O God, we pray with the psalmists, especially in coming to this text, that You would search us, that You would know our hearts, You would try us and You would know our thoughts, and You would see if there is any grievous way in me, in any of us, and then lead us in the way everlasting. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Our text this morning comes from Joshua chapter 7, which I’ll read in its entirety in just a moment. There are several ways to look at this story, and after I read it straight through and you follow along, the sermon outline will move through scene by scene to understand what’s taking place. But the story, I don’t want us to get lost and miss the forest for the trees, the story is fundamentally about sin. It’s about the gravity of sin. It’s about God’s judgment upon sin. It’s about God’s ever present knowledge of our sin.
One my prayers this week for us as a body was that the Lord would expose in your heart, in particular if there are any Achan, A-c-h-a-n, Achan sins in your heart.
Now we all have sins, we’ve just come before the Lord and I trust in those few seconds of silence you confessed some specific sins, repented particularly of particular sins before the Lord, so that is true of us every day. I do hope that those kinds of sins would also be revealed.
But even more than that, I’m thinking this week, from this passage, that in a room this size, sadly there may be some people who are living a double life. You’re fake. Or at least some part of you is a fraud. Rarely is it entirely a fake. But I mean there may be some buried sin that you have thought is buried deep in the earth, under the tent, just like Achan did, hidden from the world, never to be found out, never dealt with. Never repented of. Hidden from your neighbors.
You may be going about living your life of hypocrisy, duplicity, and here’s the scariest part – that duplicity may even be hidden from your own eyes. We are often the last to know, or the last to truly admit, the sin that so clouds our judgment and takes over our lives.
But here’s what this passage is going to show us – our sins are never hidden from God.
It’s one of the wonderful, terrifying, and freeing things about the Bible is this book knows you better than you know yourself. This book knows me better than I know myself. God sees, God knows.
Yes, we see from this passage that God’s anger burns against unconfessed, never dealt with secret sins in the lives of His people. That’s what this story is about and I pray and have been praying that the Lord would do some much needed, deep heart work in this room.
Follow along as I read from Joshua chapter 7.
“But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, 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.”
You see the pun there. They have taken the devoted things and now they have become devoted for destruction.
“I will 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 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 near 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 Carmi, 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 Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 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 burning anger. Therefore, to this day the name of that place is called the Valley of Achor.”
See there Achor means trouble, because he had brought trouble upon Israel and then the Lord brought trouble upon Achan.
This story unfolds in six scenes, which you can see very neatly correspond to the six paragraphs in the ESV.
Scene number one. An ominous prelude.
Look at the juxtaposition between the end of chapter 6 and the beginning of chapter 7. You see chapter 6:27, “So the Lord was with Joshua and his fame was in all the land.” What a great banner to wave over that chapter. He was with Joshua, his fame was spreading, and then chapter 1, but the people of Israel broke faith.
You may have heard before the famous “but God” in Ephesians 2:4. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and others have famous sermons on that text. We were dead in our sins and trespasses and we were subject to His wrath and by nature sons of disobedience, heaping up all that is true of us in Adam and then Ephesians turned with that wonderful adversative, “but God.” That’s the turning of the tide, the good news.
Well, you notice here, it’s moving in the opposite direction: But the people broke faith.
We are told here that it is Achan, and we are given his family lineage, but we aren’t yet given any specifics. The narrator is a good storyteller here. He hides some of the details until later, but he tells us right from verse 1 this ominous scene, the theme, the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.
So chapter 6:27 waves this big banner, the Lord was with Joshua and his fame was in all the land. Hallelujah. Now take down that flag, we’re putting up another one here, the Lord’s anger burned against the people of Israel. An ominous prelude.
Scene number two, next paragraph. A surprising defeat.
After conquering the major fortified city of Jericho, they crossed the Jordan, there’s the first place they need to attack, even though it wasn’t a massive city by population or size, it was an important city. They needed to defat this otherwise if they just went around it they would have had an enemy at their rear. They target then after defeating Jericho this tiny settlement east of Bethel, west of Jericho, in south central Israel called Ai.
Now let me put a little parentheses here about how to pronounce this little word. It begins with the Hebrew letter Ayin, which is different than the Hebrew letter Alef, and Ayin at least as I learned it has a little bit more a guttural, in the back of the throat. Think of the end of an –ing word. So this might be, instead of I, might be Iiii, but that’s pretty difficult to say for a whole sermon. But it may have had a little “g” sound because interestingly the word that gets translated in our Bible “Gaza,” you’ve all heard of Gaza, Gaza actually starts with this same later Ayin. So Gaza. And the Greek Septuagint actually gives the word as “Gi,” with a hard “g” sort of sound. So I’m not going to say Gi, I’m not going to say Iiii, I’m just going to say A-I even though that’s not how it’s pronounced and now you think Allen Iverson or artificial intelligence. But A-I it is.
So they go to this little town Ai and it’s not a major defeat. You think 36 people, this is not a massive defeat, and yet psychologically, spiritually, it was catastrophic.
Have you ever come crashing down from some spiritual high? I’m sure, if you’re old enough, you have at some point. Some great moment. Maybe it was from, maybe it was from your senior adult retreat, or some college retreat, and you’re just walking with the Lord, or some great conference, or some breakthrough, and then everything seems sort of empty and despondent. Or maybe it was the first big fight after your honeymoon. Or maybe you’re a salesman and you had a great banner year and then the next year was the worst sales year ever.
You had some great success and now can’t understand what’s happened. We defeat Jericho and now this small city, they send out only a small force, 36 men die. That’s not a lot but they’re chased out of the city.
Go back to chapter 5 verse 1. Notice what it said here about the nations around them, what the Canaanites at the end of chapter 5 verse 1. The Lord dried up the waters of the Jordan, the people crossed over, and it says their hearts, that is the Amorites, melted and there was no longer any spirit in them because of the people of Israel. We’ve heard this language before. That used to be said of the Canaanites. They looked out at the people of Israel and their hearts melted.
But now look what we read in chapter 7 verse 6. Now it’s the hearts of Israel, their hearts melt and become as water.
We have to remember this is the first battle in Canaan that they have attempted on their own. Jericho they did have to overrun the city but they just marched around for seven days and seven times and blew the trumpets and shouted. The Lord had handed that one to them. Now they have the whole rest of the Promised Land, city by city, region by region, to conquer. This is really the first place that they go and attack and immediately they are sent running down the hill, tail between their legs.
Israel had been on a roll. They crossed over the Jordan and people were afraid. They routed Jericho. It’s like winning every playoff game 49-0 and then they lose to the JV practice squad. If you’re on JV, we love you, too.
Some commentators speculate that the Israelites weren’t prayerful, or that they were overconfident. They shouldn’t have sent just a few thousand people. Or they didn’t wait for the Lord’s instructions, or Joshua wasn’t leading them. And maybe those things could be true. But the text doesn’t tell us any of those things. The text tells us very plainly in verse 1 here’s the reason they have failed. It’s because the Lord’s anger burned against them. In some sovereign way in the Lord’s economy, part of His judgment upon the people was to turn their hearts to be cowards.
Now they went and they were routed and they fled, overpowered by this tiny city, because of the Lord’s anger against them. It was a surprising defeat.
Here’s the third scene, the next paragraph. An ominous prelude, a surprising defeat, a pathetic response.
Now I don’t mean pathetic entirely that what Joshua did is wrong. I don’t want to be too hard on this prayer that Joshua and the elders give. In many ways it’s an exemplary prayer. I mean pathetic in that it’s full of pathos, full of feeling, and it does strike me as perhaps a little whiny.
Things have been going very well for Joshua. He’s taken over for Moses, he’s God’s chosen man, he leads them through the Jordan. Chapter 3 verse 7 – the Lord began to exalt Joshua in the site of all Israel. At the end of chapter 6, the fame of Joshua is spreading throughout the land. Good times for Israel, good times for Joshua. But often it is the test of a leader not in the times of prosperity but in the times of adversity. Both have their own temptations. We say, “O Lord, test me with prosperity, would You?”
Well, here he’s tested with the adversity. The good times turn disastrous quickly. Joshua does the right thing. We read in verse 6 he tears his clothes, a sign of penitence, and he falls on his face before the ark, he and the elders until the evening, and they begin to pray.
There’s many good things about this prayer. It’s honest. It’s good to bring your honest emotions before the Lord. He knows them already. It is searching. Rends his garments, dust on the head, falls on his face. These are all of the typical signs of being humbled before the Lord. He says in verse 8, “O Lord, what can I say?”
You ever prayed that kind of prayer? Lord, I’m speechless. I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t know what to say.
He’s seeking after God. There is a lot to commend here. He doesn’t go work on an alliance with Egypt. He doesn’t go check the chariot manufacturer and say are these things under warranty? What happened here? He turns to the Lord. He understands this defeat somehow, Lord, You’ve left us, and best of all, he is zealous, look at the end of verse 9, for the Lord’s fame. What will You do for Your great name? That’s the most important thing we can pray.
Remember, Jesus taught us to pray the very first petition, hallowed. May Your name be great, O Lord.
So there’s a lot that is really good about this prayer.
It’s also plagued, it seems to me, with some doubts. He’s wondering already, after one little defeat, the Amorites are going to destroy us. He says the Canaanites are going to surround us. They’re going to cut us off. It’s a little Eeyore-ish, lost my tail, we’re all doomed. You brought us out here. We should have never, we should have never gone. We shouldn’t have even come. This is the worstest, most horrible thing ever.
And it was terrible, but it’s a little bit like when you’re driving with your kids, “Are we there yet?” Even when you say, “We’ll be there in 15 minutes,” “Oh, this is a hundred million years.” “It’s bedtime. No, you can have a cookie tomorrow.” “I’ve never had a cookie.” And at least at my house if you say you can have a cookie tomorrow, they may not remember their Bible verses, their Catechism, they will remember first thing in the morning, “Dad, you said I could have cookies for breakfast.” It’s not exactly what I said, well, it may have been what dad said, it was not what mom said.
This is a prayer from Joshua and the elders. It’s a prayer of lament; that’s good. It’s a prayer of supplication; that’s good. It also has the air of being a prayer of exasperation. It’s very honest and we’ve all had prayers like that – Lord, what is happening. It’s over. We’re done. We’re through. We’re doomed.
My kids will tell you this is what I am like as a fan with all of my teams. I know, it’s self, it’s emotional self-protection. Talk to Pastor Derek – he roots for South Carolina. It is emotional self-protection. We’re doomed, it’s over.
A prayer of exasperation. But look at what the Lord says.
Scene four. So a pathetic response, next paragraph, a call to action.
Now when we pray, the Lord can answer us in many different ways. He can say yes, I give you the thing that you want. He can say no. He can say wait. He can say, like He did to Paul when he prayed for the thorn in the flesh to be removed three times, He said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” But here’s one of the other answers to prayer, and don’t forget this one, verse 10: Sometimes when we fall on our face and pray before the Lord, God says, “Get up.”
Don’t think that there is necessarily something more pleasing to the Lord that you would grovel in a pitiful state with Him forever and ever. Sometimes we think oh, I was so bad, I just need to be pitiful for a long enough time, and it’s almost like we think we’re earning something back with God. Sometimes the response to our prayers, now this was not Joshua’s sin but it was the sin of Joshua’s people and he has to do something about it, is to say I want you to, why are you on your face? Okay. Appreciate the heartfelt sentiment, appreciate the searching, but now is not the time to moan about this. Now is the time to get up and do something about it.
The devoted things had been stolen. Someone has transgressed the covenant. An outrageous thing has been done in Israel. That’s what the Lord says. So Joshua, you and the elders, you need to get to work. You need to find the man, you need to punish him, you need to make it right. Sin must be dealt with. Good leaders deal with sin.
Verse 12, look at it. This is a striking verse because this is the, if the Emmanuel principle is the heart of the covenant, God with us, this is the anti-Emmanuel, this is the very heart of the curse of the covenant. He says, “I will be with you no more.” There is nothing worse the Lord can say to His covenant people than that.
Now thankfully it is here not a period but a comma, “unless.” This doesn’t have to be permanent. You have to deal with this sin. Unless you do something with the devoted things and devote those things and the people who took those things to destruction. He doesn’t want perpetual groveling. He wants them to get up and do something.
The measure, listen carefully , the measure of true repentance is never merely words, but change. To bear fruit in keeping with repentance. In the same way, the measure of a good leader is not just to lament that there is a problem, to get up and to find a solution and make things better. Get up.
I cannot help but mention this illustration. I think I’ve mentioned once before, it’s such a great illustration of this very thing. It comes from the movie Gettysburg where Jeb Stuart and his cavalry have been missing, and he comes and Robert E. Lee brings him in to his headquarters and he dresses down Jeb Stuart. He says, “It is the opinion of some our officers.” Now I can do a really bad Southern accent, but it’s not any worse than Martin Sheen’s accent in that movie. I don’t know exactly what Robert E. Lee sounded like, just not like that, I think. So I’ll spare you. But, “it is our opinion of some of our officers that you have let us all down.” And Jeb Stuart wants to plead the case, but Lee won’t stand for excuses. He says, “You, sir, with your cavalry are the eyes of this army. Without your cavalry, we are blind. It has already happened once. It must never, ever happen again.”
If you’ve seen the movie, it’s a great move. Remember what Stuart does? He begins to take off his sword and hand it in as if to say, “If I have let you down, and this is what you think of me, then I’ll just leave you.” And he says to him, “There is no time, there is no time for this.” Lee tells him, “There is another fight coming tomorrow and we need you. God knows we need every man. You must take what I told you and learn from it as a man does. There has been a mistake. It will not happen again. I know your quality, you are one of the finest officers and your service to this army has been invaluable. Let us speak no more of this. The matter is concluded. Good night, General.”
Such a powerful scene. Let this be a lesson. Maybe this is in particular for some young people here. Though we can act like this is any age, but you get kind of rebuked by somebody in authority, maybe your parents, you get a hard word and you did something wrong, and our instinct then is to say, “Well, fine, just over, and there you go, and I’m through.”
You need to take it like a man. Get back in there and make it right.
Now notice there’s going to be a very different response to Achan. Sometimes the sin is so serious that you can’t just go and make it right. But here, this is not Joshua’s sin but there’s sin around and he needs to fix it. It is a call to action. Many times the Lord is not looking for you and I to have more and more expressions of grief. He’s looking for you to get up.
Scene five. A pitiful admission.
It’s a dramatic scene. The crowd has thinned out little by little. We’re going to have the tribe come forward. This must have been nerve-wracking. The devoted things are somewhere among the tribe of Judah. The 11 other tribes breathe a sigh of relief. Then he goes to the clan and the rest can scatter. Then down to the family and now it’s nervous and then finally only Achan is left. Notice this language at the end of verse 16: And Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken. There’s a deliberate play on words. He took some of the devoted things and now he is taken.
One of the reasons for the harsh punishment, it seems harsh to us, is because he took the things devoted to destruction. Remember, part of the rules was you go in there and there are things that were devoted to destruction. You’re not supposed to keep them. They could be a snare to you. Some of the things would be destroyed, some of the devoted things would then be precious unto the Lord and could be a part of funding the furnishings or the worship of the Lord. Those are the devoted things. Either to be to the Lord or to be physically destroyed, and he took them.
So that fact that he took them means he is going to have the same fate of the devoted things that he took. You want to wrap your arms around the things that ought to have been destroyed, then you will be destroyed. That’s what sin does to us.
And to wonder what Achan may have been thinking. Maybe he thought maybe somehow Joshua has a wrong message. Maybe when it first started with Judah, he’s like, well, there’s a lot of us in Judah. How do I know it’s me? But to the clan, to the tribe, to the family… Achan must have wondered throughout that process, maybe I can get away with it. Maybe I can be lost in the crowd.
Maybe, you know if you misbehave and maybe the teacher or the coach punishes the whole team or the whole class and they don’t know that you were the one who did it, maybe Achan is hoping, well, maybe just the whole tribe of Judah has got to run some laps or something. Or maybe we get a little plague for a couple of days.
But eventually, in this life or certainly in the life to come, you will have to stand before God as an individual and you will have to give an account for your sins. He couldn’t hide in the crowd forever. Eventually his name was called. It’s you, Achan, come forward. The troubler of Israel.
Look at verse 21. It’s such a pregnant description of the anatomy of sin. I saw a cloak, silver and gold, then I coveted, then I took.
That’s how sin works. I saw, and depending on what you see, it may just be a temptation presented to yourself or it already may be firing in your head, sinful motivation. I saw, I coveted, I took.
There’s nothing for Achan that would have been sinful just to see a cloak, see some gold, see some silver, but he saw it and then it did a work in his heart and he coveted it and then he took it. I saw. Same word used in Genesis 3. Eve saw the fruit. That’s how sin usually works. You see something.
That’s how it worked with David when he saw Bathsheba. He saw. It presents to our mind’s eye that looks good and I want it. Maybe Achan thought he was overdue for some nice things.
That’s what we do when we want to sin. We convince ourselves. Maybe you do it at the end of the day. I’ve been working hard all day, I just, a little sin, a little glimpse over there or you take it out in anger on your family. You convince yourself that people don’t understand or you deserve this. After all, he might have thought, we’ve been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. We’ve been having nothing but manna.
Now God miraculously provided that their clothes would not have worn out, but they had the same clothes for 40 years. So he saw one of those new robes from Shinar, that is from the land of Babylon. Oh, I’d look really good in that. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one of them new fancy robes from Babylon for me, Achan. I’m tired of living manna to manna, paycheck to paycheck, just a little silver, just a bar of gold. He saw it, he coveted it, and he took it.
It’s a pitiful admission.
Which brings us to scene six, the last paragraph. A decisive verdict.
Now you have to remember because Israel is not just a, it is a church and it is a nation, there are civil penalties. We don’t know if this was a heartfelt admission or if he just got caught and so he thought he might as well admit it. But there are penalties and sometimes even when there may be forgiveness, there are yet consequences for the sin. So Achan was going to bear the consequences for his sin, and the judgment was swift and violent. He was stoned by the whole community. Now that seems barbaric to us, but it was, he broke faith. He had brought disaster upon the whole community and the whole community therefore participated in the judgment. He was a troubler of Israel.
And what a somber scene it must have been, still fresh in their memory. They wouldn’t have had to travel too far back in the distance to think about that heap of stones by the Jordan that commemorated passing through on dry ground, and now already a second heap of stones for a much, much sadder experience, over Achan.
But both the one at Jordan and the one here, though they seem very different to us, they both bore witness to the glory and the greatness of God, that He is a God of power and He is a God not to be trifled with. And when this God is for you and you are with Him in faith, He lets you pass right through the Jordan. And when you were against Him in treachery and treason, then you experience that power as His anger.
There’s one thing that’s particularly hard for us here, and that’s verse 24. Maybe Achan deserved to be punished, but his sons and daughters and oxen and donkey and sheep? Why should all of them bear the punishment? A couple of things to keep in mind. One, this isn’t just saying that any time you’re a member of one group you bear all the sins of that group. There are, rather, in the Old Testament, certain principles of headship. So Adam is our head and then Christ is our head. A king can act as a kind of head of the people. A father can act as a kind of head of the people.
So notice he didn’t wipe out the whole nation of Israel for their sin, but he was the head of his family and God deals with us in families. Remember, He saved all of Rahab’s family and now He punishes Achan’s family. But you may say, well, what about Deuteronomy says that the son will not be punished for the sins of the father. We can’t be sure how it all fits together, but it is reasonable to think that the family who left with Rahab, they weren’t dragged out kicking and screaming. They must have had some measure of yes, we’re with you. Now maybe there’s little kids and they just come along, but other people in Rahab’s household had to have some aspect of okay, this is how we get saved and we come out with Rahab.
In the same way it is reasonable to think that Achan’s family saw him coming back with a fancy coat, a pile of silver, a bar of gold. Now you can bury it in your tent, it’s hard to come back and every family is just living in a little tight enclave there. Now we don’t know for sure, but I think it very likely that they saw dad traipsing in with this cloak and in some sense they bore responsibility with him. He had stolen God’s glory. He had stolen from the name of the Lord and now the Lord would blot out the name of Achan. It is the testimony that you cannot cheat God.
Do not sit here this morning and think… You may be able, perhaps, unlikely, but perhaps you got through your whole life with this deep, dark secret sin and your spouse doesn’t know, your kids don’t know, your church doesn’t know… The Lord knows. You cannot cheat the Lord.
This is a story about the seriousness and the severity of sin. He thought that God would not know if some of the devoted things were missing. He probably figured it was a waste. Either they’re going to be destroyed or they’re going to go off to the tabernacle service there. There’s lots of this to go around. Why does God need it? I need it. God had provided his whole life. Lest you think that Achan can be excused for his sin, he had seen for his whole life… Remember, the previous generation died. Achan’s entire life he had seen God work miracles for him. Manna every morning. He had just passed through with the rest of Israel on dry ground, the waters stood up in a heap. A miracle. He had just gone around Jericho and saw the walls coming tumbling down. Achan’s whole life he had seen with his own eyes the faithfulness of the Lord.
Now when it comes to these devoted things in Jericho, he thinks, “I don’t trust this God to take care of me. I don’t trust to do things God’s way. This God, He won’t take care of me. This God, His ways are not good. This God cannot be trusted.” That’s what was going on in Achan’s heart and that’s why it’s such a serious sin. And it had to be dealt with seriously.
Dale Ralph Davis in his commentary has this arresting sentence: You cannot treat cancer with vitamin pills. It would be no good doctor who gave you a cancer diagnosis and then prescribed Flintstone vitamins to you as you walked out the door. Take these, it’ll be fine.
No, the severity of the cure shows us the seriousness of the disease. Notice the bookends, very obvious bookends, verse 1 to verse 26. Verse 1 tells us the problem, the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel. By the end we have the solution, verse 26, then the Lord turned from His burning anger, therefore to this day the name of the place is called the Valley of Achor.
The problem was that His anger burned against Israel and that fierce anger needed to be spent. God is a God of justice. You cannot just say, “You know what? I don’t care about sin. I’m just having a good God day and I don’t care about Achan’s sin.” He burned against the sin and Achan and his family were literally burned, they were literally consumed in the righteous fury of God’s wrath so that His justice might be satisfied and sin might be punished.
Now. Say there’s six scenes here. It would be nice if there was a seventh. Well, there is no seventh scene in Joshua 7, but there is another occasion and we might think of it as a final seventh scene where we encounter this valley, because this is not the last time in the Old Testament that we will hear about this Valley of Achor, named because of Achan, the troubler of Israel.
We encounter this valley again in Hosea chapter 2, of all places. Hosea. Again, the people of Israel have been disobedient. Hosea the prophet is told to marry an unfaithful wife, the prostitute Gomer, to symbolize that God’s bride has been unfaithful. Hosea 2 is a diatribe against God’s treacherous people. He says there you’re not My people, just like He said in Joshua. I will not be with you. He says in Hosea 2, “Upon your children I will have no mercy.” He says in Hosea 2, “‘Your mother has played the whore and I will wall her in, I will put an end to her mirth, I will lay waste her vines, I will punish her feasts, she has forgotten me,’ declares the Lord.” All of that in Hosea 2. But then there’s this, in Hosea 2:14 and 15. There’s a turn, a dramatic turn after all of that judgment upon Israel: “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there,” speaking to His unfaithful, treacherous, adulterous people, “And there I will give her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.”
The Valley of Achor would one day become a door of hope. This place that for all of Israel’s history just sounded to them like it was, that’s the valley of trouble, that’s the place where Achan sinned, that’s the place where there’s a heap of stones upon Achan and his family who were stoned by the community and burned. That’s a reminder of the day that we failed.
And the Lord says to the prophet Hosea, “I can yet make your valley of trouble into a door of hope.”
Beloved in the Lord, sinner, there is a door of hope open for you. If you would but kneel. None can walk through this door with head lifted high. This is a door that leads to light, not darkness. You have to leave the dark behind. You have to repent of those sins and some of you need to get up off your face and you need to get up and you need to make this right. You need to deal with the secret sins of your heart. You have resigned yourself to live all of your days in the Valley of Achor and it does not have to be that way.
The Lord is open to you. He is wooing you. He is calling you. There is yet forgiveness that you may know grace that Achan at this moment in Israel’s history did not receive. If you would but see that door marked out with the name of Jesus Christ, because it was upon Him that the Lord’s wrath was spent, His burning anger poured out on Christ, on the cross, that you might walk through that door, out of the valley of trouble, into the light and have hope.
Let’s pray. Gracious heavenly Father, may You do a work by Your Spirit that it might be well with our souls. If any here are hiding in darkness, knowing that there is a side of them that they have never dealt with, not every sin, we could never possibly mention every sin, but egregious, Achan kind of deception, that You might be gracious to bring it to the light, painfully, after living in the darkness for so long, we might squint and dare to start to walk in the light and find that there is more life in the light than ever possible in the darkness. Lead us through the door of hope that we might bless You and know Your blessing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.