Chapter 7:13-21
Joshua was lying on his face before the Lord, but God told him to get up. It was no use for him to lie there and cry to Him. Israel had sinned, and God said He would not be with them any more until they had destroyed the accursed thing from among them.
Joshua must arise and put away the evil thing. Furthermore, Israel’s own hands must cast out the sin from their midst, before they could wield the sword in power again. Holiness was necessary for victory.
Joshua did not yet know who the guilty one was, but God has ways of bringing to light the secret sins of those who appear to be for Him down here. Our secret sins are all bare in the light of His countenance. “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Heb. 4:1313Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. (Hebrews 4:13).
Wherever sin lies unconfessed, God is afar off in our thoughts. He cannot use a defiled people for His work. But where there is an honest desire in souls to clear themselves from iniquity, God will enable them to sift things out until the very seeds of the sin are discovered.
Joshua rose up early in the morning. This showed his earnestness of heart for the Lord’s honor; and so the sifting began. First, all the tribes of Israel were brought, and the tribe of Judah was taken. Next, all the families were taken, then each household man by man, and at last Achan was taken.
Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give, I pray you, glory to the God of Israel and make confession to Him and tell me what you have done.” And Achan confessed his sin and told all.
“I have sinned against the Lord,” he said, “for I saw a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold, and I took them, and they are hid in the earth, in the midst of my tent.”
Poor unhappy man! He did not think that the holy God was looking at him as he hid it there. He did not feel what it was to belong to such a holy God, or he could not have hidden a forbidden unholy thing with his own goods. He touched what was forbidden and accursed, and he made himself accursed for it.
But this is just like what the children of God have done since the Lord Jesus went back to heaven. They have not kept themselves from the things in the world, and they have grieved God’s Holy Spirit by having unholy things mixed up with their own. If we mix with the world or bring the world into our homes, God cannot honor us as He honored His servants like Paul, and Peter and John, who faithfully kept themselves unspotted from the world in those early days of the Church.
ML-08/14/1977