Eventually you can find at least one in every culture. They seem to be set on bringing the whole community down with their own decisions toward destruction. You will know them by their nature. They are totally devoted to themselves. Modern times have witnessed many acts of chaotic violence from school shootings and church burnings by such people. We have seen it over and over in this culture through hate crimes and racial discrimination.
It always helps to know the origination and the cause of such an attitude of destruction. When we learn where such things originate in the first place; we can aim to find the cure for our society. God has given us those answers. Realizing this fact may help us to steer away from the problems caused to any society from such individuals. It may not be totally their fault but it starts with their wrong decisions.
Often destruction comes from demonic activity; but the only way to counter that would be for people not to open the door wide enough to allow demons and false gods to come into their homes, families and communities. The church has its work to do in educating people about such things. Many of today’s culture would only laugh or dismiss such subjects.
JUST DON’T OPEN THE DOORS
How do you open the door to demonic activity? It all starts by the breaking of God’s Ten Commandments. There is a reason behind each commandment and that logic counteracts things that are ungodly and not good for society as a whole.
The commandments were not given to us by trial and error. The Giver knew the science behind them. He had already seen the proof. The God who gave them has seen the beginning from the end. He already knows the total history of mankind.
From His superior knowledge of good and evil; God gave us the solution to counter-act our own self-destruction. However; Satan has demons who wish to come against these cures. Today’s passage in Joshua discusses just such a case.
THEN AND NOW
The ancients were no different from modern society in relation to sins and temptations. Ancient Israel had one bad apple that almost ruined everything for everyone.
That is often the case in today’s culture as well. Eventually someone has to get greedy and selfish. This person will decide to move in their own self-interest. A domino effect is then created. Sometimes the actions of one mislead person can actually lead to the ruin of a whole nation. Often in the history of civilizations, all of the people have had to suffer for the sins of only one individual.
Israel had one who was devoted to destruction. Instead of thinking of what was good and best for all; he was totally devoted to his own self interest. That was all he cared about. He wanted to fulfil the desires of his own flesh. Never mind how he had been warned of God’s instructions not to do so.
During the battle of Jericho this man gave not one thought to the vast amount of destruction his sins would cause to the whole nation. He was only concerned for himself. This type of destructive sin usually originates from greed and self-worship. Today we would call it materialism. All it takes is one bad apple to ruin the whole barrel. The rot from that bad apple carries over and spreads and destroys those that are good.
Unless you chose to remove the bad apple from the rest of the bunch.
That is exactly what Israel was told to do when this happened to them.
WELCOME
Welcome to the COME AS A CHILD BIBLE STUDY which we post to this blog every Thursday. We are happy to have you joining in with our on-going study today. This lesson comes from our journey through the pages of The Book of Joshua. Today we will be discussing the events that took place in Joshua, Chapter Seven.
WHAT MAKES ANYTHING UNHOLY?
Something becomes unholy when it defies the instructions of God Almighty.
God and God alone has the right to decide what is holy, good and true.
He has always loved His people enough to clearly direct their paths. If they follow His specific instructions; they do not find themselves in unholy situations. That fact can be changed though by one disobedient person going astray. This is what happened in our story today. One person did not follow God’s instructions for the nation and the whole camp became unholy and defiled because of it.
Holiness is God’s way of protecting us.
Unholy situations open doors to demons.
Demons like to pose as false-gods. False gods and demons lead people astray and wreak havoc on the whole community. This was happening in the land of Canaan among the Canaanites and the Amorites. It had been a prevailing factor in this region for centuries of time.
Now God was correcting the situation.
This correction from a new set of instructions was for the benefit of the people who honored God. It was for those who would soon be inhabiting the promised land and passing it on to their generations to come. The Israelites were in a holy Covenant with God; but one person had violated the covenant by not following God’s specific instructions.
Just ONE violation can break the covenant.
One wrong move can take away a blessing and turn it into a curse.
WHEN ACHAN WENT ASTRAY
The Israelites had enjoyed a great victory at Jericho.
In that day they had faithfully listened and obediently followed God’s instructions. God had given them the battle. There was great rejoicing in the camp of Israel. The people KNEW and understood that THE GREAT GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH was for them and on their side. It was a wonderful boost of confidence for these former slaves who had only found freedom in the last forty years.
After this great victory at Jericho there were further instructions from God. He advised Joshua to instruct the people NOT to take any of the “devoted things.” These words were referring to the things that had belonged to those who carried out pagan worship and rituals to false gods in the land they had captured. It would have referred to all of the idols and all of the sacred things used in worshiping those pagan idols.
After the victory of the Battle of Jericho, the pagan sites and temples of that area had all been burned and destroyed. All pagan people from the land were slain. NOTHING was supposed to be left inside the fallen walls of Jericho that even resembled paganism. This gave the Israelites a fresh, clean new start in the land.
THE ORDERS TO DESTROY AI
Their next conquest was to be the city of Ai.
God instructed Israel through the leadership of Joshua to go in and take the land away from the pagan inhabitants living in Ai. Joshua sent out spies, as was his custom. The spies came back much relieved. These confident spies told Joshua that the battle would be SO EASY. Their advice was to reduce the troops. There seemed to be no need for so many soldiers of Israel to handle this fairly small and easy target.
So; that is exactly what Joshua did. The smaller group of Israelite soldiers went into Ai thinking the battle would be a “piece of cake.”
They marched in with great confidence thinking this battle would be short, easy and fast. Those at home were probably already busy planning the next victory celebration even before they left the camp.
THE SINS FROM SELF-DESTRUCTION
God was for them!
Who could stand against them?
One man named Achan had fought in the battle of Jericho with them. As they proceeded to destroy the pagan altars and places of worship at Jericho, Achan had discovered a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels. The sin of covetousness took over in his spirit. He desired these defiled things in his heart. Achan took them and hid them. He buried them inside the ground of his tent after the troops returned from a victorious battle.
AN UNEXPECTED DEFEAT
How surprised the Israelites were when they lost this next forcasted-to-be-easy battle at Ai.
Everything went wrong.
The men of Ai killed about 36 Israelites. They chased them from the city gates and defeated them.
It was said that the Israelite soldiers saw what was happening and their hearts melted in fear. This was totally unexpected. These results were unexplainable to them.
What had gone wrong?
Where was God?
Why did this happen the way it did?
SEEKING ANSWERS
When Joshua and the elders of Israel realized what was happening; they fell face-down before the Ark.
They earnestly sought God’s answers.
Then Joshua approached God similar to the way Moses had done in the past. He asked God what would the Canaanite’s think of Israel now? Would they think that Israel’s God did not care about His people? He wondered out loud if their enemies would become so confident that they would slaughter Israel and run them out of the land that God had given them as an inheritance.
Joshua was very puzzled.
He could not understand why God had instructed them to take a city but had not backed them up in the battle.
GOD’S RESPONSE TO JOSHUA
God quickly responded by sizing the matter up for Joshua.
First he had Joshua to stand up. None of this was Joshua’s fault. The defeat had happened because of Israel’s sins and those sins could be narrowed down to one specific person. We can read the whole answer from God in verses 10 through 12 of Joshua Chapter 7:
(Joshua 7:10-13) The Lord said to Joshua, “Stand up! What are you doing down on your face? Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions. That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies; they turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.
The last verse of this passage seems to be VERY significant. God could not help anyone who was devoted to destruction.
YOU CAN’T RUN AND YOU CAN’T HIDE
From the above scriptures it appears that you can’t claim to be in God’s army and hide the things of the enemy inside your tent. God knows all. He sees everything. You can’t deceive Him.
Why would God waste his time defending a nation containing people devoted to self-destruction?
Self-destruction is about death and God is all about life.
God’s ways are always about thriving and surviving. They are about PREVENTING destruction; not causing it.
Achan had made that impossible though. He was the one bad apple that was ruining the whole bunch. His guilt was hidden out of sight; but it was there.
Remember when Cain thought he could bury Able and cover up his sin of murder?
Nothing can hide from God. He is holy. He can detect sin when it is near. God cannot exist within sin. Tolerance is not in His nature when it comes to sin. He will not tolerate it.
Achan had sinned and the whole nation was now suffering from his destructive and senseless sin.
YOU CANNOT STAND UNTIL YOU REMOVE THE PAGAN THINGS
God told Joshua to concencrate the people. He was to tell the tribes of Israel that the God of Israel says: “There are devoted things among you, Israel. You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove them.”
Are there “devoted things among our nation today? I wonder. Is God able to stand for us or are we trying to self-destruct by disobedience to the ways that bring a nation into holiness?
I wonder.
WHAT HAPPENED TO ACHAN
The next day the tribes came before God clan by clan, family by family and man by man. Whoever was found guilty was to be destroyed by fire along with his family and his possessions. This would now be necessary because a person had violated the Covenant of The Lord. All things of Israel’s inheritance depended upon their Covenant with God.
When things transpired to the point that Achan was the last man standing; he was asked by Joshua to confess and he did.
Joshua sent men to find the evidence and it was uncovered and verified.
The whole nation led by Joshua took the stolen goods, Achan, his family and his possessions and they went to the Valley of Achor. In that place Achan was pronounced guilty. He was stoned to death along with his whole family. Then everything to do with Achan’s clan of people was destroyed by fire.
A WAY TO REMEMBER
When the matter was finished they heaped up stones in order to remember this day.
Because the sin was finally removed from the camp; God once again put away his anger against Israel.
In our next lesson we are going to look into the prophetic significance of this chapter of Joshua. There is so much that we can learn from these scriptures.
Could any of us be a type of Achan for our own nation?
We will continue to look further into the logic of it all next week.