Pastor's Page: Sin in the Camp (Josh 7)

Human encounters with God are frequently detailed in scripture. They all assume the holiness of God, often with dramatic emphasis, and occasionally with fire and fury to demonstrate God’s zeal for holiness and his fierce hatred of sin. When Adam and Eve first sinned, they hid themselves from God’s fierce anger as they heard him approaching in a storm (this is the meaning of the traditional translation “cool of the day”). When Moses encountered God in the burning bush, he was told to remove his sandals from his feet, for the ground is holy; Joshua had a similar experience just before the battle of Jericho (Josh 5:15). When the Israelites gathered at Mount Sinai on their journey from Egypt to Canaan, they encounter God on a mountain blazing with fire, in darkness, gloom and storm, to a site so fearful that Moses himself exclaimed, “I am trembling with fear (Heb 12:18-21). When Isaiah saw his vision of God high and exalted, seated on a throne and surrounded by seraphim, he despaired of life itself, crying, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isa 6:5).

The ferocity of God’s holiness is often downplayed in our world and even in our churches today. We tolerate sin within the church too easily, often in the name of not hurting someone’s feelings. Of course, one should be circumspect and respectful in our interpersonal relationships, but our first concern should be God’s holiness and the holiness of his people, the Church. Peter wrote, “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’”

Because of the world’s concerted effort to ignore sin and to redefine it to make holiness irrelevant, many Christians have lost the sense of urgency in pursuing holiness. Not only do we fail to search our hearts for unconfessed sin, but we often embrace sin, as if we think there are no consequences to living in sin.

The story of Achan lurches us back to reality. God is holy, and his holiness is a consuming fire that does not tolerate sin. True, the plunder of Jericho that was to be dedicated to God was vast, and in the grand scheme of things, the few items that Achan stole may have seemed inconsequential. Yet God calls for his people to be serious about keeping his commands without compromise. He calls us to wash our hands and purify our hearts, and to share his holy hatred for sin. Let us then be earnest and “touch not the unclean thing” (2 Cor 6:17).

Pastor's Page: Spies Like Us

Pastor’s Take-away*

Spies Like Us:

How God Transforms Bunglers into Competent Kingdom Agents

The mission to spy out Jericho was dubious, at best. Why invest in intel and put lives at risk when God had already and in no uncertain terms assured them that the mission was his to win? Accordingly, the decision to send spies to Jericho was an indicator of their lack of trust in God and their presumption of their own competency: “Let’s help God give us this gift!” We might recall that the last spy mission achieved nothing but an extra forty years of wandering in the wilderness. We’re not surprised then, despite the emphasis on secrecy, to read that the king learned exactly where to find the spies the very day they entered the city gates. The mission was in jeopardy from the get-go.

The spies found themselves in a precarious situation with the king’s men busting in on them at the prostitute’s house. No doubt the spies recognized Rahab’s house as a strategic location for garnering intel, not only because it was built into the city wall, but also because secrets tend to be spilt there. With the doors bursting open, the spies had little recourse but to trust the prostitute Rahab’s urging to hide themselves on the roof under the flax.

Not willing to trust God to begin with, the spies’ faith would now be especially tested, for they had to put their lives in the hands of one of their enemies—a Canaanite. Well, worse than that, a Canaanite woman. While Israelite women, such as Miriam, Deborah, Esther, Susanna, and Judith were depicted as wise and competent, trusting a Canaanite woman must have been particularly humiliating for them. And this was no ordinary Canaanite woman, but a prostitute—someone who was at the bottom of Canaanite social order. They must truly have feared the worst for their lives.

This was just the beginning of the spies’ bungling. They had been told to be very careful to keep everything written in the book of the law, but to save themselves, the prostitute had to lie for them, breaking the ninth commandment. Not only so, but the spies brokered an exception to God’s mandate that all the inhabitants of Jericho were to be killed, compromising God’s command in exchange for their own lives.

They walked into Jericho full of self-confidence but had to scamper out with tails tucked. They learned nothing of strategic import—nothing about weaknesses in the wall or troop strength, etc. They returned home reporting that they were found out immediately, they were rescued by a Canaanite prostitute, and that they pledged in God’s name not to kill Rahab’s family.

The one thing they learned was that Jericho was all in great fear of the Israelites and their God. The spies also learned in the coming days that God is faithful and God is competent. The walls of Jericho came tumbling down when God’s people trusted in him.

*This weekly blog is designed for the Sunday Bulletin. If you need filler for your newsletter or bulletin, feel free to take it, with due attribution.