I’m going through the book of Joshua these days. I love this book! Full of adventure and courage—even boneheads who have to learn the hard way ( I can relate to them!). But today’s quiet time—though it was only about 13 verses—was so packed with stuff it left my head spinning!
Today I read Joshua 7:1–13. You can read it here.
Here’s the summary…
Israel has just crossed over the river Jordan (miraculously, I might add. God dried it up long enough for them to pass through just like He did with the Red Sea) after 40 years of waiting to do so due to the lack of faith of their parents. And what does this new and confident generation of believers do? They experience the blessing of God that always accompanies faith and obedience (I’m referring to their 1–0 record against the ungodly people of the land! And they didn’t even send in the first string! Or the second! They sent in the marching band and whooped the people of Jericho!).
But then what?
They experience the fear and defeat that always accompanies doubt and defiance. But let’s zoom in to see the incredible principles for living strewn all about this great passage:
God told them not to mess with any of the inhabitants stuff! It was tainted because of what the evil people used it for—not to mention the fact that God alone can use the, ‘because I said so’ line without debate! But one idiot thought that during the confusion of battle he could fly in under the radar and grab a few ipads and an X-box or 2 without getting caught.
He was right…sort of. While none of the people saw him, God did—and He took His anger out on everyone! That’s right, because of 1 man’s sin, the whole group suffered!
This is hard for a lot of us to fathom. The dude’s name was Achan and tomorrow we will see that he’ll certainly be achin for what he did but that will have to wait until tomorrow. For now, let’s focus on why the sin of 1 affected the whole.
You see, God’s people were a consecrated people (set apart for God’s use) while the enemies of the land had pretty much decided long ago to devote themselves to false gods and idle worship. Therefore, the way God saw it. The inhabitants were devoted for destruction and the Israelites were devoted for blessing…unless…
Unless they (God’s people) decided to do a little fraternizing with the enemy—a little mixing and matching. Bottom-line, God commanded the people to act as one—united in their devotion to Him but Achan decided a little division was no big deal—so he made his own rules, and…
God threw a flag! Only this would end up costing Achan and even all of Israel a whole lot more than a loss of a down and moving their camp 5 yards back toward the Jordan. Tomorrow we will see just how strongly God feels about even the slightest sin and division.