Achan’s sin

ByInHIM

Joshua 7:1-26

As the Israelites were about to take Canaan, they overran Jericho, the mighty fortress. They took it because the LORD was on their side and He fought for them. Their next hurdle was Ai, a relatively smaller foe. As such, Joshua sent only 3000 men to take Ai

But then, the people of Ai defeated the Israelites and they even killed about 36 of them.

The Israelites were bewildered and called upon the LORD. Then, the sin of Achan came to be revealed. This was the reason why the Israelites could not take Ai. As such, Israel took Achan, his children and all his belongings to Achor where they were destroyed.

Only then, the anger of the LORD subsided.

Today, let us ponder upon the following points from the story we have just seen:

  1. In our Christian lives, victory does not depend upon our enemies’ strength or the greatness of their fortresses, but on who is on our side. Who is on our side today?
  2. As victory depends on who is on our side, let us also ask ourselves – are we worthy and good enough for the LORD to be on our side? For God to be on our side, we need to set all our sins aside. We cannot be in compromise with sin and expect God to fight for us. Are we clean?
  3. We might say, “it was just a single person who sinned. Why were all the Israelites punished? Achan should have suffered alone for his sins.”  We can see from this story (in fact, throughout the Bible) that God utterly detests sin, even when a single person committed one. Why are we, then, so friendly with sin that we have failed to call sin as sin? Why have we become too liberal in our approach towards sin?
  4. Similarly, we can see that it was (and still is) important that everyone was obedient to the commandments of the LORD. If Joshua had sinned, we could say that they were all punished because their leader sinned. But God never looked at it that way. Even the sin of a lone man, a man who was hitherto was largely unknown, had to be reckoned with. Oh, let everyone understand the need to properly obey God.
  5. Because of the sin of Achan, he and all his belongings and his children died. How important it is to be the head. How important it is to follow God’s precepts when you are the head.

David wrote, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10). Let our hearts be clean as we strip off all our pride and impurities.

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