re victorious. Don’t think of the Old Testament saints as
giants of the faith that you can’t duplicate.
There’s not a person sitting in the pews tonight, not one, who has
accepted Christ as Savior, there’s not one of you who can’t have the same kind
of faith these people had or greater.
These people weren’t unattainable giants. They had sin natures like we have and this is
how they respond to their problems; they panicked at times, they got out
fellowship at times, they fell apart at times.
So you don’t have to be ashamed of yourself and think of yourself as an
eighth class believer when you compare yourself with them. It’s just that the Holy Spirit has picked
sovereignly these men to illustrate principles, but that doesn’t make these men
better than you. We have resources in
Christ that they never had.
So Joshua is mimicking the same carnal attitude of Numbers 14, but then
somehow, half into his prayer he gets out of it, in verse 8-9. He prayed from this point until evening so
this isn’t all that he prayed but there’s a change in the flow between verses 6
and 7 and 8 and 9. Somewhere the prayer
changed, and somewhere there he probably confessed his sins and recognized what
he was saying, and then he says “O Lord,” and from verse 8 and 9 on the whole
prayer changes its tone, and now he’s concerned, not with the mess that he’s in
but with the honor of God. The whole
prayer has changed. The honor of God is
at stake, that’s the point and that’s the issue that he comes back to. That you remember was the issue Moses dealt
with in Exodus 32, when the Israelites had broken the covenant, what did Moses
say? He said O God help the poor
people? No, that’s not what he
prayed. O God, forgive me for my
sins. No, that’s not what he
prayed. He said God, if You let go of us
now your testimony will be destroyed in history and it was a concern for God’s
honor in history. That was what motivated
these men in prayer and you see this in Joshua 7:8-9. It’s a concern for the honor of God; God, you
can’t let it go now because if you let it go everybody is looking and if you
let this go your name goes and You go.
So it’s arguing back to God, that whole fundamental thrust of God’s plan.
Now in verses 10-15 you have God’s answer, and I want you to look
carefully at this answer. I want you to
see first of all what God does in verse 10.
Notice how He answers; it’s very abrupt.
It’s unlike the way God usually speaks to Joshua in this book, it’s a
very abrupt answer and here you have part of that anthropomorphism that’s so
exciting in Scripture. People always say
the Bible is primitive because it pictures God as a man with hands and eyes and
ears. Bologna! The point there is that God acts like a man,
it’s an anthropomorphism and there’s a reason for it. The Bible pictures God as a man so you can
solve the sovereignty/free will problem.
That’s why the Bible pictures God as a man. If God is not a man who acted this way we’d
have a tremendous problem trying to reconcile sovereignty and free will; as it
is we don’t. Why? Because you can interact with God as a fellow
man. Now this is not denying the deity
of God, I’m not saying that. But God has
personality, you have been made in His image, and you can have a personal involvement
with Him. That’s why God is pictured as
answering anthropomorphically. And you
might say, if we put it piously, God is hacked right at this point and He shows
His reaction. God is reacting like a
person, not a machine. It’s not like
Joshua comes and there’s a set of lights that flash and out spits a little
information, hotline to infinity. It’s
not just that, it’s true these words are coming from infinity but they are not
being spit out automatically out of a machine; they are being given to him by a
personal God who was angry with him, and is angry at the whole situation and he
acts this way.
So in verse 10 it’s very abrupt in the Hebrew, “Get up, why do you lie
there upon your face?” These are the
words of a personal God. [11] “Israel hath
sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them; for
they have even taken of the accursed thing,” or the charem, “and they have also stolen, and dissembled it,” that is
they hid it, “and they have put it even among their own stuff. [12] Therefore
the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their
backs before their enemies, because they were accursed. Neither will I be with you any more, except
ye destroy the accursed thing from among you. [13] Up, sanctify the people and
say, Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow; for thus saith the LORD God of Israel,
There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel, and you cannot stand
before thine enemies, until you take away the cursed thing from among you.”
This is a problem that’s got to be dealt with. And you’re not going to stand and I’m not
going to bless you until I see that it’s dealt with. So you have a tremendous concept; remember
these aren’t heathen, these are believers; judgment must begin in the house of
the Lord and here’s the principle. God
is impartial and treats His children by the same absolutes He treats the
non-Christian. And this is why God is
angry. And in verses 14-15 He continues
His instructions. [14, “In the morning,
therefore, ye shall be brought according to your tribes; and it shall be that
the tribe which the LORD taketh shall come according to the families of it; and
the family which the LORD shall take shall come by households; and the
household which the LORD shall take shall come man by man. [15] And it shall
be, that he who is taken with the accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he
and all that he hath, because he hath transgressed the covenant of the LORD,
and because He hath wrought folly in Israel.” ]
I want you to see something else about this. Joshua kept after the Lord until he got an
answer. Joshua kept before that ark
until he got an answer; this is importune at prayer. There’s a parable I always had difficult
understanding in the Bible and I’m understanding more and more as I see this
history. It’s the parable of the
importune woman, and it always look to me like Jesus is wrong there; I know He
wasn’t wrong but it just looks wrong.
And that is that He says to this woman, she came and she knocked on the
door and she kept knocking on the door and kept knocking on the door until this
wicked judge came to the door. And the
[can’t understand word] was that what you have to do is pester God until He
comes to the door. And then Jesus turns
around and says look, that judge is going to come to the door in response to
that woman, you keep on knocking on the door, He’s going to come; how much more
will your heavenly Father come to you if you knock on His door.
And the point here is that for some reason, and I do not profess to
understand all of this, but for some reason God wants us to pester Him, not
because it’s merit, not because He rewards you with brownie points for how many
minutes you pester, him, that’s not the concept. The concept is that He wants you to come to
grips with Him in a personal way. And
this I do not know how it can be done except by prayer. And that is that He wants you to grapple with
Him as an individual and I think one reason why He does this, He wants us to
walk away from Him knowing that we have met a personal God and we won’t have
some just philosophical concept, we won’t just have an idea, that we’ll have
walked away and said I met a person, and I have a personal relationship with
God and I have to struggle to make the personal relationship work. That’s part of a personal relationship; it
takes work to make it go. And I think
this is why the Bible pictures this again and again. These men have to work at it and this is
Joshua, working until evening, until he gets an answer from God; God answer me,
I’m asking you a question. And he keeps
after it and keeps after it and keeps after it until God answer Him. And God does answer him.
What is the answer that God gives here.
The answer that God gives is found again in the New Testament. Let’s go to the New Testament and then we’ll
come back here. Can you think of an
incident in the early dispensation of the church that parallels what’s going to
happen here. This is the age of Israel;
these people are going to be burned to death for they’d done, they’re going to
be stoned and burned, Achan and his family.
Can you think of an incident in the New Testament? Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5, let’s go there
just to show you that this same principle holds for the Church Age. It actually begins in Acts 4:31, “And when
they had prayed,” this is the disciples gathering together in the early days of
the church, and they pray and they are filled with the Holy Spirit, [32] “and
there’s a multitude of those that believed,” now look at verse 32, one of the
signs of spirituality, look, “those that believed were of one heart and of one
soul,” and this is the early so-called communism passage in the Bible; it’s not
communism, it’s just that these people were poor, they lacked resources, and materially
they helped one believer to another.
This is not communism, this is voluntary charity. And it flowed freely among them.
Verse 33, “And with great power gave the apostles witness of the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all.” They’re being blessed, just as Joshua and
Israel were being blessed at Jericho, and then something is going to happen,
and verse 43 introduces the subject, that these people who had wealth in that
day would come and they’d lay it at the apostles’ feet, “and distribution was
made unto every man according as he had need,” verse 35. This is a tremendous thing; I think that we
in our generation overlook this a lot of times in evangelical churches; there
is a place for material ministry. In
fact the word “ministry” if you look it up in a concordance find the number of
times the word ministry occurs in the New Testament and then list beside that
the number of times it’s material. It’s
about 90% of the time. [35] “And laid
them down at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made unto every man
according as he had need.”
Verse 36, and Barnabas came, and [37] “Having land, sold it, and brought
the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.”
And so it was a tremendous thing here, there’s a whole group
operating. But notice what
happened. Inevitably when a group begins
to move you have this problem; people move with the group, not because of their
own personal conviction, but they move to impress the group and go with the
group. You see, you can have campfires
in Christian like you do in the non-Christian world; and that is you get a
click going and you have 3 or 4 real dynamic Christians and have hangers-on all
around these real dynamic Christians, just a crowd of really beggars and the
only reason why they hang on is because they want to share the glory of the
Christian who’s dynamic. And they hang
on not out of social conviction; they hang on out of mimicking.
And here’s the same thing.
Ananias and Sapphira see what Barnabas had done, they see this man truly
acting out of mercy, he gave his property, he sold his holdings, his real
estate holdings, gave it to the apostles, and it impresses them. And so approbation lust begins to operate. 5:1, “But a certain man named Ananias, with
Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession, [2] And kept back part of the price, his
wife being also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at
the apostles’ feet.” Now there’s the key
to the problem. You wonder why is it
that Sapphira is brought in for judgment; she knew about it. And this is how she’s implicated. Let’s go back to that [can’t hear word]. You’re in a group; here we only have two
people, man and wife. Both are judged
even though the man was the one who sold the property. Why is the wife also? Because she went along with him, she did not
make a choice against him for the Lord.
Now this is very difficult; one of the most difficult problems I face is
when I get a telephone call saying my husband will not let me study the Word of
God by tape recording in my house, he will not let me come to church, any
church, what do I do? At this point the
husband is a tremendous tension here because of 1 Peter 3, it says the woman is
to go along, and yet the husband has completely over extended his authority in
this area, and that husband stands under the judgment of God for doing
this. He is taking and dividing the
bread and tearing it away from the child of God. This is really the meaning of the parable
about the millstone around the neck; this is what it means, that you’ve taken a
child that is God’s child and you’ve put a millstone around the neck and Jesus
said it would be better for that person that he be drowned, better that person
not do this than [can’t hear].
Here we have the same thing except here Sapphira goes along, she didn’t
make a break with her husband over this issue, she went along with him and then
Peter says in verse 3, notice this is to believers, “Satan has filled your
heart.” People who say that Satan can’t
infiltrate believers, what do you do with verse 3? It’s the same word for the filling of the
Holy Spirit, and it’s a believer, regenerate, “Satan has filled your heart to
lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land. [4]
While it remained, was it not your own?”
You have the power to do this, and of course he was killed at this
point. So you have that incident; at
least we’ve got this out of the New Testament and that is God has the same
attitude now that He did back then.
Back to Joshua, in verse 16, summing this up, we come down to the final
problem of the chapter. “So Joshua rose
up early in the morning, and brought Israel by their tribes, and the tribe of
Judah was taken,” this the use of the Urim and Thummim, we don’t really know
what this was but it was something the high priest used, something like lots
but it wasn’t lots; if it was lots it would fall under the condemnation 18, so
it wasn’t lots, but it was some method the high priest had of discerning God’s
will, not by direct revelation, but you had different stones. Many think he had a breastplate, that’s why
it was the breastplate of righteousness, and he would take these stones that
were marked yes or no, we’d say heads or tails, and he’d put them in there, and
then after prayer and consecration he’d reach in and pull one; this is one
theory. Another theory says that he had
stones that actually shone the Shekinah glory at certain points. But somehow the priest was able to determine
the will of God in this area.
And think of the tremendous pressure on Achan. Here you have the twelve tribes, his tribe is
taken, and then you go through the tribes, and in verse 17 “And he brought the
family of Judah, and he took the family of the Zerahites; and he brought the
family of the Zerahites man by man, and Zabdi was taken. [18] And he brought
his household man by man, and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the
son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken. [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.”
There are several things to see here; the first thing to see is how God
closes in. There’s a cancer there that’s
obstructing His work with that group.
And God is going to close in until He finds it and deals with the
problem. And He’s not going to stop
until He does. If you were making a
movie of this or writing a novel about this, [can’t understand words] the
pressure you could make on Achan, all of a sudden he stands there, the twelve
tribes go before the high priest, his tribe is taken and he knows it’s one step
closer. And then all the families get
together; his family is taken and then his father is taken, and it goes like
this on down the line, you can see the justice of God closing in, closing in,
closing in, but he never says a word. He
must have a titanic obsession that he can escape God’s judgment at this point,
he can outwit it some way, because when Joshua replies to him, verse 19, he
says “tell me now,” NOW Achan, you had all this time, we didn’t have to go
through tribe to family to house and all the way down to you; you could have
stopped the process by confessing your sin at any point in that process but you
didn’t, did you? You waited until we
closed down, closed down and closed down, NOW we know you’re the one, now tell
us.
And even though this has happened, I want you to notice the manner in
which Joshua speaks to him. Joshua said,
“Achan, My son,” and I want you to know that there’s a gentleness about
this. One of the great commentators in
the book of Joshua, Dr. Bush in New York City in the 19th century,
said this about it, and he’s pointing out that what we have in verse 19 is a
model for every policeman, and for every official involved in the judicial
process. And that’s this: when he is
obliged, Joshua, to act as a magistrate, what he was willing that Achan should
lower himself as a father toward him, and in so doing proposed a noble example
to all who have the administration of justice.
Treat the offending one with a spirit of meekness, not knowing that we
ourselves should have done if God had put us into the hand of [can’t
understand; last two paragraphs very difficult to understand] In other words, we could be Achan were it
not for the grace of God.
And I find, frankly, that this is one thing that hacks a lot of people,
and I must confess, as strong as I am for law and order, I find a lot of police
in the way they handle people and the way a lot of judicial officials act, they
ask for trouble, just the way they do it.
Just because they have a badge on it makes them superman, and this is
totally uncalled for, and this is a totally wrong thing, and the police heap
trouble on their shoulders every time they do this. Untrained officials dealing with people, if
you treat people like this they’re going to rebel; of course they are. When a person comes along and judges a person
just because he acted a certain way, this is asking for trouble.
Joshua knows to not do that.
Joshua knows it and he’s driving for it, and he’s not going to let the
man get away, he’s all for law and order, but there’s an element of
graciousness here; there’s not this harshness at all. There is an insistence on absolute justice
but at the same time it’s mellowed with the sphere of grace. And this is a model for all law and order
officials. [Can’t hear section]
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. [21] And I saw
among the spoils a beautiful Babylonish garment,” these were fantastic garments
in the ancient world. This is like
getting something from Nieman Marcus, and he saw that lying there and he just
couldn’t resist the label. Except it
didn’t have labels on it, they didn’t take some coat and put “M” on it and mark
the price up three times. What they did
was the Babylonians took this clothing and they actually put pictures… this is
very [can’t understand word] in the ancient world, they actually put pictures
on the clothing and every woman in the ancient world wanted at least one piece
of clothing from Babylon because… and we find this in Ezekiel, this is what the
Jewish women wanted, they wanted a fashion from Babylon; nothing wrong with
high fashion, it was just the fact that the pictures that were on these clothes
were pagan pictures. Every piece of art
in the ancient world was basically spiritual.
When I was in Dallas last week I asked Dr. Waltke why it is that every
country in the world had art except Israel?
Why? Because all the art in the
ancient world was Theocentric and they were prohibited by the third
commandment, thou shalt not make any image of God, so therefore they could not
have any art form because all the art forms of that day were Theocentric.
So here it’s the same with these Babylonish garments, they are
tremendous garments, but there is two things wrong with it; first, its heathen
background and second whose is it? It’s
God’s; this city has been totally devoted to God and yet Achan took it;
“Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of
fifty shekels, weight, then I coveted them, and took them.” If you want a
graphic display of how sin works look at the verbs in verse 21, “I saw, I
coveted, I took.” See it starts with
mental attitude sins and works out to overt sins. That’s always the way, never visa versa, all the overt sins you see
in society have come from the inside; mental attitude sins. And here’s a case in point, he saw, he
coveted, he took.
And then Joshua sent messengers and in verse 26, we have the Lord’s
anger. “And they raised over him a great
heap of stones unto this day. So the LORD turned from the fierceness of His
anger.” I want you to notice that it’s
not until the last verse of this chapter that God’s anger is turned away. And notice that God would not sacrifice,
would not compromise an inch, the problem had to be dealt with and there were
no ifs ands or buts about it; it had to be dealt with, and until that was dealt
with God was angry. I know what you’re
going to say, the thoughts going through your mind, they go through my
mind. Yeah but God doesn’t act that way
all during church history. Be careful,
be careful of that statement. When He starts
a dispensation off God acts in a very dramatic way. This is one illustration.
He won’t tolerate sin and He makes this very dramatic and very clear for
all generations. He gave us the warning
with Ananias and Sapphira in the book of Acts; He won’t tolerate within the
church either. Now you say yes, but He
doesn’t kill people today. You’d be
surprised what goes on in the way of [can’t hear] discipline. But I will agree, we don’t have the
spectacular form of discipline we do have in Acts 4-5, but reason it this way;
is the reason we don’t have more blessing is because of the same thing. In other words, it seems to me God can
discipline us as a local congregation, the same way, not exactly by zeroing in
on the problem and knocking out the offending person, or the offending problem,
but He can do the same thing by simply withholding His blessing. So God does; if God is immutable He’s the
same yesterday, today and forever. It
seems to be logical, if you think through this passage, He’s going to act that
way to [not sure, sounds like: Lubbock Bible] church. And we have our own set of problems in a
local congregation. We have the problem
of whining and gossip as individuals, usually by people who have no information
whatever. I regularly have been getting
letters criticizing the way I run this church, criticizing some of you for your
so-called lack of spirituality, etc. But
this is by people who pass through here once every 85 days or something and
become self-appointed experts in Lubbock Bible Church so I usually don’t pay
too much attention. But every time I do
get something like this or it comes to my attention the gossip and maligning
going on, I do wonder whether this again might be a function of why we aren’t
growing faster than we are and I don’t mean numerically. Lubbock Bible Church has no problem with
numbers and no problem with finances.
Our problem isn’t in that area, our problem is personal and individual
growth. And this has got to be taken
care of and I am convinced and I told the board this that we are not getting
involved in any building program or anything else until this problem is dealt
with. I cannot see how God is going to
honor any further extension or anything else until we get a core of trained men
and trained leaders who will exercise their spiritual discernment. It’s a prerequisite; it’s how God works. And it’s foolish to go any further until this
problem is taken care of. There are
several other problems I won’t go into but I just lay this before you as an
application of the teaching of Joshua 7 to us as a local congregation.
We’re not playing games, we live in the 20th century, our
generation may be the last generation of the church. Our generation certainly, if Christ doesn’t
come in our generation, certainly it looks like He’s going to come in our
children’s generation, and that’s being optimistic. But even if that were not so, we face some
more battles close at home and that is this, that all around us, in the
community all around us, every day you look you find the Christian consensus is
lost. You find the effect of the
Christian principles of 200 years ago gone down the drain, completely down the
drain. All around us is a world in darkness. Those of you who have struggled through the
Framework by now you see what I mean when I say the world is in darkness, and
what a precious thing you have in the Word of God. Now if we’re going to be communicators into
that darkness we must train ourselves now.
And this means effort, and it means you don’t do this by coming to
church at