Last week we looked at probably the most well-known story in this book, where Joshua leads the people of God into battle against the city of Jericho. Or, more precisely, the Lord leads Joshua, who then leads the people into battle, because we noted that the battle clearly belonged to the Lord.
He told them how to do it, he told them what tools to use, when to go about it, and what would happen.
And they obeyed, marching around the city for a week, and on the final day let out a mighty blast from their trumpets and their voices, and the city walls fell down. Clearly a mighty work of God on behalf of the people.
Then, in obedience to him, they went in and devoted the entire city to destruction. No one left alive. Nothing was kept, except for some precious metal that was to be used in the sanctuary of God. The rest, the whole city burned to the ground, as an example of His divine wrath against the wickedness of the people in that city. Every single thing was devoted to destruction.
Or so we thought. Let’s pick up in the story in chapter 7:
But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.
2 Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth-aven, east of Bethel, and said to them, “Go up and spy out the land.” And the men went up and spied out Ai.3 And they returned to Joshua and said to him, “Do not have all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai. Do not make the whole people toil up there, for they are few.” 4 So about three thousand men went up there from the people. And they fled before the men of Ai, 5 and the men of Ai killed about thirty-six of their men and chased them before the gate as far as Shebarim and struck them at the descent. And the hearts of the people melted and became as water.
6 Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening, he and the elders of Israel. And they put dust on their heads. 7 And Joshua said, “Alas, O Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan! 8 O Lord, what can I say, when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies! 9 For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you do for your great name?”
10 The Lord said to Joshua, “Get up! Why have you fallen on your face? 11 Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings. 12 Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become devoted for destruction.[a] I will be with you no more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you.
13 Get up! Consecrate the people and say, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow; for thus says the Lord, God of Israel, “There are devoted things in your midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you.” 14 In the morning therefore you shall be brought near by your tribes. And the tribe that the Lord takes by lot shall come near by clans. And the clan that the Lord takes shall come near by households. And the household that the Lord takes shall come near man by man. 15 And he who is taken with the devoted things 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 an outrageous thing in Israel.’”
16 So Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel near tribe by tribe, and the tribe of Judah was taken. 17 And he brought near the clans of Judah, and the clan of the Zerahites was taken. And he brought near the clan of the Zerahites man by man, and Zabdi was taken. 18 And he brought near his household man by man, and Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken. 19 Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and give praise[b] to him. And tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.” 20 And Achan answered Joshua, “Truly I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I did: 21 when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels,[c] then I coveted them and took them. And see, they are hidden in the earth inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”
22 So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent; and behold, it was hidden in his tent with the silver underneath. 23 And they took them out of the tent and brought them to Joshua and to all the people of Israel. And they laid them down before the Lord. 24 And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons and daughters and his oxen and donkeys and sheep and his tent and all that he had. And they brought them up to the Valley of Achor. 25 And Joshua said, “Why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones. 26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the Lord turned from his burning anger. Therefore, to this day the name of that place is called the Valley of Achor.
I’d like for us to begin by noticing within the first 13 verses the magnitude of covenant transgression. The magnitude of covenant transgression.
The story in chapter 7 picks up immediately after the events of chapter 6. Jericho is defeated, and Joshua does what it next. He moves his attention to the next military target in their mission to purge the entire land of the wicked inhabitants, just as the Lord had ordered.
He sends scouts to take a peek at the next target, Ai, and they report that this battle shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Don’t send the whole army out. Just 2 or 3 thousand should do the trick.
But then something unexpected happens. They get whooped. 36 men get killed, the rest get run off.
Verse 5 says And the hearts of the people melted and became as water.
You would think that after the glorious military success they just had in the preceding chapter, and the might acts of God that have been both promised to them and witnessed by their own eyes, that they’d continue to have success. But now they get beaten by a little town like Ai? What has happened? What’s going on?
Joshua knows immediately what to do: he cries out to the Lord. He and the elders fall to the ground, tear their clothes in grief and lament, pour dust on themselves, a sign of their own weakness and finitude, and call out to God for help. “God why have you brought us here, if we’re just going to be finished like this?”
Now all the people of the land will hear of our defeat, and will be encouraged to come finish us off. Now they will, verse 9, “surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will you do for your great name?”
And God, in his kindness, responds to Joshua. He says:
“Get up! Why have you fallen on your face? 11 Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them
They have transgressed my covenant. What does that mean? What covenant? There’s no Joshua Covenant.
The reader knows that Achan has taken something he shouldn’t have, he took something that was devoted to destruction. But that’s not part of any covenant, is it? There was no covenant made when the command was given in the previous chapter to devote everything to destruction, right?
Good questions. We need to remember where we are in the history of redemption, in the history of God’s people. Israel as a nation is under the Mosaic Covenant, the Covenant that God made through their leader Moses on Mount Sinai after they came through the red sea.
And that Covenant, with all of its stipulations and judgments and rules, all of it, was built upon the moral law of God, written down in the Ten Commandments.
Those ten commandments begin with what: you shall have no other gods before me.
Yahweh and Yahweh alone is to be the God of Israel. And by Achan’s sin of disobeying the command of God and submitting himself to his own covetous heart, he chose to bow down to another God. His allegiance changed from Yahweh to his own idolatrous heart.
So the principle for us to see here in Achan’s sin, is that by violating the particular command (don’t take things that are devoted to destruction), he’s violated the entire covenant. Violating the particular command, becomes a violation of the entirety of God’s moral law. Think about how Achan’s sin was a violation of the whole law.
He broke the 1st commandment. He rebelled against the one true God, through disobeying the explicit command of the Lord.
He broke the 2nd commandment. He made for himself an idol, and worshipped his own greedy heart.
He broke the 3rd commandment. He took the Lord’s name in vain. Achan failed to keep God’s name as Holy, but rejected the Holy one. Further, he failed to keep the word of the Lord, given to him as a warning, and did the opposite, demonstrating a hatred of the God who’s name had been given to him as a child of Israel.
He broke the 4th commandment. He failed to do the work assigned to him, doing the opposite instead, and jeopardized his eternal rest.
He broke the 5th commandment, by not honoring his heavenly father, and instead of long life in the land, it was immediately taken from him and his family.
He broke the 6th commandment, by earning death for himself and murdering his family through his sin.
He broke the 7th commandment, by not protecting and loving his spouse well, but leading to her bodily suffering, and that of his children.
He broke the 8th commandment, he stole that which was not his to take.
He broke the 9th commandment, he tried to hide his deed, proclaiming a lie, which is that God does not see what the sons of man do. He tried to deceive, even God, becoming like the father of lies, the devil.
And he broke the 10th commandment, coveting in his heart that which was not given to him.
Achan, by taking that which was not given to him, broke all of the law of God. Breaking the particular command, and thereby earning the guilt of the entire covenant.
He’s acting just like his father, Adam, who broke the particular command (don’t take the fruit of the tree), and by doing so likewise violated all of the moral law of God.
Brothers and sisters, this story of Achan should remind us that there are no little sins. That every single sin, is a violation of the entirety of the moral law. You can’t just break 1 of God’s commands.
James chapter 2 verse 10 reminds us that “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” Holiness, righteousness, is all or nothing.
That means that every time I commit a “little” sin (I get a “little” frustrated; I get a “little” impatient; I say a “little” lie) whatever the sin, I am guilty of the entire law. Every little white lie; every little embellishment of the truth; every failure to follow through on my promise; every rash word; every covetous look; every evil thought—all of it makes me guilty. Just as guilty as Achan or Adam.
That’s a high bar. That’s a high view of sin. But that’s the biblical view of sin. And we should note that how we view the magnitude of our sin is directly connected to how you view your relationship to your creator. How we view our sin is tied to how we view God and our relationship to Him.
If you don’t view yourself as a creature born in the image of a Holy and Righteous God, who’s naturally in a relationship with that God (AKA a covenant), who has the duty to walk before him according to the standard of righteousness, then you’ll have a very low view of sin.
But if your God is infinitely pure and holy, and you know that your duty is to both be and act pure and holy for every single microsecond of your existence (not just big actions, but even down to deepest thoughts, desires, inclinations, imaginations, emotions), if that’s you, then you’ll understand the magnitude of our problem. You’ll see the real level of our own sinfulness and guilt.
But as you see more clearly the magnitude of the problem that sin brings, as the enormity of your sin and guilt come into focus, only then will you be able to appreciate the enormity of Christ’s mercy.
Israel’s problem was that they had been made unholy, through somebody’s secret sin. They are now defiled and unholy, and that’s part of what is pictured in the command in verse 13 to consecrate themselves. They needed to be made holy again. How does that happen?
We’ll get there. But now let’s move on to the second point:
The Thoroughness of Divine investigation. The Thoroughness of Divine investigation.
Look again at verse 14:
14 In the morning therefore you shall be brought near by your tribes. And the tribe that the Lord takes by lot shall come near by clans. And the clan that the Lord takes shall come near by households. And the household that the Lord takes shall come near man by man. 15 And he who is taken with the devoted things 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 an outrageous thing in Israel.’”
Notice who is doing the work of investigative discovery in verse 14. 3 times that verse emphasizes that THE LORD is doing the discovery.
“The LORD shall take by lots, THE LORD shall come near by the households, THE LORD shall come near man by man…”
Proverbs 25:2 says that it is the glory of Kings to search out a matter, and the King of Israel is definitely showing his glory in this searching process. He is seeking out that which is impossible for anyone to know, humanly speaking. He’s bringing to light that which nobody knew, perhaps only Achan himself.
And the principle to ask us here: if the Lord is seeking something out, do you think man could ever have success in hiding it? Of course not. If God is doing the investigation, every hidden thing will be revealed.
Notice too, that in this situation, it is as if God’s people have swapped positions. THEY were called to go into the Land to purge it of the evil of the Canaanites. The wickedness of the idolatrous peoples had contaminated the land, defiled it.
And the people of God were specifically tasked with seeking out every bit of the evil and purging it from the land. They were to bring holiness to the land.
But now Israel had defiled itself, taking the place of the evil inhabitants. They soiled a nation through sin, and God has to come do what the people should have done. Rather than bringing holiness, they let the unholiness contaminate them.
Now God is the one seeking out every bit of sin. God is the one taking on the role of investigator and prosecutor. God is the one who will stand both as litigating attorney and as the righteous judge, but this time it isn’t the Canaanites on trial, it is own people. God is the one who must seek out the unrighteousness, and He is the one who has to bring the holiness.
Nobody can accuse God of favoritism toward his people. He’s judging them with the same standard of moral law by which he judged the Canaanites. And we see too, yet again, that the people of God are no better than the rest of the inhabitants of the land.
Indeed, in as much as they had the explicit revelation of God’s holy law given to them in the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai, they ought to have known better. They had no possible claim of ignorance. They knew explicitly what they should and should not do, and still transgressed it.
Greater accountability will be leveled against those with greater revelation. The more you know better, the more the liability you carry for your sin.
That’s part of what’s behind James’s command for not many to be teachers, for they will be held to higher standard.
But it’s also a lesson for us churched folk: the more bible you know, the longer you’ve been sitting in church, the more sermon’s you’ve heard, the more doctrine you have, all that ought to produce more holiness.
If your biblical knowledge doesn’t make you more careful around sin, if your doctrine doesn’t produce more watchfulness, then you’re doing it wrong.
Moral laxity is inconsistent with maturity. Being fast and loose with sin is foolishness, not freedom.
Spurgeon once that that “The holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness that remains within him.”- (Source) and I’ve certainly seen that.
Is that true of you? If you’ve been in the church for years, if you’ve studied the bible for a long time, and read doctrine and you understand truth, do you have a corresponding growth in holiness? If not, all your knowledge may simply be puffing you up for judgment.
The truest measure of a man’s understanding of truth, is gauged by his relationship to his own sin.
The truest measure of a man’s understanding of truth, is gauged by his relationship to his own sin.
Does he fight it, hate it, flee from it, with increasing carefulness and zeal?
Or does he toy with sin (a little taste never heart anybody),
rationalize sin (Nobody will see it, nobody has to know),
justify sin (I’m just doing what others are doing),
minimize sin (it’s really not that bad; I’m not as bad as that guy over there), or
linger in sin (just a bit longer and then I’ll quit; just another taste and I’ll put it down)?
Achan’s story ought to terrify us. The thoroughness with which the Lord sees our sin ought to sober us, especially if you don’t trust in the Lord.
If you’re not trusting in Christ, then all of God’s investigative powers will be utilized against you on the day of judgement. Every single secret will be dug up and martialed against you as evidence of your wickedness, and your case will be litigated by the best prosecuting attorney ever.
His omniscience will expose every single wicked thought, deed, and intention of the heart, and you will be left with no possible argument for your innocence. If you’re not trusting in Christ, you will have no hope relief, and you will wish that your punishment was as light as Achan’s. This story should terrify you.
But this story shouldn’t only terrify unbelievers. It can also be a comfort to a believer. As strange as that may seem, the thoroughness of Divine investigation is also a comfort for believers. How is that so?
Well just like God seeks out the sinfulness of man with perfect, all-seeing, all-knowing thoroughness, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, that same power of investigation makes sure that every single one of your sins has been found out, and taken care of.
For the believer, the thoroughness of divine judgement goes from a terrorizing reality to a blessed comfort, because there is no longer any chance that one of your sins is left un-atoned.
Not one of your sins could be left out of the equation. Christ has carried every single one of your sins with him to the cross. Every evil word, every sinful thought, every motion of the heart that never saw the light of day, the punishment for all of it has been absorbed by Christ on the cross.
You don’t have to worry that you’ve left one off the list, that you forgot to confess something, that you’ve left something unsaid.
Yes, we confess sin when we find it, but you aren’t saved because of the thoroughness of your confession; you’re saved because of the thoroughness of Christ’ sacrifice in your place.
That’s good news. Trust in that Christ. Trust in his atonement in your place. Trust in His thoroughness of His work. Just like Israel should have brought in Holiness into the land and purged it of wickedness, but failed, Christ has succeeded. He perfectly brings holiness to a nation, and replaces the wickedness that was there.
Trust in that Christ, lest your fate be like that pictured in Achan.
And that’s where our text ends tonight. My final point is this:
The Terror of Divine Judgement. The Terror of Divine Judgement in verses 16-26.
The Lord uses Joshua and the casting of lots to find out who was responsible. And through those lots, the Lord leads Joshua all the way to Achan. There’s perhaps not a more tragic picture of the consequences of man’s sin.
We’re reminded in this scene that God seeks out your sin, and he will judge it. There is no way to hide what you’ve done. Achan may have deceived himself for a moment, to think that he got away with it. But God sees. God knows.
And his sin not only cost him. But it made both he and his whole family guilty.
Can you imagine? Being dragged out in front of the nation. Your sin publicly known and seen. And your family dragged out with you. Your children looking at you saying, “daddy, what did you do?” And then having to watch as your children are stoned right beside you.
I wonder how many men, how many women, would stop toying with their secret sins if they had seen some other family stoned to death for their father’s sin.
How many men would flee their pornography,
how many women would stop flirting with that cute guy at the gym,
how many managers would quit skimming off the top,
how many children would quit grumbling under their breath,
if we were to just remember the terrible consequences for our sin.
If we saw the pile of rocks. That’s what happened to them. The chapter ends saying that they raised a big heap of stones over the family, and that pile of stones remains to this day.
Achan and his family became a perpetual memorial (stack of stones in the land, and now a perpetual memorial in the Word of God), like the memorial the people made when crossing into the land, but this time a memorial of God’s justice and his Holiness.
A memorial of the danger of sin.
A permanent memorial, written in stone.
This family’s memorial is a small picture of the greater judgement of God over the wicked in hell for all of eternity, which will serve as a perpetual memorial, an eternal reminder of God’s justice and righteousness unto all ages.
But that is not the end of the story. This story teaches that a nation is made unholy through sin, theft, but that same nation is made clean through terrible judgment. The wrath of God is abated when the sin is avenged.
If you believe the gospel, if you trust in Christ as the son of God who died in the place of His people, then know that the terror of your judgment has already been rendered on the cross. Him being judged at Calvary means that the wrath towards a whole nation of His people has been appeased.
There is no more guilt for those who stand in Christ Jesus. He is the propitiation for our sins, that means the entirety of God’s wrath has been poured out for you, both your sins in the past, and the sins you will commit between now, and even unto death. All of your sin has been put on him.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
ALL. All of God’s people are healed through His stripes. The whole nation is made clean because of him taking the judgement that was earned by his people. That’s good news. That’s the gospel.
And this gospel comfort is in no way contradictory toward a believer striving all the harder against his sin.
Indeed, believers ought to hear this story of Achan, then remember the sacrifice of Christ in their place, and let Achan’s example remind us of the costliness of Christ’s sacrifice for sin, and let that keep us miles away from temptation.
If sin be so costly to my savior, let me never go anywhere near it.
This story also reminds me of another comfort in the gospel, and I will end with this. The new covenant is not like the old covenant. And one of the blessings of the New Covenant is that your sins don’t bring generational guilt. Your sins do not bring generational guilt.
Turn to Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31.
This is one of the clearest passages of scripture on the coming blessings of the new covenant, and how it will be different from the old covenant. Look at verse 29:
29 In those days they shall no longer say:
“‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
30 But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.
The language here of eating sour grapes and teeth set on edge, is simply saying that in the old covenant, the father’s sin (pictured in their eating of sour grapes) resulted in the children suffering guilt (children’s teeth set on edge). Sins of the fathers causing the children to suffer.
The entire nation was under the judgment of exile from the land because their father’s had committed sin and violated the covenant with the lord, just like Achan’s family suffered guilt and defilement because of Achan’s sin. Children suffered because of their father’s guilt.
But the New Covenant will not be like that. Everyone shall die for his own iniquity, verse 30 says.
Guilt will no longer be shared through blood, and that makes sense because entrance into the New Covenant will not be through blood. Unlike the Mosaic covenant that you were born into, entrance into the New Covenant is through the spirit, through being born of heaven, not born of the flesh.
Entrance into the covenant is by the Spirit, not by the flesh. Which means covenant blessings and curses come through the spirit, not through the flesh.
That principle is clarifying for us today for multiple reasons. First, that means that when someone in the church, the new covenant people of God, when a church member is in unrepentant hidden sin, we don’t take the him and his whole family out back behind the church and stone them all.
We take only the unrepentant sinner and excommunicate them. Church discipline is the spiritual judgment of God that the church performs in obedience to Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5, among other places. We no longer physically punish, but there is an analogous verdict rendered in excommunication.
A second reason that the spirituality of the New covenant is good news is that your children to not incur guilt because of your sin. Your children are not defiled because of your sin. Your children’s teeth won’t be set on edge because of your eating sour grapes.
Now certainly, there may be generational consequences, but not generational guilt.
There may be shockwaves and ripples of consequences that go for generations but that doesn’t mean that your children and your children’s children are guilty before the lord because of your sin.
For example, if a man is totally foolish with his money, then his children will feel the consequences of his poor financial dealings. The children will live in poverty because of their father’s sins, but they won’t bear personal guilt for HIS financial mismanagement.
If a parent is a drunkard, the children will feel the effects of that.
If parents get divorced, the children of course feel the sting of that.
If the parents are sinfully angry toward their children, the children feel the effects of that, but that doesn’t automatically make them guilty of the sin.
The guilt of the father is not automatically passed to the children in the new covenant. And that’s good news, because each of us parents are aware of how often we sin, and it would be terrifying to know that all of my sin’s guilt is being passed on to my children.
But also, we need to remember that my Covenant righteousness is also not automatically passed on to the my children. Just because I am in the new covenant, does not mean that my children are in the new covenant, because entrance into the covenant is by the Spirit and not the flesh.
They must be born again. My faith can have positive temporal effects upon them, but it has no final command over their eternal status. They must believe for themselves.
So in Christ, we ought to walk by faith in his sacrifice, knowing that the guilt of my sin has been atoned for, and my debt has been paid. It is finished, He said. His work is done, He stood in my place, He was the scapegoat, the substitute in my place, so that the guilt of my hidden sins will we removed forever.
That’s good news. Let’s pray.
