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from the very first verse, we're
given the tone of the chapter. It gives us, as readers, this
first verse, it gives us the dramatic irony, the dramatic
irony. It gives us the background of
what is about to happen. For those of you who aren't familiar
with that term, dramatic irony, that is, it's a tool that authors
will use when they're writing a story. Their goal is to make
something known to the readers, that the people in the story,
the people that are doing things, that they don't know. So we know
something that the readers of the story don't know. Following the conquest of Jericho,
God's name through Joshua was made great. That was the last
thing we were told in chapter six. It said, so the Lord was
with Joshua and his fame was in all the land. But in this
first verse, we're given the dreadful, dramatic irony, this
piece of information that no one else in the story knows,
except for God, except for Achan, that Israel has broken faith
with God. This is unknown to Israel, but
the reality of that fact stands throughout the whole chapter.
Israel has broken faith with God. All Israel stands guilty
before God. They have failed to obey God's
command at the Battle of Jericho. Some of the devoted things that
were supposed to be given over to God, the gold, the silver,
the bronze vessels, those things from Jericho, they were supposed
to be given to God. Achan stole from God. Achan's sin has consequences
for all of Israel. But why are we told this right
away? Why are we told this piece of information in the first verse? We're told this because this
is why what is about to happen happens. And I wanted to open
up our time tonight, before diving into the text, just making that
note, that little note. In verse one, we're given the
whole tone of the rest of the chapter and everything that happens.
This is why these things happen. We'll look at what Achan did
and why he did it in more detail later, but for now, we just,
our chapter opens up with this piece of dramatic irony. Something is rotten. in the state
of Israel. Something so rotten that it stands
in the way of God giving Israel the land. And so because of this,
because something is rotten in Israel, God moves to purify his
people. And so Joshua is showing us here
tonight that God will make his name great. Even if it means
standing against his own people. God will make his name great
even if it means standing against his own people. We see this as
we see the first failed attack of Ai and then we'll see after
that attack we see how God makes his name great. So we'll see
that in the first nine verses we see Israel's failure. And
then we see in the following verses, 10 to 26, we see how
God purifies, we see God's purification of Israel. So the Israelites,
they're hot off the all-important win, just as soon as they're
finished with Jericho, as soon as they're finished destroying
everything that needs to be destroyed in Jericho, their eyes are set
on the next step, their eyes are set on the next city. God
has just handed them the most powerful city in all of Canaan. Their confidence must be at an
all-time high at this point. And really, who could blame them?
God is on their side. All of Jericho has been destroyed.
That which is devoted to the Lord has been placed in the tabernacle,
placed in the treasury of the Lord. Or so they thought. Or
so they thought. The eyes of Israel now turn towards
the city of Ai. Ai is west of Jericho, so they're
moving further westward from the Jordan, moving into the land. Not a whole lot is known about
Ai. We know that Ai was much smaller
than Jericho, that it was much less defended than Jericho was,
so some consider Ai to be sort of this quickly kind of put up
a military outpost for the defense of the surrounding cities, the
city of Bethel, the area of Beth-Avon. If God could so easily take Jericho,
he could take Ai with both of his hands tied behind his back.
So Joshua, he sends spies to scout out the land. He's doing
his due diligence. The spies come back to him in
verse three and they say, do not have all the people go up,
but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai. Do not
make the whole people toil up there for they are few. The people
of Ai are few. Israel's confident. Israel is
confident. They have scouted out the city.
They know that God is on their side, or so they think. So about
3,000 men go up to take the city. But here's the hard truth. When
God is not on your side, nothing you ever do will succeed. Notice
that in the space of one verse, in the space of one breath, almost,
things go from confidence to absolute despair. It's almost
as if from the first battle cry of Israel, their defeat is all
but realized. We're told in verse four that
as soon as they went up, they instantly turned around. And
to make what matters worse, in their retreat from Ai, they lose
36 fighting men. Notice the effect that this has
on the people. Very important detail at the
end of verse five. The hearts of the people melted
and became as water. Do you remember Rahab's report
of the people, how she describes sort of the state of the Canaanites
in chapter two? She said that when they heard
of what God did at the Red Sea, they said, our hearts melted
because of what God did. Israel is described with the
same language as God's enemies. Their hearts melted. God is standing
against Israel. This is a complete and utter
shock to Israel. I mean, for any invading force,
for any invading force to lose men, that's a hard loss in and
of itself. It's hard to replenish that loss,
but that isn't why this is so shocking. The failure to take
eye clearly shows that God is not on their side. John Calvin
comments on this when he says that it was a terror from heaven.
It was a terror from heaven which dismayed them, more than the
death of 30 men and the flight of 3,000. It was a terror from
heaven that dismayed them. And this hits Joshua and the
elders the hardest. They've been leading the people,
they've been stepping forward, stepping forward in faith, they've
been stepping forward knowing that just as surely as God dried
up the Jordan, knowing just as surely as God tore down the walls
of Jericho, knowing surely God is with them, knowing that no
one could ever stand in their way, they experience this utter
defeat. They're lost. And so we see the
classic Old Testament signs of mourning and weeping. Joshua
and the elders, they tear their clothes. They fall to their face. They lay prostrated before the
Ark of the Covenant. They put dust on their heads.
In response to their defeat, what does Joshua do? Notice what
Joshua does. It's very important. He doesn't
curse God. He doesn't build a golden calf thinking, well, I guess
God's abandoned us, let's go try and find the next best God.
He doesn't even go back to the commander's tent to try and devise
some sort of a counterattack. What does Joshua do? In verses
seven and nine, we see Joshua run to God in prayer. He sees his utter helplessness
and where does he go? Joshua runs to God. There are really two parts to
his prayer. First, we see in verse seven,
Joshua brings his distress before God. Brings the distressfulness
of this situation before God. And then in verses eight and
nine, we see Joshua bring an all-important question before
God. What we have here is a prayer
filled with bold language before God. We see Joshua wrestling
with the will of God. We see a man of faith wrestling
with God. Joshua, we see in Joshua's distress,
alas, oh Lord, verse seven. Why have you brought this people
over the Jordan to give us into the hands of the Amorites to
destroy us? Would that we had been content
to dwell beyond the Jordan. Joshua feels the weight of their
defeat. They are a small nation and they
are invading a much larger, much more established, much better
defended nation. But we also see Joshua ask a
question of God, a very important question. What will you do for
your great name? What will you do for your great
name? For Israel to enter the land with this confidence that
they've had so far, only for them to now turn their backs
and run away from facing down what is a less significant enemy
than at Jericho, Them to do that, Joshua knows that this will send
shockwaves throughout Canaan. That everyone will think Israel
is weak. The Canaanites will pounce on
them. The Canaanites will see what has happened to Ai and they'll
think, well obviously what happened to Jericho was a fluke. It must
have just been a crazy earthquake that just tore the walls down.
We can go and take them. That's what all the land will
think in response to this retreat from Ai. But this is such a bold
and profound question from Joshua. What will you do for your great
name? I know in verse one we were given
that dramatic irony. We know why the attack on Ai
failed, but Joshua does not. And to say that Joshua and Israel
are distressed would be a pretty significant understatement. After
all, God promised to give them the land. God has proven that
nothing can stand in his way. Not rivers, not walls. And so Joshua cries out to God,
cries out, what is going on? What's going on? Won't you make
your name great? Won't you make your name holy? Here we see how God operates. God halts the invasion of the
land. What's more important to God? What's more important to God?
Claiming the land or purifying his people? What's more important
to God? The conquering of land that is
already his or having covenant faithfulness among his people? That's really what's at stake
and what's going on. The sin of Achan has corrupted
the whole people. We'll look more closely at that
in a moment, but the sin of Achan has corrupted the whole people.
Why does God allow the defeat at Ai? What is he really doing?
How is he, he is showing his people their sin. I love how
one commentator puts it when they said, he said, God uses
trials, obstacles, and setbacks He uses those to do one of three
things, maybe more than one of three things, but one of three
things. He uses trials, obstacles, and
setbacks to grow our faith, to deepen our experience of grace,
and sometimes, as in the case of I, to reveal our sin. What plans is God halting in
your life? Think about that for a moment.
What plans is God halting in your life. We all have plans,
we all pray that those plans are in line with God's will,
but is there something that God is halting in your life? We learn
here that this is how God puts things in our way. Why? Why does he allow suffering to
come upon his people? Remember what Peter says in his
first letter. In this you rejoice, though now
for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various
trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious
than gold, that perishes though it is tested by fire, that's
a refiner's fire, your faith is being refined, and that it
may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor at
the revelation of Jesus Christ. God allows these interruptions
to draw you back, to draw you closer to himself. He's doing
one of these three things that I mentioned. He's growing your
faith. He's deepening your experience of his grace, or he is trying
to expose some sin in your heart. When God stops you in your tracks,
whether it be through sickness, or suffering, or distress, we
need to stop and ask, what is God showing me? What is God showing
me? How are you, God, growing my
faith during this time? How are you showing me your grace
in this? What sins do I need to bring
to the cross? Joshua here gives us an example
of what we should do in these times, in times of trouble and
distress. In times where God has halted
the world around us, we need to stop and we need to pray. Run to God asking him, what will
you do to make your name great? What are you doing? What do I
need to see? What are you exposing to me?
But in asking that, we need to be ready. We need to be ready
for the mirror to be turned towards us. For God to say that he is
revealing something in us that needs to be dealt with. As we
turn to look at God's response to Joshua, we'll see in the remainder
of the chapter that God declares war on Israel. God's declaring
war on Israel. And God continues to declare
war on sin. And he moves in a mighty and
holy way. God is purifying his people. And so as we turn to look to
see how God purifies his people, in God's response we see that
God uses the same language, the same battle language that he
used with the battle of Jericho. There are many similarities between
this chapter and the chapter that came before it with the
Battle of Jericho. If you remember, when we looked at the Battle
of Jericho, one thing that was pointed out to us is that this
isn't Israel versus Jericho. This isn't even so much a God
versus Jericho. This is God versus sin. This is God versus sin. At its
core, that is a battle between God and sin. And God will stop
at nothing. to make his name great. He made
his name great, he made his name known among the nations as he
waged war against the sins of the nations. He will also make
his name great as he now deals with the sin of his own people.
He is a holy God and he has called his chosen people to also be
holy. And so God stops the advance
of his kingdom that he is establishing on earth. He stops the advance
of his kingdom in order to bring them back to covenant obedience. Let's look at God's response
to Joshua's prayer. Verse 10, get up, get up. Why have you fallen on your face?
Something is rotten in the state of Israel. God gives five accusations
against Israel in verse 11. The people have transgressed
my covenant. Two, they have taken from the
devoted things. If you remember back during the
Battle of Jericho. Everything that, all of the precious
metals were to be stored up in the treasury of the Lord. Someone
has stolen from these holy, sacred things of the Lord. So they've
transgressed the covenant, they've stolen from the, taken from the
devoted things. They stole, they lied about it,
and then finally they placed it among their own possessions.
Those are five accusations that God gives to the nation of Israel. This puts Israel in a very precarious
position. Verse 12 tells us that not only
will Israel fail against their enemies from here on out until
this is dealt with, not only are we told that, but even worse,
God is ready to leave his people. I will be with you no more unless
you destroy the devoted things from among you. That is what
is at stake. How seriously does God take sin? Look at what he's ready to do.
He is ready to leave his people. He also commands Joshua, get
up, consecrate the people, get the people ready, prepare for
battle, God is saying. All the people are to gather
before God, and God will work his way systematically throughout
the nation, starting with the tribes, starting, then moving
on to the clans, and then the households, and then he will
find the one who has sinned against him. He will find the man responsible. God will expose the sin of Israel. And so they do just that. And
here we have the same language as the previous chapter. In verse
15 we're told that when they had taken from the devoted things,
he will burn the person with fire. He will destroy them. Jericho
was to be burned with fire and completely destroyed. And then
we see even the same language in verse 16, and Joshua rose
in the morning. He rose early in the morning.
We see the same battle language. As the previous chapter, God
is declaring battle against his own people. God is at war against
sin. He is committed to purifying
his people. So I opened asking the question,
how far will God go to preserve his holiness? How far will God
go to make his name great? This is how far God will go.
And so the nations come forward. The tribe of Judah is selected. And then the clan of the Zarahites.
And then the household of Zabdi. And then finally, Achan is found. Achan is chosen. You can't hide
from God. God knows all. God sees all. Yet this is exactly what we try
to do, isn't it? When we sin, we think that because
no one else is around and no one else knows or no one else
sees what we do, we think we can keep it secret. We forget
that God knows the hearts of man. He knows our hearts, he
knows our sin, he knows us better than we do. Once Achan is found
out, Joshua approaches him and he says, my son, My son, give
glory to the Lord God of Israel and give praise to him. And tell
me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me." Joshua
tells Achan to confess what he has done. His sin has caused
the punishment of the whole nation. Sin dishonors God. But confession,
confession brings glory to his name. And let's look at Achan's
confession. Achan tells Joshua, truly I have
sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I did. When I saw, when I saw among
the spoils a beautiful cloak of shinar and 200 shekels of
silver and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, Then I coveted them,
then I coveted them, and I took them, I took them. And see, they
are hidden in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath."
What's going on here? What is going on here in Achan's
confession should remind us of the language from Genesis 3.
How one man's fall into sin corrupted a whole people. The sin of Achan
is not all that different from the sin of Adam and Eve. What we see with Achan's confession
is exactly how Adam and Eve fell, and that is exactly how sin works
in our lives today, in our hearts today. Notice what Achan says.
He gives sort of this threefold progression. With each step,
he falls deeper and deeper into sin. First, he saw the spoils. First he saw the spoils, just
as Eve saw the fruit. Just as we see things that draw
our eyes away from God. Second, Achan coveted. Achan coveted. The fruit was
a delight to Eve's eyes. We want the very thing that we
should not be looking at. We want the very thing that's
drawing our eyes away from God. And then finally, Achan took. Eve took the fruit, we take what
is not ours. This is how sin operates in our
lives. We see, we covet, and then we
take. There's nothing new under the
sun when it comes to the devil's tricks. He's prowling around
like a roaring lion. The world is always looking for
new ways to draw our eyes away from Christ and onto the world. and your flesh so easily gives
in to its own passions. It draws you away from God. But
God's will is clear. He is a holy God and he has called
you to be holy. This means that we too must be
vigilant in our battles against sin. God's anger burns against
sin. We see that in the conclusion
of this chapter. As Joshua and all of Israel bring
Achan and his family to the Valley of Acre, or the Valley of Trouble,
as I'm sure your Bibles have footnoted. And Achan and his
family and all that belongs to him are stoned and burned. How far will God go to make his
name holy? How far will God go to preserve
his great name? You may be asking, you know,
what specifically was it about Achan's sin that he deserved
this? Achan not only stole from what
was meant for God and the things devoted to him, Achan actually
sought after an immediate gratification, sort of that instant gratification. That's what Achan was seeking
after. He decided to take the spoils of God from the Battle
of Jericho instead of waiting for the inheritance of the whole
land, that was the spoil of the war that Achan was a part of.
Instead of waiting for that inheritance he grabbed for that immediate
gratification of 200 pieces of silver and a gold bar and an
ice cloak. And you also may rightly be asking,
well, why did his children also suffer? Why did his children
also suffer? If you noticed, Achan hid what
he stole in his tent. A private sin to the rest of
Israel, and the rest of Israel was unaware that he had done
this, but a sin that his children inside the tent essentially aided
and abetted him in. They share in the guilt of their
father. There's no denying that this
is a hard and this is a difficult text, and these are hard lessons
for us. And this isn't even the only
spot in scripture where we wrestle with these things. A few weeks
ago, Pastor preached on Ananias and Sapphira, and you also have
the story of Uzzah and the Ark, and these difficult passages
where we see what our sins truly deserve. These are hard and terrifying
passages. But these passages provide us
with that black backdrop of sin, that black backdrop on which
the diamond of Christ shines all the brighter. Christ took
on the full wrath of God that our sins deserve. He stood in our place. He is
the propitiation of our sins. He has satisfied God's wrath
towards us. For those who are his, for those
who are gathered here this evening, we stand assured, assured that
nothing can separate us from Christ. Christ is the one who
holds on to us. And because he holds on to us,
because we are counted as his brothers and sisters, God looks
on us with his favor. We can go forward knowing that
Christ has taken on the wrath of God that is displayed to us
in this text. We do not need to fear being
stoned. We do not need to fear fire from
heaven. But we do need to watch how we
live. We do need to watch how we live. We need to sort of give
no ground to the enemy. Give no ground to the devil. As Paul says in Romans 13, put
on the Lord Jesus Christ. and make no provision for the
flesh to gratify its desires. You are being transformed. You are being conformed day by
day into the likeness of Christ, renewed day by day. It is your
work. to die to sin and to live to
righteousness, and we must stand alert. Be vigilant, standing
on guard against sin, fixing our eyes on Christ, never veering
our gaze from who Christ is, setting our minds on things above. We also know, we also need to
go forward knowing, That when we do fail, when we do stumble
and fall into sin again, we have Christ and we are preserved in
Him and we need to run to Him. We need to run to Him and confess
our sins. Don't try to hide your sins from
God. It's impossible. We must remember
that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive
us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Those are the precious truths that we have in scripture, just
run to God. So are there any plans in your
life that are being halted? Let's follow the example of Joshua
that we have in this text, let's run to God. We need to run to
him, bowing before him. and ask, God, what is he exposing
in our lives? How does my faith need to grow? What do I need a deeper understanding
of when it comes to his grace? Is he exposing sin that I need
to bring before the cross? There's no hiding our sin from
God. It's foolish to even try. God
knows our hearts. He knows our hearts better than
we do. How far will God go to preserve his holiness? Sin has no place in the presence
of God and he will stop at nothing to make his name holy, to make
his name great. Even if that means sending his
own son. Even if that means sending his
own son to die for you. Jesus, the friend of sinners,
who took the punishment that we deserve, never forget that
we are hidden in Christ. And when we're tried or tempted,
Christ is your strength. In Jesus, you have victory over
your sins. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
God's Battle With Israel
Series Joshua
| Sermon ID | 211241632104305 |
| Duration | 31:10 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Joshua 7 |
| Language | English |
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