One of the things that we respect in this country is a thing called success. We talk about it. We teach kids how to be successful. We talk about somebody who is successful. But I think we have probably a different viewpoint of what success is from what the Bible says success is. How do you measure success? Certainly we must measure it through the way Jesus taught us to pray---"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"---so that our requests, our prayer life, the things we want, that we would bring as a matter of prayer before God, would all be filtered through his will, his kingdom, his goal being accomplished on this earth, rather than ours.

Joshua was very, very successful as one of God's leaders, taking the children of Israel across the Jordan miraculously; God did it, the battle of Jericho, great victory, great success. Three things made him successful: meditation, number one; adoration, number two; action, number three. He was a man of meditation. That was God's directive to him in the very first chapter of the book of Joshua. Remember God said, "Joshua, you shall meditate on the Book of the Law day and night, that you might observe to do all that is written therein. Then you will make your way prosperous, then you will have good success." And meditation on the Word is the key.

Someone once came up with a great little axiom that says, "Seven days without reading your Bible makes one weak." But he didn't spell weak like a seven-day week, but a weakness. Seven days without reading your Bible will make you weak. A week will transpire, but you will be weak in the end. And so he was to write out the law of God and then having a copy of the Scripture, he himself was to meditate on the Scripture. Meditation, the first step in spiritual success. The first Psalm, "Blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor does he stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful; but his delight in the law of the Lord, and in his law does he meditate day and night." Again, the same formula.

Unfortunately, when Christians hear the word "meditation," they go, "Uh-oh, that's that wacky, spiritualized, goofy stuff." Some people think of transcendental meditation. And the idea of transcendental meditation is that you disengage the mind and you just sort of let it simmer on some mantra. You sit there, go, "Umm-mmmm-mmmmm," and the mind disengages. Biblical meditation is quite the opposite. It's where you deliberately engage the mind over some spiritual truth. The original Hebrew word means literally the moaning of an animal, the moaning of an animal, usually associated with an animal chewing its cud. Chews the food, goes, "Mmmmm."

Of course, part of that moaning is the food going down and then being regurgitated back into the mouth, so that the animal can continue the mastication and deglutition process, as it's called, to really extract all of the nutrients. The idea for our purpose is: "one who talks to himself." I don't know if anybody's ever told you, "Don't talk to yourself, it's bad." No. It's good. I'm here to tell you, it's good . . . if you say the right stuff to yourself. [laughter] One of the translations of Psalm 1, in fact, says, "He talks to himself day and night with the word of God." So you get the idea? Take a portion of truth, take a phrase, talk to yourself over and over. Meditation is the link between theory and action.

Your mind, your life runs on a track. You automatically think in patterns. Whether you think you do or you don't, you do think in patterns. You get used to certain ways of thinking and you need to carve out the right way of thinking. So you meditate, you turn it over, you ask yourselves question when you come to a Bible text: Is there a promise in it for me? Is there a sin to avoid? Is there a warning here? And as you think about it, and as you mull over it in the Spirit, it will lay down the right track for the appropriate action. A very godly man came to Billy Sunday one time when he was a brand-new Christian (Billy Sunday the brand-new Christian, not the older believer) and said, "Billy," or he said, "William"---and Billy Sunday became, by the way, if you don't know, a great evangelist in this country.

He said, "Three things you must do in your Christian life, and if you do these things, no one will ever be able to write the term 'backslider' over your name. Number one, William, spend fifteen minutes day talking to God in prayer. Number two, spend fifteen minutes a day letting God speak to you in his Word. And then spend fifteen minutes a day, number three, telling somebody else about Jesus Christ. If you do that, you will be successful, nobody will write 'backslider' over your name." Billy Sunday went on to not only not be a backslider, but to become a great communicator of the Truth. "Joshua, meditate on the Word of God, do it day and night, observe." The second step to his victory, and, again, so far the book of Joshua is one great series of spiritual victory as well as military victory.

Second step: adoration. Right before the battle of Jericho he meets a stranger with a drawn sword. Finds out it's preincarnate Christ, or at least a theophany, God is some physical form. understands he's in charge of this whole shebang, this battle. Joshua takes his shoes off. Joshua worships God, adoring him before the battle, a time of communion, communication, adoration, worship---essential before any spiritual battle. Talk to God about it, pray. Prayer is the key that unlocks the victory. I was over in Scotland this summer and we visited the house of John Knox. And in the house of John Knox they played a recording of somebody reading his writings to Mary, Queen of Scots, and they were pretty heavy.

Mary, Queen of Scots said that she feared the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies of Europe. Imagine, "I'm more afraid of this man's prayers than all of the armies of Europe against me," so intense were his prayers, so victorious. Third was action. And this is all part of faith. True faith is involved in meditation, adoration, and then action. You know, he didn't say there all day with his Commander of the Lord's army in chapter 5, verse 13 and 14, that's the section, and just worshiping and meditating. There was a time to move, a time to act. And look down at chapter 6. We didn't quite finish it last week. I'm giving an overview. In verse 2, "The Lord said to Joshua: 'See! I have given Jericho into your hand, its king, and the mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city.' "

So there's a time to move: "Now it's time to march. Don't stay here; go on." "You shall march." It's part of the deal. Now, I'm sure Joshua would have liked a different deal. He might have said, "Tell you what, why don't you let the walls fall down first, God, then I'll march? Then I'll really know it's a confirmation that this is you. The walls are flat, I'll go, 'Okay, I heard from God.' " No. Part of the stepping out in faith is going for it without any outward show of the promise of God yet. March first, the walls fall after that. So victory is won then by obedience. When we come to chapter 7, we have an important word to look at. I'm very fond of looking at context and the text more in depth than normal. It's the first word "but."

Now, that's not a good word when you've had victory, victory, victory. And that word "but" is a word of contrast and introduces us to a period of defeat now. It's been victorious, chapter 7 is a series of defeats. In fact, thirty-six men are killed. The nation wonders: "Is God in this? Why are we here?" Joshua the leader will wonder: "Why has God led us through this?" But we left off last week and I sort of left you hanging with Rahab the harlot. They came into Jericho. They took the city at the command of God. They blew their trumpets. The walls fell down. The city is destroyed. And Joshua gives the command, the directive to spare a woman by the name of Rahab who is a harlot, who acted in faith, who hid the spies, Rahab and her entire family who was hiding in her house.

And we showed, at least we mentioned, that Rahab shows a pattern that God makes a difference in judgment. God is able at the same period of judgment to differentiate between the righteous and the wicked, so that the righteous don't have the same fate during a time of judgment as do the wicked. We mentioned 2 Peter, chapter 2, the example Peter gives of Noah and Lot. And the people in the world were destroyed by the flood, but Noah was spared with his family. And how God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; however, Lot was spared as an act of mercy of God. Peter's conclusion is this: "God therefore knows how to deliver the godly in the day of judgment, but to deliver the ungodly for the time of judgment."

And we showed that this is a pattern of God throughout history. And we related that to the coming tribulation period in which the church will be taken out before the tribulation period, the rapture of the church. A New Testament doctrine, the rapture of the church, that God will spare his people from, not through the midst of, but from the period of tribulation, like he spared Noah lifting him off the earth during the time of judgment. He wasn't kept in a cocoon under the water; he was lifted up off the earth. He had a different fate. So we saw that God's pattern historically, God's pattern in the Word of God, the nature of God's judgment over and over again shows this to be true. And then we brought up the whole issue of the rapture.

And the question we left you hanging with was: "Well, wait a minute, I never read the word 'rapture' in the Bible. It's not even a biblical word. How come some Christians talk about the 'rapture of the church'?" Is the word "rapture" in the Bible? I confess, no, it's not. Is the doctrine of the rapture and the church? Very prevalent. And the key Scripture is 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. You don't have to turn there. If you want to, you can, or you can mark and look at later. But it talks about "[those] who are alive and remain up to the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep," who have died in Christ. "That the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, the trumpet of God.

"The dead in Christ shall go up first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with him." The word "caught up" is a Greek word harpazó, harpazó, which is a word used thirteen times in the New Testament. Sometimes it's used "to catch," "to pull," "to seize by force." Now you say, "Yeah, but where's this word 'rapture'?" It's what I'm getting to. The word rapture is the Greek word harpazó. When Jerome translated the Bible into the Latin vernacular, the Latin Vulgate Translation, the word he used to translate harpazó was rapto or rapere. We translate that in English "rapture." So if you were to take Jerome's Vulgate, 1 Thessalonians 4, "We who are alive and remain shall be raptured," that's the word he used, "to be with the Lord forever."

Now, I'm going to read to you the Wuest Translation of this. By the way, Kennth Wuest wrote a Greek translation that's an expanded translation for the English reader, so that you go the full flavor of the language. He was a great Greek scholar and he translated 1 Thessalonians 4, that text I mentioned: "Then we shall be snatched away violently in masses of saints, having the appearance of clouds for a welcome meeting with the Lord in the lower atmosphere." That's the rapture. That's the difference in the judgment. Now, again, just to reinforce, all of us have tribulation. Amen? I think every Christian that I've ever met has a period of tribulation. It's part of living in this world.

Jesus said, "In this world"---here's a promise---"you will have tribulation." It's one of the Bible promises you can claim. You're going to have tribulation, whether you like it not. Whether you want to underline that promise or not, you're still going to have it. But there's a big difference between the tribulation that comes as a consequence of living in the world, and that's the tribulation that comes from the fallen world and from Satan the master of the fallen world, versus the tribulation that comes from God to judge the sinful world. That will take place in the end of times as a period called the Seventieth Week of Daniel, the period of "Jacob's trouble," to use an idiom out of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

It's also called the "tribulation" or the "great tribulation"---big, big difference. So the difference is made here in Jericho just to show that it is a pattern throughout the Scripture. Okay, back, introduction is over, chapter 7. Now, remember all that you have read up to this point, because as soon as you get to chapter 7 it's like you're in a whole different book. You read chapter 7 and you think, "This isn't the book of Joshua." Yes, it is. Introduces the word "but"; in other words, we're going to change from a period of victory to a period of defeat. And so it says: "But the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed things; and so the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel."

You're about to read the only battle the children of Israel ever lost as they entered the Land of Promise under Joshua. In the book of Joshua this is the only defeat. Why? Here's the real catch, here's the real point: They were not defeated because of outside forces; they were defeated because of inside forces, inside forces, stuff that they did wrong. It was going wrong in their own life, the life of the nation. That's a warning to us. We are---sometimes our theology is a demon-chasing theology. Something bad happens---"It's got to be the devil. The devil's under every bush under every tree. He's out to get me. It's all his fault." It could be your fault. It could be stuff going on in your life, sin not dealt with in your life.

As much as I hate the devil, you know, give him a break sometimes, if you're the one that has agreed to cooperate with his whole scheme and it's something that is of the flesh, rather than of the devil. It's an inside defeat. I just read the first verse. I want you to contrast that with last verse of chapter 6. You'll get the comparison. "So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout all the country. But the children of Israel committed a trespass . . . ." Now look at verse 2. So it says, "Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai," some like to pronunciation Ai [ay'ee]. That's more the Hebrew pronunciation, the city of Ai. But I think that if I said that during this, you're going to think of, you know, it's "I" or "eye," so I'll just call it Ai [ay-ī].

"Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth Aven, on the east side of Bethel, and spoke to them, saying, 'Go up and spy out the country.' So the men went up and spied out Ai. And they returned to Joshua and said, 'Do not let all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai. Do not weary all the people there, for the people of Ai are few.' " A couple of cities are mentioned. Ai, of course, is the city after Jericho, not far from Jericho. They turn a little bit north and go up toward the foothills and there's Ai. But notice these other two cities. I draw your attention to the meaning of their names. Do you know what the word "Bethel" means, if you remember our Genesis studies? It means "the house of God."

The term "Beth Aven" in the same verse means "the house of evil." It's interesting that the house of evil was right next to the house of God. Nothing has changed, has it? Houses of evil are often next to the house of God. And did you know that's how God intended it? God wants your house and the house of the Lord, his church, to be camped right next to houses of evil. Now, that's different from the monastic philosophies of the past that says: "The world has spiritual cooties, and because there are spiritual cooties, lest we become spiritually defiled by their cooties, we must remove ourselves even geographically into monasteries and caves, so that we don't get defiled by the world."

Here's a better strategy: put your house next to the house of evil and influence the house of evil with good, with good. Now I know that there are laws about, for instance, having liquor establishments too close in proximity to a church. And we ran into this at our previous location. They wanted to build a bar, you know, and people were up in arms about it. I said, "Hey, let them. People are going to come out of the bar, we'll be able to come out of the church, we'll be able to meet the people that come out of the bar and witness to the people, share the gospel with them. The problem is, is when the ethics of the house of evil move in to corrupt the ethics of the house of God.

When the altar of God is denigrated by the morals of the house of evil, then you have the problem, but no problem in distance. It's interesting that Ai is next. Verse 3 the spies return and what they tell Joshua is: "Listen, this town is so small, this is going to be so breezy, so easy. Hey, listen, let's just go take it. Just leave the people at home, Joshua. Just a few of us will go up. The rest of you can kick back, relax, have a nice TV dinner. We'll go up, do the job, come back, no problem." Now we just talked about how to have spiritual success. Here's the recipe for spiritual failure; here's the recipe for defeat: Number one, self-confidence. Defeat, the first step is always self-confidence, overconfidence, really.

They were just flush from the victory of Jericho. They were on a roll. They had just watched walls fall down, and they took the city, and it was over with and they were like, "Yeah, we're on a roll!" So much so that rather than praying, like they did in Jericho, rather than hearing from God and finding this Commander of the Lord's forces, wherever he might be at this point, sort of a carnal approach. They don't even consult God. "Let's just go up." Now it's estimated that the city of Ai was much smaller than Jericho, about 12,000 inhabitants, which would mean probably only about 2,000 or so fighting men in this city. But as we read on, they were well-entrenched, well-prepared men of war.

And it is sometimes easy to over---or to underestimate the power of the enemy while we overestimate our own power. Now, I'm not saying you overestimate God's power, God's infinite, but if you ever try to fight the enemy without the power of God, like they did here, you are no match for the Evil One. The minute you think, "Come on, Devil"--- I know people that have actually got into shouting---I don't want to say shouting matches, because the devil isn't shouting back at them. But they're out there shouting, "Come on, Devil! It's you and me, dude. I'll take you on, man," as if they feel some great empowerment by this diatribe of words. It's absolutely nonsense.

Even the Lord said, "The Lord rebuke you." Even the angel said, "The Lord rebuke you." So it's important that you don't come on your own strength; you come in his strength, his power. There's an overconfidence at this point. "Let's just go up. Let's just take them." Maybe they thought back to Jericho and thought, "Man, that was easy. This is going to be a cakewalk here." But could they take credit for Jericho? What great thing did they do in Jericho? They blew some horns. "Yeah, man, but we really---you should have heard the way we blew those horns. [laughter] We hit those notes. It took some work." Really? The walls fell down flat. They could not take any credit for that. But, perhaps, they were.

You are most vulnerable---now listen carefully---the most dangerous, the most vulnerable you are is after spiritual victory, because after a spiritual victory you let your guard down. "Hey, I won. No problem. I'm humming." And when your guard is down, your shield is down, you're out there fighting in the front, you can get attacked from the other direction---vulnerable after spiritual victory. Peter is a case in point, is he not? Remember Matthew 16, they're all, it says, at Caesarea Philippi? Jesus gets the boys together and says, "Hey, guys, who are men saying that I, the Son of Man, am? They say, "Well, some say you're John the Baptist, some Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets." "Who do you say that I am?"

Peter has the answer: "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." Jesus said, "Bingo!" or actually he says, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." Now that's a compliment. "Peter, you are so in tune that my Father spoke to you. My Father revealed a spiritual truth no one else here got." How do you think that made Peter feel? Pretty good. I bet he looked around at James and John and thought, "See, 'Blessed,' moi." In that flesh of victory, and he's still reeling from this great compliment, Jesus now tells them, "Now that you know who I am, let me tell you the plan: I'm going to go to Jerusalem. I'll be arrested. I'm going to be beaten. I'm going to be killed."

It was all part of God's plan. Peter walks right into this and says, "No. We're not going to let this happen to you, God. Listen to me now, let me counsel you here. You shall not go up there." And Jesus turned to him and said, you know, he got rebuked: "Get thee behind me, Satan." Whoa, he just said, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah," and says, "Get behind me, Satan. You're not thinking like God, but like man." So from great victory to spiritual defeat. It's very important that after a time of victory we don't get overconfident, but that's the time we seek the Lord. "Okay, Lord, thank you for that victory. What's next?" But they didn't do that.

"They returned to Joshua and said, 'Do not let all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai. Do not weary all the people, the people of Ai are few.' " Let's see what a few can do. "So about three thousand men went up from the people, but they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai struck down thirty-six men, for they chased them from before the gate of Shebarim, and struck them down on the descent; therefore the hearts of the people melted and became like water." They went up, they didn't pause after the counsel. It just says "they went up." See the difference? Remember last battle of Jericho?

Joshua has the conversation with the Commander of the Lord's army, they make a covenant, they pray, they dedicate their hearts. They're not really doing that this time. They're just going for it. Second step to defeat: failure to seek the Lord. First of all, overconfidence, and then failure to seek or to wait on God. They just went for it. You know, if Joshua would have said, "Wait a minute, guys, wait a minute. Before we go up, I'm going to pray. We're all going to get together and pray," I am confident that during that time the truth of what had been going on in the camp with Achan, that we just read about in verse 1, would have been revealed to Joshua. He would have heard from God.

"Lord, what do you want us to do?" "I'll tell you what I want you to do. You got a guy who sinned against me from the battle of Jericho, you got to deal with that." And he would have saved all of the misery that we're about to read. Public victories are the results of private visits with the Lord. Failure to wait on God---they went up for it. And, you know, the first step always leads to the second. If you're overconfident, you're not going to be depending on God. "Hey, I'm fine, God. I don't need to pray right now. I'm just going to move. I'm just going to go for it." Again, Peter was like that, right? Peter was the guy who said, "Though all forsake you, Lord, I will never forsake you." It's quite a boast.

Jesus rebuked him for that: "Peter, truth is you're going to deny me, not once, not twice, but three times." "No, Lord, never! These guys may be flakes, but not 'the rock.' " That's over confidence. What happened with that overconfidence? Let him to second step: lack of devotion. He's in the garden sleeping. "I don't need to pray. I'm tired. I gotta catch some shut-eye here." He's sleeping with a couple of the other guys. One step leads to the other. Well, it says, "The hearts of the people melted and became like water." Thirty-six men died; don't you think at this point they're having second thoughts about the whole take-over-the-Promised-Land deal?

"Then Joshua tore his clothes"---this is a typical gesture or ritual for a leader in times of grief and remorse. You read it often in the Scriptures. "And he fell to the earth on his face." Now, don't get the idea that he collapsed without his hands. It's not like he hit his face; it's an idiom of abject humility. He fell on his face to the ground, "before the ark of the Lord until the evening, both he and the elders of Israel; and they put dust on their head. And Joshua said, 'Alas, Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all---is it to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us?' " Does that sound like the Joshua you remember?

In fact, if you were to jog your memory just a little bit, do the words of Joshua here sound familiar? Do they sound like somebody else? In fact, you know who they sound like? Ten spies, forty years before, at Kadesh Barnea when Joshua goes up with eleven others to spy out the land. Joshua and Caleb return and say, "Let's go for it," words of faith. The other ten say, "Why has God brought us up to kill us? He brought us out here the die in the wilderness or to die at the hand of those in the Promised Land." So now he is adopting the thinking of defeat, of the ten spies forty years before. This is the first time we get a view of this kind of despair in Joshua's life, a very, very different Joshua.

He's questioning God at this point: "God, have you deserted us? Why did you bring us over here?" Have you ever been there? Have you ever stepped ahead of the Lord? Have you ever not sought his counsel? Have you ever got into a jam? And then you wonder, "God, what's up? Why did you let this happen?" And have you, like Joshua, ever shifted the blame from yourself and blamed God? "If you're a God of love, why would you let this happen?" Now this isn't God's fault. It's Joshua's fault. It's the children of Israel's fault. But it is human nature, we blow it, we sin, and we blame anybody, especially God. Or if you're God's representative, I'll blame God's representative. If you're a Christian, I'll blame you. We have been that way.

In fact, there are times when we have gotten into such a mess because we have sinned or failed to see God. We get into the mess, we blame God, and then we counsel God. Remember what Paul said? "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that we should be counselor?" If you were to answer that question honestly, you'd have to raise your hand sheepishly and go, "Me, I have sought to counsel God." I admit, I have. When we were in our old building, just getting it ready to occupy, and we thought that we did all the building codes, all of the drywall, got all the inspections done---and we were paying on that lease and also paying on the old lease of the building, ready to close that lease, because, you know, we didn't want to make double payments.

We're ready to go in, the city came in and sort of shut us down: "You have to do this, this, and this." And it would take a month to get that done, which means we had to make double payments. And it was such a tough time and I had a little lapse. I had a conversation with God. It's like I wanted to sit God down and offer him advice: "Now, Lord, I told you this could happen. And if you would remember last month when we talked about this and informed you about how this would go, if you only would have listened to me then, we wouldn't have gotten in this mess." I complained to the Lord. Joshua's doing that. Shows you that Joshua, even God's great leader Joshua, is human.

He says, " 'Oh, that we had been content, and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan! O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turns its back before its enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will you do for your great name?' " Thank you, Joshua. [laughter] "So the Lord said to Joshua: 'Get up!' " He's on his face, remember? " 'Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face?' " Hard words of rebuke. There are times to pray and there are times to move. There was the time that Moses stood before the Red Sea and started praying, and God in a nice way just said, "Shhh, stand still. See the salvation of God. Now is not the time to have a long prayer meeting, just lift---raise your hand. Lift up your staff, your rod. Get moving."

Here this complainer, you know, he's in the dust, pouring out---God says, "Get up! Get off your face. What are you lying on your face for?" And, you know, here he had blamed God, right? "God, why would you . . . and how are you . . . ?" Notice verse 11, "Israel has sinned." "It's not my fault. I hadn't done anything wrong. You're pushing the blame on me?" " 'Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. For they have taken some of accursed things, and they have both stolen and deceived; and they have also put it among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they have become doomed to destruction.

" 'Neither will I be with you anymore, unless you destroy the accursed thing from among you.' " Third step in defeat, failure: disobedience, blatant disobedience. I'll explain what's going on here. If you go back to chapter 6 and you look at verse 18, there's a direct commandment they disobeyed: "And you, by all means keep yourselves from the accursed [or devoted] things, lest you become accursed when you take of the accursed things, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it. All the silver, gold, and vessels of bronze and iron are consecrated to the Lord; they shall come into the treasury of the Lord."

Here's the deal: the firstfruits of the land of Canaan, as it was called, the city of Jericho, all of the gold, silver, all of the loot, the booty, was to be given and dedicated to the Lord for his purposes for the future treasury and for spiritual purposes. They weren't to keep any of the loot for themselves. Now, they will be allowed as they conquer Ai, but the first time God says, "It's devoted. Don't touch it. Don't keep any for yourselves." "Now, if you don't destroy those accursed things"--- somebody, as we read, Achan, had taken them for himself. "If you don't destroy those things, I'm going to destroy you." In fact, look at the end of verse 12. "Neither will I be with you anymore."

Compare that with chapter 6, verse 27: "So the Lord was with Joshua." That's a great promise and it was a promise reiterated. But now God says, "if you don't deal with sin, I'm not going to be with you anymore." " 'Get up,' " second time he says it, " 'sanctify the people, and say, "Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because thus say the Lord God of Israel: 'There is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel; and you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you.' " ' " Self-confidence, overconfidence in their own victory led to slacking off in devotion, led to a weakened spiritual state so that they lose the perception, leading to disobedience---all of that is something that is wrong with Israel nationally.

So he tells them to sanctify themselves. Now it's interesting that in verse 11 God says, "Israel has sinned"; verse 1 says, "The children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan the son . . . [this guy] took of the accursed things; so the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel." One guy sinned, the whole nation is held responsible. One guy causing a whole nation, as we see here, to come under the curse. Sin always affects other people. You never sin alone. You always drag people into it. It's the same way in the church. If somebody sins, it has an effect on the rest of the body of Christ. You say, "Well, nobody knows." Well, of course, God knows.

But if you are willing to compromise your life and you are to grow cold spiritually, you will affect the spiritual temperature of others that you're around. And this is why that if we move this into a New Testament concept, to put it in Paul's terms of 1 Corinthians 5, "Therefore purge out the leaven from among you, that you might been a new [loaf.]" The application is that there's somebody, there's people in the midst that are leavening that are causing this corruption in the body of Christ. You got to deal with them, those in blatant sin, was his idea. If they're in blatant sin, you got to deal with the blatant sin. And the implication even in the New Testament is: "If you refuse discipline, I, the Lord, will discipline you."

Achan has sinned. Nobody knows about it. They're about the find out. " ' "In the morning therefore you shall be brought according to your tribes. And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes shall come according to families; the family which the Lord takes shall come by households; the household which the Lord takes shall come man by man." ' " We infer from this that lots were cast to determine who the guy was, what family he was from, tribe, etcetera. " ' "It shall be that he who is taken with the accursed thing 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 a disgraceful thing in Israel" '

"So Joshua rose in the morning and brought Israel by their tribes, the tribe of Judah was taken. He brought the clan of Judah, he took the family of the Zarhites; and he brought the family of the Zarhites man by man, Zabdi was taken. He brought the household man by man, Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken. Joshua said to Achan"---you say, "Well, how does that work if they cast lots, that it just so happen to fall on this guy?" Remember the proverb, chapter 16, "The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord"? In those days God was actually sovereignly controlling the casting of lots, in a sense, like sanctified dice.

They would take straws, or pieces of potsherd, perhaps, or stones, and God used that method, primitive as it was, for this primitive society to find out the guilty guy, and it worked. "Joshua said to Achan, 'My son, I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession to him, and tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.' And Achan answered Joshua and said, 'Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I have done: When I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver,' " which is only five pounds of silver, " 'and a wedge of gold weighing' "---about a quarter of a pound, not much really.

" 'I coveted them, I took them. There they are, hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.' " Notice those verbs, he says, "I saw," all in verse 21, "I coveted," and "I took." Does that sound a little like Genesis, chapter 3, with Eve? She saw the tree, was pleasant to the eyes, it was desired to make one wise, it was a coveting. And then it says, "She took." That's how sin is developed. Now, the Babylonian garment was probably just a beautiful robe, a styling garment. I don't think that Achan took these because he was poverty stricken, but he was self-indulgent. It's not like, "Man, I don't have any clothes. I don't have any provision." Remember, these were clans, they provided for each other. God had provided.

The idea is that, "Man, I have a little bit of silver, little bit of gold, a styling outfit, I'm ready for a night out." Perhaps he thought, "I've been suffering for forty years out in the desert, it's about time I get my share." And so he directly disobeyed a commandment to get his share, deceiving the people of Israel, causing a curse to come upon them. Now, here's the irony in this: By the time you get to chapter 8, verse 2, God says, "When you take Ai, keep the stuff for yourself." If he only would have waited, God would have given him the desires that he had. He would have been satisfied in this way. "Seek first the kingdom of God . . . and all these things will be added to you." If he only would have waited.

And, yet, just, man, just a little wedge of gold, five pounds of silver, styling outfit, he's willing to sacrifice so much for a little bit of pleasure. "So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent; there it was, hidden in the tent, with the silver under it. They took them from the midst of the tent, brought them to Joshua, to all the children of Israel, laid them out before the Lord. And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, the silver, garment, wedge of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, all that he had, brought them to the Valley of Achor." "Achor" means troubling. "Achan" means trouble. They probably named the valley after the guy.

Achan was really aching after this. [laughter] They called the name of the valley the Valley of Trouble. "Joshua said, 'Why have you troubled us?' " play on words, " 'The Lord will trouble you this day.' " "Why have you Achaned us? The Lord's going to Achan you this day." "So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day." Now, as in many passages of the Scripture, people find fault with God, saying, "This is much too severe. Achan did it, he should get rid of Achan, but it says, you know, his offspring, they were ousted too and dealt this heavy blow."

Because of that and because of Deuteronomy, chapter 24, which explicitly says---remember, they were obeying the law here---explicitly says that a child, a son or a daughter shall not be punished for the sins of the fathers. And, yet, they're punished here. The only thing, thus, we can infer, since their keeping the law of Deuteronomy, is that they were accomplices in this. The wife isn't mentioned at all, perhaps she was exempt. But it only would have been carried out if the family, or at least the offspring, the sons, were accomplices in this whole falling-out. Now it does seem harsh, but keep in mind this is now the very first sin ever committed in the new land, right?

They've had victory, they've had consecration, they've had the power of God, the miracles of God; this is the very first sin since they crossed Jordan into the Promised Land. Even as in Acts, chapter 5, the very first sin in the early church, this pure new movement, is the death of Ananias and Sapphira who deceived the early church, very similar. And there are many instances of this in Bible when the Old Testament, Mosaic economy was in view and Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire to the Lord when the ark is being transported by Uzza and he touches out to stabilize it, he's struck dead. There are periods where this happened. Hebrews 10 is right, "It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

Simply, I see this as a holy reaction to an unholy action. It's getting us great---well, it's getting a needed message across to the people of Israel. Now, just because in this instance and in the instance of Acts 5 and others they were struck dead, that doesn't necessarily mean they're eternally banished from God. In fact, I find it a little bit strange that some Christians are up in arms about, you know, God killing these people, but they don't give two cents about people who are spiritually dying every single day around them, as if physical death is the worst thing that could happen. "How could that happen?" How can we let spiritual tragedy happen all around us? You need to be about the King's business; we don't get as upset.

So, because this physical death doesn't mitigate the eternal separation. Same with Ananias and Sapphira. In fact, by the way, in the early church sometimes God dealt the capital punishment just sovereignly, so that he might spare a person eternally. In Corinthians Paul tells the church, "Deliver such a one [a person] to the domain of Satan that his body might be destroyed, that his spirit might be saved in [the day of judgment or] the day of the Lord Jesus." The implication is that he's getting close to that place of falling away so heavily from the Lord, that God would spare him mercifully by taking his life, lest he go too far. And in certain cases I believe that has happened. So, the Valley of Achor, trouble has happened.

You know, I had it in my mind to make it through chapter 8, because I was going to give you a synopsis of it, because it's all part of the same story, but the information being as it is, and the time being as it is, we're prohibited---so for next time. I will give you something to chew on though: The taking of Ai at the commandment of God, God gives him an interesting strategy, is not even at all related to the strategy God gave them for Jericho. So, maybe they thought, "We're going to go to Ai, blow a few horns, and walls are going to fall down this time." Nope. They're going to march for war. They're going to do it the normal battle operation and ambush technique.

We'll read about it next week, but God has many ways of getting his work done, not just one way. It has to be biblical, but there's not always one biblical way. There might be two, three, or four different biblical ways to get it done. God's method is completely different. And even as God changes leaders from Joshua to Moses, so that people won't get dependent upon a person, God changes his methods.

For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.