The Woes of Achan
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
Our Scripture opens with the following statement: "But the Children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing." The fact is as we all know that the trespass was committed by one man, Achan, the son of Carmi. However, even as a false brick in a building mars the beauty of the whole building; thus the sin of one affects a whole people.
The Children of Israel sinned because Achan was one of their number, and no man sinneth unto himself. The leper of old contaminated everything he touched. The sin of a father and husband brings shame and disgrace upon the children and wife.
Let us look at sin for a little while:
1. Sin is always disrupting. Sin tears down, destroys, wrecks, and ruins. Everything that sin touches feels a blight. There is nothing that casts a deeper shadow than does sin. The form of sin is as a hideous specter, seeking to scatter the seeds of disease and death.
2. Sin in its first beginnings. The Children of Israel had but just come over the Jordan. They were now entering into a new sphere of life, as they went into the promised land. It was at that time that Achan sinned.
We think that the severity of God's judgment against Achan was, in part, a warning to Israel in their new life lest they should continue in sin.
It was so in the Church. When the first great sin was committed by Ananias and Sapphira in the matter of holding back a part of the price of the land, God slew them both, that the Church might know the seriousness of sin.
3. Saints suffer for sin, as much as the wicked suffer. Think you that, because we are children of God, we may therefore sin without fear of punishment? Shall we sin because we are under grace? Nay, "for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."
In this life Christians who sin will be punished by a loving Saviour. At the bema judgment saints also may suffer. Is it not written: "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." The next verse adds, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men."
Mark you, we are not teaching that saints are lost when they sin. We are teaching that God could not be just, unless He chastens those who sin.
We know that Christ died for sin, that He took our stripes. We also know that Christians who have been saved, and stand before God clothed in the righteousness of Christ are freely forgiven when, having sinned, they confess their sins. All of this, however, does not lessen the fact that a believer, living in unconfessed sin, must suffer.
The whole Bible is filled with the story of how God punishes saints.
I. ATTEMPTING TO CONQUER WHILE SIN IS IN THE CAMP (Joshua 7:2)
The Children of. Israel had gone forth to conquer the village of Ai, which was on the east side of Bethel. They had gone expecting an easy conquest, for the people at Ai, compared to Jericho, were but few.
There was one thing, however, they had neglected to do. Before they crossed the Jordan and marched around Jericho, they had sanctified themselves (Joshua 3:5). Now they were attempting to take Ai with sin hidden in their midst.
Alas, there are many churches today who are undertaking for God while they, also, are sheltering grievous sins. Think you, that there are not some things which should be first, before any conquest is attempted?
1. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God." Here is a first thing that is vital to everything relative to our temporal needs. If we expect God to feed us and to clothe us, we are told to seek first His Kingdom, then says the Spirit: "All these things shall be added unto you."
2. First be reconciled to thy brother. God tells us if we are bringing our gift to the altar, and we remember that our brother hath ought against us, we are to leave there our gift and to go our way. Then He says: "First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Think you, that God will receive anything of our hand, until we are first right with each other?
3. First get the beam out of thine own eye. Think you, that a man with a beam in his own eye is prepared to pull out the mote that is in his brother's eye? Certainly not.
Beloved, let us remember that if we want conquest, we must first rid sin from our camp. Have you not read that God can do no mighty works where there is unbelief?
God cannot, and will not bless the unclean. "Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord."
II. SMALL TASKS DEMAND TRUE HEARTS (Joshua 7:3)
1. Why the big task at Jericho proved successful.
(1) The people sanctified themselves. This was God's definite instruction to them in Joshua 3:5. "Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you." They did sanctify themselves, and the Lord did do wonders. He did wonders because they were sanctified. Have we not read, "Sanctified, and meet for the Master's use."
(2) The people believed God. It is written, "According to your faith be it unto you." The walls of Jericho fell down by faith. Where there is no faith, there certainly will be no victory.
(3) The people obeyed implicitly. They did just what the Lord told them to do. Obedience is an adjunct to faith. That man who does not obey his Lord, cannot have blessings from Him.
2. Wherein the small task at Ai failed.
(1) They sought not the Lord. They depended upon their own strength, and were overconfident. They said to Joshua: "Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai." They not only overestimated their own strength, but they underestimated the people of Ai. Thinking themselves masters, they sought not the aid of the Lord.
(2) They sanctified not themselves. They failed to discover whether there was any sin among them. How many times the Church of God fails the Lord in this very thing.
(3) They had not fully learned that power belongeth unto God. No man of God, no servant of Christ, who goes forth trusting in the arm of flesh can obtain victory. We receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon us. Therefore, let us fight in His imparted strength, and not in our own.
III. THE FAITHFUL FLEE (Joshua 7:4-5)
1. They went up about three thousand men. We can see them going now. No doubt they went expecting victory, because they had already had victory in the past. Do we ever get to the place in. our Christian experience where we think we can live on past blessings?
There was a wonderful victory at Pentecost when about 3,000 were baptized. Did the disciples imagine that because they had seen such a great and glorious time on that wonderful day, that the next day and the next could be met and conquered without prayer, and without waiting on God? Not so. In chapter 3 of Acts, we read of how, immediately following Pentecost, "Peter and John went up together into the Temple at the hour of prayer."
We thank God for all past achievements, but we must remember that their victories were won through faith and prayer, through sanctification and obedience, through the presence of Christ, and the enduement of power. An automobile running at 60 miles an hour, may continue a good distance from generated speed, even with the motors shut off. A church, however, cannot continue at all on past successes. They must move along every day, under direct contact with power supernatural.
2. They fled. That is the statement of our key verse, "They fled before the men of Ai." It was a pitiful sight. It seems that the moment the men of Ai saw the Children of Israel coming against them, they rushed out to meet them, and God's people turned their backs in fright.
We are always in danger of fleeing, even when no man is pursuing, if we are serving in our own strength, or undertaking apart from the will of God. God has given us an armor by which we must be panoplied if we would meet successfully the enemy. God has given us a plan of battle. This plan must be followed. God has given us His promised presence to go with us. This presence must be realized, in order to conquer.
The Lord help us never to flee from the enemy. May we, the rather, stand and having done all, stand.
IV. JOSHUA'S GREAT GRIEF (Joshua 7:6-7)
1. We have the broken morale of the people. In Joshua 7:5 we read: "The hearts of the people melted, and became as water." No wonder they couldn't fight. Their morale was gone, their courage had left them. It is written to Christian warriors: "Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees."
"God lives, shall we despair
As if He were not there?
Is not our life His care,
Is not His hand Divine?"
2. We have Joshua rending his clothes. When news of the routing of Israel came to their leader, Joshua tore his raiment and fell to the earth upon his face before the Ark of the Lord, until the eventide. He and the others of Israel put dust upon their heads. We do not condemn Joshua for this. It should always be a matter of great sorrow when we see God's children running from the enemy.
If we mistake not there are thousands today among the faithful ministers of the land, whose hearts are crushed because of the church's defeat.
3. We have Joshua's complaining cry. Joshua said: "Alas, O Lord God." We think of Jeremiah the wailing Prophet. It was he who said, "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow?" Jeremiah felt that God had sent fire into his bones. He could not refrain from weeping when he saw his people and their city overwhelmed. Beloved, the time has come in the Church of God, when we need to teach our children weeping and wailing. The church is being depleted by the world. How can we do ought, excepting that we cry, "Alas, O Lord"?
We remember what the Apostle Paul said: "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart." This sorrow came to the Apostle because he saw the Children of Israel depleted, cast down, and scattered among the nations. Let us give ourselves to tears.
V. A QUESTIONING LEADER (Joshua 7:7)
1. Joshua placed the defeat of Ai upon God. He said: "Wherefore hast Thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us?" This meant, in plain language, that Joshua charged God with the defeat of His people, that God had set Himself to destroy them.
We need not deal harshly with Joshua, for it is very customary in our day to lay upon God all of our defeats, and to claim as due to our own prowess, our victories. Let some dire disaster overtake us and we will say God did it. Some even cry, "God does not love us, or else He would not do so and so." Beloved, we have had enough of this.
God may chasten us, but if He does, we need to search out the cause, and we will find that some sin lies with us.
2. Joshua misconstrued the purposes of God. He insinuated that God had brought them over the Jordan to deliver them into the hands of the Amorites, and to destroy them. He had brought them over, in order to bless them, not to curse them; to sustain them, not to defeat them.
Shall we impugn God's purposes toward us? A temporary disappointment may beset us by the way, and a transient storm may cross our path, but through it all, and in it all, God is working together for good to those who love Him.
3. Joshua discounted the finality of grace. If we want to know God, we must look beyond the present moment. We must see what Job discovered, that the end of the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
When Jacob heard of Joseph's falsely announced death, he cried out: "All these things are against me." Entirely to the contrary, God was working out His purpose to sustain and to keep alive, not only Jacob, but all of Jacob's sons and grandchildren.
Let us remember that faith must possess a far-flung vision. Many of the patriarchs passed through every kind of tribulation and trouble, yet we read in Hebrews 11:1-40 : "these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off."
VI. A TWOFOLD COMPLAINT (Joshua 7:8-9)
1. Joshua said: "O Lord, what shall I say?" Joshua put himself in this, before his Lord. He was greatly troubled about Israel's defeat. He felt that if his people had been overwhelmed by so small a group, that they would stand little hope of success before the seven nations which infested the land of Canaan, and whom they must conquer, if they were ever to possess the land.
Beloved, we are in small business if we allow ourselves any place of prominence and recognition, in the service which we seek to render in His Name. Of course, the church's defeat does affect us. It causes the world to have an ever-lessening confidence in the church, and therefore, in our testimony. There is, however, a deeper cause for sorrow than this.
2. Joshua said unto God: "What wilt Thou do unto Thy great Name?" He felt that the inhabitants of the land, hearing of Israel's retreat from Ai, would shortly environ them around and cut off their name from the earth.
Joshua also felt that when Israel had their name cut off, that the Name of Israel's God was likewise in danger. In all of this, Joshua was eminently right.
The Lord plainly told Israel, through Ezekiel, that she through her sins had blasphemed His Name among the nations that she had profaned Him, in the midst of them, because of their unseemly ways.
Thus it is today. Saints are dragging the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ down into the murk and the mire of the swineherd, when they are unfaithful to their Lord. No man ever had a more urgent call, than that which comes to saints to watch their ways, and words, that Christ may be glorified.
We believe that the supreme reason that the old-time revivals are passing, lies in the fact that the old-time separation and spiritual vigor of saints is passing.
VII. A DIVINE COMMAND AND A DIVINE QUERY (Joshua 7:10)
1. The Divine command: "Get thee up." Joshua was in prayer. He was prostrate before the Lord. He had rent his clothes. He had put dust upon his head. He had spent hours on his face before the Ark of the Covenant. When God viewed His prostrate servant. He said: "Get thee up."
We wonder if there is not a great deal of useless praying going on just now. Churches that are worldly and unclean often have good pastors and spiritual leaders who are undone and crushed because the church is meeting defeat. Few are being saved.
2. The Divine query, "Wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?" In this query, God seemed to say to Joshua, "Dost thou think that I have forsaken Israel? dost thou think that I am about to destroy a people whom I love, and to deliver them to death at the hands of the Canaanites? dost thou impugn My righteousness. My integrity to thee, to Israel, and to My promised oath of thy victory?"
Why art thou lying upon thy face?
There was a time when Israel (Isaiah 51:1-23) cried unto God saying: "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old." To this cry God quickly responded: "Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury."
Shall we cry unto God as though He were asleep, simply because we have slept? Shall we ask God to stand up and to stretch out the arm of His strength, so long as we ourselves are prone upon our faces in shame? To Israel, the Spirit said: "Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem."
AN ILLUSTRATION
Rev. G. P. Merrick, of Holloway Prison, England, has compiled statistics which show that crime is not very remunerative. For 372 cases of housebreaking, which "gave employment" to 488 men, the average "earnings" were only $63:50. Four hundred and twenty-two pickpockets had to divide the proceeds of 364 successful attempts, the average takings being $22:75. Defrauding pays better. In 309 cases of this sort, each partner received on an average of $731:75. But as there is a long time of inaction between each case, criminals are among the worst "paid" individuals.
Sin, Eternal Loss. Look at the fact, the mathematical certainty, that if you deduct from the experience of a man's holiness for a while, you have deducted something of absolutely measureless value. You have poisoned the possible bliss of that man. The poison lasts. It never will stop its course, will it? "There will be no final pain or permanent loss in the universe! Oh, no!" I affirm that you cannot take out of human history six thousand years, and give them over to your blackest sins, or to your least black, without subtracting from the bliss of the universe; and that this gap is a part of the record of the past; and that you never can fill it up. That gap will exist
"Till the sun is old,
And the stars are cold,
And the leaves of the judgment book unfold."
Unknown.