The Sinner (Josh. 7:1)

9/7/2009 10:08 AM

SPIRITUAL DIARY

My Worship Time                                                 Focus:  The sinner

Bible Reading & Meditation                        Reference:  Joshua 7:1

            Message of the verse:  “1 ¶  But the sons of Israel acted unfaithfully in regard to the things under the ban, for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, from the tribe of Judah, took some of the things under the ban, therefore the anger of the LORD burned against the sons of Israel.”

            Chapter seven in Joshua also begins chapter seven in “Be Strong” a commentary on Joshua by Warren Wiersbe.  He entitles this chapter “Defeat in the Land of Victory,” and as usual he has a hint of what the chapter is about at the end of the introduction to the chapter:  “In this experience, he teaches what causes defeat and how we must handle the discouragements of life.”  This is the application of what this chapter is going to be about, learning how we must handle the discouragements of life.

            The word Achan or Achar means trouble in the Hebrew language.  “The son of Carmi was Achar, the troubler of Israel, who violated the ban.  (1 Chron. 2:7) 

            The entire nation of Israel are blamed in verse one of this chapter even though it was only Achan who had sinned against the Lord.  The Lord looked upon Israel as His chosen people and He walked among the camp so it must be kept holy.  One person can cause a lot of trouble for others as seen in other places of the Scriptures:  Abraham almost lost his wife for disobedience in Egypt, David took a census that he should not have and 70,000 people lost their life, Jonah’s disobedience almost sunk a ship. 

            God would tell Israel to stone Achan to rid the camp of the sin that Achan had committed.  There is an incident in the NT book of 1 Corinthians that tells of a man who was sleeping with his fathers wife and the church did not discipline him and Paul tells them that they needed to do this and then they followed his orders, but this incident caused trouble in that church and things like this can cause trouble in churches today, for the Church is described as the body of Christ and when one part of the body is hurting it affects other parts of the body as well.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  There are outside things that I know that I need to rid myself of that are large temptations to me and have caused me to sin.  This needs to be done before something happens that will cause me to get rid of them.

My Steps of Faith for Today:

1. Trust the Lord to give me the strength to rid myself of the cable TV.

9/7/2009 10:57 AM