THE ULTIMATE VINDICATION OF GOD.

Joshua 7:24-8:1“Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the Valley of Achor. Joshua said, ‘Why have you brought this trouble on us? The LORD will bring trouble on you today.’ Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them. Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his fierce anger. Therefore that place has been called the Valley of Achor ever since. Then the LORD said to Joshua, ‘Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land.’”

Achan was a significant person in the nation of Israel; he was not a nonentity but rather a man of substance and influence. He heard the command of Jehovah as the people set out to conquer Canaan that all of the city of Jericho should be dedicated to God, the gold and silver put in the Lord’s treasury while all the rest was to be a great holocaust made over to him. Everybody understood the commandment perfectly; everybody obeyed it except for Achan. He deliberately and cynically defied God, taking from a house in Jericho a wedge of gold, a considerable amount of silver and a Babylonian garment hiding them under his tent. Achan chose to disbelieve the warning of God. He knew that for other great sins God would withdraw his blessing from Achan’s life, but he persuaded himself that this would not be the case if he stole those objects. In other words, he was selective in his morality. “Such a sin as that was relatively unimportant; it would be overlooked by God; it was not like other sins; there was a certain wisdom and beauty about this action,” so Achan argued.

The royal robe that Achan could put on in the nights in the secrecy of the closed tent cost him his life; was the dress worth that price? He lost years of service to God and his neighbour; was that worth the gold and silver? He brought great hurt on the people of God, he struck at God’s glory; he damaged the reputation of the people throughout all the land of Canaan; he defiled and broke the covenant; was all that worth a wedge of gold, pieces of silver and some haute couture from the fashion district of Babylon?

1. ACHAN WAS EXECUTED FOR WHAT HE DID.

i] The sentence of condemnation was short. “Why have you brought this trouble on us? The LORD will bring trouble on you today.”  Hadn’t Achan been told what he was to do and not to do when he entered Jericho? Hadn’t Joshua said (in the words of chapter six and verse eighteen) “But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it.”  This is what Achan did, bring trouble on the camp of Israel. Thirty six men had been killed and the people of God were deeply demoralized. So Achan was sentenced because he had made the camp of Israel liable to destruction, and so destruction would come to him. He had troubled God’s people and so trouble would come to him. There would be no reprieve and no delay; the sentence was just; execution would take place immediately. There was no shadow of doubt cast over this case; Achan was not the wrong man; there was no hint of any miscarriage of justice; there were no hidden arguments to the contrary, and no mitigating circumstances to be brought into consideration.

ii] The sentence that Joshua past was just. Under Old Testament law, capital punishment was required because man bears God’s image, and because of what Achan had done thirty-six men had been killed. “Blood is the liquid of life, and one guilty of bloodshed must pay with his own blood (Genesis 9:4—6). Humanism rejects capital punishment in an at­tempt, it would seem, to value man and to honour him. Yet hu­manism rejects the image of God in man, and thus, ironically, it fails to take man seriously enough. Though it is intended to glorify man, it in fact demeans him, making his actions less im­portant and less meaningful than they are if God’s image is taken into account. Humanism thus demeans the nature of man and the importance of his actions by failing to require punishment for transgression. Instead it recognizes only deterrence and rehabilitation. Unbelief rejects the justice and judgment of God, and therefore questions the foreshadowing of God’s judgment in the judgment of the state. The Bible teaches us otherwise: we are not victims of our genetics and our environment. We are responsible agents, bearing God’s image” (Edmund P. Clowney, “How Jesus Transforms the Ten Commandments, P&R, 2006, p.82).

iii] The circle of guilt and condemnation extended beyond this one individual. His family was executed with him as accessories in his guilt. Of course God insisted that in Israel the children were not to be punished for the sins of their fathers. Of all the cruel nations of the earth in those days the sons and daughters of Israel’s criminals were safe. Consider still today how some Hindu widows are being burned on the funeral pyres where their dead husbands’ bodies are being cremated. How monstrous. But in the case of Achan the family all lived together in one tent; it was impossible for them not to have known that their father had taken the gold and silver and the robe. They had seen what he had hid; they admired him in his princely garment. They weighed the gold in their hands; they let the silver trickle through their fingers; they touched the sensuous soft silk of the fabric. He made his family participators in his crime. They had benefited from their father’s prosperity; they would benefit from the future riches that the stolen gold and silver would bring them, and so they shared in his atrocious crime; they belonged to him in an intimate way. He was their head; they bore his name. Is not this the case today? A gang robs a shop; one man alone has a gun and pulls the trigger but all the gang are punished for their involvement in the armed robbery and the death. Their punishment is far more severe because of the murder. So it was with Achan; his crime so shocked the community that everything touched by Achan was wiped out. His family, his tent and all that was in it, his oxen and asses and sheep – and there were many of them – were all destroyed. No one was to benefit from Achan’s crime.

iv] In God’s wrath the Lord remembered mercy. Don’t you see that here? The men are defeated and chased through the land, hunted from their hiding places in ditches and behind trees and rocks, speared to death. The survivors return home bringing their utter demoralization with them, and the hearts of the people fail. Have they escaped from the wilderness to die in the promised land? Then God tells them what to do! He reveals to them the cause of his displeasure; “Israel has sinned,” he says, and explains what has happened. Here is a God who wants the matter to be dealt with and not ignored. The Lord is one who is determined to chastise the people and then restore them to favour again. Who is this God? He is the one who later sends Nathan the prophet to murderous adulterous David. Why? Because he won’t allow his servants to remain comfortable in their sin. He will make it plain to Christians who sin with a high hand; he will bring them low so that they may be restored.

As Dale Ralph Davies points out, our problem is that we don’t think breaking our covenant relationship with the Lord is a big deal. We can’t understand the condemnation of the man and all who belonged to him because we aren’t bothered by sin. We can’t understand the judgments that come upon the grumbling, idolatrous, Golden-Calf-worshipping children of Israel. We get sniffy at reading of those incidents and think God is harsh, or that the innocent perish with the guilty. Can’t we grasp why Jesus says we are to go to any lengths to avoid sin? Listen, “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matt. 5:29&30). If that is baffling to us then “we do not share Jesus’ alarm over sin. The testimony of Joshua 7 is that we can’t treat cancer with vitamin pills; it requires radical surgery. We may think that cancer isn’t that big a deal, but that doesn’t alter God’s estimate” (Ralph Dale Davies, Joshua, No Falling Words, Christian Focus, 2000, p.64).

I read one commentary on this incident in which the writer said that he could remember hearing a sermon on this incident when he was a teenager. The preacher told the congregation that if there was just one single Achan in a congregation then the whole church would go unblessed. He had thought about those strong words and asked himself could they be true. He concluded, “No, fortunately he wasn’t right.” If there is a serious sin known to the church and nothing at all is done about it, the people simply shrug with indifference, then that preacher would have been right. How can God bless a congregation which is careless about serious sin? In the New Testament we see the Head of the churches, the Lord Christ, looking at the seven churches in Asia Minor and speaking to them about their strengths and weaknesses. He tells them to deal with Jezebel-like women, and repent of their behaviour. If they knew and did nothing the whole church would be facing barrenness, but if they acted as he directed them then God would bless the church.

You understand that this incident of God’s dealings with Israel and Achan is not recorded in the Bible in order to instruct us to equip ourselves with the tools of the inquisition, bring out the rack and the thumbscrews, gather wood to burn men alive, and launch a holy war on the enemies of Christ within the church. There are men who would tar us Christians with wanting to perform such acts of evil. God forbid. We know that such a reaction is wicked, but we also know that to ignore false teaching from the pulpit of Christian churches and from the pens of bishops - I mean truths like the deity of Jesus Christ being denied - and to be indifferent to serious sins in a congregation and give the hurting brothers and sisters of God no assistance is inexcusable if you are taking the name ‘Christian’ to yourself. If the salt has lost its savour then the church will be cast out and trod under the foot of men.

This incident is preserved for us to encourage us not to grow slack in maintaining the purity of the people of God, and one way of doing that is for the officers to deal with serious offences. Why? What is the purpose of keeping standards within the church? What does a contemporary London preacher counsel?

a] The first reason for exclusion from a fellowship, on the rare occasion it has to be carried out, is to protect and preserve the honour of God. It is a great dishonour to God when the neighbour­hood knows that someone who does a terrible thing is happily kept in a church. It is a disgrace to the name of God. We are here, in the words of an old Confession of faith, ‘to indicate the honour of God’, and in order to preserve His honour a grievous offender must be put out of the church.

 

b] The next reason in order of importance is that the Spirit of God should come once again upon the work of the church. If there is a serious sin and no church discipline, God’s blessing is withdrawn. Therefore, to enable the Gospel to be blessed once again to other lives, the solemn act must be taken.

c] The third reason for exclusion is the protection of vulnerable church members. If a church member has done some terrible thing and is allowed to happily continue in the church, then other people might be tempted in the same way because an appalling example is being set. Younger Christians, perhaps, may more easily fall prey to the tempter. So we are to preserve the honour of God, restore the efficiency and blessedness of the work of the Gospel, and then pro­tect others.

d] Fourthly, exclusion is designed to jolt the offender out of hypocrisy and hardness of heart into repentance and reform. How­ever, important as this is, it follows the other objectives in order of priority (Peter Masters, Joshua’s Conquest, Wakeman, 2005, pp. 50&51).

Under the laws of the theocracy of the old covenant Achan was executed for what he did; under the new covenant professing Christians today are disciplined for serious offenses. But such actions in both the old and new dispensations of God’s covenants do most certainly point forward to where this world is going to end. We live in a moral universe, and we know that what a man sows that he shall most certainly reap. We are all of us facing a full and final display of the judgment of God. At Achan’s time all of the people, tribe by tribe, clan by clan, family head by family head, man by man, were summoned to stand before the throne of judgment. So it will be in the tremendous day the whole world must appear before the judgment seat of Christ. As the tribe of Judah was separated from all the rest so will the goats be separated from the sheep. As the innocent were all delivered from condemnation, so it will be in the great day. There will be no miscarriages of justice. The righteous will be all vindicated before judgment begins. As Achan made no attempt to excuse himself but freely said, “I have sinned,” so not one of the damned will protest at their judgment: all the world will stand silent and guilty before God; every mouth will be stopped. The saints in that great day will have their hearts so brought into conformity with the will of God that they will know all God’s judgments are right. If the condemnation will be in the words of Jesus, “everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” then none will question the Saviour’s right to deal with sin as he sees best. So Achan was executed for what he had done.

2. THERE WAS A PLACE AND MONUMENT FOR ACHAN’S EXECUTION.

i] Achan was taken to Achor. We are told that they “took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the Valley of Achor” (v.24).  We are told by scholars that it was a fertile valley where the crops were plenteous, birds sang and brooks babbled. It was overlooking the plains of Jericho and full of beautiful trees. Was it already called ‘Achor’ for some strange and unknown reason, in other words was it already called ‘trouble’ for that is what the Hebrew word ‘Achor’ means? The word sounded very like ‘Achan’, in fact there are some men today who say that it should be the same name. That cannot be confirmed, but certainly we know that there was no other place chosen for the execution but that place. Or perhaps it was nameless in the Hebrew language until that time when they gave it this name ‘trouble.’ You see how the chapter ends, “Therefore that place has been called Achor ever since” (v.26). From that time Achor valley had a new meaning. From that day onwards this fearful incident would lodge in the memories of succeeding generations of the people of God. It would call to mind this history, and why the name ‘Achan’ was not being given to baby boys in the following generation.

ii] A memorial stone was set up so that this might not be forgotten. As God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, and as Jesus reminded his disciples, “Remember Lot’s wife,” so a place of remembrance – a beacon to Achan - was set up in Israel. We are told, “Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day” (v.26). There was a record, distinct and abiding, like the war memorial between the castle and the sea in Aberystwyth. One of thousands all over the nation that remind us of the million dead killed in the first world simply on our side of the conflict. So in the valley of Achor there was erected this heap of stones, as a solemn warning about covetousness, and disobedience, and all unlawful desires. You drive along in your car and you rarely travel a hundred miles on our Welsh roads before you see a heap of flowers at the side of a road. Why are they there? There has been a crash, and usually some young people were killed, and there are tearful letters of goodbye to a friend, photos, teddy-bears and dolls as a memorial to that young life ended. Don’t you slow down when you see such sights? And didn’t those in the children of Israel who were hotly pursuing sin slow down when they caught a glimpse of this heap of stones. They remembered Achan and how his sin found him out.

iii] That memorial stone in Achor commemorated an act of divine reconciliation. We are told, “Then the LORD turned from his fierce anger” (v.26). The holy wrath of God against the sin of Achan had been propitiated; the heat and fury of Jehovah’s anger toward the children of Israel had all been placated. No longer would he give them up to their enemies. Their God was reconciled through this holocaust. He had turned from his fierce anger.

Now what blessings come to us under the new covenant. The same God whose anger burns just as greatly towards the same sins of ours today has made provision for his wrath to be propitiated. He has so loved this sick world as to give his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, the Son whom he loves. He has sent him to be born of a woman. He has come into our darkness, where the groans and tears, greed and bloodshed are. That is where the Son of the God of Light has made his new abode. For thirty-three years he has lived amongst sinful men and women loving them like himself, full of integrity, light and pity. He has lived the kind of life they should live; he has died the sort of death they deserve. All the time he came to serve them and to serve his Father in heaven. At the end of his life he humbled himself even to the death of the cross. He received the great nails through his hands and feet, and the jagged thrust of the spear into his side. He endured the antagonism and hateful chanting of the mob, the torments of demons, and most of all the wrath of a sin-hating God. Why? What sin had he committed? None at all. Then why is his Father permitting him to die like that? Why is God permitting him to suffer? Where is justice? Where is the love of God? The Lord can deliver Elijah from starvation, and Jonah from death in the belly of a whale, Daniel from lions, the three men in Babylon from the furnace’s flames, Lazarus from death, the Gadarene demoniac from a legion of angels, Peter from prison and Paul from drowning. They were all sinners, but here is the blessed sinless Jesus whom he calls his beloved Son and where is the deliverance? Why should he endure all of this or any of this for longer than a second? He has done nothing worthy of such an end, yet he hangs there impaled to a cross with the heavens dark above him. He cries, “My God, my God why hast Thou forsaken me?” Why should God add such insult to the injury of the lash and the nails? Forsaking the one he loves the most at his hour of greatest need? Is there knowledge with God of things below? Does he know what is happening? Why should Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God suffer like that under the wrath of a sin-hating God when he is holy and sinless, without a blemish? Let him deliver him if he delight in him.

That is the greatest of all questions. His pain is history. His death is factual. We know the ‘what’; our question is ‘why.’ Why didn’t God prevent his beloved Son from suffering and dying? It was because for this reason he had been sent into the world. He came in order to give his life as a ransom for many. He was hanging there as the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world. He was dying in the place of sinners. He was loving the church and giving himself for it. He was dying for our sins, in our stead. The judgment his Father did not spare him on Golgotha was the true and necessary response of the Holy One in heaven to the sin he hates. God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Jesus had none, but he was made sin in our place. The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. Then he spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us. In my place condemned he stood, and he stayed there until he cried, “It is finished” and completed the work he came into the world to do, not to be served but to serve and give his life.

Jesus Christ died for the sins of all that the Father had given him. He appeased the wrath of God towards each one of them. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. The terrors of law and of God with them can have nothing to do. The Saviour’s obedience and blood hide all their transgressions from view. Perhaps there is not one here whose sins have been as mild as Achan’s. O how much worse have all ours been. Theft, covetousness and inordinate desire have characterized our days, and if God spared not Achan then what a fearful expectation of judgment lies before you. Yet many of you have found a Saviour, a sin-bearer, a substitute, an advocate with God, Jesus Christ the righteous one, and your prayer is that God would show you mercy for the sake of Jesus Christ. “May he be my plea. May he have taken away all my condemnation. May I be delivered from the wrath to come because of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” Make that your prayer if it has not been so far. Pray it until you know he has heard you and answered your request.

Let me encourage you by telling you of Israel at the time of the prophet Hosea, as godless and rebellious as these people of God who perished in the wilderness. How she backslid! What contempt she had shown for the Lord, yet he determined to bless her again, to end the drought in her vineyards and give her hope. He pleaded with the people to turn from their sins, and then he says these words, “There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope” (Hosea 2:15). We confess our sin to God; we say, “It is true; I have sinned against the Lord the God of Israel,” and we tell him what we have done and cast ourselves on the mercy of God, and plead the finished work of Christ. Then the Valley of Achor, the memorial place of our condemnation, the place where we defied God with a high hand, becomes the door of hope, an entrance into new life. He can pardon us; he will not hold our sin against us because on Golgotha’s cross God held our sin against the heart and life of Christ all through the hours of darkness.

What will the future have for you if you plead with God for mercy in Jesus’ name? Hope. The Lord preaches to his people through the prophet Isaiah and he mentions a resting place to those who seek salvation in his grace alone; “Sharon will become a pasture for flocks, and the Valley of Achor a resting place for herds, for my people who seek me.” (Is. 65:10). Don’t you long above everything else for a resting place, where your labours and trials can find peace? Jesus Christ says, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.”

3. AI BECAME A PLACE OF VICTORY.

God speaks to Joshua again. We are told, “Then the LORD said to Joshua, ‘Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land’” (Joshua 8:1). The same God who had said to them, “I will not be with you any more,” (Josh. 7:12) is now talking with Joshua and telling him not to be afraid or discouraged. He is giving him instructions to go with the whole army to Ai and attack it because he has given the city of Ai, the people and the land into his hand. The valley of Achor has become a door of hope to the people. Here is a resting place for the people who have sought to do God’s will. What lessons do we have here as we close? Four things;

i] Before we can achieve anything for the Lord our sin must first be dealt with. This is the hundredth anniversary of the Scouting movement founded by a courageous soldier called Baden-Powell. There are many things that are fine about the Scouts but there is one crucial failure and that is to be aware of the power of sin in the human heart, and the need of God’s grace to pardon and God’s Spirit to invigorate every life. A scout may promise to do his best and always do his duty, but the best we offer is spoiled by sin. We need first to find a place of sacrifice and atonement before we can fight the good fight for Christ and do our best for him. Before our clothes can be ironed they must first be washed. There is one fountain that can wash them and that is the blood of Jesus Christ God’s son. The people going with Joshua had not flinched from going to Achor, the place where judgment has fallen on the sinner. That had to be dealt with before they can go on to the place of victory. The power of sin has to be removed from your life, and then fear and discouragement will be gone. Deal first with the guilt of your sin through the cross. The Lord will not let a blow be struck at the city with a wicked hand.

ii] Everyone must fight this good fight. There is no place for the drone or the sluggard in the Lord’s army. There had been a time when the counsels about conquering Ai had been, “Don’t bother with the whole army, just a few thousand will do it.” Now Joshua says, “I and all those with me will advance on the city” (v.5). How many in the congregation in Rome were urged to present their bodies as living sacrifices to God? The elders? The men? The mature Christians? No, the entire congregation, the youngest Christian, the most illiterate, the feeble-minded, the aged and infirm – all the people were to advance in godliness. Are you pulling your weight in this congregation? Are you fighting the good fight of faith? Are you steadfast, unmovable and always abounding in the work of the Lord? The days are so dark, there are so few Christians that the cause of Christ is greatly depleted when any become passengers in the church of Jesus Christ. Every one advanced with Joshua, thirty thousand of the best fighting men, and the totality of the fighting men to stand in that evil day and having done all to stand. Then every Ai will be doomed to destruction as the battering ram of the church begins its work.

iii] Let us be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.  You see Joshua’s plan; an ambush outside the city; a small company attacking and when Ai comes out they flee from before them luring the army of Ai out chasing after them. Then the men hiding in the ambush all charge on the city, take it and set it on fire. Then with the sign of the smoke the pursuing soldiers of Ai were alarmed and were caught between the men running away and the army coming away from the city after them. What shrewdness! We are living in a clever world, but we must be more shrewd; we must excel them in our knowledge of the truth, in the credibility of our lives, in holiness and purity and love. We must excel them in the help God the Holy Spirit gives us. What a force for good this is! Give your strength to God. Give your best years to the Lord. See Joshua here, how he rose up early in the morning (verse ten), and how he worked late in the night (verse thirteen). He was always abounding in God’s work; what a spirit of consecration gripped him! How useful some of you might be with more wisdom and less harm.

iv] Let us be unsparing in our destruction of every sin that so easily besets us. If your eye offends you pluck it out. Let us lay aside every sin. Let us mortify the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit. See how this evil city - this Sodom of Canaan – had to be burned to the ground. We are not called upon to compromise, to expediency, where sin is concerned. Wicked things must be burned down so that they will not grow again. The roots must be plucked out and thrown on the bonfire. Then the new life of a living sacrifice can begin. See what Joshua did? “Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the Israelites. He built it according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses - an altar of uncut stones, on which no iron tool had been used. On it they offered to the LORD burnt offerings and sacrificed fellowship offerings.” (Josh 8:30&31). It is no use trying to become a living sacrifice until the abomination has been destroyed. Of course then there will be a great outcry about extremism and fanaticism and fundamentalism, but you cannot be faithful in the work of construction until the work of destruction has been completed. You cannot erect an altar to the Holy Spirit on the foundation of a rotten life. But when the repenting is over, and the bad relationships are ended, then there is something positive to do. Let us live a new life, and let there be at its centre the Word of God.

You see the final act of Joshua in this saga? “There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua copied on stones the law of Moses, which he had written” (v.32). There at the centre of the people of God the word of God to be known and understood and done day by day. This is a complete work and it is what we are being called to – destruction of what is evil, the erected altar and ourselves the living sacrifice. and then at the heart of one’s life the law of God. This is our determination; this is our hope, and this is our future.

5^th August 2007           GEOFF THOMAS