Sin In the Camp

Ask someone in the crowd something like, “If I gave you the house of your dreams to live in, I mean in every way possible, the absolute best of the best, and the only stipulation was that you had to take care of it. Other than that, the house was yours, for keeps, for life, signed and deeded in your name. Would that be OK with you?

OK, so say that you have a friend ask you if they can keep their 100 lb dog in your house, while they are away on a trip. The dog has a nervous disorder and tends to chew up everything it gets a hold of. It also is completely incontinent of bowel and bladder and it will most likely ruin your carpet and furniture and everything around it, wherever it is at! Would you allow this pet to stay in your perfect home?

OK, somebody else. Suppose that I give you a Mercedes-Maybach GLS, ( a $200k luxury car) and it has the best of everything in it and on it. One day, a friend drops by and wants to take your car for a test drive. The friend shows up, having just finished riding 4 wheelers with some other buddies and he is covered in mud from head to toe! And as a bonus, he was sprayed by a skunk while out in the woods riding. Would you let him get into your $220k luxury car, knowing that everything was going to be covered in red clay mud and the pungent smell of a skunk would be there for who knows how long?

So, in both of these scenarios, we can all easily see that when you have something of great value to you and it’s something that you want to keep clean and pure, you would not allow something, or someone to just come in and tarnish, or dirty up and ruin whatever it is that you hold dear and with great esteem, correct?!

It’s easy for us to see and understand this in the natural/ physical sense, because by nature, we are carnally minded creatures. BUT, how mindful of this are we in the spiritual sense?

The Biblical basis for this message this morning, is found in the book of Joshua 7:10-26. So, what I would like to do, is read the passage together and then I’ll share what the Lord has put on my heart recently. So, please turn with me, if you’ve not already, to Joshua 7:10-26 and we’ll begin reading there.

Joshua 7:10–26 ESV

The Lord said to Joshua, “Get up! Why have you fallen on your face? 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. Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become devoted for destruction. I will be with you no more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. 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.” 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. 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.’ ” So Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel near tribe by tribe, and the tribe of Judah was taken. 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. 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. Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and give praise to him. And tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.” And Achan answered Joshua, “Truly I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I did: when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, then I coveted them and took them. And see, they are hidden in the earth inside my tent, with the silver underneath.” So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent; and behold, it was hidden in his tent with the silver underneath. 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. 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. 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. 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.

So, basically here’s what has happened that leads us up to this section of Joshua 7.

In chapter 6, Joshua and the nation of Israel, supernaturally sacked the mighty nation of Jericho. (I think that most of us know the account of the children of Israel, marching around the walls of Jericho for the 7 days and blowing the ram’s horns before the ark of the covenant and the people shouting at the sound of the horns, on the 7th day and after the 7th time around the city, the city walls fell and the whole army of Israel walked right into Jericho and destroyed it and everyone in it. Except for Rahab and her family!

And in this amazing victory, the Lord told Joshua that all of the silver and gold, and articles of bronze and iron, were to be put into the treasury of the house of the LORD; that these articles belonged to the Lord.

And then in the opening verses of chapter 7, we find out that one of the children of Israel acted out in deceit and took some things for himself, which belonged to the Lord!

And because of this, Israel suffered loss! Israel had planned to attack the nation of Ai and the spies of Joshua told him that the people of this city were few and that there was no need to trouble the whole army of Israel. They said to just send in about 3,000 soldiers and that would be enough.

But because God was not with them in the attack, they lost and the nation of Ai killed some about 36 of their soldiers and sent them away whipped and embarrassed!

Then Joshua and the elders of the nation, dropped to their knees before the ark of the covenant and lamented and cried out to God as to why they had suffered such a loss.

Joshua asked the Lord God why He had brought the nation of Israel so far, only to deliver them over into the hands of the Amorites. And that now Israel had turned its back and ran from this enemy. And because of this, the other nations would hear about this embarrassing loss and come and attack them and destroy them!

Basically, Joshua’s bellyaching to the Lord about the embarrassment that they just suffered. And already fearing the repercussions of this embarrassing loss to Ai.

God then answers Joshua, which is where we came in, in verse 10.

The Lord answers Joshua and tells him to get up off of his face and deal with a problem that existed.

God says in verse 11, “Israel has sinned and they have transgressed My covenant which I commanded them. And they have even taken some of the things under the ban and have stolen and deceived. Moreover, they have also put them among their own things.”

A.K.A. “Joshua, there’s sin in the camp of Israel” and because of this, the nation was losing wars and suffering losses! Not just losing, but losing with embarrassment and shame before their enemies.

You see, sin in the camp always produces shame at some level, once it is discovered.

Remember Adam and Eve in the garden? What was their initial response to feeling sin for the first time? They felt shame and embarrassment and tried to hide from God!

And so God tells Joshua what to do as far as discovering where the sin was in the camp. (God already knew, of course, but man has to realize their own sins and then deal with it.)

One pastor said, “The Lord does not forgive excuses, He forgives sin.”

And so Joshua, through an amazing process that God gives to him, finds this one person out of the hundreds of thousands, rather quickly!

When Joshua sees Achan, he knows that this is the one and he says to Achan, “My son, give glory to the LORD God of Israel and give praise to him. And tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.”

Joshua, with some compassion and dignity, asks Achan to confess his sin and reveal the items that he had stolen.

Joshua, in asking Achan to confess his sins, says to him, “give GLORY to the Lord God of Israel and give praise to him”.

The reason for this, is confessing our sins and dealing with them, is a way of bringing honor and GLORY to the mighty name of Yahweh!

When Achan confesses his sin, it’s interesting how he describes what happened. He says to Joshua, “When I saw among the spoil a beautiful mantle from Shinar and two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold fifty shekels in weight, then I coveted them and took them.”

This is the exact same thing that took place with the very first sin, as found in the garden in Genesis.

Watch this now, in Genesis 3:6 tells we read, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired (coveted) to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

Eve was tempted by what she saw (what she desired), and then she coveted it and took it. This is the exact thing that Achan said, “I saw it, I coveted it and I took it!”

This is how sin works in your life; you have desires of the flesh and the enemy uses those desires to tempt you with them.

If you fall for the temptation and take the thing that you desire, then your temptation becomes sin at that point.

This is what James 1:13-15 tells us, “Let no one say when they are tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he/she is lured and enticed by their own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

And I like how Achan is very descriptive with Joshua in confessing his sin. He says, “when I saw among the spoil a beautiful mantle from Shinar and two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold fifty shekels in weight, then I coveted them and took them.”

In other words, he didn’t just see these things, he was all in. He could describe and give accurate weights and sizes of the items!

It would be like two guys walking past a beautiful woman and then one asking the other, “Did you get a good look at her?” And the other says, “Not really. Other than the fact she had auburn hair and beautiful green eyes, which was accented with that pretty eye liner. Oh yeah, and also that her smile could melt your heart, as those dimples began to form on her cheeks. And if by chance you caught it, she was wearing black pumps (most likely 3 inch heals), which really made her already 5’9” seem even taller! And that red poked dotted dress and that accented belt on her waist, I mean, WOW! And it was all brought together nicely, by the black clutch bag that she carried in her left hand, which I really noticed because of the diamond bracelet that dangled above the purse, which made me take notice of the french manicure that she had on her hands! But other than that, NO, I didn’t really notice her, did you?!”

Achan had accurate measurements of the weights of the items that he had coveted and took, which shows that he VERY MUCH desired and though about this sin in detail!

He didn’t just see something and want it, he wanted to know the full measure of the sin that he was about partake of, so as to relish it and make the sin all the more enjoyable!

That’s how the enemy does it. If you don’t take the bait and fall for the temptation and you walk away from the initial appeal of the sin, then details begin to pop up into your mind about the thing that you desire in your heart.

You begin to ponder and wonder and fantasize about the thing, as the enemy speaks softly, but clearly to your heart. [ “Go on, you know that you want it. You deserve it! Take it; it’s there just for you!” ] You look around to avert your thoughts, but to no avail, it just grows on your mind more and more, until finally you go back and take another look it and then, WHAM, you reach for it and take it and partake of its sweetness and then it’s all over. The temptress, Desire, has just birthed a new child in the spiritual world and it’s a healthy bouncing baby sin.

And it’s name is whatever you fell for!

As soon as the messengers confirm to Joshua about the items in Achan’s tent, Joshua does exactly what the Lord God told him to do.

They took Achan, all of the silver, the mantle, the gold, his sons and daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, the tent that they lived in and EVERYTHING else that they owned and brought them out to the valley of Achor.

There they stoned them all to death and then burned them and all of their belongings and covered the remains with stones.

Now I know that you may be thinking, “That sounds a little harsh for just stealing a few items, doesn’t it?”

Well, understand this. God has always been VERY clear about His view of sin and of how it was to be dealt with.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO tolerance for sin in the eyes of God! Jesus paid way to high a price to ransom us and to set us free from our sin, only to have us walk back into them again!

Especially with one particular type of sin! Which is what has been on my mind, for the past few weeks now!

Turn with me in your Bible to Deuteronomy 22:13-30. This section of the law of Moses, covers some of the laws dealing with sexual immorality. In verses 13-21, it speaks of the situation where a man marries a woman and then decides that he doesn’t like her anymore and tries to lie and say that on the night of their honeymoon, he finds out that she wasn’t a virgin. The girl’s father and mother bring out the sheet for proof from the night that they consummated the wedding to elders of the city. If the man was found to be lying about the girl’s status of her virginity, then he was to be taken and whipped by the men of the city and then he was to fined 100 shekels of silver ( which was paid to the girl’s father) and then he was remain married to the girl for the rest of his life. HE WAS NEVER ALLOWED TO DIVORCE HER! (I’d hate to be in that man’s situation from that day forward!!)

BUT, if the man was right and the girl was found to not be a virgin, then she was to be taken out and stoned to death outside of her father’s house for sleeping around while under the care of her father.

Now pay close attention to what God says at the end of verse 21, “So you shall purge the evil from your midst!”

Verse 22 deals with adultery and of how both the man and the woman are to be stoned. Again, God says at the end of that verse, “So you shall purge the evil from Israel.”

Verses 23-24 mentions a man sleeping with a betrothed virgin and that if she doesn’t cry for help, then they are both to be stoned to death. Again God said, “So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

If the young lady cries out for help (not a willing participant) then only the man is stoned to death.

All sin is WRONG in the eyes of God, period! But the point that I am making here, is that God has ALWAYS viewed sexual sin with a strong disapproval, because it violates His created and intended plan for a man and a woman!

There’s no mistaking God’s plan in His creating the man and woman. In Genesis 2, right after Adam recognizes the gift and the beauty of the woman and that she was created out of his body, the Bible says in verse 24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

The Hebrew word for “leave”, where it says that a man shall “leave” his mother and father”, is the word “ʿā·zǎḇ” and it’s a strong word, that literally means, “to ABANDON, to desert, to reject, to forsake!

The understanding here is not physical, but in every other way.

The culture back in the Bible, was that the wife would leave her family and move in with the groom and his family.

So, the husband was not required by God to “physically” leave his father and mother, but rather, he was to leave them in every other way, for the good of his wife!

You don’t want some mamby, pamby, momma’s boy who runs to momma every time he and his wife get into an argument! That’s a recipe for disaster!

No, he is “abandon, forsake, reject, desert, that old role and take on the new one!!

Does that sound at all familiar to you? That you walk away from the old life and into the new?

II Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

And then in verse 25, it says, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

The point here is that after the couple becomes one through the covenantal joining of God and man and woman, then sex between the husband and wife is legal and WITHOUT SHAME!

Sin always brings shame! Adam and Eve’s first sin was not a sexual sin, and yet the first thing that sin did in their lives, was to bring shame upon their nakedness.

This shows the weight of sin in our lives. Even that which is pure and created by God and sanctioned by God, once exposed to sin, becomes tainted and marred!

In one of my Bible commentaries, it says this, “Henri Blocher explains: "In the Bible, death is the reverse of life - it is not the reverse of existence. To die does not mean to cease to be, but in biblical terms it means, 'cut off from the land of the living.' . . . It is a diminished existence, but nevertheless an existence." Since dying is existing, Adam and Eve's existence was now one of death. And not only that - sin immediately penetrated every sphere of their being, like a drop of dye in a pail of water. They were at once utterly sinful.

And that is so true. Because of sin and without salvation through Jesus, we are living a diminished existence. We have not ceased to exist, but only to live a life that is opposite to the one that God created us to have from the beginning,

Only through salvation in Christ, can you regain the life that God intended for you to have, the life that Jesus referred to as the “abundant life”!

Adam and Eve were created to be sexually active in their marriage and without any shame or regards for their nakedness.

The first thing that God did upon creating man and woman (husband and wife) was to bless them and empower them. The Bible says in Genesis 1:28, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (God was ordaining and blessing sex between the husband and the wife) and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 2:24, which reads, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh”, is repeated in the Bible.

Jesus said in Matthew 19:4-6,

Matthew 19:4–6 ESV

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Pay attention to what Jesus is saying here. Once God the Father has joined a MAN and WOMAN together (which is the ONLY union that God accepts), no one else to going to be able separate that union!

You can go to the best divorce lawyer in the country, but what God has made into one flesh, no man can undo by legal loopholes!

Jesus said, the only divorce that He and His Father accept is the one that is brought on through sexual sin.

You see, sexual sin, as I said earlier, is much deeper than the other sins, because it goes against the created design of God and against His great love for us!

So when you make that covenant with God and your spouse, God means for life!

As one commentator said, “That’s God math: one plus one plus one equals one (the doctrine of the Trinity), and one plus one also equals one (the doctrine of marriage!)

“And it is God who truly brings people together in the bond of wedlock. This is “e-harmony” at its best; the “e” stands for Elohim!”

And after Jesus repeated the declaration of a man and woman becoming one flesh, then Paul says it again, with an amazing detail added to it.

In Ephesians 5:31-32, Paul says,

Ephesians 5:31–32 ESV

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

The joining of a man and woman in holy matrimony, is God’s representation of Jesus and us, the church!

For this reason alone, there is no tolerance for sexual sin in the camp! Any sexual activity outside of the marriage of the husband and the wife, is a slam against that sacred image of Jesus and His bride.

We make up the bride of Christ and when we are sinning sexually, it belittles that Holy union of Jesus and His bride!

Hebrews 13:4 says,

Hebrews 13:4 ESV

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

Next week, I am going to go much deeper into sexual sin! And some of you may say, well, I don’t know then if I want my child or grandchild, in here for that. Let me say this, I will using the Bible as my resource book for the facts. If you do not have your children instructed as to the truth about sex and the way that God designed it, by the time that they are in around 4th grade, they will have probably already heard a warped, false version of it!

We are not doing our children any favors in today’s society, by shielding them from the TRUTH of God’s entire message! Sex is not dirty and it’s not shameful and it’s not to be some taboo backroom discussion that only the privileged get to here and learn about!

If you talk about sex according to the Bible, then it is one of God’s great blessings to the unit of the husband and the wife! It is deliberate and specific, for both procreation and the fulfillment of our created mandate, but also it is for pleasure and health in a marriage!

So, next week, I’m going to begin speaking on sexual sin in the camp! (The camp referring to our homes, our marriages and our church!)

At the beginning I asked you about whether you would allow someone to come in and destroy your new home, or your new car, as these are things that most of us hold as valuable and would try to protect and take care of.

Well, if you TRULY believe that you are God’s creation and that you are a living vessel, the living temple of the Holy Spirit of almighty God, then how much should you seek to protect this vessel?

How much more should we strive to keep this vessel clean and pure, both inside and out!

Sin is bad, period, but sexual sin is against the whole vessel, inside and out!