Achan

Introduction This morning we are in the desolate landscape of Joshua 7. So could you summon up your courage and turn to that chapter, which you can find on p221 in the pew Bibles. There is also an outline on the back of the service sheet, but I want to take some time before I get to my headings. Who is in our sights as we read this chapter? "Achan son of Carmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah" as v1 calls him, least we mistake his identity. In fact, to be even more specific, it is the sin of this Achan - one particular sin - on which I want to focus. But let me just point the camera round onto ourselves for a bit first. When we admire someone greatly, there is a powerful impulse to idealise them. If evidence comes to light that suggests that our hero is far from ideal, it gets swept under the carpet. We need heroes and do not want their image to be tarnished. You would think that this was a way of thinking that Christians would not be prone to. After all, we know that everyone is a sinner. And yet is it not the case that we very easily fall into the trap of idealising our heroes of the faith? Some Christian speaker or author or even a friend becomes in our minds a paragon of Godliness. But perhaps the greatest danger lies in the way that we idealise ourselves. We like to think that we are better than we are. We like to think that our progress in Godliness is greater than it is. And then we begin to think we are invincible, like a driver way over the limit who shouts to potential pursuers, "Catch me if you can!" One of the most sobering and valuable lessons that we can learn is just how vulnerable we are to sin. The truth is that sin can come crashing into our Christian lives with all the force of a heavy car going into concrete at 100mph. The long term impact of sin is quite as great. We learn the lesson best when we suddenly get a window on to what our heroes of the faith are really like inside. Not just feet of clay but pretty much clay from head to foot, but for the grace of God in their lives. A few years back I was deeply impressed with the writings of a man called Gordon MacDonald. I was not the only one. Billy Graham said of one of his books: "It struck me right between the eyes with conviction and I wish that I had read it many years ago." Another eminent man, a friend of many well known Christian leaders, described him as "one of the most Godly men I have ever met." He was the President of the equivalent of the UCCF in the United States - a major national evangelical organisation. Here was a man I could learn from. I remember vividly the shock that I felt when I heard that he had admitted committing adultery, and resigned all his positions of leadership. Before then, I believed in my head that human nature was universally deeply sinful, that this tendency will not die before heaven, and that Christians have to engage in ceaseless warfare with it. In that moment, what I believed intellectually I suddenly understood with my heart. I have never had Christian heroes in the same way since. And in a flash I became even more aware of my own spiritual frailty. If this man, with all his much vaunted spiritual discipline, could fall so hard, then no-one was immune from danger, ever. To take one example: you might have thought that Israel was in a pretty healthy spiritual state in the afterglow of the miraculous capture of Jericho that Christopher (of blessed memory) was telling us about only last week. By the way, if you haven't heard or read his sermon I recommend that you do so. I do not intend to repeat the important and helpful points he made about coming to terms with the apparent harshness of God's judgement in these chapters. You might have thought that Israel was on a spiritual roll. Indeed, look at the final verse of chapter 6: "So the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land." Joshua, the hero of faith, is at the head of a people who have just seen God at work among them with astonishing power, as he acted to fulfil his promises to them. There is nothing there to prepare us for the beginning of chapter 7:

But the Israelites acted unfaithfully in regard to the devoted things; Achan son of Carmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of them. So the LORD's anger burned against Israel.

What were "the devoted things"? All the spoils of war that had been captured with Jericho. The Lord, through Joshua, had given crystal clear instructions as to what should happen to them, and an iron warning about the consequences of disobedience. 6.18-19:

But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the LORD and must go into his treasury.

This warning was not heeded by Achan until it was too late. Without going through all the details, which you can read for yourself, the bare bones of what happened are these. The Israelites are defeated trying to take the next town, Ai. Joshua is devastated. The Lord tells him to stop his histrionics and root out the sin in his camp. "They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions" he says (v11). In full view of all the people, God shows Joshua that Achan is the man. Verse 19:

Then Joshua said to Achan, "My son, give glory to the LORD, the God of Israel, and give him the praise. Tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me." Achan replied, "It is true! I have sinned against the LORD, the God of Israel. This is what I have done: When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.

In accordance with God's command Achan, along with all his family, his animals and his possessions, are first stoned to death and then burned. Why? Because (v15): "He has violated the covenant of the Lord and done a disgraceful thing in Israel." The sorry tale ends (v26):

Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his fierce anger. Therefore that place has been called the Valley of Achor ever since.

After that, with the Lord's guidance, they go back to Ai, and the scene of earlier ignominious defeat is turned into comprehensive and God-given victory. We are all sinners and we have all sinned. Because all sin is defiance of the Living God, it all has the same root cause in our rebellious nature. Yet it remains true today as in the days of Joshua that some particular sins are more serious in their consequences than others. There is a tension in those two truths that we need to live with. Christians cannot afford to compromise with even the slightest sin. The smallest disobedience is still defiance of our Saviour and Lord who we claim to love. And what is more there is a slippery slope from relatively slight sin to gross sin. Yet at the same the time we need to work on steering clear of gross sin. And if we do fall, God forbid, then we need to know how to deal with it. What were the steps that lead to Achan's sin? We come finally to my first heading: First, THE STEPS TO SIN One thing that is clear from this chapter, and indeed from the whole of the Bible beginning with Adam, is that sin has a corporate as well as an individual dimension. When people fall into gross sin, we cannot ignore the spiritual environment of which they are a part. Without in any way diminishing the individual responsibility of Achan, there are signs here in the early part of the chapter that after the victory at Jericho things have gone off the rails. The victory seems to have gone to the heads of the Israelites. It is common enough. Oswald Chambers puts it like this:

The Bible characters never fell on their weak points but on their strong ones; unguarded strength is double weakness.

There seems to be a spiritual as well as physical laziness creeping in when the latest group of spies return from their recce of Ai and report (v3)

"Not all the people will have to go up against Ai. Send two or three thousand men to take it and do not weary all the people, for only a few men are there.

Such laziness generally accompanies spiritual pride, which takes credit for victories that should be credited to the grace of God alone. There is no sign here of the Israelites seeking guidance. It is his strategy that they are a part of, not their own. The Lord is working through them to fulfil his promises, and yet maybe they are beginning to think that they have learned a thing or two and can do without him now. Prayerlessness and inattention to the Word of God are precursors to the slide into gross sin. They are accompanied by a decrease in the level of faith that is being exercised. Joshua's response to the humiliating defeat at Ai is a telling indication the even he is losing sight of God's promises and the certainty of their fulfilment. Joshua, like the rest of us, starts to pray when disaster strikes, but listen to what he says (v7):

"Ah, Sovereign LORD, why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? If only we had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan!

So there is pride, complacency and faithlessness here. A lethal spiritual cocktail. Achan, it seems, had been breathing this spiritual atmosphere. As is the way with sin, one thing leads to another. The process is neatly and chillingly summed up in his admission of guilt in verses 20-21:

"This is what I have done: When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.

Maybe he said to himself "I'll just have a look at the treasure while nobody else is around", with no intention of theft. But if he had stopped to examine his motives he would have found the possibility of theft already lodged in the back of his mind. His sinful tendency was not produced by what he saw. It was already lurking . C.S.Lewis puts his finger on how this works in a typically graphic way:

If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar

So he looks. He covets. He takes. And he hides his sin. That is the horrible and horribly familiar stairway to sin. James 1.14-15 sums the process up in a New Testament context:

each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

After his own fall from grace, Gordon MacDonald recalled an encounter with a friend that had taken place some time before:

"My friend asked a strange question "If Satan were to blow you out of the water," he asked, "how do you think he would do it?" "I'm not sure I know, I answered. "All sorts of ways, I suppose; but I know there's one way he wouldn't get me." "What's that?" "He'd never get me in the area of my personal relationships. That's one place where I have no doubt that I'm as strong as you can get." A few years after that conversation my world broke wide open. A chain of seemingly innocent choices became destructive, and it was my fault. Choice by choice by choice, each easier to make, each becoming gradually darker. And then my world broke - in the very area I had predicted I was safe - and my world had to be rebuilt.

Well, once sin has been committed, what happens as a result? My next heading is: Secondly, THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN The effects of Achan's action are clear and frightening - a chain reaction leading to catastrophe, not for him only, but for his family and indeed for all the people of God. We cannot be isolated from the consequences of one-another's sin. The Lord's anger burns against Israel because of their unfaithfulness. They suffer humiliating defeat. They are overcome with fear as they realise they are on their own and not invincible after all. Verse 5: "the hearts of the people melted and became like water". They are rebuked by the Lord, who withdraws his immediate presence from them until they get back on track. Verse 12: "I will not be with you any more unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction." The sin is brought out into the open. We do all we can to ensure that our sins stay hidden in the darkness, but the day will come for all of us when they are brought into the light. Achan thought he could hide from God. Ananias and Sapphira in the early days of the church thought they could hide from God. How ridiculous. Jesus said:

There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. (Luke 8.17-18)

Then the exposed sinner acknowledges God's justice. Verse 20: "It is true! I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel." The sin is purged by the destruction of the sinner and everything and everyone that is entangled in his sin. And God's justice is satisfied. Verse 26: "Then the Lord turned from his fierce anger." Let me quote Gordon MacDonald again:

When the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union blew up, not only the managers of the station suffered. Thousands of people who lived in the vicinity lost their homes, and the food supply of millions was affected by the spreading radiation. Just so, the broken-world experience damages not only the misbehaving person; the consequences can threaten scores of innocent people who live with what might be called fall-out. There can be many losses when an ungodly act occurs, and the losses may spread across the network of one's relationships and even endure through several generations. I am a broken-world person because a few years ago I betrayed the covenants of my marriage. For the rest of my life I will have to live with the knowledge that I brought deep sorrow to my wife, to my children, and to friends and others who have trusted me for many years

Joshua 7 is a searing lesson about sin and the judgement that it brings. Thank God that justice is not the end of the story. The book of Joshua is not ultimately about the just condemnation of God's people. It is part of the continuing story of how God is saving his people despite themselves. It is about mercy. But it is only when we know ourselves, and the depths from which we have been rescued by Jesus, that we begin to see God's mercy in all its glory. John Bunyan, recalling his own sinful life, wrote this:

I never saw those heights and depths in grace, and love, and mercy, as I saw after this temptation: great sins draw out great grace; and where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty.

There is an escape route from sin. And that is my final heading: Finally, THE ESCAPE ROUTE FROM SIN Galatians 3.13:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

One last quote from Gordon MacDonald:

My perception is that broken-world people exist in large numbers, and they ask similar questions over and over again. Can my world ever be rebuilt? Do I have any value? Can I be useful again? Is there life after misbehaviour? My answer is yes. That is what grace is all about. A marvellous, forgiving, healing grace says that all things can be new.

The escape route from sin is Jesus. The wellspring of forgiveness is Jesus. The power to mend broken lives and set us on our feet again is Jesus. The one who can guard us against the devastation of sin is Jesus. What will this mean for us if we are to escape from past sin that hangs around our necks like a great millstone? To begin with, we need to accept our guilt. We must give up making excuses for ourselves. But we must not wallow in our guilt. In the film Chariots of Fire, there is a scene in which Eric Liddell is in a pack of runners and breaking for the lead. Suddenly he is thrown off balance, and he crashes heavily on to the grass inside the track. The camera zooms in on him as he lifts his head to see the other athletes pulling away without even looking behind. It is a moment that seems to last for minutes. Will he get up again? He does. And he begins to run. And he wins. If we fall in the Christian life, God does not want us to stay down. The Lord said to the wallowing Joshua: "Stand up! What are you doing down on your face? Israel has sinned." If we have not yet done so, we must stop sinning. We cannot expect forgiveness if we have not renounced our sin. We must seek mercy. There is only one place to find it and that is in Jesus, and through his death for us on the cross, where the price of our sin was paid once for all. Once forgiven, we must keep on seeking grace from Jesus for the future. Grace to put right what can be put right of the damage that our sin has caused. Grace to accept and deal with whatever continuing consequences of our sin there may be. And grace to avoid future sin. We need to learn to recognise when we are beginning to lose control on the long downhill slide towards sin. We need to learn to turn off on to the escape road before we crash at the bottom. Keep alert to the dangers by remembering constantly where your life fits into the big picture of God's great strategy of salvation. Then our short term sinful desires can be put in their place as we are caught up in the glory of God's long term campaign to bring in his Kingdom through the Saviour Jesus. Pay careful attention to God's commands and warnings. They are here in the Bible. We are without excuse. Be aware of your weaknesses. G.K.Chesterton said: "The one spiritual disease is thinking that one is quite well." Seek God's help and strength. And get out the way of temptation. Don't wander across for "just a look" at the treasure if you have no business to be there. Conclusion One reviewer of Billy Graham's recently published autobiography writes in appreciation of Billy Graham's integrity. He says: "My father once told me that the three pitfalls of the ministry are pride, women, and money. The whole world knows that Billy is morally upright. But a vow never to be alone with a woman other than his beloved? Finances as clean as the driven snow, yes. But turning down the offer of complete bankrolling for all his enterprises in order to stay dependent on the Lord and in touch with the millions of ordinary people who pray and give? Beyond integrity!" There is more than a hint of hero worship about that. Surely that point is this. Why is it that Billy Graham goes to such lengths to avoid temptation? Is it because his integrity is such that he is immune to it? Absolutely not. It is precisely because he has learned the lesson of how vulnerable he is. He has at least begun to take to heart the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10.12 (and with these I end):

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.