Joshua Part 8 - The Disaster of Broken Faith

Andrew Grey continues the series on the book of Joshua. The bible reference is Joshua 7v1-26. This sermon was given at Immanuel Church Brentwood on Sunday 2nd Nov 2025.

Transcript

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So, Bibles open, please, to uh Joshua chapter 7. Our Bible reading this morning is a little bit like a bucket of cold water. It delivers a shock. It's a good shock. It's a shock that's designed to wake up people who are stuck in sin. It's a passage designed to bring me, to bring you to our senses. That's what chapter seven is doing in our Bibles. You'll remember we are working our way through the book of Joshua, chapter by chapter, this term. Chapter six, it was triumph. How the Lord gave to his people victory at Jericho. You remember the backstory, rescued from slavery in Egypt, bound to God in covenant, a special relationship, wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, brought into the land. And all of this is not just ancient history, but it's Christian history. It is pictures of the Christian life and the church's journey with Jesus. And chapter 7, it begins with a very bad word. You'll see that it begins, but we go from triumph to disaster. So I'm going to pray and then I will read. Let's pray. Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we thank you that in the Bible we have not just information, but we have heavenly truth and power. Please show us good things from a painful corner of your word. And we ask that for Jesus' namesake. Amen. Amen. To begin with, I'm going to read Joshua 7 and just the first 12 verses. So Joshua 7, verses 1 to 12. Let's listen to the word of God. But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things. For Achan, the son of Kami, 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. Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth Aven, 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 said to him, Do not have all the people go up, but 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 three thousand men went up there from the people, and they fled before the men of Ai, and the men of Ai killed about thirty-six of their men, and chased 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. 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. And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us? Would that we had 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 all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and 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? 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. Really simply, disobedience brings disaster. That is the word from God in this first half of Joshua chapter 7. Disobedience brings disaster. Where I stopped reading, that is the center of the chapter. That is the hinge of the story. That's the crux. And it describes the disaster of all disasters where the Lord God says to his people, I will be with you no more. Now, how do we get to that point? We'll look back to the very first verse. Here's what happened. Here is the disobedience that led God to say, I will be with you no more. So something had happened during the capture of Jericho. So they're on their way into this land of promise. But in the previous chapter, something had happened behind the scenes that no one else had seen except the all-seeing eyes of the Lord God. A man called Achan took some of the devoted things. Remember, back in the previous chapter, there was one command given to the people don't take for yourself these devoted things. The silver and gold belong to the Lord. Everything else was to be devoted for destruction. This is the Lord's victory and the Lord's execution of judgment. This is not a time for the people to profit. However, but Achan. He had looted some of those things for himself. And so, end of verse one, the anger of the Lord, it burned against the people of Israel. And that's the greatest of all defeats and disasters. Sin, sin is so serious because it draws the wrath of our holy God. Sometimes might wish that God could ignore sin, but he can't, and he wouldn't. It would be an appalling universe in which a holy God ignored sin. And the greatest problem with what the Bible calls sin, it is not the pain that it causes me or even other people, it is the response that it prompts in our holy God. But did you notice it wasn't just Achan, or rather, what Achan did somehow implicated the entire people. See that in verse one. The people of Israel broke faith. Achan sinned, yet the whole nation acted unfaithfully, because in the way that God set things up, they were like a team. They were like a unit, they were like a family, a God-given web bound them together such that what one part did affects another part. So I can commit a sin which no other person knows about, and that can render the whole church unfaithful. And the response of God to Achan's sin, his anger burned against the people of Israel. The whole people felt the displeasure of God, his holy and righteous displeasure. Now, at the time, no one knew this. So when we read verse 1, we're being let into something that was uh real, true, it had happened, but the story then goes on, and no one else at the time knew about this. Well, obviously, apart from Achan. Joshua was oblivious. So he sets himself to the next bit of his job. Uh, he's been told to take the promised land, and so he goes about it. Next up on the map, it's the town of Ai and the spies report. It's only a small town, few defenders. It's not like Jericho, you just need a small fighting force. Maybe it's two or three thousand men. The word can actually be simply two or three units of men, might even be less than that. From their perspective, this is a walk in the park. So, 3,000 men go up, or maybe three units of men go up, and they fled. It was a disaster. They are routed, 36 are killed. And where previously we read that the the hearts of the Canaanites melted away. So this this very evil, God-hating people-destroying culture, when they heard about the one true God coming, their hearts melted. But now, do you see the end of verse 5? It's the people of Israel, their hearts melted and became as water. So it should have been a really simple exercise, shouldn't it? A very straightforward bit of work on the battlefield. Is it possible to imagine what an assault on AI might look like in the life of a church? I mean, have a think about that. A straightforward spiritual endeavor, if there is such a thing. But a straightforward or simple bit of gospel advance, trusting and obeying. But back in the story, they have they have no idea why this has happened. And so Joshua, he comes before God. He falls on his face, he comes before the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the Lord, the place where God's presence was symbolically focused back then, and also where the law of God and the word of the covenant that bound Israel to God, that's where it was. And he laments and he grieves and he cries out to God. And it's actually a really godly response to deep perplexity. And there are times when God's people, we just do not know what the Lord is doing. I mean, he humbles himself and he expresses this confusion. And then he pleads with God. But do you see how he pleads with God? He pleads with God for the sake of God's name. It's down in verse 9. So if we are cut off, you know, if we are destroyed, what will that do to your name and your fame? How will that reflect on you? And that is Joshua's great plea. You know, Lord, I don't understand what is going on. We are in a mess, we have been defeated, but most of all, I fear that your name is going to get dragged through the mud because of this. In verse 10, the Lord says to him, Get up. In a sense, stop praying because there's actually something you now need to do. Get off your face, listen to me. And then he explains to Joshua this terrible disaster and why it's come about. He sort of lets Joshua in on it. And he says, verse 11, Israel has sinned. Israel has sinned. They have stolen, stolen from God. These are God's things, and they have lied. And that is why you've been defeated, Joshua. Because of this sin, this hidden sin of this one man, yet Israel has sinned. In fact, Israel has become devoted for destruction. So that same judicial sentence, this sentence of death which was to be poured out on these very evil cultures in the land of Canaan, well, actually, now that same sentence of death is hanging over the people of Israel. It is chilling and it's really tragic, isn't it? And then we get to those words, end of verse 12, I will be with you no more. I will be with you no more. There are no worse words that you could imagine hearing. That though is not quite the end of the sentence, though, is it? Unless. Unless. Unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. Joshua, you need to deal with this sin. And that tips us into the second half of the chapter, the hinge. This is where the chapter turns. We're shown the remedy to this terrible sin. And the remedy, the medicine, if you like, it's not a small thing. It's not take a vitamin, uh, take a course of antibiotics. It's there is a really destructive treatment that is needed here. It's a bit like cancer treatment. Something must be destroyed because the Lord will have, and the Lord must have, a holy people. So pick up your Bibles again. I'm going to read from the end of verse 12 down to the end of the chapter. So the Lord says, verse 12, I will be with you no more unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. Verse 13, 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, 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 come near by 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 the Lord, 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 clans of Judah, and the clan of the Zerahites was taken. And he brought nearer the clan of the Zerahites man by man, and Zabdi was taken, and he brought near his household man by man, and Achan, the son of Kami, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, 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 God of Israel, and this is what I did. When I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shina, 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 Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent, and behold, it was hidden in his 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 the Lord. And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan, the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the cloak, and the bar of gold, and his sons and 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 today. And all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones, and they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the Lord turned from his anger. Therefore, to this day the name of that place is called the Valley of Acor. So, how is it then that God's burning anger is turned away? That's where the chapter ends. Actually, God's anger, uh it's a bit like bookends to this chapter. At the start, his anger burns, and at the end, his burning anger is turned away. There's probably no more important question, is there, to know than this. How is the burning anger of God against sin turned away? Now, in this second half of the chapter, just notice notice both the kindness and the severity of God. He is actually very kind, he's very patient. He knows that the people are ignorant of this hidden sin. It's not that every single person is guilty of a willful sin, a kind of shaking their fist against God. So he actually warns and he really kindly explains. And through Joshua, the situation is then set before the people and he tells the people what to do. So, you know, if you're in the greatest danger, say your house is on fire, you need to know what to do. So he says to them, You do not have my presence to bless you. So of course you're going to fall before your enemies. That is why you're in perplexity. Because you have transgressed the covenant, you've stolen, you've you've lied, you've sinned grievously. So he reminds them of their covenant. It's a bit like a marriage, how he bound himself to his people. I will be your God, you'll be my people. And they were to give themselves to each other, God and the people, in love and self-giving. And the Lord has been faithful. But it's a bit like the people have committed adultery, and it's an outrageous, outrageous thing. And the Lord tells them what to do. Consecrate yourselves. Consecrate yourselves. See that in verse 13. Sanctify the people. That is, be holy as you prepare now to meet God in his holy judgment. Now, we're not told here exactly how they were to sanctify themselves, you know, get themselves ready for this, what must have been a frankly terrifying encounter. But I wonder if it is simply this. Just stop and think for a moment. God had told them about a hidden sin. He told them that there was a coming judgment, and that gap, he was giving them a moment, wasn't he, to stop and reflect and think. Think about their corporate responsibility, how they're bound together, like members of a body. You know, how one person's sins actually affects the whole. And it was an opportunity for Aikan too. Would Achan freely come forwards? He doesn't. And so his sin is exposed to this rather strange and terrifying choosing. It looked like chance. We're told it was by lots. Now, when we th when we throw dice in a game of monopoly, uh, it has the appearance of chance, doesn't it? You know, the way the dice lands, but there's actually nothing chancy about it. Uh, the sovereign hand of God is working. We don't know how this was done. Maybe it was through the high priest. This was one of his jobs. But imagine what it would have been like in that moment for Achan. If his wife was in on this, maybe she was elbowing him. You know, go forward, you know, confess. Or maybe it was the opposite. We'll be fine. You know, no one will ever know, it's completely hidden. But either way, Achan keeps his mouth shut until he is finally whittled down and exposed. You know, tribe, clan, family, then there's only one man left standing, and it's Achan, and he finally confesses. And in verse 20, what we hear are very accurate and truthful words. We have no idea, by the way, whether this is a sign of true repentance or not. We have no clue. I actually don't think we're meant to speculate on Achan's heart, we're just not told. Uh I don't think we're meant to wonder about his eternal destiny. You know, heaven, hell. Well, that's that's the Lord's business, not ours. But we can listen to his words and let them press in on us and learn from them. And he says, doesn't he? Verse 20, Truly I have sinned against the Lord. And he gives his sin its proper weight. I have sinned against the Lord. Then in his confession, he knows what we all know: this inner psychological process that lies behind a willful sin. So he saw something, that's where it starts, isn't it? Verse 21. I saw something. It's a bit like Eve in the Garden of Eden. She saw something that was desirable, and he saw something beautiful, and it caught his eye. It wasn't just riches, but it was beauty. For him, it was a cloak and gold and silver. And maybe it reminds us here of King David and his disaster with Bathsheba. So here is something that in this moment is more desirable to me than God, more desirable than holiness. And in that moment, it's like God isn't even there. It's like he's evaporated, his law has just been erased. And I coveted. Verse 21, I coveted them. And we're taken straight to the Ten Commandments and the tenth commandment. Do not covet. And that lies at the root of all sin, doesn't it? It's desiring something which just is not yours to have. I want this thing. Um, Bible explorers, Bible discoverers in Sunday school earlier today, you were you were thinking about um idolatry and how coveting something is actually worshipping something instead of the one true God. And Achan is a horrible example of this, isn't it? I want this thing, I want this experience, or I want this person, whatever it may be, even though it is not mine to have. And then the last bit, verse 21, I hid it. I hid it. That's what we do with our sin. We bury it. I saw, I coveted, I hid. So then they go and check out his story. They run to his tent, they find the stuff, and they lay it out before the Lord, and then God's judgment is carried out. It is executed like God's judgment was executed on Jericho, the city. God's judgment is executed on Achan, and it is terrible and it is holy. It's both. It's terrible and it's holy. He's stoned and he's burned. A couple of lines from Dale Ralph Davis are helpful here. The severity of the judgment is an index to the enormity of the sin. Our problem here is, sinners that we are, we don't think breaking Yahweh's covenant is all that big a deal. We really cannot understand God's wrath because sin does not bother us much. It's worth reflecting on that. And it's not just Achan, too, it's all of Achan's household. Were they in on it too? Well, possibly. His animals, I take it though, weren't. And we're reminded, now we are not just raw individuals. The Lord puts us in covenant relationships. This idea of corporate solidarity, it is real in God's universe. So later in Joshua, we'll hear Joshua say, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So the head of a house can and should lead his house into the ways of the Lord. Achan teaches us that the head of a house can bring utter disaster upon his wife, his children, and household. And finally we read at the end of the chapter, and then, then justice has been poured out, then the Lord turned from his burning anger. A memorial was left in this great heap of stones in the valley of trouble. That's what Acor means, trouble, the valley of trouble, a reminder how one man's sin brought trouble on a whole people, how he in turn was troubled by the Lord. There's a terrible but right justice in God's justice. There always is. There's like a mirror, trouble for trouble. So do you see why I say this chapter is a bit like a bucket of cold water? It is sharp, uh, it is well, it should wake us up, but it comes with a blessing of the Lord. Just as we finish up, just a few reflections. He hasn't changed. Um, God hasn't changed. He is still holy, he still desires and demands a holy people. And the New Testament makes that really clear. Jesus warns his churches about this. In the book of Acts, we see how the Holy Spirit killed Ananias and Sapphira, husband and wife, two early Christians who stole and lied. It's eerily similar. The apostles, they commanded the church to exercise church discipline because sin spreads in the body of Christ. So, Christian people, we are encouraged to deal with sin and put it to death. Now we don't we don't seek to throw off old sins to earn forgiveness. That's not how the gospel works. But alongside the free forgiveness that Jesus gives his people is also the power and the obligation to fight, you know, filled with the Holy Spirit, enabled, empowered, and then commanded to fight. And it's so hard, isn't it? It is very hard to throw off sin. Sometimes we need, often we need help to repent, to get from like a mental decision, I want to throw this thing off, to actual repentance, actual turning. Sometimes we need to say to someone, I can't do this on my own, help me. Well, do ask for that help if that is you. But as we finish, do you see how this chapter leads us directly to the gospel and to the cross of Christ? And here it is Christ was troubled, so that we need not be. Later on in the story of the Old Testament in Hosea chapter 2, there is a very lovely line. Um, God has been reflecting on a broken covenant. Uh his people have, you know, quite frankly, broken their marriage vows to him. They've committed spiritual adultery. And he says, I will make the valley of Acor a door of hope. So he reflects on this terrible incident, which has quite frankly been repeated again and again in the life of his people. And he says, I will make this valley of trouble into a door of hope. And that's what the Lord did through Jesus and through the cross of Christ. Trouble for trouble. We deserve the wrath of God. Christ carried the wrath which his people deserved. We should be troubled in that way. He bore the trouble that we deserve. And that that is the wonder of the gospel. In the days leading up to his crucifixion, in John's Gospel, we actually hear the Lord Jesus say, Now my soul is troubled, as he begins to take upon himself not his own sin, for he had none, but the sin of his people, his church, and the deserved wrath that his church deserved. And that is the wonder of the gospel. Because of Christ, the Lord turns his anger away. And as we finish, I wonder if you would just look at the very first line of chapter eight. There is wonderful, wonderful hope here. When we receive this bucket of cold water in chapter seven, well, where does the Lord want us to go? Chapter 8, verse 1. And the Lord said to Joshua, do not fear. So it's possible, isn't it, as sinful people in the hands of holy gods, not to fear. And that's only something that someone in Christ can experience and know. And Christian people, church, this is the blessing of union with Christ. Let's bow our heads. I'm going to pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this uh painful, honest, true word. Please would you do it in us? We pray that for our own individual good health. We pray that for the holiness and health of our whole body, the health of the church. And we pray it most of all for the sake of your name. Pray for a fresh filling of your Holy Spirit, whereby we would take your holiness and our sin and your judgment very, very seriously. And we thank you that you have given us a Saviour who both pardons the sinful and also empowers us to fight against sin. So do this word in us we pray for Jesus' name's sake. Amen.