Transcript

Let me say this, there are a lot of sin, there is a lot of sin in every church, because there are a lot of people in most churches. But there’s a different way you deal with different sins in the church. For example, there are a lot of church sins in the church at Corinth, but Paul takes a whole chapter and singles out one sin and one man, and urgently cast attention on this particular situation. And we’ll look at more about that after we read the text.

I Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 1. “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. And you have become arrogant, and have not mourned instead, in order that the one who has done this deed might be removed from your midst. For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judge him, who has so committed this as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; and I did not not at all mean with the immoral people of this world or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters; for them you would have to go out of the world. But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler–not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with the judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.”

Sin that brings public reproach to the name of Christ. How was a church suppose to deal with someone in the church who has sin in their life that becomes a public scandal. What I mean by that is sin that is generally known in the community and generally known throughout the church and its sin of a nature that the community and the church views it as unacceptable and as wrong. Look, look first of all and notice the church should deal with this type of sin urgently. Urgently. Look at it first of all, from this prospective. They are to deal with it urgently, with this kind of sin, because it brings disgrace to the name of Christ.

Let’s look at verse 1. He says, “its is actually”, the word actually means there, generally, or known everywhere. He says, it doesn’t mean that every single solitary person in Corinth, Corinth was a big city, but generally this type, the reputation of this particular man is getting around town and is certainly known among all of you. Then he says, generally its reported. It just means it is heard. It is common knowledge. Then there is immorality among you and immorality of such a kind. Now the Greek there when he says immorality of such a kind, means, its emphasizing rather, the revolting character of the particular deed that is being committed. Immorality there is a broad word meaning sexual sin and sexual immorality. And then he gives the specific type of sexual sin. Last phrase of verse 1, “of the kind that does not exist, even among the Gentiles”.

Now Corinth was a very perverse culture. It was a very immoral city. As a matter of fact, in this day, to, to be Corinthian meant to partake of sexual immorality. It was just so rampant in the city. So its unusual to see this strong prohibition in that even in this promiscuous immoral culture, that incest still was greatly frowned upon and was unacceptable conduct and behavior. And, and Paul writes and says, I understand that “someone has his father’s wife”. Now probably this is a step mother, not his, his blood relative mother, and uh, could be that his father has died or perhaps divorced this woman, but this man has taken her in some sort of permanent union. They’re cohabitating together, perhaps they are even married, we don’t know for certain, but it is considered the sin of incest. Now the Old Testament prescribes stoning for this kind of sin. And so we know from the original purpose of God, delivering his moral absolutes to the Jews, that this kind of sin has been clearly and squarely prohibited by God as an abomination.

Now, we have heard the phrase among people where they will say, “well, you know now, sin is sin”. And then someone may say, “well, you know, all sins are equal”. Well, that’s true, but then its also false. Its true if you are talking about whether or not a man will get into heaven, or whether or not a man will be thrown into hell. In that sense, all sin’s equal. The Bible says, if you violate one part of the law, you are guilty of all of it. That means, and this is hypothetical because all of us have a multitude of sin, some many we don’t even know about, but if you uh, take all the commandments of God, they are like links on a chain and you’re hanging on to the bottom link over the pit of hell. And it doesn’t matter which link you break, you are gone. Now in that sense all sins are equal. But my friend, all sins are not equal in terms of the damage that is done to yourself, your family, your Christian family or society in general. And you well understand that. My friend, if I gossip about you, that’s sin against you, but how many of you would rather I gossip about you instead of shooting you with my thirty-aught-six. “Well, now sin is sin, you know, it doesn’t matter”. Certainly it matters. All sins are not equal in the damage and the destruction that they do.

Now a church deal with should deal with all known sin. But sin that becomes a public scandal, sin that brings public reproach on Christ and his reputation requires urgency, immediate attention. Now this word reproach simply means to bring shame, disgrace and discredit. There are a lot of sins, perhaps, even right now in this room, that brothers and sisters in Christ ought to be dealing with one another about. As a matter of fact, a whole lot of you need to get out of your unbiblical concept that if there’s sin to be dealt with the pastor and the elders deal with it. That is not biblical, I’ll show you that clearly later. We’re all responsible for dealing with sin in the body, one to another. But when there is a sin that becomes such a public scandal, that generally in the community at large, it brings public shame and disgrace and discrediting to Christ, then there must be an immediate response. And that’s why the apostle Paul does what he is doing here. He, he’s dealing with a lot of things, but then he deals with a particular man, a particular sin, a particular aspect of what’s going on in a church, because this demanded immediate attention, even above and beyond all the many other sin problems in the church at Corinth. I’ve had people ask me, now brother Jeff, why did you deal with this sin and its known, there’s sin here and sin there, and sin here and sin there, well, some of them bring such public reproach, they’ve got to be addressed immediately.

And that’s what the apostle Paul is doing here. For example, you do this all the time, raising children. You’ve got a two year old child, and you find out that that two year old child has an occasional problem of biting other people. Well, that’s a sin problem, I’d say, at least its a problem that  asks for attention and discipline. But its not anything you are going to lose sleep over. Its not anything you are going to be excessively grieved about. But let’s say you also have a 16 year old child. And one night, (knock, knock, knock), the sheriff knocks on your doors. And says, your son has been arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin. Well, now sin is sin. Not its not. Not as a parent. You’ll totally forget about a two year old child having a problem with biting and you will urgently put your attention on what demands the attention at the time. That’s what the apostle Paul is doing here. There was a grievous open, public, scandalous sin. And its to be dealt with urgently, when that is found in the church. As a matter of fact, we find throughout scripture, that when something happens, that brings public reproach on the name of our God, God acts. God is very concerned about those things that bring public reproach.

As a matter of fact, if you look at the word sin in the New Testament, you’ll find different Greek words and different Greek tenses. And you find that the sin that gets God, God’s attention is that sin of heart and attitude and practice whereby you purpose to participant in a sin. But the sins whereby that you fall into and you confess them and you want to get right about them, those are the sins, certainly God deals with all sins, but they do not get the attention of God’s judgement and chastisement like a purpose and an attitude of premeditated sin in the heart and the life of a believer.

Listen to some of the verses though, starting in the Old Testament, about how when reproach is brought on God, it gets his attention and he acts. In I Samuel 26 we have David, little David, coming out to the battle lines where Israel was lined up to fight the Philistines. And David here, is this great big giant called Goliath, blaspheming and he uses the word, and bringing reproach on Israel and the God of Israel. And David basically says, this got to be stopped. Now there is one thing for this guy to come down and taunt us and make fun of us, but when he starts bringing reproach on God, now that’s different.

Now there are a lot of Philistine soldiers out there and a number of those soldiers, I, say a number of them, every single one of them hated Israel and the God of Israel, but one stood up and taunted the God of Israel publicly. David said, get me a rock. And he put a rock in his sling, and, and, and some of the guys, said, now David, man, you can’t even wear Saul’s armor, man, you’ll perish before this thing. And he said, I’m going to tell you what, I’m going to teach him not to blaspheme my God and King, bring public reproach on the name of my God. And he got a rock and slung that sling around and let that rock go, popped Goliath in the head, killed him and went and chopped off his head. Just to show us that sure, every Philistine deserved God’s judgement. But one brought special public reproach, and God said, I”m going to deal with that. I’m going to deal with that.

2 Kings chapter 19, we have Assyria encamped against Judah. And Sennacherib the king of Assyria, began to publicly taunt and ridicule the God of heaven. King Hezekiah of Judah went and told God on him. I’m going to tell you something, you’d better not make fun of the man of God, because he might go tell God on you. Hezekiah went in prayer and said, God, I”m not all that important, the people of Israel are not all that important, but, but Sennacherib king of Assyria, God is bringing public reproach on you. And saying that you are not the true God, you can’t defend your people. You know what God did. That night God sent the angel of the Lord and he slew 185, 000 of the Assyrian army. And the Bible says, and the next morning when they all woke up they all woke up dead.

You know what God is telling us. God is saying, when somebody brings public reproach on my name, I act. King David committed the awful sin of taking Bathsheba and then as his own wife and then having her husband murdered, and the prophet came to David’s chamber one day and through a series of events, the prophet Nathan rebuked David. And David said, I have sinned, I asked God to forgive me, and then the prophet looked and says, you’re forgiven, however. Your sin has given an occasion for the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. Your sin of such, is such a nature that the people who want to bring reproach, disgrace, discredit and shame on the name of our God, now have some credibility to their criticisms of our God. Therefore the severe hand of discipline was upon David, the little baby that was born to Bathsheba died. And the iniquity of his sin continued in his household.

And Daniel 9:6, we find Daniel praying corporately, Daniel, God’s man, God’s prophet, interceding for the nation of Israel. And in his prayer he prays for mercy and here’s the word he uses because Israel’s sin has become a public reproach. On the name of their God. And then in the New Testament, Philippians 2:15 says “that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent children of God, above reproach”. Not sinless, but above reproach “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world”. God would like for all of us to live above sin, but the only way you can live above sin is to rent an apartment above the pool room. Friend, you can’t live com, but you can, you can keep sin from becoming a stronghold whereby you fall into grievous, public, shameful sin, that brings public reproach on the name of Christ, you can do that. What the old fellow said, “you can’t keep a bird from flying over your head, but you can keep him from building a nest in your hair”. That’s basically what God is saying. You can keep from falling into grievous open scandalous sin that brings reproach on the name of Jesus.

God’s concerned about reproach being brought to him, and I Timothy 3:2, he says, “the overseers of the church must be men who are above reproach”. Men who are sinless. No. Men that you can look at and never find a sin, no. But men who have nothing in their life that somebody can credibly shame, slander, discredit, or disgrace God. I Timothy 3:7 says there, they have to have that “good reputation”, this is elders again, “with those outside the church”. That means above reproach. I Timothy 3:10 says “a deacon has to be tested”, and while you are tested and you see is he “above reproach”, I don’t want reproach brought on my name. Above sin? No. The kind of sins that would bring reproach on the church. I Timothy 5:7-14, the Bible gives instructions of how widows are to live, and he uses the word so they will not bring reproach. On Christ and his church. Titus 2:8, talks about a young man’s speech has to be above reproach. So we see here that there is an urgency when something of, is of a public nature and gives public shame, disgrace, discredit to the name of our God. That’s when you deal with it urgently.

Well, first of all, you deal with it urgently because it brings disgrace to the name of God. And secondly, Paul points out here very clearly, you deal with these kind of sins urgently because it brings disease to the whole church family. It brings disease to the whole church family. In verses 6-8 of our text, I Corinthians 5:6-8, Paul shows very clearly how, how as a church family, we have what you might call corporate solidarity. Corporate solidarity. What do I mean by that is we are intertwined and interconnected, we are one unit in God’s eyes. We are one body. We have a corporate relationship to God. And this is one of the true principles that has been so overwhelmingly neglected in American Christianity and at least in the last few years. A neglect of our corporate relationship. You know, we will want to emphasize my individual walk, my individual walk, my personal relationship. Yo know what the Bible emphasizes over and over, in addition to that, our church family as a corporate unity having a relationship to God.

We’re interconnected to each other, inseparable one from another. My friend, I submit to you that when God joins you to a local church you’re as bonded to that family as if you stood at the altar and said your vows to your spouse. You’re one with them. There is a corporate unity there, a united, and, as a matter of fact, what you do, all of us do. What you do, all of us participate in. That’s what he means there in verse 6 when he starts out by saying, “your boastings not good, do you not know” there’s alarm in that statement. Don’t you understand, can’t you see, don’t you know, what’s that Paul. That “a little”, and the emphasis is on little in that verse, “a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough”. A little sin, infects the whole big lump of dough. Now the picture there is leaven, its like yeast, you get a little bit of yeast, and you put just a little bit of yeast in a great big lump of dough and it will, it will infuse and affect the whole thing. That corporate solidarity that we have, that corporate unity that we have.

As a matter of fact, look at what Jesus says about when Jesus taught us to pray he gave us what is commonly called the Lord’s Prayer, but its really a model prayer, its not his prayer, he didn’t need that prayer. But he prayed it so we’d have a model to pray by. What is the first word of what’s called the Lord’s prayer, but what really is the model prayer? What’s the first word. Our. Jesus said the first thing you need to understand when you pray, is every time you go to God, you’ve got to think about all of your brothers and sisters in your local church. You don’t ever go to God seeking God without a conscious understanding of the family. Your corporate solidarity. Your corporate identity.

You know what, once I got married to my wife, everything I do I have to think about her. And once we had our children, everything that I do I have to include them in my thinking, every single solitary conclusion and decision of mine. You know, in America today we want to make the church some sort of optional social club, some sort of optional service club to society, we can pop in and check in and pop out if we don’t like it. And that is not biblical. You’re bound together by the spirit of God in your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, intertwined and inseparable with the body of Christ. And by body I mean the local church. We have that corporate solidarity.

In Jesus high priestly prayer he prayed that we might be one. He doesn’t mean actually one with every Christian in the world, you can’t be one with people you are never around and never see. But one as a local congregation. He gave spiritual gifts, and he said, now, some over here have this gift, and some back there have a little bit different gifts, and this group’s got a different gift, that one’s got a different one, and this, and then when you put them all together, you have a whole functioning body. You have to have one another. Corporate solidarity.

Well he says there in verse 6, your boasting is not good. And really what he means there is you are totally inaccurate. You are completely deceived. Now the church at Corinth they prided themselves in their spiritual; maturity and they didn’t have any. They thought they were so accomplished and had so attained. And he said, man, you’re going around boasting about your spiritual maturity and you are way back in the nursery school of spirituality. Boasting about how spiritually mature you are, that’s not proper and that does not fit.

Now let’s talk about this disease that spreads to the whole body or this disease that affects the whole body. Now if you have a serious infectious disease, its going to do two things for certain. Number one, its going to spread of multiply, and number two, its going to weaken you. If you have an infectious disease, in your physical body, its going to spread and multiply — that’s the nature of an infectious disease — and secondly its going to weaken your body. And that’s exactly what Paul says is going to happen here. When he says, don’t you know that, that little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough, he’s saying, just a little bit of it there will spread and multiply and affect all of it, you have a corporate unity, you have a corporate solidarity, you cannot divorce and separate yourself form others in the body when they are living in sin and rebellion. It will infect and affect you. It spreads and multiplies just like one rotten apple will ruin the whole barrel if you don’t deal with it.

Now this might be why in the church at Corinth, as we’re going to study through here, begins in chapter 6, they ware having trouble with the lawsuits. Brothers and sisters in Christ were going to pagan secular courts to sue each other. And we’re going to find out God’s guidelines for Christians, when they have legal disputes, and how you handle them and you don’t go to secular court authorities to handle them. We’re going to see very clearly also they had a misuse of liberty, they took the liberty in Christ that you have in Christ and turned it into licentiousness, and sin. They profaned the Lord’s supper. They neglected the primacy of love love one for another in the family. They failed to regulate spiritual gifts. Man, if you said you had anything in any kind of sign, wonder, or miracle, they were just doing everything all the time, it was chaos in the church. And they even questioned the resurrection. One scholar pointed out it could be that they didn’t deal with this public scandalous sin and therefore there was an infection that multiplied through the whole body. And you know, that’s what will happen if you don’t deal with sin in your physical body, I mean, your regular physical disease in your physical body. You have one type of germ or disease in your body and it begins spreading and you know what it will do? It will birth or allow the birthing or the starting of other diseases in your body. And then that will lead to other ones, and then on there ones, and it just multiplies and spreads, and that was exactly the biblical principle the apostle Paul is talking about.

It spreads and it multiples. You see, when satan wants to lull you asleep way over here, because some of you here you never hadn’t sinned in 20 years. I mean, you just don’t have any sin in your life. But then somebody way over here in the church, well you know they’ve got sin in their life, but it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t affect it. It infects and affects you. That’s the principle Paul, he said, “don’t you know a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough”. It affects the whole family.

Not only does it spread or multiply, but secondly, this disease of sin will weaken the church. Its like having a clogged carburetors on your car. Man, you go down the road, that carburetors’s clogged up, that car’s going to stutter, and chug and knock and, and be weakened and I don’t care what, you can wax the outside, you can get a new paint job, you can pin-stripe it, you can put race car numbers on the side, but until you clean out the carburetor, its weakened. Aren’t you sick and tired of churches never, ever addressing, I mean open scandalous sin and they doing everything cosmetically possible to grow the church. Instead of cleaning the carburetors.

And as a matter of fact, God’s going to show us very clearly when there’s sin in one part of the camp and you don’t deal with it, God holds the whole camp accountable for it. Now wait a minute, I didn’t do it. It doesn’t matter, you have a corporate solidarity. You mean to tell me, if you’ve got a 12, 13 year old kid out here in rebellion and you don’t do anything about it, you want to tell me who I’m going to, I you want me to tell you who I’m going to hold accountable? You daddy. You mama. If you are not willing to deal with it, you are guilty also, as that one in your family is guilty.

Now look at Joshua chapter 7. Now  the background is, the, they’ve marched into the promised land, Joshua is their conquering leader, they’ve conquered the mighty city of Jericho and they are flying high and feeling mean. Man, they’ve had a great victory, look what happens though, Joshua 7:1 “But the sons of Israel acted unfaithfully in regard to the things under the ban”. Now there were things that God banned, he said, when you plundered Jericho, there are some things that you can’t take personally and keep for yourselves, they are holy unto the Lord, or they are to be completely destroyed, they are under the ban. For Achan the son of Karmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the things under the ban”, now notice this, Achan, one man, one man, committed the sin, look at the last phrase of verse 1. “Therefore the anger of the LORD burned against these sons”, plural, of Israel. Corporate guilt. Corporate responsibility. One man did the sin. We’ve forgotten that. We, we don’t, we haven’t lived like we believe that. Let’s follow it on, verse 2. “Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth-aven, east of Bethel, and said to them, go up and spy out the land. So the men went up and spied out Ai”. Verse 3. “And they returned to Joshua and said to him, do not let all the people go up; only about two or three thousand men need go up to Ai; do not make all the people toil up there, for they are few”.

Now, the spies come back from scouting out the second city they are going to conquer, little old Ai, and, and the spies come back and says, these guys are pushovers. This little old city of Ai is nothing compared to Jericho, listen. Joshua don’t send all the troops up there, two or three thousand, we’ll just march right through Ai with no resistance. No sweat. Verse 4. “So about 3000 men from the people went up there but they fled from the men of Ai. And the men of Ai struck down about 36 of their men and pursued them from the cave as far as Shebarim, and struck them down on the descent, so the hearts of the people melted and became as water”. I mean, just moments before they were glorying in the conquering victory of Jericho, now they are walking around with their chins on the ground, wondering what happened, little old Ai, whipped us good.

Oh. Look what the man of God does. Verse 6. “Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until evening, both he and the elders of Israel; and they put dust on their heads”. listen, my friend, when the church is in defeat, when the church is weak, and the church is anemic and God’s not moving, leadership need to go get on their face and saying God, where have we missed it. God, where have we missed it. Verse 7 and Joshua said, “alas, O Lord God, why didst though ever thou this people over to the Jordan, only to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? If only we had been willing to dwell beyond the Jordan”. He’s just saying, God, we should have never come over here, in, in conquest of this land. We should have just stayed back over there in the wilderness. Back over on the other side of Jordan.

Verse 8. “Oh Lord, what can I say, since Israel has turned their backs before their enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear of it, and they will surround us and cut off our name form the earth. So what wilt though do for they great name?” What’s he talking about here. Reproach. “For thy great name”. That’s the way the leader of God prays. God, not for the sake of my ministry, not that I’ll have a good retirement, that, that’s slop. God, for your name sake, what can we do to get your hand of power and blessing, get this weakness off of us.

Verse 10. So the Lord said to Joshua, rise up. “Why is it that you have fallen on your face?” In other words, Joshua, its not a time to pray, I want you to do something about a problem. Verse 11.”Israel has sinned”. Now wait a minute God, verse 1 said Achan sinned. God said, you don’t understand, I view Israel as one. And I view the local church as one. And if one in the church, or one in the camp of Israel sinned, then I say Israel sinned. “Israel has sinned, and they’ve also transgressed my covenant, which I commanded them. They’ve even taken some of the things under the ban and have both stolen and deceived, moreover, they have also put them among their own things. Therefore the sons of Israel, the whole nation, the whole camp, cannot stand before their enemies, they turn their backs before their enemies, for they have become accursed”. Whose accursed? Achan? They are. The whole nation is. “And I will not be with you any more unless you destroy the things under the ban from your midst”. God says, I want to tell you something, I hold you all accountable, I hold you all as guilty, I hold you all as accursed until you deal ahead the sin in the camp.

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 and from your midst”. I want to tell you something, the church, listen to me, you can get in in here you can hoopla, you can lather up, you can praise, you can worship, you can clap, you can run, you can shout, you can speak in tongues in 27, 000 different languages, you can cast out, heal and do everything you want to do, but if you are not dealing with sin in the camp its not of God, whatever’s happening, because God ain’t there. He’s not going before you in power nor visiting you in power. We want some of the power a hold lot of these people are trying to openly demonstrate in their worship services, we need to quit clapping and shouting and running, and get back to church discipline. Now nothing wrong with clapping and shouting and running and hollering, I like doing some of that. But I never hear anything about discipline. Amen. Where’s the balance. I’m going to tell you, well, let’s move on.

Verse 14. “In the morning then you shall come near by your tribes. And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes by lot shall come near by families, and the family which the Lord takes shall come near by households, and the household which the Lord takes shall come near man by man”. So he’s going to go break it down tribe, down to family, down to household and down to the man who did it. “And it shall be that the one who has taken the things under the ban shall be burned with fire, he and all that belongs to him, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he has committed a disgraceful thing in Israel. So Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel near by tribes and the tribe of Judah was taken. He brought the family of Judah near, and he took the family of the Zerahites; and he brought the family of the Zerahites near man by man, and Zabdi was taken. And he brought his household near man by man; and Achan, son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Serah, from the tribe of Judah, was taken. 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.”” Verse 20,  “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 and two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold fifty 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.”

Here’s when the committee was formed. The committee said, well, you know we are suppose to love one another. Somebody jumped up in the business meeting and brought a rock and put it on the pulpit. And said, he who is out, without sin, cast the first stone. Somebody else jumped up in the back and said, now preacher, the Bible says, judge not lest you be judged. Fleshly, emotional based unbiblical conclusions for this context. We’re going to deal with all of that in the coming weeks, if the Lord lets me.

Well, look at verse 22. “So Joshua sent messengers, and they rant to the tent”. Reckon that’s urgent. They ran. To the tent. You see, you’ve got to understand something. In the physical realm, they understood the grave seriousness of Achan’s sin. They knew Achan’s sin could mean every one of them would be slaughtered by the enemy. Achan in essence was just handing them over to slaughter. So here’s what God basically said. You can judge Achan, or I’ll judge you. Are you listening church. You can judge the sin that’s among you and deal with it, or I will judge you corporately as a whole. That’s what God was saying to Israel. You judge Achan, or I’ll judge you. They, You know what they decided, I believe, we, we’ll judge Achan. Ran to the tent, and beyond, verse 22, “it was concealed in his tent with the silver underneath, and they too them from insight the tent and brought them to Joshua and to all the sons of Israel, and they poured them out before the Lord. 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 donkey, his sheep, his tent, and all that belonged to him, and they brought them up to the valley of Achor. And Joshua said, “why have you troubled us?”” Us. Not, Achan, why have you troubled your house, your family. Us. Because Achan you brought the curse and the reproach and the judgement of God on all of us. Why have you troubled us?

Verse 25. “The Lord will trouble you this day”. Now here’s where it changed. As they dealt with Achan according to the dictates of God’s biblical standard, and instruction, then the judgement of God, went off Israel corporately and onto Achan individually. We’ll talk about it more next Sunday night, but that’s what happened when the apostle Paul removed this boy in an incestuous relationship, outside the church family. What he was doing, he was saying, God’s curse and God’s judgement will come on the church, but if you will deal with this one in scandalous sin, then you put him outside and he will receive the judgement and the church will not. Same principle.

Verse 25 again “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 and after they had stoned them with stones, and they raised over him a great heap of stones that stands to this day, and the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger”. He did what? He turned from the fierceness of his anger. God simply said, you can judge Achan, or I’m judging you. They judged Achan, so God turned his anger. I want to tell you something, we are in a dispensation of grace and mercy, we don’t follow the Old Testament law guidelines of stoning, we all understand that, but the principle remains true. I want to tell you, God has removed his hand of blessing and put his hand of cursing on the majority of churches I know about in America today, and they wonder why 80 percent of our Southern Baptist churches have plateaued or are declining. And God’s not looking for perfection He’s not looking for, hey, how many of you parents discipline in perfection. None of us. Not a one of us. But we haven’t thrown it out, have we. Hadn’t thrown the whole principle out just because we’re not perfect at it. God’s not wanting us to be perfect, he wants us to be honest and yielding and purposed to honor and obey his biblical principles.

Verse 26, “then they raised over him a great heap of stones that stands to this day, and the Lord turned form the fierceness of his anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the valley of Achor to this day”. And we see them in verse, uh chapter 8, going forth against Ai and having a great victory this time, and going on conquering in the promised land.

One scholar said it this way. The individual functions with the larger context of the community of which he is a part. Achan robbed the whole nation of the purity and wholeness, holiness which it ought to possess before God. And that’s one of the reasons why we should deal urgently with open, public scandalous sin in the church that brings public reproach on Christ. Because it disgraces the name of our God and it brings disease to the whole church. Disease that multiples and spreads, and disease that weakens the whole body.