An Unfair Act

And if you would grab a Bible and open to Joshua Chapter 7,

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

let me pray for us while you're turning there.

Father God, we ask that Your word would be our teacher today,

that You would help us to align ourselves with Your Word and not

align, not seek to align Your word to our modern

sensibilities. Would You help us, Lord, to

humble ourselves and to receive this as Your word about yourself

and Your people and the world that you have made Teach us.

Lord, we ask it in Christ name, Amen.

OK, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to read the entirety of Chapter 7 and when I get

done, I've got about 7 things. We're not going to go carefully

through the text because it's pretty straightforward.

So I've got about 7 things that I want to say about this text

applying to us. So we're going to run through

start to finish Chapter 7. So read along with me, not out

loud, but just in your head and and we'll get it all sort of

before us. So Joshua Chapter 7, verse one.

Joshua 7 · chapter mention

But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted

things, for Akin, the son of Karmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zara

of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things in the

anger of the Lord, burned against the people of Israel.

So Joshua sent men from Jericho to AI, which is near Beth Haven,

east of Bethel, and said to them, Go up and spy out the

land. And the men went up and spied

out AI, and they returned to Joshua.

And they said to him, Do not have all the people go up, for

let about 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 3000 men went up from there there from the people, and

they fled before the men of AI. And the men of AI killed about

36 of their men and chase them before the gate as far as

Shebarim and struck them at the descent.

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

So they became Canaanites with melted hearts.

Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face

before the ark of Yahweh until the evening, he and the elders

of Israel, and they put dust on their heads.

And Joshua said, alas, O Lord God, why have you brought this

people over the Jordan at all? To give us into the hand of the

Amorites to destroy us? Does that sound familiar?

Does that sound like it should sound in your ear like the

children of Israel when they suffered hardship in the

wilderness and said, why did you even bring us out of Egypt?

Why? Why did you even do this?

Joshua's in the same boat. Old habits die hard.

Would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan.

Oh Lord, what can I say? When Israel is turn their backs

before their enemies, For the Canaanites and all the

inhabitants of the land will hear that it will surround us

and cut off our name from the earth.

And what will you do for your great name?

The Lord said to Joshua, Get up. Why have you fallen on your

face? I love that God has his own why

to our why? Why did you do this?

And God says why are you on your face as though this is a great

mystery. Israel has sinned and they have

transgressed to my covenant that I commanded them.

They have taken watch these verbs, 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. They've become the things that

they coveted for. We wanted forbidden, devoted to

destruction things, and now we ourselves are devoted to

destruction. I will be with you no more

unless you destroy the devoted things from among you.

What a catastrophic word, God, that God would ever say.

I'll be with you no more, as long as those things are with

you. Get up, consecrate the people,

and say, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow.

For thus says the Lord God of Israel, there are devoted things

in your midst. Oh, 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 by.

And the tribe that the Lord takes by lot shall come near by

clans, and the clan that the Lord that the Lord takes shall

come nearby households. And the household that the Lord

takes shall come near man by man.

And he who is taken with the devoted things shall be burned

with fire, He and all that he has, because he has transgressed

the covenant of Yahweh, and because he has done an

outrageous thing in Israel. So Joshua rose early in the

morning and brought Israel near tribe by tribe.

And the tribe of Judah was taken.

And he brought near the near the clans of Judah.

And the clan of the Zara Heights was taken.

And he brought near the clan of the Zara Heights, man by man.

And Zab and Zabdi was taken. And he brought near his

household man by man. And Aiken the son of Carmi, son

of Zabdi, son of Zara of the tribe of Judah was taken.

That's repeated 3 times in this text at least.

It's very important. Then Joshua said, Aiken, 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 they can answer 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 Shinar. That's where the land of Babel

and 200 shekels of silver round about 5 lbs of a little under 5

lbs of silver and then gold weighing 50 shekels a pound and

a quarter thereabouts. Then I coveted them and I took

them and see they are hidden in the earth inside my tent with

the silver underneath. So Joshua sent messengers and

they ran to the tent to behold it was hidden in the tent with

the silver underneath. And they took them out of the

tent and brought them to Joshua and to all the people of Israel.

And they laid them down before Yahweh, and Joshua, and all

Israel with him took Akin the son of Zara, and the silver and

the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons, and his daughters,

and his oxen and donkeys and sheep and his tent, and all that

he had. And they brought them up to the

valley of Achor. And Joshua said, Why did you

bring trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you,

Achen. Achor.

Are trouble that it's in Hebrew. That's what it means.

And why did you trouble bring trouble on us?

The Lord brings trouble on you today.

And Israel stoned him with stones, and 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. And then Yahweh turned from his

burning anger. Therefore, this day, the name of

the places, to this day the name of the place is called the

Valley of Achor, the Valley of trouble.

This brothers and sisters, as hard as it is to hear, is the

word of the Lord. So what I want to do is I want

to give you about 7 things that we learned from this text.

There's about 50 that I could give you, but these are in my

mind, the most significant things we need to wrestle with.

The first thing is the the fact that this text begins with what

we might call a very unfair fact.

It doesn't seem fair that one guy sends and the nation is

implicated. Did you see the people of Israel

broke faith in regarded the devoted things and we might jump

in and say no God, not all the people Aiken did it.

The scriptures say the people of Israel broke faith and they took

some of the things in the anger of the Lord burned against the

people of Israel. And so let me just remind us all

what God is not doing. God is not piling up a bunch of

pretty rocks. God is building a temple and

he's and he's fashioning each and every stone that he places

in. And those stones have to do

their job or the whole thing gets impacted.

God is not like a scientist, right?

Imagine a scientist lab. He's got all these jars of

formaldehyde and he has a human hand and he has an eye and he

has a brain. It's not what God is doing,

collecting a bunch of random dependent body parts.

God is building an interdependent body of faith.

Some of us are hands, some of us are feet.

Some of us are hearts. Some of us are wallets.

Some of us are ears, right? But we're interdependent.

And so let me ask you, what happens to you today when your

kidneys decide, you know, I'm going to take the weekend off?

You die. The whole body is impacted when

one, when one part fails, everybody feels it.

And so I don't know what you are.

I don't know what part of the body God has made you, But all

of us need to reckon with this idea.

We say it every Sunday. We believe in one holy Catholic

Church. We're not talking about Roman

Catholic or repeat something that we've talked about before.

Roman Catholic is a misnomer because Catholic means

university, universal Roman means particular.

It just, it's an absurd thing to say.

We believe in a, in a particular location of the universal

church. No, we believe in the one holy

Catholic Church, that there is only one body of Christ and that

in that body we are interdependent.

And so we need to see, you need to see yourself.

I need to see myself as part of the body.

And that if we fail, it's not just us that's impacted, it's

the entire community. Second thing I want you to see

from this text, it's just a helpful reminder that the

enemies of God listen to me. They never win.

They never beat us, never. The enemies of God have never

been victorious over God's people.

The only thing that has ever happened is that God's people

have lost. Do you know the difference?

You know the difference when? When you lose the game versus

somebody winning the game or beating you, God's victory over

his enemies is always sure. It's always certain.

The only thing that can stop the people of God being triumphant,

being victorious, is that we have sin within our camp that

compromises our strength. He says you cannot stand.

He says in other places when you go in, no one will be able to

stand against you. So well, how do we square those

things? The the answer is, the only

weakening thing to the people of God is never the enemies of God.

It's always the compromise within the people.

Amorites never win against Israel.

Israel loses fights by acting like the world and surrendering

the miracle of divine assistance.

And so listen to me, brothers and sisters, an obedient church,

in the history of the world, an obedient church has never lost.

Even when it's a weak but obedient church and people are

being martyred, we still win. One of the early church fathers

said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the

church. Anytime somebody gives the good

testimony of laying down their life for the faith, that's still

victory in the eyes of the Lord. It has never happened that we

have not won. It has happened repeatedly that

we gave away the victory by embracing worldly things.

And so we have, we have only ever surrendered voluntarily

ground that God has given to us. A faithful and obedient church

never loses. A faithful and obedient Israel

never loses. It's only a disobedient people

that God brings judgment on. The Third Point I want to make

from this text is the compound consequences of sin.

OK, so it's interesting Aiken sins and it impacts the entirety

of the body. And then in verse 2 it says that

Joshua sins spies in to spy out AI.

They come back and they say it's very small.

We can take it just 3000 people, it'll be fine.

You know what we don't read. That's very conspicuous.

We don't read. And so Joshua went and inquired

of the Lord and said, hey, this is the testimony that only a few

of us need to go. Is that right or is there a

different way you want to go about it?

He doesn't do that. He just goes forward.

It's like the you, you make this one compromise and then all of

the normal things, the normal parts of life with God just go

out the window. How bizarre is it that the

commander of Israel doesn't inquire of the Lord.

So let me what do you think would have happened if Joshua

would have said there He doesn't know that a can ascend and so

they're they're they've become devoted to destruction.

What would have happened if Joshua would have said, Lord, is

this what we should do? Should we go up this way?

I think there's every expectation that God would have

said, no, don't do it because you're going to lose because

there's there's compromise. But not only is there a

compromise, there's also that that that sin leads to leads to

consequences that have compounded.

And so they don't reach out and therefore they lose two things.

They lose 36 human souls and then they lose the mystique of

invincibility. The Canaanites know they can be

beaten now, right before it's like nobody, nobody can stand

before these people. And they were right to think

that. But now they've, they've beaten

them. And Joshua says now they're

they're all going to know that we're vincible.

We're we're very vincible. I don't know if vincible is a

word or not, but it should be. OK, so the, the point is when

there's compromise in the community of faith, then the

basics of our faith begin to fail.

Like we, we've embraced the world and so we, we just

completely abandoned some of the most basic things.

They don't inquire. The Lord gentlemen, let me, let

me, let me exhort you don't do it on.

I'm not going to do it Monday, 'cause Monday's my birthday, but

let's all do it Tuesday. Let's stay married to our wives,

but let's just not talk to them all day.

Let's don't ask their opinion, let's don't spend time with

them. Let's don't hold their hand,

let's don't touch them, let's don't look at them.

Let's just do our thing and see if that works, right?

No, that's just basic life with a bride, right?

Talk to her, right? Be around her.

It's the same thing with the Lord that we are.

Yes, we're in covenant community with him.

And then we're also to be men and women of prayer and like

God, we need direction. We need, there's a, there's a

fight here. And so we need to inquire.

We need to know what God is like.

It is, it's a phenomenal thing to me that they compromise in

this one way. And then there's compound

consequences of of those other things.

And so it's it's helpful for us to see that that sin, sin always

has further impact. So fourth thing, the lots never

lie. This is kind of amazing.

Imagine for a moment that you're an Israelite, right?

And you're told we lost a battle because somebody here in this

room has compromised, somebody has sold us out, right?

And we start looking around, Who's it going to be right?

Is it me? Is it you?

Who is it right? And so we start to look around

like anybody would. And we're going to cast lots

and, and the Lord is going to reveal by lot.

I fancy if you think about it for a moment, if you've been

tracking with the story that if you were told as an Israelite,

there's somebody in the camp that has a little bit of Jericho

with them. And therefore we're all

compromised. We have to root out whoever

among us has a little bit of Jericho in US.

Who is the very first person that we're all going to pick?

It's Rahab the prostitute. Of course it is.

It's the woman from Jericho. It's the Jericho lady, right?

If we, if we just were, were trusting our own judgment, we

would have a predisposed prejudice against Rahab, the

Jericho prostitute. And if we knew our Bibles really

well, like I'm sure we all do, we would have a predisposed pass

to a particular tribe, the tribe over which was prophesied that

the scepter would not depart from this tribe until he comes

to whom it belongs, namely the tribe of Judah.

We would, we would have a tendency to look at tribes like

Judah, the tribes of the Levites, that the priestly

tribe, the kingly tribe, and we would tend to want to give them

an absolute pass, right. If anybody is suspect, it's got

to be, it's got to be Rahab the prostitute.

Well, the fact is, if we judge by worldly standards, we would

suspect Rahab and we would give a pass to Judah.

And it's the exact opposite thing that happens.

Rahab is innocent and it's the kingly tribe, a man among the

kingly tribe who is guilty of the great sin.

So brothers and sisters, this is the reason I said a couple weeks

ago that when Jesus shows up to Joshua and Joshua says, are you

for us or for our enemies? And Jesus said, say it with me.

No, I'm not. I'm the commander of the Lord's

army. And I told you that we would see

a a greater depth of what that means.

And this is it, that at that moment he's standing on the cusp

of the fall of Jericho. And Joshua says, Lord, are you

for us or are you for them? And Jesus says no, because I

have a faithful and a loyal woman in there with a household

that's going to be with me forever.

And then I have compromised, broken, rebellious people on

this side. And so I'm not for them.

I'm not for you. You guys can be with me.

The answer is no. So you have the Jericho

prostitute who is much more suited to rise up by faith and

take dominion upon the earth and take possession of what God has

promised. And then you have a son of the

royal tribe in Israel that is ill suited to receive the

inheritance. Isn't that marvellous?

Jesus has some people that are not yet in covenant with him.

And then there are some people styling themselves as Christians

within the covenant community that are very much not his

people, not fit to be his people.

So it's just helpful for us to remember.

It's helpful for us to remember. OK, fifth thing is that you have

consequences and you have conversions when there is sin.

I wonder if you would agree with this that one of the greatest

kindnesses God ever bestows upon people is to expose sin that

you're too ashamed to repent of. Now I don't want to see a show

of hands, but mine is in the air if I'm answering this question.

Have you ever been too ashamed of sin to repent, to just

acknowledge it openly and say, guys, this is what I done and I

need mercy, would you please forgive me?

Have you ever been too ashamed to repent?

Yes, you have, and yes, I have. And sometimes getting caught is

the greatest kindness that God can bestow upon us.

And so I don't know if it feels like good news or not to you,

but it is good news that God has willed that if you're in

covenant with him, he has willed that you would be free from sin

and he will find you out. We're told in Numbers 3223, be

sure your sin will find you out. That is a biblical promise.

And so we're we're given this, we're given this promise that

our sin is going to find us out. And so it's, it's very

interesting, right? We could, we could hammer Akin,

right? You're standing next to him and

let's just pretend you know it's him.

And you're saying like, brother, it's coming for you like that

like. All of Israel is there and he's

thinking maybe it won't work. And then the lot falls to Judah

and he's like, shoot, that's close.

And then it falls to just closer and closer and closer.

And he doesn't repent until it comes all the way down to him.

And we might hammer him, but we need to remember that we've also

been in the same in the same boat.

Sixth thing I want to show you is that hard consequences.

There are hard consequences in the beginning of every major

work of the Lord. OK, so sometimes we can read

this and we could say, man, that is like that is so harsh.

It seems like such a harsh punishment that Aiken and his

and his household undergo. But I want to show you

something. There's a biblical mega theme

that anytime God does start to do a great work, there's always

very, very clear hard consequences at the start of it

in order to keep us on the right road.

And so I want to give you a couple examples here.

So in the right after the Exodus, when they're walking in

the wilderness and they receive the law and they receive a

command that the Sabbath is to be honored, they find a man

collecting sticks on the Sabbath.

It's like it's the first time this ever happens.

A man is out there working on the Sabbath and they, they, they

see him and they bring him to Moses.

And they say, what, what do we do?

What do we do with this guy? And Moses goes and inquires of

the Lord, what do we do with this guy?

And God says, Stone him to death with stones, that Israel might

know that my Sabbath shall be honored and it shall be kept.

Now it's the last person in the world that's ever that I know of

that's stoned for picking up sticks on the Sabbath.

But it's there's a beginning weight that God is establishing

that when we are in covenant with this God, we he is, he is

expecting us to obey. You have this, the very outset

of the conquest of the land of Canaan, the first city to fall

is Jericho, and the first city, Aiken violates the command and

he takes what's devoted. And Aiken and his entire family

and all that he has, they die. They're stoned to death with

stones. So there's this, there's this

great consequence that comes at the beginning of a work of God.

And very interestingly, there is a New Testament, lest we think

that God in the Old Testament is a God of wrath and anger, and in

the New Testament is a God of grace and mercy.

Does the name Ananias and Sapphira mean anything to you?

That right after the Holy Spirit comes and founds the Church of

Christ at Pentecost, very soon after that the church is blowing

up like crazy and people in Jerusalem, the church members in

Jerusalem start selling their homes and giving the proceeds to

the church. By the way, it's not communism,

it's post millennialism. They know that the ground that

Israel is standing on in Jerusalem is about to be worth a

whole lot of nothing. And so while it's valuable,

we're going to sell it and we're going to bless the community

because we know that Christ is going to keep his word and bring

judgment to this generation. And so it's not communism.

They're just selling off what is soon to not have any value.

And Ananias and Sapphira concoct a scheme to sell their land,

let's say for 1,000,000 bucks. And then they, they bring

500,000 to the elders and they say that the apostles and elders

and they say we sold the land for 500 grand.

And Peter says, why are you lying to the Holy Spirit?

The land is yours, the money is yours.

You don't have to give us anything but to lie about it to

try and deceive the Holy Spirit. That's going to cost you.

An an Ananias dies and as the men carry him out, Sapphira

comes in and Peter says, did you sell it for a million or for

500,000? And she said, oh, we sold it for

500,000. And he said the the shadow of

the, of the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the

door and they will bury you too. And she dies.

And it's the same thing of like when God, when God is starting

off of work, it's like he wants to sink down deep in us that

God's works matter. They really matter.

And he wants to be obeyed. He wants to be trusted and he

wants to be obeyed and he shall be.

And so we have all of these times in, in the Scripture where

at the beginning of a work of God, a very hard consequence

falls upon, upon those who violate the covenant. 7th and

last thing I want to show you from this text is that mercy,

mercy can coexist with remaining consequence.

OK, so let me ask you something. Can you be eternally forgiven

for a sin while yet experiencing lasting consequence for that

rebellion? Is that possible?

The answer is very much so it is possible.

It's it's probable. I think that we will see akin in

glory and I'll and I'll tell you why.

Even though he waits to the very till the lot finally falls to

him and he's exposed, he actually does repent.

He actually does. You'll notice that when Joshua

says, hey, confess your sin, tell me what you've done.

He doesn't say no, no, not me. I didn't do anything.

I don't know what this lot is talking about.

He says, look, I saw something that was valuable and I took it

and I he says I coveted he named his sin.

And so I think there is real repentance that God really does

honor. Of course, it's too late.

All of our repentance is way too late.

But I think that I think that though Aiken experienced A

devastating consequence in his life, I don't think there's

anything in the text that necessitates us seeing him as a

damned man, and certainly not his family.

So you, you know the story of David, David and Bathsheba.

He when, when Nathan comes and tells him the story, David says

that guy who would do that thing, who would steal, he has a

bunch of sheep of his own. He steals the one beloved sheep

of the poor man and he kills him.

That guy who would do such a thing deserves to die.

And then he pronounces his judgement on him.

He says according to law, that man must pay fourfold.

He must make fourfold restitution, which is according

to, to, to biblical law. If I steal your cow and I still

have it, I give you back your cow and then I give you 1 of

mine. Lex talionis, we balance it out.

But if I steal your cow and I kill it and eat it, I can't give

that back to you. And so I'm to give you 4 of my

own. That's that's according to just

Old Testament biblical law. And so David says, though the

man deserves to die, it's not an offense punishable by death.

He needs to give fourfold. And do you know that David in

his life lost four sons? He lost the baby that he

conceived with Bathsheba, he lost Amnon, he lost Absalom, and

he lost Adonijah, all of them to murder.

So David in that text where he says that man must pay fourfold,

David says you're, Nathan tells David, you're the man.

And David says, I've sinned against the Lord.

And the next thing that we hear is Nathan saying the Lord has

forgiven your your sin. He really did forgive David.

We will spend an eternity with David.

And yet those consequences remain.

And so that's part of what we need to understand.

We need to have let that idea have an impact on us in these

ways. First of all, brothers and

sisters, that it would lead us to never play around with sin.

The greatest word on sin is that sin always takes you farther

than you want to go. It keeps you longer than you

want to stay, and it costs you more than you want to pay.

Sin always does that to us. And so we need to, we need to

treat our sin like we might treat a serpent in our skivvies.

OK, you follow me. Treat your sin like you would

treat a cockroach in your coffee cup.

But just imagine this, right? You get up in the morning.

It's quiet. It's calm.

You're going to go read your Bible.

You pour a delicious cup of bitter coffee that Lila has

made, and you're about to sip it.

And you look down in there and there's a breaststroking

cockroach in your coffee cup just swimming around.

And you say, you know, I should do something about that.

But first, I'm going to read my Bible.

And 1st, I'm going to talk to my wife.

And 1st, I'm going to pray. Right?

No, you don't pray, you don't breathe, you don't do anything

until you get rid of the cockroach that's breaststroking

in your coffee cup. You follow me.

Treat your sin that way. We are to we are to deal with

sin now. And by deal with it, I mean we

are to kill it. The standard is to mortify our

sin by the power of the Spirit. Because brothers and sisters,

sin is an enemy that is either kill or be killed.

It's never manage. You're never told manage

curtail, sort of, you know, balance out.

We are told to murder our sin by the power of the Spirit.

And so let let your sin drive you to dependence upon the Lord.

Secondly, confess your sin early and often to everybody that

you've hurt, anybody who anytime your sin is public, you need to

you need to confess it as publicly as you have made it.

And then you make restitution wherever possible, praying all

the while that God would be merciful not only to eternally

to the consequences of your sin, which he will always do, but it

is fitting God, would you, would you be that merciful to me that

you would relieve the temporal consequences of my sin?

And be gentle, be gentle in your judgement, in your discipline.

Thirdly, on this, on this idea is that we need to be mindful of

the price that others will have to pay for our sin.

Do you think for a moment that a man with a wife and children

that sees generational wealth right there is not thinking

like, man, what can I do for my wife?

Like what can I do for my kids? If I just take this like there's

no, there's nothing in the text that says Aiken just wanted to

go have his own, you know, private party island.

It's there. There's every indication that

he's a family man, that he's wanting to bless his family in

the long run. So, so you have, you have this

opportunity for him to by disobedience to improve his net

worth, to improve his family standing, to give them security.

But by that sin, look what he did.

He ended up cutting off his entire family line by that one

sin. And so part of the part of the

lie that Satan loves to tell us and part of the lie that we love

to believe is that my sin can just remain a private thing that

only impacts me. And the greatest way that we

could see that that cannot be true is what did it cost God to

be merciful to even one of your smallest sins?

It cost the blood of his Son. So we need to be mindful of the

price that others will have to pay when we walk in sin.

Fourthly, and lastly, we we need to remember that the promise of

sin. This is an amazing thing to

think about. The promise of sin pales in

comparison to the reward of faithful obedience.

So. So what did Akin get?

What did he get when he when he coveted the goods?

Well, he got sweet new duds. He got a pound and a quarter of

gold and he got just under 5 lbs of silver.

And what did he do with it? Nothing.

He buried. He had to dig a hole.

It cost him more work. He had to bury it in his tent.

It didn't benefit it him at all. It taken for blessing, but it

ended up being a curse. This is like if you've ever seen

that, which I'm not recommending it, but if you ever seen the

movie No Country for Old men, that's Aiken's experience.

You see this, you see the suitcase and in it is

generational wealth. It's a game changing one day of

wealth and you take it, But instead of it being a blessing,

it is the suitcase that marks you out to be haunted until you

die. That's the that's the theme

here. Consequently, or conversely, if

Aiken had said, you know, that would be really awesome to have,

but God has said no, if he would have held held fast and

obedience, he would have been part of countless victories in

Israel in the conquest that God didn't say all of the proceeds

go into the temple. You can keep spoils of war after

countless victories that Israel enjoyed.

And so untold wealth is just waiting for Aiken to be patient

and to trust and to obey. Untold wealth awaited all the

men who left what God told them to leave and took what God told

them to take everywhere else. So it's like a sirens song.

The world always offers us untold pleasure, untold wealth,

untold experience. But when we listen and we take

the bait, our ships are wrecked upon the rocks.

It's a pipe dream. It's not.

It will not deliver. But if we tie ourselves to the

mast of obedient faith, we will make it home unscathed.

And brothers and sisters, Ithaca awaits.

And fair Penelope awaits as well.

This table is not just a promise of future blessing.

This table is the very fulfillment and enjoyment of a

greater possession than can be imagined.

Will it be better when the Kingdom is fully established?

Of course. But it's fully here right now.

You offer the man who knows the Lord of this Table 2 doors

behind door #1 He can have every gold bar in the nation.

Behind door #2 is the Lord's table and all that it offers.

And let him choose one, one door for the man who knew what is

here. Offered what I'm about to offer

to you, there would be no hesitation.

Door #2 is higher, it is better, it is infinitely more valuable

in its pleasures. Dwarf all others.

And it is that door, brothers and sisters, that I get to offer

to you today. And so let me ask you, will you

take it? Will you forsake the world by

comparison to have this table of great price?

Would you sell all you have, even your eternal soul, to have

Christ as your Lord and as your treasure?

And if so, then I have great, great news for you.

He bids you let go of all of of all of that so that you might

hold on to him by faith alone. But in exchange, when it's all

said and done with Christ, you will be given all things by

grace. Our Father is always this way.

If he is your great delight, then you are given all other

delights as well, because he is the Father of delight.

So if you want Christ, he is here offered to you to receive.

So come and welcome to King Jesus.

Let me pray for us, Father. We love you.

And we do pray, Lord, that this text would have a sanctifying

work in US and that this table would have a sanctifying work in

US. That we would see here as we

take up the bread, the broken body of Christ, as we take up

the wine, his blood shed for the forgiveness of sin.

With the with the tale of Aiken echoing in our ears of a man who

made one bad decision and it cost him and his people their

lives and it cost his nation a compromising weakness and, and,

and loss. God that we would take all of

these things as just the reminder that our sin is not to

be played with, but it is to be repented of.

It is to be mortified. And so, Lord, for those of us

who are here today with tender consciences and any reminder of

sin is like a a gash and an open wound.

I pray that the healing word of your gospel, the God, the the

word of mercy, the word of grace, the word of pardon that's

full and free. In short, the word that is

offered at this table when we come eating and drinking and

remembrance of Christ. I pray that that would build us

up, that it would give us peace knowing that all sin that is

confessed is justly forgiven by the God of heaven in the name of

Christ. And so would you minister to us

here at the table, make us free from guilt and shame, and make

us free, Lord, from the power of sin in our lives.

We ask it in Jesus name, Amen.