Claiming Your Canaan 4 There Is Sin In The Camp!

This is part 4 of Claiming your Canaan. The first week we dealt with strength for the battle. And then we taught on, This Land is Your Land. Thirdly, we dealt with How to Get Past Your Jordan. Then in chapter 5 we see how they dealt with how the Walls Must Call Come Down, and now we have reached part four of this series There Is Sin in The Camp?

At this point Israel had been on an emotional and spiritual high. In the last few chapters, we have seen two of the greatest miracles in the Bible. First God split open the Jordan River, at its fullest capacity, and they walked across on dry ground, and we know that the Jordan was not the Red Sea, yet God, before their eyes caused the river to split and they walked though on dry land. We seen how the test of faith that God showed by telling the priest to step into the water and it wasn’t until they stepped into the water, by faith, that the river split.

In chapter 5 & 6 we read that God gave Israel a great victory by causing the great walls to fall flat. We understand that Jericho was surrounded by two walls of defense. One was about 12 feet high and about 15 feet back, and the other was over 30 feet high. And over 20,000 people who occupied Jericho. 

And by this time Israel must be thinking, “nothing is impossible with God”. As a matter of fact somebody here knows that with God all things are possible, and with without him nothing is possible. Now after going through chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, we have seen the hands of God on these Israelites time after time.

However, by the time we get to chapter seven Israel runs into another snag. After they have gotten past the walls of Jericho now they runs into another snag. In other words it seems like just about time that you get through with one problem, one situation, one crisis, one dilemma, predicament, quandary, setback, drawback, issue, or obstacle another one pops up.

Because after getting past the walls of Jericho, they saw the city of Ai and Joshua calls his leader in and he draws up the battle plan. Just as he did at Jericho, he sent spies into the city to find out how big they were and to figure out what the strategy would be to conquer this land. The spies came back and told Joshua, “Ah don’t worry too much, this will be a cake walk. Compared to the rest this will be a walk in the park. In fact, we don’t even have to send the whole army in just send a couple squad in, just send in 2 to 3 thousand. That should do the trick.” Instead Joshua went with the higher number of foot soldiers to go fight, and still to their dismays 36 people were killed and on top of that Israel fled from this city.

You have to understand this generation didn’t know the word defeat. They had seen the miracles of God. Yet this defeat was devastating, over whelming, disturbing and dreadful to the point that it melted the heart of the people and they became as water.

Joshua knew something was up, and he knew that something was wrong to the point that he tore his cloths, as a symbol of distress and went directly to the Lord. Joshua did what we all should do when we know something is not right instead of going to people for the answers we need to go to the Lord and find out what is wrong from the head source.

With this in mind Joshua appealed to God’s reputation of how he has been with them, and he asked the Lord what’s going on and to his surprise the God told him. I have some bad news for you and that is “There is sin in the camp”.

Now since Joshua went to the Lord and asked him what was the problem and why it is that they had lost the battle to a lesser enemy I decided that I would go to God also.

I said Lord after all of the preacher that I do, sermon after sermon. After all, of the melodious songs that has been song by the choir. After all, of the prayers that has been prayed by the brethrens why are we losing some of these small battles, and of course you know that the Lord told me, he said that there is still some sin in the camp.

This was the same problem here. Sin had entered the camp. You see God had commanded that none of Israel would posses anything from Jericho. Either, it was to be destroyed or dedicated to the work of the Lord, and this was a direct command from God himself.