The Walls of Jericho

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Raisins rising, eyes all turning to you. We turn to you. Hope is stirring, hearts all yearning for you.

We long for you Cause when we see you We find strength to face the death And in your presence All our fears are washed away I washed away Hosanna, Hosanna You are the God who saves us Worthy of all our praises Hear the sound of hearts returning to you We turn to you In your kingdom Broken lives are made new You make all things new Cause when we see you We find strength to face the dead And in your presence All our fears are washed away Washed away Hosanna Hosanna You are the God who saves us We're worthy of all our praises Hosanna, Hosanna Come every way among us We welcome you here, Lord Jesus

We'll be right back. ever bring worthy of every breath we could ever breathe we live for you Jesus the name above every other name Jesus the only one who could ever say Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe, we live for you, oh, we live for you. Holy, there is no one like you, there is none beside you. Open up my eyes in wonder And show me who you are And fill me with your heart And lead me in your love to those around me Worthy of every song we could ever sing Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe We live for you Jesus, the name above every other name Jesus, the only one who could ever save Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe

We live for you, oh, we live for you Holy, there is no one like you There is none beside you Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me. I will build my life upon your love, it is a firm foundation. I will put my trust in you alone, and I will not be shaken. Holy, there is no one like you, there is none beside you. Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who you are and fill me with your heart and my name in your love to those around me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Prepare for communion this morning. We're going to sing Cornerstone, and then we will partake of the Lord's Supper together. My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus' blood and righteousness

I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly trust in Jesus' name. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly trust in Jesus' name. Christ alone, cornerstone, weak made strong in the Savior's love. Through the storm He is Lord, Lord of all When darkness seems to hide its face I rest on His unchanging grace In every high and stormy gale My anchor holds within the veil My anchor holds within the veil Christ alone, call us home Weak made strong In the Savior's light Through the storm He is Lord Lord our Lord Christ our Lord Call us home Weak made strong in the Savior's light Lord the storm, He is Lord, Lord our Lord When He shall come with trumpet sound Oh, may I then in Him be found Dressed in His righteousness alone Faultless than before the throne Christ alone, call us Lord Weak, made strong And the Savior's love Through the storm He is Lord, Lord of all

This beautiful and wonderful and encouraging and strengthening picture of the gospel. It begins by talking about where we were without Christ, that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. It talks about how God has made us alive in Christ. And then it talks about how God has brought us together, both the Jew and the Gentile. And in verse 17, we find this. he came and he preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers or aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. And the picture there is that in Christ we are no longer separated from God, we are no longer separated from each other,

and it's not just that we are no longer separated, but that we are brought into a family. And then he's going to talk about the foundation of this family. He'll say, Belt upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. And so in our day and in our world, I think cornerstones tend to be generally symbolic, right? They'll maybe list the name of the building. Sometimes they'll contain a little time capsule that as they're building the building, they put some little artifacts in there to remember the construction of the building. But in the time when Paul was writing, a cornerstone was your foundational piece.

It was the one point from which all the rest of the building was measured. And so how wide is the building going to be? You measure from the cornerstone. How long is the building going to be? You measure from the cornerstone. How tall will the building be? You measure from the cornerstone. And one of the pictures in Ephesians chapter 2 is that we are saved, we are brought into the family of God, we are brought near to each other, and then God is not finished with us, that he is at work building us into this structure where Jesus is the cornerstone, which means in the life of the church and in the life of the believer, Everything must be measured from Christ. We all understand it's filled with busyness and distractions and fears and worries.

And sometimes even our joys can cause us to run in different directions. And so we gather around this table and we will break this bread and drink this cup to remind ourselves where it is we're centered, where it is we are measuring life from. Where it is is the foundation that is not shaken. That cannot be taken away from us. So we remember as we gather around this table our cornerstone. Let's pray and then we'll partake. Father, we thank you for salvation. We thank you for hope. We thank you for grace. We thank you that you have not left us without strength and without help. And we thank you that you have given us a foundation that will weather any storm. And so we ask this morning, as we consider our lives, that you would anchor us to your Son,

that in all of our distractions and fears and joys and worries, all those things that so many times pull our eyes from you, that you would use these moments as we consider the cross, as we understand the weight and the burden of our sin, that You would fix our eyes on Jesus, that our hope and our life would be focused and centered on Him. I ask that You bless this bread and this cup. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Paul will remind us as he reminds the church about the good news of the Gospel and about celebrating the Lord's Supper. He will say, when Jesus had given thanks, He took the bread and broke it. And he said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Let's partake together.

In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. And then Jesus will say, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. We are going to be in Joshua, the seventh chapter this morning. It's a chapter that, in terms of the story and sort of where Joshua is going, it seems like it's a fairly simple chapter. And it's simple in the way that it's sort of written and laid out. It's not necessarily simple when it comes to applying it to our life. And I don't mean that it's hard to understand. I think the problem with Joshua 7 is not that it's hard to understand.

It's that we may not feel comfortable with what we understand. And so we're going to pray for some guidance and wisdom, and we'll jump into Joshua chapter 7. If you're following the handouts this morning, you notice there's sort of a two-part. There's one printout in the back that just has all of Joshua chapter 7 on it, and then another one that has kind of an outline. When I was putting it all together, I was just kind of breaking up the outline in kind of a strange way, and so we're kind of jumped back and forth between Joshua, the seventh chapter, and the outline that you have. So let's go ahead and pray, and then we'll dive right into it. Father in heaven, as we move into this chapter, as we consider sin, as we consider judgment, and as we consider your holiness,

may you help us to see your glory. Help us to see our lives in light of that glory. And ultimately, help us to see the hope that we have in Jesus. Give us wisdom. Be with us as we move through these verses. For a lot of us, these verses may be a struggle in applying and thinking through. And so I just ask for your help and that you would be with us this morning. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So one of the remarkable things, I remember visiting the chiropractor when I was probably a teenager. My parents probably know better than I do. But one of the remarkable things to me is that the chiropractor could look at just how you were standing and see what needed to be corrected or what needed to be adjusted just by looking at you.

He could look at you and say, well, you're kind of standing like this. This side's taller than this side. Looks like you're favoring that one side or you're not. And then he would go about correcting things. And I think Joshua 7, maybe for many of us, is going to work to sort of correct us, that we come to this text maybe with some wrong thinking and some wrong ideas, maybe about who God is, maybe about what sin is, maybe about judgment and the necessity of judgment. And what we'll do as we move into this text, we may feel uncomfortable. And one of the things that I think the reason God has given us this account in Joshua chapter 7 is because I think we need some correction, right? And so there's some things with our lives and maybe our faith that isn't quite lined up right.

And so God uses his word, not just Joshua 7, but all of his word to teach us and to encourage us and when necessary, correct us. And as I was thinking about it and kind of struggling through this text over the last week and a half, you know, it's one of the advantages, I think, even though it doesn't always feel that way, of going through the Bible, sort of chapter by chapter or verse by verse, because this is probably not a place that I would have chosen to preach from in general, right? Because there's a picture of judgment, there's loss, there's this punishment of this man and his family that as we read from our perspective several thousand years later, we say, well, that might seem like it's incredibly harsh. And so there's a lot of questions, I think, that our soul sort of

begins to raise. And some of those questions, I think, are defensive because we do not want to truly see the glory of God. So I wanted to sort of try to identify maybe a couple of areas. There's a lot of areas where we have sort of gotten out of alignment, but I want to just share with you as we begin three that I think if we can sort of at least begin the process of correcting them will make Joshua the seventh chapter just maybe a little easier to understand and so one of the struggles that we have had and I don't think it's just me or just us I think the church in general is that we have often minimized the holiness of God and so when we talk about holiness what we're talking about is that the word means that something is set apart.

And you can be set apart from, or you can be set apart to. And so a lot of times when we talk about God setting us apart, when we talk about the saints, we are set apart to the work of God, and we are set apart from sin. And when we talk about holiness in terms of God, what we are talking about is that God is removed. He is set apart from sin and wrongdoing. When we're talking about the holiness of God, we are talking about an absolute moral purity. And one of the struggles when it comes to dealing with the holiness of God is that there's theologians through time have sort of divided the attributes of God into two ways of thinking. One of them are communicable, which means that we can sort of understand them

because in part, when God creates us in his image, we share those attributes. So things like being able to love, being faithful, those kinds of things are attributes of God that he has shared through us. Now, there are attributes of God that we struggle to understand because they're so far removed from us. So, for example, the eternal nature of God, right? No beginning, no end, seeking to understand that, right? That's a struggle because we have a beginning. Now, we may be eternal in this direction, but we are not eternal reaching back. Or maybe God's omnipotence, His all-powerfulness, right? We're used to power that can only go so far, but God has no limits, and no limits or the reach of His power is complete. It's a struggle to understand. And one of those areas that is a struggle to communicate to us is the holiness of God,

that absolute moral purity. Because even people that we might say are good or good people always have some sort of flaw, right? Even if we do the best we can to make ourselves and separate ourselves from sin, there's always a flaw. And to understand that God has this unblemished moral purity is a struggle for us. And maybe to help us understand a little bit of God's holiness, we should look at Isaiah 6. And it says this, In the year that King Uzziah died, this is Isaiah speaking, I saw the Lord sitting upon the throne, high and lifted up, the train of His robe filling the temple. And above Him were the seraphim. Each had six wings. And with two He covered His face, and two He covered His feet, and two He flew. And one called to the other and said,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. and the foundations of the thresholds shook and the smoke of him who called the house and at the voice of him who called and filled the house with smoke and I said, woe is me for I am lost I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts and so when you hear those words holy, holy, holy they're used twice in Scripture once here and once in Revelation It's an emphasis. It's picturing the heart and the emotion and the strength of what is being said. It expresses force and passion. And notice those who serve in the presence of God are covering their face

and covering their feet in the glory of God. And God's holiness cannot be in the presence of sin, Which is why Isaiah says, woe is me. Because when we see the glory of God, it so clearly pictures our brokenness. And Isaiah says, woe is me. I'm a man of unclean lips, and it's not just me. It's all my people, and now I have seen the Lord of hosts. And he just feels like he's falling apart at the glory of God. To stand before a holy God as a sinful person ultimately is to be obliterated. And it's why the seraphim flies and cleanses him sort of symbolically with this cold to his lips, saying, I'm purifying you so that Isaiah was able to stand in the presence of the Lord. And what we find sometimes is that we begin to minimize the holiness and the righteousness and the greatness of God.

In fact, throughout Scripture, when people begin to get a glimpse of who God is, Generally, the response is for them to fall on their face in worship because of the overwhelming power of His glory and of His holiness. In fact, remember in the ministry of Jesus, when Jesus causes the fish to be caught in such a large number, and Peter says, Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. He gets that tiny glimpse of the glory and the righteousness and the holiness of God. In his life, all of a sudden, his sin becomes so clear in the light of the holiness of God that he says, I can't even be near you. And so what we find so many times, we've minimized the holiness of God. There's a sort of a false dichotomy that has occurred in the church

that on one time, we have God's love where he is close to us and he loves us and cares for us. And on the other side, we have the holiness of God and the justice of God. and the tendency has been in the church to sort of pick one or the other, right? So some people are all about the holiness and the wrath of God and others only speak of the love of God, but the reality in Scripture is that God is both holy and He is both love. It's not one or the other, it has to be both. And when we minimize either one, the holiness or the love of God, we begin to come sort of out of place from where we should be. The second thing that we've minimized, in addition to minimizing the holiness of God,

we have minimized our sin. Think about the things that we hear about sin, or maybe we've said, right? I'm not hurting anybody. It's not that big a deal. It's nobody's business but mine. What we find is that sin is not just breaking some sort of arbitrary rule, But sin is an affront to the holiness of God. That God is not just giving us a standard, but He Himself in His purity is the standard. And it's why Peter, quoting from the Old Testament in 1 Peter 1, will say, be holy as I am holy. And we have excused and we've explained away and we've blamed and we've minimized our sin. And if we have a small view of sin and a small view of the holiness of God, Joshua chapter 7 is going to be difficult for us.

Third, I think we have minimized our responsibility. And I don't mean in the sense that every generation says about the generation that follows it, right? Every generation looks like the generation that comes after them and goes, well, those people just don't take responsibility for anything, right? I'm sure the generations before me have done it about my generation. I've done it about the generations that follow me. It's very easy for us to say those people don't take responsibility for anything. The reality is we have not been taking responsibility since Genesis chapter 3. Remember, when God comes and confronts Adam and Eve in the garden, what does he say? Adam, what did you do? Oh, it's not my fault. It's the wife you gave me. So he blames God for the wife that he gives him. And then Eve, what did you do?

Well, it's not my fault. it's the serpent. From the very beginning, you and I have struggled to take responsibility for our sin. And with those three things sort of out of joint, our view of the holiness of God, our view of sin, and the view of our responsibility, if those things are not correct, Joshua 7 will be difficult for us. And additionally, part of what Joshua 7, I think, is intended to do in our lives is to put those things back in place to help us to see that God is holy, that sin is a huge deal, and that we do bear responsibility for the wrong that we do. So I want to talk just a little bit about the structure of Joshua chapter 7. One of the remarkable things about this chapter is that it's incredibly symmetrical. And so if you have a picture, it's exactly the same. You draw a

line down the middle. It's symmetrical. It's the same on either side. You can fold it in half, right? And both sides match up. And the remarkable thing about the seventh chapter of Joshua is that's what happens. If you look at the sections, not necessarily the length or the verse numbers, but if you look at the sections covered in Joshua, what you will see is this picture of symmetry. In fact, the term for it is a chiasm or chiasmus. And it comes from the Greek letter X, which you fold in half. It covers itself perfectly. And so in verse 1, you'll see God's anger. And then in verse 24 and 26, we'll see God's anger removed, right? Those two sections match up with each other. In verse 2, we'll see Joshua sending out scouts. And in verse 22 and

23, we'll see Joshua sending out messengers, right? So these two places sort of correspond. In verses 3 through 5, we'll see the judgment on Israel, and in verses 20 and 21, we'll see sort of where the source of this judgment comes, as Achan confesses to his sin. Verses 6 through 9, Joshua will speak to God, and then later on, in verses 16 through 19, the passage that corresponds, he's going to speak about what God has said to Israel. And then in verses 10 through the first half of verse 12, God is going to announce their sin. And in verses 13 through 15, God's going to announce judgment. And in the middle of this is the consequence for sin. So I want to read through these events. We're going to read through this text. We're going to move fairly quickly

because there's a lot here. We'll stop in a couple different places and explain a few things. And then we'll sort of try to talk through some of the struggles we might have with this text. Verse 1. The people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah from the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things, and the anger of the Lord burned against the people. And then we find the scouts. You sort of contrast this with the overwhelming victory as well that they've just experienced, and now they've gone from victory to judgment. Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth-Avon, east of Bethel, and went up to them and said, go up and spy out the land. And the men went up and

spied out Ai. And they returned to Joshua and said, 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 go up there, for there's few, there's not a lot of people there, right? You don't need a big army, just 2,000 or 3,000. If you remember, as they crossed the Jordan River, just two of the tribes had like 40,000 men of war. So you're taking a tiny amount of people to go to this city. So about 3,000 men went up from there and from the people, and they fled before the men of Ai. The men of Ai killed about 36 of their men and chased them before the gate as far as Shebarim and struck them at their descent, and the hearts of the people melted like water. And so here is where everything that has

happened so far in Joshua kind of turns upside down, right? Remember, they have just come from Jericho, where they have conquered an entire city, and their losses in that battle have been zero, right? They've conquered this massive city with massive walls, and they have lost nobody. And now they come to this little tiny backwater town and they lose 36. And it may not seem like a big number compared to how some battles go or some losses that even we've seen in battles. But to go from a massive battle where you lose no one to a tiny skirmish where you lose 36, it's a big deal. And notice how the tables have turned as they came into the promised land. In Joshua chapter 3 and 4 and the battle of Jericho and 5 and 6, it says repeatedly

the people's hearts of the land melted before them and now Israel is in the same place where the people they were attacking were just briefly. And what we see here in these verses, it's not about the opponent that is before you. The question is, is God with you? Remember when God speaks to Joshua and Joshua says are you on our side or their side he said well you have to be on my side and the real victory here is not whether the city is big or small you have a lot of men or a few men the picture is is God on your side are you on God's side and what we'll see is the people have left God's side then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until evening and he and the elders of Israel 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 have been content to dwell beyond the Jordan? O Lord, what can I say when Israel turn their backs before their enemies for the Canaanites and the inhabitants of the land will hear of it. They will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. What will you do for your great name? And when you see in Scripture people who are tearing their clothes, they're pouring dust on their heads. Job will do it with ashes. What you're seeing is a picture. We sort of like to kind of keep our appearance and hide our emotions down inside. In this time, in this culture, what you're seeing is a visible picture

of what Joshua is feeling inside, right? That my life is being torn apart. That my life is falling apart everything is wrong and he's covering himself in dust and he's tearing his robes to give a picture a visible picture of his anguish and 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 to destruction. And then in the end of verse 12, sort of the center of this text, I will be with you no more unless you destroy the

devoted thing from among you. Get up, consecrate the people and say, consecrate yourself for tomorrow. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, they are devoted things in your midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you. And in the morning you shall be brought near by your tribes. And the tribe that the Lord takes by lot shall come near by clans. The clan that the Lord takes shall come near by household. The household that the Lord takes shall come near man by man. And he who has taken with the devoted things shall be burned with fire and all that he has because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord and because he has done an outrageous thing in Israel. And so what God commands is that Israel will pass before all the tribes individually

and God will say, this tribe. And that tribe will sort of stand forward and He'll say, the clans will then pass before God. And God will say, that clan. And the clans will then pass before that clan. And God will say, that family. And that family will pass before and God will say, That man is the one who has sinned. So Joshua arose 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. Give praise to him. Tell me now what you have done and do not hide it. And Achan answered Joshua, Truly I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel. This is what I did. I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels. And I coveted them and I took them. And they are hidden inside the earth underneath my tent with the silver underneath. And what you find is that he steals gold and silver and clothes from the city of Jericho. And if you remember, God has said of Jericho that everything in the city belongs and is devoted to God. And then we find this. Joshua sent messengers.

They ran to the tent. Behold, hidden in his tent with the silver underneath, they took them out of the tent and brought them to Joshua and to all the people of Israel and laid them down before the Lord. And Joshua took all Israel with him. He took Achan, the son of Zerah, the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold and his sons and daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent and all that he had, they brought them up to the valley of Achor. And this is important for later, but the valley of Achor means the valley of trouble. And Joshua said, why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you today. All Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones.

And they raised him up 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 or the Valley of Trouble. And God's wrath is removed and I think we are left with kind of a difficult text. And it's a whole lot different than what I remember being taught in Sunday school. It's a lot darker and a lot more difficult. And so I think if we're honest, this chapter for us can be a struggle, right? It can seem to us unfair to punish an entire nation over the actions of one person. It can seem excessive to punish Achan and his entire family and all of their belongings. It can seem like the punishment itself is maybe too big for the crime.

So I want us to talk a little bit about what's actually happening in these events. Maybe we've experienced this in our modern day, that we read a news headline about something, but we don't read the details. And the headline says something that is very shocking, but the details help us to understand that headline. The headline for this chapter is the judgment of God upon Israel and upon Achan and Achan's family in a massive way. And if all we see is the headline and not the details, we're going to struggle with what God is doing. And so to understand what is happening, we need to go back to Joshua chapter 6 and verse 18. But keep yourselves, this is God, not just speaking to one or two people, He's speaking to all of God's people before they go to Jericho.

Here's what He says, But you, to all of the Israelites, keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them, you take of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it. God has warned them. In chapter 6 and verse 18, what will happen if as they go into Jericho Jericho, and they take those things which are supposed to be given to the tabernacle of God, devoted to God, if they take those things, here is what will happen. God has been very clear and very specific about the consequences of their actions. Achan's actions as well, they're deliberate. In verse 21, he'll say, I saw, right, he'll talk about this beautiful cloak from Shinar or Babylon, I wanted it, coveted it, that's when he says coveted it,

and then he will say, so I took it. Achan's thing is, I see this, I want it, I'm going to take it. The impression there was that it wasn't a lot of thought given to what God had said. God had said very clearly, if you take anything, there will be incredible consequences within the people of God, and Achan just sees that, and rather than hearing and submitting himself to what God has said, He just takes what he wants, ignoring what God has done. Achan has known the command of God, and I think, I don't know for sure, we don't have any scriptural evidence, I think he knows that the events that happen at Ai are a result of his actions. And notice, as all of these events are unfolding, and Joshua is saying, why, God, is this happening?

As all of these things are unfolding, as the people of Israel, which would not have been a quick process, go tribe by tribe, clan by clan, family by family, ultimately ending up on him, he could have at any point taken responsibility. But he does what so many of us do. When he's caught, it's not sorry that we've done something to someone. We're sorry that we've got caught, right? Most of us have experienced that, especially when you're a child and you have to apologize for something. You're not sorry that you did it, you're sorry that you got caught. And so we don't really, I think, in this text, see Achan ever truly repent. Additionally, when it comes to his family, you have to remember that Israelite tents are different than the tents that we go camping in today,

where you have this little structure, you zip out the front, you go in and zip it closed. Remember, we're talking about a tent that would be like a house. And so for Achan to steal these things, to steal 50 shekels of gold, which in modern money is like $320,000, it's a fair amount of gold, a fair amount, 200 shekels of silver and these clothes, and to bury them inside his tent, his family would have likely known and likely been culpable because they're helping him hide and keep this well. It doesn't really make what we see maybe much easier. And part of that reason is because we, like Achan, like to hold on to our sin. We like to try to justify it. We like to try to hide it. We like to try to keep it out of view.

And Joshua 7 makes several things very clear to us. First of all, sin is serious. It's not a toy to be played with or something to see how close we can get to. Because oftentimes, especially when it comes to danger or things that we're not supposed to be doing, we like to try to see how close we can get to the edge before we ultimately fall off or we don't want to fall off. Or when something's dangerous, we want to see how close we can get to it. And sin, what we see in Joshua chapter 7, is not something to be toyed with, Not something to see how close we can get or how much we can do before we get in trouble. The other thing we see about sin, and we don't just see it in Joshua chapter 7,

we see it in our lives, is that sin, even if in your heart you say, well, this doesn't affect anybody else, it ultimately does affect other people. Sin has a tendency to spiral out from our life. And our sin will affect our relationships, our friendships, And maybe in some cases, even things on this kind of scale. You see, we see throughout Scripture that even little sins spread. Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 will compare sin to leaven. And when you're baking bread and you have all of your ingredients, your cups of flour, your cups of water, and then you have just a tiny amount of yeast. What Paul says is that that tiny amount of yeast is like the sin that affects everything in that dough. By percentage-wise and by weight and by size, that yeast is so small compared to the rest of the dough,

but it has such a massive effect. And sin does the same thing. And the problem is we don't see sin as a problem. God sees it as something that corrupts because it does. He sees it as something that kills because it does. He sees it as something that hurts because it does and it spreads to those around us. And if we went to the doctor tomorrow and he said, well, you have cancer, but it's just a little bit of cancer. Let's just not worry about it for a couple of years. We would go, no, absolutely not, right? I want a second opinion. But when it comes to sin, something that kills us spiritually and it kills those around us, we go, well, it's not that big a deal. We can wait to deal with it and like ache and hide our sin.

I don't think our struggle in Joshua 7 is necessarily with what happens to Achan. It's because it puts our sin into focus and we begin to see the holiness of God and we can begin to realize that sin is truly dangerous. I want you to see a contrast. I want you to see a picture of hope and then I want to try to lead you to the Savior this morning. In Joshua chapter 7, verse 18, we find it in Joshua chapter 7, verse 1 as well, we hear the lineage of this man Achan. And you might say, why does God keep the lineage in here? He brought near to this household a man by the name of Achan, and Achan, the son of Chammai, the son of Zabda, the son of Zerah, that's important, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.

In Genesis, the 38th chapter, you have a woman by Tamar, and her story is very difficult, And she has two sons. One is Zerah, one is Perez. They're twins, and as they're born, the nurse who's helping her give birth wants to make sure they're able to separate them, so they take a scarlet cord, and they tie it around. The first hand she sees, which was Zerah, but ultimately, Perez is the one who is born first. And you have this family line coming from Tamar all the way down now, And Achan is of the clan or the family of Zerah, that twin that was almost born first but was born second. But what's remarkable, in Joshua chapter 2, we meet somebody who is saved by a scarlet cord. Her name's Rahab. And she's brought into the people of Israel.

She eventually marries a man. In Matthew 5, we find her lineage, Salmon, the father of Boaz, by Rahab. Do you know Salmon's family was? it was the other half of those twins. Perez, the twin that was born second. And so here you have this contrast of faithfulness and unfaithfulness. Rahab outside the people of God who is faithful and saved by a scarlet cord. And then you have Achan inside the people of God who is not faithful even though his lineage is delineated and marked by a scarlet cord. Achan's family ends up destroyed. Rahab's family goes on to be in the lineage of King David and ultimately of Jesus. And one of the things we see from that comparison is that faithfulness is not necessarily based on our family. It's based on our commitment to following and obeying God.

Also, in the midst of all of this sin and judgment and loss, there's a promise of hope. Remember in Joshua chapter 7, there's this valley of trouble, the valley of Achor. So several hundred years, a man by the name of Hosea will write about the unfaithfulness of God's people and the judgment they will face. And in the midst of this, he'll make this prophecy about hope. Therefore, I will allure her. I will bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her, speaking of God's people. And there I will give her vineyards and make the valley of Achor, the valley of trouble, a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt and in Isaiah 65, 10.

Sharon shall become a pasture for flocks and the valley of April is a place for herds to lie down for my people who have sought me. That the prophets look at this valley of trouble with this monument to sin belt in the middle of it and they said it's not always going to be this way. There will be a day when God will turn the valley of trouble into the valley of hope and ultimately he does so through Jesus. One of the verses that I think pictures this so clearly is 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 21. Paul is talking about the gospel. He will talk about Jesus and he will say, he took him for our sake, he made him who knew no sin to be sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The reason for us as we look back that this is now a valley of hope in the midst of sin is because Jesus, who knew no sin, took our sin and bore the punishment that we deserved. In this story in Joshua chapter 7, the trajectory of our life is the trajectory of Achan. One who has rebelled against God intentionally and without apology and has hidden our sin and held on to our sin and enlisted others in our sin. But instead of facing the fate of Achan at the hands of a holy God. That holy God sends His Son who takes our sin, who stands in our place, in that place of trouble, so that for us the place of trouble becomes a place of hope. You see, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus at the cross

takes our sin and He gives us His righteousness so that as God sees us and deals with us, He doesn't see us with all of our brokenness, all of our sin, all of our rebellion. But He sees the righteousness given to us by Jesus. You see, for the Christian, this is not a valley of fear or a valley of trouble. It points ahead to the One who would make it a valley of hope. Let's pray. Father, thank You for Jesus and for grace. Help us as we consider Your holiness to not minimize our sin or Your holiness, that we would see our sin, take responsibility for it, and run to Jesus, who stood in our place, who bore our sin, who rose again for our victory, and has gone ahead to prepare a place for us.

Strengthen us with Your Spirit. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So we're going to stand, and we're going to sing, Holy, Holy, Holy.

Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty God in three persons, blessed Trinity

Holy, holy, holy All the saints adore thee Casting down their golden crowns Around the glossy sea Cherubim and seraphim Falling down before me Who was then God And evermore shall be Holy, holy, holy Though the darkness hide Thee Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see Only Thou art holy There is none beside Thee Perfect in power, in love and purity Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty All thy works shall praise thy name In earth and sky and sea Holy, holy, holy Merciful and mighty God in three persons Blessed Trinity

We are very thankful that you are here with us this morning, whether you're joining us in person or online. I am incredibly thankful for you. Just a couple of announcements. We'll be here Wednesday at 7 p.m., continuing our study of the gospel and how it changes and transforms us. It's not just something we talk about and we say, but the reality is that it changes. It changes how we deal with others. It changes how we deal with family. It changes how we deal with the world in which we live. So we're here on Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. I also want to thank a couple people. I want to thank Debbie for all the cleaning she's been doing and taking care of here. And Kathy, if you didn't know, she came in and moved all the chairs,

shampooed all the carpets, and we're very thankful for that. And we're also thankful Tiffany brought in some cookies this morning. I'm very, very thankful because everywhere was sold out of cinnamon rolls when I went. Target, Martins, everywhere. And so when she texted me, I was very, very thankful. So we're thankful for you. We're going to pray. We're going to read a verse, and then we will sing the doxology. Father in heaven, we have so much to be thankful for. Most of all, the salvation that you have given us. Thank you that you have brought us in to your family. Thank you for the hope you have given us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And in the end of the book of Jude, it says, Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,

and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, now and forever. Praise God from whom all blessings flow Praise Him all creatures here before Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts Praise Son and Holy Ghost Thank you.