We're going to look at Joshua 7 and verses 10 through 15. Israel has sinned and they've also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things and have both stolen and deceived and they have also put it among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies but turned their backs before their enemies because they have become doomed to destruction. Neither will I be with you anymore unless you destroy the accursed from among you. Get up, sanctify the people and say, Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because thus says the Lord God of Israel, there is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you. In the morning, therefore, you shall be brought according to your tribes, and it shall be that the tribe which The Lord takes shall come according to the families, and the family which the Lord takes shall come by households, and the household which the Lord takes shall come man by man. Then it shall be that he who is taken with the accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he has done a disgraceful thing in Israel. Father, we thank you for your Word, even the tough portions of your Word, because they are written for our edification, and I pray that we would grow. To that end, I pray you would anoint me as I preach, that I would preach with the power and the unction of your Holy Spirit. Bless this, your people, in Jesus' name, amen. A telemarketer called a home one day, he was trying to sell some stuff, and it was a little boy's voice that whispered, Hello? Hello, what's your name? Still whispering, the voice said, Jimmy. How old are you, Jimmy? I'm four. Good, is your mother home? Yes, but she's busy. Okay, is your father home? He's busy too. I see, who else is there? The police. The police? May I speak with one of them? They're busy. Any other grownups there? The firemen. May I speak with the firemen, please? They're all busy. Jimmy, all those people in your house, and I can't talk with any of them? What are they doing? Looking for me. That was a mother who was worried sick about her missing child. And she eventually called the police, because she couldn't find him. And even the firemen showed up. And that was a son who probably needed a good spanking. He put a lot of people to major inconvenience and had done so very deliberately. And it's true that this story I just told doesn't really parallel one-to-one with the Aiken story, which is much, much more serious. But Achan had a lot of people searching for him, just like Jimmy did. And like Jimmy, he had put a lot of people to great inconvenience. And like Jimmy, Achan keeps hiding all the way through the story, even though God had given him plenty of opportunity to confess his sins and to come clean. For example, if you look at verse 14, God commands Joshua to wait till the next morning to start the search for the offender. Now, he could have started the search that day, but he chose to wait until the next day to give again opportunity for the offender to come clean. And then God very deliberately uses a slow, ponderous method of kind of narrowing down the search that would take a long time. He could have just revealed the name of Achan immediately, because this was by divine revelation that he's kind of narrowing things down. And he chose not to. And this, too, shows God's willingness to be merciful and wait. And yet Achan still remains in hiding. And next week we're going to be seeing that even when Achan confesses his sin because he is caught red-handed, God forces him basically to confess, he still hides by minimizing what he had done. It's not a true confession. Rather than describing his sin the way God describes it, he tries to make it look not quite as bad as it should be described. Rather than calling it an abomination, He confesses he loved what he was going to take. He admired what God called an abomination and cursed. Rather than saying he had broken his covenant, he talks about, yes, I've sinned against the Lord, but his sin is described what? As taking some spoil, which is a very positive term, and it's the exact opposite of what God called it. It wasn't spoil, it was supposed to be harem. And he says that it's very beautiful, another positive word. So here he is, caught red-handed, because he has to admit that he, you know, had done this deed. But even in his confession, he's still hiding in some sense, and it's really much more irrational than what Jimmy was doing. Achan knows eventually he will get caught, but he still hides. And this is so true to human nature. Shame keeps people from engaging in the kind of genuine confession that God will accept. Ever since Adam and Eve, people have been irrationally trying to hide rather than to confess. And the scripture says hiding is useless. And worse than being useless, it's inconsistent with God's ongoing grace. It's useless because Jesus guarantees this, let me quote, nor hidden that will not be made known, nothing. That's Luke 22, verse two. In Psalm 32, verse five, David, who also tried to hide, just like Jimmy and Achan did, finally came to his senses and said, I acknowledged my sin to you, and my iniquity I have not hidden. And it was only then that God's favor came into his life. And the text says that he was forgiven of his iniquity. And so the first lesson that I want to pound home today is that it never pays to hide your sins. It does not. I can tell you from personal experience how miserable you feel when you hide your sins. The Holy Spirit's just not gonna let you go. And you do not sense the presence, the blessed presence of the Lord in your life. As God told Saul, be sure your sin will find you out. But we discovered last week it wasn't just Achan who had sinned. We looked at nine embarrassing failures of Joshua and the leaders, and thankfully Joshua responds appropriately. He instantly repents, he instantly does the things that need to be done, and he has God's restored presence in his life. Because I spent so much time on it last week, I'm going to be a lot briefer today. But I do want you to notice who the rebuke is directed to in verse 10. Sometimes people miss this, but it's clear he's not just upset with Achan, he is also upset with Joshua. So the Lord said to Joshua, get up, why do you lie thus on your face? Gordon Mattis in his commentary says, the command, stand up, implies that the actions reported in verse 6 are inappropriate. And we looked at why they were inappropriate last week. He goes on, the why question is rhetorical, implying that Joshua's evaluation of the situation is wrong. And we looked at what was sinful about his evaluation. I'm not going to repeat that today. But it's clear that God's concern was not just over Israel's corporate guilt, there was some leadership failures as well. And I will admit, not all commentaries agree with me on this, but the majority of them do, that's immaterial. But Lawson says, thus God answers Joshua with a rebuke, rather than question God's guidance and faithfulness, which is exactly what Joshua did, Joshua and the elders, he says, need to understand that there has been a covenant violation. In other words, stop blaming God, start looking for the Jimmy who has caused so much inconvenience. Butler goes further and says that God rebukes Joshua for three things in verse 10, for his posture, for his prayer, and for his perspective of despair that shows lack of faith. And again, I outlined a lot of that last week. Now, there are legitimate differences of view, but in light of the nine things that Joshua got wrong in the previous verses, I agree with the commentators who say, yeah, God's rebuking both Joshua and Israel. I think David Reimer sums it up well when he says, The blunt, get up, may strike modern readers as harsh in the face of Joshua's distress and abasement, but such a judgment fails to recognize the lack of fitness between Joshua's words and actions. Prostration suggests repentance and confession, but Joshua's prayer is one of presumption and complaint. Joshua seems to think the issue is one of the Lord's shame and the people's well-being. The Lord's reply indicates that Israel's guilt is the problem. Thus, what is required is not lament, but repentance and a removal of the covenant-breaking offense so as to repair the damage it brought to the relationship between God and His people. So the bottom line of this point here is that because of sin, Joshua's prayer was both inappropriate and ineffectual. Okay? Because of sin, his prayer was both ineffective and inappropriate. Inappropriate and ineffectual. So let's stop there. Let's just apply that concept to ourselves. Can you think of any scriptures that say that because of sin, whether yours or somebody else's sin, your prayers will not be heard by God. There are actually quite a few. Quite a few Scriptures that say that. Let me just go over a sampling. I'm giving this sampling just to show you that Joshua 7, verse 10 is not a weird one-off situation, you know, that we can ignore. It demonstrates a covenant principle that could be applied rather broadly. Let me read, first of all, 1 Peter 3, verse 7, and you wives will love this one. Husbands, likewise dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered. So he's saying when husbands don't respect their wives, don't give understanding of the difficult position that wives are in, when they don't treat their wives rightly, their prayers are hindered. Now, for you wives, before you get too high on this, there is a word likewise that implies, hey, the same is true of the wives. When they don't submit to their husbands, when they don't really embrace their calling that God has given to them, their prayers could be hindered as well. And you can probably think of a bunch of other passages that point out the same problem. But I want to focus on the sins of others. Our own sins, yeah, they can hinder our prayers. Let me give some other. Jeremiah 7, verse 16, I think parallels our passage. God told Jeremiah, therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or pray a prayer for them, nor make intercession to me, for I will not hear you. Until the people repented, Jeremiah's prayers that God would bless Israel were actually foolish prayers that were undermining God's purpose in bringing that discipline. So let's just apply this. If you've got a relative who is living in high-handed rebellion against God, it is foolish to pray God's blessing into that relative, any blessing other than repentance. Okay, that kind of blessing you can pray. Because God's not gonna hear your prayer apart from repentance is basically what it's saying. Now, you may disagree with this next application, but I don't, sing or pray, God bless America, because I see America living in such high-handed, deliberate, willful rebellion against God, that to pray that God would bless America is running at cross-purposes to God's disciplines, disciplines which are designed to wake up America, bring her to repentance. Now, obviously, I want God's blessing, but the blessing has to come through repentance. So repentance has got to be the first thing we call for. The next verse is Jeremiah 15, verse 1. Then the Lord said to me, even if Moses and Samuel stood before me, my mind would not be favorable toward this people. Cast them out of my sight and let them go forth. Now it was not a situation of lack of faith because Jeremiah had plenty of faith. It was a situation God would not bless them apart from repentance. Next verse is Ezekiel 14, 13 through 14. Son of man, when I land. This is not just Israel, this is any land. Son of man, when a land sins against me by persistent unfaithfulness, so it's not just any sin, he's talking about really high-handed sin. Son of man, when a land sins against me by persistent unfaithfulness, I will stretch out my hand against it, I will cut off its supply of bread, send famine on it, and cut off man and beast from it, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness, says the Lord. He hints that the situation's not hopeless. There are always ways to break the cycle of unanswered prayers, and we'll get into that. But I just want to emphasize, there are times when God will not hear our prayers, period. Of course, a few verses later, we see that the individual responses at least keep God's favor resting upon them as individuals. Praise God, that's encouraging. He tells Ezekiel, or if I send pestilence into that land, and pour out my fury on it, and blood, and cut off from it man and beast, even though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it as I live, says the Lord God, they would deliver neither son nor daughter, they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness, for thus says the Lord God, how much more it shall be when I send my four severe judgments on Jerusalem. And so those people, it says, would at least deliver themselves. But these passages indicate the corporate effects of sin are not just seen in Israel. These are universal principles. And we could go through a number of other passages, but I just want to show one more where a leader is very ineffective in his ministry because of the corporate unbelief of the people. This is Jesus. This is a remarkable passage. It's Mark 6, verses 5 through 6. Here is Jesus, the perfect God-man, no fault in Him at all. Yet because the people had unbelief, it affected what He could or could not do. Let me read that. Mark 6, 5 through 6. Now he could do no mighty work there except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them, and he marveled because of their unbelief. Notice it doesn't say that he chose not to do any mighty work there, or he didn't want to do any mighty work there. No, it was much stronger. He could do no mighty work there because of their corporate unbelief. So that illustrates the corporate effects of sin that we looked at under verse 1. That didn't stop his work altogether. He did heal a few sick people. But if Jesus was hindered in his ministry because of the corporate lack of faith, and his hometown church, and it was his hometown of Nazareth church that he's talking about, and if Joshua was hindered in his attempted ministry of prayer because of the corporate unbelief of Israel, Officers of this church are not going to be as effective as they could be if this congregation is not committed to repentance, full-hearted repentance before the Lord, and a full-hearted pursuit after holiness. And that's one of the purposes that we have of officers, is to stir up each other to renewed faith, renewed repentance, renewed commitment to holiness, right? Renewed prayer. And in verse one, we looked at that corporate dimension and details. I'm not going to say more now. But then he goes on to express his reasons for those hindered prayers. And we're going to look briefly at the corporate guilt that we looked at two weeks ago. Verse 11, Israel has sinned. They have also transgressed my covenant, which I commanded them, for they have even taken some of the accursed things and have both stolen and deceived, and they have also put it among their own stuff. Is that jarring to you, that God would blame them, and He uses the plural them, for one man's sin? You know, even I tend to be so affected by the individualism of our culture that, you know, there's a sense in which it seems unfair. You've got to explain this, but this is the way God's covenant works, and if you did not hear or Yeah, hear the sermon on verse 1. I would encourage you to re-listen to that, read it online, because it's very important to see how covenantalism gives that balance between the extremes of collectivism on the one side and hyper-individualism on the other. But what I want to focus on right now is that not all sins are treated equally, as being equally bad, or even as bringing this kind of corporate guilt. And I think even just simple logic will tell you this, because the other soldiers in that army probably had sinful motives, sinful thoughts, they had some sins, but those sins did not bring any corporate guilt. I think we need to recognize that. It was only when a man brought a cursed thing into the camp that the corporate negative effects happened. So let's not over-apply this passage like some people do. Some pastors act as if there was no difference whatsoever between the sin of homosexuality, for example, or the sin of murder, and the sin of gossip, say. and nothing could be further from the truth. God makes huge differences between different kinds of sins. Not all sins are alike. John 19 11 speaks of greater sin. So there are lesser sins, there are greater sins. Not all sins are alike. In Matthew 23, 23, Jesus speaks of weightier matters of the law and justice and mercy and faithfulness. In Luke 12, he speaks of degrees of punishment and says that more knowledge will require more culpability. Likewise, intentional rebellion is far worse than irresponsibility, according to Numbers chapter 15. There's many different scriptures that indicate there are different levels of sin. But what I want to do right now, I just want to lay out for you a kind of a hierarchy of sins that was implied in Jesus' statement. Did you know that there is one sin that cannot be forgiven? That's what Jesus says. Matthew 12, verse 32, anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or the age to come. So let me list the degrees of seriousness. The sin against the Holy Spirit is the most serious sin. It's the only sin that cannot be forgiven. But implied in that verse is that all blasphemy is super serious sin, super serious. He lists blasphemy against God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit as being worse than other sins, and so we ought never to treat blasphemy against God in a light way. It makes me shudder to hear other people using the name of the Lord in vain. This is one of the reasons why I never watch a movie that has blasphemy in it. I either don't watch it or I watch it through clear play, but what Scripture says is blasphemy is way up there in terms of seriousness of sin, and we ought not to trivialize the seriousness of blaspheming the name of God the Father, God the Spirit, or God the Son. Reverence God's name. Third, there are some sins that require the death penalty, with murder being at the top of the list. Can a murderer be converted and forgiven on death row? Well, absolutely. You've seen that a number of times. God many times will use that to draw a sinner to Himself. But the law of God says when it comes to the civil government, The civil government may not do away with the death penalty. He still has to be executed. And so, again, it shows that murder is much more serious than gossip. Fourth, there are sins that God pronounces curses against, and you can see one list of curses in Deuteronomy 27. in verses 11 and following, those sins are especially cursed because of the incredible damage they do to culture and or the damage that they do to a family. For example, it says in that passage that God curses children who treat their parents with contempt. He curses them. Parents should not tolerate that kind of behavior. Why? Because it is one of those sins that actually brings God's curse, and any of the sins that bring God's curse affect the whole covenantal unit. God's disfavor now comes upon that unit because that dishonoring behavior is tolerated. That passage says that God curses meanness toward disabled people, like leading a blind person off of the road into the ditch and then laughing over it. He curses incest and bestiality, and that's why God calls these super-serious sins an abomination, an abomination. And we need to treat them as an abomination that brings down God's corporate curse. Anything that in the Scripture is said to have God's curse is parallel to what Achan did. Okay, so we're trying to draw analogies. Fourth, there were sins that were crimes that did not deserve the death penalty, but which impacted society so negatively they were treated as crimes with specified penalties. Now, obviously there could be forgiveness for those in categories three and four. But they need to be treated more seriously. And then there are sins for which there is no civil penalty. Now, they're also treated seriously by God, but you don't see the same negative repercussions upon society or upon families or upon churches. Those are not the kind of sins that Joshua 7 is talking about. So to apply this Achan passage to every sin, as some people do, is simply not being sensitive to the context. It's not every sin that makes God abandon a church, for example. Okay? It's deliberately embracing of what God has called cursed that makes God leave a church until there is repentance. And the specific sin that Achan engaged in was a breaking of the covenant by taking something that God had cursed. And it was because of this corporate impact, and I believe due to demonic legal ground, that God treated it so seriously. And I believe there is corporate guilt in any denomination of churches that beautifies what God calls an abomination, such as denominations that call re-voice a good thing, or grow soft on abortion or other crimes that have God's curse. Now, let's look next at the results of corporate sin. God's judgments don't just come on the individual. They come down on everyone who is in covenantal union with that individual, unless—we saw two weeks ago—unless that individual has resisted that sin in some way. by saying, you know, praying against it or saying, I disagree with that. If they've resisted it, then they are released from that curse themselves. Joshua 7 verse 12, therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies because they have become doomed to destruction. Neither will I be with you anymore unless you destroy the accursed from among you. Again, if you were here when I preached on verse 1, you would have gotten an in-depth look at not only what it means, what it does not mean, two false approaches, and how covenant theology helps us to have a balance. I'm not going to repeat what I said on that Sunday, but do notice the seriousness of having an accursed thing within the camp. Verse 12 says, the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies. Second, they were doomed to destruction. Third, God would not be with them anymore unless they destroyed the accursed in their midst. It's super serious. And I love the word unless. That gives hope. There's a way of getting rid of that. Okay, there were actions that could be taken. They had to get rid of Achan and the accursed things. And so I just want to apply this generally. You can see why Protestant churches used to take church discipline so seriously and why Reformed churches still, generally speaking, do take it fairly seriously. Such discipline is designed to bring the offending member to repentance, and when that does not happen, at least it brings God's blessing on the congregation. But it's just reinforcing what we saw in detail under verse 1. There are corporate consequences to the sins that God has called accursed. So we've seen corporate guilt. We've seen the corporate consequences. Verse 13 gives the corporate action needed. Get up, sanctify the people and say, sanctify yourselves for tomorrow because thus says the Lord God of Israel, there is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel, you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you. So two steps are needed. First of all, they had to sanctify themselves through confession, and then they had to deal with the sin. I'm going to deal with sanctification first. Why would they have to sanctify themselves when they had not personally sinned? After all, they had sanctified themselves just a few days earlier. Why do they have to do it again? Well, the only reason I can see is that there is such a thing as corporate guilt, and this has been true ever since the time of Adam in whom we fell. Sometimes the corporate guilt that you need to be cleansed from extends from previous generations. Let me just read you one example. This is the second commandment. You shall not make for yourself any carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. And so this visiting, of the sin to the third and fourth generation of those who hate God can be broken when people commit themselves to God, and they serve Him, and they love Him. Okay, so it's a curse that can be broken. But the reason attached to idolatry, the reason it's attached to idolatry is I think It's because the demonic is many times the reason why this is visited from generation to generation. Achan was bringing the demonic into the camp. He gave legal ground to Satan. And it used to be in the olden days when people would get converted. They would confess not only all the legal ground of sin that they had committed, but they would confess the sins of their ancestors that might have given legal ground as well. They'd put it all under the blood. And notice that sanctifying yourself is not a one-time event. They had just a few days before sanctified themselves, now they're doing it again. And this is true of the church. You can see perhaps why we in the Reformed Church are so concerned about confessing our sins regularly. because sin continues to pop up, even unknown sins. He does not call us to be perfect, but He does call us to confess our sins, to hate our sins, to forsake our sins, to keep fighting against our sins. So during that confession time, don't just go through the motions, take confession very seriously, and do so in your families. By the way, Job is an example of a person, people say, why would he confess lest there was a curse, you know, his children cursed or something like that. Well, he realized even inadvertently, his children could be bringing God's curse down upon them. And so on a regular basis in his family devotions, he would pray on their behalf. Okay, second part of the solution is dealing with the sin and the sinner. Verse 13 says, you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you. Now depending on what jurisdiction you're talking about, there are various ways that the accursed thing can be gotten rid of, and let me outline those for you. In the state, civil government, this is done by executing the accursed. The state does not execute you know, capital punishment for every sin, for every crime, only for those that God has authorized execution, which is a very small number of sins. But if there is a crime that God considers to be so heinous that it deserves the death penalty, then nothing but the death penalty can remove that curse from the civil sphere. So even though harem warfare is no longer applicable today, even though there's no one-to-one correspondence between His accursed thing and ours, the principle still remains. If God now says there's anything that He has His curse upon, it's going to have the same effect upon us. That's the point. God wants all abominations that He has cursed to be dealt with in the civil sphere, and if they aren't, the civil sphere does not have God's blessing upon it. We are not one nation under God anymore. We are one nation in rebellion against God and under His curse. Okay, so when our nation isn't doing what it should be doing, is there anything we can do? And the answer, praise the Lord, is yes. There's a lot we can do. Within a family, one should not financially support a son or a daughter who is involved in what the Bible calls a capital crime. Doesn't matter that the state doesn't consider it a capital crime. The family should. Now, obviously, family can't put anybody to death. That's Deuteronomy 21. It's quite clear. It's only the civil government that can do that. But the family should still treat a capital crime as being that serious. Right? That's the point. I know Christian homes that allow their sodomite children to live in their basements and to practice their abominations. Well, that makes the whole family guilty. Nowadays, it isn't considered to be a loving thing to kick a teenager or older son or a daughter out of the home if they've engaged in what the Bible considers to be capital crimes. But it is the most loving thing that parents can do. to force a son or a daughter out of the home if they refuse to repent of homosexuality, abortion, or even abusing their parents, which, by the way, the law of God set that up as a capital crime too, right? That's the most loving thing you can do. To coddle them means you don't care about their soul. That's really what it means. Their soul is in danger of hellfire. Parents should not support what is under God's curse, whether they're doing it out of false guilt, unprincipled tenderness, peer pressure, or some other reason. Now, why is it loving? Well, it's loving because it presses that son or daughter to God's standards, not man's. And it's God's blessing we want, not just man's. Second, by requiring genuine repentance, not Achan's kind of repentance, but genuine repentance, you're making it clear grace alone can reverse this curse. You can't. You don't have any power to reverse that curse. Only God's grace can. And you don't want a restored relationship with a relative if God's curse remains upon him or her. You want true restoration that flows from repentance and faith. So that's how a family maintains God's blessing when one of its members is committing a capital crime or an accursed sin. If they can't force a person out, they can leave. but they don't want to be under God's curse. By the way, don't automatically assume it's bad parenting that results in the kid turning out this way. God was a perfect parent with Israel, and yet he says in several passages that as he applied the rod of discipline to Israel, his sons, he's calling them, he's likening himself to a parent, he is saying it did not produce repentance in that person yet, And so, what does God do? He kicks Israel out of the home, and that was perfectly effective because Israel eventually came back with repentance and trembling. Hosea 11 and Isaiah, the first chapters, and the first chapters of Jeremiah, there are many passages that show this is the last act of discipline on God. He's tried every other form of discipline, and finally He says, You're out of the home if you're not willing to abide by this. And then God brings that person to repentance and they come back. At least that's the hope, right? So make sure you're only doing that, though, for what God considers super serious sins. Now how is this done in the church? God has authorized church discipline to keep the churches pure. That discipline has rules, checks, and balances. It follows God's principles of justice strictly. At least it should. But the end result is either repentance on the part of Achan, in which case he's restored to the church. Why is he restored? You know, Achan wasn't restored. Well, that's civil government. In the church, you know, he's always restored if there is repentance. So not only is he restored, he's restored because of repentance, but even if he doesn't repent, at least the church receives God's blessing. Okay, you're breaking off that curse. By the way, it can sometimes take years before people repent after being excommunicated. We elders, Gary and I, had the joy of seeing somebody who wasn't even in the state yet, anymore, and she came to us and said, that she wanted her excommunication lifted. And as we investigated, we were delighted to be able to lift the discipline and have her transferred to a church in her state because it was a full-hearted repentance. Gary, just a couple of weeks ago, forwarded a letter from Pastor Bob Toon, he's an Acts 29 pastor here in town, and he related the story of a young man who had become so bitter after he had been disciplined and eventually excommunicated from the church. But seven years later, God did a work in his heart. He came back and he said, I am so thankful that you stuck by your guns and you didn't cave in with all the pressure that was put on you. This discipline has done a powerful work in my heart. He had thorough going. It was a marvelous testimony. And maybe Gary could forward that on to you. It's a really cool story. But here's the thing. It's very hard to remain faithful when the world wants you to coddle the offenders and love them unconditionally. Love has to be defined by God, not the world. But let's look at how this was done on a denominational level. Denominations exercise church discipline as well. And when that's not possible because the denomination has gone too far and they just will not do the discipline that needs to be done, what sometimes has to happen is a whole bunch of churches leave. We call that reverse discipline, right? And I mentioned, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, that there were 1,800 Methodist congregations that left the Methodist denomination because the Methodist denomination is calling homosexuality and abortion and other things that God has pronounced a curse upon. They're saying, no, this is a virtue. We need to follow this kind of thing. And they realized if they didn't pull out, they were going to be under God's curse themselves. OK, so that's a reverse kind of a discipline. So the same is true of denominations that tolerate a false gospel. Galatians 1.8 says, but even if we or an angel from heaven preach… In other words, I don't care how good the denomination is, how good the angel is. It says, even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. There's that word, accursed, again. If there's something being embraced that God has cursed, you want to flee from that denomination. We're not talking about every sin. We're talking about sins that Scripture says have God's curse. 2 Peter 2.14 speaks of certain kinds of sins as being so serious that those who practice them are accursed. And so when there are denominations that glory in the LGBTQ agenda, which God has cursed, or they actively support abortion like some of the mainstream Baptist, mainstream Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican churches do, That's horrible. People need to leave. They don't have a choice if they want God's blessing. So what's true on a local church level needs to be practiced at the denominational level too. Now let me summarize this whole section by showing that the New Testament calls for exactly the same kind of separation from the accursed things today as it did in the Old Testament. For the state, and I'll just read one verse on this, for the state, Romans 1.32 says, they are still worthy of the death penalty. Still, that'd be the jurisdiction of the state, right? That verse says justice is the same, New Testament and the Old Testament. Now, let's focus on church jurisdiction. I'm going to give you a summary of small quotations from passages that call us to separate from apostasy. Romans 16, 17 says, avoid them. 1 Timothy 6, 3-5 says, from such withdraw yourself. 2 Timothy 3, 5 says, and from such people turn away. Concerning heretics, 2 John 10-11 says, do not receive them into your house, nor greet him, for he who greets him shares in his evil. 2 Corinthians 6, 4-18, it's a long passage that calls for separation. I'll just quote one phrase. Come out from them, among them, and be separate. Romans 16, 17 through 18 says, watch out for them. Ephesians 5.11 tells us to expose them. In 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul identifies the dangerous people by name, exposes them, calls them out. 1 Corinthians 5.12 commands us, judge those heretics. 2 Thessalonians 3.14 says, note that person, do not keep company with him. 2 Thessalonians 3.6 says, withdraw yourself from every brother who basically rejected Paul's message. Of those who play with sexual abominations, God says, do not keep company with them. Put away from yourselves that wicked person. 1 Corinthians 5, 6 warns us that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. And of those in apostate denominations, John says, come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins and lest you receive of her plagues. I think you get the point. God takes the accursed Achans as seriously today as He does back then. You cannot accept half-hearted repentance for such things. There must be a radical break with the accursed things before they can be restored. And without it, the whole church could be faced with the same defeat, powerlessness, fear, and absence of God's power that Israel faced in Joshua's time. So this is just God's covenant at work, and until God's people take this principle of separation seriously in the family, in the church, in the state, in the national level, there are gonna continue to be negative consequences. So what's God's goal in verses 14 through 15? His goal was to help Israel discover the individual or individuals who caused these corporate problems. So we saw under verse one, God wants individual restitution, not corporate restitution like the collectivists do. And because I dealt with that extensively, I'm just gonna make some side applications here. First, what do you do when you suspect that there is an ache in the church, but you cannot figure out who? Or let's make it concrete. Let's say that there is a Jezebel spirit in the church, which that spirit has been affecting a lot of American churches. But you can't put your finger on anything, because Revelation 2 indicates that this Jezebel spirit causes these people to create havoc, but they hide like acre. They hide so well that you don't have the evidence to be able to discipline these people. So, what do you do? The church is suffering from this. What do you do? Again, Achan is similar. He didn't admit to what he did until he was exposed by God's inspired revelation. Most commentators believe this was either the use of Urim and Thummim, or it was God just methodically revealing things to Joshua through His gift of prophecy. Now, we don't have Urim and Thummim today. And we don't have inspired prophecy today. It really doesn't matter. God can expose them through His providence, and He's done so many times in history. Verse 14, in the morning, therefore, you shall be brought according to your tribes, and it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes shall come according to the families, and the family which the Lord takes shall come by households, and the household which the Lord takes shall come by men. What would have to be in place for this process to even work? Well, first, there would have to be a corporate willingness of all Israel to hold the guilty individuals accountable. They don't even know who it is yet, but they're willing to be a part of the solution. So this implies that the heads of nation and of tribes and clans and families, they were cooperative. They too wanted holiness in the nation. But let's say Here they got the evidence. But let's say there's zero evidence of what is causing God's wrath to be poured out. What do you do? I believe there are still some options. First, we can ask God to judge. After all, it was God who exposed this person and called for the judgment. Now, God can do that without our help. He can easily expose the sins of the people. In fact, Isaiah says that God sometimes just sweeps away in a very short period of time the huge web of lies and deceit that have been constructed by this person. He just sweeps it away. God can expose them. And I think it's appropriate for the church to call down God's judgments upon secret idolaters, whoremongers, and other cursed sinners until they repent. And over the years, believe it or not, I have seen God bring remarkable judgments upon people when we have done that. Second, public officials can do as the city elders in Deuteronomy 21 did and have a public expression of repentance. Okay, applying the blood of Christ to cleanse the city or the church from whatever it is that's hindering us in our spiritual warfare. We just turn it over to Him because we say, Lord, we don't know what the cause is. That's what was going on in Deuteronomy 21. Third, when God's favor departs from a church, and when a family in the church says, I don't know what's going on, but I don't like it, what can you do? Well, as a family, you can say, Father, we confess whatever it is that's going on out there, and we pray that your curse would be removed from our family. At least your own family could be protected and can continue to have God's blessing. Individuals can confess their own sins and ask God to avert judgment for others. Fifth, James 5.16 says, confess your trespasses to one another, pray for one another that you may be healed. So that's mutual openness. Confession of sin could lead to outward blessings. Sixth, ask God to reverse the negative in your business or in your church through your own active godliness and ministry. Let me read Genesis 29.5. So it was from the time that he had made him overseer of his house, and all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptians' house for Joseph's sake, and the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in the house and in the field." So the whole house was blessed because of one righteous man's, and it's a slave's, presence. Can you make a difference corporately? Absolutely. We talked about that in a previous sermon. And you might be skeptical, and you might think, well, sin is so devastating. It's going to be way more powerful than anything righteous. Well, the Scripture says the opposite. Paul says, where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. Actually, just look up sometime the much mores in Scripture. It's so encouraging. Over and over in the Old Testament, you could see what one godly king could make a difference in a country, or what one individual could make a difference in a household. In 1 Corinthians 7.14, God says the whole family is sanctified by one believing member, so that one believer's presence has the potential of undoing all the corporate unrighteousness of the entire family. That should be encouraging. And then seventh, That brings up the power of blessing. I think we need to get more used to the habit of blessing one another. There is a power in blessing that we saw in the last verses of Joshua chapter 6, and that's why we must not bless Achans, right? We gotta be careful. 2 John 10 through 11 says, if anyone comes to you, does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house, nor greet him, for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds. So, this is the corporate effect of greetings. You might not have thought that blessing a Jehovah's Witness would involve you in their sins, but it does, because if you say, have a good day, it's okay to say hello, but if you say, have a good day, God doesn't want that JW to have a good day, because he's destroying the faith of other people, right? So, we've got to be very careful who we pronounce blessings upon. Use it wisely. I won't spend much time on the rest of verse 14, but I do at least want to remind you of all the corporate units within the nation. It mentions the corporate units of nation, tribe, clans, ancestral houses, households, and then the individual man by man. So each of those units has some measure of accountability before God, and the leaders of each unit need to seek to take actions. But notice, lastly, the covenant solidarity of the family brings curses to the whole family, at least on accursed issues, not on every sin. If the members do not interpose or speak out, verse 15 says, then it shall be that he who is taken with the accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord and because he has done a disgraceful thing in Israel. So it's unmistakably clear, God blesses and curses corporately. Sins have a corporate effect. Righteousness has a corporate effect. Blessings have a corporate effect. Lack of faith has a corporate effect. Again, I dealt with this, I think, adequately in verse 1. I won't repeat, but I do want to end by making some additional applications. The first word, unless, in verse 12 shows the way out. Defeat can be turned into victory when we take that defeat to the Lord and we resubmit ourselves to Him. The power that they had in Jericho was now lost, but it can be regained once they're restored. Second, it's better to pray poorly, like we saw that Joshua did. than to not pray. It's interesting that God answers Joshua in the midst of his praying. And yes, there is a rebuke, but there's also direction. There's a way out that is given. Like Joshua, we should take our prayers to the Lord, however poor our prayers may be. Third, be sure your sins will find you out. There's an interesting word in verses 14 and 15 that's translated as take. Literally, it means to capture to trap, just like trapping an animal to catch, the guilty person would be caught by the Lord. He would be trapped by the Lord. You may be able to successfully hide your sins from your spouse, your church, or your business. You can't hide it from the Lord. Eventually, God will make sure you get caught. Why? Because He loves you. He's interested in your holiness. He doesn't want you ruined by your sin. The last application I would make is that God disciplines Israel because He loves Israel, He is for Israel. He could have just abandoned them, but He makes sure to orchestrate events in such a way that these people will turn back to Him. Now here's the weird thing about it. By leaving them, he gets them to turn back to him. Now, I wanna read an analysis of this whole thing, because we have these departures where we don't sense God's presence in our lives, but let's see, the Puritan's name is Thomas Brooks, and just cling to this idea if you've ever no longer sensed the presence of the Lord in your life. He says this, by God's withdrawing from his people, he prevents his people withdrawing from him. And so by an affliction, he prevents sin. For God to withdraw from me is but my affliction. In other words, it's for my good. But for me to withdraw from God, that is my sin. It's not good. And therefore, he says, it were better for me that God should withdraw a thousand times from me than that I should once withdraw from God. God therefore forsakes us that we may not forsake our God. God sometimes hides himself that we may cleave the closer to him and hang the faster upon him. Brethren and sisters, if you are like Jimmy, hiding from God and from others who love you, realize it's not in your best interest to hide. Turn to the Lord and His blessing will return to you. Amen. Father, I thank you for even the difficult portions of Scripture, because they were written for our edification. May each one of us grow up into you in all things. And even quicken Psalm 32 to our hearts as we sing this psalm. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.