CAN PERSONAL SIN HAVE A CORPORATE EFFECT?
I doubt that there is anyone here who doesn’t want to succeed in some way or fashion. If there was someone like that, I’d be suspicious. I would have to think hard about becoming good friends with someone who wouldn’t want to succeed. However, there is a danger in success. It’s easy for success to breed carelessness. When things are on a roll, it’s so natural and effortless to slip into an attitude that we can handle things in our own strength and abilities and leave behind our trust and dependence on God.
I have found that trouble most often leads us to the Lord. When things are bad, when we’ve made a mess of things, when things have overwhelmed us and are out of control, when we’ve reached the end of our rope, our own abilities, that’s when we finally give God a try. That’s when we say, “God help! I can’t do this on my own!” It’s sad that God has to allow difficult and even bad things to come into our lives to get us back on the right track where we should be. Wouldn’t it be great if we would learn to stay totally dependent on Him even in the successes?
I’ve often said that it takes a higher level of spiritual maturity to experience success, wealth and health and yet stay totally dependent on God. It takes a higher level of spiritual maturity to live (not just know) in a way that realizes that all these things can be gone in a blink of an eye. I have found that not many can live at that level yet I believe God is looking for those types of individuals that He can trust; for those type of individuals that are desperate for their God despite their success.
Let’s take a moment and focus on the Children of Israel during a time of consecutive successes. In the early chapters of Joshua, they experience miracle after miracle. They had conquered their enemies east of the Jordan River. God gave them a miraculous crossing of the Jordan. They had gone up against the most powerful fortified city in the region – Jericho – and conquered it in the most unusual manner. We all know the story. As a matter of fact, I can hear the song in my mind right now, “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho…” But can you imagine being one of his commanders when Joshua explained how they were going to take it? We are going to walk around it each day for six days and no one is to say a peep. On the seventh day, we’ll walk around it seven times and only on the seventh time will we blow the trumpets and shout.” I just got to think that there was one of his officers thinking or saying, “And plan ‘B’ is?” “There’s no plan ‘B.’” It went just as Joshua said it would.
In the 1950’s, British archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon had some serious doubts about the biblical account of Jericho’s fall and did some extensive excavations there. She found that the city had suffered a quick devastation with grain left in large jars in storage areas. She also noted that the city had been burned. However, because she dated the time as early or mid Bronze Age, it couldn’t have been the Israelites.
In 1997, an Italian team excavated the site and found that it was late Bronze Age, exactly during the time of the Israelite invasion. They also found that the walls were basically two parts, a thick base wall of stone about 12 to 15 feet high, then a mud brick wall extending 20 – 26 feet high on top of the base wall. What they found was that the mud bricks fell outward in a big heap providing a ramp for the Israelite army to run right up and over. Interestingly, on the north side of the city, the walls with the houses built into the walls were still intact; just as the Bible describes in every detail.
This string of victories put fear in the Canaanite people. Fear paralyzes and debilitates. They heard about these miraculous victories and it took the fight right out of them. On the flip side, it gave the Israelites confidence. Confidence is a good thing as long as we remember that we are always totally dependant on God.
After the Jericho victory, the next challenge was this small town called Ai. Joshua 7:3, the spies told Joshua they didn’t need the whole army, only about 2 – 3000 men and they would go over and take care of them. Joshua says okay to this and they head over and get routed, 36 Israelite men are killed. This is where we want to pay close attention to this story. With this defeat, it sets in motion a sequence of events that compound the problem:
• 36 men are lost
• People are confused
• They loose their confidence
• Debilitating fear grips them
• Hearts of the people melt like water
• Believe that the enemy will grow in confidence and attack
• Want to cut and run, go back to the other side
• Question God as to why
I think it is interesting that the first word in Joshua chapter seven begins with the word, “But.” This simple conjunction drives homes the reality that victories are often followed by defeat. It also tells us that there was a reason for the defeat. The disobedience of one man, the personal sin of one person had a corporate effect. If you don’t get anything else in this message, please get this – personal sin does not affect you alone, it affects many more people, innocent people. Personal sin has a corporate effect. What is done in private will have a public effect. No matter how secret a sin might be, its affect will spill over into the lives of others.
In Joshua 7:11, God tells Joshua that there is sin in the camp, that His commandments had been violated, someone has stolen devoted things, there has been lying. God does not wink at sin. Sin corrupts. In the New Testament, Jesus warned against secret sins, “‘Be careful,’ Jesus warned them. ‘Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees…’” (Mark 8:15, NIV) Yeast is a type of fungus that causes fermentation and is most often used in making alcohol and baking. Basically, in a somewhat controlled manner, it causes things to rot. Sin corrupts.
God told Joshua in verse 12, “I will not be with you any more unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.” Unless there was a purification, a sanctification process, He was not going to be with them any more. How frightening is that? Without God on my side, without Him going before me, protecting me, what chance do I have in life? What hopes do I have living out from under the umbrella protection of God? What about my family? What about my church? What about my country? The mess had to be cleaned up and things made right.
If you are familiar with the story, Joshua went through a process to identify the sinner and it came down to a man named Achan. When identified, he finally confesses and describes the sequence of events that led to his sin. In Joshua 6:18-19, God gave explicit instructions and warnings concerning the spoils of Jericho. Everything was to be left except for the silver and gold to be put into the Temple treasury. In Joshua 7:21, Achan describes his steps towards sin:
• “I saw…” This is not sin in itself; it is the temptation, the opportunity for sin to begin. There’s an old saying, “Sin doesn’t start until the second look.” We will always be confronted with things we shouldn’t be looking at. Spiritual discipline, a holy reverence to God and getting a hold of His power helps us to get our eyes off those things.
• “I coveted them…” This is where the sin began. It is no accident that the final and most inward of the 10 Commandments deals with covetousness. Jesus restated this principle for our benefit: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15, NIV)
With Achan, which is so often the case with all the things we covet, he really didn’t need any of those things. From the list of his possessions, he was a wealthy man by the standards of his day. His theft was greed, not need. What was he going to do with them? He couldn’t use them. He couldn’t wear that Babylonian garment out in public because people would know where he got it. All he could do was secretly take them out, touch them, feast his eyes on them, but who could he tell about them? When we possess forbidden things, engage in forbidden activities, what good is it? What good is a treasure that you have to keep hidden so no one will find out? It’s so vain.
• “I took… They are hidden…” These are the same tragic steps found in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:6-10). They are the same steps David took with his sin with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:2-4). They are the same tragic steps when I have traveled this road and sinned in my own life. All of us have within us the potential to fall, and fall hard.
There is no such thing as a secret sin. Try as we will to hide it, somebody knows. God knows. We’ve all at one time or another been caught up in the thinking, “It’ll be okay, nobody will know.” Moses wrote in Numbers 32:23, “… you will be sinning against the LORD; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out.” (NIV) One thing I have found to be true is that sin gets uncovered and sinners get discovered. It may not happen right away, but it will happen.
I could preach a lengthy series on deadly sins, but I’m not here to name my pet peeve sins. I’m going to leave that to the Holy Spirit to convict each one of us of the secret sins we each struggle with on an individual basis. But I feel impressed to bring attention to one that is often overlooked, for the Christian, it’s the sin of omission. James 4:17, “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (NASB) I struggle mostly with the things I don’t do that I know I should. These are the easiest to hide because no one knows, except God. If you’ve been saved very long, we know that we are supposed to have a daily time with God; we know we are supposed to pray. We know we’re supposed to be involved in ministry. We know we’re supposed to be tithing. We know we’re supposed to be involved in wholesome Christian relationships and work out our differences in love, not walk out on each other. We know we are to be reaching out to the community with the message of Christ. Yet, for some reason, it is so easy to keep these things secret. I fear that we have been unfaithful in regards to the devoted things and God is not with us until purification and sanctification is done. How often do we find ourselves pleading with God to bless us on one hand and in the other we know that we are being disobedient and not doing anything about it.
Sin affects us personally but it’s not limited to that. There is a corporate consequence to our sins, even those that are hidden from the eyes of other men. Sin has a price. Sin will always take you further than you want to go, it will always keep you longer then you want to stay and it will always cost you more than you want to pay. The three laws of reaping apply here as well – 1. You will always reap what you sow; 2. You will reap more than what you sow, and; 3. You will reap later than you sow. Gal 6:7, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” (NKJV)
Sin affects your family; your friends and loved ones; it affects your church; it affects our country and it affects God’s kingdom. Though sins can’t be undone, the good news is that they can be forgiven. Sin does bring judgment, but God can use judgment to bring about a change in us that turns disaster into hope and victory. The Israelites did repent; they did purify and sanctify themselves and victory once again came to them. Let us search our hearts, purify and sanctify ourselves before a holy God this morning. Let us once again move on victorious.
