Israel's Jericho
...
The Lord Deals with the Covenant Breaker Achan
Joshua 7
The light was visible as far away as Amarillo, Texas, [which was] more than two hundred and eighty miles to the east, on the other side of a mountain range. Windows were reported broken in Silver City, New Mexico, some hundred and eighty miles to the southwest.
Scientists had estimated that the detonation would yield the equivalent of between seven hundred and five thousand tons of TNT. As it turned out, the detonation [of the first atom bomb had a] force [which] was equal to about twenty thousand tons of TNT—four times larger than the expected maximum.
These were some of the things witnessed on the occasion of the test run of the Manhattan Project’s top secret destroyer. And these are just the outlining effects. These do not even begin to describe the ravaging power and the unearthly brightness that filled the area there at ground zero.
The men who witnessed the event sought to describe what was really indescribable up to that point. In regards to the luminosity they used words like “cosmic” and “white like the end of the world.” In regards to the mushroom cloud that lurched up from the earth they used terms like “a flowering ball of fire,” and “a giant brain the convolutions of which were constantly changing.”
Some of the witnesses bore testimony to the magnitude of the event. Charles Thomas, the vice-president of Monsanto, said, “It is safe to say that nothing [this] terrible has been made by man before.”
Berkeley physicist and Nobel Prize winner Ernest O. Lawrence said, “There was restrained applause, but more a hushed murmuring bordering on reverence.”
General Thomas Farrell, the deputy commander of the Manhattan Project, reported that “The strong, sustained, awesome roar … warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous.”[1]
That moment when the world entered the nuclear age no doubt was awesome. But I love these quotes because they really put the power of the atomic bomb into perspective. That’s because many of their reflections allude to God and His acts.
Yet I would say that, no matter how ferocious—no matter how awesome, the trouble wrought by the atom bomb still paled in comparison the catastrophic ruin that would be wrought by God in his fury.
In our series on Joshua, we have certainly witnessed the dramatic combination of the power of God and the wrath of God. Last time we were together we studied how the walls of Jericho trembled and became a pile of rubble because God came rushing against it. What’s more, we saw how the wicked pagans of Jericho were eliminated in toto because their time had run out. Their wickedness and their utter rejection of the Lord (YHWH) had incurred incredible guilt, and their day of judgment had come. And the world would be wiped of them forever.
Yes, we have seen the awesome roar of the doomsday which swept through Jericho. We saw that all was to be devoted to the ban—all was to be utterly destroyed. Everything was to be burned with fire as a testimony to the Lord’s hot indignation.
But though Jericho’s ashes now be smoldering in the distant horizon, we come back to Gilgal. And here in the very camp of Israel, in the midst of the very people of God himself, we see just how searingly severe God’s anger can be.
It is one thing to see the wrath of God pour down upon your enemies. It is one thing for God to strike out against the wickedness that had accumulated over the span of hundreds of years. But what we see here in chapter 7 is a radically different thing. What we see here is that God cuts down one of his very own. And this must make us pause.
This is a moment of extraordinary gravity. It sends us a reminder that our God is a consuming fire. He must be held in great awe and He is due the highest degree of reverence. And we must not be flippant when it comes to his commands.
This morning I want to unfold this fact. I want to take heed to this sobering reminder by looking at several points which come out of the text.
I want us to begin by understanding the contrast that is made.
I. The contrast that is made
There is a contrast made between Rahab and Achan. On either side of Jericho (chapter 6) there stands a two individual who are really set up against on another
On the one side, prior to the fall of Jericho, we have Rahab. Rahab stands as a testimony to the grace of God. She is a pillar, as it were, -- a human monument which stands out as a clear demonstration of how the Lord freely and mercifully pardons sinners.
Rahab, as I have said before, represents the dregs of human immorality: She was a pagan, a prostitute, and no doubt she would have been a woman who was occupied with all kinds of other evils which would have accompanied these.
But yet this woman put her faith in the Lord. And God brought her out of Jericho and into his family. She received a place among the people of God and was made an heir of the eternal kingdom.
Rahab is a testimony that God will freely pardon and receive anyone who would turn to him and put their trust in him. She magnifies the fact that our God is infinitely gracious and will show steadfast love to those who fear him.
Imagine if this were the only story that came out of Jericho though. What might happen? No doubt that God’s whole reputation would be based on that act. Everyone would concentrate on this dramatic display of His grace, and (as we do with so many other things) we would blow it way out of proportion. We would make God into an indulgent being who is all love and grace and mercy and we would forget that He is also holy.
That is the contrast posed by Achan. In Achan we are reminded that, while God may be infinitely gracious and abounding in mercy, God is also holy. We are reminded that the Lord is provoked by evil and cannot in the least bit tolerate it. And just because you are “in the right crowd” doesn’t mean that you get a free pass when it comes to sin and its consequences. You cannot take confidence in your heritage as a member of God’s people. Just because you belong to the covenant people, it does not mean that you can reject the Lord’s will and live as you please.
Yes, we should affirm that God is gracious and kind, and that he does not deal with us according to our sins. But we must hold the two together: God’s grace and his holiness. Even as the book of Hebrews tells us: Since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.
Once we understand the contrast that is made, we can begin to recall the secret that is exposed.
II. The secret that is exposed
Part of what makes this passage so heavy is that Achan’s theft was done with the utmost stealth. It was the perfect heist. No one knew. But it was not long until this secret was exposed.
You heard how it happened. It was all so clandestine. Achan grabbed the loot while nobody was around. Somehow he got it back to his tent without anyone seeing, and then he then put it in ground, a place where no one would look. No one would be the wiser. It was all incognito.
But while it escaped the eyes of men, it did not escape the eyes of the omniscient one.
We have here a detailed explanation of how it came out. God said to bring ever tribe near. So a representative from each tribe probably came forward and they would draw lots (maybe pull rocks out of a bag with one rock being a certain color, or something like that). When Judah came forward, they got the black stone. Then a representative from each clan in the tribe of Judah had to follow suit until one family was taken. And then each member of that family would do the same.
Now imagine being Achan while all that was happening. Just think how you had to be sweating. And when he pulls out the stone, Joshua says, “What’d you do?”
You could say that this is an amazing display of God’s providence. How supposedly this random act of drawing lots comes to determine just the right person. But more importantly, what this really teaches us is that you can’t keep anything from God.
As Jesus says in the NT, what is said in secret will be shouted from housetops. There is not one thing hidden that will not be revealed.
And this is a sobering reminder to us. How much do we try to kid ourselves by saying, “Nobody will know.” “Nobody is looking.” What they don’t know won’t hurt them. It’s done behind closed doors. All the evidence is hidden. It’s covered up and everything looks nice and neat, like nothing had ever been done.
But then the story of Achan jumps out at you, and it reminds you that there are no secrets with God. You best confess your sins to God and get it right with Him, because one way or another it will come out.
But before we even get to the secret that is exposed, we have the disaster that is wrought.
III. The disaster that is wrought
Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve skipped over the first 12 verses of our passage. But we shouldn’t breeze over them. We see that Israel gets a shellacking right after their big win in Jericho.
Verses 2-5 tell us that the people of Israel went out to war against Ai, which was a smaller less fortified city. So it should have been pretty easy to take. As a matter of fact, they only send 3,000 troops because they figured this small town would fall without a hitch. But, to their surprise, they get routed.
Why is that? It is because the Lord isn’t with them. The Lord is punishing them. He’s angry with them. And it is all because of Achan. And that’s what is so sobering.
When you read this chapter, one of the things that you cannot escape is that this one man’s sin had far reaching effects. It was disastrous, not just for him or his family, but for the whole of the covenant community.
Now it probably sounds horrid to us. We are not used to this. As Americans we are very individualistic. We think that life is just about me and what I do. What you do is not my business and it really doesn’t affect me. That’s our typical mindset, and we don’t think in these kinds of terms.
But the Bible makes it clear that God operates according to covenants with people. There is be an organic unity between groups of people by virtue of the covenants that they make.
We’ve talked about this principle before. All humanity is in covenant with God through Adam. Adam’s sin had repercussions for all the human race. The guilt of his sin is imputed to us all, and we are all liable to the punishment of his transgression.
That principle of covenantal unity flows all through Scripture. And Here in Achan we see that same principle of covenantal unity and the disaster that one person can bring upon a whole nation. God imputes the evil of the one to all the people of God and it has disastrous ramifications for the entire covenant community.
And this is important to take into account. For this makes our behavior all that much more necessary. We could put our whole church in danger. We could put our families in danger.
So this passage exhorts us to greater sobriety. It reminds us that we need to be all that much more attentive to the Lord because the welfare of the rest of the body of people may depend upon it.
How different we may act if we would only take into consideration what havoc we might bring upon our friends, family, or community.
This is just a reminder that we need to be more covenantal in our mindset and less individualistic.
Now, the remedy comes in the
IV. The attitude that is required [25-26]
These verses tell us that Achan was stoned for his crimes. His error was a capital offense and deserved the death penalty. But I want you to notice that “all Israel stoned him with stones.” Now, it was probably done by some representatives. It would be pretty hard to have a couple hundred thousand or a couple million people stone one guy. So they probably had representatives from each of the tribes come forward to serve as executioners. They would cast the stone on behalf of their fellow tribes and clans.
But it says, “All Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones.” And that means that all Israel at least joined in the condemnation of this fellow. The whole of the people had an attitude that this was a horrific evil and a violation of God’s direct command. And all of them stood in solidarity with God in condemning this fellow.
Now, I don’t have time to talk about the death penalty. I’m just going to say that the Bible is very outspoken about public executions. What I want to emphasize is this: This act of stoning by the whole community was a way of saying “We are united in spirit in opposing this kind of behavior. We all judge it to be in grave defiance of God’s order and we all confess it to be a terrible violation against His holiness.”
That’s the attitude that is needed. There should be no solidarity with the sinner and no backing of the sin. There should be no one who says, “Well, we should take into consideration his upbringing or his mental state at the time.”
No. What God requires is that we stand with Him. We are to hate sin the way He does and there’s not to be any toleration of sin within the covenant community. We are to love God wholeheartedly and, just as much so, we are to hate sin and not show any tolerance for it.
I’d like to preach on that some more, but I want to leave you with a fifth and final point. That is the testimony that is left.
V. The testimony that is left
At the end of our passage it says that they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. And then it adds that the name of that place was called “Achor.” Which is a form of the word Achan, which is the word for trouble.
Achan’s grave became a memorial. And the whole of that area became a perpetual reminder to the people. It was a public declaration that sin is a very serious thing.
Just as the memorial stones were taken out of the riverbed in chapter 4 and set up on the side of the Jordan to be a reminder of God’s faithfulness to his people and to his promises, these stones serve as a reminder that God will not tolerate a flippant attitudes towards his law. It was a stone monument which declared that God will bring trouble upon those who defy him. Anyone who walked by that valley and witnessed that pile of bricks would know that trouble is decreed for sin.
And the same thing is proclaimed to us when we come to the table of our Lord. When we join together to remember the body and blood of our Savior, it should be a time where we remember his grace and forgiveness. It is a reminder of his sacrifice on our behalf, whereby we gain life. But it is also a reminder that the wages of sin is death. It is costly. God is provoked by our misdeeds and his anger is aroused.
God’s Son bleed for sin. Hell was released upon him. In his body he bore the trouble. Upon him came the curses and the fires of God’s anger overtook him.
And while we rejoice in the grace of God which is given to us in Christ, we should be moved to understand the severity of our sins.
Thus we should be moved to honor him and remember that our God demands obedience from us.
So let us this day take it to heart. And if there be anything offensive found among us, let it be put away. Let there be true repentance and reformation. Let us bring ourselves or our neighbors into judgment by being flippant or involving ourselves with some sort of sacrilegious act. But let us be diligent to amend our ways and be obedient to his every command.
Above all, let us remember that there is trouble for sin. Sin is never safe. And we must therefore give honor to God in a spirit of awe and reverence.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-first-light-of-the-trinity-atomic-test
Scientists had estimated that the detonation would yield the equivalent of between seven hundred and five thousand tons of TNT. As it turned out, the detonation [of the first atom bomb had a] force [which] was equal to about twenty thousand tons of TNT—four times larger than the expected maximum.
These were some of the things witnessed on the occasion of the test run of the Manhattan Project’s top secret destroyer. And these are just the outlining effects. These do not even begin to describe the ravaging power and the unearthly brightness that filled the area there at ground zero.
The men who witnessed the event sought to describe what was really indescribable up to that point. In regards to the luminosity they used words like “cosmic” and “white like the end of the world.” In regards to the mushroom cloud that lurched up from the earth they used terms like “a flowering ball of fire,” and “a giant brain the convolutions of which were constantly changing.”
Some of the witnesses bore testimony to the magnitude of the event. Charles Thomas, the vice-president of Monsanto, said, “It is safe to say that nothing [this] terrible has been made by man before.”
Berkeley physicist and Nobel Prize winner Ernest O. Lawrence said, “There was restrained applause, but more a hushed murmuring bordering on reverence.”
General Thomas Farrell, the deputy commander of the Manhattan Project, reported that “The strong, sustained, awesome roar … warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous.”[1]
That moment when the world entered the nuclear age no doubt was awesome. But I love these quotes because they really put the power of the atomic bomb into perspective. That’s because many of their reflections allude to God and His acts.
Yet I would say that, no matter how ferocious—no matter how awesome, the trouble wrought by the atom bomb still paled in comparison the catastrophic ruin that would be wrought by God in his fury.
In our series on Joshua, we have certainly witnessed the dramatic combination of the power of God and the wrath of God. Last time we were together we studied how the walls of Jericho trembled and became a pile of rubble because God came rushing against it. What’s more, we saw how the wicked pagans of Jericho were eliminated in toto because their time had run out. Their wickedness and their utter rejection of the Lord (YHWH) had incurred incredible guilt, and their day of judgment had come. And the world would be wiped of them forever.
Yes, we have seen the awesome roar of the doomsday which swept through Jericho. We saw that all was to be devoted to the ban—all was to be utterly destroyed. Everything was to be burned with fire as a testimony to the Lord’s hot indignation.
But though Jericho’s ashes now be smoldering in the distant horizon, we come back to Gilgal. And here in the very camp of Israel, in the midst of the very people of God himself, we see just how searingly severe God’s anger can be.
It is one thing to see the wrath of God pour down upon your enemies. It is one thing for God to strike out against the wickedness that had accumulated over the span of hundreds of years. But what we see here in chapter 7 is a radically different thing. What we see here is that God cuts down one of his very own. And this must make us pause.
This is a moment of extraordinary gravity. It sends us a reminder that our God is a consuming fire. He must be held in great awe and He is due the highest degree of reverence. And we must not be flippant when it comes to his commands.
This morning I want to unfold this fact. I want to take heed to this sobering reminder by looking at several points which come out of the text.
I want us to begin by understanding the contrast that is made.
I. The contrast that is made
There is a contrast made between Rahab and Achan. On either side of Jericho (chapter 6) there stands a two individual who are really set up against on another
On the one side, prior to the fall of Jericho, we have Rahab. Rahab stands as a testimony to the grace of God. She is a pillar, as it were, -- a human monument which stands out as a clear demonstration of how the Lord freely and mercifully pardons sinners.
Rahab, as I have said before, represents the dregs of human immorality: She was a pagan, a prostitute, and no doubt she would have been a woman who was occupied with all kinds of other evils which would have accompanied these.
But yet this woman put her faith in the Lord. And God brought her out of Jericho and into his family. She received a place among the people of God and was made an heir of the eternal kingdom.
Rahab is a testimony that God will freely pardon and receive anyone who would turn to him and put their trust in him. She magnifies the fact that our God is infinitely gracious and will show steadfast love to those who fear him.
Imagine if this were the only story that came out of Jericho though. What might happen? No doubt that God’s whole reputation would be based on that act. Everyone would concentrate on this dramatic display of His grace, and (as we do with so many other things) we would blow it way out of proportion. We would make God into an indulgent being who is all love and grace and mercy and we would forget that He is also holy.
That is the contrast posed by Achan. In Achan we are reminded that, while God may be infinitely gracious and abounding in mercy, God is also holy. We are reminded that the Lord is provoked by evil and cannot in the least bit tolerate it. And just because you are “in the right crowd” doesn’t mean that you get a free pass when it comes to sin and its consequences. You cannot take confidence in your heritage as a member of God’s people. Just because you belong to the covenant people, it does not mean that you can reject the Lord’s will and live as you please.
Yes, we should affirm that God is gracious and kind, and that he does not deal with us according to our sins. But we must hold the two together: God’s grace and his holiness. Even as the book of Hebrews tells us: Since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.
Once we understand the contrast that is made, we can begin to recall the secret that is exposed.
II. The secret that is exposed
Part of what makes this passage so heavy is that Achan’s theft was done with the utmost stealth. It was the perfect heist. No one knew. But it was not long until this secret was exposed.
You heard how it happened. It was all so clandestine. Achan grabbed the loot while nobody was around. Somehow he got it back to his tent without anyone seeing, and then he then put it in ground, a place where no one would look. No one would be the wiser. It was all incognito.
But while it escaped the eyes of men, it did not escape the eyes of the omniscient one.
We have here a detailed explanation of how it came out. God said to bring ever tribe near. So a representative from each tribe probably came forward and they would draw lots (maybe pull rocks out of a bag with one rock being a certain color, or something like that). When Judah came forward, they got the black stone. Then a representative from each clan in the tribe of Judah had to follow suit until one family was taken. And then each member of that family would do the same.
Now imagine being Achan while all that was happening. Just think how you had to be sweating. And when he pulls out the stone, Joshua says, “What’d you do?”
You could say that this is an amazing display of God’s providence. How supposedly this random act of drawing lots comes to determine just the right person. But more importantly, what this really teaches us is that you can’t keep anything from God.
As Jesus says in the NT, what is said in secret will be shouted from housetops. There is not one thing hidden that will not be revealed.
And this is a sobering reminder to us. How much do we try to kid ourselves by saying, “Nobody will know.” “Nobody is looking.” What they don’t know won’t hurt them. It’s done behind closed doors. All the evidence is hidden. It’s covered up and everything looks nice and neat, like nothing had ever been done.
But then the story of Achan jumps out at you, and it reminds you that there are no secrets with God. You best confess your sins to God and get it right with Him, because one way or another it will come out.
But before we even get to the secret that is exposed, we have the disaster that is wrought.
III. The disaster that is wrought
Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve skipped over the first 12 verses of our passage. But we shouldn’t breeze over them. We see that Israel gets a shellacking right after their big win in Jericho.
Verses 2-5 tell us that the people of Israel went out to war against Ai, which was a smaller less fortified city. So it should have been pretty easy to take. As a matter of fact, they only send 3,000 troops because they figured this small town would fall without a hitch. But, to their surprise, they get routed.
Why is that? It is because the Lord isn’t with them. The Lord is punishing them. He’s angry with them. And it is all because of Achan. And that’s what is so sobering.
When you read this chapter, one of the things that you cannot escape is that this one man’s sin had far reaching effects. It was disastrous, not just for him or his family, but for the whole of the covenant community.
Now it probably sounds horrid to us. We are not used to this. As Americans we are very individualistic. We think that life is just about me and what I do. What you do is not my business and it really doesn’t affect me. That’s our typical mindset, and we don’t think in these kinds of terms.
But the Bible makes it clear that God operates according to covenants with people. There is be an organic unity between groups of people by virtue of the covenants that they make.
We’ve talked about this principle before. All humanity is in covenant with God through Adam. Adam’s sin had repercussions for all the human race. The guilt of his sin is imputed to us all, and we are all liable to the punishment of his transgression.
That principle of covenantal unity flows all through Scripture. And Here in Achan we see that same principle of covenantal unity and the disaster that one person can bring upon a whole nation. God imputes the evil of the one to all the people of God and it has disastrous ramifications for the entire covenant community.
And this is important to take into account. For this makes our behavior all that much more necessary. We could put our whole church in danger. We could put our families in danger.
So this passage exhorts us to greater sobriety. It reminds us that we need to be all that much more attentive to the Lord because the welfare of the rest of the body of people may depend upon it.
How different we may act if we would only take into consideration what havoc we might bring upon our friends, family, or community.
This is just a reminder that we need to be more covenantal in our mindset and less individualistic.
Now, the remedy comes in the
IV. The attitude that is required [25-26]
These verses tell us that Achan was stoned for his crimes. His error was a capital offense and deserved the death penalty. But I want you to notice that “all Israel stoned him with stones.” Now, it was probably done by some representatives. It would be pretty hard to have a couple hundred thousand or a couple million people stone one guy. So they probably had representatives from each of the tribes come forward to serve as executioners. They would cast the stone on behalf of their fellow tribes and clans.
But it says, “All Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones.” And that means that all Israel at least joined in the condemnation of this fellow. The whole of the people had an attitude that this was a horrific evil and a violation of God’s direct command. And all of them stood in solidarity with God in condemning this fellow.
Now, I don’t have time to talk about the death penalty. I’m just going to say that the Bible is very outspoken about public executions. What I want to emphasize is this: This act of stoning by the whole community was a way of saying “We are united in spirit in opposing this kind of behavior. We all judge it to be in grave defiance of God’s order and we all confess it to be a terrible violation against His holiness.”
That’s the attitude that is needed. There should be no solidarity with the sinner and no backing of the sin. There should be no one who says, “Well, we should take into consideration his upbringing or his mental state at the time.”
No. What God requires is that we stand with Him. We are to hate sin the way He does and there’s not to be any toleration of sin within the covenant community. We are to love God wholeheartedly and, just as much so, we are to hate sin and not show any tolerance for it.
I’d like to preach on that some more, but I want to leave you with a fifth and final point. That is the testimony that is left.
V. The testimony that is left
At the end of our passage it says that they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. And then it adds that the name of that place was called “Achor.” Which is a form of the word Achan, which is the word for trouble.
Achan’s grave became a memorial. And the whole of that area became a perpetual reminder to the people. It was a public declaration that sin is a very serious thing.
Just as the memorial stones were taken out of the riverbed in chapter 4 and set up on the side of the Jordan to be a reminder of God’s faithfulness to his people and to his promises, these stones serve as a reminder that God will not tolerate a flippant attitudes towards his law. It was a stone monument which declared that God will bring trouble upon those who defy him. Anyone who walked by that valley and witnessed that pile of bricks would know that trouble is decreed for sin.
And the same thing is proclaimed to us when we come to the table of our Lord. When we join together to remember the body and blood of our Savior, it should be a time where we remember his grace and forgiveness. It is a reminder of his sacrifice on our behalf, whereby we gain life. But it is also a reminder that the wages of sin is death. It is costly. God is provoked by our misdeeds and his anger is aroused.
God’s Son bleed for sin. Hell was released upon him. In his body he bore the trouble. Upon him came the curses and the fires of God’s anger overtook him.
And while we rejoice in the grace of God which is given to us in Christ, we should be moved to understand the severity of our sins.
Thus we should be moved to honor him and remember that our God demands obedience from us.
So let us this day take it to heart. And if there be anything offensive found among us, let it be put away. Let there be true repentance and reformation. Let us bring ourselves or our neighbors into judgment by being flippant or involving ourselves with some sort of sacrilegious act. But let us be diligent to amend our ways and be obedient to his every command.
Above all, let us remember that there is trouble for sin. Sin is never safe. And we must therefore give honor to God in a spirit of awe and reverence.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-first-light-of-the-trinity-atomic-test