Study 9
Achan’s Sin
Introduction
Last week we began to look at this 7th chapter of the book of Joshua, the chapter that records Israel’s one and only defeat in their campaign, under the leadership of Joshua, to conquer and take possession of the land of Canaan.
We saw that the root cause of that defeat was the presence of sin among the people, sin which had caused the presence and power of God, that presence and power by which they had so easily conquered Jericho, to be withdrawn from them. God had promised that if they obeyed him they would be blessed, they would overthrow their enemies – five of them would chase a hundred and a hundred would put ten thousand to flight and their enemies would fall before them by the sword, that was what God had said in Leviticus 26/8. He had promised in Deut 28/1, 7 “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow His commands…the Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you…” But he had also warned them in that same chapter in vs 15, 25 “However if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all His commands and decrees…The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies…”
And of course this is exactly what had happened as they entered upon their military campaign against Canaan. Victory and blessing were theirs at Jericho as they obeyed the Lord’s command. Defeat and humiliation was their portion at Ai because God’s clear instruction, that they were to take nothing for themselves from the spoils of their victory over Jericho, that command had been disobeyed. It had been disobeyed by only one man, and it seems his family circle, but that one sinner in the camp had terrible consequences for the people as a whole. His sin robbed them of victory at Ai. His sin and the unexpected set-back that resulted from it caused the leader of God’s people and the people as a whole to become greatly disheartened and for a time at least to loose their spiritual perspective and waver in their faith in God’s promises. Sin always has serious ramifications, not only for the individual themselves but also for their family and for the congregation to which they belong.
Well having dealt with the Israelites defeat at Ai last week I want this evening to hone in on and look more closely at the sin that Achan committed. And I want to do that under four headings. I want us to consider first of all
1) The Successive Steps of Achan’s Sin
Both in verse 1 and also in verse 21 we learn that the sin Achan committed was that of taking something that God had said no-one was allowed to take, namely any of the spoils of victory from Jericho. Everything had to be devoted to the Lord and put into His treasury in the tabernacle. Achan however had disobeyed this command and had stolen some of the booty – a Babylonian Garment, 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold. But it is instructive to note that Achan’s actual stealing of those items was but the culmination of a process of sin the distinct stages of which are clearly identified in Achan’s own words in v20,21. What were those distinct successive stages in Achan’s sin? Well lets read the verses together – “Achan replied, it is true…underneath”
Notice that the first step that Achan took down the slippery slope of sin was
(i) His Gaze – The Look of the Eyes
Look at v21 again “When I saw, in the plunder, a beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels…”
You can picture can you not something of what must have taken place here. The walls of Jericho have fallen down, the people of the city are panic stricken. The men of Israel’s army are running through the streets and in and out of buildings and houses killing their enemies, as God had instructed them to do, their destruction being the means by which God was punishing them for their gross sinfulness. And as Achan in the caourse of his responsibilities and duties as a soldier in Israel’s army is running through one of the houses or buildings in pursuit of the enemy suddenly he notices this beautiful designer coat and lying beside it a considerable amount of money and beside it a wedge of gold’ These things happen to catch his eye. Now there was no sin involved in him seeing these items. As Warren Weirsbe points out he probably couldn’t help seeing them, they were lying there. He, in the course of his duty just happened to be going past the place where these things were lying and he saw them. But whilst his seeing these items wasn’t a sin, his allowing his eyes to look at them again, his second glance, this time with a degree of unholy interest in them, this second glance undoubtedly played a major part in the sin he ended up committing. It was this second glance, this looking with awakened interest, this allowing the eyes to dwell upon the items, that got his imagination working and which set the wheels of temptation and of sin in motion. Temptation entered through his eyes.
This of course was not the first time this happened – you recall the very first sin committed in this world, Eve’s disobedience to God’s command concerning the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve had seen the fruit of that tree many times and there was no sin in the fact that the image of that fruit was projected onto her retina and her brain then registered the existence and the shape and form of the fruit and so on. There was no sin in that. The sin came when she took the fruit and ate it but the first step towards that sinful act was when she looked at the fruit in an altogether different way from previous times; when she looked at the fruit with personal interest and desire. When she gazed upon it. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye…” The temptation came initially through her eyes.
You remember David’s sin with Bathsheba. How did it start? What was the first step David took in committing that sin? Well 2 Sam 11 tells us “one evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he SAW a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful to look upon…” No we have to realise that when david got up that night from his bed and went for a dander on the roof of the palace he wasn’t motivated by Voyeuristic intentions, he wasn’t a night-time peeping Tom. In the course of his midnight rooftop stroll he just happened to see his next door neighbour bathing. There was no sin in that. His sight of her was not premeditated, it was not in and of itself an immoral or sinful act. However instead of immediately looking away, it is evident from the narrative and from what subsequently ensued that David continued to look, for the narrative goes on to say that she was a beautiful woman to look upon. David allowed himself not just a second glance but it seems a continuing gaze at this woman who was most likely naked at the time, a gaze that then had an impact upon his imagination, thoughts and desires. Temptation entered through the eyes. Sin began with a look.
Friends there is nothing sinful per se in seeing a beautiful woman or a handsome man, but when the sight of such leads to a second glance, or a prolonged gaze the first step towards lust and adultery in the heart has been taken and sadly in many many cases that initial gaze has been the forerunner of actual physical adultery or fornication. And of course what is true in relation to such a sin is true also in relation to many other sins.
How important it is then that we so discipline the use of our eyes that we do not allow them to lead us down that first step into the pit of sin. Let us be like Job who in 31/1 affirmed “I have made a covenant with my eyes, not to look lustfully at a girl." I wonder men have you made that covenant with your eyes. And of course lust is not something exclusive to the male species and you women do well to make a similar covenant with your eyes. The psalmist David prayed to God “turn my eyes away from viewing worthless things…” He also vowed in Ps 101/s “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes.”
But whilst Achan’s sin began with The Gaze – The Look with the eyes – it went on from there for the second step in Achan’s sin was
(ii) His Greed – The Lust of the heart
He says “ When I saw in the plunder the beautiful robe from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver, and the wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, I COVETED them…”
What is coventousness/ Well it can be defined as a wanting for oneself that which belongs to another or to have any desire to gain for oneself, position or possessions to which one is not legitimately entitled. Coventousness is rooted in a discontentment with the present portion of blessing that God in His providence has alloted to us, be it in the sphere of finance, of health, of job opportunity, of academic ability, of practical skills or whatever. It is to identify and crave possession of something that we do not possess. It is an inordinate and unlawful desire for something. Covetousness then is a condition of heart and mind.
This was what was going on in Achan’s heart and mind as he looked at and began to think about the booty that caught his eye that day. Once Achan saw the booty, he began to imagine what it would be like to own all this and thus he began to desire it for himself. It wasn’t his, it was God’s, but Achan became inordinately desirous of these things. That which Achan saw and considered with his eyes, soon got a hold of Achan’s heart. And as we shall see, what a deadly vice this was going to prove to be for Achan. I wonder did the apostle James have Achan in mind when he wrote “every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own by his own lust (NIV- own evil desire) and enticed. Then when lust / desire has conceived it brings forth sin and sin when it is finished brings forth death.”
You remember the warning the Lord Jesus gave in Luke 12:15 “take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.” The context of these words was that of a man who came to Jesus asking him to arbitrate in a family inheritance dispute, ‘Master speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me…’ It’s clear from Jesus’ response that that which motivated this man’s request was covetousness. An inordinate envious desire for that to which he had no legitimate right or entitlement, in this case financial gain, material assets. Such covetousness is a soul destroying vice. It causes a persons affections and desires to be centred upon, what in the light of eternity, are transient material things, and thus deflects those desires and affections away from more important eternal, spiritual things. The soul destroying nature of such a covetousness spirit comes out very clearly in the parable of the sower in which the good seed of the message of the gospel is depicted as falling into thorny ground and that thorny ground as Jesus goes on to explain symbolises the human heart that is overrun by among other things covetousness. He says “these are they which are sown among thorns, such as hear the word, (that is people who hear the gospel message) and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word and it becomes unfruitful…” The “LUSTS of other things” - Lust for another person other than your spouse, lust for a position of power, of responsibility, prestige that someone else occupies, lust for some gift or skill that another person possesses, and so on - that brethren is covetousness.
Solomon warns us to “guard your heart with all diligence, for it is the well-spring of life.”
So Achan’s sin began with a Gaze – the look of the eye; It then proceeded to produce within him a greed – The Lust of the Heart. But there was another step and that was
(iii) His Grasp – The Consent of the Will
I Saw, - Temptation through the eyes I Coveted, - the stirring of sinful desires in the heart. I Took. – Now the will, that which moves us to act in any given way, the will is now in agreement with and carrying out the desire of the heart. I TOOK
Achan allowed his desire for that which he saw to exert such an influence upon his will that his subsequent conduct was governed by and aimed at satisfying that inner desire. It was bad enough that he thought about taking the booty for himself, such thoughts were sinful, but that inner sin was made even worse when it was externalised in his actual conduct, that is when the thought became an act. What he ought to have done was recognise the desires he was experiencing at that time for what they were – SIN, and recognising them as such he should have immediately turned away from that which was enticing his desires and left that place. He should have so filled his mind with the words of God’s command concerning the spoils of this battle as to suffocate these inordinate sinful desires that were gestating in the womb of his affections. What he did instead was to feed those desires and allow them to grow and to come forth from the womb of his affections and be born as an actual sinful act. He gave in to those desires and agreed within himself that he would take the items. That decision of the mind then acted upon the will and the will moved the hand and the hand grasped the booty.
The same process, the same steps are seen in Eves sin – I SAW I COVETED I TOOK. The Gaze produced Greed and she Grasped. The will consented to the desire and the sin was committed.
Similarly with David – he SAW Bathsheba – he DESIRED Bathsheba. He TOOK Bathsheba. The will consented to the desire and the sin was committed.
In each case there was opportunity for the process to be aborted – to be aborted before that which was seen with the eyes became an object of desire in the heart, to be aborted before that which had become a desire in the heart laid hold and got control of the will – but in each case the process was allowed to run its course and the end result was the sinful act which each committed.
Brethren, all of us know only too well what it is to have sinful thoughts in our minds, sinful desires in our hearts. Many a time the first two steps of this process of sin are to be found operating within us. At such times let us recognise these desires for what they are and let us determine that sinful though the thoughts may be we will not, we will not make the situation worse by allowing this third stage in sins development to come to fruition in our life, the stage where we allow our will to give in to the sinful desire that is in our heart and thus go on to commit the sinful act. Its true that there are sins that we commit without as it were even thinking about them, without making as it were a conscious choice to pursue a sinful course of conduct, but many, indeed by far the majority of our actual outward sins involve conscious, personal choice. They are committed as a result of the consent of our will to an inner sinful desire. Our will, as we learned in our Adult Bible Class some weeks ago, is not controlled by anything or anyone outside of itself. In other words Achan couldn’t say ‘the devil made me steal those things’, indeed when his sin was discovered he admitted his own responsibility for his actions. ‘I took.’ He made a conscious decision to pursue this particular course of action. And so it is with us. In most of the sins we commit there is that point where we by means of our will, consent to a sinful course of action. Brethren if you find sin laying hold of your inner desires, pray for the strength and grace to resist its overtures to your will so that it will not progress to that further and more heinous stage of actually finding expression in your life.
But there was a fourth and final step in Achan’s sin and that was
(iv) His Guile – The Covering of his Iniquity
“I Saw…I coveted…I took and behold they are HIDDEN in the ground inside my tent.”
Having taken the beautiful Babylonian designer robe, the 200 shekels of silver and the wedge of gold, Achan then went to his tent, dug a hole in the ground and buried the stolen treasure. Why did he do that? Well he did it because he knew that what he had just done, the stealing of the booty, was wrong. His conscience was accusing him of his sin. Obviously if his actions were not sinful he would have felt no need to try and hide his recently acquired goods. He could have walked round the camp wearing the beautiful robe. He could have openly spent the money he had acquired and so on. But he couldn’t do that because these were stolen items that he wasn’t meant to have and had he paraded them openly, then others would have found out about his sin and his reputation would have collapsed around him. And of course he didn’t want that. So in order to preserve his reputation he tried to cover up his sin. He hid the goods in this hole in the ground in his tent and just acted and went about his daily business as normal. From the moment he put those goods in that hole Achan had to live a life of guile, a life of deception. He told no-one about what he had done, apart from his family, who it seems, colluded with him and probably watched him as he buried the items in the tent. No-one else knew anything about his sin and as far as he was concerned no-one else was going to know. It was his wee secret. He certainly wasn’t going to let his little secret out of the bag. Having sinned he tried to cover up his sin. He acted as if nothing had happened.
So to the sin of covetousness, he had added the sin of theft and to the sin of theft he now added the sin of deceit. The picture is getting darker and darker all the time.
You remember a similar situation in the early days of the N.T. Church when Annanias and Saphira brought a sum of money to the Church telling them that this amount was the total income they had received from the sale of some land they owned. In actual fact what they were giving was only a proportion of the price they had received for the land. The fact that they only gave a proportion wasn’t in and of itself a sin. Their sin lay in they way in which they tried to deceive the church into thinking that they had given every penny from the sale when in fact they had their little bundle of money hidden away somewhere for themselves. Outwardly they were saying we are giving all that we got from the sale of the land to God, we have devoted all of it to God. When in reality once they had the cash in their hand from the sale of their field, moved by a spirit of covetousness, they took some of the money for themselves and then proceeded on a pathway of deceit.
In Prov 28:13 we read ‘He who conceals his sin does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.’ I wonder was the story of Achan in Solomon’s mind when he wrote those words. As we are going to see in our next study Achan certainly didn’t prosper, nor did he find mercy. Oh if only, if only after he had committed the sin, he had acknowledged the folly of it, repented of it and sought forgiveness. If only he had come to Joshua immediately after the defeat at Ai and told Joshua what he had done, confessed his sin, repented of it and sought forgiveness, he would surely have found mercy and pardon. As it was, even after the army had suffered defeat, even after 36 men had been killed, 36 families grief-stricken as a result of the death of their loved ones, even when it became clear that there was going to be an investigation into the cause of the defeat, even then Achan who must have realised that his sin had something to do with this terrible set-back the people had suffered, even after all this Achan kept up the deceit, the booty lay hidden in his tent, the sin remained covered over and judgement was fast approaching.
Friends the way to deal with sin is not to do what Achan did and try to hide it, try to cover it over and act as though it never happened, and yet there are many who try to do just that. The man or woman who is unfaithful to their spouse and yet who acts the part of the faithful and loving husband or faithful and loving wife when in the company either of the very one they have sinned against or in the company of others, thus giving the impression that they are not guilty of such a sin. The young person who steals money from their mothers purse or from the jar or drawer or whatever that contains the families finances and acts as though they were not guilty of any such sin; the treasurer of the organisation who is syphoning off funds for their own personal benefit but who goes along to meetings and so on and acts as though they are above reproach in such matters; The young teenager or older single person who outside of Church activities is involved in a social environment that is unconjusive to the personal growth and development of the faith in Christ they have professed and who in that social environment has been sexually active, or has been indulging in drug abuse or alcohol abuse, but who come Sabbath day is sitting in their pew giving the impression and deceiving people into thinking that they would never be not guilty of such sins; The parent who abuses their child or their spouse but who covers it up and presents himself to the Church and to the world as a loving, caring parent and husband. He who covers his sin will not prosper. The way to deal with sin is not to hide it and act the part of the deceiver. It is to confess it, renounce it and seek forgiveness for it. As we are going to see next week, such sins may be hidden from others but they cannot be hidden from God and God has his own way, in time of bringing the hidden things of darkness to light. Achan is a powerful example of the Biblical principle stated in Numbers 32:23 “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Let us take to heart and by God’s grace where appropriate act upon the lessons we have learned this evening from The Successive Steps of Achan’s Sin.
