After Jericho's walls fall without a fight, Israel feels certain the next battle will be routine—so certain they never bother to ask God first. Joshua 7 exposes a harder truth: what happens when success convinces us we've earned God's blessing. One man's hidden sin and a leader's unexamined confidence unravel an entire people, revealing the dangerous gap between assumed standing and actual standing before God.

Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

The pastor contrasts Achan's approach with Rahab's: Achan looked at what he wanted and took it, while Rahab looked to God's promise even though she barely knew Him. What does it look like in your own life to choose looking to God's promise over looking at what you want?
Achan's sin progressed from coveting, to taking, to concealing—each step compounding the last, like ignoring a small back injury until it becomes debilitating. Where in your own life have you noticed a small compromise quietly growing because you delayed confessing it?
Joshua failed to ask God for guidance before the battle at Ai, assuming past success meant he could handle it alone. Where are you most tempted to rely on your own track record instead of seeking God's direction first?
The sermon draws a subtle but important distinction between defending God's reputation (what Joshua did) and trusting God's promises (what Moses did). How might that difference change the way you pray or respond when things don't go as planned?
The pastor says “you can't deserve and serve at the same time.” How does believing you deserve something—success, recognition, a break—change the way you approach your work, relationships, or service to others?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

In the meantime, let's go ahead and prepare our hearts as we come to God's word.

That wakes you up, doesn't it? Different things wake us up. One thing that I think probably would wake most of us up is if we were part of a vast and triumphant, and in some sense painless, military victory. Imagine, we have I think a couple of veterans here at least, at least a couple. And thank you for your service. Imagine if you had been sent into a war and your job was to play in the band. At the end of your assignment playing in that band, in the most epic concert ever, you bring down the walls of the enemy and enemies defeated.

When we think about the taking of the promised land, God sends Israel into the promised land. We're coming to the story of, well, not Jericho. That's where you think we're going, right? But we're going to actually go to the story after Jericho. But we need to think about Jericho first because it sets the tone for it. You'd feel pretty good if that happened, wouldn't you? If you had just seen that happen?

God says, go do this. You go and do it, and as you do it, to quote The Music Man, “Oh, billiard parlor walls, come a tumble and down,” right? It's just done. It happens. It's beautiful, it's triumphant, and what can't you do? There's where they're going to get themselves into trouble.

Because here's the problem oftentimes for us: when things do work, when things are going well, we start to think we deserve them. We start to expect them.

Years ago, a little bit before my time actually, but it stuck so much in our cultural consciousness that I was aware of it even though the campaign had ended by then. There was an effort to provide a slogan for a fast food restaurant. That fast food restaurant had grown tremendously with its—you may recognize the symbol—the golden arches. Anyone know that one? This was as it was emerging, right? McDonald's was emerging, and they were trying to figure out how do we get people to see it as more than someplace that they can get something fast. How do we make them want it?

The theory was, well, we need to make them think that they need to get away from something, and that by coming to McDonald's, they'll get what they need. So they imagined McDonald's was like a free trip to a tropical island. You go there; you arrive there; you don't have to pay for an air flight; you don't have to pay for a cruise ship; you just arrive, and you escape whatever it is that you need to get away from.

Maybe you are tired of cooking the meals. This is 1970s, so they assumed it was the mom cooking the meals. And mom, you're tired of cooking the meals. So you, you deserve not to cook a meal today. Maybe you're the dad, and you come home, and you've been slaving all day, and you're just stressed out, and the last thing you want to worry about is anything at all. You just want to sit down for burger, fries, and shake. You deserve to get away. Or maybe you're the kids, and you're so tired of having to eat broccoli, and you deserve to get away from that. You deserve a break today.

There we are. And so for years, McDonald's used that slogan, but not as long as I actually thought. It was only for about 10 years that they used that slogan, but I think probably most people still know today, “You deserve a break today.” And what the goal was, was to speak to what people felt like they needed. They started out with this idea of making a vacation. Then they found out there was a hot dog joint that already had the idea of getting a trip to the tropics by going there, so they didn't want to get sued. They just tapped into that core impulse: I deserve.

It was a hit. Because here's the thing they recognized. If you're a clever marketer, you should recognize this. People feel like they deserve things. So you play to the fact they feel like they deserve it. You're tired of cooking. You're tired of working. You're tired of eating that broccoli. And so what? You deserve a break today. You can come to McDonald's and get it. Works great. Works great if you're trying to do marketing.

Here's where it doesn't work so great: when we start to apply that to our lives in general. “I deserve a break today. I deserve a break today, God. Things should go how I want them to go because I've been through enough. I've eaten all my broccoli today. I deserve a break, God. And more than just a break, I deserve success. I deserve the things I want. I deserve the recognition for my accomplishments. God, I deserve these things.”

It's very hard to battle that because, you know, the problem with our hearts is that we believe that. We might think at first, “Well, you know, I know I'm not really that good,” and we do lip service to that, but underneath that, there's something in every one of our hearts that says, “You deserve this. You deserve the best. You deserve that break.”

I believe that's where we find the Israelites, because they've just had this amazing victory over Jericho, and Joshua has just declared a curse on it that the Lord had empowered him to declare, that no one's ever going to rebuild this; this town is rubble, it's over. And they think now, what is it that can possibly be out of our reach? We're going to see on a personal level and a societal level how that place is an incredibly dangerous place, and it puts them on the wrong side of God after being sent in and following the Lord to that first victory in the promised land.

As we think about that, let's pray that God would help us to see those places where we're doing the same thing, where we're beating that “I deserve, I deserve, I deserve” in our own lives. And that God would help us instead to see what we don't deserve and what we ought to do instead. Would you pray as me please?

Lord, we come before you as those who want to think we deserve. We deserve a break. We deserve success. We deserve nice things. And we might know intellectually, Lord, that we aren't good, that we don't do what is good, that we trust in the wrong things, as we confessed earlier, but yet, Lord, our hearts scream out, “I deserve that break.” Would you help us understand how we don't, but in understanding that, just how much more you do and how much more love you show. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let's go ahead and turn to Joshua chapter 7, verse 1. Here's where we start: “But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabi, son of Zara, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things. And the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.”

Sometimes the books of Judges and Joshua can be a little opaque. They don't always tell us what's going on ahead of time. Sometimes God just wants us to experience it and wrestle with it, but here we're told right up front. We just finished the story from about Jericho, and God wants us to know, there is a problem here. Israelites, we have a problem. And the problem is Achan.

One of the things that he saw in Jericho: most of the people have been told don't take the things that you see as you conquer the land. I think, maybe just by sheer power of the Lord taking Jericho and the way they did, most of them were able to keep their eyes on what God had commanded them in that moment, but Achan couldn't.

And we're told that leads to a major problem.

Now, let's just go back. It's not been that long. We can't say that Achan just forgot. Joshua chapter 6, verse 17 says: “The city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers whom we sent. But you keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them, you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it.” All the silver and gold and every vessel of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord; they shall go into the treasury of the Lord.

Now, this wasn't even the first time the Lord had said this. It wasn't that Achan shows up for the Israelite army band orientation and says, “Oh, I wonder why I didn't know the guy was going to say we shouldn't take loot.” No, what do we find all the way back in Numbers before they even go into the land? The Lord had said the same thing. He's reminding them here.

Achan knows this, and we'll see more later on. Achan really does know this. He knows he's not supposed to take it. But he says, “But this stuff's so nice, and there's so much of it. Wouldn't it be a shame if it all went to waste? Didn't we use just a little of it? I just use a little of it because you know what? I deserve a break today. I've been playing my trumpet. I've been marching. I've been doing all this, and when I come home at night, I'm in the land of Canaan. I'm not in St. Louis where I know there's Carroll House, and I deserve nice things. I need to find nice things somewhere else.” And they're in Jericho.

“I have them? Yeah, I can have them. I must be discreet about it. It won't hurt, right? What harm is it? A bunch of people that were killing here, they're all going to be dead. They're not gonna miss it. I don't want these people to get what they deserve. I've been playing on key every day. I deserve this.”

So he takes things in direct opposition to what the Lord commands. But notice too, because we're going to see, he took some things that were meant to be destroyed; he also took metals that were meant to be put into the treasury of the Lord. Not only does he oppose what the Lord's commanded, he opposes what the Lord has commanded for the preparations ultimately for the temple.

Why does God want them to gather metals and put them in the treasury of the Lord? Because they can melt those down and use them for instruments of worship. They can be used for the worship of the Lord. Here, Achan isn't just taking from the people who are being defeated who are devoted to destruction, the people whose God's judgment is coming down upon as those walls fall down. He's not just taking from them. He is actually taking from the Lord, saying there's so much here, there are so many riches. If I take a few of them, if I take a few pieces of gold and silver, it won't hurt. God has plenty still.

But here's something else that Achan does. He also takes away his acknowledgment of whom the Lord is because as he does this, he hides these things, buries them in his tent, and assumes that God won't know where they are, that no one will know where they are. No one's going to find me out for this. It's fine.

We're going to look at the battle itself from what goes wrong in a moment, and needless to say, it doesn't go well for Israel. If it doesn't go well for Israel, then the people are confronted with this sin that someone has taken something. God doesn't say who it is at first. Achan could have said, “I need to confess. I did this,” but he doesn't do that either.

You see, if we look at verse 21—if you get a chance this week, just read through all of chapter 7—it's really good to get the whole story: but if you go to verse 21, what do we see? They have to go through the whole casting of lots. God narrows it down and down and down. He does this big dramatic thing where all the people, all the tribes, all the clans are there, and he narrows it down until it finally gets to Achan.

Finally, when, I imagine, if they had spotlights at the time, there would have been one shining upon him. Finally, when there's absolutely no doubt who it is, Achan says, “I need to make a confession.” As long as he thinks he might get away with it, he doesn't.

That's Achan's condemnation. Verse 25: “Joshua said, why did you bring trouble on us? The Lord brings trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned him with fire and stoned him with stones. We think, “Wow, that sounds really harsh,” doesn't it? But I think the problem that we see here is that Achan has been going down this road for some time. Achan has no desire to repent.

This is where we find in Scripture over and over again. What do we find? We're called over and over again, “Repent. Repent while there's time, do it now.” And the dangerous thing we play into when we're feeling really deserving is we say, “But I deserve this first. If I repent, that's going to take away what I deserve right now. So why not repent later? That doesn't want to be a killjoy and take away a little bit of fun for me, right? I'm so tired of that broccoli.”

This is a terrible example of marketers because I actually love broccoli. If they offered broccoli at McDonald's, I find it even more enticing, but whatever it is that we don't like, “I've been dealing with it and dealing with it. I don't want any more of it.” So we put off the repentance.

Achan says, “You know, this is going through and they're battling in Jericho. But there's a lot of nice stuff here, things I've never seen before, things that I've only imagined and dreamed about. I see them right here. Boy, wouldn't some of those things be nice.” He kind of entertains it. I imagine his mind for a little while. I doubt he took the very first thing he saw. We're not told that, but I sort of suspect.

In any case, he takes it, and they take something else, and he takes something else. And Achan goes from thinking, “I would really like these things, even though I'm not supposed to have them,” to now “I have those things.” But that's not where he's caught. Now he has the things. What's he gonna do with that?

See, I mentioned that Achan didn't miss the orientation. He knows that he's not supposed to take these things. What does he do? He hides them. I don't know exactly what he thinks he's going to do there. Does he think there's a statute of limitations on God's commandment about these things or something? I'm not really sure. I don't know if he knows. But he knows he did something wrong. He decides, “It's not going to do any harm. Maybe God will change his mind. And, you know, I would hate it if tomorrow I come out and the guy says, 'You don't need to give up any of the stuff that you collected in battle.' And then I'm really thinking about that beautiful, beautiful stuff I had. And I don't want to do that. So why don't I just bury it? I just set it aside.”

Have you ever done this with something that you know God doesn't want you to do? It's like he doesn't want you to think. You don't completely purge it; you don't pray directly, “God, help me to be free from this.” You just say, “Okay, I'm not going to do it for a little while, just over here. Won't do any harm. Then maybe if it turns out it's okay, I can return to it. If not, then I can deal with it later.” I think that's what Achan's doing here. So he buries it.

Then the Israelites go into battle. God's not with them because there's sin in the camp and they're not confronting it. They come back. I kind of imagine Achan goes back into his tent and looks at where he has the things concealed and thinks, “Hmm. Well, this guy didn't say who did it.”

It's not until it's inescapable. It's not until God puts the spotlight on him and says, “Achan's the one.” But finally, he decides to confess—when it's too late.

Yeah, it didn't seem that bad. Sort of reminds me of my little adventure with not sitting the last month and a half or so. As I've been thinking about this, I went and had my chiropractic appointment this week, and the doctor said I could do some light exercises to try to start moving towards getting better. That's exciting.

But we've been trying to piece together exactly when I initially injured myself, and I think it was when I slipped on ice on my driveway back in January when we had that ice storm and fell. It didn't really hurt that badly after a few minutes, and I was maybe a little stiffer. Then I did some other things that may have aggravated it. I'd get up off a chair and be leaning over a little bit, but then I'd eventually ease back up. “Oh, it's fine.” Do a few more things.

Finally, I remember we were shutting down the last week before I was out for several weeks with my back. Kathy's been trying to get down how to turn things off, and I was trying to show her something. I thought, “I'll just do it, and I'll show her.” I bent over and I knew I had done something. Then I got back up and thought, “Okay, maybe I'm okay.”

Maybe I'm okay. And then a couple days later, I was very much not okay.

You know that last something wasn't really much of anything. It was one of these circuit breakers over here. I was just going to show her where it was at. So I bent over to turn the switch. Very little thing. But at that point, it was too late.

It reminds me of that this week as the doctor was giving me these exercises to do. He said, “Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to do these things once a day initially, and then if at any point before you come back to see me again, you find that you've really aggravated and you're starting to hurt, I want you to call, and I'll get you in right away. I want to see you again because I don't want to make everything flare back up.”

Because compounding it, it's only going to make it worse.

And it can be a small ache. It had a small ache. He didn't. He saw things and coveted them. He compounded that by shoveling some snow. He shoveled some loot. He actually took it and fed that covetousness. Then he shoveled some more by trying to cover it up. He saw the damage that was happening because of his sin, and he continued to conceal it. He kept building and building until it seemed like a little thing to wait until the end of this process to confess in light of everything. But he reaches down to turn off that circuit breaker, and it's too late.

Why is that important for us to recognize? Because probably all of us are in the midst of battling—scratch that—not probably—all of us are in the midst of battling in some sense right now, right in this moment. And we think, “Well, I'm a little stiff. I don't really need to do anything.” God's saying, “I want you to call. I want you to pray. I want you to confess this now. Don't wait and assume that it's just a little thing that is going to stay a small ache.”

Assume it could get much worse and do it now before it irritates everything. Because with our hearts, as we irritate our hearts and our spiritual health declines, what we don't want to gamble with is when they become too hard-hearted. If the Holy Spirit is calling on you right now to repent of something, then repent of it now. If the Holy Spirit's calling on you to repent for the first time right now, repent right now. That's what Scripture calls us to.

We're not told exactly what would have happened if Achan had confessed at different points. I can't tell you exactly how it would have played out. But what I can tell you is that Achan has consequences to his sin that spread well beyond him because he chooses not to confess. A lot of times that's the case with our sin as well, where we choose not to confess. We just keep irritating that back injury.

We just ignore the little light on the dash saying that we need gas and try to go a little further. “It won't hurt. Just a little more. One more stop.” It sounds like you're calling roadside assistance, and you find out that there's a three-hour delay because too many people did that at the same time. You guys saying, “Don't do that. Call right now. Respond right now. Respond as God invites you to right now. Today is the day to respond.”

But Achan passed up all those different opportunities, too. Because in a moment where he could be feeding his relationship with God, he instead decided to feed his relationship with greed. He wanted these things, wanted to hold on to these things, and wanted to justify these things.

Where am I doing that? Where am I feeding something other than God? Where am I building a monument to myself rather than to God with my life? Those are the sorts of things God wants us to see and to confess.

Here's the thing: We don't have to have complete clarity on what we're doing in our lives to get there. What we need is the willingness to come before the Lord and pray and say, “Holy Spirit, convict me of my sin.” That can be kind of a scary thing at times until we recognize that God loves us. And as He does, He's not doing that out of anger toward us. He's not doing that to condemn us. He's doing that to save us, to purify us, and to make us exactly the men and women that God wants us to be.

Sometimes it's really obvious physical things like that, right? I have something that God's told me I shouldn't have, and I'm doing my best to conceal it because I don't want to give it up. But sometimes the sneaky snakes are wilder than that. Those kinds spring out at us.

“Oh, I want this. Okay, now I have this, and I know I shouldn't.” Sometimes it's much more subtle. That's why we've held off on verse 2 until now. I want us to take a look now at what Joshua does.

Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth Aven, east of Bethel, and said to them, “Go up and spy out the land.” And the men went up and spied out Ai. They returned to Joshua and said to him, “Do not have all the people go up, but let about two or three thousand men go up and attack Ai. Do not make the whole people toil up there, for they are few.” So about three thousand men went up from the people. And they fled before the men of Ai. The men of Ai killed about thirty-six of their men and chased them back before the gate as far as Shebarim and struck them at the descent. The hearts of the people melted and became as water.

What's going on here? They just had this amazing victory. It doesn't take a lot to add it up. You know, if we can defeat a mighty walled city like Jericho by playing music, why wear everyone out at once? Why not just take a few people up there? I think what it really boils down to is they started to believe they deserved success. They had achieved this.

One thing that's really notable here: they don't ask the Lord what they should do. They just go. Not only do they just go, they do something that the Lord has previously and in the future will guide them in doing, reducing the amount of troops to a certain number for a certain purpose. They just do it themselves. They say, “Well, we'll be generous. We can defeat them with 3,000. We don't need the whole horn section. We just do part of it.” They send a smaller army. They send it because, “We've already seen what we can do. We're okay.”

They get there, and they start dying. They're the ones being routed out. But they believe they deserved it.

Now, this gets to be the tricky part of the passage because we might say, “Well, the reason they aren't successful is because Achan sinned. He took these things, and why should 36 people die? Why should the whole army be defeated and humiliated? Why should that happen if it's just a consent?”

People have wrestled with this. Some of us just said, “Well, there's a whole host of different sins going on. Achan's is the one we're told about.” Well, that's true. You had a giant encampment, the entire people of Israel. Was there other sin? Yes, there was other sin. But I don't think that's really the point.

Some have suggested, “Well, probably Achan didn't manage to conceal all of this loot. Some people knew. Maybe a lot of people knew. Maybe it even got around to the leadership. 'Oh, you know, Achan probably has some stuff back there. Unless I talk about it, we keep it quiet, God won't know.'”

Did anyone else know? We're not told. It seems conceivable, but I don't think that's it either.

I really believe when you look at this, the heart of it is that God has been instructing them step by step by step, and here they go in, and they don't ask the Lord first if there's anything they need to do first. They don't ask the Lord if there's things they need to confess first. They don't ask the Lord to guide them on how many troops to send. They simply assume, based on past performance, they can do it again. And in that, they're revealing a complete overconfidence in their own strength.

From Joshua to his advisors, they're all saying, “You know, we have this under control.” The problem is they aren't the ones who had it under control to begin with.

I include Joshua in this. He's a great leader in Scripture. He's a man who has many laudable qualities as he seeks to follow the Lord. This is not one of them. I include him because of the way he responds to the Lord when this happens.

Because what's interesting is that he cries out in the exact same kind of language that the Israelites did last week when we looked at them complaining they didn't have water and in other stories of their time in the wilderness. He doesn't sound like Moses; he sounds like the people who got mad at Moses. “Why, God, did you do this? Don't you realize what you've done, God?”

The problem is Joshua has had spiritual success here. He's leading these people well and will lead them well again, but in this moment he is so convinced, I believe, of his ability to lead. The one thing he really needs to do in this moment, which has come before the Lord, he doesn’t do it. Because you know what? If he'd come and prayed before the Lord before they went to Ai, God would have revealed what was going on before anyone died.

So there's a sneakier sin here: just not focusing on where our strength comes from and assuming we have things under control. Whether it's our own sin or the sins of others in our family or in our church or other communities, we’re not discerning to figure out if we are actually cleared for takeoff. If God is ready for us to go because we’re not actually coming before Him and asking.

I thought over the weekend that some people, you know how it’s become a joke? It’s become a meme that you have that tool in Facebook if you're in an area where there's a natural disaster. You can mark yourself safe. Now, when other things happen, people take a graphic and they put it on it. One of them this week was this:

“Mark say from internet pastors today.”

If you're part of our online church family, you know this has nothing to do with being part of Little Hill or anything. But what's it referring to? It's referring to the two very notable figures both had huge scandals break out this past week. I'm not going to name names, but you may have heard.

Notably, they have very little in common with each other. One of them is part of the ex-evangelical movement, a leftist movement that tries to hold onto some evangelicalism but spends most time attacking evangelicals for being too conservative. The other pastor is part of the far right of the evangelical movement who has spent some of his time trying to argue that Hitler wasn't really as bad as he seemed and some of this stuff, but managed to get a fairly large following.

Both of them, tens of thousands of people followed both figures. Both spent the last few years on the internet attacking other pastors and why they're bad. Some of their criticisms have been true. Some people they pointed to and things they've done are really bad.

I think what you see in part here is they started to think they deserved a following. You can see both are sort of far off on their respective corners. Both fell into a common sin: they started to think they deserved it. So they fed their own biases and became more extreme and crueler in what they said. The scandals have broken out amongst people saying these people are not exhibiting godly fruit that one should see in spiritual leaders. Investigators have come in. It's been a huge mess this week. That led to someone joking, “Mark say from internet pastors,” but the point is there are these people who get huge followings online and start to think they deserve it.

As I read that, I thought, well, that's really easy to throw rotten fruit and vegetables at the celebrity pastors. But what they're doing isn't that different from what every one of us does. What I do wherever something works, I start to think I deserve God's blessing in that area. That's what Joshua does.

You don't have to be some really crazy person on the internet to land in this place. Those at least we back away from initially and say, “Whoa, these people are a little crazy.” And then it's sort of amazing it takes something like this for more people to finally say, “Hey, these people are crazy.”

We put on a nice veneer. We put on a respectable presentation, and people think, “Oh yeah.” Look in the mirror and say, “Oh yeah, I deserve respect. I deserve success. Yeah, I'll share God's word and people should hear it and it should be fruitful.” Do we stop as we do that and say, “God, help me to see where I'm blind because of my sin and I'm not actually revealing what I need to reveal and teaching what I need to teach? Lord, soften my heart in those places where I don't want to talk about things because they come too close to where I'm uncomfortable.”

You don't have to be standing behind a pulpit or have an internet following for this because each of us has those opportunities. We speak into the lives of others, and are we willing to allow God to come and confront those places where we're overconfident in our own abilities, and we're not bringing all of the strength that the Lord's given us because we're too busy thinking that it's us doing it and we're looking, “Well, it worked so well last time. I don't even need to try.”

A lot of times we come blind to this because we say, “But what I'm doing, I'm doing it for God.” It's so easy to mask over what we're doing. We put the dirt over the pit where we buried the things that aren't supposed to be ours and pull the dirt over and pound it down and say, “Oh look, it looks nice and clean and good.” Now I'm just going to stand here on my holy—not hill; I got it flat, right? I know how to hide the evidence.

It's smooth and flat as if I never dug anything, and I'm going to stand on my flat space and be righteous. “I'm doing it for God, right? I'm just cleaning up for God.”

God wants us to actually have that pit there uncovered and confess it. Because then we're saying, “I can't get it right for you. God, I need your strength.” Notice the difference in how Moses approaches the Lord from what we've been talking about.

When the people are in rebellion, Moses implores the Lord and says, “Oh Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent, 'Did He bring them out to kill them in the mountains and consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people, because remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, 'I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.'”

I might say, well, that sounds like what Joshua says, right? You were talking about it. We summarized it. We didn't read all of it, but Joshua says, “Lord, you know what? You don't want the people to see your people fall and become a laughing stock. What's that going to do for your name if people think that you can't even get us through here?”

I think if Joshua… praise that. I think he believes everything he's saying. I think he really does think he's trying to defend God. But the problem is he's missing the point. He doesn't need to defend God. He doesn't understand how much he needs God.

See, the difference here with Moses is that Moses is sinful; we talked about that last week. But Moses comes before God and says, “Here's the reason I'm asking this. It's not because you need us to make your name great or to go fight your battles. God, it's because you promised you're going to take your people into the land, and I know you are a God of your promises.”

Notice the difference there. Subtle but important. Joshua sounds pious, “What's going to happen to your name?” But what he's saying is, “We're adding something to your name. We're making your name worthwhile. We're making it so people are going to want to know you.” What Moses says is, “You're so great, God, given us this promise, and I'm looking to your promise, and I know that you are the God who does what He promises.”

That's the difference between us adding something to God and us just recognizing how much we need God. Moses doesn't say, “You need us to do something.” He just says, “I know your promises are true.”

Joshua 7:10: The Lord said to Joshua, “Get up. Why have you fallen on your face? Israel has sinned. They have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them. They have taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings. Therefore, the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies because they have become devoted for destruction. I will be with you no more unless you destroy the devoted things from among you.”

See, Joshua says, “God, why weren’t you providing what we needed? We’ve been fighting for you. Yes, we've said some loony things on Israel X. We were defending Pharaoh and saying he wasn’t really such a bad guy after all. Now we know that’s nonsense. But why didn’t you do this?”

God says, “It’s not that I didn’t do this, that you haven’t been coming to me. You’ve been holding on to sin instead of onto me.”

Is anyone else inclined to find some reason that it isn't you? It isn't me? As I was thinking about this in preparation for this message, I thought about a time that I was probably, oh right about here in a chair. Those were the days, as in a chair, and I was sitting next to Jason, who just confirmed to me today, yes, he is going to be back here this summer. I can't wait, yeah?

We were going to film a podcast, and I can't remember exactly the reason why, but we decided we were going to wear faith tree t-shirts for that. We have some in the back, and I have one I keep back here in case I need it. Jason didn't have one yet, so I’d gotten one of our extra ones and given it to him, and he had it on. I thought, well, okay, I need to put my faith tree t-shirt on as well.

So I go back and grab the t-shirt and put it on. It ends about right here, and it's up to about here. I thought, I don't know what's wrong with this shirt. Last time I put it on, it felt a whole lot better than this. I don't think I ate that much tonight. I took it off and put it back on. Maybe I didn't put it on quite right. I thought maybe I’d put it over a dress shirt. Maybe just too many layers.

I took it off, put it back on again. I just don’t know what's wrong with the shirt. Now I have my… It’s bad. It’s bad. I finally take it off again, look at it, and realize there's nothing wrong with the shirt. I picked up the wrong shirt. I have a size small. Doing a fine job. It's just not on the right person.

What was my impulse? “What's wrong with this shirt? Did it shrink? You know, it got too hot in here this summer and it shrunk the shirts? What's wrong with it? Or is my other shirt messing it up? What's wrong with it?”

Joshua was looking at this battle that hasn't gone right, and the shirt's up to here, and he's thinking, “God, why did you shrink our shirts?” God says, “I didn't shrink your shirts. You put on the wrong shirt. You put on the shirt of your own confidence, of your own ability.”

You've been thinking you deserve success. Achan’s been thinking he deserves loot. Here's the thing you need to understand: you can't deserve and serve at the same time. God's calling them to serve. He's calling us to serve. Are we going to serve, or are we going to feel like we deserve? Because as long as we think that we deserve, we're going to keep putting on that shirt and saying, “I know if I just stretch it, it will finally fit.”

And we say, “Wait, I don’t deserve it.” God graciously takes the shirt off for us and says, “Here, let me hand you one that actually fits.” Because you know, in our own strength, our shirts never fit. They're always too small. Our strength is way, way too small.

God takes that shirt off and hands us a shirt of grace and puts it on us, one that’s just right, and says, “Here, have this instead.”

Here's one of the remarkable things, I think, as we look at this story, especially if it comes up right after the Battle of Jericho. Even if you consider where the commandment that Achan breaks is in the story, it’s with an instruction to leave someone behind, do not destroy her or her family: the prostitute Rahab and her persons. They're attached. Guys, don't leave her behind. She's going to come with.

Here's a man who's part of the people of God, someone who seems like he deserves to be there, certainly more than Rahab. What's the difference? Just focusing on deserving to be there. He's tugging on that shirt.

It struck me so deeply. I was reading a commentary on this passage, and the commentator said, “If you look at those two families, look at where they were looking.” Achan looked at some stuff. “This is what I need.” He brought judgment upon himself.

Rahab looked to the promise of a God she didn't really even know yet. She just heard of Him, and she said, “This is what I really need,” and God rescued her.

What happened? What's the lasting legacy? Achan’s lasting legacy is a pile of stones left there to remind all future generations of the condemnation that comes when you turn and trust in your own self and your own greed and your own strength and your own power and your own success and pride.

What's Rahab's monument? She's in the genealogy of the Savior. Two lasting legacies: one’s in the Savior’s line, and one’s a pile of rocks.

For each of us, we have the choice: are we going to say “I deserve,” or are we going to say, “Here’s one I want to serve?” Here's the beauty of the gospel. Here's the beauty of what we find from the beginning to the end of Scripture: God looks at us as those who don't deserve, and when we serve Him, He gives us what we don't deserve.

Will you pray with me, please?

Father, we come before you as those who truly don't deserve, and we pray, Lord, that you'd help us to see those places where we think we do. You help us set those aside. Look to you instead, that we would be like Rahab. Not that we are perfect and righteous; our sins are written; they're etched in the pages for all eternity. But so is her salvation.

Lord, would you help us to look to You, to serve You, to turn to You rather than focusing on our alleged deserving, which ends up coming up empty. In that, would you help us to experience the joy of actually trusting in the one who provides everything we need and who will always be with us. We pray in Jesus' precious name. Amen.

Thank you, Chris.

We have gluten-free in the middle and regular gluten communion on the outside.

As we think about this table, here's the thing that we need to say clearly: none of us ever deserve to come and have a meal with God.

And so it can sound kind of weird when you come into church and we say, “Now, if you haven't believed in Jesus yet, if you aren't yet a confessing believer in Jesus, if you haven't been baptized, we don't want you to take this.” And you say, “Wait a second, I thought you said it wasn't about deserving?” It's not.

It's about turning to the one who's there, that Savior that came in that line of Rahab, came into the world: God came into the world and saved us.

As we look to Him, we don't deserve, but He does, and He invites us to that table.

When we say that, it's not to cast you away and say, don't come. It's to say, turn and recognize, just like us, none of us deserve this, but if you trust in Jesus, you are welcome to this table. And make tonight and next night, if you haven't already, that you do trust in Him.

If you're online, grab one of our online church family members in the chat. We would love to pray with you. And of course, here we'd love to pray with you as well. Come to know Jesus, then come back next week and celebrate with us by taking this meal that none of us deserve, but the only one who ever could. He is the one that gives it to us.

So it was on the night that He was betrayed. Jesus took the bread, and He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise, after supper, He took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you for the remission of sins. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this…