Please turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 8, and we're just going to read the first two verses. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed. Take all the people of war with you and arise, go up to Ai. See, I've given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Lay an ambush for the city behind it. Amen. Father, I thank you for your Word, and I pray as we dig into it that you would touch our hearts and quicken your Word to our hearts. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, it is so good to be back with you all after being sick for so long. Gary and Brian before the service said, man, what an appropriate title. They thought it was rather funny. Welcome back. And I do feel like everybody's given me a warm, warm welcome. But that's not what the sermon is about. This sermon is dealing with a nation that had been completely out of God's favor and now was being welcomed back into God's favor. It is a chapter that shows a complete reversal of the horrible things that had happened in chapter 7. So even though it's a short two verses, there's a lot in here that I think is packed in. Now, as you know, in chapter 7, there was sin in the camp, and the sin of that one man really caused a disaster. It caused the defeat of the army. Thirty-six men died as a result of that. God said that he had abandoned them. In verse 13 of chapter 7 he said, Now that was God's response. to Joshua's earlier devastation and absolute abject humiliation at this defeat in verses six through nine. He felt so discouraged, we saw that he wanted to actually bail on the conquest and go cross back over the Jordan again. Let me read verses six through nine of chapter seven. Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until evening. He and the elders of Israel. And they put dust on their heads. And Joshua said, Alas, Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all? To deliver us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? Oh, that we had been content and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan. Oh, Lord, what shall I say when Israel turns its back before its enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear it and surround us and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will you do for your great name? Now many times that is our reaction when we are out of fellowship with God and when we're out of fellowship with each other. We're down and we are discouraged. And sadly, many people don't know how to climb out of that. Even though the person has repented of their sin and they have been restored, he or she feels like they have lost face and they've lost respect and they won't be at the same level of trust as they were before. And so they have an insecurity about their relationship with others. maybe two individuals who have fallen out with each other, or maybe a person who was under discipline, maybe excommunicated from the church, and then they repented, and they were brought back into the church and restored to fellowship. But some of the people in the church just don't know quite how to relate to this individual. They don't want to offend them. They don't want to say anything that will be you know, a big major faux pas or maybe cause pain, and so they don't talk to the individual too much, and that individual just feels a little bit shunned, feels like a pariah, doesn't quite know what to do, and after slouching around for a few months, eventually transfers to another church where they can have a fresh start. Now, that's not the way it should be, but it happens many times in many churches. Jay Adams points out in his book on church discipline why that should never be the case. Anytime a person comes back into the church, the church should talk through the issues fully, talk through the issues with the church, even maybe put on a banquet like they did with the prodigal son, right? And hash these through so it's in the public and it's no longer something that's a verboten topic to talk about. They don't feel like a leper. You do everything you can to make them feel like a first-class citizen. and that life is back to normal. Actually, it's better than it was before, right? That's the way it should be. Well, God models what true reconciliation should look like in this passage. It isn't half-hearted. Israel doesn't have to prove themselves before God will welcome them back. God gives them every assurance that they are welcome and that they will be powerfully used immediately. immediately, and that is so encouraging to me. Let's look at several welcomes that we see in this passage, at least implicitly. First, God says, in effect, welcome back to confidence. Look at verse one. Then the Lord said to Joshua, do not be afraid, nor be dismayed. Now those words are astonishing when you consider God's reaction to the sin in chapter seven. God took that sin extremely seriously. Let me read chapter 7, verse 12 again. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they have been doomed to destruction. Neither will I be with you anymore unless you destroy the accursed from among you. Things had been so serious, God told them, that Israel would be defeated, fearful, and doomed to destruction, and abandoned by God. You can't get much worse than that. And yet the moment there was repentance, and a quick dealing with sin, God's words were, do not be afraid nor be dismayed. So I would say it doesn't matter how deeply you have fallen into sin, any sin of the flesh, whatever it may be, if you will humble yourself before God, confess your sins to God and to man, and deal with them as they did in chapter seven, you will find full and complete restoration to the Lord. I mean, that's what the Lord's table is all about. It's a beautiful message. Our security is not in how perfect we are anyway. When the crucified robber—and he was more than just stealing, it was a bandit who had probably killed people—when the crucified bandit on the cross next to Christ asked for forgiveness and asked to be remembered, his sins were dealt with. He was just as secure as the gossip who confesses his or her sins to the Lord and casts them at the cross of Christ, right? Just as secure. And by the way, he needs to be just as secure with us, with the church. Ephesians 4.32 says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you. Now that just as language shows that God is modeling for us restoration. If God says, welcome back to confidence with me, we need to say, welcome back to confidence with the church, right? Go out of your way to be welcoming. Secondly, welcome the person back to the joy of being useful as servants of the Most High God. Verse one goes on to say, Take all the people of war with you and arise, go up to Ai. Now this is in such stark contrast to God's words to Israel 40 years before when He just put them on a shelf and He says, I'm done with you. You're useless to me. I'm not gonna deal with them. And why were they not useful to God? It's because they did not repent of their sins. Back then He told them, do not go up, lest you be defeated by your enemies, for the Lord is not among you. Those are words I don't want to ever have the Lord say about me, that the Lord is not with me. Without God's presence, those Israelites were useless. With God's presence, they were useful. See, we're useful to God, not because God needs us. Nothing could be further from the truth. God doesn't need any contribution that we might make. Did God need Israel when he conquered Jericho? He did not, but God delights in making us useful in his kingdom, a very significant part of his kingdom. Did God need these soldiers to conquer Ai? No, I mean, he could have toasted Ai just like he did Sodom and Gomorrah, right? It would have been very easy for God to do that, but God wants his people to be significant, and how does God make us significant? It's by his grace. We are made to be useful by His grace alone. And notice it's not just about Joshua. God involves all the army because He wants all the army to have the joy of being useful to Him. Now I don't know about you, but I want my life to count for eternity. I want everything that I do to count for eternity. I want to be useful. And I know the only way I can be useful is if I have God's blessing, His presence, and His power resting upon me. And that means I need to deal with my sins. Right? I need to always be looking to His grace. And by the way, don't just think of my preaching up here as being ministry. Their soldiering was ministry. Their administration was ministry. Everything we do can be ministry to the Lord if we're in right relationship with Him and we're asking for the filling of the Spirit. We're saying, Lord, I want to do all of my housework. I want to do everything I do to your glory. But anyway, back to the main point. No matter how deep your sin may be, You can be useful if you've repented of the sin and destroyed it. You can be useful even after you've committed adultery and repented of it. You can be useful even as a former liar. Emphasis on the former, right? Your integrity and respect can be established on God's grace, not on your past. Not on your past. You'll never live down your past. Don't worry about it. It's established on God's grace. You could be useful to God and to the church no matter where you have been or what you have done. But the converse is also true. You have no usefulness whatsoever in God's kingdom no matter how many gifts you may have if you don't repent of your sins. if you hold on to them because of fear, pride, or carelessness. And believe me, it is worthwhile to repent and to do the works of chapter seven. God says, welcome back to confidence. Secondly, welcome back to usefulness. Thirdly, he says, welcome back to living by faith in God's promises. So what's the first thing to come out of God's mouth the moment God gives to them a task? It's to give them a promise, an outrageous promise, that's going to take faith to believe. Okay? All God's promises require faith. Verse one, second sentence. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land. Now, do they see any difference in Ai when God said that pronouncement, that gave that promise? No. In fact, the bodies may still have been strewn on the ground if they hadn't had time to be able to sneak up and collect the bodies back to bury them. And Ai was just as secure as it was before But God calls them, once again, to live by faith instead of by sight. And what a joy it is to live by faith. In chapter seven, verse three, you don't see faith. You see confidence. But you don't see faith. You see confidence in what men can do, but not confidence in what God can do through men. They basically said, sure, no problem. We can take the city. Don't bother sending everybody up. Send 2,000 to 3,000. This is going to be easy. We've got it, is basically what they were saying. They had confidence, not faith. And there's a big difference between self-confidence and faith. Without God's blessing, you will automatically start living by sight and by confidence in what you can do, rather than by faith and confidence in what God can do through you. And I don't know how many times I have slipped from living by faith, confidence in God, into confidence in what I could do, or doing what I think is realistic to do. And a lot of times what God calls for is not realistic, at least from man's perspective. And I'll confess, I sometimes still struggle to live by faith and I have to correct myself. And I correct myself severely. I say, cut it out, Phil. You know, you gotta live by faith. And you've perhaps sensed the same thing. So there's a very real sense in which God can say to these forgiven Christians, welcome back to living by faith in God's promise. What difference does it make to have this? Well, for me, it was revolutionary. When I first became convinced of God's post-millennial promises concerning the future when I was in college, it turned my world upside down. It was like a second blessing. Now, we don't believe in Pentecostal second blessing. We believe in second, third, fourth, and ongoing blessings from the Lord, right? But anyway, it was revolutionary. It revolutionized how I thought and acted and studied and worked. I now knew that my labors in the Lord were not in vain. Didn't matter if I lost all my money, if I lost my house, if I lost my family, if I lost my very life. It doesn't matter. I have the joy of knowing I am contributing to the triumphant, guaranteed extension of Christ's kingdom. Such faith has helped me to avoid discouragement, and depression and doubts that could come, you know, when you get criticism from the world and when it doesn't seem like you're making much progress, but you know by faith you are making the progress God wants you to make. But what happens when you rebel against God? You can immediately lose that sense and you begin to become cynical. In fact, you can become cynical of other people's expressions of faith, and you think, oh, that's ridiculous, right? It's very easy to get that way. You begin to operate from duty rather than from joy, and it's only a wholehearted, complete, unconditional restoration to the Lord that renews the joy of walking by faith in God's promises. Why do people not opt for that? I don't know all of the reasons, but here's a couple of possibilities. It is far more comfortable to do what you can understand and what you think you can easily achieve than to do the things God has called us to do, which require His grace, that are so impossible. And our tendency is to opt for comfort. So that's one reason. Secondly, it is unnerving to not have everything under control. Maybe it's not for you, but for me, it's very unnerving to not have everything under control. One of the issues in Joshua 7 was they thought that they had AI completely under control. You know, they had it figured out. God had to show them that that was not the case. But nevertheless, however many times God may show us we don't have things under control, we're tempted to still think that we do, or at least that we need to. Trusting God requires flexibility and a willingness to change. Now, God has provided for our family, sometimes miraculously, but more often than not, it's just through hard work. But he's still provided through our hard work. And we see the same kinds of differences between Jericho and Ai. These people wanted a miracle from God in Ai, just like they experienced in Jericho. And God taught them that they needed to be prepared for either approach in His good timing. And the bottom line is that when you know God is pleased with you, banking on His promises takes on a whole new meaning. When we're dealing with people who have blown it in the past, let's be quick to encourage them with this point. Welcome back to living by faith. But it's only when you're right with the Lord and you have security in Him that you can do so. Fourth, welcome back to stewardship. What was the issue in chapter seven? Achan did not act as a steward. He kept back something God wanted for himself. Chapter seven demonstrated the principle that everything belongs to God. and that he has the right to dictate when, where, and if we are going to enjoy the good things of life. When we abandon stewardship and we try to take things for ourselves and steal things and control things, we end up actually losing the joy. of those things. And so God welcomes Israel back to the joy of stewardship. Now stewardship has two sides. First of all, it involves an acknowledgment that God can take away from us anything that He chooses to take away from us. Verse 2 begins, and you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. God wouldn't let them have just anything that they chose. He took away everything at Jericho. Here, it's only some things. Here was a cool city that they could inhabit with lots of cool buildings and water supply and public squares. On the other side of the Jordan, God allowed them to occupy some of those cities. Here, he says, nope. You're not gonna occupy it, you're gonna cover it with dirt. It's gonna be a big heap, and you're gonna destroy a lot of these things. But second, stewardship also involves what he allows us to use, and he's going to allow them to take booty here. Verse two goes on, only at spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Now at Jericho, God had tested them by not allowing them to take any booty or spoil. Achan failed that test of stewardship. But when you have a steward's heart and you've devoted your house and everything you have to be used by God in any way that he sees fit, there is such an excitement in seeing God use what little you have and multiplying it. And God loves to bless you with more. Now, how do you tell if you've got a steward's heart? With me, it's my reaction, my internal reaction when God takes things away or when he gives me things. Okay, when God took away Job's children and all of his wealth, Job said, the Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. That's a steward's heart. I love the prayer of Saint Ignatius. He prayed, and actually I've prayed this prayer many, many, many times as well, especially with regard to my recent memory loss. But Ignatius prayed this. Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it. All is yours. Dispose of it wholly according to your will. Give me your love and your grace, for this is sufficient for me. And I'll admit, I still get choked up sometimes when I pray that. because God has chosen to take away my memory in the last few months. And a couple of weeks ago, praise God, the neurologist said, Phil, we looked at every test, there's nothing wrong with your brain, except he's convinced viral inflammation. And he said, all across the states, there's COVID patients that have had the same memory, either brain fog, or sometimes it's complete memory loss. But he says it'll probably come back in weeks or years. But whether it does or whether it does not, my memory belongs to God, not to me. And I gladly tell the Lord, dispose of my memory in whichever way you will. Dispose of my wealth, my house, my family. All is yours. I want to relate to it as a steward, Lord. I want to be faithful with what you have given to me. And if I can better glorify the Lord without my memory, praise God, that's what I'm going to do. Okay? Let me make this personal for you. Does God have the right to take away your children in a car accident today? And I think if we know our theology, we would have to say yes, however hard that would be. We would have to say yes, he does. Does he have the right to take away your wife, your house, your retirement savings? He does. And we have to have a willingness to give all to the Lord and relate to all as if it belonged to God. or we will not have the same joy we could have with those things that are currently in our possession. Let me read to you from Mark chapter 10. This is one of God's promises. He said, there is no one, which means there is no exception. This is a universal principle. There is no one who has given up brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and houses and lands for my sake and the gospels, who shall not receive the same things back 100 fold. 100-fold. That is incredible. He says this is guaranteed, absolutely guaranteed. Now, He's not promising necessarily that you'll have 100 times more cash. If you give the Lord your cash, you might. But He's saying you are going to enjoy that. You're going to relate to it. You're going to be able to use it effectively in His kingdom 100-fold times better. That's what we should want. He tested Job's stewardship heart, and Job passed the test, and God gave Job more. Very literally, he gave him more. There is a joy in stewardship. By giving up all to God, we end up having far more. But those who selfishly seek to be first will be put last, according to the Lord. He says, the last will be first, and the first will be last, Matthew 20, 16. And so God says to these Israelites, welcome back to stewardship. Now that Israel has passed a test, and it was a test, God tells them that He can trust them with booty. You've been faithful, so I can trust you with booty. They could trust them with victory and fame and riches. And so the principle is exactly the same at Ai as it was at Jericho. God wanted Israel to relate to things the way he told them to relate to things. And when you're right with the Lord, you want to do that anyway. You love stewardship. You believe that stewardship truly is a principle of life that works. And so you're delighted to be welcomed back to stewardship in God's kingdom. Fifth, God says, in effect, welcome back to a life of fulfillment. I find it so ironic that God gives these Israelites, in verse 2, the very thing that Achan tried to steal. If Achan had just waited a while, he would have had all the gold he wanted. He could have had clothing, you know, the things that he stole, he could have had. Second sentence in verse two, it's spoil and it's cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Our God is such a generous God. He loves to give. He loves to be generous with his saints. We can never out give the Lord. No matter how much we have deprived ourselves or been deprived, God will pour back more. When God tells us to take up our cross, to deny ourselves and to follow him, he is not calling us to a lifetime of misery and depression, no. The same Christ who told us, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me, also said, I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. Not less abundantly, more abundantly. That's John 10, verse 10. It's the paradox that when you seek your own life, you lose it, but when you lose your life for God, you gain it. And if God has been convicting you about something that you are not relinquishing to Him, I just tell you. Put Him to the test, give it all to Him, and see if He does not enable you to find far more fulfillment with those things than when you selfishly related to that person or those things, or that object. God's purpose for our life is fulfillment in Him. He wants you to have joy, heaped up, shaken down, running over, is the expression Jesus used. So seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you. Achan failed that lesson. These Israelites gained from it. So welcome back to fulfillment in life. You know, Solomon, a lot of people wish that they could be as rich as Solomon. When Solomon was not right with the Lord, even with everything that he had, richest man in the world back then, even with everything that he had, he lacked fulfillment. He was miserable. And he didn't find it in the things that Achan found it. And he found it in serving God when he finally left vanity and found meaning under everything under the sun. Anyway, sixth, welcome back to the joy of being instructed. Now God is going to, in this chapter, give a whole series of instructions of what they should and should not do. And because they were walking rightly with the Lord at this point, they saw the relevance of those instructions, and they're delighted in those instructions, right? They didn't bristle, react negatively. But that isn't the case when you are out of fellowship with God. When you're out of fellowship with God, Bible study no longer has the same joy. devotions are no longer appealing. And when somebody like Joshua outlines, you know, what God's law says about some things, oh man, it feels so legalistic, it feels so dry, it feels meaningless to us. You know, during the time that David covered his sin with Bathsheba. The Psalms tell us he didn't have much fun. He wasn't interested in the Word. His heart was dry. But after repenting and being cleansed from his sin, he says this, Oh, how I love your law. I meditate on it day and night. He said, Blessed is the man whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach out of your law. To the righteous, God says, welcome back to my instruction. Now in stark contrast, Psalm 50, verses 16 through 17 says, but to the wicked, God says, what right have you to declare my statutes or to take my covenant in your mouth, seeing you hate instruction and cast my words behind you? There's only joy and instruction to the penitent man who wants to be right with God. In other words, there's a logical order in all of these points. Seventh, welcome back to the joy of obedience. The whole chapter describes how they obeyed God in all of the details. And by the way, it was not a very comfortable obedience. Let me illustrate that. Verse three says, so Joshua rose and all the people of war to go up against Ai. And Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men of valor and sent them away by night. They had to silently climb the mountain undetected at night and stay there undetected until the morning. And this meant sleep loss, cramped bodies, danger, bugs, no tent, cold, but they did it. Verse five speaks of exposing themselves to arrows when they engaged in their false retreat. That was dangerous. It was a dangerous stunt, but they obeyed. Verse eight speaks of torching many valuable buildings and artifacts in the city, but they obeyed. Verse nine speaks of 30,000 being separated from Joshua and the security of his leadership, but they obeyed. Verse 13 speaks of a sleepless night for Joshua, but he obeyed. Verses 24 through 25 called for the killing of all men and women in that city who were guilty of the death penalty, by the way. killing them. That's not appealing, but they obeyed. Verse 28, spoke of the hard work of burying the city with dirt, making it a huge heap, but they obeyed. The whole chapter is a chapter showing obedience. Obedience may not be easy, but when you are right with God, it is joyful. It is joyful. Romans 8.29 says that the purpose of God's salvation is to conform us to Christ so that we can serve Him. Ephesians 2.10 says, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Titus 2.14 gives this as the whole purpose for Christ's coming. He says this, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works." So purified from sin, zealous for good works. Are you zealous for good works? That's God's purpose in your life. And when you've been restored to Him, that zeal, that joy of obedience is restored. So He says to these Israelites, welcome back to the joy of obedience. I think by now you're beginning to recognize that the affliction that God brought in chapter 7 was worthwhile. It was totally, totally worthwhile. It produced all kinds of benefits in their lives. God brought blessing even out of defeat. I mean, this is just another way where we see the truth of Romans 8, you know, all things work together for the good of those who love God. What did David say? Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. So welcome back to confidence. to the joy of being useful, to living by faith, to stewardship, a life of fulfillment, the joy of being instructed, to the joy of obedience, and then finally, he welcomed them back to renewed victory. Now in chapter seven, he guaranteed them defeat after defeat until they would be willing to remove the accursed thing from their midst. He guaranteed their defeat. Now here, he guarantees their victory, and they experience victory. It is truly a glorious thing to be reconciled to God, and yet I can almost guarantee that there are probably some here who will look at these eight benefits and they will say, yeah, I'd love those benefits, but because of fear or pride or some other thing, they're gonna refuse to confess their sins to man or to God. You'd rather have a life of defeat and rejection than to enter into the joy of walking in the Holy Spirit. If you're tares and not wheat, if you're fake believers and not true believers, you will ultimately rather choose a future in hell rather than to suffer the shame of confession now. For Tares, the pain of confession now is worse than the thought of future hell. But sadly, there are even true believers who would rather risk God's future discipline and possible exposure to voluntarily exposing their sin and receiving these eight benefits now. I don't understand it, but I know that it happens. I know it happened in my own life. On one occasion, I think I've shared this with you before, when I was going from high school to college, for two years I fought the Holy Spirit's conviction over two sins that I had committed, and it just seemed so shameful. And in hindsight, I wonder, what on earth? Why would I struggle with doing that? And I was miserable for those two years until I finally submitted to the Lord's convictions in my life. you might think silly sins, but God was convicting me over that. One was that I had cheated on my math exam in ninth grade, and I wrote a letter to the school and said, I cheated, I want to confess this sin, I want to get right with God, and I'm willing to take that exam over again. And the other one was when I was in boarding school in Ethiopia, I was really hungry. I was in growing spurt. We just didn't get enough food at the meal, so I stole some potatoes to cook them in between and was convicted, convicted for a long time. So I paid way more than I stole restitution to them. And I immediately felt joy in the Holy Spirit. And I had all of these things restored into my life. It was just glorious. And I wondered, what on earth Possessed me that it took me so long to do that. I don't understand the Irrationality of sin the irrationality of our own hearts, but it is there. I've seen it there and It may be in your lives and I can't play the Holy Spirit All I can do is tell you that God's Word promises that if we will confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness And then he says he will restore us, revival in our hearts, victory of life. God will say, welcome. And by the way, your fears of rejection by us are way overblown anyway, because we're committed to saying welcome as well. Find blessing. Do not seek the path of Achan. But there are some who end up treading Achan's path so long that God is going to say to them, You know what? I'm done with you. I'm going to take you home to heaven. You have sinned the sin unto death. Now, let me explain this sin. Many Scriptures testify to this physical death that God brings into unrepentant believers' lives. These are true believers. These are saved people. Many in Corinth were sick. Many had died. simply because they refused to sanctify themselves and mortify their sins. They finally crossed a point where God was saying to them, okay, that's a sin unto death. Let me read 1 John 5, 16. It says, if anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask, and he will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death. In other words, he is saying, that there are many sins in a congregation where Gary's and my prayers for you will spare you from death, okay? It'll spare you from judgment. But then he goes on to say, there is sin leading to death. I do not say that he should pray about that. We're not allowed to pray for those who have committed that sin. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death. Now, only God ultimately knows when a Christian has stepped over the bounds and will be brought to death. It's different than the unpardonable sin. God says, this is a brother. He's saved. But He says that there are true Christians who would rather risk all of that than to face a present blow to their pride. May none of us be in that camp. Rather, may we be of those who respond to God's word by saying, yes, Lord, I will gladly pick up my cross, deny myself, and follow you, because where else can I go? You have the words of eternal life, and you is fullness of life, and you is fullness of joy. And so the bottom line is that chapter seven gives us all kinds of motivations to repent of our sin from a negative perspective. Chapter eight gives all kinds of positive, glorious reasons why we should repent. Both motivations can work in our lives, and may it do so. Amen. Father, we thank You for Your Word, and I pray that each one of us would grow. I thank You for the growth You've brought into my own life, and I pray that everyone here would find the joy, the glory of walking in the light and no longer hiding as Achan hid. And Achan couldn't even enjoy those things. He had to hide them, because if people saw them, they would immediately accuse him. So I just pray, Father, none of us would hide our sins, but we would walk in the light and find the joy of restoration. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.