Joshua 7: The Cost of Hidden Sin

In Joshua chapter seven is where we start today.

And it says in verse one, but the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things.

For Achan, the son of Karmi, the son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things, and the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.

Let's pray.

Lord, this morning, as we bring ourselves, Lord, to the foot of the cross and before your word, God, we pray that you would examine us, that you would show us, Lord, just exactly what you have for us this morning.

I think sometimes we come in with this idea of this notion of we know already, God, what you want to say, or we've heard everything before.

But Holy Spirit, I don't think that's the case.

I think you want to move in each one of our hearts this morning.

And so I pray that you would, that you remove the obstacles, that the walls around our heart, Lord, would just fall flat and we'd be exposed, Lord, and allow you to do the work that you want to do in us.

God, some of us have walked with you for a time, and in that we are thankful, God, for your goodness, but sometimes we grow dull to hearing your voice.

Help us not be like that.

And Lord, for some of us, we're new in our faith.

We're recommitting in our faith.

And we haven't heard some of these things before.

Lord, help us receive them in faith.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I said last week we we saw victory.

We saw this amazing way that God came through and said, Hey, follow my presence around the city, right?

And then I just read verse one of chapter seven, and the whole chapter can basically be summarized with the first word.

But you go from this amazing high where God is in front of you, He's leading you, He's showing you what to do.

You actually don't have to do anything but just go like, I'm sort of like just following you, God, wherever you go, and whatever you'd have me do, that's I'm gonna do.

And then victory happens.

Blessing happens, your enemies fall, you have conquest.

But the people are on this amazing winning streak.

They are acting in faith, and now all of a sudden, but so a contrast is coming here because, in a very real way, this winning streak was obvious to them and to everybody around them.

They uh they the two and a half tribes, well, first God had given them a new leader, right?

Moses was gone, but they had Joshua.

The two and a half tribes had agreed to go in with them to the promised land to fight and take over uh uh the land of Canaan.

The Lord stopped the waters and they walked across.

Uh we obviously just mentioned that the walls of Jericho fell, and now the fame of the Lord is everywhere.

And all these victories came just because they were following the presence of God.

But the people of Israel broke faith.

See, God gave specific instructions and all this to the people of Israel.

He said, yes, you're gonna walk around this city one time a day, every day, and then on the seventh day you're gonna do it seven times.

But he also said, Don't take things that were devoted to destruction.

That was in Joshua 6, 18.

I'm just gonna paraphrase it.

Keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest you take them, devote yourselves to them, and even says in there that bring destruction and trouble upon Israel.

That's just God's word.

This is the warning that he gave.

But Achan did.

That's what we're told here.

We're told that because of one man's disobedience, that is Achan, Achan, uh uh son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, that the anger of the Lord burned against Israel.

Now that's kind of strange to me, one man's disobedience made it so God's anger burned against all of his people.

David Guzik, pretty solid Bible teacher, uh, wrote this about that phenomenon.

He said, in ancient Israel, corporate responsibility was essential because God bound the people together as a unit.

As a result, God did not regard someone's behavior in isolation from the Israelite community.

For this reason, Achan's guilt hurt the whole congregation.

See, God sees his people as one body.

One body.

We know this.

Even now, when we read the New Testament, we are what, many members, but one body.

This is partly why the church is actually really powerful when everybody is here and participating and working and fellowshipping.

We see an awesome move of God because we are in unity with one another.

Not only that, we I mean it's a healthy body, right?

A healthy body can do amazing things.

We also see that we're called the bride of Christ as a church, as God's people.

Not the brides, but the bride.

We are seen as one.

When one of us disobeys, it hurts the whole church.

You know, I know that for for me, there's a there's an American deep inside of me because I I I grew up here and I've been taught about individualism and capitalism.

And there's very I'm not anti some of those things.

I'm actually very much pro-America.

I love the freedom that I have.

But there is a sort of uh interconnectedness uh and interdependence that makes me kind of resist a little bit the communal responsibility and the communal call.

And I'm just telling you guys from my own experience.

I don't know if any of you guys are like that.

Or if you're just like, eh, I don't really care about my own personal space, my own personal identity, my own personal goals.

I'm just here for the people and for the Lord.

I don't know if everybody's like that, but me, I'm sort of a little bit like a cowboy, you know?

And I want space and I want room to ride and run and go and do things.

I don't like the fact that that my life is affected by the things that you do.

I don't like that.

But that's sort of what we're we're seeing here.

Aiken's sin is affecting the entire people.

And you know it's hard because uh there's a there's a response to that type of thinking, where when somebody's sin affects you, you sort of say, Yep, I'm out.

I'm out.

I'm not gonna do this community thing, right?

Uh you get jaded, and so then therefore you just never really plug in anywhere.

You might show up somewhere, but you don't plug in.

And that's just a byproduct of that.

I don't want to go too far into that right now, but Joshua chapter 7, uh, verse 2, after this little aside about Achan, says this.

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

We pick up back in Joshua's storyline, says, Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Bethaven, east of Bethel, and said to them, Go up and spy out the land.

And the men went up and spied out Ai.

So the anger of the Lord is burning over here.

Joshua has no idea, and he's just operating as usual.

He does something that he's really, really used to.

Remember, he was a spy, and then he sent out spies, and now he's sending out more spies.

This is sort of what he does.

This is just good military tactics.

But what Joshua should have also learned is to inquire of the Lord.

But he doesn't do that.

And I think that we we do that too, church.

Sometimes we look at what's just the next logical step.

We've done this in the Lord, and then we're here, and we're just not sure what to do next, so we just do the next logical thing, the next good idea.

Again, this is something that I struggle with big time.

So Joshua sends the men to spy out the land.

You know, in life, uh, day-to-day small decisions, uh big life-changing decisions.

We just assume that God wants like a man of action, right?

That's totally what he wants.

He wants a man of action and somebody who's just not going to sit back and let life come at him.

He wants a man of action rather than a man of prayer.

Or in a worst case scenario, maybe we don't think that.

We just kind of forget God and just lean on our own understanding.

I wasn't thinking that God wanted a man of action, I just wasn't thinking of God at all.

So I don't know which one Joshua is doing here.

I don't know if he's kind of forgetting that the Lord wants to be involved in every decision or if he's leaning on his own understanding.

I don't know.

But we do see that he does not inquire of the Lord and he sends out the spies.

I think had he known and spent time with the Lord, he would have known to deal with the battle at home before the battle out there.

But he doesn't.

So it says, and they returned to Joshua and said to him, Do not have all the people go up.

These are the spies speaking now, but let two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai.

Do not make the whole people toil up there, for they are few.

So about three thousand men went up there from the people, and they ended up fleeing before the men of Ai.

And the men of Ai killed about thirty-six of their men and chased them before the gates as far as Shebrahim and struck them at the descent.

And the hearts of the people melted and became as water.

So we see here that the battle just doesn't go well.

Right?

You send out spies, you get information, you act on the information, you send three thousand people.

Remember, the spy said, send two or three thousand.

Joshua, he's he's a he's a warrior.

He's like, okay, we'll send three thousand.

He didn't send two.

But still, it doesn't go well.

The spies uh uh they are, it's interesting because remember when when we when Moses sent out the spies, and they came back, they said, Hey, we can't do it.

There's giants in the land.

They were looking with their eyes, and this we could go back there and we could create a whole sermon on this, and we have, but we see God's not pleased with that in a very real way.

So these spies go and they go, hey, we can take the land.

Seems like that's what God wanted them to say, right?

No, again, they're seeing with their own eyes.

God doesn't want you to say yes, he wants you to see with his eyes.

He wants you to see him first, he wants to see him being the reason why you say yes or no.

This is what he wants to see.

But Joshua is listening to the men.

See, when we listen to ourselves or the world, uh, and we're not gonna experience the power of God in our battles, the victory that he promises.

You know, there's smart voices out there.

There's men of God, women of God, who've been walking with him faithfully for years.

And we're gonna go and, you know what, I'm gonna talk to, you know, um, whoever.

I don't want to use anybody's name because then they'll think I'm making another joke.

But you're gonna talk to this person that you really, really respect because they've been walking with the Lord faithfully.

And that's good.

But God wants you to go to Him.

You cannot leave out God's voice in favor of something else.

That cannot be the driving force of the believer.

We are to walk by faith, listen, faith, listen to the Lord and what he wants to tell us.

We do go to people afterwards.

We do ask for confirmation, or we do say, Will you seek the Lord with me in this?

Because this is how we are supposed to walk as believers.

Seeking God's face, walking by faith.

So 36 men have died.

They've been run off by a much weaker army, an army that they should have defeated.

And it says in verse 6, then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening.

He and the elders of Israel, and they put dust on their heads.

You guys, Joshua is broken right now.

Okay?

He tore his clothes.

I I didn't really understand this when I was younger and uh had spent less time in the Word and had not asked for help.

But I thought like tearing of clothes was sort of like somebody just ripping their hair out because they're so frustrated.

But it was actually more than that.

I think there's there's there's two reasons why you might tear your clothes and put dust on your head when we look at scripture.

It's what it shows to the person looking at you.

That on the outside, this torn garment, it's not the act of the tearing because that only takes two or three seconds.

It's what happens as you walk around with that torn garment and that dust on your head, and they see that you are broken.

They see that you are carrying shame because of your actions or because of your sin.

It's sort of like a widow who might be wearing all black because of the hurt that's inside.

She doesn't want to do anything but wear black on the outside.

It is an outward symbol of an inward reality.

He fell before the ark, the presence of God.

See, Joshua is broken, he tears his clothes, he puts dust on his head, and he goes to the ark where the presence of God was said to have been.

This is where his hope still was.

He's still a sinner.

He still gets it wrong, he still needs to know where to go.

Guys, we still get it wrong.

When we get it wrong, do we tear our clothes, put dust on our heads, and then fall before the Lord?

I pray that we do.

I know in our culture we don't we don't tear our clothes.

But we should be broken before the Lord when we find sin in us.

Verse 7, Joshua says, Alas, O Lord, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all?

To give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.

Would that we have been content to dwell beyond the Jordan?

O Lord, what can I say when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies?

For the Canaanites and the inhabitants of the land will hear of it and will surround us, cut off our name from the earth, and what will you do for your great name?

I can just imagine the Lord listening to Joshua in this moment.

You sound just like the Israelites when I brought them out of Egypt, and they and they were like, we don't have anything to eat.

Why did you even bring us out here, Lord?

You should have just left us in slavery.

That's what they preferred.

It's like the the hardship was just so much for them, it just crippled them.

They had no faith.

And the same thing is happening here.

Why have you brought us out into the wilderness, God?

We're just gonna die.

Wish we were slaves.

Why even bring us into the promised land at all, Joshua?

We should have just stayed with the two and a half tribes of Manasseh on the other side of the Jordan and taken advantage of that fruit.

And then he says, and what will you do for your great name?

He's like, God, you're gonna ruin your own name by letting us lose to these people.

These battles that we should have victory in, we are losing, and people are dying, and your name is gonna not be glorified.

What will you do for your great name?

In verse 10, this is where I think it gets good.

The Lord said to Joshua, Get up.

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.

That is not what you want to hear.

You do not want God upset with you like this.

But if you're gonna deal with it, oh, you want to know.

You want to know because you want to be right with a just and holy God.

You don't want to sit there compromised, sinful, unrepentant.

See, he's telling them, he's telling Joshua here exactly what happened.

See why I was giving you victory over Jericho.

People.

He says, people here.

Okay?

They interweave their own selfish desire into that conquest.

They didn't listen to me.

They compromised.

And Joshua is right, everyone was watching Israel.

All the people in Canaan were watching Israel and the God they served.

And God knows that what they really needed to see was a people sold out for the Lord, not willing to compromise for anything.

Israel was supposed to be an example.

God's chosen people.

When they fell short of being God's chosen people, God just allows them to fall.

He doesn't want to bless the heart that's 99% for him.

He wants him to be all in.

And I think that's true, you guys.

I think I was talking to somebody, actually, a believer who doesn't live in this area, and he said, hey man, I've got people who I work with who want to see me fail.

How do you deal with that?

Bro, I'm I'm I'm starting to lose it.

I don't know how to deal with these people who want to see me fail.

Do you guys know that church, there are people who want to see us fail?

They want to see us sin.

They want to see us uh come up short.

They want to see, oh, there it is.

There's the hypocrisy.

They want to see us fail.

A little leaven does leaven the whole loaf.

You guys, there is sin.

And there are people who are watching, and they're gonna they're gonna go, oh yeah, see, God's not as good.

He's not as good as as you guys all say he is.

And you know, what are we supposed to do?

Be better.

How's that for an answer?

Be better.

Don't mess up, just just never mess up again.

And they won't be able to say anything.

Anybody feel better?

Can you can can we do that?

Can we just be better?

That doesn't work.

That doesn't work.

But there's going to be some answers here about how to actually deal with it.

And it's right here.

It says, get up.

Get up.

There's sin.

There's sin happening.

We have to identify the sin.

And you know what?

There's a reaction here, like I said, with the with the church being a whole.

That when we see how upset the Lord gets, that it makes us want to pull back.

It makes us want to go back to that place of individualism.

Of I'll do this on my own.

Of church isn't really that important.

Fellowship isn't really that critical.

I'm going to kind of decide to sequester myself over here.

You know what I'm going to do, actually?

I'm just going to hang out with my work friends.

Or my neighbors who don't claim to be Christians.

Because at least there's no hypocrisy in them.

I at least know what I'm going to get.

I've fallen into that trap before.

I'm just going to hang out with the world.

And then now you've become the compromiser, though.

Right?

You separate yourself from fellowship, so now you've become the compromiser.

It's interesting because you quietly practice your faith.

No Christians around you to really affect you.

You quietly practice your faith.

You don't share the gospel too much because you just want to be loving.

And it's relational ministry.

Right?

That's what we do.

We pull back from the church.

We go into our own little private sphere.

We don't talk about the gospel.

We just try to be loving, relational.

We go years without speaking of God.

We don't get too drunk when everybody goes out.

We don't cuss too much when they start saying things.

And we make sure to read our one-minute devotional every single day.

Four times a week.

Right?

There's a way that we we remove ourselves from fellowship because we cannot even fathom the idea of your sin or your sin or my sin affecting the whole.

So we pull back.

Church is just filled with fake people.

This is what it is.

I have two verses for you.

If your response to the person sitting next to you who's offended you or you've seen their sin and how it's affected you.

Proverbs 18:1, whoever isolates himself seeks his own desires, he breaks out against all sound judgment.

Proverbs 18:1

So the answer to Achan's sin or Pastor Ben's sin is not to remove yourself from fellowship.

It cannot be that.

It cannot be to isolate.

That's not the safeguard.

1 Peter 5.8, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Lions, they run into a herd and they try to separate.

And then they go after the small one, the weak one, the sick one, the injured one.

The law of the jungle is not a very kind place.

Okay?

Some of those things we don't watch as much Discovery Channel, because the thing we don't want to watch is a lion that's like 300 pounds devouring a 27-pound piglet.

But that's how it works.

Right?

So when you get isolated, you get weaker.

And the enemy wants to attack you.

So the idea of isolationism and individualism as a response to dealing with other people's sin affecting you is either coming from self or Satan.

Not our Savior.

This cannot be the responses.

The second time the Lord says, get up.

Verse 13.

Consecrate the people and say, Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, for thus says the Lord, God of Israel, they 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 become by households.

And the household that the Lord takes shall come near man by man, and he who has taken with 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.

Get up, I've got a solution for you.

Consecrate yourselves.

Which essentially, in this passage, literally means to examine yourself.

God's solution for the compromise isn't running away.

In fact, it's examining yourself.

And Joshua's role in this is not to consecrate every single person, but he's to tell every single person that they should consecrate themselves.

They should examine themselves.

Likewise, God means for each one of us to do the work of our own heart.

It's not Pastor Mark's job to examine your heart.

I use him because most of you guys like him more than me.

But I mean, it's just not his job.

It's not my job.

It's not your parents' job, who are faithful to bring you to church every Sunday.

And here you are on the edge of adulthood, going like, I cannot wait to just go at my own life.

It is still your job to consecrate your own heart, to examine your own heart.

Or maybe you're knocking on death's door.

It is still your job to consecrate your own heart.

You don't get brownie points for showing up here.

So they're told to consecrate themselves.

It's at this point, in my opinion, that Aiken should have stood up and repented.

He should have stood up and repented.

There's sin in the camp.

Tomorrow we're gonna do this.

Examine yourselves.

If he was broken, he should have said something.

You know, maybe though he just thought there were other people who had done it too, right?

You don't know.

You didn't get to see every person who was in Jericho and what they plundered and what they didn't.

Maybe he just thought there was just somebody else.

I mean, all of this, Joshua shows up and is like, hey guys, consecrate yourself because tomorrow there's gonna be a big deal, and the Lord's gonna start sifting us.

Aiken's like, couldn't be just me.

All this hoopla, just for what I took?

I don't know.

I I don't really know, but it says here that you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you.

It's like all of them.

One thing, two things, four things.

God's telling them the reason they lost.

You know, it'd be easy to go, you know what, maybe the men were just tired.

After all, they marched around the city for a week, and then seven times on the last day, right?

Maybe they were just tired.

And God's like, no, you can't stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you.

Our ability to stand in our battles, guys, it's not based on our strength, it's based on faithfulness.

It's can we be faithful with the Lord?

I hear people all the time who want victory over certain areas, and me too.

And then I experience a loss and then another loss in an area.

It's just discouraging.

Yeah, even like something like trying to get to church, right?

Like that could even be a battle for a lot of people.

I think that that's a battle.

But we spend our time with people whose priority isn't church.

And then we wonder why they book something on Sunday morning.

Brunch sounds amazing.

Mimosas and French toast or worship.

And some people are like, dude, mimosas sound great.

I'm not telling you you can't ever make that decision.

I'm not here to be legalistic in that way.

But I'm just telling you, if your desire are the for the things of the world and you're having trouble getting to church, maybe it's because of the company you keep.

Good company corrupts good habits.

Bad company, excuse me.

Thank you, Galen.

I'm glad you were here this morning.

See, when the church, when everybody is here, bad company corrupts good character or good habits.

Uh, maybe you're trying to win the war on lust.

But there's just no accountability.

Right?

There's people all the time murmuring about the things that they're losing, the battles that they're losing.

But we just have these devoted things within our midst.

So Joshua rose early in the morning as he said he would, and brought Israel near tribe by tribe.

Everybody's in their twelve tribes, and the tribe of Judah was taken, and he brought near the clans of Judah.

I don't know how many there were.

And the clans of the Zarahites was taken.

And he brought near the clan of the Zarahites, man by man, and Zabdi was taken.

And he brought near his household man by man, and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, son of Zarah, 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, the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I did.

When I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, then I coveted them and took them, and see they are hidden in the earth, inside my tent, with the silver underneath.

So God takes the people, separates them out, just like he said, Achan is identified, and then he says this really true statement, and I believe it's how he feels in the moment.

He identifies what he did and how he hid his possessions.

But he didn't come forward.

He was caught and then confessed.

Those are really different postures, church.

Bringing God your sin or God confronting you and then going, You got me, are two totally different postures in dealing with sin within our own life.

Do we bring it to the Lord when we know it's wrong?

Or do we wait until we're caught so we we might be able to not undergo just any amount of personal suffering?

I mean, well, it all happened so fast, though.

Don't you feel bad for Achan?

I mean, how could he have handled it any different?

He showed up where he's supposed to show up.

God said he was gonna do this, why not?

One, after the defeat, after the men died, he could have said, This is me.

This is my fault.

I took devoted things, I have sin in our midst.

Second, when he was told to consecrate and examine himself, he could have been like, Lord, do I have anything?

Oh, yep.

Uncover Joshua, I have this stuff.

Nope.

In the morning, Joshua could have thrown open the what are these, the flaps of his tent.

And oh, Aiken, what's up, man?

What are you doing?

I know why the Lord is having you do this.

Spare everybody all this.

This is this is the treasure that I treasured above fellowship with the Lord.

Take it.

There's at least three, but I think there was more because moment by moment we live before the Lord in his presence.

And he could have done it at any time.

And we see this roadmap from Achan of sin.

If you guys look closely here at the middle part of verse 20 and 21, it says, Truly I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I did.

Listen to this church.

This is for us.

When I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar and two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, then I coveted them and took them.

And see, they are hidden in the earth inside my tent with the silver.

We see the first thing he did is he saw.

There's no avoiding that part, church.

You will see things in this world that are not for you.

But you cannot get around that.

We don't get to live in a holy Christian bubble just because we walk into a store, a mall, a beach, a wherever.

There are things that are not for you.

And he saw those.

I mean, he was walking around Jericho for crying out loud.

A place that had rebelled against God for 400 years.

Who knows what he saw?

Idols and treasure probably everywhere.

Not that dissimilar, I think, from America today.

Plenty of people rebelling against God.

Plenty of opportunity to see things that are not for you.

So first I saw, Aiken says.

Second, it says, I coveted.

I coveted.

Inside Aiken, there is a desire for those things.

And this is like the bud of sin.

That initial growth that happens within us.

But even at that, you guys, Aiken is still just one of us.

And I think that there's it's just hard not to play that game.

The money, the youth, the the car, whatever.

I don't even know anymore.

But just like there's something that we we covet inside of us.

It's a family if you don't have one.

There are so many things that we can covet.

Coveting is still sin.

But but really it's this inward battle.

Right?

But it says this, it says, I took.

I saw among the spoil this, I coveted them, and I took them.

See, Achan acts outwardly on those sinful desires.

He's ignoring the roadblocks, he's ignoring God's word of what he should do and what he should not do, and he's just going for it.

This is sin for sure.

And there's a fourth thing he did, and I think this is the most damaging aspect of sin.

He says, I hid.

I hid.

When we cover it up, when we hide it, we want to keep it, or maybe we just don't know how to deal with it.

Either way, the result ends up being the same.

This is the most damaging aspect of sin.

So I saw, I coveted, I took, and I hid.

You guys, we've seen this pattern before.

We see it in the fall, in the garden.

We see it in David and Bathsheba.

He saw, he coveted, he took, and he tried to hide it.

If you know the story, sin is playing the same game.

If you guys have sin in your life, and I know that we we do, but if we have sin that's going here to the place where we are trying to hide it and cover it up beneath the earth, you might be able to convince me, I might be able to convince you, but we cannot convince the Lord.

This is not a game.

This is life and death.

It says, So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent, and behold, it was hidden in his tent that this with the silver underneath, and they took them to 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 Zarah, and the silver and the cloak, and the bar of gold, and his sons and his daughters, and his oxen, and his donkeys, and his sheep.

Why even talk about the livestock after you say sons and daughters?

And his tent and all that he had, and he brought them up to the valley of Acor.

In verse 25, 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 him with fire, burned 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 Acor.

You guys, sin will take you farther than you want to go.

It will keep you longer than you want to stay.

And it will cost you more than you want to pay.

Don't forget that.

God hates sin.

I read this and I see an angry God.

What happened to the God of love?

But you guys, God is not so one-dimensional that we get to put him in a box and say, God is love.

And then pretend that sin doesn't anger him.

He crucified his own son because of sin.

It literally says here, the Lord turned from his burning anger.

And I know this seems maybe a little bit extreme, but you guys, people have been dying because of sin.

Death has been present from the beginning because of sin.

Human death entered the world through sin.

Adam and Eve.

Romans 5.18, I'll just paraphrase it.

One trespass led to the condemnation of everyone.

Look it up, Romans 5.18.

And then in Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death.

What we see happen to Achan seems extreme at first glance.

But it is a microcosm of what sin has been doing in the world since creation.

Think about that.

This story of Achan seems extreme, but this is a microcosm of what sin has been doing in the world from the beginning.

But there is hope.

Why?

Because God.

Now I didn't read all of Romans 5.18 a second ago, but let me read it.

Romans 5.18, one trespass led to the condemnation of all, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

Now the law came into the into increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, great grace might also reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

You guys, sin came into the world through Adam, and we see it in Achan, we feel it and we know it in us, but righteousness came into the world through Jesus Christ, through his faithfulness.

That's how you get out of this quandary.

This is how you get out of this predicament.

You don't get to disappoint and say, God, you're mean.

And I don't like that, so therefore it does not exist.

And I turn my head, and there's a God of love just waiting to embrace me, no matter what I do.

That is not how you solve the problem.

God solved the problem.

By his own son.

And then Romans 6.23.

I read a part of it.

For the wages of sin is death.

But.

Remember Joshua chapter 7 started with but.

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

And how powerful that was?

This is even more powerful.

It said that in Romans 5, 18 through 21, that where the law made you even more guilty, grace abounded more.

That's what this verse says.

For the wages of sin is death, Aikens, Ben Alderman's, yours, whoever's.

But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That's where the hope comes from, church.

That's where the hope comes from.

It doesn't come from being better.

Like I said, don't ever sin again, and then you'll be on the right side of God.

Impossible.

We have all sinned.

And even if we never sinned again from this day forward, we're already guilty in nature and in deed.

We've done it all.

But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.