Dennid Edwards
Joshua when he took over from Moses on Moses’s death, made some mistakes. Moses was a man who spent time with God. He had gone to the mountain and had come down with something to say. Moses spent time with God. He spent forty days on the mountain with God. And then another forty days. He was used to spending time with God. He had spent forty years in the wilderness and had learned He needed to spend time with God. Moses knew his work was not more important than his relationship with God. His family and his friends, his hobbies, his personal interests were not more important than his spending time with God. Moses spent time with God, and he had something to say when he came down from listening to the Lord.
That’s the way we should all be. As God’s people, we need to spend time with God. We need to spend time with the Lord in prayer for our families, for our loved ones, for our neighbours, for our politicians, for the state of the world, for Godly leaders. We should be praying and asking God to raise up righteous leaders in all aspects of life. We need to be praying. Failure in life is often the result of not praying. Or of having sin in the camp and therefore, losing God’s blessing.
Finally, when Moses died, Joshua took over the command of the people. They cross the Jordan River into the promised land and Joshua wins the victory at Jericho. But Joshua wasn’t as used to spending time with the Lord as Moses had been. Nevertheless, with the Lord’s help, he wins the battle at Jericho. However, there’s another little town not too far away named Ai. Joshua’s counselors suggest, “It’s a little town, it’s really small. It only has a few thousand people, so it’s nothing in comparison to Jericho. So we don’t need to bother taking the whole army. Just send around 2-3 thousand men. They’ll be able to take it.” Joshua listens to their counsel and does what they suggest. However, God’s word doesn’t tell us that Joshua inquired of the Lord, like we saw that Moses did. Joshua didn’t stop to hear from the Lord until after the fact. What happen when the children of Israel went out to the battle against Ai, those 2-3 thousand men, which should have been enough to conquer the city, got frighten. They fled from the inhabitance of Ai and thirty-six of them were killed. All of city of Ai come out after them and scared them away. And yet, it was only a little town.
All of Israel were astonished, “What happened? Where is the Lord? We were able to conquer the great city of Jericho, but not this little one?” Everyone knew that the presence of God was not with them. They soon found out why. Joshua finally gets down on his knees and cried out to the Lord in prayer, “Lord, what happened.” And the Lord told him, “There’s sin in the camp.” Somebody had sinned. The Lord had commanded the children of Israel that when they conquered Jericho that no one should take any of the spoil. The spoil, the silver and gold, etc. was to go to the common pot. The spoil was to go to the common pot, it was for the community. It was to be taken into the treasury of the nation and not any one individually should take anything.
But, a man named Achan stoll a wedge of silver and a Babylonian type dress and hid it in his tent. When Joshua prays and the Lord reveals to him that there’s sin in the camp. “Get everyone together and I’ll show you who it is.” Joshua called for the chief representative of each of the twelve tribes of Israel to come before him. The Lord was going to show him which tribe was the one where the sin was found. The tribe of Judah was chosen. They went through the different families within the tribe and eventually came to the family of Zerah and one of his sons named Achan was chosen. Joshua talks with Achan. And Achan confesses to the crime explaining he had stolen a wedge of silver and the Babylonia dress. Achan tells Joshua where he had hid it in his tent. Joshua sends some men to find it. They bring back the wedge of silver and the Babylonia dress.
The Lord told Joshua that he needed to set an example, so that all men might fear before the Lord. Joshua commands the people to take Achan and his wife and his sons and his daughters and his cattle and all his things and bring them to a valley, which became known as the Valley of Achan. The tribes of Israel stone Achan and his family to death. They were stoned to death in the Valley of Achan.
Apostle Paul tells us, “All these things happen unto them for examples.” Because of what happened, the people had the fear of the Lord. “Thou shalt not steal.” The spoil belonged to the community. We need to listen to what the Lord says and not have any secret sins. If we think we can have secret sin in our life and still have God’s blessing, we’re mistaken. We can’t. It’s a lesson for us to learn.
Maybe we should be asking the Lord why we don’t have His blessing on our lives. Maybe each one of us needs to be trying to radicate any secret sins that we have. Samuel tells us that he would be sinning by not praying for the flock that God had made him the overseer. Samuel says, “God forbid that I should sin in ceasing to pray for you.” If I don’t pray for you, I’m sinning. How many of us have that attitude that if we miss our time in prayer, we are sinning. We can go a week long and maybe we have a little time of prayer on Sunday, or on another day of the week, if we even have that. We never think we are sinning by our lack.
Maybe our whole society has gone off keel and we are wondering why we are having these problems. The presence of God maybe is not with us. Maybe, here in Portugal, we are having a less difficult time than some of the other nations, because we have a bit more fear of the Lord here? The fear of the Lord, the obedience to the Lord gives us a bit more of the Lord’s presence. Maybe we are not so blatently antichrist as some of the other countries. We certainly have an antichrist government here in Europe in the way certain laws have been made.
The important thing is that we spend time with God in prayer. We should be spending time praying for our families, praying for our children, praying for our government. And the other lesson we learn from today’s study is that we need to clean up any secret sin in our lives. God’s presence can not go with us, if we have sin in our lives. The children of Israel lost the battle because of the sin of one man. But Paul tells us that all these things happen to them as examples to teach us these lessons for today. But we are never going to learn the lessons, if we don’t spend time alone with God, if we don’t spend time reading God’s word. If we throw the Bible aside and think it’s just a normal book, we’re mistaken. To some people it may be a normal book. But believe me, I read these two stories this morning and they spoke to me. They spoke to me better than any other book I could find. Maybe some other books can speak to my mind, but the Bible really spoke to my heart today. I hope you got the lesson from it, too.
Lord, we pray for each of our loved ones and friends today. Put your Spirit upon them. If they have any secret sins, help them each to root them out. Help them each to spend the time they need with You. Help each one to go to the mountain and hear Your voice. Help them to get their Bibles out and as they read, speak to each one. As they read, speak to them. Help each one to follow Your commandments. Let Your word speak to them, communicate with them, so that they obey the voice of the word. Help them to follow that still small voice of conscience. In Jesus’s name we pray.
If we do these things, we’ll be better for it. Our country will be better for it. Our families will be better for it. We will becoming men and woman of God. We will be a positive influence on others. Ultimately God wanted the Israelites to be an influence on the world and spread the message. But they failed miserably. It wasn’t until the Jews received Jesus that they finally realized what they were suppose to have been doing. They were suppose to be an example of a people with God in their midst, a people who loved God above everything else. It was something that each and every one of them could do. “To love the Lord their God with their whole heart, and their whole, soul, and with their whole strength, and with their whole mind.” It is still the mission of every true man and woman of God today. Our mission is to teach others how to have a relationship with Jesus and God. That’s our job. It’s the most important thing we each have to do. God wants us to be a witness. The most important object we need to maintain, is our own relationship with God. We need to keep God first in our lives.
He says, “This is the first and greatest commandment, Thou shall love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole strength, with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.” That’s the first commandment. So we need to keep God in first place. Apostle Peter says, “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.” Why? “So that you’ll be ready to give an answer to any man that asks you the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” If we put God first, we are going to spend time with God and if we spend time with God, we will learn how to answer the doubts and skeptism of the unbelievers.
But if we don’t spend time with God, if we don’t love the Lord, our lives are never going to amount to much. In fact we may very well be washed away by all the doubts and criticisms that are being spewed out into the world today. We may very well be overcome with doubts about our faith and our Christian heritage. We may very well end up believing the lies that are being spewed out. Why? Because we didn’t spend time with the God. If we spend time with God, we will be able to stand up for Jesus. If we spend time with God, we will hear His voice. We will become pillars of faith in the face of life’s storms. We will be able to face the waves, or better yet, the tsunami of intellectualism and unbelief that is crashing down against God and all that is godly. May God help us to stand in the gap and become the men and woman of God He wants us to be.
To go back and read the first part of the lesson click HERE
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