Joshua: Soldier's Manual Lesson 11

                                        The Mercy

Joshua 7:6-11 Then Joshua tore his clothes, and fell to the earth on his face before the Ark of the Lord until evening, he and the elders of Israel; and they put dust on their heads. And Joshua said, "Alas, Lord God, why have you brought this people over Jordan at all-to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? Oh, that we had been content, and dwelt on the other side of Jordan! Oh Lord, what shall I say when Israel turns its back before its enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear about it, and surround us, and cut off our name from the earth. Then what will you do for your great name?" So the Lord said to Joshua, "Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed my Covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things, and have both stolen and deceived; and they have also put it among their own stuff." 

19-21 Now Joshua said to Achan, "My son, I beg you, give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession to him, and tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me." And Achan answered Joshua, and said, "Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and this is what I have done: when I saw among the spoils a beautiful Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. And there they are, hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent, with the silver under it." 

Vs. 25 And Joshua said, "Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day." So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned him with stones.

After conquering the city of Jericho there was a much smaller city called Ai that the army of Israel needed to conquer. So Joshua sent an army to Ai, only to be defeated. As we read in our text, Joshua fell on his face before the Lord and asked, "Why did you give us into the hands of our enemy?" God answered, "Because there is sin in the camp. I commanded you to destroy everything, yet someone hid something. This is why you were defeated." Joshua soon found out it was Achan and had him stoned to death. 

So right here, I know what some of you are thinking: "Tim, why in the world would you entitle this blog, 'The Mercy'? It looks like Achan got everything but mercy. I don't get it." 

Well, let me explain: this is one of those stories in the Old Testament that after I read it, I take a deep breath and say to myself, "Thank God I am in the New Covenant." You see, as the New Covenant children of God, we are no longer under the wrath of God. We do not have to worry about being stoned to death for our disobedience. Because Jesus took the fulness of God's wrath on the cross, God no longer deals with our disobedience as a wrathful judge, but as a loving Father. 

Please do not misunderstand me: the Lord will be as severe as He needs to be with us when it comes to our sin and disobedience. Because He loves us, He will deal with our willful disobedience as strongly as He has too. Hebrews 12: 6 "Who God loves, He scourges." "Scourges" is a pretty heavy word. 

The Lord is saying, "I will go to whatever length I have to in order to get your attention. I know where sin and disobedience leads, to destruction, and because you are my child and I love you, I will go to whatever extreme I need to go to get you to repent and turn from your sin."

In this New Covenant walk there are three levels of God's chastisement. 

First of all, conviction. The Holy Spirit will lovingly convict our hearts when we are straying into an area of disobedience. He will speak, "Hey, you know this isn't right. Stop it. This grieves the heart of your Father." 

However, if we shrug off the conviction of the Lord, He will cause leadership to get involved. 

He will cause our spiritual leadership to recognize our disobedience and deal with it in grace and truth. 

Yet, if we harden our heart and ignore leadership, then the Lord will break out the scourge. 

Like Jonah being swallowed up by a whale, we will suddenly find ourselves swallowed up by very difficult circumstances. We will know that we are being scourged because the Lord's  chastisement will in someway be connected to our disobedience. It will be the result of our disobedience. 

However, the Lord's loving chastisement is His mercy toward us. There is too much at stake for the Lord to casually sit by and watch us dabble in our sin. The bible says, "the wages of sin is death." Wherever sin is present and not repented of, death will set in. If we try to hide secret sin in our marriage, death will set into our marriage. If we harbor sin in any relationship, death will eventually set into that relationship and kill everything there. 

Thank God for His mercy. Thank God He deals with us as a loving Father. What father seeing his child playing with something destructive would not step in and intervene?