God's not pleased with the church in America today, generally speaking, as I see it, because there's so much sin in the camp. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Living in the Light with Bible teacher Ann Graham Lotz. Ann's message today is from Joshua chapter 7. Joshua has declared his dismay and the dismay of the people with one of his leaders, Achan, as Joshua recognizes that the Lord has not been with Israel's troops in the battle. Without the Lord, the whole reason that Israel had crossed the Jordan would now be impossible, and the Canaanites would now judge that neither Israel or her God was invincible.
And Joshua confronts Achan, Tell me what you've done. Do not hide it from me. Here's Anne with a challenging question for all of us. There was more sin than disobedience concealed in that camp. independent self-reliance?
Is there sin in this camp that's been concealed? God sees it. And God saw Achan's sin and the sin that was concealed crippled Israel in their quest to experience everything God had for them. As they sought to advance and progress and claim the promised land, They were crippled in that because of sin that was concealed in the camp. They were defeated by it.
Verse 4, 3,000 men went up, but they were routed by the men of Ai who killed about 36 of them, totally defeated. And I started to label that depressed because so many Christians today are depressed. And we go to counselors and we read books and we take Prozac and do all of these things and it may be it's sin that's in the camp that's been concealed. And it may be so long ago, it may be so deeply buried, you just need to get on your face before God and say, God, would you reveal to me what this sin is in my life? Sin will cripple you.
It's defeating. It's depressing. Achan's sin cost the lives of 36 innocent men. Verse 6, At this the hearts of the people melted. They became like water because now they felt totally vulnerable to the enemy.
And Joshua tore his clothes. He fell down on the ground before the ark and he remained there till evening. The elders did the same. They sprinkled dust on their heads. And Joshua said, Oh, sovereign Lord, why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan?
to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us, if only we had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan. And Joshua's just totally demoralized. He's not complaining. He's confused. He's been defeated.
And he thought God would give him the victory after victory after victory, and suddenly he's been defeated, and now he's made vulnerable to the enemy, and all of the enemy, and all of Canaan, who were scared to death of him after Jericho, are now saying, man, they're no problem. We can take the Israelites. If I can do it, we can do it. And Joshua's terrified. And he's demoralized.
You feel demoralized, confused. You just don't know which way is up. You just don't know which way to go. You don't know what's wrong with you. Joshua didn't know what was wrong until God told him.
And that's why we need to go to God in prayer. and I know counselors can be wonderful but God is the one who knows what's down in your heart he knows what the root cause of something is the best counselors are ones who will get you into the scripture and help apply it to your life and help you open up your life and your heart to God's word that God might reveal to you what's down there and God revealed to Joshua in verse 10 the Lord said to Joshua stand up what are you doing on your face You know, sometimes prayer is inappropriate. And we can pray and pray and pray and pray. And sometimes we just need to get up and do something about it. We need to stop confessing our sin and repent of it.
Stop talking about it and stop doing it. Stop crying over it and crucify it. And so God said, Joshua, what are you doing on your face? Israel has sinned. That's what the problem is.
There's sin in the camp. And then note those plural pronouns. They have violated my covenant. They have taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen.
They have lied. They have put them with their own possessions. He was holding all of Israel accountable for the sin of one man. Who is suffering because of your sin? Who is experiencing God's displeasure and His wrath because of the sin that you're harboring in your heart and in your life?
Sin is dangerous. God says in verse 12, I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction. They were going to lose God's presence in their midst. And I want to tell you something. If you're indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, if you've been born again and God has put His Holy Spirit within you, He will never leave you, He will never forsake you, but sin will make you think He has.
Because the Holy Spirit is so grieved and so quenched, It's as though the Spirit has departed. And you'll lose that awareness of God's presence. They had already lost their peace when their hearts melted like wax within them and they had no peace, no sense of God's presence. They were going to lose their power in verse 13. You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove this.
You'll have no power to get answers to prayer, no power to bring other people to Christ, no power to even receive special things from Scripture and insights into Scripture, no power in your teaching, no power in your service. And then they lost the pleasure of God He says down in verse 15 you done a disgraceful thing in Israel And they lost the pleasure of God Sin is dangerous. It's just not worth that. I don't know what Achan stole. He talks about the gold and silver and...
I don't care what it was. I don't care if it was a whole wide world. It's not worth the price of God's presence and God's power and God's pleasure and God's peace. Sin is crippling, defeating, demoralizing, dangerous because of what it will cost you in your Christian life. I remember taking a large women's conference and it was one of these national conferences.
There were thousands of women there and I felt God had given me messages to give and I think I spoke two or three times. And the first time I got up, the message seemed to come, not easily, but I felt there was a freedom. but it was like I was disconnected from the audience. It was a weird experience. I went back to the hotel and I got on my knees and I said, Lord, what's wrong?
And I began, the first thing I'd do is search my heart for sin and then see if there's anything he would bring to my mind. I just couldn't figure it out. I went back the next day thinking, well, maybe I was just tired.
Next day, same thing. The audience was there. It was like there was this glass wall and then I was on the other side and I was speaking but I wasn't connecting. And when I finished the series, I gave the invitation as normally I do and when people make a decision, I have them fill out a response card and then I get the response cards and take it home and then we follow up with material through the mail. When we got home out of those thousands of women who were there, we only had one or two dozen who had made decisions, who had responded.
And I knew something was wrong. It wasn't until about three or four months later that I found out what it was. And the woman who was chairman of the committee that put on that conference turned out she was having an affair. and she left her husband and she since divorced him but there was sin in the camp and it blocked and it hindered what I believe God wanted to do in that conference.
Now what happens at that conference can happen in your own personal life. It can happen in your Sunday school class. It can happen in your family. It can happen in your church. And you just, in fact, I think this describes churches I know.
They have no peace. They're all fighting on the inside, backbiting, trying to do each other in, one-up each other. No sense of God's presence. It's as though the Spirit is left. No power to bring people to Christ.
No power to get people back together in their marriages, to heal the hurts, to get people studying, reading the Scriptures. God's not pleased with the church in America today, generally speaking, as I see it, because there's so much sin in the camp. And sin that was defeating, demoralizing, dangerous, was deadly. God told Joshua, sin in the camp.
So Joshua went tribe by tribe, clan by clan, family by family, individual by individual until he came to Achan.
Now I want you to understand, from the first time Israel was defeated at Ai, Achan knew what the problem was. And now they're searching it out. And Joshua and the elders had been on their face before God. Achan could have come up and confessed and said, I'm the reason. I've done this.
I'm sorry. I want to set it right. Instead, he's still hiding it. And so they begin the search, tribe by tribe and clan by tribe, and he's still hiding it, hoping they won't find out it's him. Finally, Joshua comes to Achan, and Achan finally confesses, well, I did it.
And God had Joshua put Achan and all of his family to death. because sin is serious. And I don't know why the family was involved. Maybe the wife had egged Achan on. Maybe the daughters had wanted to wear the jewelry.
Maybe the in-laws wanted the extra money so they could get ahead in the promised land. And maybe they were all part of it and helped hide it and they're all keeping the secret. And for whatever reason, Achan and his whole family were put to death. And we know sin is deadly. The wages of sin is death.
and your sin will cost the death of someone. And we know it has. It wasn't the Romans that put our Lord to death. It was your sin and my sin that put Jesus to death. He's died.
He's taken the judgment for us. But I'm going to turn it around a little bit and say that not the person, but the sin needs to be put to death. And if there's sin in the camp, you crucify it. You take it to the cross and you just nail it there. Put it to death.
Don't toy with it. Don't tolerate it. Don't hide it. Don't try to dress it up and give it a different name. Don't accommodate it.
Don't make peace with it. You just crucify it. Put it to death. And just by that I mean get on your knees before God in prayer and say, God, just say the words. God, I crucify my pride.
I crucify my unbelief. I crucify that stronghold, that sin in my life. The disobedience, the rebellion, the lust. Whatever it is, I crucify it. And you take it to the cross and there's something about seeing it nailed to the cross and seeing the death of Jesus who would have died for you for that sin only.
If it had been the only sin you'd ever committed and you're the only person who'd ever committed a sin, He would have come to earth and died just for that sin. And you crucify it on the cross and it becomes so repugnant to you. You hate it. You don't ever want anything to do with it again. And it's hanging there on the cross and you want to leave it there.
Just crucify it. And the sin that was concealed and that crippled and was so costly then they had to go back And they had to go back to I and reclaim lost territory And this time instead of sending 2 or 3 men they sent 30,000 men to the little town of I. Which I think is impressing you and me that when we've failed and we try to recover lost ground, it takes every ounce of energy, strength of will, effort. it's much harder to recapture lost ground than it would have been to take it in the first place. But you can take it again.
God will give you the victory. And this time the strategy was totally different. God told Joshua just exactly how to take it, and he did, and he had victory where he had formerly had defeat. Where have you been defeated? Where have you failed?
You bring that before God, and by His grace, let Him give you victory where you failed. It's interesting where Achan was put to death was called the Valley of Achor and it literally means the place of disaster, place of sin and judgment. And Hosea chapter 2 verse 15 says something really interesting. It says, In the Valley of Achor, I will place a door of hope. In that place of disaster, I will give you hope.
And Joshua, after they have gone back and retaken Ai, and they've had the victory, he gathers them in a great, green, grassy amphitheater. And he puts half of the Israelites on one side on Mount Gerizim and half of the Israelites on the other side of Mount Ebal. And they stand there surrounding in this amphitheater. And the Ark of the Covenant is there. At the end of chapter 8, in verse 30, Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded.
He built it according to what was written in the book of the law, an altar of uncut stones on which no iron tool had been used. On it they offered to the Lord burnt offerings and sacrificed fellowship offerings in the presence of the Israelites. And I know the ark is there somewhere. Verse 33. And they were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant.
my point being that God was still present in their midst. And when you've been defeated, and when you've failed, and when you've gone back and you've recaptured lost territory, God doesn't abandon you. Ask Peter. Do you remember after Peter had failed, and he had denied his Lord, and he had gone out and he had wept for three days? And then the Lord confronted Peter and revealed himself as the risen Christ who could forgive his sin and cleanse his sin and restore him in his faith.
And Peter writes to those of us who believe he is so precious because he never walks out on his children. He'll never abandon you. And there is the Ark of the Covenant. And the children of Israel, in this green grassy amphitheater, half on one side, half on the other, the Ark of the Covenant in the midst. And they build this altar in the center.
And their focus is on the altar where the Lamb was slain. Their focus is on the cross. And the lamb or the animal is slain and the blood runs down over the rocks. And it says on the altar of uncut stones, Joshua carved in the stones, in verse 32, the words of the law. He wrote the law in the stones.
And I wonder as the sacrifice was made, did the blood run over the stones and the law that was carved there, the law that reveals our sin, the law that our sin is broken and the blood covers it and we're cleansed and the Israelites were focusing on the cross and they were focusing on the blood that was cleansing and covering the stones on which the law was written and their sin was covered and then Joshua in a thunderous voice verse 34 he read all the words of the law the blessings and the curses just as it is written in the book of the law there was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of Israel, including the women and the children and the aliens who lived among them, and they recommitted themselves to obedience to the word of God. They got tough on sin. Sin that was concealed, that crippled them, that was costly, they had to go back and retake. I was sin that was covered by the blood of the sacrifice. and they made a recommitment to obedience.
Listen to me. If there's sin in the camp, if there's sin in your life, whatever it is, would you keep your focus on the ark? God's presence is in our midst. He has not abandoned you. He loves you.
If you doubt that He loves you, you just look at the cross. He gave His life for you, knowing you were a sinner. Romans 5.8 says, At herein we know the love of God, that while you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you. He knew you would sin. He's not abandoned you.
And you focus on the altar, the cross, where the sacrifice was made. And you focus on the blood as it runs down over the law, the law that our sin is broken, cleansing us, offering us forgiveness, and then would you recommit your life to obedience to the Word of God? Do you want to experience everything that God has for you? Then you must, listen to me, it's not an option, you must get tough with the strongholds in your life. And you must, it's not an option, you must get tough with the sin in your life.
Would you pray with me, please? Just in the quietness of this moment, would you just reflect on what God has been saying to you What is the stronghold in your life What is the hidden sin? Would you name it? And if it's a stronghold, would you acknowledge the authority of the Lord over the stronghold and then would you claim the victory through your obedience whatever he tells you to do whatever he brings to mind may be very different than anything you've ever thought of before you just do it and be dependent maybe ask someone to pray with you about it and persevere. Keep on keeping on until it comes down.
Until God lets you know you can shout. And what is the sin in your life? Let chapter 7 be a warning to you. Don't continue to hide it. Bring it to the light of God's truth.
confess it before God, before it cripples you, before you're totally defeated and demoralized and experience the dangerous loss of power and peace, God's presence and His pleasure. But I'm here to tell you, if you're already there, if you've harbored it so long, you're already mired in defeat and depression and despondency. and you've already lost the sense of God's presence and power and pleasure and peace in your life, then I just invite you to come back to the cross of Jesus Christ. It's still the cross. And you focus on the cross and the blood of Jesus that was shed there to cover your sin, to cleanse you of your sin, to restore you in fellowship with God.
And just recommit yourself to obedience.
So, Lord God, we would ask that you would strengthen our will to get tough on strongholds and tough on sin. Oh, Lord God, that we would declare war on the sin in our lives and the strongholds. Keep us from ever, ever, ever making peace with something you don't tolerate. Don't let us toy and play around with something you died for. Give us, oh God, a holy hatred for the sin.
Give us a passionate love for the Savior.
So we just ask that you would take this message and burn it deep in our hearts. we want to obey without delay we don't want to procrastinate even an hour we just want to do business with you while the spirit is moving so Lord we just ask that you would seal this in our hearts that we might not put our head down on our pillows tonight until we have confessed our sin and talked with you about the stronghold and just set ourselves right with you. We want to experience everything you have for us. Thank you, dear God, that you yourself have gotten tough with strongholds and you yourself are tough with sin, so tough that you died for us. Help us, oh God.
We thank you for the blood of Jesus and washes us clean. There's power in the blood. We know that. And so we give ourselves to you, the thoughts, the emotions, the decisions. Ask that you have your way.
In Jesus' name, for his sake, for his glory. Amen.
Now here's Ann with this final word. There's a beautiful Puritan prayer recorded in the little volume, Valley of Vision, entitled The Precious Blood. Let me read some of it. Before thy cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity that caused thee to be made a curse, the evil that excites the severity of divine wrath. Show me the enormity of my guilt by the crown of thorns, the pierced hands and feet, the bruised body, the dying cries.
Thy blood is the blood of incarnate God. It's worth infinite, its value beyond all thought. Infinite must be the evil and guilt that demands such a price. Yet thy compassions yearn over me. Thy heart hastens to my rescue.
Thy love endured my curse. Thy mercy bore my deserved stripes. Let me walk humbly in the lowest depths of humiliation, bathed in thy blood, tender of conscience, triumphing gloriously as an heir of salvation. Amen.
Praise God. Not only does he save sinners like me, but he gives us victory over sin through our Lord Jesus Christ. Living in the Light is a weekly study in God's Word with teacher and author Ann Gramlotz. Learn to listen to his voice. Then start making the choice to keep on going and believing and trusting who God is.
Go to AnneGrahamLotz.org. Take advantage of the many helpful free resources to get you started. Join us again for Living in the Light.
