THE TROUBLER OF ISRAEL
‘Why hast thou troubled us?’
Joshua 7:25
Ai was a royal city, which was in existence in the time of Abraham. It lay in the uplands to the east of Bethel, amid ‘a wild entanglement of hill and valley’; so its capture might well have been reckoned difficult even by experienced besiegers. But the miraculous success at Jericho had inspired such hopes in Israel, that the capture of Ai seemed a certainty. What a critical hour this was for Israel! A crushing defeat now might have been irretrievable. It was at exactly a similar stage of their approach to Palestine from the south that the Israelites had met with the severe repulse at Hormah, which had driven them back into the desert for forty years. No wonder that Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth on his face before the ark. There are some defeats that are doubly tragic owing to the hour in our experience when they come.
I. Note that defeats often follow hard on victories.—Only a few days had gone since that so glorious hour when the walls of Jericho had fallen at the trumpet-blast. The memory of that day was still intensely vivid; there would be little else talked about by the camp-fire; and it was then, in the full flush of triumph, that the men of Israel were routed before Ai. Not when they were dejected and dispirited, not when they were bereft of tokens for good—it was not then that this so ignominious and so unexpected repulse occurred; it was when every heart still thrilled with the cheer of an unexampled victory. Now oftentimes temptation meets us so. It comes on the heels of our brightest and best hours, until at last, as we journey through the years, we learn to be very watchful and very prayerful.
II. The blame of our failures may lie at our own doors.—When the three thousand fled and the thirty-six were slain, Joshua went straight to God about it, and he did well. But read his prayer, and you will catch a strange note in it. Joshua reproaches God. Why hast Thou brought us here? Why art Thou going to destroy us? Why were we not content to dwell across the Jordan—as if the power of God had not been seen at Jericho. Then Joshua learned—and none but a loving Father would have taught him that—that the blame lay not in heaven, but at his door. It was not God who was responsible for the flight; it was sin in the camp of Joshua that had caused it. The secret of failure lay in the tents of Israel. And how prone we still are when we are worsted, to carry the blame of it far too far away! How ready, in every fault and every failure, to trace the source of it anywhere but in ourselves! In spiritual defeats never accuse another. Never cry out against the name of God. He changes not. It is in the tented muster of my heart, and in the things buried and stamped under the ground there, that the secret of my moral disaster lies.
III. The wide sweep of a single sin.—When Achan stole the Babylonian garment and the gold, he never dreamed that others would suffer for it. The crime was his, and if it should ever be discovered, the punishment would fall on his own back. If one had whispered to him in the critical moment that the whole army would suffer for his tampering, how Achan would have ridiculed the thought! Yet that was the very thing that happened, and that very thing is happening still. From Joshua to the meanest camp-follower of Israel, there was not one untouched by Achan’s folly. It scattered the three thousand before Ai, it slew the six and thirty, it spread dismay through all the host. And how Achan’s home was brought to ruin by it, is all told in this tragical chapter. And that is ever the sad work of sin. Like the circles of ripples, its consequences spread, and on what far shores they shall break, none knows but God. I may think that my sin is hidden. I may be certain none has observed my vice. But in ways mysterious its influences radiate, and others suffer because I am bad.
IV. Lastly, Be sure your sin will find you out.—Over all the lesson that warning is written large. In all history there is no more memorable instance of the way in which sin comes to the surface. Achan thought himself absolutely safe. In the wild carnage no one had observed him. The man was slain to whom the gold belonged, and the wearer of the garment lay stabbed in the streets of Jericho. But the scrutiny of God proved too much for Achan. He learned that all things are naked and open before Him. Though not a single human eye had spied him, he had been under the gaze of the all-seeing God. As Achan sowed, so did he reap. Now for you and me there will be no dramatic moment in which by miracle our sin will be detected. We shall not be summoned into public audience, and unmasked in the striking way that Achan was; but for all that our sin will find us out, as surely as his sin found Achan. We think it is done with. No one knows our secret. It is buried in the tent of our own hearts. But in conscience, in character, in joy, in sorrow, in trial, in the quiet moments of uneventful days, in the great hours of conflict and of duty— then, and at the last judgment in eternity, our sin, like a bloodhound, runs us down. How precious to think that if our sin must find us, it can find us clinging to the feet of Jesus! There there is pardon for a guilty past; there there is power for an untrodden future.
Illustrations
(1) ‘When Benjamin Franklin was a young man, he was being shown out of the house of a friend along a narrow passage. As they went, his friend said to him, “Stoop, stoop;” but Franklin did not catch his words, and struck his head violently against an overhanging beam. “My lad,” said his friend, “you are young, and the world is before you; learn to stoop as you go through it and you will save yourself many a hard blow.” It may be we are all loth to stoop when we are leaving the “large room” where God has been good to us; but then, if ever, watchfulness is needed.’
(2) ‘Joshua, with the grim humour of which the Oriental mind is so fond, playing on the similarity of the word achar, “to trouble,” and the name Achan, said, “Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this day.” The whole nation had shared in the imputation of guilt and its disastrous consequences, and therefore the whole nation, through its representatives, must now take part in its expiation. “Joshua and all Israel took Achan, and stoned him with stones.” To mark more deeply God’s detestation of his crime, and its spreading, clinging taint, his children, who may probably have been the accomplices of his crime, his cattle, and all that he had, share in his doom. The corpses are consumed with fire, together with his tent and the accursed things it had once vainly sought to hide. A great heap of stones, after the manner of primitive peoples, was raised over the spot, which took the name of the Valley of Achor, i.e. “trouble.” And the guilt being thus put away by sacrifice, “the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger.” ’
(3) ‘It is said that the Bank of France has an invisible studio in a gallery behind the cashiers, so that, at a signal from one of them, a suspected customer can instantly have his picture taken without his own knowledge. So our sins and evil deeds may be registered against us and we ourselves altogether unconscious of the fact.’