Some People Learn the Hard Way

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Turn with me this morning to Joshua chapter 7. Joshua chapter 7. You know, when I was a teenager, I never went through that phase where my parents became stupid, as so many go through.

But I did go through a phase where maybe my parents overreacted a little bit. And some of the things that they warned me about, well, maybe it’s not as bad as they have led me to believe. Especially when it came to cars.

And I don’t know a whole lot now, but I was completely clueless when I was a teenager. And my dad used to warn me, when it gets cold, when it gets below freezing, you need to go warm your car up before you leave. Now, I’ve been told some of the newer cars, you only have to warm them up for about 30 seconds.

But my first car was an old Dodge that I bought from my grandmother for $250. And you had to warm that thing up for 15 minutes before you could go anywhere when it got below freezing. And he would warn me all the time, if you don’t warm that car up, if you don’t warm that car up before you leave for school, you’re going to destroy it.

You’re going to crack the block. You’re going to do this. You’re going to do that.

And after, you know, I took him seriously at first, but then I thought, well, maybe it’s not as big a deal as I’ve been led to believe. And I remember one day in my senior year of high school, it was so cold, as I’ve heard people say before the politicians had their hands in their own pockets. It was that cold.

It was in the 20s that day, and it was so cold. And I overslept, and I had a meeting early at school that day, and I thought, I have got to go. There was construction, and they had all the roads torn up between there and the high school, and more is split in half by railroad tracks, and there’s only a train when you’re running late for something.

And I thought, I have got to go. So that day, I did not warm up my car. I got in the car, cranked it up, and off I went, and I thought, well, you know, Dad just is overreacting to this whole thing.

Until I got ready to leave school that day, and my car wouldn’t drive quite right. And I found out, we had to have it towed in, I found out about $1,000 and a week later that I should have listened to my dad, that he spoke from experience. And that was a hard-learned lesson, not only being without my car for a week and having to have my mother drive me to high school as a senior in high school.

Think about that. But also having to shell out $1,000 when I was working at the grocery store. I didn’t have that kind of money.

It was a hard-learned lesson. And sometimes we have to learn lessons the hard way, don’t we? Sometimes it seems like that is the only way that we’ll learn.

As a matter of fact, you don’t see it on the screen right now, but that’s the title of this morning’s message, Some People Learn the Hard Way. And we’re going to look this morning at the people of Israel because if ever there was a poster, well, if ever there were poster children for having to learn things the hard way, it would be the nation of Israel. And we see in the book of Joshua, they’re really getting started after they’ve wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

And God has been faithful to lead them through everything. God was faithful to lead them out of Egypt, and yet they sat there in the desert and whined and said, you know, why would God bring us out here just to let us die? Well, the answer is he wouldn’t.

And you would think, we would think that they would have learned by the miraculous way God brought them out of Egypt that he wasn’t just going to leave them there in the desert to die. But over and over he provided for them, and over and over they doubted his word. They had told him, or he had said in about 1446, around the time of the Exodus, he had told them to go in and possess the land.

He had told them it was theirs and told them to send spies into the country to check it out. Send spies into the promised land and see what it was like. And they were only told to go and see what it was like, not to bring back a report on whether they could take it or not.

But they brought back a report these spies did and said it’s a great land. It’s a wonderful land. It surpasses all of our expectations.

It is as wonderful as God said it was. There’s no way we can take it. And the people began to doubt God.

And so God left them there for 40 years, wandering in the wilderness. And we pick up in Joshua, where after you would think they would learn from all these lessons. And by the way, if it sounds like I’m being too harsh on the Israelites, we do the exact same thing.

I’m just going to clue you in on that right now. We do the exact same thing in our walk with God, do we not? But they’ve come in in Joshua, and God has said, Okay, the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness is over.

You’re going to go in and you’re going to possess this land. and they begin to experience doubt, and they begin to experience disobedience to God’s word yet again. And we start in Joshua chapter 7, verse 1.

It says, But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing, for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, 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-Avon, on the east side of Bethel, and spoke unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai.

And what we’re going to do, we’re going to look at the story this morning, kind of get a glimpse of what’s going on, and then come back and apply it, apply the lessons that we can learn from this. But they’ve just captured Jericho. Most of you are familiar with that story.

They come to this massive city, massively fortified with these giant walls, and they say, How in the world are we going to take this city? And God says, I want you to march around one time each day. And then on the final day, I want you to march around seven times, and then I want you to shout and blow the trumpets.

And they did, and the walls came down, and they took the city. Miraculous thing. And now they’ve come to the next city in the conquest, which is Ai.

And Joshua told them to go up and check out Ai and see what was going on with the city. And they returned, verse 3, they returned to Joshua and said unto him, Let not all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai. and make not all the people to labor thither, for they are but few.

And so what we see from this verse is Ai was a small town. It may have been fortified, it may have had walls, but it was small potatoes in contrast to Jerusalem. Not Jerusalem, excuse me, Jericho.

And they said, surely if we could take Jericho, we don’t even need our whole army to be able to take Ai, so let’s just send in a small detachment of two or three thousand men to go in and take over the city of Ai. And Joshua said, that sounds like a good idea to me. Why burden all the people?

Why do this overkill? Why send in many thousands of people when it’s small enough that two or three thousand should be able to subdue the city? So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men.

But get this, it says, and they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six 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. So this small town that they should have been able to subdue with 2,000 or 3,000, should have, I might add, been able to easily subdue.

I don’t think the Israelites were saying, let’s make it an even match here. So if they had 2,000 or 3,000 men going in in their contingent, that tells me that Ai was even smaller than that. They get to Ai, and something bad happens, and the people of Ai send them running.

And not only that, the men of Ai chase them as they’re fleeing, as they’re retreating from the city. They chase them down. Wherever they find them, they kill them.

And it says they end up killing about 36 of the men. And because of this, the hearts of the people melted and became as water. The people were terrified of what was going to happen.

And verse 6 says, 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. A couple of things going on in this verse.

First of all, Joshua’s confusion and the people’s confusion is understandable because we need to make it clear it was not only God’s desire for the people to go in and take Ai. It was not only God’s desire for them to subdue the land of Canaan and go in and possess this promised land. It was God’s command to them.

He had told them on numerous occasions, you are going to go in and take and possess the land that I’ve given you. And there was nothing suggestive. There was nothing, there was no wishful thinking about it.

It was a command from God as much as it was a desire for them to go in and subdue this land. And so Joshua’s confusion was understandable. Because if, I don’t want to say if God’s fighting on your side, but if you’re fighting on God’s side, you should be invincible in the battle.

And yet they’ve been turned to flight by this smaller enemy. And so Joshua’s confusion is understandable, but he does exactly the right thing here, ladies and gentlemen. You notice what he does?

In the confusion, he turns to the Lord. Now the tendency we have when things don’t go according to plan, when things don’t go exactly the way we want them to in life, we have a tendency to turn and start pointing fingers and blaming everybody and getting things stirred up. When folks, when things don’t work out, the best thing we can do is go to God and talk to Him about it.

And it says, Joshua, rent his clothes. Have you ever been so distraught that you’ve rent your clothes? Probably not.

You may have been so distraught that you would have felt like it. I’ve been so distraught I’ve wanted to rip out what little hair I have left. I think that’s along the same lines.

He was so distraught, he rent his outer garment, and he fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide. He went there to worship the Lord and seek his face as well as his hand, and he stayed there until the evening. He was there all day.

This was not just a matter of going to God and saying, Lord, I don’t know what happened. Help us figure it out, and now I’m off again to do my own thing. He went and worshipped and sought God’s face until the evening.

And he and the elders of Israel and put dust upon their heads. All the leaders went and did this. Now, I’ve always wondered if they picked up the dirt and put it on their heads as a sign of mourning, or if the dirt was on their heads because they got on their faces before God.

Either way, there was some serious prayer and serious mourning and serious worship that was going on here. And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, Wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan to deliver us under the hand of the Amorites to destroy us? Would to God we had been content and dwelt on the other side, Jordan.

So he says the same thing that the Israelites have been getting in trouble for saying since they came out of Egypt about 40 years earlier. God, it’d be better off if we just stayed in the last place you left us. But folks, at least in Joshua’s favor, he’s going to the Lord about it instead of starting murmuring in the camp about how, oh, God should have just left us in Egypt, as so many had done before.

Folks, I don’t think God minds us asking sincere questions at times when we don’t understand what’s going on. But he said, would to God that we had been content and dwelt on the other side, Jordan. O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies?

Really, there’s nothing. What do I say? Because their entire worldview, their entire understanding of the way the world works was hung on the very concept that God is all-powerful and God keeps his promises.

And they had been promised this land, they had been promised that God would do battle for them, and suddenly what they’re seeing around them doesn’t match up with what they’ve been told to believe. What is there to say? 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 this was something that was prayed frequently in the Old Testament. When people were seeking God’s favor, and they would say, and I don’t think, folks, that they were trying to twist God’s arm into doing something, but I think they had a right perspective of what’s going on here.

God, it’s not just about us and our prosperity. It’s not just about us and what’s good for us, but it’s about you and your glory as well. And there are numerous times in the Old Testament that somebody prayed, God, if we’re left here to die, if we’re defeated here, the whole world that surrounds us knows that we serve the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And what will they say about the one true God if we’re defeated here? What will they say if we’re cut off? See, it will not only harm us, but it will give the pagan countries around us reason to blaspheme the name of God if we fall.

And the Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up, wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? Get up, why are you lying on your face right now? Israel hath sinned, verse 11, 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 it also and have dissembled also and have 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 were accursed. Neither will I be with you anymore except you destroy the accursed from among you. And this is not a change of plans on God’s part.

This is not a breaking of a promise on God’s part because although he does tell them in the earliest chapters of Joshua, go in, I will be with you. You will be invincible. They won’t be able to stand against you.

it was always understood, it was always understood that the agreement that God made with them in the book of Deuteronomy when they were to go into the promised land said that he would do battle for them. I’m paraphrasing, but says that he would do battle for them as long as they remain faithful to him. Now there is an unconditional covenant given to Abraham, which I believe will be fulfilled one day.

But ladies and gentlemen, as far as they’re at this time coming into the promised land, God had told them that if you’ll obey me and keep my commandments, If you’ll walk with me, I’ll do battle for you. He had always told them that you’ll walk with me and I’ll walk with you and I will be your God and you will be my people. And sometimes the people of Israel forgot that little message.

Sometimes the people of Israel forgot their end of things when it came to this covenant of going into the land and would disobey and God would have to remind them that it’s obedience that brings blessings. I won’t say all the time that you obey God and you’re going to get everything you wanted out of this life. But when it comes to spiritual blessings, obedience brings blessings.

And so he said, the reason why you’ve been defeated here, the reason why you’ve been defeated here is because there is sin in the camp. You’ve transgressed my covenant. The commandments I gave you at the battle of Jericho when I fought for you, you broke those commandments.

And he says in verse 12, Neither will I be with you anymore except you destroy the accursed from among you. Unless you deal with this sin, Unless you deal with this sin, you’re not going to find success in these battles any longer. And so he gives them the remedy in verse 13 and says, 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. So what he tells them is you’ve got to clear the camp.

You’ve got to sanctify the people. And that word sanctify, we don’t use a whole lot anymore, but it is a good word, and it is such a good picture. That word sanctify means to set apart.

And Israel had been set apart as a peculiar people unto the Lord. Israel had been set apart as God’s chosen people, but so many times they forgot to act like it, and they would have to be reminded and set apart again. And he says, sanctify the people.

Set them apart to me again. Which is similar to the idea of when people come forward and rededicate their lives to Christ. Folks, if you’re born again, you’re always born again. If you’re secure in Christ, you’re always secure in Christ. But sometimes men and women, we forget to act like it.

And sometimes it behooves us to remind us of the dedication that we offered to the Lord in the first place. And so people will rededicate their lives. It doesn’t mean they weren’t saved.

It doesn’t mean they’ve gotten saved over again. But it means we need to be reminded that we’re set apart unto the Lord. And he says in verse 14, 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 things 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 what God is saying, the people of Israel were a tribal society and they were divided up by tribes and clans and families and households. And God says, you’re going to have the people of the nation pass by and the tribe I point out to you.

You’re going to take that tribe and you’re going to have them come family by family, group by group, in other words. Extended families. And the extended family that I pick out, you’re going to bring them by household by household, and I’ll show you.

And the family, the household that has done this, is to be destroyed. And we think, we look back on sometimes the Old Testament, we think how harsh God was in meeting out punishments. But you’ve got to understand the people of Israel knew and understood the covenants that they were agreeing to.

They agreed to live under the law. And God had said this is the way it’s got to be. And ladies and gentlemen, the reason for that is very specific, and that is that idolatry is so infectious.

Idolatry left unchecked in our hearts will fester and grow until I believe it completely roots out the love that we have for the one true God as we begin to put anything above him in any respect. If we don’t deal with it, if we don’t deal with it, it will take over. Not just in the individual heart, but in the group.

Ladies and gentlemen, if we allow idolatry, if we allow sin, and if we get right down to it, all sin is idolatry, even if it’s just that we’re putting self ahead of God and our own will ahead of God. Idolatry left to fester will infest the entire group if we’re not careful about rooting it out. Now that’s not to say that I start putting myself first immediately.

Brother James is going to go out and worship idols, and Brother Daryl’s going to worship idols. But make no mistake, it will have an impact on the entire group. It will have an impact on the entire church.

It will have an impact on the entire family. It will have an impact on the entire nation, ladies and gentlemen, if sin is allowed to run rampant and unchecked. And I’m not suggesting that today the answer is to go out and stone idolaters.

There aren’t enough gravel pits in this country. Or to burn them, or to do whatever they did in the Old Testament. God gave them specific instructions.

But what we can learn from this is that sin cannot be allowed in our own lives, in our own hearts, in our own families, in our own churches to continue on undealt with. So Joshua rose up early in the morning and brought Israel by their tribes. And the tribe of Judah was taken.

So as the tribes went by, God pointed out to Joshua and said, it’s the tribe of Judah. And he brought the family of Judah and took the family of the Zarhites and brought the family of the Zarhites man by man and Zabdi was taken. So they go through the process and they narrow it down to a household.

And he brought his household man by man. And Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken. They go through tribe by tribe, family by family, household by household, and finally man by man.

And God leads Joshua to the conclusion that Achan is the one who had done what was accursed. And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord of Israel, and make confession unto him. and tell me now what thou hast done, hide it not from me.

And Achan answered Joshua and said, Indeed, I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. Which I think thus and thus, when I see it, is the Bible’s way of saying, and blah, blah, blah, he confessed. You know, the Bible doesn’t give us all the details, but says he explained to them in so many words what he’d done.

When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment and 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold 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. Now, why was this a problem? Because in chapter 6, when God told them to go into Jericho, that was the common practice, even among the Israelites, that you go in, you subdue a city, and you’re able to take the spoils of war back.

The goods, the wealth of that city, you’re able to take back with you. Now, I’m not saying I agree with that. I’m just saying that’s the way it worked.

And they were told, when they went into Jericho, though, possibly because of the idolatry of the city, that they were not to take from the goods and the wealth of the city of Jericho. They were to kill all the inhabitants of Jericho again because of the danger of idolatry and infecting God’s people. But they were to dispatch with all of the inhabitants of the city and everything they found in, they were to leave the spoils of war there.

Only the gold and silver they were to take and they were to put to use in the temple. Or not in the temple, but they were to put to use in the Lord’s service. And Achan one out of, just one out of many of the people of Israel, saw what he described here, a robe from Babylon, and about 25 shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold 50 shekels weight.

And reading, studying on this passage this week, I’m given to understand that this wedge of gold may have been part of an idol. And I’m given to understand they had idols that they would put pieces of gold in their mouth. And so he took, he possibly here took part of an idol that was used in the work, in the pagan worship of the people of Jericho.

And he said, I saw it, I coveted it, I wanted it, and I took it. And then I hid them in the earth in the midst of my tent. I tried to bury them.

And so Joshua sent messengers, and they ran unto the tent, and behold, it was hid 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, unto all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the Lord. And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan, the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his oxen, and his daughters, and his, I’m sorry, his sons and his daughters, and his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, and his tent, and all that they had.

And they brought them to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? See, it was Achan’s sin that had caused the deaths of so many at Ai.

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.

And after they had stoned, I’m sorry, 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 Acor unto this day. And again, people will question why the harsh punishment? Why the family?

Why his sons and daughters? And I don’t know here that it means young children. But folks, I doubt that Achan was alone in what he did.

Certainly the rest of the family knew about it when they come in and he’s digging and hiding things in the tent. And this family had been the cause of so many deaths in Israel. It says in chapter 8, verse 1, And the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed.

Take all the people of war with thee and arise. Go up to Ai. See, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai and his people, and his city and his land.

And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst to Jericho and her king. Only the spoil thereof and the cattle thereof shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves. Lay thee an ambush for the city around it.

And so Joshua arose and all the people of war to go up against Ai. And Joshua chose out 30,000 men of valor and sent them away by night. And so Joshua and the people go back to war.

And you can read in chapter 8, they subdue the city of Ai. And it strikes me as interesting here that God tells them they can take any of the spoils of the city of Ai. And it occurs to me that if Achan had just obeyed God and had waited just a little while, he might have gotten his silver and gold and been okay with the Lord.

But he chose to disobey. And what we have here is a story of one man’s sin who brought suffering, who brought death to an entire nation. Now again, the entire nation didn’t die, but they suffered defeat.

Some of their soldiers died, and it was because of their sin. And after all that they had been through, the people of Israel should have known, just as we should know, going through life, that obedience to God is the best way to do things. But again, sometimes people learn the hard way.

And there are some hard-learned lessons in just the next few moments that I think we can see and apply to our own lives from this passage. And first of all, is that sin hinders our ability to serve God. Sin hinders our ability to serve God.

Folks, it wasn’t just for their own good that they were told to go and take Ai. God had commanded them. God had commanded them to go and take it because he had promised them for all this time that he would bring them into a land that would be their own where they could serve him, where they could worship him, and they would be a peculiar people separated unto him.

And so in going to war, Again, this is Old Testament stuff. I would not suggest to you that we need to go and slaughter the infidel or anything like that. But in this context, in this time, under this commandment, they were serving God by going to war.

And yet their service to God, their effectiveness in their service to God was hindered because of this sin among the camp, among the people. And folks, I’m here to tell you that we can try to serve God. We can try to do things, do works that He’s commanded us to do.

And our effectiveness in doing them will be hindered. if sin remains undealt with in our hearts and in our lives. We cannot effectively serve God.

We cannot effectively make disciples. We cannot effectively lead others to Christ. We cannot effectively teach His Word. While there’s sin in our own hearts and lives that we’re not broken over and that we’re not confessing and that we’re not repenting of.

Folks, sin undealt with hinders our ability to serve God. And we learn that because the entire nation of Israel, their army was brought to defeat by the sin of one man. Folks, let’s not ever be deluded into thinking it’s just a little bit of sin.

And I say that realizing I think the same way you all do. We all think this way sometimes. But let’s not let ourselves be deluded into thinking it’s just a little sin.

It doesn’t matter. One man stole a robe and some coins and a piece of an idol, and the entire nation was defeated in war. Folks, sin is deadly serious.

Sin is a grave situation and needs to be dealt with. God takes it seriously, and it will stand in the way of our ability to serve God effectively. Second lesson this morning, not only does sin hinder our ability to serve God, but total obedience is our obligation to God.

Folks, total obedience is our obligation to God. Again, in keeping with what I’ve said to you already this morning, total obedience to the law, doing good things, being a good person, is not an obligation in the sense of earning our salvation, okay? You cannot earn your salvation by being good enough.

Let’s just be clear on that point. But what God expects out of man, what God is owed by man, is total obedience. That’s why we need salvation.

That’s why we need a Savior, because we are incapable of rendering total obedience. We have all sinned against him. We have all disobeyed him at some point, and for most of us on a regular, regular basis.

But folks, what God is owed is total obedience. As believers, as Christians, as people who have put our trust in Christ and been born again, What we, what God deserves from us is total obedience. I say that, again, not telling you that that’s how you earn your salvation or how you keep your salvation, but that, even knowing that we fall short of that standard, that is the standard that we shoot for.

Folks, God is not a God of doing things halfway. God is not a God of doing things halfway. You see how he dealt with sin in Achan’s case.

There’s no halfway with God. And if I can put it to you this way, God is not interested in our 99% obedience. Are you with me on that?

God is not interested in 99% of your heart. God is not interested in 99% of my obedience. There’s a man I used to go to church with who said it very well.

Partial obedience and delayed obedience are the same as disobedience. If God tells us what to do and we don’t do it when he says it, how he says it, and to