Joshua: Valleys of Failure and Pathways of Hope

We are back in the book of Joshua.

So we have this epic story in the Old Testament in the book of Joshua.

This is God's people were enslaved in Egypt.

They come out of that.

They are wandering around the desert for 40 years.

After that, they cross the Jordan River.

They win this battle at Jericho.

And then they so confidently march up into the hills to take this city of Ai.

This is the story in Joshua 7 that we looked at it last week.

And they're defeated.

They're destroyed.

They're demoralized.

They're so in despair over this loss.

And they're in this loss because of some coveting that happened by one individual and a family, and this coveting and this discontentment inside of this man, Aiken.

So yesterday I was driving to church, driving over to the church building to work, and I was driving and pulled onto Session Street off of Church Street.

And as soon as I pull on Session Street, way up ahead of me, I see what looks to be a 16, 17-year-old kid, and he is on his mountain bike, and he is riding a perfect, perfect, beautiful, fast, controlled wheelie all the way down Session Street, down the middle of the street.

And just when he gets to me, he sort of curves back over into his lane, stays on the wheelie, mind you.

I'm talking about a half mile, perfect wheelie.

As a parent, immediately I think to myself, um, he's gonna kill himself.

And then also there's this part of me, the kid part of me, that was never quite able to ride a great wheelie.

Like I could ride like 10, 20 feet, but Gary in my neighborhood, Gary could ride like a half mile, like this kid.

And there's this part of me that even though this kid's probably gonna kill himself and he probably like you know hurt himself further down the road, uh, still it was like, man, to be that age, to be that fearless, to have that kind of guts, to know if you fall down, you're probably not gonna get hurt anyways, because you're so young.

If you do get hurt, you're gonna be healed in like two and a half weeks.

I mean, how amazing that would be, right?

And it's so easy for us, maybe wheelies aren't your deal, something else is your deal, but how easy for us to crave something that we don't have.

Maybe we never had it or we used to have it and we lost it.

But all of this is this word coveting, to crave that which we don't have.

And it's so easy to do with all sorts of things, right?

Like you can covet less busyness, probably not right now.

You can covet more busyness.

You can covet your friend who is 50, but his body or her body looks like and works like it was 20.

You can covet your friend who can eat a whole pizza and not gain a pound and sleep all night.

You can covet Jimmy Fallon's house in the Hamptons that he keeps recording all his videos in, and like the videos are funny, and then you start to look at the background at this house, and you're like, that's amazing, because you also know he probably has a great apartment in New York, and you're like, whoa, that's amazing, right?

We can covet so many things that just aren't ours.

And so we know what this guy, Aiken, feels like.

They just won this battle of Jericho, and God has said, don't take any of the treasure from this battle, that those items that are worth a lot.

That's a lot of wealth.

And God says, Don't take any of it for yourself, don't make yourself wealthy by these items that were given for Canaanite worship.

And so you know what, you know what Achan was feeling like when he sees these items, because these are items that can make him wealthy.

Make him independent, make him feel secure.

He could provide for his children better.

We know all these, oh no, all he has to do is take them.

That's all he has to do.

So we know what that feels like.

We know those feelings.

So we jump into the story here at verse 19, and we know this has angered God.

And we talked about anger last week and last week's sermon.

I'm I'm so tempted to re-preach all of that, but I'm gonna pull myself back.

You can go back and listen to that.

Joshua 7, 19 through 21.

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 Shannar 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 he comes clean.

He comes clean.

Point number one is this overly desiring the next thing has always been a failure in humanity.

Overly desiring the next thing has always been a failure in humanity.

You are not the exception.

I am not the exception.

Modernity is not the exception.

This was happening thousands of years ago.

And to covet, to crave, to yearn that which is not yours or that which you do not have, and to think, if only you get it, if only I get it.

That coveting?

It's not new.

Point number two is this, straight from verse 20.

Our sin is against our holy and loving God.

Our sin is against our holy and loving God.

So here's the whole story, right?

Like our story doesn't begin with sin.

Our story always begins with we are created in God's image.

We are image bearers.

We are created beautiful in God's image.

That's the beginning of our story.

And now we sinned against his authority over us, and that sin is a break.

It is a break in wholeness, it is a break in peace, it is a break in what God desires for us and for this world.

We see it in this story because Achan's sin causes individual, family, and communal disruption.

Now we know this side of Jesus, all of our sin is taken care of.

And that's the good news that we talked about last week that all of God's anger is handled within the grace of God and the incarnation of God as Jesus and Jesus on the cross that our sin is put upon Jesus, his righteousness given to us, so we're beloved in his sight.

So the anger is handled.

We don't have to ask, is God angry at me?

He's not angry at you, he loves you.

And he is committed to formation of you, is what we said last week.

But this story also has a clear warning for us, for us to be serious about what sin can cause.

Because it causes a break in freedom.

It causes a break in wholeness, it causes a break in holiness, it causes disruption, destruction.

And now that depravity is also not the end of our story, it's part of our story.

So this story goes on, the story in Joshua 7.

Joshua, he sends some men into the tent to dig this up and to find this, as they can tell them the truth.

Sure enough, they find all of it.

They find all of it.

And this is where the story takes a turn that many of us get uncomfortable with, including myself, anytime I run into this sort of anger of God, because I live in so much of this side of Jesus, that this anger of God can make me feel uncomfortable, but it also helps me see how beautiful and supreme the grace of Jesus is.

That God could hold this sort of anger and rightful justice and wrath toward sin and toward that which disrupts and causes harm.

And yet, in the grace of Jesus, all of that is absolved.

And we live in loving regard with him.

Here are the verses in verses 24 through 26.

And Joshua and all of Israel with him took Achan, the son of Zarah, and the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, his donkeys, and his sheep, and his ten, and all that he had, and they brought them up to the valley of Akur.

Verse 25.

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 Accor.

So this is the way of law.

That when we fail the law, we have to pay the price.

And what we have in Jesus is the fulfiller of the law who paid the price for us.

Now, what's worth mentioning here, because when I read through this right away, I start to think about this guy's kids and what do these kids do.

But many commentators believe that the children were accomplices in this.

Nonetheless, it still returns us to this idea of God's anger, our concerns about God's anger.

23 years ago, a 17-year-old kid, and I was with my buddy Kevin, who's Christie's older brother.

We grew up in the same town, and my buddy John.

And so Kevin and John and I, it had just rained for two days straight.

Hard rain.

It's springtime.

And we're over at Kevin's house, and we decided we're gonna raft down the Alcove River, which is like this big creek out in the countryside about 15 minutes from our homes.

And so we get this great idea that it's gonna be so much fun to voyage down the Alcove River in a flimsy raft that was meant for the ocean.

And so we get the raft out of the closet there in Kevin's garage, and we're starting to pump it up.

We had just finished pumping up, just putting on our bathing suits.

We are ready to go.

We are loading up in the SUV, and Kevin's dad walks out and he sees this flimsy raft and these stupid 17-year-old kids.

What are they gonna do?

He said, What's going on, boys?

Not much.

What's the raft for?

Oh, we're gonna, we're gonna um we're gonna um we're gonna raft down the Alcove River.

That's that's what did it.

Didn't take much.

Didn't take much.

And he lit us up.

He went from what's going on to anger very quickly, the thought that we might even venture to do something this stupid, and he went on to rip us to pieces about our foolishness, about the flood stages of a river and what trees could be there, entrapment, and we don't even have life jackets on.

Now, why is he so angry?

Well, we took his property, we didn't ask him.

Uh, we're gonna trespass on other people's property to get to this river of which we don't really know anything about, and at flood stage would certainly be dangerous.

So he's angry that laws are broken, but he is also angry because he knows something that 17-year-old kids don't know that we could actually really hurt ourselves.

And here's my point.

It's not a technical point, but here's my point.

God's anger is toward our sin as an offense to his authority.

And also, God's anger is because it's an offense to his desire for us to live in peace and holiness and wholeness.

Now, the good news is that our mistakes are never the end of our story.

Later in the Old Testament, there's this prophet named Hosea, and Hosea is writing encouragement to the people of Israel who had been again disobedient and in failure again, and he's writing uh encouragement to them.

And we get this incredible verse that refers back to this story in Joshua.

Hosea 2, 14 and 15.

It's very provocative language, too.

Listen to this language.

Therefore, behold, I will allure her.

So the her is God's people.

Therefore, behold, I will allure God's people and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her, and there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of a kur a door of hope.

What beautiful language for us.

What beautiful theology for us.

This point number three: God turns our valleys of failures into pathways of restoration.

We all have these valleys.

We have these moments, we have these failures before the law, but we are not stoned to death.

Rather, Jesus took the price.

God Himself, the grace of God, absorbs it.

And what we have left is a loving God committed to our formation.

Part of our formation is to move out of covening and to move into greater contentment.

Paul wrote in Timothy, 1 Timothy 6, 6, you probably know this, maybe you've heard this.

Godliness with contentment is great gain.

So, last point, point number four, last point.

God desires our hearts to be defined by godliness and filled with contentment.

God desires our hearts to be defined by godliness and filled with contentment.

That is God's heart for us.

And our godliness is always, the phrasing that we use here, I didn't make it up, is always already but not yet.

Already, but not yet.

We are already fully godly because of Jesus, permanently, by gift, by grace alone.

And yet we're also not nearly as godly as God desires us to be.

We're still on that ongoing, imperfect walk toward godliness, which is also a walk in freedom and toward freedom.

And Paul's giving us a huge secret here in this passage, in this passage in Timothy.

We won't get this a lot of other places.

You won't get it on Instagram, certainly, at least not on my feed, and it's not coming in like the 18 catalogs I get on Tuesdays, of for me to buy something else.

What Paul says is that great gain in life is godliness, the gift of godliness, the pursuit of godliness, and that is connected to your heart being content.

Now, this word content, what a rich word.

This is this Greek word that means self-sufficient.

That you could be independent, independently joyful and at peace apart from what you have or you don't have.

Right?

Contentment is in its greatest expression, is the ability for us to be free from all wants and even needs.

What a great gain that would be.

A few weeks ago, the Washington Post published an editorial, and here's what it read.

So we were maybe halfway through this pandemic, this coronavirus pandemic that we've been experiencing for six weeks now here in the U.S., and so three weeks ago or so this was published.

The novel Corona Pandemic is a thief.

Among the things that snatches away are the connections that feed passion, contentment, belonging, and all of the other variations of love.

And then this week, I was driving and I heard twice this week, because when I drive, I listen to the radio.

Yes, I still listen to the radio.

That's how old I am, and I'm listening to Star 94, our the biggest pop radio station in Atlanta, and I'm listening to Star 94, and twice this week in my very, very, very limited driving this week, I hear Whitney Houston's Higher Love.

You remember it?

It's 34 years old, and yet our current, most current pop station is playing a 34-year-old song.

Well, of course there are.

What else are they going to play right now that people want to hear?

Listen to these words.

Worlds are turning, and we're just hanging on, facing our fear and standing out there alone.

A yearning, yeah, and it's real to me.

There must be someone who's feeling for me.

And then she sings, and I can't do it.

Bring me a higher love, O Lord.

And see, this is what we need to hear today, but this is what we need to hear every day.

This is what we need to hear during a pandemic, but this is what we need to hear in the most abundant, flourishing U.S.

economy life.

We need to know that there is a higher love, a love richer and deeper than any shiny things that could be offered to us.

A love that can satisfy us no matter what we have or what we don't have, that can create in us, gift to us godliness, inspire and empower us toward godliness, and begin to create in us a contentment, a freedom, a freedom that we can have all we need in the love of Jesus.

I'll close with a prayer from my mentor, Scotty Smith, that wrote about contentment and coveting.

So let's pray together as I read this prayer.

God, through the gospel, I realize that all I really need is Jesus, plus what you choose to give me.

If I owned everything I envy and covet, as your word says, my bones would rot.

It would never be enough.

Father, there's a Jesus-shaped vacuum in all of us that only Jesus can fill.

Thankfully, he is more and more.

Free us to be more content in Jesus, more present with people, and more generous with that which we have.

So very amen.

I pray in Jesus' beautiful and more than sufficient name.