Faith is a gift of God. It is all of grace. It produces faithfulness and faithfulness is hard work. Without Christ we could never be quarantined from sin and death. Even when we sin, his death in our place means that we don’t lose our place in God’s forever family.
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Transcript
Dan:
Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 40 of trainingforliferedeemed. I am your host, Dan Jackson, and as always, I’m joined by my father, David Jackson. Today, we are up to Joshua seven and eight, and we are going to dive straight into Achan’s sin. Dad, what’s going on? Joshua and the Israelites have just been told to destroy Jericho, burn everything, and get rid of it all. And it says they kind of did that, but then Achan just steals gold and treasure. I presume there are idols that he’s stealing as part of that as well. And it just, it causes havoc for Israel.
David:
Yeah, it’s… I think there was a guy during the week who was on the run from the police because he was COVID positive and there was no way he was going to abide by the law and they spent a week tracking him down. And the problem was he brought the disease with him . And I think Achan is a bit like that. That sin is this, when you, when you disobey God, when you put something else, that’s more important than God. It’s like an infection. It’s like a virus. And if it gets into the camp of Israel, then God’s moving out and they’re on their own. So this concept of holiness is the same concept as quarantine, except instead of quarantining from a virus, you’re quarantining from sin, which is a lot more difficult to handle because everybody’s born with it. You don’t catch it. You just have it. So God has separated his people. He’s made them his holy people. And now this individual sees a bunch of stuff in Jericho and he says, that’s more important to me than God. And he’s now brought that culture into the camp and God says , fine, you’re on your own, but he doesn’t say it. He lets them go into battle and figure it out for themselves. Yeah, it’s interesting. Isn’t it? That you think of all the battles Israel’s had and this time they lost 36 men and this is, they’ve never lost 36 men before all these wars, all these battles, Midianites and everything else, 36 men.
Dan:
and out of over a million, right? Yeah.
David:
An army of 600,000 they lost 36. They’re not used to losing anybody in battle because Yahweh fights for them. And now they’re sitting there going, what happened?
Dan:
What did we get wrong?
David:
What did we get wrong?
Dan:
Ai’s not exactly huge either, is it.
David:
No, total population. 12,000 . Yeah .
Dan:
Against 600,000.
David:
That’s right. Yeah, no , I just , I really liked Joshua’s prayer in seven Joshua 7:9. Um, he doesn’t try and justify Israel. He just says , um, all the Canaanites and everybody roundabout is going to hear about what just happened. What will you do for your great name ? You’ve built this reputation that nobody stands before Yahweh and they’re all going to think, oh yes, you can. It’s more about God’s reputation than it is about Israel. Yeah.
Dan:
Definitely caring more about God and his name than he is about Israel’s name. Because I think, oh, what a big thing. The people that can beat Israel, that the war between God and them. Yeah. So we then have this process, where God, you know , there’ll be of lots thrown and eventually Achan is identified. He then gets wiped out as a result.
David:
Yeah. That comes as a bit of a shock to people. Doesn’t it? Um , I can , as the guy that’s done the wrong thing and his entire family gets wiped out, even his donkey, which I think is interesting. So that tells you, it’s not about whether the, whether , you know, the wife and kids chose to be part of the sin. It’s more about you brought this virus, this wickedness into Israel, and it’s gone into your dwelling. So everything to do with your dwelling has to be cut out. Like, you know, we can’t have that inside the people of Israel. So that whole household with its animals has to be taken out and removed.
Dan:
And that’s this whole idea that God is holy and making sure you actually understand the gravity of who God is, that you can think that you can be camped with God and live really next to him, really , uh , and have sin with you at the same time that this is gonna happen a lot of the time throughout the whole Bible. You , every time someone who shouldn’t be know we’ve had it already , uh , as our wandering through the desert and people are like, oh, I can go and offer incense or come before God’s presence. And they got wiped out.
David:
Yeah. The only cure for sin is death and that’s, and it’s , it’s under headship . So everybody under the head , is branded with the same brand it’s it’s so this concept of salvation is about quarantine, about separating God’s people from sin and the only way to do that is death. And so what we see happening here is what actually happens to Jesus. So he has brought kherm/ sin into the camp. He and his household become Jericho effectively. So they have just been within the walls of Jericho. And what happens to Jericho happens to them, but you take them outside the camp and deal with it. I just, I mean, you got to feel, I wonder whether Achan repented . Yeah . Because he doesn’t, I mean, fair enough. You’re standing there and they’re going to start drawing lots and you start with 12 tribes and how many clans are in that tribe and how many families are in that clan? And he’s sitting there going, and it just so happened. They pulled out my one , nobody else knows that I did this and There you go. There’s my family. He just turns around and says,, okay, tell us what you did. And he tells him where the loot is and he tells them everything. I wonder whether that isn’t okay, I’ll take, what’s coming to me. But yes, I’ll help you get this out of the camp. So , you know , you’re live in hope for the fellow and his family, but yeah ,Ggod , this is an object place. You don’t bring the corruption of sin in the world, into God’s family.
Dan:
Yeah . Well then the result that is they go back to battling AI and they destroy AI.
David:
Yep . But they get to keep the loot. You know , if I, if Achan had only waited another week, he could have had a share in AI’s stuff, you know? but it reminds you this kherem business that there are exemplary cities that we’re g oing t o use to teach the lesson. But in 90% of the cities, you know, I’m going to give you their farms and their property and everything else. Your job is just to get them out of there.
Dan:
Yeah . It’s much like what he does to them as they leave Egypt because they left having essentially ransacked Egypt with gold and stuff from there. And
David:
Here’s your compensation for 400 years of slavery. We won’t bother with the lawsuit. We’ll just hit them with 10 plagues. This is, yeah, there’s a , I enjoyed the tactics of this whole thing. I don’t know whether the Bible really does enjoy that, but always thought of two Israelite army sort of sandwiching these guys. But then I realized reading this through this three, he’s got one on the north side, one on the west side, and then his little feint comes up the hill , um, draws them all out of the town. And then a few fellows go into town and finish the town off. And as they’ve carried all that loot out, w e’ve got it all out of there. They set fire to the city. And then this main force of about 5,000 comes galloping down the hill. And Joshua stands there, lifts h is spear in the air. Everybody does a, U-turn like a brass band, and marches up the hill, it’s it’s there . And he sucked in Bethel and AI, which is really interesting. Cause Bethel is the big town and AI has just forward observation post. So he’s managed to take out both towns with one action and he’s kept them from bringing their allies in. So do you remember were you at Wadi Qelt? Yes. Yeah . I was , we had a few war veterans with us , , when I was there and uh , we sort of look up , I’m army reserve. I just played on the weekends, but you look up this w this gully and the photos are in the notes, but my goodness, I could not imagine doing a 14 K hike up a kilometer, vertical climb in the dark at night, tactically so that they didn’t know you were there. And then in the morning when the sun rises, you go into battle. It’s and it’s all crumbly soil everywhere. You put your foot, this is donkey country,
Dan:
it’s goat country, Dad, goat country.
David:
It was funny. We actually stopped the bus on the way back up to Jerusalem, looked out the window. And there were three donkeys up on the Ridge on the side of the face of this hill that Joshua would have had to go up. and there was a little foal and this stupid foal is bouncing all over the hill, like a two year old y ou k now, pumped up. Why isn’t he falling down the slope he just had such traction. And I look at that and I think, y ou k now, God calls on his army to go and do this huge physical tactical maneuver. And he just takes out the w hole o f the top of the Ridge. It’s a very powerful scene, But it’s not without hard work.
Dan:
Yeah. We then have a covenant renewal that happens at Mount Nebo Why didn’t they just renew the covenant when they were doing the circumcision? So there was kind of a renewed commitment as well. That happened earlier . Now we’ve got another covenant renewal happening.
David:
It’s it’s interesting because when you go to Mount Ebal, Mount Gerizim down in the valley, and you remember being in Shechem , I think you got to go down the valley. We weren’t allowed , we had to stay up top. People were firing guns at people. but as you look down that valley , this is where God told Abraham he could have the land. This is where Jacob camped in the land. So you now bring all of Israel, men, women, children, grandma a hundred kilometer hike and all the Canaanite Kings and everything else around the place are going , yeah , we’re not going to touch them. And it’s like this victory parade that goes right across the top of the Ridge plops down here, where Abraham said, this is your land. And you go, this is our land. Let’s go back and remember, God made a promise. Let’s chisel the whole of the book of Deuteronomy onto a rock . Let’s spend three hours and read it to everybody. now, you know what y ou g ot t o do, folks, you can go for a a hundred kilometer hike back to camp. meanwhile, all the Canaanites are looking on g o ing, oh , heck, we’re in a lot of trouble here. It’s a really powerful, I g u ess, signal to the whole of Ca naan. Yo u k n ow, don’t bother fe llows, just pack up and go. 500 years ago, God made us a promise. 500 years later, we are here. God is good. He’s faithful.
Dan:
Well, that brings us to the end of episode, 40, the end of Joshua seven and eight . If you enjoy this episode, we would love it. If you would leave us a review. And if you would like to come and grab the daily notes for this or the study notes transcript, et cetera, you can head over to trainingforliferedeemeded.com / 40, to grab all of that. And of course do make sure that you hit that subscribe button and come back next week as we jump into chapters nine and 10, thank you so much.
