Intro: The Fall of Jericho and “the Ban”

This narrative picks up after the miraculous fall of Jericho. This first conquest dramatically showcased the power of God and showed that God intended to give the whole land to Israel. Jericho is a type of the whole conquest: God gives the first and strongest of the Canaanite cities to Israel with a flourish as token of the whole land. But this first-fruits of the conquest were to be given back to God. Everything was under the ban: all the inhabitants were to be killed and the city was to be burned and the precious metals were to be saved for God. This is a new flood, sweeping away the iniquity of man and cleansing the place of God’s habitation. But two things are spared from the ban, one lawfully and the other unlawfully. The first is Rahab, preserved by faith in the ark of her house, and the second is treasure, purloined by Achan, a man of Judah.

What did Achan take? A Babylonian cloak, about a pound of gold and about four pounds of silver. We’re not told what he was thinking other than that he “coveted” it and buried it. There are two reasonable options: 1) This was a crime of passion, a “Want shiny thing” moment. Or 2) A cool calculation for self-advancement. But either way, it was a blatant contradiction of the ban, a gross trespass against God’s holiness, a profound act of ingratitude, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the covenant.

Presumption (7:1-5)

After the glorious victory at Jericho, Joshua next tackles the much easier target of Ai. The names of the places are ominous. Ai means “Ruin” and it’s near Beth-aven, the house of iniquity. “Then the posse rode into Devil’s Gulch, just west of the No-Hope Saloon.” And Joshua has no idea that there has been a violation of the ban. He either presumes that the people are still holy or that God is with them regardless. Either way, he sent them into battle when they were unfit. The application for fathers is clear: know the state of your household. Joshua assumed all was well, but it wasn’t. Do not likewise.

The conquest of Ai should have taken about 20 minutes, including travel time. The people are flush with miraculous victory and they are riding high. Imagine if your high school basketball team found themselves facing the Lakers, and then pulled off a win. Think of the exhilaration. And then the next game is against Nowheresville High with a student body of 42. You would send 5 guys, tops, probably without the coach. And then imagine that they get thrashed by Nowheresville High. Everything about Jericho screams “God is with Israel!” And everything about Ai says, “Not anymore.” 36 dead, the hearts of the people melted, like the men of Jericho.  

Crisis (7:6-15)

This is a complete crisis. Every move Israel has made up to this point is predicated on the assumption that God is giving them the land. If that’s not true, then what is? Joshua despairs falls on his face before the Ark, he and all the elders, and they lie there for hours. Finally Joshua says basically, “What gives?” He almost says that it would have been better to die in Egypt. This is a national crisis, but I think you can see clearly that it is a personal crisis as well. Imagine being the Commander who took Jericho without losing a man. Your name would be a thing of awe, spoken by Kings’ counselors in dread whispers. And now, zilch. You wiff at Ai. Joshua’s concern for God’s name in vs. 9 comes after two more personal items. And the Lord’s response to him is striking: “Get up, fix the problem. Do your job.” Maybe this is a crude comparison, but it’s almost like Joshua and the elders are a wayward boyfriend coming up to his girl, with a big red lipstick mark on his cheek, saying, “Sweetheart, Sugardumpling, I just don’t know what’s come between us.”

But in His kindness, God gives it to him straight. (vs. 11) Notice the total disregard for the individuality of the members of the tribe of Naphtali who were innocent. Achan’s sin is Israel’s sin. Achan’s sin means all Israel is unfit for the presence of God. One man’s sin dooms everyone. 36 dead and all Israel stranded without the Lord’s presence. But in His kindness, God allows for national repentance.

Repentance (7:16-26)

And to his credit, Joshua mans up. Early in the morning he seeks the Lord’s guidance in finding the sin. And the Lord miraculously reveals Achan as the troubler. This is comforting, because it shows the kindness of God in correcting and restoring His people. Imagine if He did not. And He does the same for us; He reveals to us our sin that we may repent of it. We ought to be in the habit of praying, with David, often, “Lord, search me and try me!” Sin robs you of joy. If you lack joy, search out any unconfessed sin. And don’t just navel gaze, rather present yourself to the Lord for inspection.

Somehow the Lord reveals Achan to be the man, first by selecting his tribe, then his clan, then his household. And then Joshua urges him to confess his sin and by so doing to give glory to God. And to his credit, Achan does. He presents with no excuses the sin he committed. And then, and this seems horrible to us at first, every member of his family, his cows, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent–everything–is taken down to the valley of Trouble (Achor) and stoned and burned with fire. Everything under his headship is destroyed. His socks had to be burned.

What are we to make of this? First, as an aside, Achan was a man of wealth already. His stealing the goods was not a poor man allured by the shiny stuff, but rather it was a rich man wanting an advantage over his brothers. But second, consider the pettiness of Achan’s sin, when laid out before all Israel, including the families of those 36 men who died at Ai thinking that the Lord was with them. The whole conquest of the land is in jeopardy because you wanted a few stack of cash, and the result is destruction of you and your whole legacy. Third, Achan’s disregard for the ban is striking. In the destruction of Jericho, apparently no one else took anything. Everyone else revered God as holy and His word as binding. Everyone else offered Jericho back to God in thanksgiving and obedience. And Achan said, “Sweet, a chance to nab some swag.” The punishment seems way over the top to us, but look at it the other way, is any violation of the Law of God a small deal? Is not the holiness of God the most fundamental principle of creation? The smallest sacrilege against an infinitely holy God is infinitely damnable. The thing that is ludicrous is that God would make people holy too. On the surface, the unreasonable thing seems to be the ban and the severity of Achan’s punishment, but no, the unreasonable thing was the miraculous overthrow of Jericho and the presence of God with these smelly people in the first place. That Achan would refuse to give back to God the firstfruits of the conquest is profound ingratitude.

But we do the same thing, do we not? We disregard the miraculous blessings of God in the past and consider only our own “rights” and “needs” in the present. Folly. Blind folly. It could look a thousand ways, but doesn’t it always come back to that basic voice that says, “I deserve this”? We say, “God is wrong to require so much of me, so I’m going to carve out this space where I take what’s mine.” And the sin of Achan didn’t happen in a vacuum. How long had he indulged discontented thoughts? How long had he cherished visions of his own advancement? How long had he presumed upon the holiness of God? I hope that as you hear this, your mind goes to that thing in your life: The dragon you have hidden in the basement and kept small and contained. You know you shouldn’t keep it, but it’s so small. Nobody will ever know. False. It’s small today. But if you let it be, and if you feed it occasionally, someday it will break out and grab you by the throat and shake you like a rag doll. If you leave that thing alive, someday you’ll be standing in the presence of all Israel with 36 men dead and looking at the destruction of everything you have. 

Getting up again (8:1-29)

Achan’s story is a terrible reminder of the terrific consequences of our actions. We have in our hands the ability to wreck everything. Let us zoom out and consider the response of Israel and Joshua to Achan. On the command of God, the sin is totally purged, and then the Lord reaffirms His presence with them. He says to Joshua, “Get back up on that horse and do it again.” This is a quintessential part of repentance: the proceeding in faith. Suppose you are a husband who has sinned against his wife. You confess and she forgives you, and now you’re supposed to lead again. But you don’t feel qualified. You feel like a fake and a loser, and maybe you are, but you’re a fake and a loser with a wife to love and lead. And sulking will only add further sins to the one she just forgave you of.

Joshua is now in the opposite position to where he was after Jericho, and you see that in his second campaign against Ai. Jericho is an example of miraculous provision, but the second battle of Ai is an example of shrewd tactical thinking and flawless execution. In the first battle of Ai, Joshua presumed upon the Lord’s presence and aid. And in the second battle, Joshua takes meticulous care in his attack. This is no lack of faith, but it is a sobriety of mind. This is meticulous planning… in faith. There can be a temptation for a robust understanding of God’s sovereignty to turn to fatalism, and ultimately despair. But true faith is a faith that works. (Phil. 2:12) Joshua does just this, he knows God is with him, but he does not proceed carelessly. Rather he uses all the means at his disposal to bring about the reality that God has promised him.

An area of practical application is in the raising of our children. We believe that God is sovereign, and there is a pull to raise our hands and say, “Thy will be done!” And when a child jumps the shark, we become fatalists. No. Rather we hold fast to the belief that God has promised to save our children, and then we strive by every means of God’s appointing to bring them up in the nurture of the Lord. 

Heed the Word in Full (8:30-35)

After the destruction of Ai, wherein the town called Ruin is burned and its king is made like Achan, buried under a heap of stones, Joshua brings all the people to Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerazim and does what the Lord commanded through Moses: recommits the people to God. He builds an alter on Mt. Ebal, he writes the book of the law on stones by that alter, and he carries out the ceremony of blessings and curses on the mountains. And finally he reads to the whole congregation the entire bible. He dramatically states that the people of God are those who heed His word, in its entirety. Let that be true of us as well. May we be defined by our total adherence to every word that comes from the mouth of God. As Achan wasn’t. How will we keep from sin? By fixing our eyes upon the word of God, by hiding it in our hearts, by knowing it backwards and forwards, by holding fast to the words of life.

Conclusion: Covenantal Judgement & Covenantal Salvation

In conclusion, let us look back to where we began. Two things were taken from the ban of Jericho: a girl and some gold. One was lawful, and the other was unlawful. One represented an act of faith, and the other an act of disbelief. One resulted in destruction and the end of a family line, and the other resulted in the eventual birth of David and ultimately the birth of Christ himself. We can look at the story of Achan and be outraged at the destruction of his family with him, presuming (without reason) that they were innocent victims of their father’s sin. But flip it on its head. Consider Rahab. Her whole family is saved because of her faith.

The unreasonable thing is not the death of Achan, the unreasonable thing is the salvation of Rahab. And further, bigger, stranger by far, the fact that God took on flesh, tabernacled with His people, in order to save them from their sins and give them eternal bliss in the presence of God, this is the greatest of mysteries. The reasonable thing would be for you to be burned with fire on account of your father Adam’s sins, and your adding to them. The strange and earth-shattering reality is that you were not, but that you were saved from utter destruction and joined to the family of God.