God takes obedience VERY seriously (Joshua 7)

Here’s the scene…

Joshua 3-4 the children of Israel are instructed the Lord will do a great miracle by stopping the waters of the Jordan for them to pass over and take the promised land.  God is faithful and does what He said He would do.

Joshua 5-6. They are prepared and sanctified before the Lord (circumcised) and given instruction on how to proceed in battle. 

18And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.

19But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD. (Joshua 6:18-19)

Ok, so don’t take anything… very clear instructions.

They conquer Jericho in a seriously miraculous fashion (silent march around the city for 6 days and horns and shouts on the 7th day take down the walls) by following the plan exactly as God had laid it out.  So again, God = faithful.

Joshua 7.  You know your in trouble because verse 1 starts out “But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing…”

Achan (whose name means trouble– that wasn’t very nice mom!) took something.  You don’t know what it is at first.  But here’s the thing… Joshua (leadership) is unaware that one of his flock has sinned.  But being unaware isn’t going to help in this case… Joshua sends guys out to attack Ai and they get killed.

First off, I have to wonder, did Joshua step out ahead of God?  I mean he had instructions, but if he had gone back to God and sought His face before sending the men – would God have told him then – hey someone in the camp sinned and took stuff at Jericho?  I think He would have – as angry as He was, why would He want to kill more of His children?

But apparently Joshua didn’t ask, he went ahead anyhow and they got killed.  Not good.  But even worse is Joshua’s response:

6And Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the LORD until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.

7And Joshua said, Alas, O LORD God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan! (Joshua 7:6-7)

So now it’s God’s fault.  Total lack of faith.  No asking God, ‘Hey God what’s going on? This wasn’t what I thought You said You’d do, but You are faithful so I know I must be missing something here…’ – instead Joshua blames it all on the faithful God.  Yuck.  It’s frustrating to read.

I think what makes it most frustrating is that we all have done this!  When we don’t understand… we blame God.  That’s horrible!!!  Especially when we consider how faithful He is.  And even more so when we consider how faith-less we are.

And what really makes you want to cry is God’s response.  Here’s God, already angry because somebody has been disobedient to some very specific instructions, and now He’s getting blamed by a faithless leader who should KNOW it’s NOT God’s fault because he’s just seen God’s faithfulness with the waters of the Jordan being stopped and the walls of Jericho falling!  And so God basically says to Joshua very calmly – ‘hey hang on, I’m not randomly being mean or deserting you – you all are no longer clean.  Accursed items have been stolen.”

The thing that’s a little unnerving about this very kind response of God’s is in verse 11.

Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff.

One guy did it (Achan), but Israel sinned, they transgressed, they took the accursed thing, and they put it with their stuff.  Ouch.  Everyone is responsible.  That is heavy.

So it makes me wonder what the implications of that are.  We are all responsible for encouraging each other not to sin, holding each other accountable if we do sin, really spurning each other on towards holiness and righteousness.  It is serious.

It also makes me wonder whether people saw Achan taking the stuff… but I’ll come back to that in a sec.

So, verse 16 Joshua gets up the next day and starts marching people through to find out ‘who-dun-it’.  He gets to Achan, and he confesses (verses 20-21).

20And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:

21When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

That’s what was worth disobeying God for?  Makes me wonder what it would be worth in today’s dollars – $100? $1,000? $10,000? A million?  What would make it “worth it”? What is worth getting on the outs with God?  NOTHING!!!!  But yet somehow in the moment we manage to be convinced otherwise.

So I’m thinking again about whether someone saw Achan.  That’s a lot to carry – not exactly pocket change… did people see him and not call him on it?  Were they afraid to?  You know fear of man… not wanting to upset him… is that why they all got blamed?  Or was it that they had cultivated an environment where it would be ok to sin?  What exactly was it?

This disobedience had a high price… his life.  He and all his stuff was brought out – everyone stoned him… and then he and all his stuff was burned.  How did they feel as they killed him?  Were they angry?  Or were they wishing they had tried to stop him if they had seen him?  Was he married?  Was his wife there throwing stones too? It says his sons and daughters were called… were they killed too?  Did they have to help stone their father?  I bet it would make them all think twice before directly disobeying God!  Which I suppose was part of the point.

But all it made me think as I read it through my tear-filled eyes was “thank You Jesus for Your blood because I deserve the same fate…”

Lord, I know You take obedience very seriously.  Help me to be obedient to a fault.  Help me to seek Your face on each step of each moment of each day so I stay perfectly aligned with You.  I want to work on perfecting holiness… God help me to be pleasing to You.  I love You so much.

And thank You for Your mercy God which I so do not deserve yet You chose to give anyway.  Thank You for loving me that much.  You are an amazing God.