The Sin That Troubled Israel

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning, we're going to look at the sin of Achan. So what happened? Why? Why did AI or why did I fall? Who is responsible? And what's the Lord going to do about it? Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into God's Word. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word. We thank you that it doesn't return void, that it is living and active. So, Father, we pray that you would use your Holy Spirit this morning to teach us, Lord, to instruct us in your ways. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, here we go. Joshua chapter 7, beginning at verse 10. So the Lord said to Joshua, get up.
Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things, and have stolen and deceived, and they have also put it among their own stuff. Therefore, the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they have become doomed to destruction.
Neither will I be with you anymore, unless you destroy the accursed from among you. Get up! Sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow. Because thus says the Lord God of Israel, Sorry, there is an accursed thing in Israel in your midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you.
In the morning, therefore, you shall be brought according to your tribes. And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes shall come according to families. And the families which the Lord takes shall come by households, and the household which the Lord takes shall come man by man. Then it shall be that the one who is taken with the accursed thing 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 a disgraceful thing in Israel.
So Judah rose early in the morning and brought Israel by their tribes. And the tribe of Judah was taken. He brought the clan of Judah, and he took the families of the Zarahites, and he brought the family of the Zarahites man by man, and Zabdi was taken, and he brought the household man by man, and Achan, the son of Kamri, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah was taken.
Now Joshua said to Achan, my son, I beg you give glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession to him and tell me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me. And Achan answered Joshua and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I have done.
When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. And there they are hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent with the silver under it. So Joshua sent messengers and they ran to the tent and there it was hidden in the tent with the silver under it. And he took them from the midst of the tent, brought them to Joshua and to all the children of Israel and laid them out before Jehovah. Then Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, the garment, the wedge of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, and all that he had.
And they brought them to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, Why have you troubled us? Yehovah will trouble you this day. So all Israel stoned him with stones, and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. Then they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day.
Well, whew, that's a difficult passage. We need to ask ourselves, A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? So what's this passage about? Remember, they had gone up to fight against Ai, and they lose. And it's because somebody has taken one of the accursed things, right? Everything in Jericho was supposed to be devoted to God. They weren't allowed to keep any of it, right? This was God as the covenant king with the first spoils of war, And what do we find? Well, we find Achan taking something. The army loses, fighting inside, has to run with their tail between their legs. A couple dozen guys die. And this is the answer. What do they do?
Lord says, get off your face, Joseph, or get off your face, Joshua. Do something about it, go, family by family. So tribe by tribe, clan by clan, man by man, family by family, until you get to the guy that I'm gonna show you is the one who does it. So that's what Joshua does, he goes. And it's the other 12 tribes somehow, it's Judah. And then to the clan, and then to the family, and then to the man, Achan.
And he's confronted, what have you done, man? Have courage, be honest, tell me what you did. And he says, stole the Babylonian garment. There's also some silver and gold and I took that too. What did he do? He hid it. Buried a hole in his tent and hid it. Probably put like a rug or a table over the top of it so that way people wouldn't see it. He goes and he hides. Tries to act like everything's okay. So they go and they find the cursed things. They see that no, this is true. He did sin against God. He stole from the Lord. And then he and his family suffer capital punishment.
Now at this point, I need to back up because we're going to talk about some calling stuff, and this is important, right? But what is this about, right? This is really about Achan's sin. But Achan and his family are put to death. But see, this is the difficult thing about sin, right? Sin takes you and entices you. Achan thought that if he had that garment, and if he had that gold and silver, he had this desire in him, and that desire would be fulfilled. And that's what sin does, right?
It entices us. But once it ensnares us, the joy and pleasure that it once held out to us, fails us. Harms us and harms people around us. God's not an idiot. And He didn't let sin just go unpunished forever. Yeah, even in this life, it may seem like the unrighteous, the unjust flourish and the righteous suffer, but the Lord says He's going to judge the living and the dead. He's going to judge the righteous and the unrighteous, and so we trust Him with the ultimate judgment. But in this life, I see it all the time.
Achan couldn't enjoy the stuff he had. He had to bury it. You can imagine every time he would open the door to his tent, concerned and fearful, oh no, is somebody going to find what's hidden underneath the floor? His conscience uneasy before God and before men, his relationship and his family. People have to start covering over for his sin. Hiding, right? They know it's there. But they don't want to say anything. They won't say anything.
They become complicit in hiding his treason against Jehovah God himself, the Covenant King. And I see this all the time. When one spouse decides they're going to start sinning and the other spouse covers for it, and they tell their kids to lie about it, and then things start getting just a big old mess. Families become embroiled in generational sin. until some house, some way eventually comes out or everything unravels. And then sadly, there's sin destroys. So sin deceives, right?
When we want to think about a desire and chase after that desire that's forbidden, we don't actually get the joy that we wanted, the pleasure that we wanted, and it destroys our relationship between God and others. And so this is what the Lord is telling us here. This is the reality of sin. And so what are we called to do? How does this possibly show us Jesus Christ?
Unlike Joshua, who commits, you know, commits Achan to death, right, when he says to them, Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day. So all Israel stoned him with stones. That's how Joshua dealt with it, and righteously. But our Joshua Jesus comes. And he might say to us, My children, I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel. Make confession to him and tell me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me. And then when we confess our sins, the one who's the just takes the stones for us.
The just dying for the unjust that he might bring us to God. Achan was destroyed in the flesh because of his disbelief. because of his violating of God as his covenant king. But now there is a way forward for us who are also those who would be unrighteous to confess our sins to God because our Joshua, our Yeshua, Jesus has died for us. He was the one put to death for our offenses, a substitution for us.
And so it's a better way forward now. It was a better Joshua, a better hope. So I hope that you'll trust in him and that you'll be honest about your sins. Take courage, confess them. For we know that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and he is just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the joy it is to follow Jesus Christ, our covenant King. Teach us to walk in your ways, Lord, we pray in Jesus's name. Amen. May God bless you. May you walk in his ways and enjoy his favor forever. I'll see you next time. Bye.