Joshua 7 | Wayfarer

Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions.
Joshua 7:11 (NIV)

There is a legendary family story that happened when our daughter, Madison, was only about four or five years old. On my way out of the house to run an errand, I heard our older daughter, Taylor, screaming in the backyard. I walked around the back of the house to see Madison hitting Taylor repeatedly on the head with a whiffle ball bat.

I yelled at Madison to stop and immediately scooped her up in my arms in parental frustration. I decided to put her in the car seat and give her a talking to while I ran my errand. I forcefully and sternly told her that hitting someone on the head with a baseball bat was a naughty thing that you should never do. From the car seat, Maddy softly said:

“But, daddy, how do you know?”

I told her that she could hurt someone by hitting them on the head with a baseball bat.

“But, daddy, how do you know?”

My already angry voice rose to a new decibel level, and I told her that I know because it has happened. I told her that people have died by getting hit in the head with a baseball bat!

“But, daddy, how do you know?”

Now I was really frustrated. “BECAUSE IT WAS IN THE NEWS!” I shouted at her.

“Daddy?” Maddy asked.

“WHAT?!?!” I replied.

“Grandma said you can’t believe everything you hear in the news.“

Ironically, just as I finished typing this, our adult daughter Madison called me. That stubborn, willful little child bent on vigorously defending her act of assault and battery on her big sister grew into a lovely, well-behaved adult. But that was the point of my sometimes being a stern and disciplinary parent. A four-year-old doesn’t always understand the larger implications of their actions and, if I want them to learn some of the basic behavioral rules of life, I had to demonstrate the hard side of love.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that what God is doing with the Hebrew tribes is showing them a different way. Ultimately, God reveals this eternal vision through Jesus and His followers. Everything and everyone is connected in love that can’t be explained or understood in human terms. Everything that flowed from the Creator flows back to the Creator and the only word we have for it is holy, and that human term doesn’t do it justice.

I’ve come to believe that the entire Great Story is like one lifetime. From humanity’s birth in Genesis to our death and resurrection in Revelation. As I read Joshua, I have to remember that humanity is in the toddler stage of history and God is trying to explain some basic rules of Life to His children. God is saying,

“Everything in this world that you think is yours actually belongs to me. I love you and will gladly share all good things with you. but first, you have to give up any claim on it. Oh, and realize that when you act disobediently out of pride and selfishness it negatively affects everyone in the family, including me. It’s all connected.”

In today’s chapter, God deals pretty harshly with a man from the tribe of Judah who disobeyed God’s command and took plunder for himself and then hid it in his tent. That was the way all the other human tribes operated. Conquest was about plunder, power, and pillaging. “I’m teaching my children a different way. It’s something you don’t quite comprehend at this age, but someday you will grow to understand.”

In the quiet this morning, I find myself thinking about my own failures and shortcomings in terms of how they affect everything and everyone to whom I’m connected. I enjoy the vantage point of living in the adult era of human history, but I observe we’re still struggling to fully understand the way Jesus came to teach us we’re all connected, and how we treat one another is how we treat God. I’m still learning the lesson. The way I think, behave, and relate affects the whole. I’m still working on it, and I’ll continue to do so until the end, just as humanity does the same thing on a larger scale. The promise is that I will one day fully experience what God has been trying to reveal to us.

Until then, I press on one day at a time, endeavoring to follow the way Jesus shows me. One day, I’ll experience it fully.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

And Achan answered Joshua, “It is true; I am the one who sinned against the Lord God of Israel. This is what I did: when I saw among the spoil a beautiful mantle from Shinar, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, then I coveted them and took them. They now lie hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”
Joshua 7:20-21 (NRSV)

The story of Achan is fascinating. God miraculously delivers the city of Jericho to Joshua and his big band of trumpet players. The walls of the city come tumbling down and the nation of Israel plunders the city with one simple rule: don’t take any of the pagan idols or things used in the worship of the idols and false gods of the people of Jericho. Does this remind you of anything? (Hint: “You can eat of any tree of the garden except for that one in the middle.”)

Sure enough, a man name Achan takes some forbidden spoil for himself in direct disobedience to the order (that would be calls sin) and then hides it by burying it in his tent (that would be called shame). God clues Joshua in that someone has disobeyed and, eventually, Achan is confronted and confesses his sin. Achan and his entire family are stoned to death to rid the nation of sin (that would be called a “scapegoat”).

When I was younger, I always saw the story of Achan from the idealistic view of the majority. “Achan, how could you ruin it for the whole nation? Dude, you knew the rules! How simple was it just to do the right thing? What an idiot!”

As I have progressed in my life journey I have increasingly come to terms with a simple fact: I am Achan. I am the child who, at the age of five, stole all the envelopes with money in them off my grandparent’s Christmas tree and buried them in my suitcase. I am the one who is guilty of lying, and cheating, and stealing, and breaking my word, and being disobedient to God and my loved ones. Not just once, mind you, but over and over and over again. If I point the finger at Achan, there are three pointing back at me.

In the context of the Great Story, Achan serves as a thematic waypoint. Achan hearkens us back to Eden and reminds us that the problem of sin has not been dealt with. Achan reminds us, in the moment, of one of the meta-themes of God’s great story: one little sin taints the whole. As Jesus put it, one smidgen of yeast affects the whole loaf. Achan reflects our fallen human nature’s penchant to blame one for the failure of the whole, and a Cubs fan need only to hear the name Bartman to realize that human nature has not changed across time. Finally, the story of Achan is a foreshadow of the solution God will provide when He will send His one and only Son to be the One who will die the death that idol stealing and Christmas money stealing criminals deserve. Jesus will be the sacrificial lamb and make atonement for the whole.

This morning I am once again humbled by an honest reflection of my own shortcomings. I am thinking about Achan and accepting that I am him. Throw the rocks, man. I deserve it. I am once again grateful for that which we have just celebrated: God becoming man to die for my sin, to take my shame on His shoulders, and then to rise from the grave to give grace, hope, forgiveness, and redemption to one such as me.