Reading from Joshua chapter 7. But the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed things. So the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel. Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-Avon on the east side of Bethel, and spoke to them, saying, So the men went up and spied out AI, and they returned to Joshua and said to him, do not let the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack AI. Do not weary all the people there, for the people of AI are few. So about 3,000 men went up there from the people, but they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai struck down about 36 men, for they chased them from before the gate as far as Shebareim and struck them down on the descent. Therefore, the hearts of the people melted and became like water." Father, as we seek to learn from the chapter, Joshua chapter 7, I pray that Your Holy Spirit would instruct our hearts and quicken the Word to our hearts, enable me to faithfully be able to expound verse 1, and enable this to be a key that opens up this entire chapter. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I was actually going to preach on all five verses this morning, but the more I studied this, the more I realized that most Americans would get royally hung up on verse one, would not be able to concentrate on anything I had to say on the rest of the verses because this verse would be bugging them. And sometimes it is the difficult verses that stump us in life that end up being keys to understanding life, and I think that's definitely the case with this particular verse. And since socialistic pastors have misused this passage so much, in recent years to promote BLM. Yes, pastors use verse one to support BLM radicals out there and the commie redistribution of wealth and other weird things. But I thought, well, I need to address this. Now, thankfully, this verse also addresses another extreme. There are two extremes in our culture. And the first extreme is radical individualism. Now, what bothers some hyper-individualists about this passage is that God's wrath, His anger was looming over more than just Achan and his family. It loomed over all of Israel. Now, they could explain why the family of Achan was destroyed right along with Achan and still be able to maintain their system of radical individualism. For example, one thing that they could possibly say is, Well, maybe the rest of the family knew exactly what Achan had done. They saw him bringing this loot in and burying it under his bed. And since this was a capital crime for this particular war, declared by God to be that, then the Lord would take this much more seriously. And there is an element of truth in that explanation. If your parent commits a capital crime, you know, you can't be silent about that, right? And you would have implicit guilt if you were. And so that might be an explanation that the individualist could give. What I believe the hyper-individualists cannot explain is the corporate guilt and the corporate consequences meted out by God on the whole nation. It seems to me that it would be impossible for the millions of other Israelites to have known that Achan had taken these things and had buried them in his tent. So how could they be held guilty of this trespass regarding the accursed thing? On an anarchistic or a totally libertarian philosophy, it seems like a tough one to explain. So take a look at verse 1 again. Verse 1 and the rest of the chapter documents only one man's sin, and yet verse 1 starts by saying, the children, plural, of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things. And then it ends by saying, the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel. Now certainly the millions of other individuals had their own sins to answer for, and we'll actually look at some of those sins next week. And so there's a sense in which anything that happened to them is a justice from God's perspective, but that's not what this verse is talking about, not at all. This verse is talking about them being accountable for the specific sin of taking the accursed things, something that only Achan did. In verse 5, we discover that while Achan didn't die in the battle against Ai, 36 other soldiers did. It just doesn't seem fair to Western individualists that so many people should suffer for one man's sin. And verse 1 only gives one man's sin as the reason for God's anger. So I'm trying to tease apart why two unbiblical extremes are contradicted by this passage. So that's the first extreme, hyperindividualism. What troubles the collectivists on the opposite side of the spectrum, at least if they pay very much attention to this passage at all, is the amount of individual accountability found in this chapter. On their system, the individual is lost in the collectivist crowd. totally lost. They don't mind corporate guilt so long as the individual is not held liable. They would rather redistribute the liability through everybody's taxes, right? So even though people like Tim Keller use this passage to justify their socialistic views, it actually doesn't completely fit their paradigm. And I'm going to try to tease apart why they are not totally handling this passage properly. They do get the corporate guilt part right. But notice first that this verse speaks of children plural, not Israel as some nebulous unit. Now yes, verse 10 is going to mention the corporate guilt of Israel and covenantalism can take that into account. But even that verse immediately uses the plural they to describe Israel and makes it clear this corporate unit does not have a will to sin. Only individuals can sin. Okay, not corporate units, nor was it society that paid the restitution as the collectivist desire. No, no, no, no, no. It was Akin, an individual and his family that had to pay this restitution. And so, if you look at verses 6 through 15, very briefly, Joshua as an individual is held accountable by God for certain actions, and he's told to adjust his actions. And there's many other hints throughout the entire chapter that show that God holds individuals accountable and responsible throughout this chapter. So the collectivists themselves have also missed something. And let me do a little bit deeper dive into this a little bit because I think that's the primary problem in our society that is heading more and more in a collectivist direction. If you're gonna err on one side or the other, let's not err in the direction of becoming collectivists, right? Socialists love to demonize what they see as societal sins, or because they love to use the word systemic, they demonize systemic unfairness, whatever that is, and systemic racism, and other systemic societal sins, and rarely are they willing to look for solutions for the individual's guilt. Instead of individual responsibility, restitution, and guilt, They pawn these things off on some nebulous entity they call society. But this chapter will show there is no such thing as a corporate unit that can sin. It's always individuals that sin, even imputed sins. You know the imputed sin of Adam? God still holds individuals accountable for that sin. And that means that individuals can always do something to avert these issues. whereas it's pretty hard to know what in the world individualists can do for the kind of guilt that the collectivists try to put on your shoulders. The way people speak of America's guilt of the slavery of the past and the racism of the past, you could never get past that guilt, even if your ancestors only immigrated to America 50 years ago. If you're white, that makes you guilty in their eyes. And because you cannot get rid of your whiteness, you can never get rid of your guilt, right? They don't, according to scripture, you don't need to be paralyzed by some nebulous guilt that can never be dealt with because you're supposedly part of some systemic cultural sins. That ends up freezing people into inactivity and actually being manipulated by the experts. And by the way, that's what they want. They're not interested in guilt. They're interested in power, just like global warming advocates. They're not interested in global warming. They're interested in power. It's just a tool for them. They're flying around. If they were really interested in not polluting the world, they wouldn't be flying around in their private jets, right? It's a kind of hypocrisy. But let's get back to us. You might say, how on earth can an individual do anything about the anger of God that hovers over a nation when it's other people's sins that are bringing this guilt, you know, the abortion in the land and theft and tyranny? Well, when there is guilt that we share with a leader of a nation, we can throw off that guilt by disagreeing with that leader, like the prophets did, or confessing the sins of the leader, or taking a stand for righteousness. There's no need to be paralyzed into socialistic acquiescence by some nebulous guilt that they try to put on society as a whole. Now, having said that, I will admit that it is hard to maintain this balance that the Scripture has unless you fully embrace covenant theology. That's the missing key to understanding this. So I probably should have titled the sermon, Covenantalism versus Individualism and Collectivism. But let's look at each word in the text, and then I want to give the covenantal background that helps to explain it. And hopefully, once you understand this verse, it's going to be a key to understanding the whole chapter. Everything else will open up. Now one interpreter made a big deal over the first word but at the beginning of verse 1 and emphasized the contrast between chapter 6 and chapter 7. And it's true, there is a striking contrast. The problem is the first word in the Hebrew is not a contrastive. It is a word that is usually translated as and, or also, okay? This chapter is building off of the covenant blessings and curses that were at the end of chapter six. The idea is that God's covenant, which guaranteed the victory in chapter six, is also a covenant that guaranteed this defeat in chapter seven. Okay, it's the exact same covenantal issues that are involved in each of these chapters. We like the fact that one man's faithfulness to God in chapter six brought about huge covenantal blessings to everybody. We say, yay, we love that. And we're not so keen about the fact that one man's sin brings this covenantal or corporate defeat in chapter seven. But it is the same covenantal principles operative in both chapters. We can't rejoice at the corporate victory in chapter six and then consistently reject the corporate defeat in chapter seven. It's the covenant that makes both operative, not some other secular idea. And so the first word actually connects us to the covenant curses and blessings of chapter 6 by showing the flip side of the coin. So in that sense, yes, you could translate it as but. It's an interpretive translation, but it's still the same covenant. Now the next phrase in verse 1 makes an accusation against more than just Achan. It says, but the children of Israel Now some versions leave out the children of, or more literally the sons of, and they just have Israel sinned. And yet it literally says sons of Israel, and it's emphasizing sons because it's the males primarily who were responsible for resisting Joshua's bad ideas and the bad ideas of the other leaders in this chapter. And it implies that they could have resisted. When we get to verses 2 through 5, we'll see that the soldiers should not have accepted a task that God had not authorized. And I probably need to pause and give you a little bit of civics instruction background for you to even understand what I'm talking about here. One of the most fundamental principles of civics, you do not understand biblical civics at all unless you firmly embrace the principle called the regulative principle of government. The church is bound by this as well. The regulated principle of worship is quite different than the freedom principle. Individual and family were made before the fall, and they could do anything that God has not specifically forbidden, prohibited, right? That's the freedom principle. Then after the fall, God took some liberties from family and individual and gave it to either state or church. And so God said to the state and to the church, you may not do anything that I have not explicitly authorized. This is the regulative principle. They cannot do anything that's not explicitly given to them in the Scripture. Okay, here's the point. Whereas defensive warfare was authorized in the law, offensive warfare was absolutely prohibited in the law unless God, by special revelation, gave them permission to do so, which was the harem principle that we looked at earlier, where God's already judged Canaan in his courtroom, and he says, I'm gonna use you as an instrument, but this is by special revelation to destroy everybody that's there. This was not common, normal warfare that they were involved in. It was a special case. Without God's direction, they could not engage in offensive warfare. It was unlawful. Well, we'll see next week that there is absolutely zero evidence that Joshua or anyone else prayed or asked God's guidance to go after Ai And since, and commentators point out, God rebukes them for this. Since the regulative principle of government means that the state cannot do anything not directly authorized by God, the militias had the right to bow out, saying, we're not gonna be doing this. They were authorized by Scripture to decide to join or to not join a cause, depending on the justness of that cause. And other leaders could have spoken up as well. So really, that's a biblical presupposition that makes a big difference in how you interpret chapter 7. We've got to understand biblical civics, or we're very easily going to be swept into modern so-called solutions to the problems of civics in our modern culture. Now, let me illustrate how this issue of resistance to an ungodly mandate can work. Well, you're just using a modern senator. When Senator Massey Praise God. It's not just, you know, in the olden days we had a Dr. No. We've got a Dr. No now. When he votes no against a bill, an ungodly bill, he as an individual and by association his state of Kentucky is no longer held accountable by God for the guilt that God imputes to that wretched bill. Why? Because he resisted, and he resisted on behalf of Kentucky. There is always a way for an individual to deal with guilt in God's economy. But conversely, let me use a different illustration. Think of Nebraska senators, Christian senators, who feel that it is hopeless to do away with abortion, so they don't try. In fact, they approve of abortion up to a certain week, which means Right? That's what the heartbeat is exactly doing. When they do that, they've endorsed abortion up to a certain week. By failing to take a strong stand against it, they are covenantally guilty for all of those abortions that will now happen up through week seven and eight. And that is true, even though they are personally opposed to abortion. It's exactly parallel to what most of these families were failing to do. To avoid covenantal guilt, a magistrate needs to oppose a practice that God commands him to oppose. It doesn't matter whether he thinks it's achievable or not, you need to personally take a stand against it in order to avoid that covenantal guilt. Now let's return to an issue we talked about earlier. The way many Christians interpret corporate guilt, every white citizen in America is told that he or she is guilty of the evils done against blacks in early America until restitution is made. Well, I'm sorry, that's not the way God's covenantal guilt works today. It does not separate people out as blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics. If there is covenantal guilt, that guilt rests upon everyone in the society, including the blacks in that society. unless the individuals or the churches or counties or states have resisted that evil. You get the point? There's got to be resistance in some way. But the result of the collectivist guilt is that everyone suffers because everyone has to pay taxes for this supposed restitution. And no one is told how much restitution needs to be made to the blacks who are alive today, or even whether those blacks descended from slaves in the past, right? And thus it's an excuse for endless redistribution of wealth, something that God clearly calls theft. And it is theft on a grand scale, and yet how many pastors justify that theft based on this verse? I think you get the drift. In the battle mentioned in verses two and following, God only held the sons of Israel accountable, at least the ones that went to battle. The ones that didn't go to battle didn't die. And so let's take seriously the plural in this phrase, the sons of Israel. Israel was made up of a bunch of individuals. and tribes. America is made up of a bunch of individuals and states, right? And as we go through a long list of corporate and individual guilt passages later in the sermon, I'm going to illustrate how this is consistent throughout the Bible. I don't know of any exceptions. And I'm spending more time on this because I am so irritated with pastors who have misused this verse. It is Scripture twisting. Though this verse does speak of corporate guilt, and verse 10 is even more clear on that, there's always something that individuals can do about it, and it's individuals who suffer. But next comes the puzzling phrase that helps us to have covenantal balance. It says, but the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed thing. There is no getting around the fact that God attributes the sin to more than Achan. Certainly God will be describing Achan's sin in the next clause, but here he says the children, plural, of Israel committed that trespass. Otherwise the word for in the next clause makes no sense. And so our theology needs to be able to accommodate this idea of corporate guilt without entering into false guilt. And I believe covenant theology enables us to do that. Anarcho-capitalism does not. Second, the disobedience is called an act of adultery. The Hebrew word is ma'al. It's the same word for adultery. It may not seem like a big deal to us that one man in a nation coveted, stole, and hid accursed things, but when God pronounces a curse upon anything, we need to avoid it like the plague. It is not an ordinary sin like Achan tried to make it out to be. A lot of people say, hey, he confessed. How come he was stoned? Yeah, yeah. He confessed, waiting a long, long time when it's finally obvious, okay, I got caught. Then what does he do? He doesn't call it an accursed thing. He doesn't call it adultery. He doesn't call it breaking covenant. He doesn't call it a sin worthy of death. No, he's, yeah, I coveted, and yeah, I did take some things. He minimized his sin, right? And so this was a deliberate taking of something that God had cursed. And I highly recommend that you read Ray Simmons' book, The Confessionalist County, to see how this relates to the bloodshed in our land through abortion and through other forms of murder. Let me read from David Firth's commentary. I think he summarizes the meaning of this phrase rather well. He says the verb used here can refer to marital unfaithfulness, and though it is more commonly used to describe unfaithfulness to God, this background points to the pain that Yahweh experiences in his people's sin. This corporate approach to sin stands in marked contrast to the individualism that typifies much of Western society and which tends to assume that something is acceptable if it does not overtly hurt anyone else. This is an older commentary, because I think individualism is being replaced by collectivism hugely. But anyway, this, however, is to fail to recognize that no sin, whether of commission or omission, stands in isolation. We are embedded within communities and no sin is ever purely personal. Rather, all sin is interpersonal. Although in some cases it is easier to see how it affects others, we should not imagine that our sin has no wider impacts. I think that's well said. And I'll be demonstrating this covenantal connection we all have with a few more examples, but right now I want to just give one example of how Paul makes exactly the same covenantal application in 1 Corinthians 5 verses 1 through 13. Now in that passage, Paul gets on the case of the church for not having excommunicated a person who had engaged in incestuous marriage with his stepmom. You know, his father, it says his father's wife, but it was his stepmom probably. That is something that the law says defiles the land, and yet the church tolerated it, and he said that this whole congregation was in spiritual danger as a result of one man's curse-bearing sin. curse bringing sin. In verse six, he says, do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? And he goes on to say that, He's only talking about the church. He says you don't have to avoid people in the world who engage in this kind of sin. In fact, you're going to have to engage with them if you're going to bring the gospel to the world. But he says when you are in the covenant, the people in the covenant relate to each other, have an impact on each other for positive or for ill because of that covenantal relationship. So the church leaders were called to excommunicate him, and the members were to have nothing whatsoever to do with him until he repented. And then in the next book, we find out when he repented, he said, hey, what are you waiting so long for? Bring him back in. But the point is, if a little leaven leavens the whole lump, it means that the whole church is impacted by that one man's sin. Now in the next clause, Joshua clarifies that the sin that the others were guilty of was a sin committed by one man. He says, for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing. So he came from a very distinguished line. By embracing what God cursed, he put everyone in danger. And again, this is not an ordinary sin. This was a curse bringing sin. And the four explains the reason why God was attributing guilt to the sons of Israel. Achan had violated the direct orders of God. And this is where we need to understand the nature of covenant connections. 1 Corinthians 12, 26 says, if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. And notice he says members, plural, okay? We're covenantally connected as individuals. Our individuality is not lost. The next phrase shows how all suffered because of this man's sin. They suffered God's anger. So the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel. And as the next verse has outlined, that anger resulted in defeat on a super easy battle and the loss of life. AI looked like such an easy target that everybody was blindsided by this. What in the world happened? But here's the point. If God is not for us, Anything can be against us, even little things like AI. But if God is for us, nothing can be against us. And that's the reason why it's so important to get rid of serious sin from our midst. But one misapplication that Tim Keller and many other people make from this passage is to say that because there is corporate involvement in sin, that society must pay restitution. Now, Tim's not as bad as some pastors that I've read, but he still comes to the wrong conclusion. Sure, everybody in the nation has a potential of suffering from the sins of others. But citizens should call the individuals to account, and if that is not possible, then the leaders can confess the sins of the past, put them under the blood of Christ, and that ends it. There is no need for generation after generation to endlessly pay restitution to classes of people for the sins of the past. that leads to socialism and racism. And because this is such a misunderstood concept, I want to illustrate by giving sample verses of how this corporate principle works out on every level of society and show how individuals still make a difference. I think that's true covenantalism. And the most obvious example, first one given in your outlines, of our being guilty of one person's sin is the imputation of Adam's sin to not only Eve, who was in covenant with him, it's not just physical descendants, but it's also all of his descendants who were in covenant with him, even though Paul says they didn't sin in exactly the same way that Adam did. Still covenantally, he says they're guilty of Adam's sin. Now in your outlines, I have given a picture of probably the best book that I have ever read on this doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin to humanity. It was written by John Murray. I highly recommend it. Or you could just read the same ideas from his Romans commentary. Very good. But I just want to introduce you to the concept. Let me read Romans 5, 12 through 19. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin and thus death spread to all men because all sinned, and in a moment he'll be saying when they sinned. They sinned the moment Adam sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who was a type of him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense, for if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man's offense, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through one man's offense, death came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. "'For as by one man's disobedience, "'many were made sinners, "'so also by one man's obedience, "'many will be made righteous.'" Now, by reading all of that, I jumped ahead to the positive example way later in your outline of Christ, right? Because Adam and Christ are parallel in the scripture. Just as Adam's sin was imputed to all who were in covenant with him, Christ's righteousness is imputed, treated as if we had done that righteousness, to all who are in covenant with Him. And just as God's wrath was poured out on all who were in Adam, Christ's righteousness, His grace, His blessing is poured out upon all who are in Christ. There is a covenantal corporate nature that makes us all guilty of Adam's sin. You cannot ignore the corporate nature of blessings and curses. Now, how does the individual play into this? Well, as each individual rejects his identity in Adam, and by faith receives his identity in Christ, he loses the condemnation and he receives the blessing. This is what is so disastrously wrong with the people, including some Reformed people in the Revoice movement. who still cling on to their old identity in the LGBTQ plus movement. They call themselves gay Christians or trans Christians. No, no. If you're a true Christian, your new identity is in Christ. That doesn't mean you won't fall or stumble or sin, but you are progressively being conformed to this new identity. That is the thing that is driving your whole life. The point is, our whole salvation is dependent on this idea of corporate guilt and corporate worthiness in Christ, but it's also dependent on our individual response. It's kind of the mediating position between the two extremes. Paul's interpretation does not make the individual passive or hopeless like the socialistic interpretation does. And so that's an illustration related to all humanity. By the way, this should not be controversial at all, this first point, not at all. Now let's move on to 1 Chronicles 21, 1 through 14. And I'm not going to read the whole passage, but it is clear David sinned by making an intrusive census of the people. A lot of people don't realize how much God despises the American census, which is way, way, way, way more worse—more worse, that's bad grammar—way worse than David's census. But anyway, Joab objected by saying, why then does my Lord require this thing? Why should He be a cause of guilt to Israel? Notice that Joab recognized that this one sin could bring corporate guilt to all of Israel. Now, by resisting this edict from David, he could have completely nullified the guilt, but he didn't follow through on his resistance. It was only half-hearted. The text says David prevailed, he insisted on doing the census, and Joab kind of grudgingly does it. He drags his feet, but he does it. And so there's one man's sin, and yet verse 7 says, God was displeased with this thing, therefore he struck Israel. And the individualists say, how is that fair? This is David's sin. Why on earth would he be striking everybody? The text goes on to say 70,000 individual Israelites died of a plague as a result of David's census. Why? for two reasons. First, because of the strong covenantal connection that the whole nation has with David, but they're not trapped in that covenantal connection, so there's a second reason. Second reason is because they did not resist. Anyway, David sacrifices to the Lord, and the sacrifice stems the plague. But the point is, because of the covenantal way the people in the nation are connected, there's a corporate guilt and corporate consequences. Now, by the way, when I preached on this during the Life of David series, I pointed out that there were those who did resist the census. They didn't cooperate with the census. Those who did were under God's wrath, and those who did not cooperate were spared God's judgment and wrath. Okay, that's why we can never ignore the sins of our nation. We must open our mouth as Jared Ridge preached last week and resist them. And so it's no surprise to find down through history that clergy and political leaders would come together and they would confess the sins of their city or of their state or of their nation. They did it because they didn't want to be part of God's wrath, covenantal wrath. Daniel 9 is one such example. Though Daniel did not personally commit the sins that he confesses, he confesses the sins of his father on behalf of his nation. That's legitimate. And I'll just read a few sample verses, but notice the we all the way through. I'm going to start with verse 4. And I prayed to the Lord, my God, and made confession and said, O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant in mercy with those who love Him and with those who keep His commandments, we have sinned and committed iniquity and have done wickedly and rebelled even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments. Neither have we heeded Your servants, the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings and our princes, to our fathers and all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us shame of face as it is this day. to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those near and those far off in all the countries to which you have driven them because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against you. O Lord, to us belong shame of faiths, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him. We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants, the prophets. Yes, all Israel has transgressed your law and has departed, so as not to obey your voice. Therefore, the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, has been poured out on us, because we have sinned against him. And he has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our judges who judged us, by bringing upon us a great disaster. For under the whole heaven, such has never been done as what was been done to Jerusalem." And he continues on. It's quite a long prayer. He continues on in the same vein. But it's clear there is corporate guilt. Yet, he as an individual could still make a huge difference in that country, and certainly he made a difference for himself. God's blessing rested upon him, on Daniel. And that's why we believe it's so important for us to oppose the evils in our society and to confess the sins of our nation. Resistance to evil, confessing those evils, shields us but it also helps to turn around the nation. Why? Because of that covenantal connection. We'll see in a bit that God blesses and he honors individual actions. Again, because of that covenantal connection. If all of the county leaders, both civic and clergy, would get together and we would confess just due to what Daniel did here for our county, I think untold blessings would start pouring into this county in a powerful way. And again, Ray's book documents that rather well. But in this case, Daniel starts the process of the restoration of the nation as a whole by confessing the sins of the nation as if they were his own. And we'll give you the opportunity to do that by singing the final hymn. It's one way we can start applying the sermon. Well, we need to hurry on. What about the land? Law of God says, blood defiles the land and brings God's curse. It's an inescapable part of the covenant. Again, Ray Simmons' book, The Confessional County, documents that. Numbers 35-33 says, So you shall not pollute the land where you are, for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. Now, the Old Testament ends with exactly the same curse in the book of Malachi. Malachi chapter 3 begins by listing out some of the capital crimes that would be committed in the time of Christ, and then it says, but because of these capital crimes that have defiled the land, I'm going to send my prophet, he's going to send John the Baptist to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, children to the fathers, to repent. Why? Very last verse of the Old Testament, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse." Well, John the Baptist was successful in averting God's curse for 40 years. That's something. That is something. Today, abortion defiles the land. We can't take a who cares attitude toward abortion thinking, hey, it's impossible for individuals to make a difference. No. Individual resistance at least protects the individuals from the corporate guilt. That's the way covenantal works. Covenantalism, that's the way it works. That's not the way socialistic collectivism works. Collectivism leaves it up to George to do something. They hope some George is going to do something. No, that's irresponsibility. That's not covenantalism, right? In Mark 6, 5, we see that the unbelief in a town made it difficult for Jesus to do miracles there. That was a case of corporate unbelief. It had impact upon the entire community. I've already dealt with the 1 Corinthians 5 passage where a little leaven of sin tolerated within the church defiles the whole church. Revelation 2 has actually several verses where God holds things against an entire church. Why? Because they tolerated gross evil in their midst. Now, the leaders hadn't committed that evil. They themselves were okay, but because they didn't deal with the evil, God held them accountable and there was disastrous consequences for the whole church. Like it or not, that's the way God's covenant works. And I've been going from the whole of humanity all the way down to localism to show there are no exceptions to this principle. Christ indicates that his curse could have been removed from those churches if they would have disciplined the offending member. Revelation 18 tells people to leave an apostate church of that time, that was the Jewish synagogue system, because if they didn't, they'd be held guilty for that denomination's sins. It says, come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, lest you receive of her plagues. I was very glad to see that 1,831 Methodist churches left the Methodist denomination in just the last few weeks. They were so fed up with the denomination, not just tolerating, but endorsing, embracing what God considers to be capital crimes that they said, we don't want to be under God's judgment, so they left the denomination. That's exactly what this is calling for. Now, sadly, they left way too late. They've embraced a whole bunch of other corruptions as well, but at least they've taken a good stand against the capital Now what about a household? Deuteronomy 22.8 says, when you build a new house, then you shall make a parapet for your roof that you may not bring guilt of bloodshed on your household if anyone falls from it. And yes, such a fall would just be an accidental fall. But because of the dad's failure to take precautions to prevent such an accident, when it's easy to take such precautions, then it's not just the dad who has guilt. It says that you may not bring guilt of bloodshed on your household if anyone falls from it. There is a covenantal guilt that the whole household shares. And of course, we'll see later that Joshua 7, 25 through 26 has the whole family being stoned because of Achan's sin. It may not seem fair to Western minds, but it's God's covenant way of doing things. And again, on each one of those examples, an individual can protect himself or protect herself from guilt by personally resisting. Passivity is not enough. To avoid corporate guilt, we must individually do something. Pray against the evil, confess the evil. In some way, we've got to be resisting it. Of course, a second group of passages in your outline shows that this covenantal connection brings blessings as well. Okay, let's end on a happy note. There's a lot of blessings that an individual can bring to the various corporate units, and I think is a great way to end. Romans 5 shows that we benefit from Christ's active and passive obedience. So we're starting again on the grand, huge scale. 1 Corinthians 15.22 shows that the blessings go even into eternity. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. So one person making this huge difference. And then look at the positive impact that one righteous person can have upon a nation. In Genesis 18, Abraham is told that God's going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and his nephew Lot lives there. He doesn't want Lot being destroyed, and so he goes into intercession mode, and he says, Oh, Lord, are you sure you want to destroy this city? And he pleads with him. He's hoping. He's really hoping that his nephew Lot has been engaged in evangelism and that there's more righteous people there. Well, it turns out there really are not. Only Lot, and he's messed up and compromised, but beginning to read at Genesis 18, verse 23. And Abraham came near and said, would you also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were 50 righteous within the city, would you also destroy the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous that were in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked. Far be it from you, shall not the judge of all the earth do right? So the Lord said, if I find in Sodom 50 righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. And then worrying, well, maybe there's not 50 righteous there, he starts bargaining with God down to 45, 40, 30, 20, and then 10. But anyway, I won't get into the rest of the story, but it illustrates the potential power that one man can have through his prayers and making a difference on a city. And it also illustrates the power that some righteous people can have if they will open their mouths and make a difference. Now, sadly, Lot did not. He made zero difference in that culture. Second Peter 2 8 says the log was vexed in his spirit every day. It shows that he was a believer. Yeah, big deal. But that's about it. He kept his mouth shut and therefore had no godly impact. It's not enough to be bothered by the crimes that go on in our nation. Okay? The tyranny, the abortion, it's not enough to be bothered. There must be active resistance. I've already read scripture that shows that murder brings defilement to a land and brings God's curse. What if you can't find the murderer? You know, what if he can't be executed? What if he's already dead and can't be executed? Or what if, you know, the murder has happened 150 years ago? It's your great-grandparents' fault. Well, Deuteronomy 21, 1 through 9 has the leaders, both civic and church, confess the guilt that the land has of the murder to offer a sacrifice which in modern terms would be pleading the blood of Christ and to ask God to cleanse the land. So individuals can take actions to deal with the corporate sin. What about a town? Proverbs 11, 11 says, by the blessing of the upright, the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked. the upright can positively make a huge difference in a town. What about a church? Each of the letters of Revelation 2 and 3 were written to the lead pastor of that church. Angel means messenger. Some of those pastors received God's judgment for tolerating evil, but in verse 10 of chapter 3, God tells that pastor, because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole earth to test those who dwell on the earth." So the whole church is blessed because of one single pastor's willingness to preach the whole counsel of God, willingness to keep God's Word. So the blessings on him overflowed into the lives of all of the members. Can a righteous man bring blessing to a business or to the estate of a pagan? Well, interestingly, yes, he can. Genesis 39.5 speaks of Joseph saying, And the same thing later happened in prison, later happened in Pharaoh's household. Christians can have a powerful impact on blessing a business if they will honor that business in everything that they do. And you'll see that business begin to lose some of those blessings when that Christian leaves that business. It's just a covenantal thing. I'll read one more verse. 1 Corinthians 7 14 says, For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean. but now they are holy. So one believer in a home can set apart the entire home to God's blessing if they will be faithful to the Lord. Now all of those verses that I've gone through, and I've gone through a bunch because I want to make sure this is something you understand crystal clearly, all of those show we need to be so, so careful about our covenantal relationships. It should make you careful of not joining, for example, a church that is majorly compromised in various areas. Now, all churches have sin. I'm not talking about that. But I'm talking about churches that have curse-bringing sins or Even if they don't have that in their church, they're utterly unwilling to speak against the curse bringing sins like abortion and other things like that. I would never join a church that absolutely refused to preach against abortion or the other evils of our society for fear that they're gonna receive persecution. No, that brings problems to every member of that church. But this covenantalism should also make us careful on who we covenant with in marriage. Now you might be attracted to a person physically and socially, but you need to evaluate, is this person wholeheartedly following after the covenant? It's the covenant that should dictate who we marry, not attraction. Okay, there is covenantal guilt and blessing that we all need to take into account, but praise the Lord, it's not a collectivist guilt that individuals could do nothing about, and then sadly, it's not a collectivist blessing that individuals can't nullify. You know, that's what happened here, right? God calls us to human responsibilities, and in the next section, we'll get into some of those. But for now, I just want to leave you with one more application. Joshua was on a spiritual high in chapter 6. He had led an entire nation to miraculously conquer the city of Jericho by faith. And in this chapter, he lets down his guard. He doesn't pray, he doesn't seek God's guidance, he allows self-confidence to replace God-confidence, he succumbs to peer pressure. We're gonna look at 10 things that he would have been absolutely embarrassed over once the Lord opened his eyes to it, okay? And so this is the way Satan frequently works. He comes after us after we've had a spiritual high because we begin to think, we're sailing, nothing could go wrong with me. And what does this say? Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. That's 1 Corinthians 10 verse 12. May God give us the faithful actions to keep ourselves insulated from corporate guilt that we find in churches, businesses, cities, counties, and national governments. May he help us to keep our guard up always, and may he help us to be a blessing to others. Amen. Father, we thank you. We thank you for your covenant. It is your covenant that brings untold, undeserved blessings into our lives. And we rejoice in those blessings, but help us not to forget the flip side of the coin, that your covenant also brings curses to us if we do not avail ourselves of the blood of Jesus Christ on a regular basis, and if we do not resist the evils of the various institutions that we are covenantally connected with. So Father, may this verse, now that we understand it, open up this chapter to us. May we see great and marvelous things in this chapter. Bless this, your people, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.