Joshua 15
Loyalty under Group Pressure - 7
We dealt with the sin of Achan and this introduced us to certain
mechanics which we want to clear up. I
was asked at the end of the evening service last week if I would go into more
detail about why it is that the family of Achan was stoned to death when it was
Achan and only Achan that actually stole the material. Why is it that the family is implicated by
what the father does? Isn’t this a
violation of Biblical justice, visiting the sins of the father upon the
children, and isn’t there a violation somewhere of God’s moral law. This led me to think perhaps I hadn’t made it
clear enough about the mechanics in Joshua 7.
If you go back to verse 11 you remember that when God told Joshua to get
up off his knees and told him what the problem was that God began by referring
to something in verse 11, “Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed
My covenant which I commanded them; for they have taken of the accursed thing,
and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among
their own stuff.” The basis of
condemnation and that Law which Achan, and apparently his family, broke, was
none other than the Law that was given by Moses which we studied in Deuteronomy. And this forces us back once again to get a
perspective. We’ve been going quite
rapidly through Joshua and it’s good if we back off a minute and get a picture
of what’s really going on here as far as the mechanics of history are
concerned.
To do this we have to remember that the books that you call the
historical books, the first five books of the Bible are called the Law; the
next set of books are called the Prophets; included in the Prophets books as
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and then strangely enough when you go to look in
your Hebrew Bible, lo and behold, in the Prophets books are Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, Kings and books like that. You
say wait a minute, what’s going on here, these are history books, not prophecy
books. They’re not predicting anything;
they’re just straight flat history, what is going on. Well, this is the role of the prophet. The prophet was to take the Law and explain
it in the context of history so that a prophet was not just a foreteller, a
prophet was one who had the divine viewpoint of his own history and past
history. Maybe if we put it this way, a
prophet would correspond in our culture to a historical analyst. That would be the best analysis of a prophet. A prophet would be a historical analyst in
that he explained to you what is going on.
He’s literally explained to you what is going on in history.
And so the books of Joshua, Judges and Samuel and Kings are not written
actually by Joshua and the Judges and Samuel and the kings. They are written by a school of prophets
commissioned in Deuteronomy 18 to guarantee an accurate infallible inspired
record of
Now the history, therefore, of
And then we have chesed and chesed is another nuance to it; the word
means that God loves in terms of His prior agreement. And so chesed
kind of love means that God honors his agreement that He made with you, and He
will go even further than the agreement He made with you. But you’ve got to see
it as the chesed love is a love that
is linked always to a covenant. Ahabah love is love that is free. Ahabah
love causes the covenant to be formed, for Deuteronomy tells us that God said I
loved Abraham and I loved him and I hated the other people. Now it doesn’t mean that God hated in the
sense of repulsive, but it does mean a sovereign choice was made to love
Abraham and to hate that which He did not love.
There was a distinction an antithesis, a black and a white made right at
this point.
This is why all world religions are condemned by Genesis 12. Genesis 12 says every world religion that
developed outside of Abraham is absolutely totally and irreparably wrong. Genesis 12 and the election of Abraham is the
John 14:6 of the Old Testament because when God called Abraham out of
Now when you come down to that, the divine viewpoint analysis of history
becomes important, and when we go to the chesed
and the ahabah types of love that God
has we have to remember that the prophets were interpreting this love, chesed love, not ahabah; ahabah love is He
set up the covenant and got it going; chesed
love means He kept the covenant going according to his Word. Now this is where this will help you; this
may seem like just so much Hebrew lexical study to you. Until you take this knowledge and you begin
to think about that term which you often hear in hymns, which you sometimes
hear among Christians, and it says “thy mercies are new every morning,” it
comes from Jeremiah, or “the mercies of the Lord endureth forever,” and these
phrases. Do you know what you’re saying there?
Do you really know what you’re saying.
The word “mercies” is chesed
and what you’re really saying is that God has promised His word and today and
tomorrow and the next day and the day after that and the day after that, etc.
He is loyal to His Word that He’s given me; that’s what you’re saying, His
mercies. It’s not some vague sentimental
maudlin thing that just gives you a nice cuddly feeling on the inside when you
say “God’s mercies endureth forever.”
You’re saying something far tighter than that. You’re saying that the legal contract that He
has expressed to me in His Word, He is backing up with full force at this
moment now in my life. That’s what
you’re saying when you say “His mercies endureth forever.” It is a chesed
love, a loyal love to His Law.
So the prophets, out of a ministry of concern for their generation wrote
history to show chesed, to show that
God loves us and He was faithful to that which He had promised. That is the purpose of the prophetic
historical books. This is why these
books are not made to give you doctrine in a direct sense. It’s wrong to build doctrine out of Acts; it’s
wrong to build doctrine out of Joshua, it’s wrong to build doctrine out of
Judges, it’s wrong to build doctrine out of Kings, Samuel or any history book
of the Old Testament. You can if you’re
careful, but people usually aren’t careful so it’s safer if you just don’t
bother, unless you’re really skilled at this and if you’re really skilled at
this then you’ll see the point this then you’ll see the point the historian is
making. This is a man or men, we don’t
know who they are, who are inspired by God to write down from the materials
Joshua furnished them, some parts of which Joshua himself may have written, the
Bible doesn’t tell us. But here they
are, they’re giving us historical source material and they’re breaking it down
for our understanding. This is why I
tried to show you that the book of Joshua always present history in triplet
form: the Lord said; Joshua said; the people did. Over and over you have these three
steps. In chapter 7 you notice that it’s
broken in the first part, the historian is trying to tell you something
then.
Keep this is mind when you study these history books, imagine yourself
sitting at the feet of a prophet; just imagine that; maybe this will help you
understand this a little better. Just
imagine yourself sitting down and you’re interviewing a man who was on the
scene and is telling you the history of
So we want to go back and make the connection because maybe I haven’t
made this clear enough so that you’re losing the forest for the trees here in
all this detail of Joshua. I want to
take you back and show you first some things in chapter 7, then I want to take
you to the Old Testament so that you’ll see that Joshua 7 and all of this has
been written, not just to account for history but to account for God who is
moving in history. The focus isn’t on
the history, it’s the God behind the history.
And so this is the whole objective here.
In Joshua 7 the first thing to notice is verse 11, as I pointed
out. The whole issue is that Achan
transgressed the covenant of God. He
transgressed and broke the covenant of God and the question we’re immediately
faced with: is God as faithful to His cursings as He is faithful to His
promise. Christians always like to say I
believe God is faithful to His promises, or His blessing, but they don’t like
to say that God is also faithful to His cursings and if I’m a bad boy I get
spanked; they don’t like to say this.
But one is a corollary to the other.
If you think you can get out from under something that you’ve done wrong
and for which God has said He’s going to discipline you, if you think you can
weasel out from under that, but on the other hand you turn right around and say
but I can claim the promises of God, what are you doing? You’re breaking a two-fold analogy. If God says He’s going to discipline people
who wise-off in His plan He’s going to discipline and that is as certain as the
fact that He’s also going to bless according to His promise. So if you’re going to claim the promises
you’d better start claiming the discipline too because they both flow
together. A loyal God is loyal both to
His promises and to His cursings.
That’s the principle that Joshua 7 is trying to show us. Verse 13, when God says “Sanctify
yourselves,” we discussed that, that “there is an accursed thin in the middle
of you,” and Israel, “you canst not stand before your enemies, until you take
away the accursed thing from in the middle of you.” There’s something which is accursed and I am
not going to bless you as long as that cursed thing is there; it’s just
impossible, I am not going to do it, I told you I wasn’t back when I gave you
the covenant and I am faithful to My blessings, I am faithful to My cursings
and I am not going to bless you at that point.
You have the accursed thing, the charem
thing in the middle of you and I’m going to be faithful to My Law and I’m going
to hold to it.
A simple application of this if you want a practical one is that when
government or parents or anybody in authority are not consistent with their
express will they decrease credibility in themselves. It would be far better for the law of this
land if we would elect a whole new slate of people and they were to go in and
erase every law on the books and start all over again. We’ve got laws on the
books that aren’t being enforced, they never were intended to be enforced and
it’s ridiculous. And people know they’re
not enforced, except when somebody can’t afford a lawyer. So we have this problem in this country.
Now the point is that if you’re going to have credible government the
government, if it’s going to say don’t do this, when you violate it they ought
to do something about it. The same thing
with parents; parents threaten their children; don’t do this or I’m going to do
something, the kid goes ahead and does it; if you do it once more I’m going to
something; and then the kid does it, now if you do it once more I’m going to do
something, it goes on for 25 times and that’s wrong. Those of you who have heard Joe Temple on the
tape know your child, or you’ve read it in a book; he has a tremendous point
there, you really should never raise your voice, you give the command once,
make sure it’s clear, if it’s not clear clarify it, and if it’s clear and they
violate it then go into punishment status.
You shouldn’t have to repeat things 25 times. And that’s the same thing with God, it’s
trying to show here through a drastic, and you might say horrifying and overly
cruel punishment, He is trying to teach that lesson in Joshua as He tried to
teach it to the church. Remember the
incident, when God started church history what did He do? Ananias and Sapphira were the two clucks that
happened to come along and He used them to illustrate the same principle of
Achan. There’s always… as P. T. Barnum
said, there’s an idiot everywhere. And
God has His share and there’s always some dumb believer that plays the
role.
So Achan just happened to be the right man at the wrong place, doing the
wrong thing. So God says all right, I am
going to make an example of you Achan; now God didn’t do this every time but
with Achan He did. The reason why God
doesn’t and He relinquishes is not a compromise of authority; it’s the problem
of grace. If He really had all of us
down to the point of Achan we’d really have some problems, the congregation
would be decimated and probably the preacher.
We’d have a problem then, if God were totally consistent with this all
the time. But fact is that He has
deliberately emphasized at the beginning of the dispensation that He means to
enforce His Law and His promises. You
may think this is horrible but think of the fact that this is saying something
wonderful to you; it’s saying that the God who enforced the discipline upon
Achan and He was stoned to death and he was burned, and Ananias and Sapphira
were killed, the same God that did that is the same God that stands in back of
the promise that He’s given you. So this
is the emphasis on the faithfulness of God.
So don’t look upon this as just something nasty, there’s a greater
principle here, it’s the faithfulness of God that’s at issue.
Now come back to the terms of the covenant, Deut. 28. We want to back to that passage and summarize
it very briefly so you can see some of the mechanics of the covenant. The Mosaic Covenant is what is called a
conditional covenant. All other
covenants of the Bible are unconditional.
The Mosaic Covenant had two things; first of all it said you will have
military victory, you will have economic prosperity, you will have occupation
of the land and you will have blessing in general if, with a big fat “IF,” if
you are loyal to me nationally. This is
not individual, national; if you are not, then through a series of five degrees
of discipline I will take you, Israel, over into a status where you will have
total military defeat, where you will have economic collapse, where you will be
ejected from the land and instead of blessing you will be a by-word among the
nations. And he says that is the
either/or, either blessing with obedience, curing with disobedience. And Deut. 28 is that section of the Mosaic
treaty which gives us the cursings and the blessings.
Very briefly, when we went through Deut. 28, remember three circles, and
that is at the center of this chapter, this is a chiastic chapter meaning that
the man starts out dealing with this outside circle; the outside circle deals
with international relations, the inside circle domestic relations, and the
center circle the lordship of the nation.
Chapter 28 starts out dealing first with the international area, then it
starts dealing with the domestic area, then he goes to the lordship, then he
goes back to the domestic area, then back to the international. Notice it comes in the circle and then comes
out of the circle. This is called
chiastic structure and is used by writers of Scripture whenever they want to
emphasize something central and crucial.
In other words, instead of giving you a list they cross the list, it’s
called chiastic structure because it’s from the Greek word Chi that looks like
this, and so they crossed it and at the middle of the cross is the center
emphasis of the passage. So the central emphasis of this passage is found in
verse 38-48.
Deut. 28:38-48. “Thou shalt carry
much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust
shall consume it. [39] Thou shalt plant vineyards and dress them, but shalt
neither drank of the wine, nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them.
[40] Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy borders, but thou shalt not
anoint thyself with the oil; for thine olive shall cast its fruit. [41] Thou
shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall
go into captivity. [42] All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust
consume. [43] The sojourner who is within thee shall get up above thee very
high, and thou shalt come down very low. [44] He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt
not lend to him; he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail. [45]
Moreover, all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and
overtake thee, till thou be destroyed, because thou hearkened not unto the
voice of the LORD thy God, to keep His commandments, and His statutes which He
commanded thee; [46] And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder,
and upon thy seed forever. [47] Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with
joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things, [48]
Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies whom the LORD shall send against thee,
in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in lack of all things; and he
shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.”
Now the key thing about that is in verse 48, because in verse 48 the
central part of this chiastic structure what God is saying here is that if you
won’t let Me rule you, this will you; you will be ruled, by Me and if you don’t
change and would have Me rule you, then I turn you over to these forces and
they will rule you, but you will not rule yourself. Either you will be ruled by Me or you will be
ruled by this. That’s the sovereign God of history speaking, no in between, no
both/ands, it’s either/or; either you are ruled by Me or you’re ruled by
this. And that’s the central function of
the blessing in the covenant.
Now God had a way of spanking the nation and that is given in Lev. 26,
the five degrees or intensity of spanking.
By the way, don’t think He doesn’t spank Gentile nations; and don’t
think He isn’t disciplining the United States either. The blessings and the cursings are not
mandatory in Gentile nations like they are in Israel but they do represent His
ever abiding faithfulness and His ever abiding wrath. Now the first step of discipline that He
would exert upon the nation is found in verse 14-17, “But if you will not
hearken unto Me, and will not do all these commandments; [15] And if you shall
despise My statutes, or if your soul abhor Mine ordinances, so that ye will not
do all My commandments, but that ye break My covenant; [16] I also will do this
unto you: I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning
fever, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart; and ye shall sow
your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. [17] And I will set my face
against you, and you shall be slain
before your enemies; they that hate you shall reign over you,” now think of
Joshua 7, “you will be slain before your enemies; they that hate you shall
reign over you, and you shall flee when
none pursues you.”
In other words, there’s a mental and a physical and a military
implication at the first cycle of discipline or the first stage. That’s the first stage; God begins to apply
the heat. Then He goes on to the second
stage in verses 18-20, “And if you will not yet for all this hearken unto me,”
in other words, He spanked once and they didn’t get with it, and if you’re not
going to get it this time “then I will punish you seven times more for your
sins. [19] And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your
heaven as iron, and your earth as bronze, [20] And your strength shall be spent
in vain; for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of
the land yield their fruits.” So you
have the second stage of discipline, it escalates, the heat gets turned up some
more, if you don’t like it, well you’re going to get some more of it till you
get with it. This is an escalation of
punishment, another spanking, the second stage, given in verses 18-20.
Now in verses 21-22 we have the third stage, “And if ye walk contrary unto Me,
and will not hearken unto Me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you
according to your sins. [22] And I will also send wild beasts among you, which
shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in
number; and your highways shall be desolate.”
So verses 21-22 is the third degree of discipline.
The fourth degree of discipline, verses 23-26, “And if you will be
reformed by Me by these things, wit will walk contrary unto Me, [24] Then will
I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times [more] times
for your sins. [25] And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the
quarrel [vengeance] of My covenant,” the word “quarrel” is rib, and it’s a legal lawsuit.
This forms the background for the prophetic works of Hosea, Micah,
Isaiah and some of the Minor Prophets.
[26] “…and when you are gathered together within your cities, I will
send the pestilence among you, and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the
enemy. [27] And when I have broken the
staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they
shall deliver you your bread again by weight; and ye shall eat, and not be
satisfied.” There we have the fourth
degree of discipline.
And finally the fifth degree, and this is significant, verses 27, “And
if you will not for all this hearken unto Me, but walk contrary unto Me, [28]
Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise
you seven times for your sins. [29] And you will eat the flesh of your sons,
and the flesh of your daughters shall you eat,” and don’t think that didn’t happen
literally. Read Josephus and read how
the women in Jerusalem in 70 AD were eating their own children, how some of
them were so starved they were eating their own children and another woman
would come along and grab the arm out of their mouth and eat that. That literally happened twice in history; in
586 BC when Jerusalem went down and it happened again in 70 AD and you have
historical sources to prove it. That
actually occurred so don’t explain this away as some sweet little allegory;
this isn’t allegory, this is the real thing. [30] “And I will destroy your high
places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of
your idols, and My soul shall abhor you. [31] And I will make your cities
waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the
savor of your sweet odors. [32] And I will bring the land into desolation: and
your enemies who dwell therein shall be astonished at it. [33] I will scatter
you among the nations, and will draw out a sword after you…”
So what He’s saying is that I will kick you out of the land, throw you
out of the land; the very possession which I’ve promised you I will throw you
out of it. It doesn’t mean they lose
possession for eternity, the born again crowd come back in the millennium, etc.
you have that not violated but the actual possession in the immediate present
is ruled out.
This is why I have made the analogy with the Christian at this
point. Here we are, we accept Christ as
Savior, we enter into an eternal covenant with Him, like the Abrahamic Covenant
with Israel; that is eternal, that never ends, that is not violated. But we also have, down below, the area of the
known will of God for us as believers and when we get outside of the known will
of God we are out of fellowship and when we’re out of fellowship God doesn’t
like it and He’s going to start disciplining, not necessarily in this program,
but Lev. 26, though it’s addressed to the nation Israel, shows you what God
does and how He thinks of believers that get out of fellowship. Now at this point you say, wait a minute, I
always heard Christianity was nice, sweetness and light and all the rest of
it. How come you’re brining in this ugly
stuff? For this reason, when you are
born again, and we have to hold this when we hold to eternal security, this is
the other side of eternal security; eternal security is like a coin, people
like what’s on top, eternal security, but they don’t like to see what’s
underneath. And what’s underneath is
that you are also locked into the family of God and it also means that He is
your Father. And it’s sweet and nice to
sing our heavenly Father, who art in heaven, and all the rest of it, and you
say isn’t that sweet, I can call God my Father.
But on the other hand, if you get out of line what does the Father
do?
So when you are locked into a father-son relationship, there are two
things you can say about it; in one sense it gives you something tremendous
because He is your Father. In fact, the
New Testament goes, shall we say sacrilegiously, to call God “Daddy.” That’s the word “Papa,” as it’s used in
Galatians and in Romans, the idea that the believer can refer to the God of the
universe as “Daddy,” not irreligiously and piously but it’s that friendly and
it’s that warm. But on the other hand,
having said that, because you are the children of your heavenly Father it means
also He will be a Father when necessary.
And when you are out of fellowship and in rebellion against Him your
heavenly Father is also a Father then and it means He spanks. So think of that
next time you hear believers say my heavenly Father, etc. He is your heavenly Father both ways, in
blessing and in discipline He is your heavenly Father. And this is the thing with the nation Israel;
they were locked into covenant with this God.
So we have the blessings and the cursings and this should show you the
necessary problem of Achan.
Now let’s go to Deut. 7, here again we find some of the mechanics of
this covenant as they work out in history.
There are specific provisions here and we have lots of lessons to draw
from this as believers. Keep in mind the
theme of Deuteronomy is “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,”
mental attitude, “and all thy soul,” details of life. So you have this theme of the book of
Deuteronomy. Inner love which means you
think, your attitudes, and the outer love all thy soul; that’s what those two
words basically mean as we showed in the Deuteronomy series.
But in Deut. 7:1-6 we have the mental attitude of holy war. This is that part of spirituality that deals
with holy war and Deuteronomy 7 in particular deals with the mental attitude of
holy war. And in verses 1-6 we have the
theme of the inevitable conflict, “When the LORD thy God shall bring you into
the land….” [2] “And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee, you
must smite them, and utterly destroy them….”
And the point that we can derive from these first six verses, I’m going
rapidly because I just want to give you an overview, the first six verses basically
have this as their key theme: that if you are a child of God you are adopted
into His family. If His family is having
a feud or a fight with somebody else, you automatically, by virtue of your
membership in that family are forced into confrontation with God’s enemies.
If you have accepted Jesus Christ and you are a child of God, you don’t
have options. You only have two options,
not three; the two options are you get with it and receive the blessing of God
and fight His enemies, or you say no, I am not going to serve God, I am going
to rebel against Him, and receive His cursing, but you don’t have the choice of
uninvolvement. You don’t have the choice
of sitting in the stands and watching the game.
You are a participant one way or the other, there is no middle
ground. And certain things, if you think
back in your life using this perspective, certain things that have happened to
you perhaps can be better explained now; if you think in terms of the fact you are
automatically involved in war.
Now what does this have to do with us?
How can we apply this? The first
thing, if you notice inverses 1-6 there are certain things that are happening
to people who come out to fight. First
they are thrown out, Joshua has a thousand recruits and if he’s following this
procedure of chapter 7 he dismisses most of them. Why? Well, look at the first one, verse 3,
“Neither shalt thou make marriages with them;” the enemies of God, “thy
daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto
thy son.” This means that we cannot be
sloppy in the areas of the home and in the areas of our personal relationships
in the area of marriage. The Bible says
no excuse whatever for a Christian to date and get involved with a
non-Christian; getting involved with non-Christian is asking for trouble and
there’s no better way to get tubed down in the Christian life than to get
martially or romantically involved with a non-Christian. That’s just law out of the Old Testament; it
comes over into the New Testament, 2 Cor.
If you want a fast way to get out of it, that’s the way of doing
it. So this is one area; in war you
don’t marry the enemy’s children. It’s
very simple once you get the concept; if a non-Christian is at war with a
Christian, in a deep way, not necessarily in a physical way but in a deep way,
what are you doing marrying them, getting involved with them. You can’t take middle ground, you’ve got to
decide one way or the other, either you go whole-hog with Him or you go against
Him. You can come up with all sorts of
excuses, I look at the Christian girls or Christian guys and ugh! And all the
rest of it, but it’s funny that somehow those who have always trusted that God
would provide have always found God provided in this area; so you’re doubting
the sovereignty of God.
The second thing if you look at this, you find in verse 5 “But thus
shall you deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their
images, and cut down their idols, and burn their carved images with fire, [6] For
thou art an holy people [unto the LORD thy God’ the LORD thy God has chosen
thee to be a special people unto Himself, above all people who are upon the
face of the earth.”] This seems to imply
that you have to have discernment, in order to cut down the groves you have to
have military skill. This tells me
something else about the Christian holy war.
It means we have to have trained believers, we have to have trained believers. We must have trained believers, I want to
emphasize that, trained believers! We’ve
got believers, the dime and the dozen out doing all sorts of (quote) “works”
for the Lord and they aren’t trained properly with the result that we’re not
having the impact that we should. For
the number of people that we have as missionaries and the number of people we
have doing Christian work, we should be making a lot more inroads than we
are. Why is that? Lack of training! This is one of the great problems; we do not
have trained people.
Dr. Chafer, while at seminary, really reamed the statesman of major
missionary organizations and he was absolutely correct. I can remember the question and answer
period, they were standing in the back, the statesmen of evangelical mission
societies were sitting in the back of the room and Chafer said someday the
statesmen of missionary organizations are going to listen to me when I tell
them, as I have been telling them for 15 years that you don’t send a missionary
into evangelize some group of people without first training that missionary in
how those people think. You send a
missionary out to the jungles; what do you do?
You spend three years training them in the language and two days showing
them how the natives think. Now what’s
more important, learning the language or learning how they think. You have to have both. If it takes you three years to learn the
language you ought to spend at least three years learning how they think, what
are their ways, what are their past theologies, etc. and if you are going to be
an ambassador for Jesus Christ in America, whether it’s on the college campus
or whether it’s in your factory, or whether in some other area of your job or
business, if you’re going to be a witnessing Christian this means for you that
you should be a one-man or one-woman expert on how those people think. How many of you could write a two page paper
on how your associates think in the areas of spiritual things? How many?
Could you tell the chief components of how most of your associates think
in religious [can’t understand word/s]; and until you know how they think, how
do you communicate the gospel. You
can’t, or you can but very ineffectively and that’s exactly Chafer’s point and
some day he says maybe 15 years from the missionary organizations will wake up,
20 years from now maybe the local churches will wake up. So we have this problem of training.
Notice finally, Deut. 7:26, a little thing, and this is the root of
Achan’s sin, “neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest
thou be accursed thing like it,” there you have it, that’s what Achan did and
it’s right back there in the Law, “lest you be accursed thing like it, God is
saying here listen, this is My constitution, if I say something is charem, something is cursed, and you
bring it into your house, you possess it and you become charem and once you
become charem you’re always charem.
This is not loss of salvation, this is in the physical area; you become charem, that which is under God’s wrath,
you must experience God’s wrath, and Achan did.
Now there are some more principles, continuing in the covenant for a
while, Deut. 20:1-9, I want to show you these principles, those of you who were
here in Deuteronomy, don’t just think of this as repetition, this is to remind
you of something. When you read Joshua, think of Deuteronomy. In Deut. 20 we have the other part of
Deuteronomy; Deut. 7 deals with the inner mental attitude; the last part of
Deuteronomy deals with the details of life.
Deut. 7 deals with the inner mental attitude of holy war, Deut. 20 deals
with the outer details of holy war. And
so in Deut. 20 we have various things said.
In verse 5, “And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What
man is there who has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go
and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicated
it. [6] And what man is he who hath planted a vineyard, and hath not yet eaten
of it? Let him also go…” [7] And what man is there who hath betrothed a wife,
and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in
the battle,” etc. Verse 8, “What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted?
Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well
as his heart.” In other words, when you
are in holy war and in grappling, there’s no room for unprepared
believers. Get them out; have one
believer that’s prepared and kick out the other 19 that aren’t prepared. You may start with an army of 20 and wind up
with one but this is the same principle Gideon used. There is a time and a place for training and
if you don’t have trained people they have no business being out there in the
war; get them out! And if they aren’t
convinced this is the will of God, get them out too; tear it down until you
have people who are trained and have confidence that they are doing God’s will,
and get rid of everybody else. Let them
sit in the bleachers or do something, go home and play tidily-winks but get
them out of the way because they have no business being in the front
lines.
So this is the way God works. I
want you to see the norms of how God always worked in history. Verse 16 and 18, Deut. 20, this is what they
were to do to the Canaanite cities, verse 17, “But you shall utterly destroy
them…. [18] That they teach you not to do after all their abominations….” There is one exception and here is where the
prophetic historian of Joshua clarifies something that many of you asked me and
I never did clear up when we went through the Deuteronomy series. Some people asked me this, and the answer is
that when you look at a verse like verse 17 and it says they’re going to
destroy everybody in the village, does that mean everybody? Suppose there are believers there? The answer is given to us in the prophetic
history of Joshua. What happened when
they came across Rahab? In other words,
the prophetic historian is saying that holy war is applicable except when you
find believers and if the believer is there and has already submitted to
Yahweh, you don’t kill them, even if they are Canaanites. Rahab was a Canaanite
prostitute; you couldn’t get a lower class than the Canaanites and in the
Canaanites you couldn’t get a lower class than the prostitute. So you pick this person out, the Canaanite
prostitute, she trusts the Lord and she is fully acceptable and does not come
under verse 17, so we can generalize and say that the Old Testament laws
presumed themselves to be general applications to be provided in specific
situations; if a person were a believer it doesn’t carry.
Another book written to show this principle is the book of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabites, she did not fall under
it. Why?
Because she said where your God goes, your God is my God, where you go I
will go. Ruth declared her submission;
she had bowed her knee to the God of Israel.
So whenever you find a person like this they would not come under the
charem principle and it solves the problem.
Incidentally you will recall we have had a very interesting parallel
between Rahab and Achan. Notice this at
this point. Rahab is called out; Rahab
leads her family to Jesus Christ, that’s why she stays back there, she
witnesses to them and gets them all in the house. So all these people are in the house and they
are believers and they are saved and who does Rahab marry? Extra-biblical tradition says she married one
of the spies, but at least we’re told Salmon was of Judah. Of what tribe does Achan come from? Judah.
And Achan’s family are removed.
So you have the addition of one family and the subtraction of another. There is a parallel here in Joshua. In Joshua 2-3 a lady trusts the Lord in a
pagan city and she’s received and she marries into the tribe of Judah, and yet
within the nation, the so-called children of God, you have apostasy and they’re
cast off into the sin unto death. And so
you have this analogy. Judah wins a
person and they lose a person.
There’s one further passage before we summarize and this directly
answers the problem that we started with and that is what about the family of
Achan. Deut. 13, how is it that his
children and his wife were stoned to death, in spite of the fact that only
Achan was the one who stole the goods.
And with this we are introduced to a tremendous principle, the principle
of loyalty under pressure. In Deut.
13:1-5, I’ve read this to you many times in connection with the logical test
but look at it again from another perspective and it’s saying: “If there arise
among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives thee a sign or a
wonder,” and he makes these prophesies and they come true, but he doesn’t teach
you the Word of God, he has all the flamboyant miracles but one thing
lacking—doctrine. His doctrine conflicts
with Moses. If this is the situation,
then verse 5, “And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to
death,” you shall not follow him, in other words. Now this is saying something. In Deut. 13 we have the call to put the Word
of God over people, and the first class of people are the prophets. In other words, even if the prophet violates
the Word of God, don’t pay attention to him.
Reject him. The Word of God is
the criteria.
Now the next group, verses 6-11 gets closer to home. “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or
thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend who is as
thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods,
which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers, [12] Namely, of the gods of
the people who are round about you….”
Verse 8, Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither
shall thine eye pity him, neither shall thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal
him. [9] But thou shalt surely kill him….”
Again, here is a loved one, notice how close to home this touches. The loyalty is to the Word, not to the prophets,
the clergy, the church, or even your loved ones in your own family. It’s the Word; the Word is first and
everything else is second, no matter how many lumps you take. It’s always the Word, the Word, the
Word! And here if there were people in
that family that violated the Word of God, they were to be reported, and that
is why Achan’s children were stoned to death and his wife was stoned to
death. They put their loyalty to their
father and their husband above their loyalty to the Word of God, and that is
the sin for which they were stoned to death.
They are guilty, along with Achan, because under pressure their loyalty
was to the wrong people.
Now the Word of God wants to protect the home; the Word of God wants to
build the home, but the Word of God is the Word of God and demands absolute
total and complete allegiance, with no competition. And this is the area, the prophets and the
loved ones. And people under pressure
who put their loved ones first and the Word of God second fall into the wrath
of God. And you can say now isn’t this
awful, isn’t this horrible? No it isn’t,
because what would ultimately have happened if this pattern were to continue? The blessing would go, and as cruel as this
may sounds, this means that the Word of God is always first; always first!
Now there are certain modifications I want to introduce because I can
see some wheels turning. We have in this
congregation, as well as many fundamental congregations, a predominance of
women who are either divorced or women whose husbands have died, or women who
are married to non-Christian, or some situation where the husband is not
spiritually with it, and the woman has had to take the role. I’ve seen this so much; it’s nauseating to a
pastor. We live in the generation of the
greatest boobs on the male side of the fence I’ve ever seen. But we have a tremendous dearth in the
American home with this, where the wife is [tape turns, some words missing]
couldn’t listen to the Word of God, by coming to have association with Christians
or anything else, that man is out of line, totally out of line. From the Christian point of view she has
every right to desert at that point. But
very rarely does it ever get down to that.
Now what happens and this is the friction point and this is why I want
to clarify it, a lot of the women don’t know how to handle their men, and the
Christian women have never… and I don’t blame the Christian women for this
simply because we evangelical clergymen have never expounded the doctrine of
sex and marriage correctly from Scripture.
In my research I have never found one book that goes into sex and
marriage from the Biblical point of view deeply enough to be effective. You have some little tweedy little thing
you’re supposed to give the people that are getting married, oh isn’t marriage
wonderful, tra la tra la, and it never touches anything. And then the things that do get into the
nitty gritty are all written from the non-Christian perspective. So there’s a problem here.
But often times the Christian woman isn’t fulfilling her role in 1 Peter
3 and that is why in the last analysis she has trouble with her husband. This is why you can see it often times, the
woman just doesn’t do the obvious thing; she does everything possible under the
sun to hack her husband off, the woman may not know this, but everything to
infuriate a man and how he thinks. If
she sat down and designed it she couldn’t do it any better. But I have seen this; I have been in some
homes where this has happened. And at
first I thought oh, this poor woman, I’m so sorry because her husband is
spiritually out of it and she’s had to take the lead. And when you investigate it you don’t find
that at all; what you find is this woman has never been trained how to handle a
man and so he’s reacted against her and religion; and if she got straightened
up he might straighten up to. So this is
a problem; I’m not saying that’s true in every case, but I’m saying that’s
enough true so beware of just plowing into Deut. 13, taking what I have said
tonight as the green light to just say chuck to your husband, etc. because
unfortunately oftentimes that’s already happened, that’s why you’ve got the
problem in the first place. So please
don’t misapply, I had to protect myself, this is on tape.
Finally, let’s finish this chapter, verses 12-18 and this in the whole
city. “If you shall hear say in one of
thy cities, which the LORD thy God has given thee to dwell there, saying, [13]
Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you,” etc. [14]
Then thou shalt inquire, and make search, and ask diligently….” Verse 15, and
“Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the
sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof,
with the edge of the sword.” Destroying
it, and that means that even loyalty to government shall not interfere with
your loyalty to the Word of God. Nothing
interferes: government, family, church, with your loyalty to the Word. And that’s the theme of Deuteronomy and that
is where Achan’s family got in trouble.
They did a good thing the wrong way; the children were obedient to the
father; the wife was submissive to her husband.
But there’s only one problem, they violated that principle which in 99%
of the time is valid, the children obeying their father, isn’t that nice,
children obeying the father; wife submitting to the husband. There’s only one problem, when the husband is
in open rebellion against the Word of God they can’t do it because to do it
means they violate it and they fall into the same condemnation as the husband,
as shown by Achan’s family.
I hope this will give you some background on the mechanics. I’d like to conclude by one verse in the New
Testament, Gal. 6, just to summarize this off and apply it to the Christian
life in a direct fashion. The principle
that we have been studying tonight in a nutshell: Gal. 6:7-8. God is faithful in every area, not just the
area of blessing you. He is also
faithful in the area of disciplining you because He is your heavenly FATHER, in
capital F-A-T-H-E-R, He is your Father and fathers are loyal in both
areas.
Gal. 6:7-8, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man
sows, that shall he also reap. [8] For he that sows to his flesh shall of the
flesh reap corruption; but he that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap
life everlasting.” There’s no escape
from this; there’s no way to escape this rule because God is God and He is
faithful and He is righteous and He is just.
You may think you escape from it but ultimately you never do, and the
first sign that you’re not escaping will be a lack of blessing, there’s just a
vague lack of blessing, and then the signs become more and more obvious, there
are obvious areas of discipline, etc. that need straightening out. But the New Testament doesn’t leave you with
a dark picture; it says this is a family matter and can be solved by 1 John
1:9, that if when you think about these things and God draws these things to
your mind, why you’re not being blessed because of certain specifics, when the
specifics are clear, 1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins,” and notice the word, “faithful,” … faithful,
just as He was faithful to discipline, just as He is faithful to bless, He is
also faithful “to cleanse us from all sins.