Joshua 7 Sin of Achan

Intro

I think chapter 7 of Joshua is one of the most instructive in all of the Bible

It shows us how to deal with sin in our lives and how seriously God takes it

Moses described the Promised Land as “a land of hills and valleys” (Deut. 11:11).

That statement, I believe, is much more than a description of the contrast between the hilly landscape of Canaan and the flat monotonous topography of Egypt.

It’s also a description of the geography of the life of faith that is pictured by Israel’s experiences in Canaan.

As by faith we claim our inheritance in Christ, we experience peaks of victory and valleys of discouragement.

Discouragement isn’t inevitable in the Christian life, but we must remember that we can’t have mountains without valleys.

The ominous word but that introduces Joshua 7 is a signal that things are going to change; for Joshua is about to descend from the mountaintop of victory at Jericho to the valley of defeat at Ai.

Joshua was a gifted and experienced leader, but he was still human and therefore liable to error.

In this experience, he teaches us what causes defeat and how we must handle the discouragements of life.

Read Joshua 7:1-5

I. Very Clear Warning vs. 6:18-19

We need to start this story back in chapter 6

Before God destroyed Jericho he gave a very clear warning to Israel

Everything had to be destroyed and anything like gold or silver was to be put in the treasury of the Tabernacle

If they kept anything meant for destruction it would bring trouble upon the camp of Israel

This was a serious charge

God doesn’t say anything without intending to keep it

God destroys the walls of Jericho and the Israelites rush in and destroy everything except Rahab’s family

Israel experiences the thrill of victory and realizes that God is going to keep His Word and they are going to inhabit the land

Except for one problem

There is sin in the camp and God isn’t happy

II. Broken Faith vs. 1

If the chapter starts with “but” you know it isn’t going to go well

The people broke faith in regard to the devoted things

Achan took some of the gold and hid it in his tent

Now the anger of the Lord is burning Israel

Achan decides to ally himself with that which is devoted to destruction by taking what belongs exclusively to God and appropriating it for himself, then that destruction will certainly fall upon him, and his Israelite ethnicity will be no defense against God’s judgment

One man’s actions have such a devastating effect.

The camp had become unclean in God’s eyes due to Achan’s disobedience, and the Lord would therefore no longer go out with them in their battles, until the matter had been settled.

However, at this stage no one else is aware of it.

III. Defeat at Ai vs. 2-5

What we must realize is that the sequence of events is the outcome of the Lord’s anger burning against them.

This is what Israel will be like if God is no longer with them—very human and very vulnerable.

Ai is the next city to be dealt with if they are to continue to press further into the land.

So they do the sensible human thing, which any responsible commander would order—they send some spies to assess what is required.

Here is the first mistake that Joshua makes

He doesn’t consult the Lord

If he had, God would’ve told him not to go and about the sin in the camp

The report back has more than a whiff of complacency about it.

Ai is not much of a place, and about 2,000 or 3,000 men will easily be able to deal with it, they decide.

So only 3,000 men go up to fight; but thirty-six do not return.

The rest turn tail and run.

The first Israelite victims of the conflict lie dead outside Ai, and defeat is staring Joshua and the people in the face.

The Jericho shout must have seemed a long time ago.

The comment of verse 5 that “the hearts of the people melted and became as water” is a poignant, ironic echo of Rahab’s comment in 2:11 (“our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you”) or the narrator’s comment in 5:1

Now it is Israel’s turn to feel the helplessness and then the panic bred by defeat.

There is not a Christian who has not been there, when our disobedience or unfaithfulness to God’s word has brought about a total lack of confidence and coherence in our spiritual lives, and our hearts melted with fear.

The only way through such despair is the guilty person’s cry for grace, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).

The only way to be justified is to turn from our sin and failure and cast ourselves upon God’s mercy

IV. Israel has Sinned vs. 6-13

Vs 6–9 describe how Joshua and the elders reacted to this devastating news.

Their instinct is right, but their thinking is all over the place.

The torn clothes and the dust on their heads are an expression of grief and mourning, but not necessarily of repentance.

At this stage Joshua does not know that any repentance is needed.

So he and the elders go to God—he is “on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening”

But when he speaks, Joshua reveals how flawed his view of what has just happened really is.

In many ways it is a rerun or an echo of numerous speeches God had endured from Israel during their forty years in the wilderness.

The content is instructive.

(1) Why have you let this happen?

(2) We would be better off where we were.

(3) Now we are disgraced.

(4) Our enemies will build on this to destroy us completely.

(5) And then what will happen to your great name and reputation?

It is a powerful reflection of our human hearts and the default position to which we so often return when things are not going our way.

More instructive still is the speed with which Joshua forgets all the guarantees of God’s great promises that he will certainly bring them into the land

Yet Joshua’s instinct to pour it all out before the Lord is right and good, because when we are flat on our face before him there is always a way forward

Sin always blurs our vision and distorts our view of God, so that we become aggrieved and peevish.

Defeat shows us that we are not strong in and of ourselves, and like Joshua we imagine that our enemies are stronger than they are, so strong that even God will not be able to defend his name against them.

What rubbish!

Joshua did the right thing with his despair—he took it to God.

He didn’t say the right words, he didn’t have the right diagnosis, but he began to open up the situation to the Lord, and then things begin to change.

So whatever our acts of foolish disobedience or overconfident complacency may have produced, perhaps leaving us paralyzed by our helplessness, we need to tell God all about it.

We may get it all wrong. That doesn’t matter—tell God anyway.

It was when Joshua lay before the Lord and laid out his problem that God began to put things right.

Vs. 10-13 are a blunt rebuke from God

“Get up off of your face!”

The Lord has little patience with Joshua’s prostration, perhaps because the self-pitying, remorseful prayer of his servant is so disregarding of God’s faithful promises.

The problem is Israel, and the trouble is sin.”

That is what has caused God’s anger, and until that issue is dealt with, relations between the Lord and his people will be strained.

But God does not merely address the actions of theft, deceit and selfishness.” What they represent is an attack on his covenant faithfulness and a rejection of holiness

If you join the side of opposition to Yahweh and rejection of his covenant terms, you make yourself liable to his judgments, as do all his enemies.

Worst of all, you divorce yourself from his presence—“I will be with you no more” (v. 12c)

There is a way forward.

It involves the renunciation of the sin, which is the essence of repentance, and an act of reconsecration to the service of the covenant Lord.

Once again the stress is put upon holiness as the prerequisite for the enjoyment of the covenant relationship.

V. Sin of Achan vs. 14-26

The section from verses 14–21 divides into two parts.

First, God gives instructions about how the matter is to be resolved (vv. 14, 15), and then we see the familiar pattern of Joshua’s detailed obedience

The process decreed by God is duly worked through, and Achan is disclosed as the offender, to which he confesses (vv. 16–21).

Of course, from the very beginning the Lord knows both the offense and the offender, so why does he not reveal the name to Joshua directly?

Why this long process?

The answer lies in the fact that the whole nation is implicated in the one man’s sin, and although Achan and his family alone will bear the punishment, God deals with the whole nation since they are all the object of his anger

All 12 tribes are gathered because they all infected by sin

From the 12 Judah is chosen all the way to Achan

All this is determined by lot, to indicate the supremacy of the Lord’s will and his sovereign overruling in all the affairs of his people.

The process does not depend on human knowledge, wisdom, or choice but entirely on the authority of God.

It cannot be engineered or contrived by Joshua or any other human being.

As at Jericho, so here Yahweh alone is in sovereign control.

We see God’s net closing in on the guilty man, and one can only imagine what that must have meant for Achan.

He saw the inevitability of the process and certainly knew his guilt (v. 20), and yet there is no confession until it is wrung out of him and no apparent evidence of remorse, let alone repentance.

Either he is paralyzed by the process or stubbornly hardened in his rebellion, but as the text stands, Achan comes out with his hands up (he hasn’t gotten away with it), but this is an admission of guilt and nothing more

He does not just say what he did, but he defines his actions as sin and accepts the full responsibility for them (“this is what I did”).

Then look at the sequence of verbs in verse 21.

“I saw … I coveted … [I] took … they are hidden.”

Here is exactly the same anatomy of temptation and sin that we witnessed in mankind’s first great disobedience in the fall.