CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 7:11. Have also stolen and dissembled, etc.] To steal devoted things was solemnly sinful; every moment of hiding was a moment in which the guilt of theft was perpetuated and repeated in the conscience, in addition to which all Israel was being deceived and wronged; but the sin mentioned last, as though that were the greatest sin of all, was that of putting the devoted things “even among their own stuff,” and thus shewing a determination to appropriate to private uses what was under the awful ban of God.
Joshua 7:14. Brought according to your tribes] Heb.,” be brought near,” probably near to the Ark—near to the Divine Presence. Jehovah Himself would solemnly discover the offender. The tribe which the Lord taketh, etc.] This is the process of election by lot, and was frequently pursued, sometimes for widely different purposes than that of discovering the guilty (cf. 1 Samuel 10:20-22; 1 Samuel 14:40-43; 1 Chronicles 24:5; Acts 1:26). The land of Canaan was divided in this manner among the tribes, and Jonah was discovered similarly, when he fled to Tarshish.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 7:10-15
GOD DEALING WITH HUMAN SIN
In this chapter we see God dealing
(1) with sin,
(2) with an individual sinner,
(3) with a sinner’s family,
(4) with a sinner’s possessions,
(5) and with a community having a sinner for one of its members. This paragraph shews us the mind of Jehovah concerning sin and the forgiveness of sin.
I. Sin not only brings a need for the prayer of suffering and tears; but while sin is unforgiven it limits the influence of prayer. God says to Joshua, “Get thee up.” The power of unforgiven sin in limiting the power of prayer is here very emphatically marked.
1. The prayer of the unforgiven is not refused a hearing, or even an answer. God comes to Joshua. True, He does not come till eventide; Joshua and the elders of the people have to lie all day ere He draws nigh to attend to this prayer of suffering; but God does come, and to a certain extent He answers this cry of the needy. So far this is very merciful; it is like God. If men really pray, He keeps not silent, even though prayer come up to His ear from the lips of the unforgiven. God, who answered not “by prophets nor by dreams,” spake nevertheless through Samuel to unforgiven Saul in his agony; and had Saul truly repented, even though Gilboa might still have received its royal victim, the pains of death would have been soothed with the thought of Divine pardon. No man can truly pray and God not hear. The breath of real prayer is not a mere electric current which rings a bell and moves the hands on a dial in front of the throne and before the eyes of a God who sometimes refuses to attend; it is a current of troubled desire in man which moves in the heart of God as a compassionate, wise, and holy sympathy. We may be sure that when we pray importunately from our heart, sooner or later God draws nigh to see if we are in a right mind to profit by help from on high.
2. But the prayer of the unforgiven can only secure God’s attention in respect to the sin which is not put away. The Lord comes to Joshua, and virtually says, “Get thee up: all that I will hear thee upon is this matter of sin.” He will speak on nothing else. He will consider nothing else than this matter of sin. Mark the holy irony of the question, “Wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?” As if prayer were not God’s own appointment! As if lowly humiliation were not His own ordained method of approach to the mercy-seat! As if Abraham and Moses and others had not been answered, till lowly prayer had become known, even through the Divine response, as a mighty power! But in this case there was this difference, Joshua and the elders of the people, in common with all Israel, were held to be guilty of Achan’s sin—not personally guilty, yet corporately guilty. That is why this question is asked, and that is why Joshua is bidden to get up, and to desist from his particular pleading, while God speaks with him on this question of sin. (a) Humiliation is nothing when it is not humiliation for the unforgiven sin. In this sharply defined picture, God shews us that it is useless to humble ourselves for adversity, and leave out any unforgiven sin which may have had to do with the adversity. It is so in national fasts; in personal trials, etc. Rent garments, prostrate forms, dust and ashes and sackcloth, are nothing to God, if we take no account of sin. (b) Grief is nothing, if it be not grief for the guilt. A man may feel his heart broken at the consequences of sin, and cry out of that broken heart to God; and God will hear him on the question of the sin, but not on the question of consequences till the sin itself is put away. If a man lose a situation through ill-temper or idleness, squander a fortune by prodigality, incur physical disease through intemperance, it is useless to plead the sorrow till he have first communed with God in sincere repentance on the matter of the transgression. Joshua may mourn his thirty and six slain, and the shame and pain which have come through defeat: God thinks it in good time to consider these when the camp has been cleansed from its impurity. (c) The plea of future consequences is nothing, if the unforgiven do not find the most disastrous consequence of all in the wrong done to God. God says in effect, “Wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face to tell me of Amorites and Canaanites to be feared, of Israelites who turn their backs to the enemies, or of a national name to be cut off from the earth? Wherefore concernest thou thyself with the honour of My great name? What is that to thee, thou unforgiven leader of an unforgiven people? Get thee up.” So may an unpardoned man plead for his future peace and honour, for his family, for the church with which he stands connected: God declines to consider these sorrows to come, just as much as sorrows that are, till sin be put away. The consequence which the guilty should mourn as most unbearable, is the wrong done to God,—the wrong done to His nature, His past mercies, His unfailing goodness and love.
II. Sin is not only limitation and weakness to urgent prayer; it is, in itself, full of injustice and wrong. The eleventh verse contains six allegations; the first two dealing with the sin in its relation to God, and the remaining four describing the character of the transgression. Two of these four descriptions, the taking and the stealing, seem to be synonymous, unless the taking be intended to refer to the secret appropriation of the heart, and the stealing to the outward act of the hand. Probably, however, the verse should be read as a succession of cumulative utterances, rising to a climax in the natural rhetoric of strong emotion, rather than as containing that philosophically exact analysis of the sin, more suitable to calmness of heart and thought. Taking the terms of description as three, rather than four, we see that:
1. Sin is theft. And this description of the particular sin of Achan has far more general truth in it than some imagine. Sin is taking something from another. It is always that, and never less than that, let the sin be what it may. The murderer takes life; the burglar and the pickpocket take goods; and the theft in transgressions of this kind is manifest. But the liar is also a thief; the drunkard, the vain man, the ambitious, the false-hearted, each deprives his fellows of valuable possessions. Each takes from the purity of the moral atmosphere which surrounds his neighbour, and thus takes away from his neighbour’s means of maintaining a healthy tone of life. Each, moreover, robs his fellow of the good example which every living man owes to those about him.
2. Sin is deceitful. Achan stole not only the gold and the garment; but he robbed the Israelites of God’s favour; he made the camp of Israel to become devoted, and then by hiding both the stolen goods and the knowledge of the curse brought upon his people, he suffered them to go ignorantly up to their defeat. Achan stole the devoted things from God; he stole from Israel God’s smile and help, victory over the men of Ai, and thirty-six lives; and he dissembled about the theft even in the presence of the slain. Thus sin does yet other injury in the deception with which it is ever accompanied. It leads the innocent unsuspectingly into danger, and, it may be, to death.
9. Sin is misappropriation for personal advantages. “They have put it even among their own stuff.” The sinful seek personal gain and pleasure at the expense of others. Like Achan, however, who presently has to restore all, and more than all that he had taken, no man ever sins without having to feel ultimately that transgression always costs more than it yields.
III. Sin is not merely a wrong in itself; it is a rejection and a breaking of God’s covenant. “They have also transgressed my covenant.” The breaking of the covenant is put as an additional and distinct feature of the sin. If it be said that Achan made no personal covenant with Jehovah, it is enough to reply that the covenant made with the host was binding on him individually. He was a member of the community, and he had stayed with the people, and enjoyed with them the common privileges of the covenant for many years previously. Thus Achan had voluntarily become a party to the covenant. In addition to this, no man is at liberty to ignore any covenant of the Lord. For Jehovah to proffer Himself to man in anything, is for man to stand bound.
1. The covenant made with men in Christ is binding on all men. Hence, the Gospel leaves no man where it finds him. It is the “savour” of something to everybody,—“of death unto death, or of life unto life.” Every man comes into life under this “New Covenant.” It is because of this, and not because of some specific act of mercy lying outside of the plan of salvation, that children dying in infancy are saved. The child of a Hottentot, or a Maori, or a Greenlander, dying ere it comes to years of responsibility, is saved because of God’s covenant with the human race. When Paul says, “As in Adam all die,” he means everybody; there is no exception. Equally does the apostle mean everybody when he says, “Even so in Christ shall all be made alive;” there is no single exception in the case of the life, any more than in the case of the death. Every one comes into life under the covenant with the race made through Christ, and if nothing were done to forfeit that life, thus forensically secured in the Redeemer, every one would be saved. But no one comes into life regenerate. The judicial life is one thing, the principle of the new life is another. In Adam all have died, not only judicially, but morally, and hence it is written to all men, “Ye must be born again.” Yet it is true that till every child becomes responsible for his acts he is under the covenant of life, and till actual sin be committed, he has the promise of life. Were it otherwise, we should be absolutely forced to accept the monstrous creed of elect babies and lost babies. There would be no logical alternative but the absurdly fanciful conclusion that all the babies who have died in their infancy, would, had they been spared, have grown up to become Christians; or that they came into the covenant of grace by the mere act of dying before a given day, after which they would have been personally responsible, when the act of dying would no longer have been efficacious. If all children who are saved, are saved by the work of Christ for the human race; and if all children are not in Christ by virtue of being members of that race; then, either some children are lost, or they must come into Christ by the mere act of dying at a given time, or only such children as are elected to life ever die as children The first of these alternatives is not only unlike God, but inhuman; the remaining two are simply frivolous. If this be so, then every child begins this life completely justified by the work of Christ; every child is under the covenant.
2. Every adult living in sin is not merely a being who has not accepted the covenant, but a being who, having been under the covenant, has ignored and rejected it. It is this that makes the position of each intelligent transgressor so unspeakably solemn. It is not that unbelieving men merely refuse to accept Christ; such, having begun life under the shelter of Christ’s work, absolutely reject Christ. Like Achan, who had partaken of covenant privileges, they presently treat the covenant as of less concern than the things which tempt them to transgress.
3. The most aggravated form of human sin now, is the rejection of the covenant made with them in Christ. It is a rejection of God’s love, of the Saviour’s sacrifice, of the past mercy which shielded them as helpless children.
IV. Sin has not only these aggravated forms of guilt in itself, but weakness, and injury, and many other evil results in its train (Joshua 7:12).
1. Sin brings weakness. God is not with sinners, and every transgression is so much loss of a man’s own moral strength.
2. Weakness brings defeat. The weakness that comes through sin is not a mere sentiment of the pulpit; it is something more than ecclesiastical poetry. History, whether national, family, or individual, has many battle-fields of failure and flight and shame and loss, to expound the reality of the weakness.
3. Such defeat may stand connected with death. Not only before Ai are there thirty and six slain; many, yea countless, are the broken-hearted, and other dead, who have gone down to their graves unable to bear the defeat which has been wrought by some one’s transgression.
V. Sin is not only at the time of transgression, but till the time of repentance. “Neither will I be with you any more,” etc. The heart repeats the guilt through every moment in which it refuses to repent. A state of unrepentance is not negative, but positive; the heart refuses to think repentance a present necessity. The heart thus virtually certifies the guilt afresh, and, in spirit, commits it over again. In this light,
(1) think of the importance of prompt repentance;
(2) think of the aggravated guilt, and of the solemn position of an aged unbeliever.
VI. The forgiveness of sin requires not only separation from the transgression, but some adequate acknowledgment of its guilt.
1. Forgiveness of sin requires separation from the sin. “Sanctify yourselves.” The formal sanctification of the people was meant to be the outward expression of a heartfelt antipathy to Achan’s transgression.
2. Forgiveness of sin requires an adequate protest against the evil of sin “He shall be burnt,” etc. Ere the Israelites were forgiven, they were to express in some suitable way their disavowal and detestation of the offence. This expression of feeling was imperatively necessary for the Israelites themselves. If a child sin against his father, a wise father will not recklessly forgive, but will, for his child’s sake, require some expression of contrition and disavowal which shall be, so far as possible, commensurate with the magnitude of the offence. It is not because of any longing to honour the abstract principles of justice that a wise father would make such a demand; justice would furnish the ground for that demand; but it is the father’s love to his child, his love to his other children, and his sense of duty towards society generally, which would make the demand imperative and the father inflexible. In a modified form, the same feelings would actuate a good governor or judge in dealing with criminals, and, allowing a sufficiency of power, a good and wise nation in dealing with the offence of some other nation. Justice is passive, and does but furnish the license of right to proceed; it is the sense of duty to others, or the feeling of love to them, which is active and urgent in its demand that the offender suitably express contrition. It was God’s love to Israel that made Achan’s prospect of pardon so hopeless; the offence had been great, and nothing less than the life of the more immediate offenders would be understood by Israel, and therefore be taken by God, as a suitable and sufficient acknowledgment of the guilt. So it was God’s love to men, and not His hunger for justice, that made the cross of Christ so absolutely imperative. Either man, the offender, or God who wished to pardon, must for the sake of the world at large, perhaps for the sake of the intelligent universe, suitably recognise the guilt of human sin. Man could only do this in his own ruin; to save him from that ruin, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” This “power to forgive sins,” without disordering the moral forces which influence sinners, is the most wonderful manifestation of power ever displayed even by God. Thus the narrative of the cross is greater than the record in the opening chapter of Genesis; the glory of Calvary transcends the majesty of creation.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 7:10.—THE RELATION OF PRAYER TO WORK.
I. In times of new perplexity and distress, the natural order is first to pray, and then to work. It was not till eventide that the Lord said, “Get thee up.” Although it would have been useless to pray after that, God does not rebuke Joshua for praying before that.
1. Prayer brings light upon the difficulty itself. Without this humble and persevering petition, Joshua must apparently have remained ignorant of the sin which had been committed.
2. Prayer secures the Lord’s guidance. The petition that brings God to our side cannot be useless. Jehovah guided His servant (a) to know that sin had been the cause of the defeat, (b) to understand fully the nature of the sin, (c) to the assurance that sin must be put away before He would again be with Israel, (d) to discover the sinner, (e) and to the way in which the Divine presence could once more be secured. When God begins to enlighten His people, He guides them, not merely to know the measure of their difficulty, but entirely through that difficulty. He gives the light of the law to reveal sin, the light of the cross to shew how sin can be put away, and the light of precious promises to assure us of His personal presence till the last enemy shall be destroyed.
3. Prayer brings strength for work. It was no light task which Joshua had to perform. For the first time in his capacity as leader, he was called on to inflict the judgment of death. The prayer, the words of the Lord, and the solemn process of discovering the offender, would prepare both Joshua and the people for this dreadful task.
II. In times of distress, work should never be willingly allowed to precede prayer. Difficulty may overtake men in the midst of work, when there is little opportunity for prayer. It was so when Joshua first saw the beginning of the defeat at Ai. Excepting momentary supplication, there would have been little time for Joshua to think of anything but the battle, and the management of the retreat. But, in times of emergency, work should not precede prayer from choice. Had Joshua renewed the battle with a greater force, he would probably have sustained a fresh defeat. Defeat would have been added to defeat, and distress to distress. He who pursues work that has failed, when he should be asking help from the Lord, can only expect to add sorrow unto sorrow.
III. Work should never be neglected for prayer. While Joshua merely prayed,
(1) sin could not be put away,
(2) God would not come to the help of the people,
(3) and the Canaanites would exult in their recent victory.
“The question: ‘Wherefore fallest thou thus upon thy face?’ is one of reproof, implying that Joshua had no reason to doubt the faithfulness of the Lord, or to implore its continuance; since it was not to God, but to the sin of the people, that he must trace the calamity which had befallen Israel. The reproof does not of course apply to the mere fact of Joshua’s turning to the Lord and prostrating himself in prayer, nor even to the tone of complaint against the Lord observable in the words of his prayer, but to the disposition, which he manifested, to seek the cause of his misfortune in God and His superintendence, whereas it was to be found altogether in the transgression of the people.” [keil.]
Joshua 7:11.—THE SINFULNESS OF SIN.
I. The successive stages of sin. “When Achan longed, he ought to have resisted; when he planned, he ought to have stopped before taking; when he had taken, he should have cast it away instead of stealing; when he had stolen, he should have freely confessed it; and when it was buried, he ought to have dug it up again.” [S. Schmidt.]
II. The aggravated guilt of sin.
1. It was a transgression of righteousness. “Israel hath sinned.”
2. It was a transgression of the law of gratitude. God had graciously entered into covenant with them, under that covenant they had already received mercies for forty years, and recently these mercies had been wonderful beyond conception. Forgetful of all this, and in the very hour of a miraculous victory under the covenant, Achan ignored the covenant altogether.
3. It was a transgression of God’s word. “Which I commanded them.”
4. It was the transgression of good faith. Under the specific condition of not touching the spoil, the victory had been granted, and Achan had “even taken of the cherem.”
5. It was a transgression of honesty and truth. “They have stolen and dissembled also.”
6. It was a transgression of Achan’s own conscience. Had he not felt it wrong to put the devoted things “among his own stuff,” he would not have hidden them.
III. The wide-reaching evil of sin. God held that “Israel” had done this wickedness. Through each of the six charges contained in the verse, the sin is ascribed to all the people: “They have also transgressed,” etc.
IV. The connection between sin and unbelief. Achan had no real faith:
1. In Divine omniscience. Had he really believed that God saw him, he could not have taken of the spoil.
2. In Divine punishment. Had he been convinced that he would have been “devoted,” he would have resisted the temptation.
3. In the Divine word. To disbelieve in the punishment was to disbelieve Him who had threatened to destroy. The man evidently believed concealment from his brethren a much more important matter than concealment from Jehovah. Thus does unbelief in God usually lie at the root of all transgression.
Joshua 7:12.—THE CONSEQUENCES OF UNFORGIVEN GUILT.
I. To be without forgiveness is to be without God. II. To be without God is to be without strength (cf. John 15:5). III. To be without strength is to be without courage. IV. To be without repentance for the sin which works results like these, is to be without hope.
“The oracle of God, which told Joshua that a great offence was committed, yet reveals not the person. It would have been as easy for God to have named the man as the crime.” [Bp. Hall.]
Joshua 7:13-15.—GETTING READY TO BE SANCTIFIED.
I. Human preparation for putting away sin. What Jehovah teaches Israel, we should learn as necessary for ourselves. There are no superfluities in the Divine teaching, and human hearts are as weak now as they were three thousand years ago. In order to be sanctified indeed, the Lord teaches us the following things:
1. To get a deep consciousness of sin’s existence and guilt. “There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee.” There will be no question of sin’s presence in us if we wait long in the Divine presence. We are to feel that sin justly makes every one who entertains it worthy to be devoted.
2. To maintain an unwavering conviction that sin works misery and ruin. “Thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until,” etc. He who suffers himself to entertain the smallest hope that sin can ultimately bring anything but loss and misery, is hindering his sanctification. If we would be made holy, sin must be regarded in its results, as well as in its nature, as an unmixed evil.
3. To undertake deliberate and specific acts tending to sanctification. It is only the forms, and never the moral principles of the old dispensation, which are abolished in the N. T. We also need the help of a deliberate purpose to be sanctified, and of outward things in which we can manifestly act in that direction. Regular times for private examination, meditation, prayer, and the reading of the Scriptures, are helps which no man can dispense with for long without becoming irregular in holiness. For special times of departure, fasting and humiliation, in secresy before God, should not be despised. Most men are more in danger on the side of worldliness, than on the side of superstitious asceticism.
II. Divine help for putting away sin. The Lord would discover the way in which sin entered into the camp, the person who had introduced it, and the place where the proofs of it lay hidden. This discovery:
1. Supposes omniscience by its boldness. The proposal was to single out one person from two or three millions. A charlatan, relying on effrontery in himself, and superstition in his victims, has sometimes ventured to assert his power to detect a thief from among half a dozen ignorant and credulous people, one of whom has been known to be guilty of stealing; and, owing to the timidity which accompanies transgression, he has occasionally succeeded. It would be a widely different thing for a man to gravely propose to unfailingly detect one thief from among all the inhabitants of London, and that by means of considering the people, in their absence, under some systematic division of the multitude into classes. It required God, calm in the consciousness of infinite discernment, to announce that He would, with invisible hand, unfailingly guide the lot past the myriad names of Israel to the name of him who was guilty of the crime.
2. Is impartial in its spirit. Prejudice had no place whatever in the enquiry.
3. Is deliberate in its method. God moves to judgment slowly, that the guilty may have opportunity to repent and confess.
4. Is solemn in its steady progress. Jacob, under no special accusation, felt the very presence of God to fill him with awe: surely when Achan watched the ever-narrowing and unerring procession of the lot, which pointed out successively his tribe and his family, he must have been ready to anticipate the last selection, and to cry out in an intenser fear than the patriarch, “How dreadful is this place!”
5. Is certain and convincing in, its result. Probably no single person in the host had, any more than Joshua (Joshua 7:19), the smallest doubt that Achan was the offender. Then, what God so unerringly shews, and his brethren without exception believe, the guilty man unavoidably confesses. So bold, and fair, and solemn is the judgment of the Lord; so terrible, to the guilty, is its issue.
III. Characteristic features in the putting away of sin. If we would be sanctified in heart, as well as outwardly, we must deal severely with that which offends (Joshua 7:15).
1. No necessary sacrifice must be withheld. Sin may call for extreme measures, but the Saviour said for our guidance, who live in this dispensation, “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.”
2. No weak hesitation is to be suffered. “In the morning ye shall be brought,” etc., and after that each step is prompt and firm to the bitter end.
3. No room for sympathy with transgression is to be left. Achan, and all that he had, were to be destroyed. No opportunity was left to mourn with “the bereaved,” and thus get gentler thoughts of the sin in fellowship with the sufferers. The transgressor and his family, who might have been privy to his guilt, were to be alike “stoned with stones, and burned with fire.” He who would fight manfully against sin, must leave no way of retreat into the regions of transgression.
Joshua 7:10-15.—I. Prayer and humiliation are of no ultimate account without repentance.
II. Repentance avails nothing without sanctification.
III. Sanctification is impossible without abhorrence of sin really felt and unmistakably expressed.