Joshua 7:10-15 – Sin must be swiftly dealt with

When a ship is sinking, it is usually not caused by the water outside of it but the water within it. Similarly, Israel’s defeat at Ai was not caused by something outside of them but something within them. God now revealed to them the cause of their sinking ship. Someone had violated the ban God had placed on the spoils of the war. God specifically told them not to keep any gold or silver or articles of bronze or iron. Everything they would gather from Ai belonged to the Lord. However, Joshua 7:1 tells us that “…Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, from the tribe of Judah, took some of the things under the ban, therefore the anger of the Lord burned against the sons of Israel.”

Joshua and the people tried to figure out what went wrong with them. It was something that God knew exactly. It is He who had formed men and He knew the heart of men all along. Nothing we do or will ever do escapes His sight. So, he revealed to Joshua that there was sin in the camp. Sin, when present always brings about a negative effect on life. It always brings defeat and must be dealt with swiftly and definitively. Like yeast, a little of it will cause a whole lump of dole to rise and puff up. These verses show us what sin is like. And it will do us well to take note of them so that we will not allow it to do us in.  

Verse 11 tells us that God knows all about sin. Achan must have thought the thing he had secretly taken from the spoil gathered from the conquest of Jericho was unknown to anyone. He overlooked the fact that nothing is hidden from the eye of God. Hebrews 4:13 tells us that, “…there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” God knows and sees everything. This verse also strongly suggests that God hates sins because it breaks trust with Him. The Lord wants to help us to be rid of sin just as he wanted to help Israel rid of sin. Yet they chose to embrace it. We cannot love the world and love God at the same time. Jesus said that we can never serve two masters. Between obeying God wholeheartedly or embracing sin passionately, we can only choose one. There is no way we can have both and yet remain neutral.    

Verses 11-12 show us that the sin was not confined to the one who violated the instruction of God. Sin is not only invasive it is also pervasive. It affected the whole camp of Israel. Sin must not be trifled with. One hidden sin by a member always affects the whole family. As a spiritual family, we do not live in isolation. A sin within the church left undealt with has the potential to drastically lower the spiritual temperature of the whole church. Every responsible member of the church must know the severity of harboring sin. Besides, we also need to know that sin always hinders our corporate progress in God. It does not just affect the individual who commits it but also affects the rest of the family. Verse 13 strongly suggests that all sin must be dealt with. We either grit our teeth and deal with it or God will have to painfully take care of it. Sin is offensive and it hurts the heart of God. We either deal with it or be done in by it.

Keeping oneself accountable before God is a responsibility each one of us in the spiritual family has to take seriously. We must know that we are not our own, we belong to the body of Christ. In sinning, a person has unwittingly assisted the devil in his scheme to devastate the fellowship of God.  We do well to take heed to Paul’s timely advice, recorded in his first letter to the Corinthians. He said, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands, take heed that he does not fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).