NAVIGATING THE NEW YEAR
Don’t Sink the Ship
When we ended the message last week, we did so with the children of Israel celebrating the Destruction of their Enemy and rejoicing because of the Depth of their Victory. Although they didn’t make much sense to them, the Israelites followed the instructions given to them by Joshua, and just as he had promised, the walls of Jericho fell down flat and "they took the city" (Joshua 6:20). Verse 21 says, "And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city..."
This was an outstanding victory for Joshua and his followers. But not only that, it leaves you and I with some excellent insight as to how we can overcome the obstacles that stand in our way and dare to keep us from having God’s best in this new year.
For those who are just joining us this week, we have been involved in a series of messages titled "Navigating the New Year." We’re basing our study on chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the book of Joshua. In chapter 5 we learned that we must properly prepare ourselves if we are going to successfully navigate the previously untraveled waters of the year 2001.
Last week we discovered, as did the Israelites, that whenever we set out to claim what is rightfully ours in the Lord, there are going to be some obstacles to overcome. There are going to be some barriers between us and godly greatness that we must breakthrough. But as we know, victory can be ours if we possess a victorious faith. If we are willing to surrender both our focus and our future to the Lord, and if we are willing to see the impossibility of victory without the Lord’s help and to accept our responsibility to walk, to wait, and to not waver in our faith, we will be victors and not victims, we will be over comers rather than being overcome.
As you join me in the book of Joshua, you will notice that chapter 6 ends with these words, "So the LORD was with Joshua; and his fame was noised throughout all the country." "BUT" begins chapter 7, "... 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, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel."
The subject of today’s message is one that all of us are far too familiar with, and that is the subject of sin. I wish that I could stand before you and tell you that of all the subjects that are covered in the Bible, the subject of sin is one that I’m just not very well versed in. But the truth of the matter is, if there is any subject that I could come close to declaring myself an expert in, it would have to be the subject of sin. I do not say that boastfully by any means, I say that much to my shame.
However, I am thankful that I am not as qualified to be called an expert as someone else in this church. Last night, the Lord revealed to me that there is a greater sinner than myself in this church. Last night I dreamed that I died and went to heaven and upon my arrival there, I was promptly greeted at the gate by St. Peter.
After a brief conversation, Peter ushered me through the pearly gates and began to show me around. One of the first places he took me was a big room with literally thousands of clocks all over the walls. Every clock was ticking at a different speed and each one had someone’s name on it.
I began to look around and sure enough there was a clock for (name several folks), and each one was ticking at a different speed, some slower than others and some faster. Finally I ask St. Peter what the clocks were all about and he said that each clock represented the life of someone still on earth, and every time they sinned, the hands on the clock made a complete revolution.
So I continued to look around and sure enough I spotted more clocks that belonged to people I knew. But as I kept looking at the clocks, I couldn’t seem to find my brother’s clock. Finally I asked Peter were my brother’s clock was and he said, "Oh, you mean Rick? We took his down and moved it to the office. We use it as a fan."
Some may wonder what sin has to do with navigating the New Year, and I would say this, "Nothing will sink the ship of your life faster than unconfessed, unforsaken sin. Nothing will take you from the ‘thrill of victory’ and plunge you headlong into the ‘agony of defeat’ any faster than sin. Sin will take you from ‘hero’ to ‘zero’ in nothing flat." Just ask Joshua.
Let me give you a brief overview of what happened in Joshua 7 and then we’ll go back and zero in on a few details. Having overcome Jericho, Joshua and his people are confronted with yet another obstacle. This time it is a city named Ai. Now Ai was not a large city, nor was it a strong city, but it did lie between Israel and what God had promised them, so it had to be overcome.
In verses 2-3, we find that Joshua sent out a group of men to spy out the city of Ai and they were to come back to him with a report. So they "went up and viewed Ai" as they were told to do, and came back with the report that a couple of thousand men, maybe three, would be all that was needed to win the battle. "So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men" (Joshua 7:4). And notice what the Bible says beginning with the last part of verse 4. Read verses 4b-5.
How could this happen? How could such a satisfying victory be followed by such a humiliating defeat? The answer is SIN!
God had given specific instructions to Joshua (Read Joshua 6:18). No doubt, Joshua had passed along those instructions to the men of war, but in spite of being warned, Achan willfully and deliberately disobeyed, and he transgressed the Word of God.
What I hope to convey to you in this message, and what I hope we will all go away from here with, is an understanding of the destructiveness of sin. And when I speak of the destructiveness of sin, I’m talking about ALL sin. Regardless of how we classify it, big or small, black or white, serious or insignificant, ALL sin is dangerous and carries with it the potential for disaster.
In an article dated 4/9/97, a writer for USA Today wrote:
Scientists now say that a series of slits, not a giant gash, sank the Titanic.
The opulent, 900-foot cruise ship sank in 1912 on its first voyage, from England to New York. Fifteen hundred people died in the worst maritime disaster of the time.
The most widely held theory was that the ship hit an iceberg, which opened a huge gash in the side of the liner. But an international team of divers and scientists recently used sound waves to probe the wreckage, buried in the mud under two-and-a-half miles of water. Their discovery? The damage was surprisingly small. Instead of the huge gash, they found six relatively narrow slits across the six watertight holds.
I would remind you that Solomon said it is, "the little foxes, that spoil the vine." It doesn’t have to be one humongous sin that sinks our spiritual ship. It could be a series of "lesser" sins, as we would call them. If the truth were known, it is usually the small things that often become the big obstacles in our Christian life if not dealt with properly.
In this message we are going to consider Sin and its Course; Sin and its Curse; and Sin and its Cure.
I. SIN AND ITS COURSE
The course that sin takes is a well documented fact in the Word of God. The course that it took in the life of Achan is the same that it takes in our lives today. Notice Achan’s reply to Joshua when asked about his sin.
Read Joshua 7:20-21.
What was the course of sin in Achan’s life? "I saw", "I coveted", "I took."
1 John 2:15-16
If I were to take you to the book of Genesis and Satan’s temptation of Eve or to Matthew 4 and Satan’s temptation of Christ, we would find sin taking, or attempting to take in the case of Christ, the same course ... "seeing", "coveting", "taking" ... "the lust of the flesh", "the lust of the eyes", "the pride of life." It’s always the same.
A. Seeing
1. As Achan made his way through the charred remains of Jericho, he "saw" the Babylonish garment, the silver, and the gold.
2. What the writer of Lamentations said became true for Achan. Lamentations 3:51 says, "Mine eye affecteth mine heart..."
3. When the Bible says that Achan "saw", it means that he looked at it with "intention purposely", that he "saw with delight", that he "looked upon with pleasure." It wasn’t a casual glance or an accidental viewing of the "accursed thing", it was far more than that.
4. As Achan viewed the forbidden spoils, his heart was overcome and no doubt he began to justify within himself why it was alright to go against what he knew was right.
5. Satan loves for us to focus on things like pleasure and riches and entertainment because he understands that our eyes affect our hearts, and if we focus on something long enough we will then begin to justify our need for it.
6. That’s why Solomon wrote in the book of Proverbs 4:25-27, "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.
Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.
Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil."
7. Our prayer should be that of David when he prayed, "Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way."
B. Coveting
1. If you get right down to it, covetousness is the cause of all sin. It is desiring to have what God has forbidden. It is desiring to do what God has deemed unsuitable. It is desiring to go places that God has declared to be unsafe.
2. It’s when that desire gets the best of us that we sin.
3. James 1:14-15
C. Taking
1. Achan’s "taking" was the result of the "pride of life." The "pride of life" deals with our ego.
2. It’s our ego that makes us think we can rewrite the rules or change the Word of God in regards to sin. None of us are above the Word of God. Everyone of us are subject to the rules of life set forth in the Scriptures.
II. SIN AND ITS CURSE
Sin is not without its consequences.
A. Sin Diminishes our Confidence in God
1. Verses 6-9
2. Israel’s sin had such a detrimental affect on Joshua that he actually doubted whether or not God had done the right thing in leading them into Canaan.
3. Sin always produces negative feelings. Sin does nothing but promote sorrow, defeat, and despair.
B. Sin Disrupts our Communion with God
1. Verse 12
2. Isaiah 59:1-2
3. People often wonder why it seems like God is so distant, why His presence is not felt, why their life seems so dry spiritually.
4. The problem is not with God, the problem is with us. The Lord will not grace us with His presence when there is unconfessed, unforsaken sin in our lives.
5. Folks often wonder why they’re not being blessed like others are. God gives us the answer in Jeremiah 5:25.
C. Sin Damages the Cause of God
1. What should have been a relatively easy victory for Israel, turned out to be one of the most humiliating military defeats in that nation’s history.
2. The thing to notice is that Achan’s sin affected more than just himself, it affected all of those around him.
3. Let us not dare think that the testimony and reputation of this church is not affected by the way we live, because it is.
4. Let us not dare think that our sin will not affect the Lord’s blessings on this church, because it will.
5. "One sinner", Solomon said, "destroyeth much good."
III. SIN AND ITS CURE
A. Identify Ourselves
1. Verses 19-20
2. Achan said, "I HAVE SINNED."
3. When Joshua came to Achan, he immediately identified himself as the one having sinned.
4. The best thing you and I can do when the Holy Spirit comes to us and convicts us of our sin is to identify ourselves as the ones having sinned.
5. We can compare Achan’s words with those spoken by David in Psalm 51:4 and see how important it is for us to acknowledge our sin as being against God.
6. David said, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight..."
7. The thought that we have sinned against God ought to bring us to our knees. We may have let others down, we may have disappointed the church, but our sin was against God.
B. Sanctify Ourselves
1. Verse 13
2. To sanctify ourselves is to separate ourselves from whatever sin we are guilty of and to commit ourselves anew to God.
C. Fortify Ourselves
1. Joshua 6:18
2. The word "keep" means to "guard or hedge about."
3. Had Achan heeded the words of God and "guarded" himself or "hedged himself about" he would not have been the subject of this message.
4. God has given us the wherewithal to stand against the attacks and attempts of Satan on our lives. We can be victorious over sin. We can win over the devil. But we can’t do it on our own. We can’t do it without the power of God on our lives.
5. I hate to think that before this year ends someone, within the sound of my voice, is going to make a wreck of their life. But chances are it will happen because they will fail to fortify themselves. At some point they will fail to "guard" themselves as Achan did, their ship will sink, and a once promising life will be destroyed.
CLOSING: The late president Calvin Coolidge returned home from church one Sunday afternoon and found his wife sitting in the chair. Unable to go that day, she was still interested in what the preacher had to say. She asked her husband what the preacher spoke about and he said, "Sin."
Like most women, a one word answer to a question was not satisfactory, so she pressed him for more details. Finally he responded to her by saying "Well, I think he was against it."
Let me tell you something, God is against sin ... any sin ... all sin. It makes no difference how we dress it up or shrink it down or explain it away, GOD HATES SIN!
Here we are three weeks into the New Year, how are you doing? How’s your battle against sin going?
The Psalmist said, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
It could be that at this point in time there are no "big" sins in your life that threaten your immediate ruin, but what if the Lord were to probe deep beneath the service? Remember, it wasn’t a "big" hole that sunk the Titanic, it was a series of little ones.
What about the little sins? What about those sins that nobody else knows about? Just because they’re beneath the surface and can’t be seen, doesn’t mean that they can’t sink your ship.
