Chp. 7-9 No small things (Ai and Gibeonites)
Joshua 7:1-9
“Trouble in the Vineyard”
I. Intro
II. Vs. 1-4 Grieving and quenching the Spirit
III. Vs. 5-9 Brokenness at the ruins
Intro
This is the only defeat and casualties listed in the book of Joshua and they needn’t be as the defeat was because they thought they were sufficient in themselves. We need to realize that we are as dependant upon the Ai’s as we are for the 40 foot walled Jericho’s. In Deut. 11:11 Moses described the promise land as a land “of hills and valleys” which not only describes the terrain of the land of promise it often describes the geography of the Christian life! Any believer that has spent any time walking after the presence of the Lord will tell you that such a life is often characterized by “Hills” of incredible joy and “Valleys” of despair and discouragement. Hey listen up friends you can’t have the mountains without some valleys and I have found that spending time in the valleys causes me to desire and appreciate the mountains all the more. Joshua is about to descend from the mountaintop of victory at Jericho to the valley of defeat at Ai.
There was a snake in the Garden of Eden, a Judas amongst the disciples and a fellow named Achan in the camp of the Israelites. Friends when God is at His best you can count on satan being at his worst! When God’s love does not flow thorough our lives you can bet that it will be replaced by fear and insecurity and there are two causes for this grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit. With out continual consistent fellowship we can expect our hearts to melt like water (verse 5). To make matters worse this sin had been warned against prior to the walls of Jericho falling down and Achan, amongst the ruble and ruin caused by the inhabitant’s rebellion, took up the very objects that caused their demise. You talk about treading upon the grace and goodness of God, Achan is the poster by for such things.
Vs. 1-4 Grieving and quenching the Spirit
Vs. 1 In this section we are led to two things that caused the defeat of Israel and both have to do with actions taken against the Holy Spirit:
- Vs. 1, 11-26 Grieving
- Vs. 2-5 Quenching
The Start of chapter seven is a bit ominous as we read that in light of the victory at Jericho and the warning of the Lord through Joshua to, “by all means abstain from accursed things” (6:18), that “the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things.” Friends pay attention here because the quickest way to derail the advancements in faith and joy is to disobey the Lord and grieve or quench the Holy Spirit. We must never forget that the moment we came to trust Jesus as our Lord and savior we entered into a living relationship with Him. One that has great benefits and rewards but it is nonetheless a relationship in which our failure can and will bring swift and immediate consequences. There are three ways a person can experience the Holy Spirit’s relationship in their lives and likewise three ways that by our failure we will experience a loss in that relationship:
- There is the relationship by which the Holy Spirit is WITH a person. It is not necessarily limited to just believers either, as many of us can testify to the reality that the Holy Spirit with us prior to our trust in Jesus. You see the Holy Spirit often comes beside a person and begins to speak to them about their personal need to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. We read of the Holy Spirit being with the prophets of old as He spoke through to them others. He was with Gideon, David, Daniel and others. Ah but as He longs to be with an individual that also suggests that is possible for Him to no longer dwell WITH someone. Take for instance Saul who no longer wanted to be a man after God’s heart as he rebelled against God’s ways by rejecting His word. Thus we read of the Holy Spirit in 1 Sam 16:14 where we are told that the “Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul”. “You don’t want to hang out with Me Saul, well you don’t have to I’ll just leave you and find someone who does want to hang out with Me!”
- This leads us to the second way in which a person can have a relationship with the Holy Spirit and that is when a person responds to the Holy Spirit being WITH them and their need for Jesus as Savior and Lord the Holy Spirit will come and dwell IN that person. Oh how wonderful it is to have the Holy Spirit make His home in our hearts, how much more intimate our relationship becomes we He takes possession of our hearts and lives IN us. That which we experienced occasionally when the Holy Spirit was WITH us we now experience all the time as He dwells IN us. Ah but it is also possible for you and I to grieve our “heart mate” when we allow the things of our former life to crowd out our new life in Christ. Simple things according to Ephes. 4:31-32 such as “bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of malicious behavior” And even not being “kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another” can grieve the Holy Spirit. I’m certain we have all experienced this in our relationships with other people as our “grieving” someone cause a separation, a distance as the relationship is strained. I’ve noticed that this isn’t a sudden thing it usually happens over a continued grieving, a pattern of behavior that finally causes the person that I was once close with to say, “Hey, I’m hurt by the way you continually treat me, so you won’t be enjoy our friendship and comfort we had until you realize that this type of behavior hurts me.” That is the same way it is with the Holy Spirit as well, as after a continual consistent behavior of grieving Him you won’t have the same joy in your life, you will be experiencing more fear instead of the peace you once felt regularly.
- Finally we are told of the relationship we can experience with the Holy Spirit when He comes UPON us and empowers us for service. Wow, how incredible it is when the Holy Spirit is UPON us and to be a living testimony of His grace and love to those who were just like us apart from experiencing them. There is a fire, a burning of our passion with the Holy Spirit’s as we melt into His will and heart for those who are in need of His love. But this burning in our hearts can be quenched when make His empowerment about us and make the instrument the object of adoration instead of the Lord. When that happens we will put out the Holy Spirit’s power flowing through us and cease being useful to Him.
The first thing we are told that lead to defeat at Ai was a disobedient soldier named Achan, who grieved the Holy Spirit. Joshua is very precise as too the ancestry of Achan and it would do us well to find out why he mentions this. Achan’s name means “trouble” and I mean that literally with a capital “T”. His father’s name Carmi means “Vinedresser” so this fellow was sowing trouble and it was about to cause the nation to spring up weeds in the Vineyard. The last ancestor on the list is Zerah who was Achan’s great great grandfather, now if you go to Genesis 38:15-30 you will find out that Zerah was offspring of an adulterous relationship that his father Judah had with his son’s widowed wife Timnah when she tricked him into thinking he was sleeping with a prostitute in order to have a legitimate heir.
Note that according to verse 2 they were encamped at Beth Aven or if you will the “House of Idols”. We must never underestimate the amount of damage one person can do outside the will of God. What is interesting to note is that God says that “the children of Israel committed a trespass” even though it was Achan who “took the accursed things”. Friends none of us are an Island all to ourselves what one does always affects the others it is for this reason we need to be accountable to each other. Solomon said in Eccles. 9:18 “one sinner destroys much good.” In verses 21 Achan in his own words reveals what led to his sin as he says three things:
- “When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels”: The fact that Achan is so specific tells us that he spent a long time gazing at these items, in fact he counted the shekels of silver and weighed the gold. Proverbs 4:25 reminds us to “Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you.”
- “I coveted them”: From there we see in the above section that Achan reclassified that which was to be “consecrated to the Lord; they shall come into the treasury of the Lord” according to 6:19 as “spoils” 7:21 to be taken for personal use. Achan simply changed these items classification to justify what he was about to do.
- “And took them”: Instead of singing praises in his heart for the great victory God had given, Achan was imagining in his heart what it would be like to own all that treasure. Achan’s final mistake was to think that he could get away with his sin by hiding the loot. Moses had warned the people of God in Numbers 32:23 “take note, you have sinned against the Lord; and be sure your sin will find you out.” Nobody gets away with sin it will all come out at the judgment seat of Christ. How foolish Achan was to think that he could hide the idol’s in the earth from the creator of the earth. Heb. 4:13 tells us that “all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account”.
Achan had witnessed what the Lord had done in crossing the Jordan, participated in the cutting away of the flesh at Gilgal prior to celebrating the Passover, watched the Lord work on the walls of Jericho, yet with total disregard to this “saw, coveted and took” what was the Lord’s. We see this path to death over and over again in scripture with Eve in the garden, David on the roof top looking at Bathsheba, and it always has the same results, death!
Vs. 2 Joshua has given us the chronological order of what he and the nation didn’t yet know that old “trouble” had taken hold of the things of the world. He then takes us back to the next battle and this one was with a little forgotten city named Ai. How insignificant was Ai? Well a clue to this is found in the meaning of the towns name Ai which latterly means “Heap of ruins”. Why compared with Jericho this place was a ghost town and something that the folks didn’t seem to take too serious based upon verse 3. Ai was only 10 miles from Jericho and in chapter 8:25 we are told that there were only 12,000 people in Ai but the lack of miles was more than made up by the change of heart with in the people of God. By now you may have noticed a theme running through this chapter as it relates to those things that will “grieve” or “quench” the Holy Spirit’s work in enabling us to move further into the presence and promises of the Lord. But just in case you haven’t caught on yet, it is the small things like (Achan) that “trouble” us and cause our lives (Ai) to become a “heap of ruins”.
There is another interesting observation to see here and that is that Joshua sent spies out from Jericho (a sweet fragrance) not for Gilgal where there was a cutting away of the and it seems as though they thought that the battle had been won in their strength. These spies were filled with pride and self-sufficiency and had already turned God’s miraculous provision to a triumph of human achievement. Oh how desperate is our flesh to take credit that it may boast of its importance. “Send only 3000, Josh we don’t need to waste the man-power”, they said. And they were right as God didn’t need the any man power as the work of the Spirit is not about might, nor power but by the Spirit says the Lord. The trouble was not their confidence but rather what their confidence was in as it was in themselves in stead of the Lord. In 1 Kings 20:11 The king of Israel said, “Let not the one who puts on his armor boast like the one who takes it off.” The down fall of Joshua and Achan is the same neither of them bothered to communicate with the Lord.
Vs. 3-4 In chapter 6 verse 2 we read that “the Lord said to Joshua” then in chapter 8 versed 1 we will again read “Now the Lord said to Joshua” but when you look at chapter seven we don’t read of God speaking to Joshua until verse 10 when He says to Joshua, “Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face”? Though it was Achan’s sin that grieved the Holy Spirit it was Joshua’s failure to seek the Lord before the battle that quenched the Spirit. In Numbers 27:21 at Joshua’s inauguration Moses said to Joshua, “He shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire before the Lord for him by the judgment of the Urim. At his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in, he and all the children of Israel with him–all the congregation.” Now just in case you were wondering Eleazar name means “Help of God”, hum that reminds me of Jesus words in John 14:26 where He says that, “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” So instead of going in before Eleazar the priest and seeking the Lord as to whether or not they should go out against Ai he took the council of some spies. Joshua had sought the Lord at the crossing of the Jordan, he had listen and obeyed the word of the Lord as they circled the 40 foot walls of Jericho for seven days but here at the report of the spies he sent out Joshua doesn’t think he needs to seek the Holy Spirit’s council with regards to Ai and the out come is going to lead to the “ruin” of 36 men. In Deut. 32:30 Moses had said ff they were following the Lord by faith, 1 Jewish soldier would chase 1,000, and 2 would put 10,000 to flight! Thus they would have only needed three soldiers’ defeat the whole city, if they had been pleasing to the Lord. Even with the Ark amongst them the visible sign of the presence of God because they had grieved the Spirit the Ark became nothing more than a wooden box.
Joshua’s problem resembles mine far too often and that is after having depended upon the energy of the Spirit in over coming obstacles and breaking through walls and begin to think that the power to do so is in me instead of in the Holy Spirit. Joshua should have called a prayer meeting, then Lord would have informed him that there was sin in the camp; and Joshua could have dealt with it. Paul spoke of this very thing to the Galatians in 3:3 saying, “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” “Hey, Josh this is a little city named heap of ruins, we don’t need to be concerned about this dump we can take it on our own”, they thought.
Vs. 5-9 Brokenness at the ruins
Vs. 5-6 The combination of Achan’s grieving the Spirit and Joshua’s quenching the Spirit is rather predictable was the first defeat that Israel had experienced for 40 years not to mention the death of 36 of Israel’s finest sons. Friend’s, in every believer I know there are a few Ai’s because we allowed “trouble” to compromise us instead of seeking and obeying the Holy Spirit’s council. Sometimes it cost us the death of a job, sometimes it was a relationship, perhaps a marriage or your health but we all bare the scares of our own hidden trouble in our vineyards’. We are further informed by Joshua that the men of Ai not only killed 36 men but they chased the rest of the 3000 back to Shebarim. Now Shebarim name means “breach” and Webster’s dictionary describes a “breach” as “broken, ruptured, or torn condition a gap made by battering a break in friendly relations”. How appropriate this was as the nation’s relationship with the Lord had been “breached” by grieving and then quenching the Holy Spirit. Is it not interesting to see what Joshua does upon hearing the news that 36 men had died and the rest of the 3000 had been chased back to the “breach” as we see him in verse 6 tare his clothes and fall on his face before the presence of the Lord at the Ark. There remains only one thing we can do when we have failed to maintain our relationship with the Holy Spirit and that is to acknowledge that it was us who were responsible for ripping apart the relationship not the Holy Spirit and fall upon the mercy and grace of His presence!
Vs. 7-9 Joshua takes responsibility for the quenching of the Spirit but he isn’t aware that there is someone who had grieved the Holy Spirit in Achan and he begins to question everything about his choices such as entering into the promise land. What do we make of this statement of Joshua? Only this that sin separates us from hearing from the Lord and we begin to question our past decisions as well as present circumstances and our future plans. Joshua is in full panic mode here as the grieving of the Holy Spirit has removed him and the nation form the security of the presence of the Lord. Joshua was face down to the ground with his head in the sand thinking that the Lord had did something wrong instead of facing his and the nations own issues. When you walk by faith you will walk in victory and posses all that He has for you but when you walk in sin you will blame God for all your troubles. What life does to us depends on what life finds in us, and we don’t always know the condition of our own hearts. Israel’s defeat had robbed God of glory, and for this they had to repent. The important thing was not Joshua’s fame or Israel’s conquests, but the glory of the God of Israel. Joshua’s concern was not for his own reputation but for the “great name” of Jehovah. “God if you aren’t going with us then we should have never crossed over after You”, Joshua prays. I’m afraid today that most of God’s church is filled up with so many programs and doing ministry in the energy of the flesh that they would be totally unaware that God has ceased guiding and providing for them. In that sense Joshua’s words are very refreshing and I wonder if I would have been as perceptive as he? Hey saints listen to what Joshua’s greatest concern was in verse 9 “the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear it, and surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will You do for Your great name?” “If we are defeated then what will happen to your promises made to us, Your name will be cut off because of our failure”, Joshua says. Or dear saints our greatest care ought to be concerned with God’s reputation not our own as our failure often causes His name to be slammed.
Joshua 7:10-26
“A door of hope in the Valley of trouble”
I. Intro
II. Vs. 10-15 Get up
III. Vs. 16-21 Time to get right
IV. Vs. 22-26 The Valley of trouble
Intro
In 1 Cor. 10:11 we read that with regards to the stories in the O.T. that, “all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” The lessons of Joshua are that we are as dependant or even more so upon the Lord after a great victory as we are after a great defeat. Any victory in our life is solely based upon the presence and power of God on our behalf. With that truth in hand we realize that Israel was as guilty of touching the accursed things as was Achan in as much as they had slipped into thinking they were some how responsible or entitled to the victory. Both touched the glory of the Lord Achan grieving the Spirit Joshua quenching the Spirit. Our sin is not hidden we are just running at of room as Paul wrote to Romans 2:4 “do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”
An examination of this section with a broader view to all the Old Testament reveals a very unfortunate pattern:
- First came God’s abundant unrestrained blessings upon an undeserving people. He shows Himself strong and gracious by pouring out His goodness upon His people.
- But then His blessed people think that they don’t need Him any longer and turn aside to their own sinful pursuits which bring forth His judgment, which turns them back to His grace.
Oh dear one that we would but learn to just abide in His grace and never wonder off thus sparing us His righteous judgment. Sin will never be tolerated by God in our life and this story is as much a proclamation of hope as it is judgment. Sin brings judgment but with confession it brings the hope of restoration and the outpouring of God’s grace.
Vs. 10-15 Get up
Vs. 10-11 The truth was God had not failed the nation but the nation had failed God. Now that may not seem to be good news but it is for this simple reason if it is God who has failed us then there is nothing we can do about it and of coarse God can not fail us. And sense it is us who has failed Him and He is desirous to restore us this is an easy fix if we are willing. “Josh, get up”, God says. Why? Because we don’t need to gravel and beg Him to do what His heart is all along and that is to restore, repair and renew that which has separated us from receiving His love. Friends listen up we often think when things aren’t going right that we need to pray to change God’s heart but the truth is that what needs to change isn’t God’s heart it is our heart. I’m so thankful that I can’t change God’s heart aren’t you?
“They” sinned God said not just Achan as a little leaven had leavened the whole lump. Israel’s sin was that they tolerated Achan’s compromise, as did the rest of the tribes. To get a picture of this all we need to look at is our own society in which though we may not practice specific sin we tolerate them as a society. Achan had taken the things that were dedicated to the Lord for his own personal consumption. According to Leviticus (22:14, 27:15, 27:19, and 27:31) if you wanted to keep something that belonged to God, you had to pay a 20% (one-fifth) penalty which interestingly enough was the same amount required for restitution in a theft according (Leviticus 6:4-5).
There are a lot of folks who are like Joshua here as they lay face down in their problems instead up getting up and fessing up to them. God tells them that until they deal with the sin in their camp they won’t be able to stand before their enemies because God won’t be standing with them. Friends, that’s the nature of sin, be that the sin that grieves the Spirit or quenches the Spirit you can bet on the fact that such compromise will result in the loss of two things:
- Our ability to over come the enemies of our faith. And what is it that is that is the enemies of our faith you ask? Well we have three, satan, the world system and our flesh.
- We won’t sense His presence around us as He won’t be around us anymore until we deal with that which his grieved or quenched His Spirit.
There is no quicker way to lose God’s presence and power in our lives then to not deal with those things that have removed us from His presence and power. So many relationships and Churches wonder why they are no longer sensing His presence and power in their service towards Him and instead of asking the Lord, “Father, are we in some way grieving you by our actions and attitudes? Dad is our arrogance and pride quenching the work you desire to do in and through us?” They see some program so way of attracting the people to supersede the effects of grieving or quenching the Spirit, “Oh we aren’t grieving the Spirit, were not quenching Him, see look at all the numbers of programs and people we have.” Oh dear saint’s let us not fall into thinking that for ourselves or this fellowship but rather humbly ask ourselves, “Lord is there anything in my life that is hindering the Your presence and power in my life.” Friend’s do you know the difference between a neighbor kid and your own child? You don’t let your children get away with the stuff the neighbor kids get away with! Because you don’t love them? No, because you do love them! God’ hold’s back His presence, power and provision in our lives so that we would recognize that we have grieved or quenched His Spirit and seek to restore our fellowship with Him.
Vs. 12-13 In chapter 6:27 we were told that “The Lord was with Joshua” now 13 verses later we are told that because of this sin that the Lord won’t “be with them anymore, unless they destroy the accursed from among them.” Nothing ought to grip our heart more than the loss of the presence of God in our hearts from grieving or quenching the Spirit. The hope and fate of the nation hinged upon the word “UNLESS” which was a door of hope in a valley of trouble! They must rid themselves of the idols of the people of Jericho; God is no respecter of persons he judges fairly. What deception leads us to believe that we can keep and enjoy the idols of this world with out it affecting us as it does the rest of the world?
Friends did you notice that Israel could not fight in God’s power and presence unless they walked in obedience to God and neither can we. It is sobering to realize that a body in sin has no power before their enemies. But it is wonderful to realize that once the sin has been dealt with, God’s power can again flow in our Christian life.
Vs. 14-15 Five times in these verse God in telling Joshua uses the word “accursed”. The nation had sanctified themselves prior to crossing the Jordan in 3:5 before they faced Jericho but now they found out that there was an enemy in their own camp. Achan had stole from God then lied about it, something that we see in Acts chapter 5 with Ananias and his wife Saphira when they keep back a part of the proceeds of from selling their land but acted as if they had given it all to the Lord. Friends we can never obtain all of God’s inheritance as long as we are going after the forbidden pleasures of sin for a season! I wonder upon hearing this if Achan got any sleep that evening as they were preparing themselves to meet with the Lord for the purpose of discovering hidden sin?
In Numbers 32:23 God spoke through Moses saying, “If you have sinned against the Lord; be sure your sin will find you out.” Sometime we can fall into the trap that thinks that we can hide our sin form the Lord but we fail to remember that the Lord God is all knowing and every where present, so how are we going to be able to play hide and seek with our sin when He is always right with us? May I make this suggestion why not our sin in the tomb of Christ berry so that His blood can wash as white as snow? Is there any thing right now you think you have berried from God, perhaps its time to dig it up and give it to Him sense the only one that thinks our secret is safe is us. Now the opposite of this is cool as well as each tribe came forward, then each family if the tribe, then each household of the family and finally each man in the family. What this suggests to me was that there were far more folks that the Lord revealed were innocent that the Lord defended then the “Old trouble” that was found with the accursed things. Hey, saint’s we don’t need to defend ourselves the Lord will do that for us as He unveils the hidden things of the heart.
Vs. 16-21 Time to get right
Vs. 16-18 Achan was “taken” because he had taken! Can you imagine watching this whole seen if you were Achan as the tribe you are from is chosen then the family in that tribe, then the household and finally your name is called out? We get a good picture of Achan’s heart here as he didn’t volunteer his confession he waited until his sin found him out. Simply put Achan wasn’t sorry for his sin he was sorry he was caught which is not repentance. Taken the accursed things felt good when Achan didn’t weigh the consequences but they didn’t seem worth it after he was found out. In Hebrews 11:25 speaking of Moses the author writes that Moses “choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin”. Sin is always pleasurable but it is only for a season and the end always leads to death. In Jeremiah 17:9-10 we read that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart; I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” Then we are told by the Lord in Jeremiah 23:24 “Can anyone hide himself in secret places, so I shall not see him?” says the Lord; “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the Lord.” In Jeremiah 16: 17 the Lord says, “My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from Me, nor is their sin concealed from My eyes”.
As Achan stood before Joshua he didn’t say, “You idiot, you trouble maker”! No he called to him “My son”. Oh dearest ones if we could only hear our Lord call out to us in our sin and failure with the words “My Son, My daughter” not you stupid idiot, perhaps we would like the prodigal come running to our Father’s love and willingness to forgive all our sin. You see this is the picture of a grieving God who longs for us to come back to Him. Now in Achan’s response we see his attempt to justify his actions by calling the garment, gold and silver as “spoils” he is saying that I only took what in any other circumstance would have been ok to have. “Oh I had an affair” instead of saying, “I committed adultery by forsaking my spouse”. We are all prone in changing the name of our sin to make it sound a little better aren’t we? “I’m not gossiping, why I’m just sharing my opinion!” And like all our sin Achan’s began when he saw and didn’t deal with his own heart in what he saw and chose rather to take and then hide what he took. That is always the nature of sin isn’t it, we see, take and then hide. According to a report by Cambridge university 60% – 70% of all crime is done so between the hours of 4 PM to 4 AM. the reason for this is that folks think that if it is dark they can hide what they are doing. John tells us in 1 John 2:16 that “all that is in the world–the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life–is not of the Father but is of the world.” Did you notice that it is the “lust of the eyes” and that what Achan SAW he took? It is interesting to note that our society seems to be becoming more and more enamored with what our eyes see and less with what our ear hear. Churches have picked up on this and have offered more dramatic presentations instead of simple teaching of the word. Ah but friends remember what Romans 10:17 tells us that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” And then Hebrews 11:1 says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” May I make this simple observation that we need to get back to becoming a people who learns to listen and not just be entertained by watching?
Vs. 19-21 How valuable was that Babylonian garment, silver and gold when compared to the 36 men that died because of Achan’s sin? The same is true when you weigh the price of sin’s pleasure with the loss of life. That drink, that drug, that adulterous relationship placed opposite upon the scales of the families and lives it has destroyed. Oh if we would only feel as bad about the sin prior to committing it as we do after we have done it!
Vs. 22-26 The Valley of trouble
Vs. 22-26 As we saw when we seek to cover up our sin rest assured it will always be found out but that’s not all. You see when you seek to cover your sin you can bet it will cause those close around you “trouble” (Achan) as well. Several years back when we did the Christmas party for the kids I’ll never forget what one little girl told Ed what she wanted for Christmas was her mom to be out of prison.
Hey did you notice that that twice in these final verses Joshua references the “Valley of Achor” (verses 24, 26) or the literally the “Valley of trouble”? The trouble that old “troublesome” Achan brought upon himself, his family and His nation became a monument of stones. Ah but wait a minute friends because if you cross reference the Valley of Achor you will find some interesting things. In Isaiah 65:10 we are told that the “Valley of Achor is a place for herds to lie down, for My people who have sought Me.” And in Hosea 2:15 we are told that in Israel “the Valley of Achor will be as a door of hope; She shall sing there, as in the days of her youth”. What’s this? The place of trouble becoming the place where herds lie down, a place where God’s people seek Him? A place of trouble becoming the door of hope where fresh worship is heard? How does a troubled place where we were “rocked” because of our sin become such a place where we find rest, seek the Lord, a door of hope and a place of worship? Well friends I suggest it is to be found when we stop trying to hide our sins and start confessing them. Listen to how John put it in 1 John 1:8-9 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Isaiah said as much to a rebellious nation when in Isaiah 1:18-19 the Lord said “Come now, and let us reason together, Says the Lord, Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land”. The hope of repentance is truth of forgiveness where by peace will flood your heart and you will experience a renewed worship.
The heap of stones in the valley would remind the people of two things:
- The holiness of God and what happens when people don’t heed God’s word.
- The love of God that he would restore those who have fallen if they will be turn from their sins.
When you surrender to the Lord, no defeat is permanent and no mistake is beyond remedy. Even the “Valley of Trouble” can become a “door of hope.”
This is a placeholder. Notes will be added