Joshua 7

WHAT a most remarkable victory was this conquest of Jericho! It was distinctly the hand of God; there were no visible means. And now at a small place, Israel flees before the enemy, which discomfits them utterly. This is a very singular change, and a very sudden one, and has to be accounted for. You get in the first verse an intimation of what is the matter, though the people did not know it. But, as we have noticed already, as soon as they began to act they found their power was gone.
Certainly the Lord would never desert His people. His command to them was to take possession; and in the conquest of Jericho He had given them a most singular instance of His presence with them: He had shown them how He, without any human means, could cause the enemy to be overcome; and now, in the case of a very small city, the contrary occurs.
The reason of it all is, that one man-not the majority of the army, but one man-" took of the accursed thing," and implicated the whole army in his act; and God would not go up with the people in consequence.
It is the history of Christendom. The order to the church was to overcome the world-to bring the Rahabs out of it; but for many a century the church has not been able to overcome it. It is not that there have not been true and faithful men in it; but there is no single denomination that stands forth as a light in the world, as a witness in the midst of it. The church has lost its candlestick for many a long day. The people of God now are not able to take a heavenly standing. Where is the church that has kept it? God may go on in grace with His people, but He will show them where the defect has come in. One man took; it was a sample of the leaven that was at work, and the whole of Israel was implicated.
The word accursed," which we find in the preceding chapter and here, is the same as "devoted; " it means that it is all the Lord's.; you are not to touch it.
There cannot be walk in faith and power unless there be self-judgment. The overcomers of the Church decay in Rev. 2 and 3., are those who overcome that which has brought in that decay.
Well, this is how the thing occurred historically; but now you cannot turn out the Achans; all you can do is to purge yourself. " If a man purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work." When first I awake to the state of things in which I am, I am miserable because of that state, and my only way of action is to purge myself from it. But when I have done this I cannot, as people often fancy they can, relieve myself from the pressure of the condition in which the church is; I cannot escape from it. As a great man once said in a fine house, "I am looking for a quiet corner of the house in which I can pray; " so all we can do is to get up into the attic by ourselves: we cannot get out of the house.
In this chapter, Joshua is tremendously discouraged by the fact that the people flee before their enemies; he falls to the earth upon his face before the ark. But God says, " Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face 2 " You must find out the evil. The abominable rationalism of the day is that God is love and not holiness; and I say this is dreadful.
But, you say,- who is the person, who can get clear of everything? I answer, No one can; but it is a great thing that I do not tolerate it. Non-toleration is our principle. The flesh is in me. Yes, but do you tolerate it? No. Then that is a great step. And next the church question: Do you tolerate church evil? No; I do not tolerate it. If you allow evil you have a bad conscience. So I say, I come to this principle in my church association, that I do not tolerate evil. God is maintaining us, not simply as a saved people, but as a heavenly people; and if He be not maintaining us there is something wrong. " The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work."
The question is, What is God's purpose for His people? When a man goes to war he knows what he has to reckon on I reckon on the power of God to support me against all odds down here, unless I am coquetting with evil; and then He says, I cannot support you, because you are connected with this. He cares for His people wherever they are: He blessed Isaac a hundredfold when he was in the land of the Philistines. It is no evidence of His presence that He cares for His children; but it is that He keeps you from evil.
Here the evil affected the children of Israel only circumstantially. It did not soil the conscience individually, but it affected them in their proprietorship and nationally. Any godly one amongst them would not feel hindered if he were looking to God for his own comfort and blessing that day. But now, because 'of the unity of the Spirit, I believe A saint may be under a depression through going on right in his own heart and ways, because of what is allowed by others. I believe you may be in this condition when there is nothing traceable to yourself; for just as Israel was represented by the twelve loaves, are we by the one. Each one is not bound to find out the evil, but each one is responsible to wait on God to discover it. I do not think it is happy work to go seeking out evil. I think you may feel that something is wrong, and judge yourself, and wait on God to show it, None of the disciples knew that Judas was a traitor; but the Lord shows John in answer to prayer: " He it is to whom I shall give a sop when I have dipped it."
I do not think undiscovered evil prevents His coming into the midst of His people when they are gathered together in His name; He loves to come amongst them; but this I will say, though I do not wish to offend any one, that He will not come there where there is a rule-a predetermined course. If there be a rule He cannot come in; for if He 'did He would have either to abrogate it or be less than it. If many saints were gathered with a rule He could not come in. If they were ignorant, and were willing to be shown the truth, of course they would soon be taught; but people often call willfulness ignorance. It is possible to have a great deal of personal enjoyment of the Lord, and yet not at all know what it is to enjoy His presence. I do not believe any soul, the most excellent, the most godly, in a man-made system, knows Christ as He reveals Himself in the midst of His people-knows what is His presence in its true sense. It is not that you and I as individuals, enjoy the Lord's presence; it is that we are gathered round His person; all of us having the same title to be there, all of us children of the one Father, from the least to the greatest. I take Scripture as it speaks: " Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst."
He comes into the midst of His saints gathered; and it is as the One risen from the dead, and leading them into all the moral elevation of His own position. And they have the sense of His presence with them. But to thus know Him you cannot be mixed up with what is wrong-with ecclesiastical rules; His eyes would then be " as a flame of fire."
His presence in the midst of His people is not at all the same thing as manifestation of Himself to an individual soul. It is a Person taking His place in the midst; not a Person coming in grace to a lonely one. A person may stay away from the table and say they are very happy in their own room, and they may be very happy, but they have not got at all the same thing as they would have if in the midst of those gathered to His name.
People who are not gathered to His name are not responsible for the ground, for they are not on it; but they are responsible to find it. " His, name " means that when you are thus gathered, all is as He would have it. People say, If you do this you will have all sorts of confusion; but facts are against this.
What shows the church's power, is its being able to maintain its position as a heavenly people on the earth. I defy any person to say that the church has done this. On the contrary, it has mixed itself up with the world. Can anyone show me anything on earth like 1 Cor. 12? At the best we are only trying to creep out of the ruins. I am sure God helps the saints to do this, but they must, as He says to Joshua, get rid of the evil; there must be a clear riddance of it. Some one remarked that Hosea is the second book of Joshua; and it is very remarkable that the valley where Achan was stoned should be made the " door of hope " for the people to return to the land by.
We see thus that God cannot go on with evil it is not the fact, as people so often say, that simple prayer settles everything. The object of prayer is to learn the mind and get the help of God; and God can have nothing to do with you until you have got rid of evil. Hearing this forty years ago, delivered me from systems: " God will not hear you till you are clear of evil." I did not know what to do or where to go, but I saw that God's great principle is, first get clear of evil: " Cease to do evil."
Another thing that is a great comfort in all this is, that when I set my mind to discover the evil, God will show it to me. They were to judge themselves-to separate themselves from everything that they knew to be evil. And then we see that, when God's finger is laid upon Achan, he confesses. He will be the first to confess when God has touched him. But the finger of God was laid upon Achan before he confessed; if he had come forward before this and had told of himself, it would have been an evidence of repentance; but now it was too late. Thus a great many things that are brought out, if they had been confessed before, might never have been known by the assembly at all. Whether a matter should be made known or not depends on the pastor. Deliberation belongs to the pastors; and adjudication to the assembly.