Hello, this is Elder Brandon Hartfield. We're thankful to have this opportunity to come and be on the radio broadcast again this week. We certainly desire the prayers of those of you that know the Lord, and by the Lord's help, we pray that we can stand and be used of God to be a blessing. And we certainly want to look to the Lord in prayer today before we get started with the message. Dear Heavenly Father, as we come to you this day, Father, we're so thankful for the many wonderful things that you've done for us. Father, you have been far better to us than we deserve, and help us not take those blessings for granted. Help us, Father, to look at your goodness and your mercy and your grace, and Father, understand who you are, that we could understand who you would desire us to be. Father, for the lost, help them to see that they have nothing to offer you, but you have everything to offer them through Jesus, as they would turn by faith and belief upon Him. And Father, we pray that those that are saved have followed you into a biblical, local Bible-believing church, that, Father, they would follow you in scriptural baptism, administered by an ordained minister, as is shown in your Word, And Father, we pray that they would then work in that local visible church, be an active member, to be a blessing to others, to be an encouragement, to learn of you, and apply your word to their lives, that they could be doers of your word and not hearers only. Continue to remember the prayer requests that have been mentioned to us. Father, we pray that you would look down and bless us only you can. And for the good that is accomplished, let us step aside and give you the praise. For it's in Jesus' name we do pray. Amen. As we come today, go and turn in the book of Joshua chapter 7. Joshua chapter 7, a great victory has been accomplished. They've just overcome Jericho. The walls have come down. And anything that was taken was going to be put forth unto the Lord. The gold and the silver, things of that nature, was going to be used in the coming kingdom and the land that they were going into for the Lord's glory. And there was symbolism in that. And certainly it was giving a cross also to the people to not be greedy, to not be selfish, but to lean upon the Lord. And we find here that Achan will disobey this. And this is the only time that you will see defeat in all the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is near about a book of total victory. But this is a time when somebody got greedy, somebody got selfish, and it caused some of the Israelite people to die. And some people say, well, the punishment to Achan and his family was too severe. You might not think that if it caused the death of your brother, sister, your daddy, you know, the men that went to battle. Certainly they're the ones that suffered the defeat and some were lost. It caused a great pain to come upon the nation of Israel. It caused great heartache. It caused the loss of a battle. And there was death that was caused by it. It's not a small thing. I mean, God is looking at this that you caused these people to die. It's blood upon your hands for what you've done. And this whole family took part in this. So when you think, oh, the punishment was too strong, you're not looking at things the same way God is. And I'll say this, you're probably not looking at it from a righteous standpoint. And sadly our world today does not look at judgment the same way that God does. People say, oh, the God of the New Testament is different than the God of the Old Testament. I'm going, no he's not. If you believe that, you have not read to the end of the book. You have not read the book of Revelation. Because there is nothing done in the Old Testament that is near as severe as what you find in the book of Revelation. Just because we're living under grace at this moment in time, and just because we're dealing with God's long-suffering and mercy at this time, don't take that as God has changed. Because He hasn't. He deals with sin just as severely, if not more severely, in the New Testament than he does in the Old. And you don't need to take that for granted. There's a whole lot of people today, God is love, God is love. And I'm going, God is love. You might want to study that word a little bit deeper in Scripture and what it means. And you might want to study what happens when you forsake the love of God. In John chapter 3, at the end of that book, It talks about how the wrath of God abides upon them that has not believed in Jesus. We tell lost people, oh God loves you. God has offered love to you. There is a difference. He has shown His love to you. He so loved the world. There is love shown there. There is love extended to you, offered to you. But if you reject God's love, you have chosen God's wrath instead of His love. You chose that, not him. But he's righteous and just and he's going to follow through on that. And some of that's not taught. And great damage has been caused to many a people because it's not been taught. They got this idea of God that doesn't fit scripture. While God has shown His love to you, while He has offered His love to you, while He has given you the evidence of His love through Jesus Christ dying for your sins, if you reject that love, then His wrath abides upon you. And you need to know the severity of that. And a whole lot of people don't look at the severity of God. And it's an important doctrine to note. And so here in chapter 7, we're seeing God having to judge sin. Sin that has brought death. Sin that has brought destruction. Sin that has brought defeat. But there's also a part of here that Joshua and some of the other people of Israel got comfortable just thinking, well, we're walking from one victory to another. And they forget where the victory comes from. They put their trust in themselves instead of fully in the Lord. And we need to be cautious of that and learn from that in our lives too. In verse 1, again, after they've got the victory at Jericho and they've come through and they were commanded not to take of the gold and the silver and these treasures and the raiment and things of this nature that don't take part of the cursed thing. Of course, those things that were unto idols and idol worship, they were not to take part of that. Just leave it where it was. Even if it looks like it's some priceless possession, leave it there. He said, but, in verse 1 of chapter 7, but the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing. For Achan the son of Carmi and 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. And the sad thing is, is they didn't know it. Before they went into battle, it seems like even Joshua didn't go to God and say, God, is this how you want us to fight this battle? Is this what you want us to do to get this victory? Because if he had went to God first, they would have never went to the battle and lost the men. I always go to God first. Sometimes we say, well, I know what God wants me to do. Sometimes we do that with jobs, don't we? Well, this one offers more money. That's exactly what I need to do. No, not necessarily. Sometimes Satan tempts us with money. Sometimes Satan tempts us with power. Sometimes we got it in our eyes. I'll use us men for an example. Sometimes back in our younger days, there was a certain woman, and she's just beautiful and gorgeous and all these things, and our attention is with our eyes instead of with our soul and with God leading us. We can get our eyes on the wrong things. There's some men, they've looked at a woman, they look at pleasures from the woman, and they say, ooh, that's the woman I want right there. And they don't stop to say, oh, does God want you? Well, God allowed this woman to come into my life and she likes men. She's gonna marry men. There's some men that have gotten into some serious trouble because they married based upon lust and desire instead of looking for the godly characteristics of like the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31. A lot of men, and look, there's women that have done the same thing. Instead of looking for a godly man, they looked for their desire. Oh, he's cute. Oh, he's funny. And they got themselves into a mess before. We need to be careful not thinking with our minds, but following the Lord in all things. And so this thing has come. God's anger is kindled against the children of Israel. And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside of the east side of Bethel and spake unto them saying go up and view the country and the men went up and viewed Ai 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 thither for they are but a few." That sound like God's wisdom or man's wisdom? They looked at this, well we just overcome this great city, Jericho. Again, not giving the glory to God, but taking the credit themselves. And now they look over here, at AI, and they say, they're just a few. We don't even have to worry God with this, we can take care of it. Y'all see the problem? Y'all think we ever do something similar in our lives? And some of us have made some mistakes, and as Dave Ramsey says, sometimes we pay the stupid tax. And some of us have been stupid in our walk with God. And I don't use that word too often, but to get across the point, sometimes biblically a different word's used, foolish. Sometimes we are foolish with our walk with God. And we assume what God would have us to do or where he'd have us to go, and they're like, You know, by our thinking here, we just overcame this great city. They're going to be afraid of us because we just got this great victory. We can go over here. We can get this victory with just a few thousand men. We don't need to send everybody. They're just a few. So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men and they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men. All of a sudden they're seeing people die beside them and they weren't ready for that. They weren't ready for the battle. The reason they weren't ready for the battle is they forgot who was really in charge. It was God. Joshua got a lesson here. Men of Israel got a lesson here. And there's some people that came back and there was people missing a father. missing a husband, missing a son. And so 36 men, for they chased them from before the gate, even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down, wherefore the heart of the people melted. Can you imagine going from Jericho to this? They went from on high to winds taken out of their sails, a gut punch. The hearts of the people were melted and became as water. They're just poured out and empty. What do we do now? And Joshua seems to be in the same condition and Joshua rent his clothes. and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening tide. He and the elders of Israel and put dust upon their heads. And Joshua said, At last, O Lord God, Wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us unto the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? Would to God we had been content and dwelt on the other side of Jordan." Notice his feeling. God, you let us down. Was this God's fault? Was this God not being with them? Was this God not willing to fight their battles? Or was it that they had let sin in and instead of going to God before the battle and making sure that God was going to give them the victory, they could have taken care of the sin beforehand and then got victory. Instead, they're doing things backward. And notice who they're blaming for this. They're blaming God. And let me tell you, there's a whole lot of saved people and surely a whole lot of lost people that don't even know the Lord, that when things don't go the way that they think they should have gone, instead of looking in the mirror and saying, God, what's wrong? See, in our nation right now, we blame this political party, that political party, this thing over here, this thing over there. And how many of us have said, God, is my sin hindering our nation? Sometimes we see our churches going down and we don't take inventory and say, God is my sin in the way. When we don't see lost people coming to know Christ, when we don't see saved people drawing closer to the Lord and putting off of the flesh and putting on the spirit, do we ever take inventory and say, wait a minute, what part have I played in this? Instead, what we do sometimes is we blame God. Let's throw the blame on God. That's an easy thing. Even parents sometimes. We look at the generation that's out there in the world today, and we look at how selfish they are. We look at how unskillful they are, especially in the workforce. We know that's not everybody, but generalization of things that we come across and see. Generalizations certainly is not righteous judgment. You judge each individual according to who they are. But we can look and see some things going on in our nation and have we stopped to say who raised this generation? And who raised the generation before them? And maybe we failed them. Maybe we didn't teach them. Maybe we didn't train them up. Maybe in churches we were trying just to get them to church and play games with them instead of actually instructing them in the ways of the Lord. And maybe in some churches today we got men that are not qualified to be deacons or preachers, but we cared about people and we cared about power and we cared about prosperity and we forsook the words of God to get what we wanted. And I mean it's gotten all the way down to we got women preachers and even homosexuals standing in pulpits. We might want to say, where did we sin? Where did we go wrong? Maybe it was when we were justifying our divorces. Maybe it was when we were justifying our actions and things that we allowed into our lives that were ungodly. When are we going to go look in the mirror and say, wait a minute, it might not be God, it might be us? But notice they looked at it, even Joshua himself. God, why did you even bring us over, Jordan? Why did you deliver us into the hand? Oh, it would have been better if we just dwelt on the other side. And I'll tell you what, God doesn't put up with His prayer too much. He said, Oh Lord, what shall I say when Israel turn at their backs before their enemies? We're going to be chased out. We're going to be overcome. We're defeated. Everything's bad. And there's some people about like that in our country. If we would turn back, if we would repent, And we repent of our wickedness and our sins and our wicked ways, beginning with the churches, because judgment must begin at the house of God. And instead of looking all over the other place and finding people to blame, we start looking within ourselves and saying, God, have we left you? Have we not stood for you? Have we turned to the left hand or to the right hand with your word? When we start looking inwardly, then we're going to find where we need to be. He says, oh, we're defeated. Our enemies are coming against us. What shall we do? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it and shall enveron us round. They're going to besiege us. They're going to come around and defeat us. They're going to be strengthened to come and fight against us because of this and cut off our name from the earth. We're just going to be destroyed and wiped out. And what will thou do unto thy great name? And oh Lord, if you let this happen, what's that going to do to your name? And the Lord said unto Joshua, get thee up. There's a time to pray and there's a time to work. And a smart Christian knows when to do both. A wise Christian that's looking unto the Lord knows when it's a time to pray and knows when it's a time to act. The Lord said unto Joshua, get thee up, stop crying, stop whining, even stop praying. Get up! I wonder if there's times when God would tell us, get up! We've got a weak society. And let me say this, we've got weak saved people that quit easily, that faint easily. God said faint not. God said overcome. God said endure. Now a lot of times we're giving God our excuse. Well I have this anxiety. And God's like, well give it to me. Let me take care of it and you trust in me. I've got these doubts. I've got these fears. I've got this. God said I didn't give you the spirit of fear. That's not from me. I gave you a sound mind. I gave you love. I gave you the truth. Get up! There's a lot of times we're wallowing in self-pity just like they were here and God's saying, get up. Get up, put your faith in me, listen to me and do what I tell you to do. He says, get thee up. Wherefore lies thou thus upon thy face? Notice that statement of God. Why in the world are you lying on your face? Why in the world are you weeping like this and down here? Get up! There's a time to weep. There's a time to pour our heart out unto God. But if you think that's all there is to Christianity, you're missing some things. There's a time to get up and get doing some stuff. You need to start putting this off of the flesh. You need to start putting this onto the Spirit. And God's about to tell Joshua and the people of Israel, y'all got some work to do. And you need to get to it. Notice what he says here. Israel has sinned. You know there's times where there's sin in the church. And instead of just wallowing about it and nothing, there's a time to stand up to it and even call it out. There was a member at the church at Corinth that was living in fornication. Such as was not even named amongst the Gentiles. And Paul told the church they were just letting it go on. They were like, oh we love him, we care about him, he's still allowed to be here. And he said, I'll tell you what you need to do. And he said, I'm getting what I'm saying to you from God. This is how y'all need to take care of that. Y'all need to let that be a shame. Y'all need to withdraw yourself from that person and not have fellowship with him. He said, no, not to eat. Don't have anything to do with that kind of filth, he said. Now when the person repented, he said, now restore him. But repentance was needed for that. There's time that sin's going on in church. Fornication, shacking up, all kinds of evil going on. The church just turning a blind eye to it. We don't see it. We don't see any sin. There's no wrong going on. Drug use, drunkenness, all kinds of stuff that shouldn't be named once has become a saint's. Church members watching filth, even all the way down to pornography. Oh, let's not say anything. We might run somebody off. We might hurt somebody's feelings. I'll tell you what, the snowflake attitude got into the church before it took over our country. It got into churches before it took over our country. It got where preachers were going, well, I might not need to say that. That might hurt my offering. That might run somebody off. How dare we as God's people judge and stand against sin? But it's taught in the Scripture to judge righteous judgment. And it's taught in the Scripture to withdraw thyselves from those who are walking disorderly. He said have no fellowship with those who are living in the darkness of sin in this world. We've about forsaken those scriptures, but they're just as important as John 3.16, dear friend. And we got a lot of snowflaking going on inside of churches. And it's been going on for a long time. We can't call out immodesty, can't call out ungodly living. Can't preach against selfishness, greed, covetousness, idolatry. There's a whole lot of preachers that say don't preach against some sins. It'll run some people off. I'll tell you what, maybe sometimes they need to be ran off so they'll learn to repent. I know in our day and time there'll be another preacher that'll pass them on the back and say shame on that other person. They didn't love you enough. They wouldn't let you do whatever you wanted to do, even if it was against God. Shame on those other people. The Bible says open rebuke is better than secret love. We've about forgot it. And there is long-suffering, there is mercy, and there definitely needs to be forgiveness. But Israel has sinned is what he said here. They transgressed my covenant which I commanded them for they have even taken of the accursed thing and have also stolen and assembled also and they have put it even among their own stuff. God says there's some people been selfish and greedy in the camp and they did things I commanded them not to do. Deal with it. And they did. They ended up stoning them and then covering them with a pile of stones. A whole lot of people forget this is the same God that's on the throne today. He hasn't changed. Same yesterday, today, and forevermore. But we've tried to change Him into who we want Him to be. We've turned the truth of God into a lie, and we've worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, as it says in Romans chapter 1. I'm not trying to be hard with that, but there needs to be some truth preached. There's not enough call to repentance going on in churches today. And if God's people won't repent of their sin, how in the world can we expect lost people to repent of theirs? We've got more concerned with numbers than righteousness. And God said, if you want Me to be with you, you're going to abide in My Word. You're going to abide in My commandments. You're not going to add to them. You're not going to take away from them. You're going to abide in Me. Is that what we're doing? Or have we changed the Word of God to fit the world? Have we taken out parts of it? Have we tried to justify our sins? And I tell you what, until the house of God starts dealing with our sins, how in the world we think the world's gonna turn? How can we expect others to repent except we repent first? And judgment must begin at the house of God. It must begin there. There's sin in the camp. There's sin in the camp. There's fornication in the church. There's lust in the churches. There's immodesty, ungodliness, unrighteousness heavily amongst God's people. Instead of repenting of it, in a lot of cases we've justified it. And we've pointed the finger at God, and we've pointed the finger at other people out in the world, and we have not forsaken the lusts of the eyes, the lusts of the flesh, the pride of life. And dear friend, a lot of what we're dealing with today is because we are refusing to repent. And I want to tell you today, we need to repent. If you're lost, you need to repent and trust in Christ. If you're saved and you've got sin, you need to repent of that and turn to the ways of God. We need to uphold the truth. Sin is in the camp and it must be dealt with before we can have success and victory. That's where it needs to begin. This is the burden that God has given us. Our number is 601-606-4681. Heavenly Father, we pray that you'll take this message, use it to your honor and glory. Help us to apply it to ourselves as much as to anyone. And Father, for the good accomplished, let us give you the praise. For it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.