Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: After Sin

Because we had a limited amount of time in the book of Joshua over the summer, I needed to skip some content. Ideally, we would have work through every passage on Sunday mornings, but we did not have the time for that, as I have described in past devotionals. But, as I have also mentioned before, what I could not cover on Sunday mornings, I tried to cover at least briefly in the Friday devotional emails that I sent to my congregation over the summer. Those emails I have turned into these devotional posts, and that is what we are going to do with Joshua 8 in this post.

Two Sundays ago, I posted the sermon from Joshua 7, where we saw the destructive power of sin in the camp, both individual and corporate sin. Sin is far more deadly than we often think it is, and it must be dealt with. This next part of that episode--ch. 8--tells us the story of how God restored the people after the sin of Achan was dealt with and how, even though Achan had sinned and they had sinned, His plans could not be derailed by anything. The sin of God's people cannot overcome the glorious plan and work of God.

Again, I did not have time to look at ch. 8 specifically in a sermon, so let's look at a few highlights from ch. 8 in this post:

First, note how God encourages Joshua right from the start: "And the Lord said to Joshua, 'Do not fear and do not be dismayed.... I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land.'" With such a devastating loss because of sin fresh in his memory, Joshua may have thought that they had blown it and God was done with them, but, again, the sin of God's people cannot mess up the plan of God. Two quick points from that:

• Think about our battles against sin in the Christian life. When we give into sin and temptation, satan is often right there with us as the accuser of God's people, whispering, "You've done it now. God's done with you now. You might as well go on and keep on sinning." He may also say to us, "God's name will be dragged through the mud because of you. You're such a scumbag!" Those are lies from the pit of hell, and they smell like smoke. Conviction of sin is never intended by God to drive us down into the dust simply to stay there bemoaning our sinfulness. The conviction of the Holy Spirit is meant to bring to Him in repentance, hear His words "Do not fear and do not be dismayed," and then move on in gratitude to serve Him again. Sin should never spiritually paralyze us. As the old hymn goes, "Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that is greater than all my sin." Or, as the modern hymn says, "Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here. Sin would reduce me to utter despair, but through Thy free goodness my spirit's revived, and He that first made me still keeps me alive." Learn from this episode and do not listen to the lies of satan: once you have repented of your sin, move on to serve God again in gratitude for His great mercy.
• Think also about our battles to share the gospel with friends, neighbors, and family members. Again, here satan attacks us and says, "Your sin is going to drag God's name through the mud. No one will listen to you because you're such a sinner, so get it together before you go out and try to share the gospel." That too is a lie from the pit of hell and smells like smoke. Just as God dealt with their sin and then brought them to victory over Ai, so God deals with our sin in Christ and sends us out as His messengers for the gospel. And, listen: your sinfulness is part of your witness. You are a great sinner going to other sinners and saying, "Look, I have nothing for you personally. I am big sinner whose only hope is Jesus Christ, and He's your only hope too." If we give into the lie of satan and think, "I really do need to clean up my act before I witness to my friend," what subtle message does that send to them (i.e. our friends)? It sends them the message that they have to clean up their act before they come to Jesus, and that is not the true gospel. Jesus doesn't say to anyone, "Clean yourself up some and then we'll talk." No, He says like God says here, "Do not fear and be not dismayed: there is more grace in me than there is sin in you."

Second, note the sad ending to Achan's story. It is subtle, but it is in v. 2: "...its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves." When they "fought" against Jericho, all the plunder was to go to God, and Achan stole from God for himself. The sad ending of Achan's story is this: if he had just waited for a little while, he would have had all the plunder he wanted. But, Achan let his desire override his devotion to the LORD. Church family, often times our desires are not the problem. Often those desires in and of themselves are good desires. The problem comes in when we let those desires get out of order and we go after them before seeking God. For example, the desire for money to meet our physical needs is not the problem because God knows we need that for our physical needs. It becomes an idol when we go after it more than God, thinking that it will fulfill our needs. Or, the desire for sexual gratification is not in and of itself a bad desire because God created man and woman to be one flesh in marriage. That becomes a sin and an idol when we go after it more than God, seeking to fulfill it before God's timing and outside of God's plan for us, which is fulfillment in the context of marriage between a man and a woman. The sad conclusion to Achan's sin is that if he had just waited on God; if he had just sought God first, he would have had the plunder in God's timing. Is this not the OT equivalent of Jesus' teaching in Mt. 6:25-33 (cf.v. 33)?

Third, note that God's plan for His people is very different for this battle than it was for Jericho. Here, the whole army has to fight and they use an ambush strategy. Remember, while parts of God's plan for us in the battles of this life are constant, like using the means of grace (the Bible, prayer, and worship), we cannot put God in a box and think He will work the same way every time. We cannot think that because one strategy for evangelism worked for one person, it will work for all of them. We cannot think that because God met our needs in a particular way in one situation, that is always the way He will meet our needs. Our Lord is not a tame lion who shows up whenever we want and in the ways we want. So, we need to seek the counsel of God first, and then act after seeking godly counsel, knowing God may not work the same ways He has before (we will talk more about this in Sunday's sermon).

Finally, notice out Joshua renews the covenant at the end of this episode. This seems abrupt and even out of place in the narrative, but it is a very appropriate way to end the episode of chs. 7-8. One commentator notes: "After Israel had just experienced the curse of Yahweh’s anger (ch. 7) and the boon of Yahweh’s aid (ch. 8), what could be more appropriate than Joshua’s reading ‘the blessing and the curse’ (v. 34) of the Torah?" They have felt God's anger and seen God's blessing, and so what has happened to them in the space and time of life needs to be interpreted for them by the Word of God. But, even though it is appropriate, it is still and abrupt change: from war to worship. Yet, that abrupt changes brings back up one of the lessons we learned from ch. 1: Success for the Israelites was not primarily about defeating the Canaanites and taking the land. The land was simply a place where they could have rest from their enemies so that they could be prosperous in their relationship with God. Here, by bringing them to worship right after restoration and victory, God reminds them to keep first things first: their relationship with Him as His people. And, Church family, the same is true for us. In the battles of this Christian life, God gives us victory so that we can "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to [us]." In all the whirlwind of life, jobs, professors, family, friends, politics, struggles with sin, and everything else this life throws us, we need to keep first things first: our relationship with our Savior as His people and His Church.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Rahab's Deception and God's Providence

The passage of the sermon that I will post this coming Sunday is one of the many difficult passages in the books of Joshua and Judges. If you have read the book of Joshua (and Judges), you know there are several difficult stories that present ethical behavior that is challenging (at best) or completely appalling (at worst). I am going to try to address these difficulties in Joshua as we move through this book, but even as I do, we need to remember that almost all of them are secondary issues at best, so I do not plan to bring them up in the sermons. But, I also cannot just leave them unaddressed, so I will try to address them in these posts.

This first thorny issue surrounds Rahab's method of protecting the spies in her house in Jos. 2. She deceives the king of Jericho, telling him that the spies had left, when she was really hiding them on her roof. So, the question that has been debated a lot throughout the history of the Church is: What do we do with that? The NT praises Rahab for her protection of the spies, so how do we reconcile that with her deception here?

First, let me say again, this is not the point of the story at all. This is actually quite a minor detail in the story as a whole, and even the structure of the passage shows us that. The author uses a common Hebrew literary technique called a "chiasm," which looks like this:

     A: Opening information to set up the story

          B: Secondary detail

               C: The point of the passage

          B': Matching secondary detail to parallel the first

     A': Closing information to parallel and close out the opening

There can be more layers in the middle of parallel information, but the point is that the center of a chiasm is the important part of the story--the point of the story, and this literary technique was a way Hebrew authors highlight the most important part of their story. This chapter follows that pattern like this:

     A: V. 1a -- Opening detail telling us Joshua's assignment to the spies
          B: Vv. 2-7 -- Secondary details of how they entered Jericho and were protected
               C: Vv. 8-14 -- Rahab's confession of faith: the point of the story
          B': Vv. 15-21 -- Secondary details of how they left Jericho and escaped
     A: Vv. 22-24 -- Closing detail telling us how the spies report back to Joshua

The beginning and ending hold the passage together, so they are pretty important, but the passage is primarily about Rahab's confession of faith; not her deception. The section that contains her deception is actually the most minor of the passage. So many people get hung up on Rahab's deception and miss her glorious truth that she confesses, and we do not need to get hung up on it.

In fact, I had thought about showing the ways Christians have tried to reconcile the ethics of this passage, but that still gets us distracted from the point even of her actions themselves. If we narrow in on her deception, there is still a bigger and more important theological point: God's providence.

Church family, for Rahab's confession of faith to be genuine and for her actions to be something God uses for good, it is not crucial that we justify her deception. She was a sinner like us. In fact, she was a new believer from a pagan, Canaanite city, so, of course, we should not expect that she have all her ethics straight in her first act of faith. When we do things for God out of faith, we have mixed motives or mixed actions that often, if not always, mix some sin in with the good works we try to do for God. Does that mean God cannot use them? Not at all. Sinful or not, God can use our actions anyway, and Rahab's protection of the spies shows us this. He uses the actions of sinful men and women to bring about His glorious plans (cf. e.g. Ge. 50:20 Ac. 2:23). In fact, since all He has to work with in humanity is sinful men and women, He must be able to use all our actions for His sovereign plan--sinful or not.

Certainly, we cannot use that as an excuse for sinning (cf. Ro. 6:1-2), and certainly we need to think through difficult ethical issues and try to do what is faithful to God's Word. But, the amazing grace and providence of God reminds us that even if we do that and fail, we cannot mess up God's plan; even if we do that and fail, the blood of Christ covers those sins too. So, while we should think through ethical issues and attempt to be faithful to God's Word in the decisions we make, we also can rest in the fact Christ catches us when we fall. This is basically what John says in 1 Jn. 2:1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

In the sermon from the church service that I will post on Sunday, my congregation confessed together what true faith is from the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a 450-year-old reformed set of questions and answers. Well, that catechism also has a very good question and answer about God's providence--Question 27:

Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which He upholds, as with His hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from His fatherly hand.

Friends, we can talk about Rahab's deception and debate whether it was sinful or not (and if you want to talk about it, feel free to ask), but ultimately, what we should see in it is God's providence. He is "God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath" as Rahab confessed, which means He so rules all things that He can use our and Rahab's actions whether sinful or not. He is also the God who grants mercy, as Rahab saw, and He covers all our sins by the blood of Christ when we put our faith in Him. We can rest in that. We can try to live a faithful life and fight the battles of this Christian life as best we can resting in that truth.

But, one might respond and ask as the Heidelberg asks in question 64:

Q. But doesn’t this teaching make people indifferent and wicked?
A. No. It is impossible for those grafted into Christ by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude.

As we will see in Rahab on Sunday, when God works true faith in our hearts, we will want to serve Him, we will want to live for Him out of gratitude. But, we will also fail in that. When we do, We have His promises in places like 1 Jn. 2:1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

By His Grace,
Taylor

Just This Once?

"It is easy to tell a lie but hard to tell only one." ~ Sissela Bok, Lying

What a true statement. How easy is it for us to justify "white lies" by saying, "Just this once because I am afraid of what might happen" or "Just this once because I do not want to look bad"? The problem is that once we tell one lie (which is already pretty easy) it is a little easier to tell the next lie and then the next lie, so on and so forth. Soon our attitude snowballs and it is nearly impossible to stop.

Why do we lie? I would argue that we lie either our of fear or pride--fear of some type of consequence or pride in thinking that we deserve something be it an object or glory.

Fortunately the gospel offers a remedy. First, we are united to Christ and Christ is the truth (John 14:6). When you are united to the Truth and have His fullness that gives you "grace upon grace" it is impossible not to be changed by it. Second, when the King of the universe has set His intensive love upon you fear is driven out and pride is destroyed. How can we be prideful when we know who we are before God and what He had to do to bring us back to Him? How can we be afraid when the God of the universe has set His love upon us and promised to be with us always? This, of course, does not mean that the moment we become Christians we stop lying, not at all. I believe that successes and failures directly relate to how much or little we really believe the truth of the gospel. Some days it is in our hearts and in our minds and we can easily say, "I do not need to lie about this." Other days our belief falters and likewise go our actions. This is why Jonathan Edwards said, "The key to the Christian life is letting the gospel work its way down into our lives both rationally and experientially." Fortunately on all days we can always come to our Father and know that nothing can be done to make Him love us any more or any less. His love is constantly and infinitely intensive on His children.

By His Grace,
Taylor