Basic Lessons, Part 2

Review: The First Two Steps of Sin's Ensnarement

0:05 blessing of God. Now again, Joshua chapter 7, if you will please. As we come to what I trust will be the sequel to the final message in this series of studies, I do wish to bring at least one exposition on the sequel to the sin of Achan. We dealt with the setting, the substance, and now Lord willing, in one future exposition that which is a wonderful token of God's blessing upon His people when sin had been purged but tonight is our purpose to consider again some of the further lessons contained in the confession of Achan. For those of you who are not familiar with the facts of the story Israel was about to be brought into the land of Canaan by the mighty power of God to possess that land and God had given clear directions that when the army would conquer Jericho by God's miraculous power in knocking the walls flat, they were to take all of the substance of Jericho and consume it with fire except the gold and the silver and the precious metals which were to be brought back to Israel into the treasury of the Lord. God had given strict commandment in chapter 6 that if they dared retain anything that was a curse that was devoted to destruction they would become accursed and the frown

1:30 of God would be upon them. Well, there was a man named Achan who did keep back some of the substance that belonged to God and who retained in charge that which should have been destroyed and the disfavor of God was displayed in their inability to conquer as they went up to the next place in this city of Ai. Joshua and the elders fall before God and cry out to God that he would be pleased to intervene on their behalf and subsequent to that prayer recorded in Joshua 7 6-9 God gives directions as to how the sin will be purged from the camp of Israel. And our study tonight is in the midst really toward the end of that mighty activity of God by which he discovered the sinner Achan and brought his sin to judgment. I read now from Joshua 7 verses 19-21 Joshua said unto Achan my son give I pray thee glory to the Lord the God 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 of a truth I have sinned against the Lord the God of Israel and thus and thus have I done. When I saw

2:44 among the spoil a goodly Babylonish mantle and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight then I coveted them and took them and behold they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent and the silver under it. In our study of this confession of Achan we have looked at its basic character we have considered together its basic ingredients and we began this morning a consideration of its basic and abiding lesson. And the lesson is found in that Achan's confession is a chronicle of the soul's ensnarement by sin and the ultimate destruction of the soul by sin. How does sin attach itself to the human soul bringing death and destruction to that person to whom it attaches itself. Well this passage is a sad but accurate chronicle of that very issue. And this morning we had opportunity only to touch on the first two aspects of this chronicle of the destruction of a soul by sin. We

3:58 saw that first of all there was the presentation to the senses of forbidden objects. Notice the words of Achan in verse 21 When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment. There was this passing before the senses before his eyes of the forbidden object. And once that object was fixed in his eye and he began to view it not as a man of faith assessing that object in the light of what God had said upon it or said about it but assessing it in the light of carnal sense and carnal wisdom he opened himself to the snare of the devil. And from this I encourage you to learn to discipline your eyes if you would make progress in sanctification. Secondly I urge you to seek to cultivate eyes of faith that learn to view all objects animate and inanimate in the light of what God has said about them so that we react to them and treat them as men and women of faith. And then in the second place we saw the next step in this ensnarement of Achan's soul following the presentation to the senses of the forbidden objects. There was the excitation of desire for the forbidden object then I

5:25 coveted them. These are the words of Achan. He recognizes that from that visual confrontation there was this excitation of desire in the words I coveted them. And we define coveting as desiring that which cannot be obtained without violating the law of God.

5:48 And Achan coveted set his affection upon that which God had said should be destroyed in the case of the garment and that which should be brought unto the treasury of God in the case of the precious metals. And as we opened up that second aspect we saw something of the universality and the deep and pervasive nature of sin. All coveting is sin. It not only leads to other sins but it is sin in itself.

6:20 For God says thou shalt not covet. And all of the ways in which the human heart sets itself upon forbidden objects is an indication of the deep malady of sin that has cursed the human race. This understanding will also show us the necessity if we are believers of watching the heart. For it is in the realm of the heart that our spiritual disorders begin. And then we close with the positive note. A passage like this, such as this, shows us the glory of Christ. For if the scripture tells us that he did no sin, that means never once was there an element of coveting in his Holy Spirit. Cleared in poverty, living in the midst of wickedness, our Lord never once allowed the fingers of his heart to reach out and to wrap themselves around forbidden objects.

The Commission of the Deed: Taking the Forbidden Object

7:19 So much for our review. We come now tonight to consider the third thing in this chronicle of how the soul of a man is destroyed by sin. We move from the presentation to the senses of forbidden objects. When I saw from the excitation of desire for forbidden objects, then I coveted to this third element which is the commission of the deed necessary to enjoy the forbidden object.

7:49 Look at the text. Then I coveted them and took them. And here Achan acknowledges the commission of the deed necessary to enjoy the forbidden object upon which his affections were set. I saw, coveted, I took them.

8:14 This is a simple description of the coordinated motor activity of Achan's eyes, arms, hands, and fingers by which he laid hold of garment, gold, and silver. In other words, Achan here is confessing the reality of Paul's description in Romans 6.19, when he says that the unconverted man is the man who presents his member servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity. When Achan's spirit coveted, his hands now complied with the covetous designs and all of the loader activity of arms and wrists and fingers were all brought into the service of sin. And that's all bound up. In that little phrase, and took them. For he took them not with reference to throwing the garment on an existing fire to consume it according to the word of God, nor did he take the gold and silver with reference to bringing them home to the treasury of God.

9:25 He took them with a view to fulfilling the dictates of his present passion, the desire to possess these items for personal gain and for personal ends. Now we must underscore two things about the commission of this deed which Achan knew was necessary in order for him to enjoy his forbidden objects. Number one, this deed was not done against Achan's will but with the full consent of it. Now we hinted at this this morning, I want to underscore it more emphatically.

10:03 When Achan confesses his sin and said, and I took them, he's talking about the whole complex activity involved in taking. There was the full consent of the will which in turn sent the messages from the brain which in turn activated the proper muscles at the proper time in the proper direction and he bears full responsibility for the act of taking. This deed was done because Achan brought to it the full consent of his will and all sin is done because we will to sin and therefore the great battleground of the soul is the battleground of gaining the consent of the will and when you're tempted and conscience is thundering one thing and maybe scriptures are coming to line on the other hand and passion is dictating another thing and disordered affections are screaming out another thing. What's the whole battleground? When you clear away in the mist and the dust here's the battleground element of the human personality. Which faculty of the soul will gain the consent of the will? Shall

11:24 the word of God binding the child of God gain the consent of the will or shall the passions acting contrary to the light of the spirit and the light of the law and the presence of grace. That's what Paul's talking about the flesh lusted against the spirit the spirit against the flesh and these two are contrary the one to the other but when we sin it's because sin has gained the consent of the will but the second thing that Achan's confession reveals is this though this deed was done with the full consent of his will the act of his will was not exercised in isolation the two previous things conditioned as it were the response of his will I saw coveted then I took he never would have taken had he not coveted he never would have coveted had he not seen so you see that the acting of the will though it is responsible and conscious acting of human will the will does not act in isolation from the present and prevailing disposition of the heart when his heart was given over to covetousness there was the compliance of the will to take the forbidden

12:51 objects what was true of Achan in the chronicle of his destruction by sin is true with us as well we sin when we choose to sin therefore the responsibility for the sin is ours

13:13 every day did it against my will what you mean is I did it against the delightful compliance of my will and no Christian ever sins with the full abandonment of his will because he has a principle of grace within him there is the divine seed within him the spirit lusting against the flesh so a Christian though he sins with the consent of his will never sins with the abandonment of this will of his will to that sin. But when he sins, it's his sin. And his confession must honestly acknowledge this is so. Look at Romans 7 as a classic example of this.

13:57 I won't go into any detailed exposition of it. But when Paul is bemoaning this principle of corruption yet with him, he takes full responsibility for it. He says, to will is present with me, but to perform I find not. And then he goes on to say, the good that I would, I do not.

14:16 The evil I will. No, he says, that's the possibility for it. And it's a cop-out when you sin as a Christian to say, well, I was my old nature. What is that old nature?

14:35 Who's responsible for his actions?

14:39 My friend, when you sin, you sin. And you're responsible for your actions. And you're the one who must repent. And I'm the one who must repent.

14:48 And you're the one who must seek the forgiveness of God. And confess the sin. And so Achan's chronicle of sin's attachment to his own soul is a reminder of this principle. But we must understand the second principle that we enunciate it.

Deductions from the Commission of Sin: Tracing Sin to its Source

15:04 Our wills direct our faculties to sin when the battle's been lost at the deeper levels of the soul. It's when the eyes have rested upon forbidden objects. And when the heart has been moved in directions of covetousness. It is then that we take this or that forbidden thing.

15:29 Therefore, deductions from this understanding. In confessing sin, we must learn to trace our sin to its source and acknowledge the whole business.

15:42 You children, when you cheat in school, if you've fallen before that terrible sin of stealing your classmate's work. And stealing the fruit of his labors. Why do you? Well, first of all, it's because you covet either a place in the honor roll.

15:57 Or you covet a passing grade so you can move up to the next grade. If you didn't covet, you wouldn't cheat. You never choose to cheat just for the sheer joy of cheating.

16:08 There is a desire for another end that cheating will help you to attain. And so it is with the sins of adults as well. And so in the confession of our sin, we must learn the soul humbling discipline of tracing those acts of the will in choosing. In the confession of sin, the pride of sin, which is the most important.

16:28 How to keep the spirit alive in the soul. And so there's the complete responsibility of our soul to help each other. It's our responsibility to take each other's pride and our sins back to their source. It's what I looked.

16:37 And when I covered it, then I then subsequently took and secondly, and I'd like to emphasize this at greater length. Immortifying sin, that great Christian duty of all who are in Christ. But only if you're in Christ, mortification is not the work of dead men. But living men.

16:54 spirit can mortify put to death remaining sin now in that work of mortification we must seek to deal with it at its roots and not merely in its fruits why are some of you having to confess certain sins again and again and again why are your efforts to mortify them seemingly so fruitless it's because you're not tracing the mortification back to the source of the sin there are forbidden objects passing before your eyes again and again but they are not forbidden objects that you have to see Akin had to see that garment he was doing what God told him to do destroy everything in but there are times when we are ensnared by beholding objects that we don't need to see they're

17:51 Therefore, if you're being tempted to lust because of what comes over your television, it is no duty to watch television. And if you can't discipline your television set, get rid of it. Stop all that moaning and groaning and mourning and crocodile tears before God of wasted time and polluting of the mind, and you have to go back over the same thing every single week, and the constant source of it is an undisciplined TV? Face it. It's bigger than you are.

18:23 And get rid of it. Now, it doesn't sound very spiritual, but that's true spirituality. That's tracing the sin back to its source. If you're seeing things that you need not see, if your occasion of stumbling is the literature on the newsstand, then don't go by the newsstand.

18:42 No one says you have to. Pay a few more cents and get the paper delivered to your front door.

18:49 That's what you need to do to keep the eyes from beholding forbidden objects. Some of you women, given over. It's a covetousness. You just write monkey words and seers and tell them you don't want the catalogs anymore.

19:01 If you find sitting down and browsing through a catalog,

19:09 how spiritual is it?

19:11 But that's biblical mortification. That's plucking out eyes. That's cutting off right hands.

19:20 Are there those things upon which the fingers of your heart begin to tighten?

19:26 And you've got to deal with it at that level. Are there things that you're looking upon and not assessing them as God does? Then begin to feel. Feed upon the scriptures that tell you what those things really are.

19:38 The fashion of this world passeth away. The glory of it is all but a fleeting thing. This is what true mortification is. Turn to James 1, 14 and 15 for a moment.

The Process of Sin Unfolds: James 1:14-15 Parallel

19:51 For a vivid description of how this process of sin unfolds.

19:58 And I'd thought of using this as sort of a parallel passage in the exposition of this portion, but it would have been too complicated to... I've kept weaving it in, so I gave up the idea.

20:09 But I do want to inject it here. James 1, 13. Let no man say when he's tempted, I'm tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil.

20:20 And he himself tempteth no man. But each man is tempted when he's drawn away by his own lust. There's the enticement, the presentation to the mind, to the affections. And enticed, then the lust, when it hath conceived,

20:43 beareth sin, that is the act of the sin, and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death. Now here's a man who finds himself plagued with a specific sin. And he wants to mortify it. Where does he have to start?

21:01 Well, he's got to start way back with this melamine of being drawn away. Deception. Deception. Deception.

21:13 Deception. The bearing of all the thing in the world. That's where it must be dealt with.

The Deception Implemented to Hide Sin

21:24 And so this chronicle of Achan's destruction is a revelation to us that the third step in the process of falling before sin is this actual commission of the sin. This deed necessary to enjoy the forbidden object. And then in the fourth place, we see in the narrative in Joshua chapter 7, the deception implemented in order to hide the sin. The deception implemented in order to hide the sin.

22:00 Look at the text. I saw, I coveted, I took, and behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it. Now try to relive this whole event. Here he lays.

22:22 He lays his hand upon the garment, and he knows if he goes out and makes his way back to the camp of Israel with his fellow soldiers, with the garment in full sight, all of his fellow soldiers will say, Achan, Achan, what is that you have? Oh, just a Babylonian's garment. Babylonian's garment? That's an accursed thing.

22:39 You cannot bring it back to the camp. The curse of God will be upon it. And they'd wrench it from him, and they'd consume it in the fire. So Achan knew instinctively, the moment he laid his hand on the garment, he had to do something with it to get it out of sight from his fellow soldiers.

22:53 He couldn't go walking back into the camp of Israel, flicking his shekels of silver.

22:59 None of them had died. The moment they'd be seen, people would say, that belongs in the treasury of the Lord. So what happened? Achan discovered something that all of us have discovered time after time, that the thing upon which our disordered affections have been set, no sooner have we taken the thing that we think will bring us delight, when it turns into the occasion of the deepest misery and bitterness of soul.

23:31 For the moment Achan laid hold of that garment and that gold and silver with an intention to keep them for himself, you know what happened? Every fellow soldier, instead of being a buddy, became a threat.

23:46 And everyone who looked at him, he wondered, is he looking at that lump under my garment?

23:51 Why is he looking at me that way? Is he suspicious? You see what happened? He lost all of the sense of freedom.

23:57 In his general relationship with his fellow soldiers. Anyone that come up to put their arm on the shoulder and say, my, wasn't God good to us at Jericho? He recoils. Doesn't want a man to get too close.

24:09 He might just rub his hand down where I've got that money, stashed in the sash of my garment. There's that immediate sense of the terrible tyranny of an accusing conscience. And he must hide his sin from his fellow men. And whatever, if at all, he can find, ought about the God of Israel, he must seek by some means to hide his sin from that covenant God of Israel.

24:38 Once home, every visitor to his door is a threat.

24:43 You don't knock on a tent flap. I don't know how you let someone know you want to come for a visit. Maybe you whistle outside the door. I don't know.

24:50 But everyone who came and whistled at his tent flap became a threat to Achan. Instead of throwing the flap open and saying, welcome, Aby. Come on in for a cup of tea. Let's have a bagel together.

25:04 Couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. Couldn't do it.

25:10 Anyone who came was looked upon again as a threat. Achan became an island to himself in the midst of the camp of Israel. Cut off from any delightful thoughts of the God of Israel and cut off from any delightful social relationship with the people of Israel.

25:36 Because when a man starts making efforts to deceive and cover his sin, he becomes something less than a true man who's living with his face upward to God and outward to his fellow man. And that's the great tragedy of the deception that is always implemented after we've sinned. And that sin is not followed by immediate and thorough confession. There will follow deception in order to hide the sin.

26:12 Oh, what a lesson for us. When God gives us a gift, whether by special providence or by legitimate and normal means, we're able to say to all around us, come behold the wonderful works of God. Rejoice in God's gifts to me. It's like the parents who in a legitimate marriage have prayed and God is blessing them.

26:34 They've prayed and God is blessing them. They've prayed and God is blessing them. They've prayed and God is blessing them. They've blessed their union with a child and they say, come behold this precious gift that God has given.

26:42 But there's the unwed mother back in the day when people thought biblically.

26:48 And what does she do? She sneaks off to some place 300 miles from home to have her baby and sneaks back home hoping no one will know. Why? In one case, the gift has come in the channels that God has ordained and there's joy in the sharing of that gift.

27:06 You see? But Achan could not come home to his family and say, look at what God has given to me, this beautiful...

27:13 No, no. He had to huddle his family together and bring them into the secrecy of his own sin and secure their consent to try to deceive and to cover his sin. And let me say by way of application, sin will always set us on this course of the cover-up, the course of deception, evasion. Genesis chapter 3 again is the classic commentary on this.

Application: Sin's Impact on Relationships and Assurance

27:42 Adam and Eve no sooner sin than they seek to cover themselves from each other with their fig leaves and from their God as they hide amongst the trees of the garden. David no sooner commits his sin with Bathsheba than he seeks to cover it by the blood of Uriah and by treachery and by all forms of ungodly activity that we would not believe were possible unless the word of God recorded them. Sin causes us to weave a cocoon in which we hide ourselves from God and from man. Let me ask you a very simple question today.

28:23 Do you think and regard your fellow Christians as a threat to you? Do you feel uncomfortable?

28:33 Do you regard God as a threat to you?

28:39 Do you see the mark of a Christian walking in the light? He neither regards God nor God's children as a threat to him.

28:48 He's walking in transparency, vertically, horizontally. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, we with God and God's people with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. But you begin to cover sin. You know what your action is?

29:10 Just like Achan. Every believer is a threat to you. Are they going to discover? What I really am?

29:17 Are they going to know? What are you asking me that for? You ask the most innocent question and they're touchy. Sensitive.

29:24 Why? Because they've got some garment they're hiding in their bosom. They've got some shekels of silver and some wedges of gold that are stuck in their waistband. That's why they're not open.

29:38 That's why some people never are given to Christian hospitality. They know if they had you in their home you'd find out what they really are. Achan doesn't want anybody in his tent. You might just get rooting around playing tic-tac-toe on the dirt floor and come across some metal.

29:56 He can't be at ease. Oh no, I'm not saying if you have social problems the root is always sin. Please don't anyone misconstrue what I'm saying. But I am saying that one of the fundamental reasons covering their sin guilty of duplicity, sham, hypocrisy.

30:27 Why is it that in times of revival there is that blessed sense that you're not going to be able to do it? Why is it that in times of revival that the roof has been blown off and the walls have gone flat and people don't feel threatened by God nor threatened by their brothers?

30:44 When you fled to that fountain open for sin and uncleanness and you know that almighty God pronounces the sacrifice of your son fully sufficient for all your sins you no longer regard God as a threat. And I say to some of you having problems with assurance of salvation one of the fundamental problems is your sin. Do you still think of God as a threat to you?

31:08 Now if you've got nothing to hide and you've said Lord I want to be done with my sin and I want to find refuge for my sin in Christ alone God's no threat to you. He's your father in Jesus Christ who loves you with an everlasting love who is tender and compassionate and gracious. Maybe you feel God's a threat to you because you've still got some controversy with God. You've got some Babylonish garment.

31:37 You've got some wedges of gold and some shekels of silver. Well my friend you can go on and memorize 1427 and a half verses on assurance and God will still be a threat to you unless your conscience becomes seared. Maybe you better stop trying to find assurance by planting your foot on the promise and get your garment out and have God consume it. Get your gold out and your silver out and start dealing with it.

32:05 It's amazing how many times chronic problems of assurance are rooted not always but many times rooted in the fact that there's a controversy with God. Why is it you've got a problem with your brethren? One of the biggest laughs that I get is when people will say well Christians at that place aren't friendly. Friends that's a cop out.

32:28 What you're saying is I don't feel at ease to be transparent with my brethren.

32:36 I've never been anywhere where I didn't find true Christians friendly to me. And I've been in a lot of places with some pretty reserved people.

32:47 And I won't mention any names or nationalities.

32:52 But if you've got nothing to hide you can be open, transparent and if the life of God is in them they'll respond. Maybe the problem's with you.

The Retribution of God: Achan's Judgment

33:03 If you feel threatened by the whistle outside your tent somebody might find out what you really are. In this sad chronicle of sin we're going to find out we see the process from the presentation to the senses to the excitation of desire to the commission of the deed now to this terrible attempt to hide the sin the deception implemented and then we close our study tonight with the consideration of this fifth line of thought that is in the text beginning with verse 22. We have in this chronicle of sin in its effect in Achan's life the retribution, the murder of Goliath and the resurrection of the son of Man because God decided to cause Jesus to have his cents gently thrown into His специary chamber and to make them by means of camels to slain those who had sinned aroused Lot who was widowed to usurping the rejoice ensc Wyoming and to proszę His people who were in constituency of Lot and bring to his系 the sins of which all has forsaken the brethren from which Sara was ech flashlight 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 up to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled

34:25 us? Jehovah shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and they burned them with fire, and stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones unto this day. And the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger, wherefore the name of that place was called the valley of Achor unto this day. Now notice the simple facts of the narrative. There was in this retribution meted out upon the sin and the sinner as the culminating aspect of this chronicle of sin's powerful and tragic effect upon Achan. First of all, Achan was a sinner. Achan was a sinner. Achan was a sinner. Achan was a sinner.

35:09 Achan was a sinner. Achan was a sinner. Achan was a sinner. Achan was a sinner. Achan was a sinner.

35:09 Following the securing of the evidence, verse 22, the messengers ran to the tent, and it was exactly as Achan had confessed. There was the garment, there was the gold, there was the silver. Following the securing of the evidence, verse 23 gives us a record of the displaying of the evidence. They took them from the midst of the tent and brought them to Joshua and to all the children of Israel, and laid them down before the Lord.

35:38 There are the three great parties in this whole transaction. Jehovah, his appointed leader Joshua, the entire nation. The evidence being secured, it is now displayed so that the entire nation in the presence of God is convinced this man is guilty. And then the guilty ones were gathered, verse 24. Achan, his sons, his daughters, all of his possessions, and they are brought to the valley of Achor. Evidence secured, evidence displayed, the guilty are gathered, and then in verses 25 and 26, the guilty and the tokens of their guilt are consumed in the retribution of God. Stoned with stones, burned with fire, and a heap of stones put for future generations, who seeing a heap of stones in an unusual place would be led to ask again and again, what means? If this heap of stones and this sad chronicle that I have sought to expound in these weeks

36:44 would then be unfolded for the instruction of all who could hear. Certainly these words have their most vivid commentary in such statements of scripture as, Be sure your sin will find you out. He that covereth his sin shall not prosper. Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

37:09 I've thought in meditating upon the passage, and I hinted at this this morning, if we could have been there to read Achan's thoughts on that day, what would they have been? As he stood there with his family and saw all of his material goods gathered together, brought to the valley of Achor, as he saw people going out and gathering the stones, boulders that would be thrown upon them, stones big enough to crush a man, small enough to be lifted, and mouthed after them, and then lifted up and hurled upon him and upon all of his possessions, as he saw his substance gathered, the stones gathered, as he saw Joshua begin to give the signal that representatives of the twelve tribes should pick up those stones and cast them upon him and his loved ones and his substance. I wonder what thoughts went through Achan's mind. I'm quite sure that perhaps thoughts of this nature went through his mind, O that I had plucked out my eyes when they first looked upon the garment. Oh, that I had torn them from their sockets when they first looked upon the gold and the silver.

38:24 And perhaps his thoughts went a bit further and said, if I had allowed my eyes to behold the object, oh, that I had mortified the desire that went out towards them. And if I had gone so far as to succumb to the desire, oh, that once having taken them, I had turned and consumed the garment in fire and had brought the substance of the gold and silver to the treasury of God. Or even further, if I had been so deceived as to look and to covet and to take, oh, that that dreadful night when my conscience thundered with the words of Joshua that God gave him concerning the necessity of this showdown and the next day only, that I had come and thrown these things down at the feet of Joshua and pleaded for mercy. But, my friend, all of those thoughts, all of those thoughts together could not reverse the mandate of God. The stones were now in the hands of the representatives of the twelve tribes. The hands were raised in but a matter of moments.

39:32 They would come down in their crushing, death-dealing blows upon Achan and his entire... I wish we could have been there not only to read his thoughts, but if we could be there and ask him some questions, I wonder what his answers would be.

39:49 Achan, Achan, with Joshua standing about to give the signal that will pronounce your doom. Achan, what delight is your garment now giving you? What pleasure are you deriving from your gold and your silver? As Achan begins to hear the groans, cries of his own family and the sheep and oxen as they are pummeled to death with the stones, he'd ask them the question, Achan, what blessings have you brought your children by your sin?

40:23 What good have you secured for your family by your deception and by your disobedience?

40:34 Imagination? No, my friends. Achan was a human being who had a mind that worked and thought and acted consistent with his nature. And the tragedy of this whole passage is that all of his thoughts of remorse and all of his second guessing of his ways could not turn away the retribution of God.

Warning to Unbelievers: The Greater Retribution

40:58 And I say to you who sit here this night, strangers to the grace of God, you've never been driven out of your carnal confidence and out of your love and attachment to sin to find refuge in Jesus Christ. My friend, listen. I plead with you tonight. Look upon all that keeps you from Christ as you will look upon it in that day when Almighty God raises the stones of his retribution.

41:28 When he sits upon his throne and the books are opened and the sentence is about to be uttered, depart from me, cursed, into everlasting fire. Look upon your garment, your Babylonish garment of your own works righteousness, seeking to clothe yourself to the fabric that has come from the loom of your own works and your own things when God says that is a polluted righteousnesses are its filthy rags. My friend, how will you look upon that garment in that day when the eye of God will consume all but the perfect righteousness of his beloved Son? When the only garment that will stand that day is the garment of his righteousness, even of Christ our Lord. What about that sin that you've hidden, you cling to, you refuse to turn from it, you suck such present sweetness from it? Oh, my friend, how will you look upon it in that day when God will drag that sin out publicly as he did the sin of ache and secure the approbation of the consciences of the entire moral universe, of all within that entire moral universe that God is just in the day of judgment. The damnation of your soul.

42:57 My own conscience smites me that I can think of such concepts without my own spirit fainting and failing within me.

Comfort to Believers: Christ's Substitutionary Atonement

43:10 Child of God,

43:13 do you find it difficult to appreciate your Savior? Do you find yourself taking him for granted? Listen, there is no sin that you or I have committed that does not deserve treatment such as aching or seeing.

43:29 No treatment lesser than this deserves our sin. Why is it that God has insummoned us to some valley of Achor? Have we not sinned enough to trouble Israel, the people of God? Have we not sinned enough to bring the frown of God upon us?

43:51 Why is it that God does not issue such a mandate for our destruction? It's because he issued one for the destruction of our surety and our substitute. And now the scripture says there is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ. Jesus, our Lord took the pummeling that should be ours.

44:11 And never forget it, our sins are no less heinous in God's sight because we're Christians. Sin is just as ugly when it's committed by a Christian as it is when it's committed by the non-Christian. It's even more ugly because it's sin against grace, not only against light. It's sin against privilege.

44:32 The reason God's anger is not stirred against us is because all of his judicial anger against sin, the sins of his people was exhausted in the person of his beloved son. And Christian, when that gets hold of your heart, no matter what grief you may feel for your declensions as a believer, no matter what horror you feel, you'll never allow yourself to be brought back under the terrors of the law.

45:00 The terror of the law is the realization that sin provokes judicial wrath. Fiery nation is the words or are the words that scripture uses.

45:12 Though as a child of God I fear my father's frown of displeasure and I fear his rod of correction, I dishonor him if I bring myself back under the fears of judicial punishment. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And why? Not because God ceases to condemn sin, but because he exhausted that condemnation, in the person of his own beloved son.

45:44 Read this frightening account of what seems to us to be brutal. It does, doesn't it? And I've been restrained in my exposition of the words. You'll notice how quickly I just read over and gave the gist of it.

45:57 You sit down and read this and let the details of it come before your mind. This was a gory, bloody, ugly, disgusting event.

46:06 You've never seen anyone stoned to death.

46:11 Most of us have never seen anyone even dying gradually under great physical pressure and under great physical abuse. This was a gory, bloody, ugly mess.

46:26 And God is saying, that's what sin appears in my sight. That's what it deserves. And that's what my sin deserves and your sin deserves. Because the retribution was meted out upon him who did become a bloody, gory, mass of bleeding, wounded, suffering flesh.

46:50 The Son of God, that very place of troubling Golgotha, has become the valley of hope for every Christian. So, child of God, don't allow the enemy, the accuser of the brethren, to bring you under legal bondage. Thank God if he's pointed out areas of sin. Rejoice that the punishment of that sin has been born in his beloved Son.

Final Exhortation and Prayer

47:17 Then cry to God that you may show your love to him by pressing on with new measures and new degrees of mortification of sin that you might not grieve and quench the Holy Spirit. But I say in simple, blunt, plain language on the authority of the Word of God, if you're not in Christ, the treatment you'll receive from the hand of God will make the treatment Achan received from the hand of Joshua and the children of Israel. You look like kid stuff.

47:51 But there's no record of what went on in the invisible world of the Spirit. We can deduce what may have gone on, but God tells us what will happen to every person who dies outside of Christ and comes to judgment in that state. The wicked shall be turned into hell, and ye shall say, Depart from me, cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and for his angels. May God grant that the sheer, way to His Word will seize upon our hearts and bring us to seek mercy while the day of mercy is still upon us.

48:30 Let us pray. O God, our Father,

48:48 we come to You this night conscious again that we have been in the realm of serious and sobering matters.

48:57 We confess to You that when we are weary in mind and body and our spirits are drained everything within us tells us that we are not responding with the kind of awesomeness and holy dread with which such matters ought to be contemplated. O God, we ask that You will have mercy upon us in our earthiness, in our creatureliness, in our sinfulness.

49:32 We thank You that for many of us the awful dread of impending judgment is passed and passed forever because we have fled for refuge to Jesus Christ. O God, we plead tonight bring others to find that place of refuge. Give them a spiritual perception of the truth of the gospel that they may not seek refuge in themselves, in their church, in their doings, but in that blessed One whom You have set before us. Even the Lord Jesus Christ.

50:12 Then we pray for us as Your people. For Lord, our hearts have been searched in these weeks of exposition in this passage and we confess to You at times we feel we've only begun to enroll in the kindergarten of the school of grace. Forgive our surface dealing with our sins. Forgive our carelessness.

50:34 Forgive our tempting You by putting ourselves in the way of being presented with forbidden objects. Forgive, we pray, the inordinate affections of our hearts. O Lord, teach us how to mortify, how to guard our eyes, how to look upon things with the eye of faith. Father, teach us these things.

50:56 Work them into us by the power of the Holy Spirit. O Lord, we thank You for the hope that dwells within our bosoms tonight. We who know You at the hour is coming. When this struggle with sin shall be done.

51:13 When the agony of Romans 7 will no longer be our portion. When sinning with the full consent of our will but with the crying out of the principles of grace within us will no longer be our portion. When we shall love You completely. Every object we behold will lead to acts of obedience.

51:36 Every desire of our hearts will lead to acts of obedience. To deeds of holiness. O God, hasten the day when we shall put off the remains of this corruption and we shall be like our Savior.

51:52 Help us. Help us, we pray, until You graciously bring that day upon us to so walk and to so live that in spite of our inconsistency and sin and failure men may know that there is still a godly, a remnant in the earth. We thank You for Your presence with us today. Thank You for the portions of Your Word that we've been privileged to study together.

52:21 Seal them to our hearts. Be with us as we leave this place and go our several ways into our various spheres of responsibility. Gracious God, help us not to be hearers only but doers of Your blessed Word. These things we plead thanking You for Your goodness and grace and mercy to us in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

52:47 Amen.