The Home That Was Cursed By The B.G.
By Rev. Eric D. Smith
Josh 6:16-19
16 And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the LORD hath given you the city.
17 And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.
18 And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.
19 But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD.
Josh 7:1, 16-21
1 But 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.
…16 So Joshua rose up early in the morning, and brought Israel by their tribes; and the tribe of Judah was taken:
17 And he brought the family of Judah; and he took the family of the Zarhites: and he brought the family of the Zarhites man by man; and Zabdi was taken:
18 And he brought his household man by man; and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken.
19 And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.
20 And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:
21 When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.
This is a very important message that I want to preach to you tonight. It is important because of the many times that you see Israel being invaded by an enemy that GOD ALLOWED into their land because Israel kept on refusing to follow after God. God spoke to me and said that this, what I am speaking tonight, is the root cause of why many Christians’ homes have become cursed. My people can rid themselves of the curse, and avoid my anger, my wrath and my judgment; but how many will hear? How many will take me serious? Too many Christians have become dull of hearing what the Spirit speaks.
You can be amused if you want to by the title of my sermon, but I did not title it this to be funny. I am speaking on the root cause of why Christians’ homes are being cursed. This “Babylonish Garment” that Achan coveted, I will abbreviate to the letters BG… and I have titled this message, “The Home That Was Cursed By The BG”.
Josh. 6:18 - And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.
The commandment had come forth from God. Did God speak it forth through Joshua without any kind of foundation? Did God speak it forth without any underlying reasoning behind His commandment? Open your ears tonight and you will understand that God knew exactly why He spoke forth the prophecy of a curse upon anyone who would take of the accursed thing.
Now, the two types of things that Achan coveted from Jericho, is a direct type and analogy of the things that Christians struggle with today. He struggled with the gold and the silver, or the money. And he struggled with the BG. And because he disobeyed God, these things brought a curse into his life, and that curse flowed into his home and into his family, and it troubled his nation.
Before we go any further, I want to dispel the error of thinking that if something that we have allowed into our life hasn’t harmed us thus far, then it is OK. The very day that the idea was conceived in the mind of Achan and the accursed BG was brought into his home, the curse was started. But the consequences did not come upon him that day. So, we must understand that although the curse can be placed upon a person’s home or life by allowing something in that God said should not be there, the consequences do not necessarily come the same day or the same week or the same year in which someone performs the deed. As a matter of fact, Achan probably didn’t even consider that the defeat of Israel at Ai had anything to do with the curse that he had instigated by bringing the BG into his home. Achan, just like everyone else, probably was attributing the defeat to a superior enemy.
How many of us Christians today are attributing defeat and depression, marital problems, and problems with our children to a superior enemy? So we must understand that God has said that bringing an accursed thing into your home will bring a curse to you. Some people will try to give excuses because they feel like they can’t pinpoint the reasons that brought the consequences, and some people try to blame other things beside themselves for the problems. But I’ll tell you right now that God does not have a superior enemy. Achan probably didn’t even consider that the defeat at Ai had anything to do with bringing the BG into his home.
Now, getting back to the two types or symbolic things that Achan coveted from Jericho. I want to show you that the two types is a direct analogy and is parallel of the things that Christians struggle with today. Let’s look at the gold and silver first.
Josh 6:18-19
18 And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.
19 But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD.
God does not label the gold and silver as the accursed thing. Yet, in the same breath that God was speaking of the accursed thing, He tells His people that the gold and silver and brass and iron of this particular city will be brought into the treasury of God. It is not just a coincidence that the first city that Israel enters into to conquer that God says that the gold and silver is mine. This is symbolic of the firstfruits.
Exod 23:19
19 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God…
God often times refers to bringing in the tithe, or 10% of your income, into the treasury of the Lord. It is not a coincidence, then, that God says, “As you enter into the Promise Land that I will give you, I want the firstfruit." The conquering of this city therefore becomes symbolic of our tithe. God did not say, “After you conquer all the other cities, conquer one for me.” With our tithes, he does not want what is left over after we pay all the bills, and buy all the frills. We often have the tendency to keep making bills and keep buying frills until we are all moneyed out.
So one type or symbolic thing that Achan coveted from Jericho that brought a curse into his life was that which belonged to God. If I can say it in the terms of the modern day Christian struggle, “He didn’t want to pay tithes unto God.” The gold and the silver that should have gone to God, he thought that he could be richer if he didn’t give what little part of the land that God requested, and kept it for himself. He evidently thought that God could not curse him, and therefore God did not have the ability to bless him either. He thought that he was his own determiner of his future blessings. So he took what God was requesting and was going to use it to bless himself. But what he was going to use to bless himself, became a curse unto him.
Mal 3:8-12
8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.
12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.
Luke 6:38
38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
For those that want to see tithing in the New Testament, take time to read
1 Corinthians 9:1-14.
A couple of comments before we move on to the second thing that cursed his home. God is showing us here that we need to have the mentality of giving God the firstfruits and not the leftovers. Secondly, don’t develop the mentality that there is not enough money in your paycheck to tithe. If someone only makes a hundred dollars a week, that is only ten dollars in tithes. That type of mentality would complain if they made a million dollars a week. That would then be $100,000 a week in tithes. That person would then complain that that is too much money to be giving.
Bottom line - when Israel was coming into the Promised Land and God was READY TO BLESS His people with a land flowing with milk and honey, instead, God brought a curse to them because someone tried to bless himself with what belonged to God.
Now, getting to the second symbolic thing that Achan coveted from Jericho that is a direct parallel to the things that Christians struggle with today. Achan brought something that God considered accursed into his home. The Hebrew word for “accursed” simply means that God had appointed that thing for utter destruction. It does not mean that the thing was by itself evil. Therefore, when Achan first saw the BG, he may have wondered why God would want to destroy something that looked so beautiful.
The first lesson that we can learn is the fact that clothing was essential to mankind. Everybody wore clothing. Therefore, by human logic, one could deduct that it would not be harmful to have a BG in someone’s home. Achan had weighed the benefits of having a BG in his home, and even when confronted, he described it as a "goodly" BG. If you would closely examine it’s weaving, the BG and a normal Jewish garment may have been identical in thread pattern. So you can reason it out that within the BG itself, there was nothing wrong about it. Yet, there was something about the BG that God saw that would bring forth a curse.
Let us, therefore, look at this BG that Achan brought into his home. First, it was from Babylon. We are talking about conquering Jericho. Again, it is no coincidence that as Israel came into Jericho that Achan spied and fell in love with something from Babylon. Almost in a prophetic dejavu, the country that made the thing that caught his eye, would be the same country years later, that would invade the land of his brethren and lead them off into captivity. Achan was of the tribe of Judah. It was Judah that settled in the Southern region of the Promised Land. And while the ten northern tribes were eventually over run by Assyria, it was Babylon that came and took Judah and Benjamin captive. So, prophetically, the BG that he brought into his home, the producer of this BG came years later by the tens of thousands and took his brethren into captivity. Something that he thought was so innocent, became their prophetic captor years later. How many times do Christians bring their own captors into their home? How many times do Christians lay their own trap?
On the other side of the irony, the Babylonian area is where God called Achan’s ancestor, Abraham, out of. God saw that Ur was full of idolatry, and wanted Abraham to depart from that land. So Achan, when he brought the BG into his home, was actually putting something into his home that God was trying to get out of Abraham’s life. God has brought us out of a land of sin. God had seen the idolatry that is the world and has told us to be separated from the world.
2 Cor 6:17-18
17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,
18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
The BG that Achan brought into his home was actually a representation of everything God was trying to separate them from. If God wanted His people to act like the Babylonians, then God wouldn’t care if Abraham was to stay in Babylon. If God wanted His people to talk like the Babylonians, then He would have left them in Babylon. If God wanted His people to look like the Babylonians, then He would not have minded Achan bringing the BG into his home. But by bringing the BG into his home, he stirred up a past that should have been dead since Abraham, and Achan put into motion the future captivity of his nation.
Christians struggle with the same thing today. The very thing that God is trying to separate from us, many are bringing right back into their homes. They fanaticize about the sin and lifestyle that God is trying to separate us from. The desire of Achan in today’s church makes Christians try to look like the world we were called out of. It makes them talk like the world that we left. It makes them act like the world that we left. But most of all, it makes them lust after the things that God calls accursed. Achan’s BG got him to the place where Achan was immune to the desires of God.
The root cause of why many Christians’ homes have become cursed is because they have allowed things that God hates into their very homes. God’s people can rid themselves of the curse, and avoid His anger, His wrath and His judgment; but how many will hear? How many will take God serious? Too many Christians have become dull of hearing what the Spirit speaks.
Phil 4:8
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
We need to search our homes to find the things that could bring a curse to our lives and to our homes. Get Babylon our of our lives and give God the firstfruits that He desires.
Acts 19:17-20
17 And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.
18 And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds.
19 Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.
20 So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.
