to the book of Joshua, the book of Joshua chapter 7. I did turn my microphone on now, so you're good. Joshua chapter 7, we'll begin reading in verse number 1, and we won't read the entire chapter. We'll end at verse number 20, Joshua chapter seven, beginning in verse one. But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing. For Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Beth-Avon, on the east side of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, Go up and view the country. And the men went up and viewed Ai. And they returned to Joshua and said unto him, let not all the people go up, but let about two or 3,000 men go up and smite Ai. And make not all the people to labor thither, for they are but few. So they went up thither of the people, about 3,000 men. And they fled before the men of Ai. And the men of Ai smote of them about 30 and six men, for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim and smote them in the going down. Wherefore, the hearts of the people melted and became as water. And Joshua rent his clothes and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their head And Joshua said, alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us? Would to God we had been content and dwelt on the other side, Jordan. O Lord, what shall I say when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it. and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth. And what wilt thou do unto thy great name?' And the Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up, wherefore liest thou upon thy face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed. Neither will I be with you anymore, except you destroy the accursed from among you. Up, sanctify the people, and say, sanctify yourselves against tomorrow. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel. Thou canst not stand before thine enemies until thou takest away the accursed thing from among you. In the morning, therefore, thou shalt be brought, according to thy tribes, And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord taketh shall come according to the families thereof, and the family which the Lord shall take shall come by households, and the households which the Lord shall take shall come man by man. And it shall be that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath, because he hath transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel. So Joshua rose up early in the morning and brought Israel by their tribes and the tribe of Judah was taken. And he brought the family of Judah and he took the family of the Zerites and he brought the family of the Zerites man by man and Zabdi was taken. And he brought his household man by man and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah was taken. And Joshua said unto Achan, my son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession unto him and tell me now what hast thou done? Hide it not from me. And Achan answered Joshua and said, indeed, I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel and thus and thus have I done. When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment and 200 shekels of silver and a wedge of gold of 50 shekels weight, then I coveted them and took them. And behold, they are hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent and the silver under it." Amen. We'll end the reading there at the end of verse 21. Let's seek the Lord's help. Let's pray as we come to these verses today. Our Father, we come before you this morning having read a familiar story, what we recognize to be a very solemn event in the history of your people. You've told us that these things in the Old Testament are written for our admonition, for our learning. And so we pray that today you would help us as your people in this context of service for you. to understand what these things mean, help us to learn the lessons well, and prevent us from going in the way of Achan, that one that went before us. And we ask all this in Jesus' name, amen. This morning in our adult Sunday school class, we looked at a survey of the book of Joshua. One of the most familiar stories in that book is about the battle of Jericho, the children of Israel fighting that great battle of Jericho, that huge walled city. And right after that is this humiliating defeat at this small, relatively insignificant town called Ai. But before AI, there was Jericho. At Jericho, there was a great victory. It was perhaps the most unusual battle that the children of Israel ever fought, except for maybe the battle that we find later in the Old Testament where the choir was to go in front of the army and they were to sing and they arrived at the battlefield only to find the enemy already dead. Now, that's quite a peculiar military scenario, but this one in the book of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho is one that we all know quite well. Even you children in the church know about the Battle of Jericho and the Lord commanding the two spies to go into the land and the spies, you remember, are hidden by Rahab and Rahab lowers them down over the side of the wall so that they can escape And then the instructions for the Battle of Jericho were very unorthodox. The children of Israel were to line up, and for six days in a row, they were to march in a circle once for each of the six days around the city of Jericho. The command was that no one was to say a word. There was to be no talking. There was to be no singing. There was to be no humming. I know some children that would not have done well in that march. They would not have been able to contain themselves for such a time. But that was the rule. You go around one day, and that was it. The only noise was footsteps and some priests with trumpets that were to blow their trumpets on each revolution around the city. On the seventh day, it was different. Not one lap. but seven times around the city. Until the finishing of that seventh time, no one was to draw a sword, no one was to get an axe or any other weapon of warfare. They were simply to shout, for the Lord has given you the city. And it went down exactly as God had said. And the walls came down flat. And the children of Israel went in, and they obeyed the Lord's command, and they slew all the inhabitants of Jericho. In the process of that, God had also told them that the city is accursed. Now, we hear that word in English today and we think a very different thing than what the Hebrew really has, the weight behind that word. The city was accursed in the sense that, not that it was haunted or some weird curse put on it by, you know, you know, Middle Eastern witch doctor or something like that. The word accursed in this context simply means set apart or devoted. It was a devoted city, was devoted to the Lord. Everything in it belonged to the Lord, was to be taken in for the Lord. And so if you go back in your Bible to chapter six, verse number 17, we read some of these instructions. The Lord had commanded the people that all the silver, all the gold, anything of any value at all in that city was to be taken by the children of Israel and to be put into the Lord's treasury. It was set apart for him. So chapter six, verse 17 tells us some of this. And the city shall be accursed, that is, devoted, even it, and all that are therein, to the Lord. Only Rahab the harlot shall live. she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that were sent. And ye, in any wise, keep yourselves from the accursed thing." That devoted thing, that thing that is placed under the ban, that's another way that it's translated sometimes. It was banned from the people getting for themselves because it was devoted wholly to the Lord. lest ye make yourself accursed." Now here it really does carry that connotation of in great trouble. When you take of that devoted, that accursed thing and make the camp of Israel accursed and trouble it. But all the silver and gold and the vessels of brass and iron are consecrated unto the Lord. So there we have really the idea of what that accursed thing was. They're consecrated unto the Lord. They shall come into the treasury of the Lord. And so at Jericho, there was this tremendous defeat. It was a high watermark in the nation of Israel's history. They had just crossed the Jordan River into the promised land. They were eating of the fruit of the land. Here's the first battle. Here's the first test. They're victorious. They win. Ai's next. And Joshua sends spies to go look over the hill, survey the land, come back, report what's there. They come back, and they say, Joshua, we don't need to send the whole army. 2,000 or 3,000 will be plenty. This is a much smaller city. They had fought battles before in the wilderness. They had slain Og and other nations in their wilderness journeys. They were not inexperienced at war at this point. And they said, Joshua, we don't need the whole army. We can do this. And so Joshua chooses the larger number you'll notice. He said the report was 2,000 or 3,000 is plenty. Joshua sent 3,000, he sent the higher number. Go, take care of Ai. They go and they retreat from the gates. And in the retreat, 36 men die. They're killed in that retreat. They come back a humiliating defeat. And we see in verse number six of chapter seven, Joshua rends his clothes not only Joshua, but the other leaders of Israel. They're prostrate before the Lord. And they're asking, in effect, Lord, what went wrong? And the Lord tells them, get up off the ground. The answer is simple here. There's sin that has to be dealt with. There's sin in this camp. You have to deal with that sin if you're ever going to have my blessing. Now, we looked at that as something of a major theme through the book of Joshua. It's a major theme in the book of Numbers, also a major theme in the book of Deuteronomy. But we learn about the sin in verse number 21, that last verse that we closed our Bible reading with, Achan. He saw some of those accursed things, those things that had been placed under the ban, those things that were off limits for the people to take for themselves, a goodly Babylonish garment, 200 shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of 50 shekels weight. Achan says, I coveted them and took them. He brings them back, we learn more of the story, digs a hole in his tent under his bed, hides them, but yet it is found out. It's discovered, the sin is discovered. The Bible makes it very clear that the things written in the Old Testament were written for our admonition, they're written for our learning. They're written as examples for us to take to heart. selves in a way that fits our modern context of obedience. How do we obey these admonitions? How do we learn from these things? And so what I want to preach to you on this morning is simply a message with the title Lessons from Aiken's Sense. Lessons from Aiken's Sense. And I have chosen three that I want to focus our attention on this morning. The first lesson that I want you to see from Achan's sin is very simply this. Everybody matters. Everybody matters. You matter. Everybody matters. Look again at verse number one of Joshua 7. But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing for Achan. And here we go. The son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah. took of the accursed thing. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel." Who in the world is this guy, Achan? In the grand scheme of Israel, Achan was just another guy in the army. He was not a very important leader He wasn't the head of any major thing at all. He was just a regular man among men in the nation. His name in the entire Bible is mentioned seven times. In the entire Bible, seven times. As opposed to a man like Abraham, 300 times. A man like Moses, over 800 times. Jesus' name over a thousand times. Here's a man seemingly insignificant, yet his sin was so serious that it had consequences that affected the entire nation of Israel. The sin of one affected so many other people. The nation had had this tremendous victory against Jericho, but in a humiliating defeat was sent running for their lives against Ai. Now some liberal commentators will come to this and say that Joshua and Israel had become very proud They have this victory against Jericho, this city that in the description of it, the Bible really goes to some great length to tell us how impregnable Jericho is and how insurmountable the obstacle is to defeat such a massive walled city. But yet with no fighting at all, they destroy the city, God brings the walls tumbling down, and you could see Israel all puffed up and, hey, piece of cake, we got this. This conquering the promised land thing's gonna be pretty easy. We can do this. And so some would say that they're all just so puffed up with pride. And even these spies that come back to tell Joshua, hey, Joshua, don't worry about it. A little tiny city, just send a few people. Well, Joshua sends the larger amount, remember. He sends the most of what was recommended. But that's not the reason they were defeated at Ai. They weren't outnumbered. They weren't outmatched at Ai. We have the hand of a sovereign God who rules all the affairs of men gave Israel a defeat. That's what happened. Verse two and four tells us what happened. It was a small city. militarily, strategically, didn't make sense to send the whole army. All that from archaeological records and all the rest of it bears out. It was true. But it wasn't their pride of anything that got them the loss there. It was Aiken's sin. Now, for a moment, put yourself in an Aiken situation. The walls of Jericho have just fallen. Chaos ensues, people running everywhere, the army of Israel rushing over the rubble into the city, killing the people of Jericho, gathering up all the stuff that's devoted to the Lord, and in all the pandemonium, out of the corner of his eye, Achan spots this garment, he sees the silver, he sees the gold, and His mind starts to wander, and I don't know, where does he put it? Stuffs it under his breastplates? What did he do with it? But somehow, he figured out a way to, in all the pandemonium, get it back to his tent. And now what is he gonna do with it? And so he digs a hole and he hides it. He tries to cover up his own sin and conceal it so that hopefully nobody knows. The dust settles, if you will, and guess what happened? Nobody found out. The next day, nobody knew that Achan had taken of that accursed thing. Achan may have been all kinds of sanctimonious. and come with his arms loaded to the temple the next day, and here's the stuff devoted to the Lord from the battle. And made a big pomp and show of how obedient he was to what God had commanded him to do. We're not told that in Scripture, mind you. But is this not human nature? We put on a big pomp and show of how good we are to do what? To cover up? Our sin, you would never suspect Achan. I mean, Achan brought a whole bunch of stuff that he had gathered up for the Lord. Only he forgot to tell that part about the stuff that he hid in his tent. You know, Achan had bills to pay. And who would ever find out? Who would ever know? Anyway, what difference does it make? Nobody would ever suspect me. It seems from the passage, we're not told, but it seems from the passage that Achan is the only one that did this. You would think, surely the Lord would have revealed others that were guilty of similar sins. Seems as if Achan is the only one that did it. But here's the point. Who was Achan? Who cares about Achan? But yet Achan mattered. in the obedience to the Lord. Perhaps you were here this morning and you think that you can sin and it doesn't matter. Because you have sinned, you have been sinning, and nobody knows. It's hidden from your parents. It's hidden from your wife. It's hidden from your husband. It's hidden from your children. Nobody knows. You've not been caught. You think you've covered all your tracks and you're not going to be caught. But yet you matter. You think your sin does not affect anyone else. You think, well, if anybody's being harmed in this, it's only me and I'm not really being hurt because so far there have been no consequences for this. Everything is OK. And so you continue on. And you become more and more bold in your sin. We see here that the sin committed by one man. Even if we want to say an insignificant man. affected the entire nation of Israel. Everybody matters. The next lesson that I would put to your attention is this. Even little sins are devastating. Even little ones. It's not just the big sins. It's not that you were found with a knife in your hand with blood all over it and there's a dead body there, right, that matters. Even the little sins matter. So many think that they can sin with no consequences. And as I have intimated already, a very common idea is that as long as nobody else finds out, everything's going to be OK. It's fine. You know, I'm sure Akin, that afternoon after he had covered the hole, sweating bullets. He wakes up the next morning, and so far nobody has found out. What a relief. We don't know exactly the days between Jericho and AI, but every day, more and more relief, more and more searing of conscience. When you read the rest of the story, though, You find out that the punishment that Achan received for his sin was that not only he died, but all that he owned was destroyed. All of his animals, his sheep and his oxen were destroyed. His wife and his children were destroyed in this. Even little sins have devastating consequences. You look at verse 25 down toward the end, we didn't read this far. And Joshua said, why hast thou troubled us, speaking to Achan? Now the Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones and burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. Not him, but them. Little sins have devastating consequences. 36 fighting men of Israel lost their life because of Achan's little sin that Achan thought surely nobody would ever find out about. Surely this doesn't matter. I want to point two things out about these devastating consequences. The first one is that it brings God's judgment. Look at verse one again. At the very end of verse one, we've read this verse twice already. The anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. The anger of the Lord was kindled against Achan, of course. But the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. Achan brought the judgment of God, not only on himself, but as I said, on the whole nation. By your sin, you do brings God's judgment on yourself. Of course you do. But here's where biblical thinking goes really directly against the thinking of the rest of this world. Most people think to themselves, I'm not so bad. And so why would God be angry at me? because I know lots of people way worse than me. I've got neighbors that do this, that, and the other thing that I know about, and that's awful. I don't do any of those things. How could God be angry at me? They compare themselves with others, and they think the standard of God's justice falls just a tick below their morality. God judges everybody below them, and everybody from them up, and there's not many higher than me. I'm at the top of the moral standard, right? Because I devise my own standard. This is the thinking of most people. The quick, very quick to notice the sin in other people's, but blind to their own. This is human nature. This is human spiritual pride at its finest. It exists in all of us. This is where all of us are naturally in our heart. And we think we're above it. We think, well, God can't be angry at me. He's angry with other people, sure, because they're bad. I'm not bad. So God's not upset at me. I'm OK. And this is the thinking of so many. But the Lord tells us, if you regard iniquity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you. Meaning, if you're harboring known sin in your heart, with an unwillingness to come to terms with and confess sin as it is revealed to you. You are purposefully holding on to what you know to be sin. You have built up a brick wall between you and the God of heaven. It's not only big sins that God hates, it's the little ones as well. In our minds, we often try to categorize sins into this little and big category, and I know I've been using that kind of language, but the point, can we not see it here, is that even what seems to be the little sins are those things that are also devastating. I said they're devastating because they bring the wrath of God. Now, it may not always manifest, and in our context today, it's not going to manifest in you, you know, losing a battle against another city-state like Israel did. But God's wrath and displeasure manifests itself against us in many ways. You think about Saul, King Saul in the Old Testament. Saul experienced God's displeasure. Saul was given a command of what to do. Saul said, hey, I got a better idea. I think there's a better way to bring glory to God than the way God said to bring glory to God. And God punished him by removing the presence of his spirit from Saul. Samson was a man who was very self-righteous. Samson thought he was above the law. And Samson one morning lifted his head off of Delilah's lap and it says he shook himself as at other times. He'd always been able to display this supernatural strength that the Lord had given him. But that morning, he wists not that the Lord was departed from him. The Lord removed his presence from him. And he was no longer able to go forth in that supernatural strength. Jonah sought to run from the Lord. And what did the Lord do? But follow him in the Mediterranean. and brought this great storm. The people on the ship thought they were going to die. Jonah's sin didn't affect only Jonah, it affected everybody else on that ship. And it affected all the other ships that were in that storm. And the Lord found Jonah out, dealt with him. He was cast overboard. The Lord in mercy and grace preserved him. He will bring turmoil and misery into your life. often for the purpose of driving you back to Himself. Some of you have that testimony. If I were to ask you of your testimony of conversion, part of your story is that the Lord brought you to a low point to open your eyes that you needed Him. That's not the testimony of everyone here. But some of you, that's your testimony of the Lord brought you to the depth of yourself, punished you, For what purpose? To bring you back to yourself. I don't know if you caught that in verse number 13 as we read it. Achan had an opportunity to repent. There was warning given to the children of Israel. Look at verse 13. Up, sanctify the people and say. So here's Joshua speaking to the people and he says, sanctify yourselves against tomorrow. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, This is the facts of what it is. There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel. Thou canst not stand before thine enemies until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. We're not told. We're not told. But I think we can gather from the gracious nature of God, had in that moment, Achan raised his hand and said, Joshua, it was me. I'm sorry. I repent. I did wrong. I sinned against the Lord. And at this moment, I humble myself and I plead for God to be merciful to me, a sinner. What would have happened? We not know from the tenor of the gracious mercy of God that just as the thief on the cross, yeah, the thief on the cross died that day, but he went straight to paradise. We see other examples in scripture of those that humble themselves in the moment of their sin, and they understand, it's me. I'm the one. Lord, forgive me. Lord, I humble myself before you now. Achan didn't do it. He didn't do it. But what if he had done it? We would read a different story in our Bible. And it teaches us the devastating nature of sin, holding on to even the little things. Sin robs God of his glory as well. That's another one of the devastating consequences of sins. It robs God of his glory. Now, I want to make sure you understand something, and I think you all know this already. Just stay it just so that we all are on the same page. Nothing robs God of his intrinsic glory. God is glorious whether or not anybody recognizes it to be true or not. God is glorious. But sin robs God of the perception of glory by ourselves and others. Look at the argument. Look at verse 6. So Joshua rinses clothes. He falls on his face to the earth with the other leaders of the land. And look at his prayer, verse seven. He says, Elias, O Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us? Is that what you brought us over here for, just for us to die on this side of the river instead of the other side? Would to God we have been content to dwell on the other side of Jordan. Verse eight, O Lord, what shall I say? when Israel turneth her back before her enemies. For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth. And here's the capstone of the argument at the end of verse 9. And what wilt thou do unto thy great name? Lord, how are you going to get glory to your name when your people are all slaughtered? You made a promise. This is what Joshua was saying. You made a promise that your people were gonna come and inhabit this land, and that you were gonna go before them, and that you were gonna drive the people out from before them. And if you don't do what you said you were gonna do, I mean, what's Rahab to think? Rahab heard of this great army, this great God, and Rahab has humbled herself and believed God, helped, hid the spies. She was saved alive only for, this is Joshua's argument, God, only for you to break your promise and destroy us all. What are people going to think? Who are they going to think you are? They're going to think you're no better God than anybody else. You see, we read these things in Joshua and we don't, Because we're not part of this pantheistic system of religion that was so prevalent in that day, we kind of miss some of the force here. This was Joshua's argument. He knows that when the rest of the cities in the land of Canaan hear about how Israel was so easily defeated, well, they're going to be emboldened to join together and come and defeat us. They were terrified when they heard about Jericho. Jericho was the impregnable city, and it was wiped clean. And if little AI can defeat them, well, their god must have gotten lucky with Jericho. You see, each of these little city-states, and that's really the way they were, each of these little city-states, they all were enemies with one another. I mean, there was some trade back and forth or whatever, but they were all enemies with one another. And they all had their own local god that was their top of the heap that they worshipped, their god that protected them. And it was the general thinking of society at that time that whoever won the war had the stronger God. That was the superstition. And so Jehovah must have gotten lucky with Jericho. Jericho had a bad day. And who is this Jehovah? He's nothing. He's a nobody. If Ai can beat them. Ai is one of our smaller towns. And so the glory of God is at stake in this. And so by losing that battle, Joshua argues, Lord, how are you going to defend your name? The sin of Achan brought ridicule to the name of Jehovah. And Joshua recognized that. Joshua does not use these words, but it's something of David's cry when he's there before Goliath and Goliath is defying the God of Israel. And David says, is there not a cause here? Is there not something bigger at stake here? This is what Joshua is recognizing. Is there not something bigger at stake here? God, you made a promise. You're gonna go against this promise? Your sin brings dishonor for the Lord. You claim to be a follower of Christ, but you live like the rest of the world? What's the world supposed to think about our God? Sin will always take us further than we want to go, and it'll always leave us there longer than we want to stay. Sin has devastating consequences. But one last thing, and that is the last lesson, and that is that there is no such thing as a secret sin. You see, this was one of Aitken's fatal mistakes. He thought that taking this loot back to his tent, ground, hiding it, nobody would ever find out. When did Aitken plan on wearing that goodly Babylonian garment? How is it going to come out of his tent? And everybody say, hey Aitken, where did you get the new clothes? And he goes to the market with all this silver. Hey, kid, where'd you get all this? Hey, I've seen those coins before. I've seen those gold pieces before. He couldn't even enjoy what he stole. It's ridiculous. I mean, some of you literally are laughing, right? It's laughable to think that you could get away with this. But just sit there for a moment and think about your own secret sins that are in your heart right now. That if you begin to talk about them out loud, they're just as silly, right? They're just as laughable that you think you could get away with it. He thought that what he had done was in secret. But now literally everybody knows about it. Everybody in the whole nation knows about it. There's a sticky wicket that we have to deal with. I'm not going to spend a long time here. I think there's quite a simple explanation. In the law that was given, a child was not to be punished for his parents' sins. But yet in this scenario, Achan and his whole family is punished and they die. Most commentators looking at this to try to untie that knot and why is that these laws were made for the people of Israel to follow. Human judgment is fallible. and therefore the soul that sinneth it shall die, and the children are not responsible for the sins of the parent. Fair enough. And the conclusion, God is sovereign, and not to say this in a flippant way, but God can do whatever he wants. There's one answer. The other answer that also is reasonable is that if In the tom, or after the fact, his family became complicit in this, where he gets back to a tent, and he hands a shovel to his oldest son, and he's like, hey, boy, help me dig, quick. And they hide it together. Like, hey, Dad, why is all this dirt around your bed? And it's known. Either way. I don't know if ultimately it matters. Other than the point that. There is no secret. Sam. Even if his family was completely ignorant of any of it. Until this day. God knew. And at the end of the day. That's the only one that matters. It really didn't matter if his wife knew. It really doesn't matter if his kids knew. God knew. As he was digging there alone in secret as fast as he could, sweat pouring all over him, God saw every scoop of shovel. And so you translate to that today and God sees every mouse click. He sees every turn of a page. He sees every mile in a car. He sees everything you do. He knows it all. There's nothing secret from him. He knows every motive in your heart. He knows every lie you tell your parents and you think you've got the wool pulled over their eyes and you think your parents are stupid and they don't know. Let me tell you, most of the time, your parents know. They know you're lying. But you go through all that, and you think you've got them. Even if you do, you don't have God. He knows. There is no secret sin. So we apply this to us as men, fathers in the home. There is no secret sin. You think that your sin only hurts you, but it hurts your whole relationship with your wife and with your children and everything else. Your moms, you think your sin only affects you, but it affects your husband, it affects your whole family, it affects all of your other relationships in life. Your children, you think your sin only affects you, It affects your whole family. It affects your relationship. It's that guilt that's in your heart all the time that makes you lash out in anger at your siblings. You're holding on to so much guilt and you hope you never get found out. It's that guilt that you're covering up that makes you so holier than thou and sanctimonious to everybody in the way that you act all the time. Your sin's not a secret. God knows about it, and he's dealing with you about it. What's the conclusion? The conclusion is to come to the Lord in repentance. Look at verse 13. What would have happened? We don't know, but what would have happened? Had Akin, when the announcement was made, we're going to start casting lots. Akin just said, you know, Joshua, put the lot back in your pocket. It's me. to me, what would have happened? If you think the story of Achan is unfair, why would the whole nation be punished just for that? Well, if you think the story of Achan is unfair, then you would have to come to the conclusion that the entire gospel is unfair. Because if the sin of one man cast the whole nation under punishment. Is that not what we have in the gospel? The sin of one man? And so death by sin, and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned? How can it be fair for God to hold that sin of somebody so long ago against me? Well, if that's not fair, then the gospel's not fair. Because how is it fair to use the same logic to hold the righteousness of one man as able to account for you? If you want to be dealt with by God solely on your own merit and your own guilt, well then, logically from that, you have to stand before God on your own merit and your own righteousness. And it's not going to do. It's the righteousness of one, it's the obedience of one, the obedience of Jesus Christ and that perfect righteousness that he has earned and his obedience to the law that is counted on our behalf in the gospel and salvation. In Adam all die, in Christ shall all be made alive. Christ has provided a forgiveness for sin. Christ has provided a remedy for sin. Come to Christ and repent of sin. Turn to him for the forgiveness and the cleansing of your heart. There simply is no other way. And these are a few lessons from the son of Achan. Amen. Let's close in prayer. Our Father, we come before you with hearts humbled, knowing that if you were to search us and try us, you would find wicked ways in all of our hearts. We pray for that spirit of repentance before you, that we would confess our sins, even as some would sit in these moments as the piano plays that soft music, we would confess our sins and make things right in your sight. We thank you for the forgiveness that there is of our sins and bless us in the fellowship time to follow. We pray that we would enjoy sweet fellowship and one another's company and enjoy the good food that you've provided and that we would know your blessing as a congregation and loving one another. and being helpful to one another and iron, sharpening iron among one another. May we know your blessing. And we pray that you bring us back again this evening with great expectancy to hear your word again. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.