“SIN… It’s not that big of a deal… is it?” (Joshua 7)

We continue our “Moving Forward” series in Joshua by looking at one of the most sobering chapters in the book — Joshua 7. After the victory at Jericho came unexpected defeat at Ai, all because of hidden sin in the camp. This message reminds us that sin is never small, disobedience always carries consequences, and spiritual compromise will eventually affect every area of life. But through confession, repentance, and the grace of Jesus Christ, restoration and victory are possible. Join us as we learn that true spiritual breakthrough begins when we honestly deal with sin before God.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Well, how about that weather in Michigan? Things are finally warming up. Praise God. You guys survived one of the hardest winters I ever remembered living in Michigan. And praise God that we're here and things are warming up and starting to see Pentwater come to life. It's great to see that. Thank you so much. And uh yeah, thanks for letting my wife and I get away. So we went to uh North Carolina at a pastor renewal retreat at the Billy Graham Center and just had a great time talking with other pastors and getting to hear from one of my favorites, Jim Cimbala. So we got to hang out with the Graham family there and kind of see the center that Billy and Ruth said, you know what, it'd be so awesome if God would bless us with some land, and he did. He gave them 1,500 acres in North Carolina over the Blue Mountain Ridge mountains out there in the Appalachian Mountains. It was just beautiful. And of course, my wife was like, hey, we need to go hike to the top of the lookout. I was like, okay. So just trying to keep up with her, we got to the top. It was about eight miles round trip, and it was up. I mean, it was like this. I was like, could it be just flattened a little bit? Nope, it was straight up. But what a beautiful view. What a great time spending time with my lovely wife and just being renewed. And I was talking with the people at the conference. They say they do seven a year. I was like, hon, we could do this like almost once a month. This would be great, you know? Just go and relax and get renewed. This would be awesome. But one of the some of the nuggets that we took away, I'll just share. I was talking to pastors who've been serving for 50 years. 50 years. I was like, what's your secret? They said they made that a priority. Going to these pastor renewal conferences and just getting renewed and refreshed with the Lord and just the importance of spending time with the Lord. Sometimes you get so busy with ministry, you yourself forget to spend time with the Lord and how important that was. And one of the things I love from Jim Cimbala, when I was at Moody Bible Institute, he came and spoke, and that man influenced my life and the power of prayer. Ever since then, I've been passionate about prayer and seeing what prayer did. If you've not read his book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, I'd encourage you to read it. It's in a powerful story of what God did in Jim Cimbala's life and how the Brooklyn Tabernacle was basically formed through that ministry. And so if you anyone know about Brooklyn Tabernacle out there? Oh, there's a couple? Oh, you gotta watch it. They do a phenomenal job. And I'm telling you what, choir is back. I would love to see some of those songs here at FBC. I think that'd be so much fun. And uh just a huge blessing. So today's topic is sin. You probably caught that from Lori as she was talking, which is not really the most fun topic to talk about, amen. But the title of today's message is Sin. It's not that big a deal, is it? Isn't really that big of a deal? If you have your Bibles, open on the Joshua chapter 7. We're gonna be camping out there this whole time. And let me ask you a question as you go there. What's the big deal about a small sin? What's the big deal about a small sin? Maybe it's just one little look. Or maybe it's just one little lie or one little compromise in your life, or maybe one just hidden decision. We live in a culture that says it's really not that big of a deal. No one will care, it'll just affect you, and if you just do it once, it's not gonna be that big of a deal. Nobody got hurt, it's just this once. Maybe God will understand if I chose to do this one little sin. But Joshua chapter 7, wow, it teaches us something very different. Sin is never small. What we think is just a little spark can ignite a whole forest fire. Sin is a big deal. In Joshua 6, we see that the walls of Jericho had fallen. They see this amazing victory. I mean, can you imagine the excitement in the camp? Just roaring through that camp. We just saw the walls of Jericho go down. What was impossible wasn't for what God could do in our lives. And then immediately following after that, Joshua chapter 7. Defeat. What changed? What changed? It wasn't the strategy, it wasn't the leader. This nasty three-letter word. Sin. Sin entered the camp. Obedience leads to victory, but sin, secret sin leads to defeat. I remember that little phrase: secret secrets are no fun. Secret secrets hurt someone. Secret sin in our lives, when we choose to do this, is no secret to God. God knows everything. Secret sin is no secret to God. Joshua chapter 7, verse 1. But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things. For Achan, the son of Carmi, son of Zebdi, 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. Now, Achan, he took what God said not to take. The word broke faith literally means he was unfaithful. He betrayed trust with God to deal treacherously with something. This is not merely a poor judgment. This is not merely weakness or accidental failure. This was a deliberate disobedience to what God told them to do. Other translations would say that Israel committed a trespass. Now, when as I was studying this, I was looking at this, there are four common offenses about this with God. There's offenses that go against God. And the first one is sin. And in the Hebrew, it's kata. We miss the mark. We fall short of the standard of God. The second is iniquity. And the Hebrew word for iniquity is a von. How many ladies out there use the makeup Avan? Does that still exist? Is there anyone out there? Well, I'll tell you what, in the Hebrew, you'd be putting iniquity all over your face. You know, that's what the Hebrew meant. It was iniquity, which meant bent or twisted. There was this moral problem of the human heart or character, and it's bent. The next one was transgressions. Transgressions in the Hebrew is kasha and deliberate offense against God, covering over the sin. And in the context of the passage that we're looking at, trespass. This Hebrew mael, to act covertly. This means to cover. Covering up the sin. Now, as believers in Jesus, covering up our sin is good when it's the blood of Jesus. It covers all of our sin and what Jesus has done for us on the cross. But in the context of this passage, this man commits a trespass. He's covertly covering up this sin and he's trying to hide it in his life. And God had already made it clear, Jericho belonged to him and no one else. The devoted things were not theirs to keep, and Israel just experienced this miraculous victory. Yet Achan went and wanted God's blessing without God's authority. I want the loot, but I don't want that to submit to my father. And we see earlier in the story, he said, We want you to destroy everything in Jericho, for it's wicked. Everything in Jericho will be destroyed except for the bronze and the silver and the gold that would go to the temple of the Lord. And Achan decided he wanted some for himself. Sin always begins small. Maybe it's a thought, a compromise, a hidden desire, but secret sin is never truly secret from God. Notice something important. One man's sin, and we're gonna see here, the whole nation of Israel suffered. Why? Because sin affects more than the sinner. Private sin always creates public consequences. Sin is not just breaking a rule or crossing a line, it's making a mistake, and sin is rebellion against a holy God. We often compare ourselves to other people and say, oh, I'm not as bad as that person across the street of me in Bentwater. Have you seen what they've done? If they can do this, then I can do this. That's totally fine. But the problem is, we're not getting compared to our neighbors. We're not getting compared to each other. We're getting compared to a holy God. And one of the most dangerous moments spiritually is right after a victory. We see them. They conquered Jericho. We have victory. Now we have pride. And now we have all this that we can do this in our own strength because success can make us careless. Amen. There are times in our lives where, hey, I got this. God, I don't need you. You can take a backseat. I got this. I've been successful, and therefore now I start to become careless. And Satan often loves to see success because then we become careless. And so he attacks, not in our weakness, but after these spiritual victories, and we see this in our story when we minimize sin. It's not that bad. It's not that big of a deal. Everyone else is doing it. Nobody knows. I deserve this. I've been just doing so much for God. I can do this. This is okay. I'll stop later. It only really affects me. But sin never stays contained. Some people want God's promises, God's blessings, while holding on to the very thing that God told them to surrender. And this morning, we've got to ask ourselves what have I normalized in my life that God calls sin? What have I made normal? Like this is just what I do. I go to church on Sunday, but I can keep on doing this. This is okay because culturally it's accepted. You can sit in church even and say, you know what, my sin is somewhat respectable. It's okay. I can do this, and I'm going to continue to sing worship songs. I'm going to serve in ministry while still having this hidden compromise in our hearts. God's not only concerned with our outward appearance, He cares about the heart. You know, one of the things that we know all too well in Michigan is rust. Amen. I know what you're thinking right now. You know, every spot on your vehicle where there's rust, right? Anyone have rust in their vehicles? Alright, there's a couple of us. All right. We're not all retired, okay? I'm just joking. I'm just joking. I'm messing with you. But rust, I mean, rust is this nasty thing. I remember just looking at my truck like it looked beautiful when I first bought it. I'd gotten Z-Bart to drill holes in my truck to try to put oil in the doors, preventing rust. And I feel like my life in my truck is just trying to figure out how to prevent rust. And I know you forged people out there like, well, we should get the aluminum truck, you know? There's no rust in that. But GMC, they're all steel, right? A little more solid. Just a little side note. That one's free. But rust, I'm watching it, it just slowly starts to build on the inside of my vehicle, and I start to see it slowly surface, and you start to see it on the outside of the job of the paint. And you start to see that, and it starts to come, and you're like, okay, well, maybe I'll take some touch-up paint, cover up the rust, and it'll be okay, and I'll prevent it from going, but it just keeps on happening. And you're constantly covering it, and it comes back again, and it's this thing that's just slowly disintegrating the vehicle. That's what sin does. It rusts in the inside of our bodies, it destroys who we are. It just slowly happens. It's not just a massive thing that happens in our life, it slowly comes in, it creeps in, and it starts to weaken our frame. It starts to weaken our body because sin destroys. The Bible says that I have come to give you life to the full, and the enemy's like, I've only come to steal, kill, and destroy. And he doesn't do it overnight. It's a slow process like rust. It starts to come in and creep in. And I've oftentimes used rust as a reminder. This is what sin does, it destroys. It destroys, it destroys marriages, it destroys integrity, it destroys ministry, spiritual strength. Your relationship with God is destroyed oftentimes from this little three-letter word, sin. Eventually, what is hidden becomes visible, just like Russ. You can try to prevent it as long as you can in Michigan, but eventually you're gonna see it. Secret sin is no secret to God. Number two, secret sin affects others besides you. Oh, that's hard. Especially if you're in a family. You're thinking about your sins. Secret sins affect others besides you. Continuing the story in verse two, Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Bethhaven, east of Bethel, and said to them, Go up and spy out the land. And the men went up and spied out I. 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 I. 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 I. And the men of I killed about thirty-six of their men, and chased them before the gates as far as Sherbim, and struck them at the di at the descent. And the hearts of the people melted and became as water. And so we see Israel going to, some might say, AI. It's I was looking up on how you say it, it's I, but AI, I mean, come on, we're in the AI generation right now, right? It's kind of weird, right? Kind of correlates. But Israel goes to I and gets defeated. They they expected this another miracle. They're like, oh, we saw God part the Jordan, we saw him take down the walls in Jericho. This is gonna be a piece of cake. This this people group, they're so small, but instead of them defeating them, they lose 36 men. At this point, Israel has never lost. What do they do with this? The army runs in fear, the confidence that they had just collapses. What a contrast from Joshua chapter 6. Israel is bold. In Joshua 7, Israel is completely broken and a little bit humiliated. Look what our God can do, and all of a sudden, they get conquered from I. Because hidden sin weakens visible strength. And Jericho was a massive city. I was small and humanly speaking, I should have been easy. But victory is never about numbers. Victory depends on the presence and the blessing of God. And one of the dangers after spiritual victory is this self-confidence that we start to see in the Israelites. I mean, listen to the spies. You don't have to send all the people, just send a few. We can get them, just a couple of them, right? There's almost no mention of, you know what, before we go to this battle, we should pray. We should seek God for dependence or seek Him and see what He says to do. And success at Jericho may have produced this overconfidence at I. And sometimes God always allows smaller battles to expose the deeper problems. And I reveals this hidden sin, the spiritual pride, this self-reliance, the phrase that their hearts melted. I think it was ironic that when they were deciding to attack Jericho, all the Canaanites' hearts were just melted in fear. And now the same Israelites with their same God are just melted in fear towards God because of what they just saw at I. And so sin promises this freedom, but produces this discouragement. And some of you this morning are asking, why do I feel spiritually dry? I've been a Christian for a long time and I'm so dry in my relationship with God. Why am I losing battles that I used to win in my life? Why does God feel so distant? It may not be your circumstances, it may be unaddressed sin in your life. Sometimes we blame stress, people or church, when the real issue is this spiritual compromise in our lives. This hidden sin will eventually produce this discouragement and fear in our lives. You cannot walk closely with God while holding tightly to sin. And some believers wonder why don't I feel close to God anymore? While ignoring the very thing in their life that's grieving the Holy Spirit. Time and time again, just grieving the Holy Spirit. God does not distance himself because he hates you, he convinced you because he actually loves you. He wants to take you away from that hidden sin. He wants to take you away from this because he's seeing it slowly, rust your life away. And some of you are trying to fight spiritual battles while feeding the flesh all week long. You cannot expect victory on Sunday while entertaining this compromise Monday through Saturday. It's not just a one-day event. Because it just discourages our believers. We gotta stop praying, stop serving, stop trusting, stop fighting. The conviction from God is actually mercy. God exposes a problem because He wants restoration in our life. When I was at the conference, I had seen Jimalize saying, I want to invite the pastors who have been brutally hurt in ministry to come forward. And I sat down like that there and I was like, I don't want to see what happens. All these pastors and their wives get up. There was barely any empty seats. They all go forward. And Jim did something unthinkable. He didn't say a word. For about five minutes. Can you imagine me standing here not saying anything for five minutes? How awkward I would feel. But they were standing, he was standing there just listening, and I was listening as he was listening as well. And there wasn't a dry eye in the room. There was wailing. I mean, like bawling. Just people who have been brutally hurt. And Sunday after Sunday, they go up and they preach and they have this bitterness in their heart. Constant bitterness of this person hurt me. I can't stand this. And Jim started to talk about Joseph and how this man was brutally hurt. Brutally hurt from his family. His brothers tried to kill him and eventually sold him to slavery. And then Joseph did something I never even realized. He named his firstborn son Manasseh. And that really hit me because Manasseh means causing to forget. This man was trying to forget the anger that he had towards his family for trying to kill him. He had every right to be angry and selling him to slavery. He had every right. And I'm sure a lot of those pastors who were hurt at that conference when they were going forward, they had every right to feel the way that they did. But there was this freedom. You could almost feel it in the room. When they decided to surrender that at the foot of the cross, they're free. And that's what sin does. It binds you over. You don't walk around like this because you were mulching the church. You walk around. You walk around like this because you're holding on to this sin and this bitterness and just all this stuff in your life. Like, oh, I can't believe they did this. And you can grow old and cynical towards life when God's like, I don't want you to hold on to that sin anymore. Let it down. I sent my very best, my one and only son to die, a horrible death. So you wouldn't have to carry this anymore. In Israel, they're coming around, they're carrying this burden of sin that was caused in the camp. Secret of sin didn't just affect Achan, it affected the whole nation. They lost so many men in that battle. Number three, secret sin makes us more vulnerable to the enemy. Joshua 7 and verse 6. Then Joshua tore his clothes. He 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, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all? To give us into the hands of the Amorites? To destroy us? With that we have 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? So you think about this. I mean, Joshua falls to his face. I would too. I'd be like, oh my goodness, we just crossed the Jordan, we just got the walls down in Jericho with the power of God, and now this happens. Like, I can't do this. I mean, you can imagine the frustration the elders. They're throwing dust on their heads, and they're just like, we are just beyond ourselves. We have no idea what to do. And now Jason, uh Joshua's faced with this confusion. Joshua's overwhelmed. Joshua six, victory, this grief, this confusion, despair. This unchecked sin creates this emotional and spiritual collapse all throughout the nation. Joshua begins asking these painful questions. Why did you even? Even bring us here, God. Why did this happen? Would it have been much better if we would have just stayed back? Isn't it amazing how quick we do the same thing when we're discouraged? Everything's going good. There's a nice sunny day in Pentwater. You're driving along, and then something happens, someone cuts you off, and you say, Why, God, why did that just happen? Right? And we go down that why path. Why? Why? And just days later, God did something amazing in your life. You parted the Jordan, maybe, or whatever He did in your life. God destroyed Jericho and God proved his faithfulness. But now, one defeat, we can see it causes this panic in the camp. One setback caused panic, and one setback clouds their memory of God's goodness. Discouragement has a way of making us forget these past victories that God had in our lives. These answered prayers in God's faithfulness. And Joshua begins sounding very similar to the people before him in the desert. Maybe we should have never left Egypt. Maybe we should have just stayed back. And despair often makes us romanticize the past. And thinking that was better. When people become spiritually unhealthy, they lose perspective. Fear gets louder than faith. Emotions overpower truth. Notice Joshua is praying, but he still does not yet understand the real issue. He's going before the Lord. And sometimes we pray for God to remove the pressure when God's trying to expose the problem underneath it. The real issue was not I. The real issue was this hidden sin in the camp. And sometimes the reason life feels spiritually heavy is because something underneath the surface has not been dealt with. Hidden compromise eventually creates this spiritual exhaustion. I'll never forget it. When I was with the Moody Choir, we went to Texas and we're staying in host homes. There's about three of us in a host home. And the man that we were staying with, he started giving his testimony and he started to talk about how even he was 14-year-old. Any 14-year-olds in the room today? He was 14 years old. He decided to look at pornography. And he started to look at images that he shouldn't look at. And that addiction has stayed with him, and now he's 55 years old. And he is just this one little compromise, now he is bawling in my arms. And these other moody students' arms that he can't stop this addiction that he started when he was just 14 years old. And he's telling us how it's destroyed his marriage, and he's tried everything he can, and he can't stop the addiction. Notice this progression as we see sin unfold. Sin, discouragement. Despair. I saw it all over his face when we were with him. And you see, you can probably see even right now with the Israelites, the despair and the discouragement that they're going through. Sin rarely destroys someone overnight, it usually happens gradually. And some of you are not just discouraged, you're just exhausted. You're exhausted. You're spiritually drained, you feel stuck, you feel defeated, you're questioning everything. And you may not even realize that there could be something underneath it all. Sometimes we blame everyone else while ignoring what God may be trying to address. And this hidden sin can easily create this anxiety in your life. You can't continually resist God and walk in peace. Some believers are trying to find peace without repentance. But freedom begins when honesty begins. Secret sin makes us more vulnerable to the enemy, it weakens everything. And the last but not least, secret sin leads to consequences. Continuing the story in verse 10. The Lord said to Joshua, Get up, why have you fallen on your face? Israel has sinned, and they have trespassed my covenant and I've commanded them. They have taken some of the devoted things, and they have stolen and lied and put them among their 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. And I'll be with you no more unless you destroy the devoted things from among 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 the past. O Israel, you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you. And so I love this scene. When Joshua's down on his face before God, God says, Get up. Why have you fallen on your face? And God says, Stop just trying to pray about it. Start dealing with it. Sin must be confronted, not ignored. Do I need to get a new microphone?

unknown 26:59

Just move it and adjust your.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Let's see. Is that better? Alright. There we go. So we got to stop praying about it. When God, it's important to pray, but there's times where God says, I want to call you to action. Joshua, get off of your face and start to come forward and start to not ignore the things that you're going through. Consecrate the people, he says. Consecrate yourselves before God. I mean, set yourself apart, cleanse your life. You cannot walk in victory while ignoring the sin. You had to find it where the sin was. And they had to find where the sin was. And some scholars suggest in the process of doing this, the uh the priest would have these two stones to find the sin. They would have the stone they called the urim, which represented guilt. And they had another stone called the thumin, which represented innocent. And so you could probably see this process. A lot of scholars think this is how it actually went down, and they were going through the process of trying to figure out where the person who was guilty with these stones. God guide us through these stones in a sense. And so they split up tribe by tribe. So you had the tribe of Judah, and then it went to the clan of the Zarites. And then we see it broken down family by family, and then finally man to man. And when I read that and I see the process of just going from the tribe of Judah to a clan to a family and to man to man. I'm like, God, why wouldn't you just say, Achan's the one? He's the one who sinned. Because I think God is not willing for any to perish. He's giving us all an opportunity to confess when we've done something wrong. He's not willing for any to perish. And so Achan doesn't confess until he's actually approached. He coveted this Babylonian robe from Jericho. And he had some silver and he had some gold. And the silver in today's world is probably worth about $2,200. So not very much. And he had about a half pound of gold, which is about $38,000. So you're thinking about the things that he coveted, the things that he stole, this secret sin. It was about $40,000 worth in a Babylonian robe. And he can't even, I mean, can you imagine? What is he going to do with a Babylonian robe? Everyone's going to know he took it from Jericho, but he decides to hide it in his tent. I mean, it doesn't make any sense at all, but this is what he decided to do. And so we see this unfold in verse 19. Then Joshua said to Achan, my son, give glory to the God, 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 of Israel, and this is what I did. When I saw among the spoil the beautiful cloak and the two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, then I coveted them. I took them, and see, they are hidden in the earth inside my tent and the silver underneath. So we see he finally confesses, and when he does choose to confess, it gives glory to God. Confession gives glory to God anytime in our lives. When we stop hiding, we stop justifying the things in our lives, we stop minimizing the sin, we bring it before him and the path to sin. It's always the same. I saw, I coveted, and I took. I saw, he saw the attention of it. He saw, I coveted, I desired to have this thing, and then I took. There was an action that followed afterwards. No different than the fall of man at the beginning in the book of Genesis. I saw, I coveted, and I took. And God tells Joshua, he says, get up. In other words, Joshua, this is no longer the time only to weep. This is the time to deal with what is wrong. And there comes a moment when prayer must lead to obedience in our lives. And some people keep praying about what God has already told them to confront. We keep praying about it. I'm going to keep on going to the Lord in prayer when God's already telling you what to do. You say, Lord, help my marriage. Help my marriage be better. But God says, then confess your bitterness towards your spouse. Lord, restore my joy. Well, if you want to restore your joy, you've got to confess some of the hidden sins in your heart. But God says, give me peace, you might ask God. But God says, then stop living a double life. Prayer is not a substitute for repentance. We cannot ask God to bless what we refuse to surrender. And Achan's sin was in a private place. The place where no one could see. The place where he thought no one would look. What is hidden in your tent? What is hidden in your life? Is there bitterness, lust, greed, dishonesty? Achan thought he could just bury it. But the truth of the matter, he couldn't. God loved Israel too much to let them move forward with that sin in their lives. And God loves you too much to let you move forward without confessing this sin that slowly disintegrates who we are. And some of you are trying to fight sin at this action level, but the battle often begins at the attention level in our lives. We gotta start, stop staring at what's pulling it away at your heart. Consecration literally means, Lord, I belong to you. I don't belong to this desire. I belong to you. And confession gives glory to God because it agrees with who God is and what he told us to do. It says, God, you are right, your word is true, and my sin is serious. And one of the things I think we do as believers is we confuse remorse and repentance. Remorse says, I hate the consequences. I've sinned, I've done really bad things, and I'm sorry I did that because I just I don't want to deal with the consequences anymore. Where repentance says I don't only hate the consequences, I hate sin. I can't stand it. Remorse wants this relief from the consequences, where repentance wants an actual restoration in your own life. And God's not calling you to go to hide, God is calling you into the light. The consequences of sin is serious, but the mercy of God is greater than the sin you bring to him. You can either uncover your sin through confession or God can uncover it through consequences. But either way, hidden sin will not stay hidden forever. The conclusion of the story in verse 25. And Joshua said, Why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you today, and all of Israel stone him with stones. They burn them with the fire and stone them with stones, and they raised over him a great heap of stone that remains this day. Then the Lord turned from his burning anger. Therefore, to this day, the name of that place is called the Valley of Acor. This is a hard part. This is a hard story. I mean, Achan and everything connected to him is stoned and burned. He's judged. And some, when you read about this, they struggle with this concept like, how could God do this? I mean, you think about the sin that Achan did. 36 men died. I mean, you think about 36 dads died because of this man's one decision to sin. And on top of that, Israel suffers. They're going through this discouragement. And Achan buries the possessions in the middle of his tent. In that day and age, when you bury something in the middle of your tent, you're referring to basically a living room in our kind of homes. And so it would be likely that the family would have known what he was burying in the middle of the tent. And oftentimes when you read that passage, you might think, okay, are these like little kids? Like, no, it was common where whole families would live together in those tents. And you think about the sin that they all were aware of that was going on. I mean, you think about the Canaanites in Jericho. They were there about 400 years. Some scholars even suggest 600 years they lived in that city. All that time, I think God was trying to give them time to repent and come back to him. You know, I think about Rahab and the story of Jericho, how God allowed her repentance. She repented of her sin and she came back to God and her and her family was spared. I don't think God was willing for any to perish, but they chose sin and so therefore it had to be destroyed. And you may think that's a little bit harsh. But you think about the 60s and the 70s. I know some of you lived in that era. And this disease called AIDS existed because of sin, because of different things that was happening. And through that, that just happened in 20 years. Now, can you imagine 400 years of sin? 400 years. Think about how diseased everyone was in that city. God won, I think God wanted to destroy that completely because of that. But Achan couldn't wait. They took the plunder at I. They were able to, but not with Jericho. But he couldn't wait. He had to do it right away. Sin destroys. The Bible says this in Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death. It's death. Anytime you choose, just this little sin, the wages of sin is death. It only leads to death. It may be delayed, it may be hidden, but it never is free. Sin promises pleasure, and sometimes it is, but it pays with pain. And here's the gospel, here's the good news. The story doesn't end at Joshua 7. In 1 John 1 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us. He will forgive every hidden sin that we have in our lives. It will be erased, it'll be gone once you bring it before our Heavenly Father. And we see this in the story of Jericho, how God forgave Rahab and spared her and her whole family. She confessed her sins, and he was faithful and just to forgive. And he can do the same thing for each and every one of us today. That's where you get hope. It's the power of the gospel. Achan was judged for sin, and Jesus was judged for our sin. The punishment you deserve was death, and Jesus, he paid for it himself. That we can have eternal life with him. So this is the grace of God. When you hear the story, when you go through the story, I see the grace of God. I see the judgment of God and I see the power of sin, but I also see that God was gracious in the midst of this. If we're going to move forward, we must deal with our sin. You can't hide it, you can't bury it. You gotta deal with it, you gotta face it head on. We gotta stop being Christians who remorse over our sins and literally say, I'm not just afraid of the consequences, I hate sin. I'm gonna repent, I want to do a 180. I'm gonna go in this way because he's giving me life to the full, and this guy's saying, I've only come to steal, kill, and destroy. I'm not following him, I'm following God. This is the way to go. And so if we want to do that this morning, we've got to ask through these questions. What am I hiding? What am I hiding in my life? And when you I know you know what it is. What am I minimizing? Because that's what the enemy does. He minimizes it. But I'm telling you, it's destroying you. It's not God's best for your life. What have I refused to deal with? These are the questions we get to ask in Pentwater, Michigan. Bring these before a Heavenly Father today and make things right. He is just and He will forgive us of our sins. We just got to confess them before Him. Secret sin is no secret to God. Secret sin affects others beside you. Secret sin makes us more vulnerable to the enemy. Secret sin leads to consequences. How many want to keep sinning now? Right? It's not worth it. The outcome we see, we can't see it any clearer than the story of Achan. His whole family's destroyed from that. And so let that not be true of us. Let us choose to lay our sins at the foot of the cross and move forward in the grace that God gives. It's amazing grace. Let's pray. Father, forgive us for that nasty three-letter word sin. You know every sin in our hearts. Father, I pray that this Sunday afternoon you would search all of our hearts. So Father, you would bring it to light. We would restore our relationship with you. We would no longer remorse about the sin and the consequences, but we would just feel like sin is so nasty, we want to do a full 180 and walk away. Father, we see what sin produced in Aiken's life. And I would argue this morning, Father, it's not worth it. But Father, I thank you that you looked at us and you said you are worth it. And you sent your very best, your one and only Son Jesus, to die a horrible death so we could live life to the full. Father, if there's anyone in this room who is walked away from you because of hidden sin, Father, I pray they would take serious and they would repent before you today. Father, if there's someone in this room who've never received you as their Lord and Savior, Father, they would not leave this place without knowing how to have life and have it to the full by following you and your way. We thank you for Jesus. We thank you that we've been freed from this nasty three letter word of sin. Father, help us prioritize you in our lives in everything we say and everything we do. Help us follow your way and not the way of the enemy. We pray all this in your name and all God's people said amen.