From His Heart

Speaker 1

Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, we're going to learn how to get out of trouble.

Speaker 2

Hey, let me ask you a question in the privacy of your own heart. Are you walking in the light, or are you just saying you're walking in the light? You know there's some sin there that you haven't confessed, that you haven't dealt with. Achan knew what he had done. His wife, his kids knew what he had done.

Be sure your sin will find you out. We don't sin in a vacuum. One man's sin affected his family. It affected the whole camp of Israel. God sees, God knows; you know you have to deal with it. He can heal every scar with real truth, real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

When God commanded the Israelites to take the city of Jericho, he also commanded that they refrain from taking certain possessions for themselves. But a man named Achan disobeyed and hid the things that he stole from God. So why did God hold the whole nation of Israel accountable for the sins of one man who causes us trouble?

This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, who today will reveal the answer to that question as we complete this message, cleverly entitled Trouble. We've all got it, but many don't know why they have so much trouble in their life. Could some of it be that we have continually ignored God's commands of what to do and how to live, but instead did only what we wanted to do?

This message comes from Pastor Jeff's 10-message series, Rising to the Challenge. You can find out more about this series when you go to fromhisheart.org. Click the listen link now; though, turn in your Bible to the seventh chapter of the book of Joshua and discover how to eliminate trouble before it hatches.

Speaker 2

I want you to notice with me three warnings from Joshua, chapter seven. How can you avoid bringing trouble into your life and into your family and into the church and into the community of the saints? How can you avoid that? Three warnings.

**Warning Number One: Beware the Sin of Coveting.** God said in Joshua, chapter six, "Be careful with that stuff. It's all under the ban. Don't covet it." So when Achan is chosen, Joshua says this to him in verse 19: "Then Joshua said to Achan, my son, I implore you, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and give praise to him. And tell me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me." So Achan answered Joshua and said, "Truly, I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel, and this is what I did. When I saw among the spoil a beautiful mantle from Shinar, a beautiful coat from Shinar—it was like an Armani suit—I wanted it. And 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold, 50 shekels in weight. Then I coveted them and took them." That's what he did. He coveted and he took them. Beware of the sin of coveting.

**Second Warning: Beware the Sin of Covering.** Look at verse 21 again: "When I saw among the spoil a beautiful mantle from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold, 50 shekels in weight. Then I coveted them and took them. And behold, they are concealed in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath it." He took that stuff. When they were going in to eradicate and exterminate all the inhabitants of Jericho, he took that stuff and he took it back to his tent. The Bible seems to indicate that his wife knew about it and his children knew about it because they're going to pay the price too. They were co-conspirators in this lie. He took it into his tent and he dug under his tent, probably under a rug or something. He dug and he hid the Babylonian coat and he hid the gold and he hid the silver. He covered it over and he said, "No one saw what I did." But God saw. God saw. Because God sees everything we try to hide. He sees it all. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, Proverbs 15:3 says, watching the evil and the good.

And God will not bless. Why is this so important? Because if you want God to bless your life, he's not going to bless your life if you have hidden sin in your heart. The scripture says in the Book of Psalms, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." And God says, "I'm not going to bless you if you don't deal with this sin." Well, he says in verse 11, "Israel has sinned." But we know it's just one guy, Achan. Achan has sinned. "Lord, it's not Israel, it's Achan that has sinned." But see, Achan was part of the body called Israel. And when we're part of the body in the New Testament called the body of Christ, when one person sins, the whole body suffers. You hit your finger with a hammer and you say, "Well, you know, I mean, this hand feels okay." I mean, your whole body hurts if you hit your thumb with a hammer. And it's not just you can't just isolate and say, "Well, you hurt over here." I mean, it just radiates through your whole body. Achan sinned. It affects Israel. Thirty-six guys who went up to fight AI died. Why? Because the Lord was not with them. Why wasn't the Lord with them? Because Achan had sinned.

You know, when we come together as part of the church, it's really important how you live as a Christian. But when you attach yourself to a church, then you become a representative of that church. You're a representative of Christ. You're a representative of the body of Christ. And people who are will watch how you live. They'll watch what you do in the community. They know if you are a member of the church. They know if you are a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you talk like a sailor, if you are a cheapskate when you go out to eat, if you always give the very least that you can give, if you're rude to your wife, if you're a mean, crabby neighbor to your neighbors, if you're dishonest in business, that reflects on the whole church.

Hey, let me ask you a question in the privacy of your own heart. Are you walking in the light, or are you just saying you're walking in the light while you know that you're walking in the darkness? You know there's some sin there that you haven't confessed, that you haven't dealt with. Achan knew what he had done. His wife and his kids knew what he had done. But they, as the Lord said, "Israel has both stolen and deceived." What's the deception? "I hid it in my tent and I'm pretending like everything is okay and it's not." You know, David did that same thing when he sinned with Bathsheba. He tried to cover everything up. You read 2 Samuel, chapter 11, and you'll find that nothing is mentioned about God until the last verse. And it says this: "But the thing that David did was evil in the sight of the Lord." Because the eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good.

Hey, God will not bless hidden sin. You gotta get sin out of the shadows and into the light and under his blood. And God will uncover hidden sin. If you have hidden sin in your life, things that you're not dealing with, things that you're not being honest about, God’s going to put the screws to you if you really are a child of God. That's what he did to David. That's why David said in Psalm 32, "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning." It says in Numbers, chapter 32, Moses said this: "Be sure your sin will find you out." We don't sin in a vacuum. One man sinned. It affected his family. It affected the whole camp of Israel. God sees, God knows; you know you have to deal with it.

I heard a story about a guy who was in an apartment about 25 years old. He invited his mother over to have dinner. His mother came over; she lived on the other side of town. She noticed immediately that there was another person living in the apartment. Her son John was living with Julie. The mother was like, "What's up with this, John?" He said, "Oh, mother, it's not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. We're just roommates. I needed somebody to help me pay rent. She has her room; I have my room. There's nothing going on that would be like that." The mother was skeptical. They had dinner, and the mother was watching how they interacted.

Well, about a week later, Julie says to John, "Hey, John, I'm looking for that nice silver gravy ladle that we have. I know we had it last week when your mother was here, but ever since your mother left, I can't find the gravy ladle. Do you think your mother might have taken it?" He said, "Well, I can't understand why I would be shocked that my mother would take something like that from us, but I'll ask her." So he sends her an email: "Dear Mom, I'm not saying you took the gravy ladle, and I'm not saying you didn't take the gravy ladle. But the facts are this: The gravy ladle has been missing ever since you left our apartment. Love, John."

The mother sends back an email: "Dear John, I'm not saying you're sleeping with Julie, and I'm not saying you're not sleeping with Julie. But the facts are this: If Julie were sleeping in her own bed, she would have found the gravy ladle by now." Be sure your sin will find you out.

Now, the Bible says this in Proverbs 28:13: "He who conceals his transgression, like Achan did, will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion." Here's the way God works: If you conceal your sin, if you try to cover up your sin, God will uncover it and expose you. But if you uncover your sin, if you bring it before the Lord, if you come before him with a broken, repentant heart, you uncover. You say, "Lord, this is what I did, and this was horrible and awful. Oh God, please forgive me." Then he covers it in his blood. You cry and cover it; he’ll uncover it. But you uncover it, and he covers it in his blood.

Hey, unless you start being honest, you got nothing. You can't rebuild on a cracked slab. You have to be honest. You have to get things out in the open. You get it out of the shadows and under his blood and let God do a miracle.

Speaker 1

Hey.

Speaker 2

Beware the sin of coveting. Beware the sin of covering. And lastly, beware the sin of squandering. The sin of squandering. The sin of not taking advantage of the opportunity that you have to get things right with God.

Now, it's very interesting as we read how God told Joshua to go about finding who has sinned. Look at it again. Verse 13. Rise up, consecrate the people and say, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow. For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, has said, there are things under the ban in your midst. O Israel, you cannot stand before your enemies until you have removed the things under the ban from your midst.

In the morning, here's the program. In the morning, then you shall come near by your tribes. Remember the 12 tribes of Israel. You shall come near by your tribes, and it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes by lot shall come nearby families, and the family which the Lord takes shall come nearby households. And the household which the Lord takes shall come near man by man. So God's gonna weed it out. First the tribe and then the family, and then the household and then the man. All that takes time. It takes time to gather everybody. It takes time to cast lots, to see where the lot falls.

Why did God do it like that? Because God was giving Achan an opportunity. He was giving him an opportunity to repent, and Achan squandered it. He was guilty of the sin of coveting. He was guilty of the sin of covering. He was guilty of the sin of squandering.

Hey, God is gracious to give us an opportunity to repent. You know, God wants to forgive sin. God doesn't want to judge. He wants to forgive. He's a savior. He's a forgiving savior. The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth. Who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin. Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

God wants to forgive, and the scripture makes it clear if you, Lord, Psalm 130 should mark iniquity. Oh, Lord, who could stand? But there's forgiveness with you that you may be feared.

You say, well, Jeff, but it sounds like Achan did confess. Achan was cornered like a rat. Achan had nowhere else to go. They chose his tribe, they chose his family, they chose his father's house, they chose bam, bam, bam to him. And all the time, what's he thinking? You think in the mind of Achan, what's he thinking? Man, it just keeps getting closer and closer. What am I supposed to do?

You're supposed to say, stop, it's me. I have sinned. God have mercy. That's what he was supposed to do. But he didn't. He waited and waited and waited till the lot fell to him. You're the Achan. Give glory to God. Tell me what you did. Truly, I have sinned, he said. Not a confession of sin, not repentance from sin, but an admission of sin.

That's like going 100 down I-30 and you get pulled over and the guy says, you know how fast you were going? You're like, well, I'm not really sure. You were going 100. Well, okay, I was going 100. You got me. Are you sorry you did it? No, I'm sorry I got caught. There's a big difference. Achan is not necessarily sorry he did it. He's sorry he got caught because he thought he could pull one over on God. He forgot that the eyes of the Lord are in every place watching the evil and the good.

God is gracious to give us an opportunity to repent. And God is faithful to judge sin. Look what happened. So he says what he did. He says where the articles are, the coat and the silver and the gold. Verse 22. So Joshua sent messengers and they ran to the tent. And behold, it was concealed in his tent with the silver underneath it. And they took them from inside the tent and brought them to Joshua and to all the sons of Israel. And they poured them out before the Lord.

How embarrassing. How shameful. How disgraceful. Those are God's things you stole from God. They poured them out before the Lord and it says, then Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan, the son of Zerah, the silver, the mantle, the bar of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, and all that belonged to him. And they brought him up to the Valley of Achor. Achor and Achan are from the same root. That means trouble.

And Joshua said, why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day. And all Israel stoned them with stones. And they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones that stood. And the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor. To this day, God will judge sin. God hates sin.

And as much as he wants to forgive, as much as he wants to cleanse, as much as he wants to save, if you say no, then judgment's gonna fall, and it's going to fall severely. The scripture says. Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 18. Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you consent and obey, you'll eat the best of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you'll be devoured by the sword. Truly, the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Achan was wiped out. His children were wiped out. You say, well, that just sounds so severe for what he did. It sounds severe to us. You know why? Here's the thing. We have lost the fear of God. Even in the church, we don't fear God. And we do things and we play around with sin. Why? Because we don't fear God.

Proverbs, chapter 8. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverted mouth I hate. But we don't hate that. Why? Because in our hearts we're starting to love the world and the things of the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And we drift away, as it says in Revelation, chapter 2 about the church in Ephesus. I have this against you. What is against? What have we done?

Speaker 1

Lord?

Speaker 2

You have left your first love. You've drifted away from your first love. You used to love me supremely, but now you love other things. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life. You're starting to love the world. And so we see this and we say, well, God can't do that. That's wrong for God to do. God is God. He's the judge of all the earth. Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly?

And remember this too, about God. He's setting an example. He's done that in Scripture. As we look through the whole counsel of God, he does that when he sets things up because he wants the people to fear him. When they set up the stones in Gilgal to commemorate crossing the Jordan, the Lord says at the end of chapter four, Joshua, chapter four, he said, so that you would fear me forever. Forever.

I've told you before that the fear of the Lord, understood in the correct way, is kind of like the fear of electricity. I mean, electricity is in this room. Nobody's scared about it. But we know that when you mess with electricity, you have to be very careful. Why? Because it can fry you. That's why. I was working in the chemical business years ago in the 90s, and one of my accounts, a downtown building, had three-phase 480 power coming into the building. And two electricians had gotten careless, and they were electrocuted and they got fried by the electrical power. That's 480 volts. You know, the most voltage, I looked this up, the most voltage ever produced was at a lab, and it was 25.5 million volts of electricity. What is God in terms of electricity? He's like 25 billion volts of electricity.

What does the Bible say about God? He's a consuming fire. This world belongs to God. He created it. He set it up. And we, as a society worldwide, have spit in his face. And we said, forget you, God. We're gonna go our own way. Hey, there's coming a day when the Lord is gonna come back, and he is going to deal out retribution to those who do not know God, to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's a consuming fire, and we need to fear him. Not in a way that we run from him because we're afraid. We need to give him honor, we need to give him glory. We need to give him respect because he's God. It's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. A terrifying thing.

Listen, this convicted my own heart because I'm just like you in terms of the frog in the water. You know, the temperature keeps going up, and we keep getting more compromise and more compromise, and we just don't notice it. And it's like, well, that's just the way it is.

Speaker 1

And.

Speaker 2

And you know, everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it. And we think, oh, this is okay. It's not okay. It's not okay. God hates sin. And if you don't deal with the sin in your life, God is gonna uncover it. He is going to expose you. He's going to shame you.

But if you will come now, as the scripture says, "Come now and let us reason together," says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you will consent and obey, you'll eat the best of the land.

But if you refuse and rebel, you'll be devoured by the sword. Truly, the Word of the Lord has been spoken.

Speaker 1

How about you today? Perhaps you know that you are a believer in Christ, that He is indeed the Lord and Savior of your life. But your hidden sin has caused you to have trouble and surely feel distant from God. Would you like to come back to Him today? He would surely love for you to, or perhaps for the first time, ask Him to come into your heart.

If so, from a repentant heart, say to Jesus, "Lord Jesus, I need you. I know that I'm a sinner and I can't save myself. But Jesus, I believe that you are God in the flesh who died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead right now. Jesus, I turn from my sin and I ask you to forgive me and save me and make me the person you want me to be." If you pray a prayer like that and you meant it from your heart, the Lord will come into your life and He will change you forever.

Listen, we hope that you will do that, and if so, please go to fromhisheart.org and click the "Why Jesus" link. It will give you more information about what it means to come to Christ and some spiritual helps to guide you in your journey. Thank you so much for turning your life over to Christ and continuing to learn more about Him. Contact us, please, and let us know how the Lord is dealing in your life. Just go to fromhisheart.org and click the "Contact Us" link.

Pastor Jeff will surely get that. If you're facing fear in your life about your inability to share your faith or questions about how to be strong and courageous in your Christian life, this month Pastor Jeff wants to send you his new six-lesson series, "Strong and Courageous: Studying the Book of Joshua." We are offering that series this month to say thank you for your support of any amount.

To get the series on a USB flash drive, digital download, CDs, or DVDs, make that gift today when you call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go online to fromhisheart.org. God bless you for helping us reach the world, and I mean the world, with this kind of biblical teaching.

I'm Larry Nobles, hoping you'll be here again next time when we'll continue our study of Joshua in the series "Rising to the Challenge" with a lesson called "Do You Want to Walk in Victory?" Join us next time to find out more about a victorious life in Christ right here on From His Heart.

Speaker 2

There is treasury, there is blessing, there is hope.

Speaker 1

From his heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and he has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more@fromisheart.org.