STUDY THEME: JOSHUA ON LEADERSHIP. 9-17-06.
“THE AGONY OF DEFEAT.” JOSHUA 7: 1-26.
JOSHUA 7: 6-7, 10-13, 16-21, 24-26.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO JOSHUA 7.
The Life Question in today’s lesson is, “How can I lead in the midst of Spiritual failures?
No individual or group lives life with an unbroken succession of victories. Our fallen nature guarantees failure from time to time, even those of us who have come to faith in Christ and who are led and empowered by His Spirit.
The question then is not whether we can or will fail but what we will do in the wake of failure.
Will we permit failure to derail us in our Christian pilgrimage and thus make us useless in the work of God’s kingdom, or will we confess it, learn from it, put it behind us, and go on to achieve victory in the next set of challenges?
The Life Impact of today’s lesson is designed to help us develop the spiritual leadership skills God desires us to have by analyzing Joshua’s strengths and weaknesses as a leader and then assessing how appropriately we deal with spiritual failures.
Leaders must be able to handle success well, but they also must be able to deal with spiritual failures. This includes the failures of others and their own as well. Spiritual failures or defeats are always costly and serious, but they don’t need to be the final word.
When believers fail, their failures touch the lives of many. Depending on the nature of the failure, the method of dealing with it varies. Sometimes discipline is needed; sometimes restoration is needed.
Sin exists in every congregation. Some sins damage deeply the spiritual life and witness of the entire church. A member spreads a vicious rumor about another member. Members, even leaders, fall into fornication, adultery, drunkenness, drug abuse, spousal abuse, or child abuse.
As tragic as these sinful actions are for the individual involved, they affect the entire congregation.
Spiritual failure never occurs in a vacuum but always impacts the whole congregation. Some churches may ignore such violations of clear spiritual standards. To do so, however, allows the sin to become the church’s sin. Spiritual leaders have the responsibility of dealing wisely and quickly with moral failure within the church.
The story narrated in Joshua 7 gives principles of dealing with moral failure within a congregation. Joshua’s situation was foreign in many ways to our situation. At the same time we can discern several biblical principles for dealing with “sin in the camp.”
When Frank Baugh was our pastor one of the members announced he was going to open a liquor store on Harrison Street in Shawnee. Brother Baugh called a meeting of the deacons and appointed John Collier and I to go to the home of this family and try to talk the man out of this intention. From the Scriptures we showed the man how wrong this would be and what a reflection it would cast upon his church. He and his wife listened. She said she knew he was wrong but she would support him in any choice he made. We had prayer with them and left. They ceased attending the church, but their teen-age daughter continued to come and sing in the choir. The husband and wife never came back to the church. The liquor store was never opened.
This lesson today focuses on Achan. The sin of this one man caused the defeat of Israel when they attacked the small town of Ai. All Israel suffered from his sin. Eventually Achan and all his family were put to death.
The Lord commanded the Israelites who marched around Jericho to devote everything in the city to the Lord. This involved saving the gold, silver, brass and iron for the treasury of the Lord but destroying everyone and everything in the city, except for Rahab and her family.
Many people have trouble with this destruction of human life. Two factors should be considered. For one thing, the sins of the people of Canaan were full to the brim. God told Abraham in Gen. 15: 16 that in his time their sins were “not yet full.” But by the time of Joshua, they were full.
Leviticus 18: 6-30 identifies their sins as incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality. They were like the people before the flood in Gen. 6: 5, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen. 18: 20. Even their religion was a mixture of idolatry and immorality.
The second reason for the destruction of Jericho was that the Israelites would be constantly tempted to follow their evil ways.
PLEASE READ JOSHUA 7: 6-7.
Israel began its conquest of Canaan by attacking Jericho. Prior to the assault on Jericho, God laid down rules of engagement. This conquest was not for the purpose of personal enrichment. The campaign’s purposes were to exalt the Lord’s name, to seize Canaan for Israel, and to bring God’s judgment on the Canaanites.
The people of Israel were not, therefore, to seize any wealth of the Canaanites for themselves. Achan, however, ignored God’s instructions and seized for him self some valuable items of booty from the battle with Jericho.
When Israel turned its attention toward Ai, Joshua sent scouts to survey the city. Filled with the ecstasy of their recent victory over Jericho, the scouts recommended Joshua not mobilize the entire army. A small raiding party of 2,000 or 3,000 men would be sufficient to defeat such a small town. Heeding this advice, Joshua sent out a small contingent. The citizens of Ai routed the Israelites, and Israel lost 36 men in the battle.
In vs. 6, dismayed at the defeat, Joshua tore his clothes in a public display of grief. He fell on his face in front of the Ark of the Covenant, which symbolized God’s presence. All the elders of Israel followed Joshua’s example. They sprinkled dust on their heads as a sign of grief because of the military disaster.
Joshua was obviously very upset. He had been the leader during two great victories. One was the crossing of the Jordan, told in Joshua 6: 1-27. He was disturbed by the defeat of the Israelites who attacked the smaller town. He could not fathom what was wrong.
If we compare the defeat at Ai with the victory at Jericho, some striking differences appear. Never do we read that the Lord told Joshua to attack Ai. The decision made sense to Joshua. Jericho was the eastern entry into Canaan, but the Israelites needed to move from the valley to the highlands, and Ai was in a strategic place in the highlands.
When Joshua gave the command to attack Ai, he did so trusting in his fighting men. Joshua and the people seem to have become self-reliant and forgotten that the Lord had given them their two victories. Such self-confidence is dangerous. 1 Cor. 10: 12 says, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
Joshua lacked confidence in the Lord’s ability to turn the situation around and lead the nation to His previously announced intentions for them. “If only we had been content to remain on the other side of the Jordan!” he lamented
Life now and then is filled with “if only’s.” It is all too easy to second guess in the midst of trying circumstances. “What if I had done that instead of this, we reason.” Surely the outcome would have been better had we made different choices! This kind of logic is profitless at best even in the mundane affairs of everyday life. When it is applied to the ways of the Lord, it is worse---it is faithless rebellion.
To regret not remaining on the other side of the Jordan rather than following the will of
God because of a moment of challenge is to assert a knowledge superior to His and a lack of confidence in His ability to fulfill His promises to them.
In short, Joshua’s prostration with his face to the ground and with dust on his head was not so much and act of contrition and repentance as it was of sheer frustration.
Things had not worked out according to plan, and therefore Joshua’s knee-jerk reaction was to blame the Lord rather than to seek to find the underlying causes that moved the Lord to allow defeat rather than victory.
A few days earlier Joshua’s faith was high. Under his leadership the Israelites had won two great victories. Now he was having trouble coping with defeat. Life is not a string of victories and successes.
For a variety of reasons, life is sometimes defeats and failures. A good leader must go through all of them. Joshua recovered from this down time, and he learned to trust the Lord more completely. The rest of the story shows that the main cause of the defeat was not Joshua’s sins, but as a leader, he was accountable for what his people did.
Joshua appears to have overlooked the possibility that the defeat at Ai, lay at the feet of the people themselves. He did not know of Achan’s sin, of course, but knowing Israel’s history of rebellion against the Lord in the wilderness should have alerted him to the likelihood that Israel’s present troubles were of their own making.
Human pride often wants to shift the blame for life’s difficulties to someone or something outside one’s own behavior. When no human agency can be found, God becomes the scapegoat.
PLEASE READ JOSHUA 7: 10-13.
Vs. 8-9 show what frightened Joshua. He knew that the Israelite victories had caused the hearts of their enemies to melt. Now he feared that their defeat by tiny Ai would embolden their enemies and cause the hearts of the Israelites to melt.
Joshua’s attempt to blame the Lord for his and Israel’s troubles was nipped in the bud by the Lord who commanded Joshua to stand up and get off the ground. This rather abrupt response to Joshua’s apparent posture of remorse and contrition betrays the fact that the Lord sees through
Joshua’s ploy for what it is---a petty display of temper and frustration.
All the prayers in the world is to no avail until sin is exposed and confessed and the Lord is no longer held accountable for what people bring upon themselves.
The Lord’s question, Why are you on the ground? Is immediately answered by Him: Israel has sinned. Until that sin was addressed, Joshua’s prostration had no practical or spiritual significance. The Lord does not discourage heart-felt, sincere prayer, of course, but there are times when the call is not to prayer but to action.
Israel’s sin in this case was that they have violated My covenant that I appointed for them.
The continuation of the conquest would therefore remain on hold until the sin question was dealt with and the terms of the covenant recalled and reaffirmed. Prayer would be ineffectual until that was done.
The covenant in view here is the one made at Sinai and reaffirmed in Moab in the form of the Book of Deuteronomy. Among many other things, it called for Israel to conquer and occupy the land of Canaan as the Lord’s inheritance to them.
In the immediate context the covenant that Israel had violated was the stipulation that when the Canaanite cities fell in war the valuables discovered there must not be kept by those who found them. Instead they must be turned over to the Lord as treasures to be kept in His storehouse and then used in the future to furnish the places of worship to be established in the Promised Land.
Any question as to what aspect of the covenant was violated was dispelled by the Lord’s revelation to Joshua that it concerned someone’s having taken some of what was set apart.
Interestingly, the blame is not on the individual who did this---though indeed it turned out to be a single person---but on the community as a whole.
They have violated My covenant, said the Lord, they have taken some of what was set apart, and they have stolen, deceived, and put things with their own belongings.
This charge recalls that the covenant was not made with one person or even with Israel as a community of individuals. Rather, it was made with the nation as a collective entity. When one member sinned, therefore, the whole body was guilty and the whole body would remain under threat of judgment until the person or persons guilty of the sin were exposed and brought to repentance or judgment.
Notice that God said the people had sinned although later He accused one man and his family. God used the words they and them in describing the guilty. This is an example of the O.T. way of identifying the individual with the group.
We can understand this to some degree because one person’s sin always affects others. The outstanding example is the sin of Adam, which has affected everyone. Some people claim that they are hurting no one but themselves when they sin. This is not true. All the people heard the command not to take any treasure for themselves from Jericho. One man disobeyed and Israel sinned. Achan’s sin robbed Israel of its previously good standing with God.
Vs. 11 shows the seriousness of sin. God was angry at the blatant disobedience to His clear command. Two familiar words described what they did: sinned and transgressed. The rest of the verse enlarges on this basic charge---concealment, theft, deceit, and selfishness.
The sinner had taken some of the things that were dedicated to God. By doing this they had stolen what belonged to God. Joshua 7: 1 says that “the Lord’s anger burned against Israel,”
Vs. 12 explains why the Israelites were defeated at Ai. The word therefore points back to their sin as the reason the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies. They had taken Jericho because they relied on the Lord to give it to them, but they relied on themselves when they attacked Ai. Therefore, they turned their backs before their enemies.
Vs. 12 uses the expression accursed thing in two slightly different senses. Israel itself has become an accursed thing, but also among them is an accursed thing that must be completely destroyed if the Lord is ever to be with Israel again. Thus the corporate and the individual go hand in hand in this verse.
At this point in the narrative, Joshua did not know who was guilty and what he had done. Readers are told Achan’s sin in vs. 1, but only later is the culprit identified and his sin uncovered for Joshua and the others to deal with. Meanwhile, because in one man’s sin all had sinned, God called Joshua to sanctify or consecrate the people.
Joshua in turn said for all the people to sanctify themselves for the next day. The Lord told the people that the reason for their defeat was because there was sin among them. He also said they would continue to be defeated by their enemies as long as the sin remained. “I will no longer be with you unless you remove from you what is set apart.”
The tone here is ominous, indeed, for the Lord revealed not only the reason for this one disaster but suggested that disaster and defeat would be ongoing unless and until the people took measures to make thing right. Failing this, they would not be able to stand against their enemies in the future and in fact, would turn their back and run from their enemies. The point was that the Lord would no longer lead their armies into battle as He did in the victorious conquest of Jericho in Josh. 6: 6-7. They would be on their own, always in danger of defeat and destruction.
In Vs. 10-13 Joshua showed more good leadership than in the earlier verses. He got up from his self-pitying prayer as God commanded him to do. Without knowing the particulars, he accepted God’s explanation for the defeat at Ai. He realized how wrong he had been even to hint that the defeat was God’s fault. He issued the call for consecration and no doubt consecrated himself. He trusted God to reveal the one whose sin had tarnished the entire nation.
PLEASE READ JOSHUA 7: 16-21.
God told the people to consecrate themselves for the morrow. As though he could not wait to be about the Lord’s will, Joshua got up early the next morning to implement the strategy the Lord had revealed to him. Until then the advance into Canaan was stymied. God had said that He would not go with them until the accused thing was destroyed.
The plan consisted of a narrowing down process from largest to smallest, from the level of the tribe to the isolation of a single individual, the one who had taken the things set apart.
Ironically, the tribe of Judah was selected, the very tribe from which would come both King David and Jesus the Messiah.
The relevance perhaps is the identification of David and his messianic lineage with sinners, here the thief who brought such grief to the nation, Judah, in a sense, gave birth to both the sinner David, and the One who could save him from all his sins. The Zerahite clan of Judah was selected next, and then the extended family of Zabdi.
Zabdi’s grandson Achan was at last singled out for all the nation to see. Achan was the son of Carmi of Zabdi’s family. Besides outlining the means by which Achan came to the fore, this passage provides insight in to the structure of ancient Israel’s national life---people, tribe, clan, family, individual. The people or nation was nothing apart from its constitution as a collection of individuals, but the individual had no real identity apart from his or her connection to the nation.
Achan at last was identified as the person behind Israel’s miserable failure at Ai. But until he confessed on his own, there might remain lingering doubts among some in the community. Besides, whatever grace might have been applicable could come to him only as he was willing to admit his guilt. Knowing he had been caught with the goods, Achan confessed to Joshua what he had done, putting it in terms of having sinned against the Lord.
He had sinned against his fellow citizens, to be sure, but sin by its very definition is ultimately against the Lord, for it only to Him that people are accountable in the final analysis.
Furthermore, the Lord was identified as the God of Israel, by both Joshua, and Achan himself. The import of this was to highlight both the national identification and unity of the people and the fact that there existed a covenantal relationship between the Lord and Israel.
Achan could have given glory to God by confessing what he had done and not trying to hide it any longer.
When he did speak, Achan used the right words to confess his sins. He said, “I have sinned.” But the words do not always indicate genuine repentance and confession. David used them and was forgiven in 2 Samuel 12: 13. Why did Achan confess his sins? Was it not because he had been caught?
Confronted with his guilt, Achan confessed what he had done. He had been one of those who entered Jericho after the Lord caused the walls to fall. He knew the orders not to take anything for him self, but he saw among the ruins an expensive beautiful cloak from Babylon, some silver (“200 silver shekels”), and some gold (“a bar of gold weighting 50 shekels,”). This was a considerable amount of wealth. Achan coveted them, and took them.
Notice the similarity to Eve’s response to the forbidden tree. She saw it, desired it, and took it. The word hid is another similarity. Achan hid the stolen treasures. And Adam and Eve tried to hide themselves from God in Gen. 3: 1-8. The action of Achan and Eve show the deadliness of the sin of coveting—wanting something that is not yours. In both, the desire was so strong that it led to a deliberate act of disobedience to God. The coveting led to acquisition---he took the objects of his temptation. Finally, he concealed all these things in the ground inside his tent.
In the very place the family ate and drank, fellowshipped and slept, prayed and meditated---there Achan took and hid what belonged to the Lord alone.
Achan no doubt believed his deceit was impervious to human gaze, but the omniscient God saw not only the fruit of Achan’s thievery but deep into his heart as well. There, it seems, was no repentance, no reason for the Lord to withhold His wrath.
PLEASE READ JOSHUA 7: 24-26.
In vs. 22-23 messengers found the stolen things hidden in Achan’s tent. This may explain why Achan’s family was punished. The fact that his family shared in that fate may be due to their common knowledge of the crime. After all, the goods were hidden in the parental tent.
Joshua as leader and theocratic administrator now had to become judge and executioner. All Israel joined him in taking Achan, his stolen goods, his sons and daughters, his livestock, his tent, and all that he had…up to the valley of Achor, a place to this point still unidentified.
By all Israel is certainly not meant every individual in the nation but the leaders who represented them. No doubt these would have included the heads of his tribe, clan, and family as well. All Israel had suffered the defeat at Ai because of Achan’s sin so all Israel as a collective entity needed to punish that same sin.
Using a play on words, Joshua asked why Achan had troubled his people. Joshua responded to his own question by uttering the condemnatory words. “Today the Lord will trouble you!” The word translated trouble is Achor, hence the name of the place of execution. The word is similar to Achan, further enhancing both the pun and the troublesome nature of the man who had caused the trouble in the first place.
So heinous was the act of robbing God of His glory that the only fit punishment was death. And since the wrong was done against the whole community, only stoning, a participatory means of corporal punishment, was suitable. Thus all Israel stoned Achan to death.
Then they burned his body and those of his household and covered the grisly pile with a cairn of stones. So that Israel would never forget the price of covenant violation, the stone pile was heightened to a memorial which the author of the narrative said remains to this day. A pile of stones had marked Israel’s success in crossing the Jordan in Joshua 4: 1-17, and now another reminded them of failure to obey the Lord.
Having satisfied the wrath of the Lord, the people took note that the Lord turned from His burning anger. The way was clear for a fresh attempt to capture the city of Ai, something that would easily have been accomplished before had Achan---and, indeed, Israel---been willing to follow the leadership of the Lord and conform themselves to His covenant requirements. Obedience, which often seems the slow and difficult path to achievement, is in fact the quickest and smoothest.
They attacked the city a second time with totally different results, for they went with the assurance of God’s will. Ironically the Lord allowed the Israelites to take some of the spoil of Ai and keep it for themselves. So if Achan had been patient, he would have received some of the booty of the city as a gift from the Lord.
There is also a comparison between Achan and Rahab. Rahab and her family were the only ones spared from Jericho. This was because she exercised her faith and risked her life to hide the spies. By contrast, Achan and his family were the only Israelites lost as a result of the fall of Jericho, and it was because of his lack of faith and disobedience to the Lord.
Leaders must be willing to confront sin and sinners, even from among their own group. Joshua was a leader who confronted one of his own people.
In a similar situation in the N.T., Peter rebuked Ananias and Sapphira. They had lied to the Holy Spirit about the amount of money they received from the sale of some property, and when Peter confronted them, they died in Acts 5: 1-11. There are parallels between them and Achan. Both tried to hide their sins. Both were confronted by their leader, and both were punished by death.
Confrontation is never easy, but sometimes it is necessary. It always must be done humbly with full awareness of our own sins and failures.
A final reminder of the momentous events of the narrative was the permanent naming of the place where they took place. The historian noted that that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day.
It may be argued that one should not dwell on the past, especially when it conjures up dark and doleful memories. But it can also be argued, and convincingly so, that remembrance of past failures can be reminders of God’s grace that has turned them into victories and that the defeats of yesterday can be instructive about how to live today.
Achor means “The valley of trouble.” It speaks of the trouble we bring on ourselves by our own sins.
Today’s lesson is a sad story, but it has a serious lesson for God’s people everywhere. Sin in the camp will weaken the host of the Lord and hinder blessing and victory. Sin judged with and dealt with leaves God free to work in the way in which He delights.
It is impossible to hide sin from a holy and omniscient God. We would all do well to recall the text that reminds us in Numbers 32: 23 to “be sure your sins will find you out.”
To confess sin is to bring glory to God. To only admit sin---and without repentance---is to dishonor God and bring deep sorrow to the sinner. Like Job in Job 42: 5-6, we should say to the Lord, “I had heard rumors about You, but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes.”
NEXT WEEK’S LESSON IS IN JOSHUA 24: 1-31. IT ASKS THE QUESTION “WHEN IS IT TIME TO RELINQUISH LEADERSHIP AND HOW CAN SMOOTH TRANSITION TAKE PLACE?” A.V. DAUGHERTY >altav@swbell.net>