Dennis Tuuri

Interesting that Chesterton’s song there ends with that prayer that God would raise up a nation to be a single sword to thee. Achen. And as we read the account of it in Joshua 7, the context of course is God raising up a nation to be a sword for him to execute judgment upon those who are wicked.

Please stand for the reading of the scripture text, which is Joshua chapter 7.

Joshua chapter 7: “But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing. For Achen the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-haven, on the east side of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai.

And they returned to Joshua and said unto him, Let not all the people go up, but let about 2 or 3,000 men go up and smite Ai, and make not all the people labor thither, for they are but few. So there went up hither of the people about 3,000 men, and they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai smote them about 36 men, for they chased them from before the gate, even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down.

Wherefore the hearts of the people melted and became as water. 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. 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 would have been content and dwelt on the other side Jordan. Oh Lord, what shall I say when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies?

For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us around, and cut off our name from the earth. And what wilt thou do unto thy great name?’ And the Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up. Wherefore liest thou there upon thy face? 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.

Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies but turned their backs before their enemies because they were accursed. Neither will I be with you anymore except ye destroy the accursed from among you. Up, sanctify the people and say, Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, there is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel. Thou canst not stand before thine enemies until ye take away the accursed thing from among you.

In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes. And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof. And the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households. And the household which the Lord shall take shall come man by man. And it shall be that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath, because he hath transgressed the covenant of the Lord and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.

So Joshua rose up early in the morning and brought Israel by their tribes. The tribe of Judah was taken, and he brought the family of Judah, and he took the family of the Zarites, and he brought the family of the Zarites man by man, and Zabdi was taken, and he brought his household man by man, and Achen the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah was taken. And Joshua said unto Achen, ‘My son, give I pray thee glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him, and tell me now what thou hast done. Hold it not from me.’

And Achen answered Joshua and said, ‘Indeed, I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonian garment, and 200 shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of 50 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.’

So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran into the tent, and behold, it was hidden in his tent, and the silver under it. And they took them out of the midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, and all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the Lord. And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achen the son of Zerah and the silver and the garment and the wedge of gold and his sons and his daughters and his oxen and his asses and his sheep and his tent and all that he had. And they brought them into the valley of Achor.

And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called the valley of Achor unto this day.”

We thank God for his holy word and pray now that he would illumine it to our understanding.

I was reading an article this week—not really because I wanted to, but by John Robbins—critical of Reverend B. Jordan who was here about a month ago. And I don’t recommend the article, but a friend of mine had read it and wanted some comment on it. So I was going to do that. But Robbins makes fun of the fact that Jordan sees Jesus eating and drinking with people in the New Testament as having at least a pointer relationship to sacramental meals and holy communion.

And Robbins says something about how well, I suppose he sees every meal and even every shower I suppose is somehow related to sacraments, and makes fun of that idea. And says that he seems to want to go back to the dark ages, the medieval time. And indeed, the medieval age people did think of showers a little differently than we do, and meals as well. And I think that’s a good thing. I think it is a good thing when we wash occasionally or when we eat to be reminded of the Lord’s supper, be wed under the rites of baptism and the cleansing from sin.

Not that it’s sacramental in and of itself, the common meals and the common washings, but they do have their—we understand them in relationship to God’s word, in relationship to what he teaches us in these great symbols of the covenant. And worship is that same way. And that’s why I mentioned earlier in my prayer that every day when we get up in the morning, your alarm clock rings, however you do it, you should hear that as a call to worship.

I know today is different. We come together in God’s command as a convocated host presence, but every day is a day of worship as well. Every day should involve that confession of sin and the self-conscious effort to think God’s thoughts after him.

And now we’re going to think God’s thoughts in terms of the political heavenization of Canaan, I suppose, is one way to think of this. And by political, we simply mean the structures—the social and political and governmental structures of the land are now going to be radically changed and transformed.

God has brought his people into a land to conquer it, to execute, to be his single sword raised up in purity against a wicked people and to change the systems, to tear down those who are mighty and to exalt those who are poor in spirit and yet exalted in the Lord Jesus Christ to positions of power and authority in that particular land. And this is a reminder to us of what the New Testament, the greater Joshua, Jesus, is all about.

He’s ushered us into salvation for his purposes. And his purposes are to pray and then work toward the end that his will might be done on earth as it is in heaven, to heavenize the earth and the structures here. And so when we look at the Canaan that God has placed us in, the context of Oregon, America, the whole world has been given over to Christ. We see our task the same as the army of God. And we see here in the book of Joshua in the seventh chapter a very different scenario than we have seen up to this point.

And yet it’s a scenario that is much more familiar to us in a way, isn’t it, than those tremendous first six chapters of total blessing and total success and total victory. Here we have defeat.

I saw an interview with Horton Foote a couple weeks ago, and he was talking about his movie 1918. And he said that the theme of that movie is death expected and death unexpected. It was about World War I. Millions of people in America died from the flu, a flu epidemic. And so people were afraid of going over to war or expected death at war in foreign lands. And yet death struck at home in the providence of God. And certainly there was sin that was being punished there, although we may not agree on the specifics of it.

Well, in a way, Joshua 7 is about death expected and death unexpected. We expect these wicked men at Ai to be wiped out, but instead it’s the men of Israel who are wiped out.

And so that’s what this chapter is all about. And it’s very important for us as we look at our responsibility in conquest, having seen God’s sovereignty last week, to look at our responsibility now in this chapter. This is a text that is not an easy text to deal with. People don’t like this chapter because at the end of it, Achen and all his family—children as well as adults and the other members of his family—are all stoned and burned.

And his cattle and everything else he has. I was reminded this week of a Robert Jones gave me an ad for a theological magazine and I’m going to read you what this ad says. This paper they sent try to get you to subscribe. This is actually seen as a positive thing to try to get you to subscribe to this theological magazine. One article in a recent issue provided readers with a surprising new way to understand the role of the biblical text in preaching.

The author noted biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann borrowed a concept from family therapy—triangling, or the idea that family relations are often arranged in two-against-one patterns. He applied that to the relationships among preacher, text, and hearers. The preacher, instead of standing over against the people, instead of siding with the text, should instead, Brueggemann said, side with the people over against the text.

Okay. Only in this way, claimed Brueggemann, can the text be found to be ambiguous, freed to be rather ambiguous, filled with contradictions and freighted with irony as it struggles through to a new and daring utterance as the living word of God. Incredible, isn’t it? We’re supposed to challenge the text, you and I. That’s what preaching is supposed to be about. We want to tear this text apart and say, you know, what’s really going on here, and it can’t be what it says it is. This is a text in which lots of preachers would want to do that, somehow, because it’s a text that certainly does not exalt humanity, but exalts the sovereignty of God.

It talks about his judgment against sin and a horrific judgment it is. And so people don’t like this text, but it’s a very necessary one to understand the importance of.

I was watching another show on TV a couple weeks ago in the Library of Congress, and everything is preserved. You know, all books, all videos, sound recordings. They say we preserve everything now at the Library of Congress. And they were talking about what a terrible thing it was that the Library of Alexandria was burned down thousands of years ago, several hundred years ago. Well, that idea that everything is worth preserving is not found in these accounts of Joshua, Jericho, and Ai, is it? God doesn’t want everything preserved. He wants some things destroyed. And because they weren’t destroyed or used for proper purposes by Achen, God’s judgment comes upon the people of Israel.

God doesn’t. His ways are not our ways. Our way is everything man does is good and wants to be preserved. God says, “No, man’s evil works are to be obliterated from the face of the world, of the earth.” And that also means, of course, from our human hearts, our own sin.

Okay. To look at this lesson and look at man’s responsibility and conquest and what it teaches us. First, I want to go over a brief outline of the book. And I note on your outline itself that this outline is from a commentary by Dale Ralph Davis, No Falling Words. And you’ll notice the structure on your outline is that it indents. It is a chiasmus, meaning every point is inverted at another point later in the text. It builds to a central text center meaning and then goes back out. And so you would see there’s a correlation between, for instance, the beginning of the text in verse one where Yahweh’s wrath is burning, to the final verse of the text where Yahweh’s wrath is appeased. And then also between the disaster for Israel in the first four verses after the introductory verse being translated over or balanced off by disaster for Achen as we reach the end of the chapter, and so on.

And right at the center of it you have the center of the text itself. This structure is correct and I think it is. And so let’s go over that just real briefly then, this structure of the text, and I’ll note certain things as we go along here, and then we’ll get to application after we go over a brief overview of the text.

First of all, as we said, the first section is Yahweh’s wrath burning in verse one. We’re told something in verse one that the people of Israel don’t know as they go through verses two and following. We’re kind of let in on the secret of the story in verse one. We know that this particular person, Achen, sinned in regard to the things that were supposed to be dedicated to destruction or for use in God’s house of sanctuary. We know that sin has occurred and that’s told to us in verse one.

We know that as a result of that sin, God’s wrath is kindled against the children of Israel. And so that is very important for understanding the rest of this text.

The next several verses talk about the disaster for Israel. Then spies are sent out to Ai in verses 2 and 3. And I might just mention here that Ai is specifically identified in verse two as being beside Beth-haven on the east side of Bethel. So it’s alongside Beth-haven, and Bethan means house of vanities or house of idols. Bethel of course is house of God, which is in counter distinction to these two. They’re close to each other. Ai itself means the ruin or a heap, the ruin. So you got the ruin next to the house of idolatry or house of vanity as opposed to Bethel, the house of God. I think that’s significant in the text.

And we find in these first two verses that Joshua sends these spies out and they come back then and give advice in verse 3 to Joshua, saying, “Just send up 3,000 people. It’s not a big town. It’s going to be okay.” Indeed, we find later in chapter 8 that there are about 12,000 total inhabitants of the city of Ai—men, women, and children. So probably they only had 2 or 3,000 fighting men. So it made sense to send up about 3,000, you know. We don’t have to send out a lot. They say we just need a few people to go up against it.

So we have that spy narrative going on there again. And it is interesting because in contradistinction between this and, for instance, what happened in Joshua 2 where the spies are sent to Rahab and into Jericho, it’s a completely different thing going on there. There are assurances that God will give them the land throughout that chapter 2. Remember all that? Here there are no assurances of that to the spies. There’s no indication that we have from the indication of the text that they’re going to be successful.

These spies don’t have prayer. They don’t look for guidance or direction from God the way that Joshua did in the battle at Ai. Rather, they come back and dictate to Joshua, or at least suggest to him, a battle strategy. So there are several things that are going on here. They seem overconfident. They seem almost—some would say—not to have liked the way that Jericho was taken, or everybody had to be involved. They want to send up only a few men. And they do it presumptuously, without consulting God and without really apparently from the text going through an exercise to understand his will.

And as a result, of course, then the battle itself does not go well. In verse 4, we see that about 3,000 men went up, and they fled before the men of Ai. And in verse 5 talks about the men of Ai smote them. Now it’s interesting there too. It doesn’t say that they began to lose the battle and then they turned and ran. What it says is in terms of verses 4 and 5: they go up, but then they fled before the people of Ai, and then the men of Ai smote them at this particular location—whose name means a rock quarry, okay? On the descent of the rock quarry they are about 36 of them killed by the troops of Ai, and so they end up suffering defeat here instead of victory.

So this second part then—disaster for Israel—occurs with a bad report from the spies, really, in that it didn’t involve God and look for his help or direction.

Then following that the people themselves are judged. Now as I said, this can be contrasted quite sharply with Joshua 2. Completely different thing going on in this chapter. As we said in Joshua 2, Yahweh had assured them that he had given them the land. But he does not—we don’t see those assurances here in this particular text. Again, they build a battle strategy without reference to God, the spies do, or even without reference to Joshua, completely unlike the spies in Joshua 2. The battle plan of course is unsuccessful.

And the concluding formula of this, in verse 5 at the end of this battle scene, the men are smote by the men from Ai and they swipe them in the going down, and the last phrase says, “Wherefore the hearts of the people melted and became as water.” What we see in these short set of verses after verse one, in this set of verses, we see trouble for Israel because they now are the enemy of God. They are repeating the same thing is said of them. Their hearts are melting. They become as water. That’s the way the hearts of the Canaanites were as they heard of God’s progression of his people toward their area and toward their towns.

And instead, now Israel apparently from the text has become the enemy. It becomes the one defeated. It becomes the one that’s under the judgment of God. It becomes the one that’s full of fear. And it becomes the one that then has men killed in it, as opposed to winning the battle.

And so a completely different account of the spies is given in these verses. And it’s very important to recognize that verse one tells us at the beginning of that section why these things have occurred. They do not lose the battle ultimately because of overconfidence or because of bad spies or because of not consulting God in the battle for Ai. Those things happen, but those things are a direct result of God’s wrath being kindled against Israel because of the sin of Achen, as pointed out in verse one. Verse one precedes verses 2 through 5.

And the whole thing is not built upon the errors of battle or strategy or whatever might go on in verses 2 through 5. The whole chapter’s focus is the sin of Achen. God’s wrath causes things to go wrong in our lives, and frequently we look at the things that go wrong and try to figure them out without going back to the source of God’s anger against us and why he throws us into perplexity, which is the result of sin of ours—coveting after what we shouldn’t covet.

So it’s very important that this structure—this outline that Davis suggests and which I think is appropriate—be kept in mind as we go through this.

Okay, the third section that Davis lays out is the people before Yahweh in perplexity. In verses 6-9, Joshua, because of this defeat, goes to God. He throws himself down before God and he’s very perplexed and he says things we would not expect Joshua to be saying. This is a lamentation and it’s very significant that up to now we have seen celebrations and festival rites, eating of the produce of the land, Passover—that kind of stuff going on. Here we see lamentation instead.

And it’s not even a typical biblical lamentation. There’s no petition from Joshua that God would save them or do things for them. Joshua doesn’t know what to say because the people of God are fleeing before the enemy. That’s what Joshua—what can I say when God’s people run away from the ones we’re supposed to be defeating? Joshua himself almost sounds like those murmurers in the wilderness. He says, “Boy, what did you bring us over here so these Amorites would kill us off? It would have been better if we would have not have passed over the River Jordan. If we would have been content to stay over there.”

Okay. God says, “No, no, no. Get up from there.”

So this period of lamentation and perplexity on Joshua’s part is followed then by God telling Joshua how to resolve the matter. And he tells him specifically what has produced the problem in verses 10-12. God’s revelation of the problem that exists here. The Lord says to Joshua after Joshua’s lamentation before him, “What are you doing on the ground? Get up. Why are you on your face before me here? Israel has sinned. God says they’ve broken my covenant. They’ve transgressed my covenant in the accursed thing.”

So he tells Joshua what the problem is. Joshua wouldn’t know otherwise. Joshua was focusing upon the spies’ report and the way the battle went. And God says, “No, no, no. The problem here is one of your guys has taken an accursed thing and all of Israel has fallen into sin in this matter. Israel has sinned.”

God says they didn’t want to pass over the Jordan. Now he says, but what they do want to pass over is my covenant—is what God says. They’ve transgressed. They’ve broken my covenant. And as a result, all these things has happened.

Okay. And then at the very center of the text, according to the outline we that we’ve adopted here, is the second half of verse 12. And God tells Joshua, “Neither will I be with you anymore except you destroy these thing from among you.” And then as the text proceeds, we can see corollaries to what leads up to this middle point. That middle point is extremely important. At the heart of this text is the call for God’s people to want the presence of God in their midst instead of the presence of these things. Instead of the presence of the sinful desires of our heart, God wants the desires of our heart to be for his presence with us.

That’s the heart of the whole narrative. That’s where Achen sinned—is in desiring the presence of gold and silver and a fancy robe instead of in desiring the presence of God. God then gives Joshua the instructions for the solution. He tells him that the people are to sanctify themselves. And it’s interesting—we’ve seen this consecration before. We see this consecration of Israel back in Exodus before they receive the law.

Here we have the consecration of God’s people before God’s presence and his law comes forward into the camp to single out who the sinning party is. And then he tells them the process, one of lots apparently, by which they’ll discover who has sinned in this matter.

And then Israel receives clarity as they walk in obedience to this in verses 16-23. Here we’re back to the Joshua we expect to see. God says do these things in this way. And Joshua immediately in the very next verse, in verse 16, begins to obey. And he gets the people up in early the next morning and he says we’re going to do this thing. And they go through this system of lots until they find that Achen is the one who has sinned.

And then Joshua talks to Achen. And it’s interesting—look at verse 19 of the text. Joshua said unto Achen, Now at this point, Joshua knows that Achen has caused the destruction of 36 men of Israel. He’s caused God’s wrath to come against Israel. He’s caused Israel essentially to turn from Israel into Canaanites. He has done a bad thing here. He has stolen from God. He has broken covenant and brought great trouble upon the people of Israel. But look, and he knows this by now—but look at the way Joshua treats Achen.

“My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him, and tell me now what thou hast done. Hide it not from me.”

Amazing. Another—just a—is a remarkable set of verses here in Joshua 7. And this is one of the most remarkable, that Joshua, while ferreting out sin in the context of the covenant community, does so in a gentle and a meek way, not looking to prevent his own anger or wrath against Achen, but rather he is focused upon the single purpose of God being glorified through the act. And he entreats Achen this sinner to give God the glory. And Achen responds in the affirmative.

Achen says, “Yes indeed. This is what I’ve done.” And then he gets into the specifics of what he has done. And he makes confession of his sin.

Notice here the nature of Achen’s sin. He’s not involved in adultery or drug dealing, anything like that. He has stolen from God. Essentially, he has stolen from God. And he has stolen a robe which was supposed to be destroyed. And he has taken also 200 shekels of silver and a wedge or a tongue of gold. That’s the more literal translation—a tongue of gold. He has taken those things which really were supposed to be given to God into his storehouse for his temple and his building. The wedge there is every other place translated tongue, and apparently this is some sort of tongue of gold that weighs 50 shekels of silver.

Okay. And so they find out who the culprit is. Achen confesses, and then we see the execution of Achen.

Now instead of trouble coming upon Israel for Achen’s sin, now destruction or disaster comes upon Achen in verses 24-26. They take Achen and they bring him up to the valley of Achor. And it’s interesting there that at the end of verse 24 where it says they brought up Achen and all that he had, they brought him up to the valley of Achor. That word—alah—is a word that is usually used in a worship sense, a processional sense of going up to the mountain of God.

Now a valley is down. You know, a valley would be someplace that they’d go down to normally. We don’t know the exact geography, but I think the significance here is that what they’re doing again is an act of worship. And the execution of God’s command to excommunicate or to execute the death penalty upon criminals is really a worshipful act in the part of God’s people and belongs in the context of worship.

And then verse 25, now Joshua’s tone changes somewhat. He says, “Why have you troubled us? The Lord shall trouble you this day.”

Okay. And he then carries out—they carry out the execution. There is stoning and also burning going on. There’s some discussion throughout the commentaries of why there’s these two methods of execution. We don’t know for sure. The Jews thought it was because he was stoned for Sabbath violation—that he stole this thing on the Sabbath day—and he was burned because of the Corban, or because of the things that were devoted to destruction.

I think myself that we could see here the stoning being related to the death of the 36 men at the rock quarry. So the stoning would be for the essentially for the violations of the second table. But he was responsible for the death of those men ultimately. And then him and all that he has is set on fire. He becomes Jericho.

Okay, we don’t know if his family knew of his sin or not. They probably did, ’cause he buried the stuff in his tent. So, but the text doesn’t stress that these families being put to death because of their knowledge of his sin or participation in it. His cattle, his tent, everything is burned up. I think what the text stresses—while there may be personal responsibility involved on the part of the family, and there usually is when you excommunicate people, the family usually participates in that sin—I think what’s really being stressed here is that Achen has become Jericho.

He’s taken these things and he’s become accursed. And as a result, what happened to the people in Jericho? Well, they all—their whole family was destroyed. All that they had was burned up and totally given over to destruction. And so I think that’s the big model here: is that when we sin, we change allegiances as it were. When we sin and break God’s covenant, and then we’re treated the way the enemy is treated.

There’s no natural privilege with God. There’s only covenantal privileges, and those privileges have a responsibility attached to them.

Okay. Let’s see. Then in verse 26, a memorial is set up. They raise over a heap of stones unto this day. And then Yahweh’s wrath is turned away in verse 26. The Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called the valley of Achor unto this day.

And here we see a very important play on words going on. Achen—his name is later listed in the chronicles of Israel in the book of 1 Chronicles, but his name is changed to Achar. And Acar is very close to Achor, which means trouble. They named this valley the valley of trouble, or Achor. And later Achen is referred to as Achar, or a troubler. And so Achen is the one who troubled the people of God. And this mound is erected, this pile of stones over his body. We have a mound of stones again as a monument. And also the name of the place geographically is changed to the valley of Achor, the valley of trouble, as a reminder of what has happened here.

God doesn’t want his people to forget these lessons.

Okay. Let’s move on then now to look at some of the implications of this verse for our lives. Man’s responsibility in political heavenization.

And man has basically—he has more than this, but I’m focusing on three specific responsibilities that this text tells us we have relative to doing the job that God has called us to do, which through preaching the gospel is to reclaim every area, every square foot of land on this earth for the Lord Jesus Christ and to work that his will might be done on this earth as it is in heaven.

So as we seek to bring God’s order, God’s heavenly process as it were, his law, resulting blessing of that, into our families, into our workplaces, into our recreation, into our civil sphere, into our towns, into our communities—as we seek to do this, these lessons are very important for us to learn. These, you know, the book of Joshua sets up a lot of motifs, a lot of things that are then relied upon throughout the rest of scripture.

We talked last week about the blowing of the horns and the shouting. And later, the prophets would always use that blowing of the horn model as a symbol of God’s victory over his enemies and God’s sovereignty and conquest. So these things are given to us as instructions for how we’re to live our lives as well as we follow the greater Jesus.

Remember, we’ve talked about the correlations between Joshua and Acts. We’ll get into that a lot more specifically when we get into a discussion of the book of Acts in about a year. But of course, you obviously are probably thinking already, or maybe some of you have, about Ananias and Sapphira, two people in the book of Acts who suffer the same punishment as Achen here for very same reasons. Things that were consecrated to God, they kept for themselves. They didn’t have to consecrate the money they made from the selling of their land. They decided to consecrate it—a serious oath before God—and they were punished because of it.

Okay. So these things are very important lessons for us. And the first lesson is personal holiness is required for political or social reordering.

Personal holiness is the first responsibility we have in this matter. I mentioned Achen’s genealogy. It tells us two different times, three different times actually in the text, who Achen’s father, grandfather, and up the tribe was, which was very important. It seems for some reason the text wants us to understand those things. Well, we won’t go through it now. The names of those personages all have to do with blessing. Judah was the great and preeminent tribe, first of all. And if you look at the names that are listed in terms of the identification of who Achen is, those names mean, for instance, dowy or gift. Those names mean garden or a flourishing place—names of blessing.

And I think it’s important for us to realize that while our ancestry may be blessed by God and may have good names associated with them, Achen’s name, which becomes Achar—troubler—is an indication that there is no natural privilege to God’s people. And as we raise up our children, the story of Achen is an important one to tell them. They may be the recipient of a long lineage of blessing. And yet they still are responsible for personal holiness in the context of that. And if they fail in personal holiness, they fall into the destruction of Achen.

Achen’s sin is very explicitly pointed out for us in the text. Achen stole several things that are very interesting in the enumeration. The first was a Babylonian robe. Now Francis Schaeffer in his commentary on this says that well, fashion is always a problem. We always want to look nice and dress like the people around us and that’s the sin going on here. I don’t think so. The robe in scripture is always associated with authority. It’s what kings wear, or it’s what the same word as the prophet Elijah wore his mantle. It’s authority and power before God.

And so when Achen seizes this Babylonian robe, he seizes, or attempts to seize, power for himself and authority apart from God’s giving men power and authority. And that is one of the great sins that men fall into: seizing after power.

Now, what we do wear is important. I told my wife I’m going to preach today about the need for Richard and I to wear robes. I think it’s a good idea. I think that clothing is important as the worship call is a model for us how we live our lives. The robe also worn in worship services, and certainly in the temple, and in the Orthodox Church for 2,000 years and various elements of that church, is an indication that our garb is important before God and it sanctifies or sets apart how we look at our clothing for the rest of the week as well.

Well, in any event, whether or not we end up wearing robes here, the point is that this was a robe that was devoted to destruction. God wanted the power of the Babylonian system of power, the gentile means of power, destroyed through the destruction of the symbols of those powers as well. And Achen seizes after power and authority.

What else does he take? He takes 200 shekels of silver and a tongue of gold, being 50 shekels. It’s interesting where those denominations are recorded in other places. 200 shekels of silver only occurs one other time in scripture—and that was in the formulation of Micah’s idol, his false god, by his mother, in the book of Judges. 50 shekels of silver is the weight of the nails that go into the construction of the Holy of Holies in the temple.

Achen seeks after personal wealth through seeking silver and gold. And he seeks then the glory of those things, the weightiness of the metals. 250 shekels is a weight altogether. So Achen seizes after power and authority, and he seeks after glory through his own means rather than through the means that God has ordained us to seek after.

This is very important for us as we seek the political heavenization of our state and nation. In Deuteronomy 7, which precedes Deuteronomy 8, Deuteronomy 8 talks about the blessings that he gives to covenant keepers—God gives to those that keep covenant. Deuteronomy 7 is a long promise that God will give them the land. And it says what they’re supposed to do when they get into that land of Canaan. And in verse 25, we read, “The graven images of their God shall ye burn with fire. Thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is in them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein, for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God.”

Deuteronomy 7 tells God’s people that as they conquer, they do so gradually. He says he’ll drive them out little by little, battle by battle. And then he says, don’t become worshippers of the false gods that they worshiped at. And it’s interesting that the gold is spoken of as a tongue here, a particular form made into something. So there’s this connotation of idolatry along with it. And as we seek to supplant people that have taken power and authority and glory and tried to seize it from God and the political structures of our land, it’s important that we do not fall into those sins ourselves.

You know, people have said that when the state is God, then true religion is political activity. And as we seek to apply the word of God to our political affairs as every other affair in our life, we must be very careful not to fall into the idolatry of the nations and the people that we are called to dispossess and proclaim God’s judgment against.

Achen fell into that sin of seeking authority, power, glory, and wealth apart from God’s providence. And as a result, suffered the destruction of God. Achen coveted power and wealth. Same thing that Eve did, right? She wanted to be as God, determining for herself good and evil, having power and authority apart from God’s ordination. And it’s interesting that the process of Achen’s sin is the same process of Eve’s sin.

He says, “I saw these things. I coveted them. I took them.”

We look upon things. We desire them. We begin to covet in our hearts. And as a result, our members then involve themselves in sin. And if you’re going to get rid of that sin, you got to get to the elimination of covetousness. And to get to the elimination of covetousness, you must be careful what your eyes gaze upon. David—same sin, right? With Bathsheba. He saw, he coveted, then he took.

Men and women, it’s important that we recognize what we put before our eyes can be very dangerous to us. And when our heart begins to covet things, even things that may be proper in and of themselves, we must repent before God and turn, because the next step is taking it. And that taking assigns us the curse from God. Assigns us the need to come to repentance for those sins lest we defile those that we are in context of.

Achen’s sin was discovered. And throughout the scriptures, I’ve listed some scriptures there, again and again, God says, “Don’t think you can hide things in your house. It’s not going to work. The timbers will start saying, ‘It’s here. It’s here. It’s here.’”

We cannot hide sin from God. You may think your sin is confined to your mind, and occasionally somebody may see your actions, but don’t forget that God in heaven knows you better than you know yourself and he ferrets out all sin and he makes it public.

Ecclesiastes 10:20 says, “Curse not the king, nor in thy thought, and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber, for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.”

We could talk about what that bird is. The point is God’s point in this is don’t think you can conceal sin. You cannot do it. Achen couldn’t do it. You can’t do it.

Achen had missing virtues. Achen was not a covenant keeper. Plain and simple. His bottom line sin was transgression of the covenant. He was not a covenant keeper. He didn’t have truthfulness. God says that he stole these things and he lied. He deceived. And Achen was selfish. Achen wasn’t generous. He was selfish. God says Achen didn’t tell the truth. God said he dissembled or he lied about it. Achen didn’t keep covenant. Achen broke covenant. Achen wasn’t obedient. Achen was missing the virtues of obedience, truthfulness, generosity according to God. And ultimately, he was missing the great virtue of covenant keeping and contentment with the blessing and the presence of God.

What else can we be? How, if the presence of God doesn’t satisfy us, how can those things that are made only to indicate God’s presence and his glory, such as metals, how can those things possibly satisfy? They can’t. And we live in a culture that’s rejected the presence of God and as a result can get no satisfaction out of the things that God has given to us as pointers back to him.

Sin, guilt, and defeat. Boy, an important part of this whole lesson. Remember I said that these people are covenantally guilty. We’ll talk a little bit about this, but Israel sinned—not just Achen. God imputes that sin to the whole nation. And they then suffer the guilt of God. They don’t even know what’s going on, but the first thing they find out is when they go into battle, they don’t feel good about it. They feel like they want to turn and run. And they do.

And as they turn and run, they’re beat. Sin brings guilt. Guilt brings defeat. Guilt brings a mindset with it that does not want to press forward in obedience to God’s call and aggressively pursue dominion in our affairs.

Men and women of this church, remember this fact: that if you are guilty in personal holiness, and if you have sins that you’re not dealt with, it will interfere with your ability to exercise dominion in your home, in your workplace, in the civil state, and in this church. It’ll interfere.

Men, if you lust after things, lust after other women in your heart and in your mind, that brings the condemnation of God with it. That condemnation of God brings guilt and a sense of shame. And that sense of shame will take you out of the game of ruling your family correctly for God. There is an incomplete tie here between guilt and the desire to turn and run.

And if you’re turning and running in family devotions or in formulating a family plan to move your family in terms of righteousness and holiness, maybe the problem isn’t just you’re not committed enough to follow out a plan for personal devotions. Maybe the problem is lustful thoughts. Maybe the problem is you’re withholding the tithe.

You know, you could preach a whole sermon on this about the tithe. The tithe is the dedicated portion of our income that stands for all the rest, the first fruits, the way Jericho was. And man, if we withhold that tithe from God, he’s not going to let you be happy in your house and your financial affairs. You’re going to have a sense of guilt and defeat as you take it into your family. You’re going to be under the curse of God covenantally, under his judgment. And you may not even think about it much the way these men didn’t. But pretty soon, you’re going to find yourself in defeat all around you.

You and women, if you do not submit to your husbands and if you compare your husbands unfavorably with other men on a regular basis and you do not honor them in your heart, you fall into these same kinds of sins of personal holiness. If you don’t love God and don’t have your personal relationship with God in place, don’t somehow think that you’re going to be able to exercise godly dominion in teaching your kids at home.

If you got problems with homeschooling your children, you got problems in relationship to your husband, maybe the problem is a problem of personal holiness—an area of secret heart sins and evil thoughts that need to be dealt with before God before he’ll bring you into victory.

This story of Achen is a tremendous reminder that sin brings with it guilt and a defeat mentality instead of an aggressively pressing forward, pressing forward mentality. Achen’s confession is also recorded for us here. When you get to the place, maybe you just have, of recognizing some sin in your life that’s kept you from really exercising dominion in your workplace, maybe, you know, if you think that you can somehow exercise dominion while having an improper attitude to the authorities that God has placed over you, if you seek to grasp for authority and power at the workplace, in the church, or in the state without going through the proper means that God has established, you’re in the same sin as Achen.

And if you don’t repent of that sin, you’re not going to be part of the heavenization process. You become Jericho, and you’re the one that God’s war gets waged against, and you’re the one that suffers defeat and guilt and shame.

If you have areas of your life where you want to turn it around now, if you realize there are elements of personal holiness in your life that are wanting, follow Achen’s confession. Achen confessed. He said, “Yeah, I’ve sinned.” He didn’t just say, “Yeah, I’ve sinned. Please forgive me.” He said, “I’ve sinned. I did this. I did this. I did this. I did this.” Specificity in confession is Achen’s model for us. And it’s a good model to follow.

Achen admitted shame, brought shame to himself, and in so doing brought glory to God. I don’t know what Achen’s eternal state is, but I’m not going to be surprised if I see him in heaven. Joshua called him son and treated him, and Achen responded by confessing his sin. We would have liked him do it a lot earlier, but he confessed. And as a result of that confession, of course, he knew he was bringing God’s judgment against his own life, but he confessed anyway.

And so you in your confession, remember Achen’s confession. There is specificity here of confession.

Matthew Henry said that by personal repentance and reformation, we destroy the accursed thing within our own hearts. And unless we do this, we must never expect the favor of the blessed God. This church knows that we’re like that Joshua people. We need to march forward. That this church should know then that apart—