SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone, I'm Dr.
SPEAKER_02: Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_02: I want to welcome you to the Road Church Podcast.
SPEAKER_02: Each week we go into God's Word.
SPEAKER_02: We teach chapter by chapter and verse by verse.
SPEAKER_02: And we are here to build a Kingdom of God revolution through empowering people to change the world.
SPEAKER_02: So we pray this will minister to you at your heart level and change your life.
SPEAKER_02: Today, be encouraged by our guest speaker.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, well, I'm gonna be honest with you up front about Joshua chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: It's not as much fun as Joshua chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so Pastor Steve had the fun chapter last week with Jericho, and uh this one's a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: But the good news is we get to read God's word together, and uh we're gonna learn, we're gonna grow, and he's gonna speak.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna start by talking about a uh childhood hero of mine.
SPEAKER_00: Um for those of you that know me well, I'm a huge sports fan.
SPEAKER_00: I love to talk sports with anybody.
SPEAKER_00: I'll follow pretty much any sport.
SPEAKER_00: I can talk to you about any sport, probably other than like golf and boxing.
SPEAKER_00: But other than that, let's talk about sports.
SPEAKER_00: And growing up, my dad was a big cycling fan.
SPEAKER_00: So every summer we would I would wake up early and watch the Tour de France with him.
SPEAKER_00: Um for those of you unfamiliar, it's this huge bike race uh all across the countryside of France.
SPEAKER_00: And so that was one of my favorite things.
SPEAKER_00: And as a kid, I would I would wake up early in the summer when I didn't have school to watch this bike race with my dad.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I grew up in the late 90s, early 2000s, so that's when Lance Armstrong was doing his thing and was winning uh Tour de France's.
SPEAKER_00: So naturally, I was a huge Lance Armstrong fan, huge Lance Armstrong fan.
SPEAKER_00: I had posters of him in my wall.
SPEAKER_00: I had a trek bicycle because he rode trek bicycles, um, had the Live Strong bracelet.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody else rock a Live Strong bracelet?
SPEAKER_00: You remember those?
SPEAKER_00: No?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um he was he was awesome.
SPEAKER_00: He was not only the best cycler, one of the best athletes in the world at the time, he also had beaten cancer.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was part of his Live Strong foundation.
SPEAKER_00: So I was I was enthralled.
SPEAKER_00: I was a huge fan.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's common knowledge now that almost every cyclist, uh, American and not, during that time period was cheating.
SPEAKER_00: Um kind of like the baseball era where where a lot of them were doing steroids, that was happening uh in the world of cycling.
SPEAKER_00: And lots of stuff like PEDs, performance enhancing drugs, they take in testosterone.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but the main one was something called doping.
SPEAKER_00: It was pretty high tech.
SPEAKER_00: They would actually remove their own blood, and then I don't, I'm not a science guy, but they would do something to it with the platelets and stuff in order to increase their capacity for retaining oxygen, and then they would inject it back into themselves.
SPEAKER_00: So, not allowed, it was against the rules, but all of these guys were doing it.
SPEAKER_00: It was pretty high tech and it was hard to detect, too, uh, because it's not a drug that shows up in your system.
SPEAKER_00: So, one by one, these guys start admitting to it, they start getting busted, they start falling.
SPEAKER_00: Um, other guys I followed, like Tyler Hamilton wrote a book about it, and they're all falling, but not Lance Armstrong, right?
SPEAKER_00: He denied it and denied it and denied it.
SPEAKER_00: And me being a kid at the time, I believed him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, man, Lance Armstrong is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is he not cheating, right?
SPEAKER_00: Everybody else is cheating, and he's still better than all of them, right?
SPEAKER_00: As a naive kid.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I thought.
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, no, that wasn't the case.
SPEAKER_00: Finally in 2012, uh, they got him.
SPEAKER_00: They finally got him in 2012.
SPEAKER_00: He won his last Tour de France in 2005.
SPEAKER_00: So he he maintained this lie for a really, really long time.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone else at that point had already admitted to it, moved on with their lives, but Lance Armstrong kept going, kept pushing uh this lie.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember I was a little bit older in 2012, wasn't little kid anymore, but I was still crushed when I found out that he was was cheating.
SPEAKER_00: And and not only that, I think the part that bothered me more was not necessarily the cheating anymore, but was how long he maintained this lie.
SPEAKER_00: Because the longer he went, the nastier it got.
SPEAKER_00: And he started attacking people's character for speaking the truth, and and he was going after people in really pretty horrible, uh, horrible ways.
SPEAKER_00: And so I remember being more crushed, more upset by the fact that he lied and maintained this lie for so long than even the fact that he he cheated anymore.
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes the cover-up is worse than the actual crime.
SPEAKER_00: It often makes the whole situation a lot worse.
SPEAKER_00: So, why did I just spend five minutes talking about Lance Armstrong and cycling from the early 2000s?
SPEAKER_00: Well, stay with me.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read this chapter and I'll make it make sense, I promise.
SPEAKER_00: So uh, before we read chapter 7, I want to start with the last verse of chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: So if you look back in your Bibles, chapter 6, verse 27 of Joshua says this.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout all the country.
SPEAKER_00: So last week we talked about Joshua and the Israelites and the Lord's huge victory, uh, the defeat of this mighty, historic, powerful city of Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: God brought down Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: So what a high that must have been for the Israelites, right?
SPEAKER_00: Imagine what that did to their faith, how that encouraged each other.
SPEAKER_00: They would have been so excited riding this high of defeating Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, the Lord was with Joshua, good things are happening, his name, the Lord's name is spreading throughout the land, throughout the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: And then look at the first verse, or sorry, the first word of chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: Ready?
SPEAKER_00: The first word of chapter 7 is but.
SPEAKER_00: Dang it, right?
SPEAKER_00: But but, man, great things are happening, and now we have an ominous but.
SPEAKER_00: Moses described the promised land in Deuteronomy 11, 11.
SPEAKER_00: He described the promised land as a land of hills and valleys.
SPEAKER_00: Hills and valleys, and boy was he right.
SPEAKER_00: In more ways than one, in more ways than he possibly realized.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just a description of the physical landscape of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: It was also a description of the Israelites' faith throughout this journey of entering the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: The same is often true of our own right, our own lives, right?
SPEAKER_00: Our faith can often have hills and valleys.
SPEAKER_00: And my first question when I began studying chapter 7 and looking back at chapter 6 was like, well, how much time passed between chapter 6 and chapter 7, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're in a valley with the butt, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe because there was like years that passed by after Jericho and they forgot about Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: No, the there was zero time between six and seven, right?
SPEAKER_00: It was immediate.
SPEAKER_00: So uh that wasn't the case, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're coming right after this high high, this defeat of Jericho, um, this great thing that's increasing their faith, and all of a sudden they find themselves once again in a valley.
SPEAKER_00: And it's easy to look at the Israelites and think, what is wrong with these people, right?
SPEAKER_00: Why are they so quick to question God?
SPEAKER_00: Why are they so quick to go back to sin?
SPEAKER_00: Why are they so quick to lose their faith after all that they've witnessed, right?
SPEAKER_00: They've witnessed Jericho being defeated, they've witnessed the Red Sea being parted, the Jordan River being parted, manna from heaven, the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.
SPEAKER_00: Like, imagine the things that they saw with their own eyes, yet they're still so quick to go back to the valleys.
SPEAKER_00: And then my next question was well, am I any better, right?
SPEAKER_00: Before I point fingers at the Israelites, am I any better with my own life?
SPEAKER_00: How often am I quick to question God and what he's doing in my life?
SPEAKER_00: Or am I impatient with my prayer requests?
SPEAKER_00: Am I am I quick to forget the good when the difficulties come?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's read Joshua chapter 7, take in this story and see what is going on with the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll start in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: But the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan, the son of Carmen, the son of Zabedee, the son of Zerah, and the son of the tribe of Judah took the accursed things.
SPEAKER_00: So the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth Aven, on the east side of Bethel, and spoke to them, saying, Go up and spy out the country.
SPEAKER_00: So the men went out and spied out Ai.
SPEAKER_00: They returned to Joshua and said to him, Do not let all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai.
SPEAKER_00: Do not weary, for the people there, for the people of Ai are few.
SPEAKER_00: So about three thousand men went up there from the people, but they fled before the men of Ai.
SPEAKER_00: And the men of Ai struck down about thirty-six men, for they chased them from before the gate as far as Share Barn, and stuck them, struck them down the descent.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore the hearts of the people melted and became like water.
SPEAKER_00: In verse one we see the sin that was committed by the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: Achan took the accursed things.
SPEAKER_00: This was a clear violation, a clear disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: If you look back in chapter 6, verse 18, it says, And you by all means abstain from the accursed things, lest you become accursed, when you take of the accursed things, and make the camp of Israel accursed and trouble it.
SPEAKER_00: So they the Israelites had clear instructions with the fall of Jericho that they were not to take anything for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Clear instructions before it even happened.
SPEAKER_00: Yet Achan, for Achan, the temptation was too great.
SPEAKER_00: He knowingly and willingly sinned.
SPEAKER_00: And it says the Lord was angry.
SPEAKER_00: And then in verse 2, we see the Joshua and the Israelites continuing with their mission, right?
SPEAKER_00: As they inhabited the promised land, there was this process of spying out and then attacking and conquering different groups of people as they take what the Lord promised them in the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: So they continued on with that same mission despite this unresolved sin that was currently taking place.
SPEAKER_00: There was no pause.
SPEAKER_00: There was no time taken by Joshua and the spies to consult with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They were supremely self-confident.
SPEAKER_00: And I get it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Look what they just witnessed the fall of the mighty city of Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: Of course they're feeling confident, right?
SPEAKER_00: But their confidence was in the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: Their confidence was in the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: They were confident in themselves instead of confident in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They were confident in themselves and they didn't pause and say, Lord, are we in the right headspace, the heart space?
SPEAKER_00: Are we ready to go out and conquer somebody else?
SPEAKER_00: They didn't do any of that.
SPEAKER_00: They just moved right on because of their self-confidence.
SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference, right?
SPEAKER_00: You say, well, confidence in me and the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference in if we're confident in our own abilities or if we're confident in the Lord who's in us and his abilities, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I my favorite example of that is David when he faced Goliath, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that David was struggling with a little bit of anxiety and fear before that moment, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was this little teenager and Goliath was a giant, right?
SPEAKER_00: But he wasn't confident in himself or his abilities, he was confident in the Lord who was in him, right?
SPEAKER_00: The Lord who was in him.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Joshua forgot that for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites forgot that for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: They pressed on, they kept going, and they didn't pause and make sure they were right with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So what was the result?
SPEAKER_00: Defeat.
SPEAKER_00: The result was defeat.
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 16, 18 says, Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
SPEAKER_00: The result may have been completely different how Joshua and the spies paused, waited, and listened to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: If so, the Lord may have revealed to them Achan's sin, and they may have had an opportunity to deal with it before moving on.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, they pressed on without consulting the Lord, and the results were devastating.
SPEAKER_00: They lost 36 people, 36 men were killed.
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, but it says the hearts of the people were melted and became like water.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: The faith of the people melted, their hearts melted, became like water.
SPEAKER_00: You see, trials don't produce faith.
SPEAKER_00: They reveal the status of your faith, the condition of your faith, where you're at with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That comes through.
SPEAKER_00: We see where you're at in the middle of a trial.
SPEAKER_00: And we saw the Israelites melt their faith, their heart melted.
SPEAKER_00: They thought it was going to be easy.
SPEAKER_00: They said, the men of I are few.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need to bring the whole army.
SPEAKER_00: We can bring a little bit of the army.
SPEAKER_00: We just defeated Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: This will be easy.
SPEAKER_00: Men and women, don't ever underestimate a spiritual battle.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever underestimate a spiritual battle.
SPEAKER_00: And don't ever think that we can handle something without first consulting and making sure the Lord is with us.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go alone.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be confident in your own abilities.
SPEAKER_00: Rely on the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Trust him and seek him with every battle, with everything that we face.
SPEAKER_00: So after this hill, this high that the the uh Joshua and the Israelites were on, they now find themselves in a valley.
SPEAKER_00: And we see Joshua's reaction in verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: He tears his clothes, he falls before the Lord, he's crushed.
SPEAKER_00: And now we see Joshua take time to consult with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he's a little bit late, right?
SPEAKER_00: Would have been great if he did it prior.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit late.
SPEAKER_00: But I still think there's something we can learn from his reaction because when a trial comes, when the difficulty comes, hit your knees.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what Joshua did.
SPEAKER_00: He he recognized somebody messed up, we we failed.
SPEAKER_00: What do I do?
SPEAKER_00: He hit his knees.
SPEAKER_00: Cry out to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great response and a great example.
SPEAKER_00: So let's see what he says, starting in verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: And Joshua said, Alas, Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that we have been content and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan, O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turns its back before its enemies?
SPEAKER_00: For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear it and surround us and cut off our name from the earth, then what will you do for your great name?
SPEAKER_00: Joshua is broken, and he's questioning everything, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's questioning everything.
SPEAKER_00: He's why are we even here?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: He's questioning everything.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming from a place of fear and doubt.
SPEAKER_00: Where do we find ourselves when we're in the valley, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where we've just been defeated, where something went wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Are we filled with fear and doubt?
SPEAKER_00: Do we fall back to that place of fear and doubt?
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly where the enemy wants us to be.
SPEAKER_00: He will use difficult and tragic situations to instill fear and doubt.
SPEAKER_00: But as we just prayed, that's not how we were created, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's not how we were created.
SPEAKER_00: And in this moment, but that's the uncertainty where Joshua was.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he was dealing with.
SPEAKER_00: But what's cool is you see his heart in these verses, he's also concerned about the name of the Lord, right?
SPEAKER_00: The last verse in chapter 6 said his name was spreading throughout the land.
SPEAKER_00: We see he didn't care about that.
SPEAKER_00: What he said in these verses is, Lord, I'm worried about your name, right?
SPEAKER_00: Your name being changed, being being hampered, right, by this defeat, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he's feeling bad that he may have caused damage to the Lord's name.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord responds to Joshua in verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord said to Joshua, Get up, why do you lie thus on your face?
SPEAKER_00: Israel has sinned, they have also transgressed my covenant, which I commanded them.
SPEAKER_00: For they have even taken some of the accursed things, and have both stolen and deceived, and they have also put it among their own stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they have been doomed to destruction.
SPEAKER_00: Neither will I be with you any more, unless you destroy the accursed things from among you.
SPEAKER_00: Get up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow, because thus says the Lord of Israel, there is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning, therefore, you shall be brought according to your tribes, and it shall be that the tribe with uh which the Lord takes shall come according to families, and the family which the Lord takes shall come by households, and the household which the Lord takes shall come by man.
SPEAKER_00: Then it shall be that he who has taken with the accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he has done a disgraceful thing in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord reveals to Joshua what had happened, the sin that had taken place.
SPEAKER_00: God hates sin because sin holds us back.
SPEAKER_00: Sin prevents us from doing what we should be doing, walking how we're we were created to walk.
SPEAKER_00: And so God told Joshua that the sin needed to be addressed and dealt with.
SPEAKER_00: He said, The Israelites cannot stand before their enemies, they're not going to be able to have success in the promised land if this accursed thing, if the sin is not dealt with.
SPEAKER_00: So Joshua does just that.
SPEAKER_00: He followed the Lord's instructions.
SPEAKER_00: He rose the next morning, he brought each tribe of Israel before him, he brought each family from each tribe, each household from each family of each tribe, until he got to Achan.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, in verse 20, we get a confession from Achan.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of verses, right?
SPEAKER_00: It took a lot of time to get a confession from Achan, this whole process of dragging out each family from each tribe from each household.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, get to Achan in verse 20, and he says this.
SPEAKER_00: And Achan answered Joshua and said, Indeed, I have sinned against the God, the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I have done.
SPEAKER_00: 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 I took them.
SPEAKER_00: And there they are, hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent with the silver under it.
SPEAKER_00: This was a selfish, self-seeking, self-satisfying sin for Achan.
SPEAKER_00: He coveted, he saw something, he coveted, he wanted it, he took it, and then he hid it, because he knew what he did was wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He hid it under his tent.
SPEAKER_00: He tried to keep his sin covered.
SPEAKER_00: So Joshua hears this confession from Achan.
SPEAKER_00: He verifies it, he sends his men, they find what Achan said to be true.
SPEAKER_00: They then burn the accursed things and they stone Achan.
SPEAKER_00: Achan paid the price for his sin.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus paid the price for ours.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Sin caused a whole lot of problems for the Israelites in Joshua chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: Sin can cause a whole lot of problems in our own lives as well.
SPEAKER_00: So I have three points regarding sin and its role in our lives that we can learn from this chapter, Joshua chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: So the first one is this sin prevents.
SPEAKER_00: Sin prevents.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be fully used by God if you are harboring unrepentant sin.
SPEAKER_00: If you're walking in unrepentant sin, you will not be able to be fully used by God.
SPEAKER_00: God told Joshua they would not find any more success in the promised land until the sin of Achan was dealt with.
SPEAKER_00: Israel couldn't go in two directions at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: They can't continue to conquer land for the Lord God and represent him while they're harboring and dealing with unrepentant sin.
SPEAKER_00: You can't go in two directions at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Israelites couldn't, and neither can we.
SPEAKER_00: Sin prevents us from living the life the Lord wants us to live.
SPEAKER_00: It prevents us from having a kingdom of God impact.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was a youth in a in a youth group, different church that I was growing up in, and and uh I was struggling with some sin, and I reached out to a youth leader in my church and asked him for some help, some advice, some accountability, and he responded uh with read, uh I think it was Colossians 3, read Colossians 3.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, you're dealing with that.
SPEAKER_00: And that was it.
SPEAKER_00: I never heard from him again.
SPEAKER_00: There was never a follow-up question, there was never check-in or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: I did read Colossians 3, I love Colossians 3, but um I was missing that accountability part.
SPEAKER_00: And what I learned years and years later was that that youth leader was in the middle of a ton of sin, walking in sin himself.
SPEAKER_00: So he was unable, uncapable of ministering to me and helping me because of the unrepentant sin in his own life.
SPEAKER_00: So now that I'm in the role that I'm in and I have a team of youth leaders that I train and uh work with, it's one of the things that we we do in our training, right?
SPEAKER_00: I tell him, I say, if you have unrepentant sin in your life, if you're actively walking in sin, your ministry is useless.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You will not be able to help students who are also struggling, right?
SPEAKER_00: You can't.
SPEAKER_00: You just can't fully commit to the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: You can't fully be used by God if you're walking in sin.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 12 says sin entangles, it distracts, it trips us up, it slows us down.
SPEAKER_00: So it needs to be dealt with.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how?
SPEAKER_00: It needs to be confessed, right?
SPEAKER_00: Sin in our life, unrepentant sin in our life, needs to be confessed to the Lord first.
SPEAKER_00: It needs to be confessed to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Then it needs to be confessed to those who have wronged.
SPEAKER_00: If your sin has directly affected somebody else, if you've sinned against somebody else, it needs to be confessed and brought to that person.
SPEAKER_00: And then lastly, it needs to be confessed to somebody who's gonna hold you accountable.
SPEAKER_00: Who's a blood-stained ally in your life, who's somebody who's walking with you, who's close to you, and if you don't have that person, find that person, right?
SPEAKER_00: We need to have blood-stained allies, we need to have community in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: James 5, 16 says, confess your trespasses to one another, pray for one another, that you may be healed.
SPEAKER_00: So confess that sin that's in your life to the Lord, to those you've wronged, to accountability partners.
SPEAKER_00: So that's number one, sin prevents.
SPEAKER_00: Number two is sin festers.
SPEAKER_00: That's a gross word, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Sin festers.
SPEAKER_00: The longer Lance Armstrong lied, the worse it got.
SPEAKER_00: See, I brought him back.
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys see?
SPEAKER_00: Follow him.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: The longer Lance Armstrong lied, the worse it got for him.
SPEAKER_00: Um his lies got nastier, his reputation suffered more, ultimately, it left him as a villain.
SPEAKER_00: You'd be hard pressed today to find uh somebody who has a positive view, a positive opinion of Lance Armstrong.
SPEAKER_00: So the longer we hide city.
SPEAKER_00: Me become prisoner to it.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: For 10 years, for over 10 years, Lance Armstrong covered this huge lie.
SPEAKER_00: He had broken the record for seven titles, seven Tour de France victories in a row.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody had ever done that, right?
SPEAKER_00: So he's he's covering up this lie to keep those titles.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure it's something he thought about every single day.
SPEAKER_00: It probably still is, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was captive to it, prisoner to it.
SPEAKER_00: Lingering sin can also have a physical toll on your body, right?
SPEAKER_00: It causes guilt, it causes stress, it causes shame.
SPEAKER_00: These things are physically bad for you.
SPEAKER_00: If you're walking around carrying stress, covering this lie, cleaning up that's not good for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a good way to live.
SPEAKER_00: Sin also isolates you.
SPEAKER_00: The longer it festers, the more it's gonna isolate you.
SPEAKER_00: You were designed to be in community and have blood-stained allies, as we were just talking about.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're hiding and wrestling with sin alone, you will become isolated.
SPEAKER_00: This also happened to Lance Armstrong, right?
SPEAKER_00: He had this team of guys that have been biking all around the world together for years.
SPEAKER_00: None of those guys talked to him today because he threw them all under the bus with this lie, right?
SPEAKER_00: As he was trying to preserve this lie and his reputation, he lost his friends.
SPEAKER_00: Sin isolates us.
SPEAKER_00: And I just wonder, I wonder if Lance had revealed the truth sooner, how different would things be today?
SPEAKER_00: And as I was studying this chapter, I wondered the same thing about Achan.
SPEAKER_00: If Achan had revealed his sin before verse 20, before they went to uh conquer the people of I, before, what would have happened?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe those lives would have been spared.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the whole story would have been much, much different.
SPEAKER_00: So don't let sin linger.
SPEAKER_00: Deal with it, confess it, get it out, repent, don't let it fester.
SPEAKER_00: Recently, our oldest son had a uh cavity, and we didn't deal with it quick enough, so it festered and it became infected, and he actually had to get it pulled.
SPEAKER_00: Which he's a six-year-old boy, he loved the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: He thought the whole thing was really cool, and many of you have probably seen the hole in his mouth where his tooth was because he likes to show people.
SPEAKER_00: Um but sin is a lot like an infection, right?
SPEAKER_00: Sin is like a cavity.
SPEAKER_00: The longer it goes unaddressed, the more it will fester, the more it will get infected, and the more damage it will cause.
SPEAKER_00: So don't let sin do that in your own life.
SPEAKER_00: Don't let it get infected, don't let it fester.
SPEAKER_00: Let's get it out, right?
SPEAKER_00: Get it out, um, which leads us to our last point.
SPEAKER_00: It will get out.
SPEAKER_00: And number three is this sin will be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: Sin will be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: Your sin will be found out just like Achans was.
SPEAKER_00: Ecclesiastes 12, 14 says, For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
SPEAKER_00: And likewise, Jeremiah 16, 17 says, For my eyes are on all of their ways, they are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the truth, men and women, God loves you too much to allow you to get away with your sin.
SPEAKER_00: God loves you too much to allow you to get away with your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, wherever you find yourself this morning, if you're struggling with lust, with greed, maybe it's anger or laziness, maybe it's a you struggle with honesty or gossip, wherever you're at, the Lord loves you too much to continue to let that sin go unnoticed because it's causing damage.
SPEAKER_00: It's causing damage to you, and it's probably causing damage to other people as well.
SPEAKER_00: God loves us too much to allow us to continue to cause damage.
SPEAKER_00: And I think of that as from the view of a parent, right?
SPEAKER_00: As a parent of four, we had our fourth about a month ago.
SPEAKER_00: We we as parents love our kids so much to not that we can't just let them do things that we know are bad for them.
SPEAKER_00: Let them sin, let them let them get into trouble, let them do things that are gonna hurt themselves.
SPEAKER_00: We love them too much to allow that to happen.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you might not feel the same way about your neighbor's kid, right?
SPEAKER_00: You might not be correcting their every move, but you feel that way about your own kids, and that's how God feels about us.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us as his children.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to live a life where we're not actively hurting ourselves, we're not actively engaging in sin.
SPEAKER_00: So he will allow that sin to be revealed so that we stop, because he loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's interesting in this chapter, God also made it clear that it wasn't just Achan's sin, right?
SPEAKER_00: It was this community sin.
SPEAKER_00: It affected all of the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: It was a corporate sin.
SPEAKER_00: Israel was one people under the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And today we are one people under the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We are the body of Christ, as Scripture says.
SPEAKER_00: If one part of the body is wrong and suffering, the whole body suffers.
SPEAKER_00: One way or another, your secret sin will be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: God loves you too much to allow it not to.
SPEAKER_00: So deal with it, confess it, and address it.
SPEAKER_00: So that's number three.
SPEAKER_00: Your sin will be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: So in conclusion, I want to say this: the the events of this week are a reminder that life is short and not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00: Every day that we are here is a gift.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to encourage you to live with that mindset.
SPEAKER_00: Live with that in mind.
SPEAKER_00: So if you do have unresolved sin this morning, if you do have an unresolved sin issue, don't continue to live that way.
SPEAKER_00: Don't continue to live with it festering inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's take care of it.
SPEAKER_00: If there's unresolved conflict in your life, if you're at odds with somebody, don't live that way.
SPEAKER_00: Resolve it, address it, deal with it, go to that person, make it right.
SPEAKER_00: Make today the day we fix it, today the day we confess it, today the day we acknowledge it, today the day we move on.
SPEAKER_00: Seek first his kingdom and love people well.
SPEAKER_00: Seek first his kingdom every day.
SPEAKER_00: Make a kingdom impact and love the people around you well.
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SPEAKER_01: We pray today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
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