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There we go. Well, welcome. Welcome to you. If you've joined us since the service began, welcome those who are online, welcome back. Ellie Easley.

Where's Ellie? There she is, waving. Ellie has been away for about a year and it's your first Sunday back, and it's really nice to see you, and I hope at some point we'll hear a bit about the adventures. But it's lovely to see you. Welcome home.

Here we are, look. Let's pray as we look at this solemn passage together tonight, let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for your word to us tonight. We hear it as a solemn warning and we pray that we would take it to heart ourselves. We pray that we would also hear of the grace and forgiveness that we have in the Lord Jesus, and of his willingness, his joy, his delight to forgive us when we confess our sins. Thank you. It is safe to confess our sins to Christ because of the cross.

So be with us tonight in our study. Help us, we pray, and give us ears to hear what you have to say to each one of us this evening. Lord, we ask for your name's sake. Amen.

So the question really from this passage, I suppose, is does it matter how we behave in private? Is it anyone's business but ours? What we get up to behind closed doors, how we speak to our families, what we spend our money on, what we do online, what ambitions drive us? Is it anybody's business but our own? What our thoughts or daydreams are that we indulge?

What unforgiveness, perhaps we nurse in our hearts, we hang on to? Does that concern anybody else except ourselves? What's it got to do with anybody else? It's just me, isn't it? Not hurting anybody, surely nobody's business but my own?

What goes on in my own heart?

Well, a few days ago, I was driving along the M25 and it was dark, and one of those enormous lorries with a great flashing orange arrow sign on the back was a few yards ahead of me. And you know what they are. They mean there's a hazard ahead, change a lane, get out of this lane. And Joshua 7 is like that. It's a big flashing orange hazard sign saying, there is a hazard ahead.

And if you are in this lane, change lanes, change lanes. Joshua 7 is going to show us that sin is never a personal, private thing.

And that warning might come as a surprise after all that's happened. And Matt's already reminded us of that this evening, how God had rescued his people from slavery in Egypt and brought them to Canaan, the land he promised centuries earlier to Abraham. How after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, Moses had died and Joshua is the new leader. And they stood on the banks of the river Jordan with God's promise in their hearts and they stepped out and the waters separating them from their inheritance piled up all the way back to a town called Adam. And they were able to go in to their inheritance.

How? In chapter five, Joshua met a man called the commander of the Lord's army, the son of God himself, who went ahead of them to fight their battles. How they marched around the walls of Jericho seven days and the walls fell down. And Hebrews 11 tells us, by faith, the walls of Jericho fell after the army had marched around for seven days and they did nothing. But God gave them this inheritance.

And the way Jericho was defeated and the fact it was judged pointed them and us. We saw to the fact that one day Jesus is going to come back again into this world and he is going to bring judgement because he has to make our inheritance a safe family home for us to share with him forever.

And meanwhile there are the Israelites and Jericho has fallen and they haven't had to lift a finger and the Lord has done it all. And all they had to do was trust him. And the next town on their fighting list is this town, AI or AI, however you want to pronounce it. And AI means heap of ruins. If you live in AI, you're probably worried already, aren't you?

Heap of ruins, not a promising name. And compare with Jericho, that great city shut up behind these huge walls, AI should have been an easy victory. That's what the spies said in verse three. If you have a look down, we don't all need to go, they said some of us can stay back. Send 2 or 3,000 to take it and don't weary the whole army, for only a few people live in it.

Compared with Jericho, Joshua, AI is a walk in the park. It's easy. And if the Lord had been with them as he had been at Jericho, they would have been right. It should have been an easy win. But they don't realise what's been going on in their church family, the people of God.

So have a look down on verse four. So about 3,000 went up. But they were routed by the men of AI who killed about 36 of them. They chased the Israelites to the city gates and struck them down on the slopes. At this the hearts of the people melted in fear and became like water.

Well you can imagine it, can't you? Jericho has been forgotten. In a moment, body bags are carried by in full view back into the camp and the Israelites break out into a cold sweat. And until now, we've been told several times that the hearts of the Canaanites melted in fear. But now we're told the hearts of the Israelites are melting in fear and become like water.

Something has gone wrong. So Joshua prays in verse six. He humbles himself before the Lord, he tears his clothes, he falls face down before the Lord. And the elders of Israel all do the same. And they pray.

Why did you ever bring us across the Jordan, Lord, to hand us over to our enemies? Everybody's going to hear about it. Our name will be wiped out. And Lord, your name will not be honoured. What will it do for your reputation?

Now, Moses had prayed like that once before, but this time the Lord doesn't listen. This time the Lord doesn't listen. Stand up. The Lord says, stop praying. And here are the words that must have sent a shudder through their hearts.

The Lord says in verse 11, Israel has sinned.

There are times if we just pause for a moment, there are times when we don't need to pray. You heard the vicar say that there are times when we don't need to pray. When God's word is clear, we don't have to pray and ask for guidance. What should we do? We know what to do.

We just have to do it. It's the same with the church. So we think about the Church of England and the turmoil it has put itself in. When the Bible is clear about a moral issue, the Church doesn't need to have a consultation process. It just needs to do what the Bible says.

We don't need to pray about it. Maybe somebody at the moment, you know what the Lord wants you to do, you know what the right thing is. We don't need to pray about it, we just need to do it to be fair. Though, of course, at this point, we know what Joshua and the elders of Israel don't know. They don't really know yet what has been going on because we have read verse one, verse one.

But the Israelites were unfaithful in regard to the devoted things. Achan, son of Carmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Sarah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of them from Jericho. So the Lord's anger burned against Israel.

See, the Lord had warned them back in chapter six that when Jericho fell, everything in the city was to be devoted to the Lord. He said in chapter six, verse 17, if you can look across the page, the city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared because she hid the spies. But keep away from the devoted things so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it.

All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury. So Jericho was the first city to be taken in the promised land. It was a bit like the first fruits, the harvest. It was devoted to the Lord. It belonged to the Lord.

All the silver and gold and metals were to go into the Lord's house, not into the Israelites houses.

And Achan knew it. Achan knew it. But you can imagine him, can't you, charging through the streets of Jericho, clearing the houses. And in the rubble he spots something, a glint perhaps in the sunlight. And everybody else in his unit moves on.

But he lingers. He goes in and what does he see? He sees a wedge of gold, a bag of silver, a beautiful robe.

Google's a wonderful thing. You can type into Google how much is a shekel? Or how big would this be? And it will tell you so. This may or may not be very accurate, but the beautiful robe, well, it got burnt.

So this was the best I could do tonight. Look, a beautiful robe from Babylon. That's what he found. He found 200 shekels of silver. That's less than two and a half kilos in terms of volume.

Less than a pint. Less than half a pint. Fifteen tablespoons of silver, it's not very much.

A little wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, that's less than 600 grammes. That's a piece of gold five or six centimetres long. Now, I know that's still worth an awful lot of money, but as the spoils from a whole city, it's not very much, is it? It's not very much. But God had said, don't take it, it's mine.

And Achan knew it. Achan didn't think it was very much. He probably rationalised it. He probably said it was not very much. It's a nice little souvenir from Jericho.

What's the harm? God can't really mean what he says, can he? He'll understand. Bit of a waste really. It's a little sin.

Jim Packer, the writer, said Christian maturity is living all your life in God's presence. But Achan thinks he can bluff God. He saw it, he wanted it, he took it and he buried it under the ground in his tent. And very often, faced with temptation, I find that I'm like Achan, don't you? It's a small sin.

It's just a bad temper, just a grumpy comment.

Well, that person that really hurt me. Well, if I hang on to that hurt and nurse it, well, it makes me feel better.

What about the way that you relate to that person at school or at work or at home or the way we're behaving in that relationship? We can make all kinds of excuses. We can rationalise our behaviour and excuse ourselves, can't we? It's just a little thing. It's not really hurting anybody.

The Lord will understand. It's just me. If you knew the pressure I was under, you'd know that I'm entitled to this kind of thing. It makes me feel better. It's just my battle.

A little sin.

But a little sin can do a lot of damage.

We've had squirrels in the roof of the vicarage recently. Well, we've had them for a few years, actually. We've been hearing them pattering above our heads for the last two or three years. We hear them running across a few inches above us. And squirrels.

They look soft and cuddly with their big bushy tails and their cheeky little faces, don't they? But they are rodents and they keep chewing things to make sure their teeth don't get too long. They chew things like electric cables and roof beams. And according to the website of Nick, the pest control man who came around a few days ago, they can chew through electrical wiring, insulation, wooden structures, posing fire hazards and causing costly damage. They also bring noise, leave droppings and introduce parasites like fleas and ticks into your home.

So don't come around to the vicarage for a little while. But now, in the middle of the night, when we hear a trap snap shut on the back of a squirrel in the roof above our heads, Katie leans over and high fives me.

No, she doesn't, really, she doesn't.

There's no such thing as a little sin, a harmless sin. It looks harmless, but it does great damage. It can do huge damage when you allow it to make itself at home in your life.

But here, I think, is the really frightening thing in this chapter, and that is that sin is not just a personal, private thing. Our sin always, always affects other people. Our sin always affects other People, Achan means trouble. His name means trouble. What he did to his parents, I don't know.

But his name means trouble. And Achan didn't just bring trouble to himself. He didn't just bring trouble to his family. He brought trouble to the whole church. We can say to all the people of God, Verse one says again, but the Israelites were unfaithful.

I thought it was just Achan. No, the Israelites, verse 11. The Lord said to Joshua, stand up, Israel has sinned. I thought it was just Achan. No, Israel, the whole people.

Israel has sinned. They have violated my covenant. They have taken some of the devoted things. You see, church isn't just a gathering of individuals. We're not like a sock of marbles, a sock full of marbles.

We don't just act as individuals. We never act as individuals. We're part of a body. And the spiritual health of one member affects the spiritual health of the whole body. If you twist your ankle or break your leg, it affects everything.

Your body can't do what it wants to do. It's weaker.

And when you and I sin, it affects the whole church. My sin affects you, and your sin affects me.

Achan's sin brought trouble to the whole people of God. And that really ought to make us stop and ask ourselves a question this evening. Have you or I allowed a particular sin to make itself at home in our life to the extent that it is bringing weakness to our church, to one another? Are you or I the cause of God removing his blessing of us being spiritually weaker than we should be?

One old writer from centuries ago said, be killing sin or sin will be killing you. Take it seriously, he means, I wonder, do you have a Christian friend, church, that you can confide in, that you can pray with, someone who can encourage you in the fight against sin, someone you can confess your sins to, and with someone who can encourage you and pray with you in that battle against sin because it's serious. One man's sin turns God's presence away from a whole people. Even though they just won a great victory over Jericho. Now they can't win the simplest battle.

They had to learn that lesson that Jesus told his disciples in John 15. Apart from me. Jesus said, apart from me, you can do nothing.

It's a warning for every church, isn't it? It's a solemn warning tonight from this chapter. It's a warning for our church. I think we just need to take it to heart. Sin makes us weak.

Sin affects us as a church. And the solution isn't strategies and programmes and visions and all this sort of thing. But confessing our sin, turning back to the Lord, asking forgiveness. And if we confess our sin, God will always forgive us our sins. He's promised that in His Word.

Repent then and turn to God so your sins may be wiped out. That times of refreshing may come from the Lord. Acts 3:19.

Confessing our sins doesn't mean we're spiritually sick. Confessing our sins is a sign of being spiritually healthy. It's being honest about who we are.

I don't know if anybody here knows the name of the Irish evangelist Willie Nicholson from years ago, the Harland and Wolf shipyard in Belfast. Do you know that shipyard with the great cranes, those big yellow cranes? David and Goliath, they put up a shed, they call it the Nicholson Shed, to house all the stolen goods and tools that were returned by those working in the shipyard who had been converted by Willie Nicholson. They had to build a whole shed because people became Christians in their scores and when they became Christians, they confessed their sins and they repented. They brought back the things they'd stolen.

That's a sign of spiritual health. It's always, always the case in revivals. They are accompanied by confession of sin, by deep awareness of sin and confession and restitution.

Well, what does the Lord do?

It's a terrible thing to hide sin. It must be brought out into the open so that it can be forgiven. So in verse 14, here are the instructions from Joshua. Consecrate the people. The Lord says, in the morning, present yourselves tribe by tribe.

The tribe the Lord chooses must come forward, clan by clan, then family by family, then man by man, and so on. Now, why does the Lord do it that way? The Lord knew who it was. The Lord could have just put a big flashing orange hazard warning in the sky, pointing down to Achan's tents, couldn't he? Why does he do it this way?

Well, presumably he's giving Achan time to repent. Presumably he's giving Achan time to come forward and confess his sins. Time to be forgiven.

I wonder what was going through Achan's head that night. Did he have a sleepless night? Think about Achan for a moment. Think what he knew. His parents and grandparents had been slaves in Egypt.

They would have told him about Passover night. They would have told him how they had sheltered from God's judgement under the blood of the Lamb that had died in their place. He would have known that. He would have heard how the Lord had brought them through the red sea. On that miraculous night, he himself would have eaten manna that God had provided day after day, the wilderness.

He had walked through the river Jordan with all the Israelites. He had just received the sign of circumcision in Joshua 5, God's covenant, sign of justification by faith alone. He had marched round Jericho just a day or two before he had seen the Lord's judgement there. He had all these privileges, and he knew God's warning, presumably in numbers 32 23, be sure your sins will find you out. He knew that.

But Achan doesn't believe it. He thinks he can bluff God. He thinks, I can pull this off.

God won't put his finger on me. So the next day, the Israelites assemble and the sifting process begins. And as the day wears on, I guess, and the lots are cast, the finger of guilt points more and more and more clearly to Achan. And all he has to do, even at this stage, is just confess his sin. If he had only done that, the Lord would have forgiven him.

Of course he would. He gladly would. He says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But Achan won't confess. He thinks God hasn't seen it.

He thinks he can bluff God and finally the spotlight is on him and there's nowhere to hide. And it's too late. And only then does Achan admit it. And he might be remorseful, but he's not repentant. He's not repentant.

He might have wished he hadn't sinned, but only because he has now been found out. And he says in verse 20, it's true, I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. And so the runners are sent to the tent, to Achan's tent, and there, buried under it, is the treasure. And they bring it out into the open and they spread it out before the Lord. And Achan discovered what Hebrews 4:13 tells, tells us that nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight.

Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. And I wonder if at that point Achan looked at the treasure and he said, was it worth it? Was it worth it? My life for this?

So Achan and his household are taken to the valley of Achor and put to death. In verse 24, Achan, his family, his animals, his possessions, along with the gold and silver and the robe, everything. And we might be thinking, well, is that fair? Is that fair Achan's family.

Well, here's another question. Does the Lord put innocent people to death?

Is that what the Lord is like? Does he kill innocent people? Of course he doesn't. In fact, Deuteronomy says. Deuteronomy 24:16 says, Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents.

Each will die for their own sin. So although it was Achan who'd stolen it, we can be pretty sure that his family knew what was going on. As he moved their beds aside and dug that hole in the tent and covered it over, they knew and they did nothing about it. And they shared with him in that sin. They were as guilty as him.

And over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, it says, which remains to this day. And then the Lord turned from his fierce anger. And therefore that place has been called the Valley of Achor ever since. I guess whenever an Israelite walked past and they saw Achan's grave, they would remember the trouble that he had brought to the Israelites. Trouble.

Our sin is never a personal, private thing. It always affects other people. But as well as that memorial, there is, of course, another memorial, and that's the cross.

And Joshua 7 is a flashing hazard sign to us about our sin. But we mustn't fall into hopelessness, because there's the cross.

And the cross always stands as a place of forgiveness. Whatever we have done, even if nobody else knows about it, the Lord knows. But the cross is a safe place. It's the only place, the only safe place where we can bring it out into the open and we know it will be forgiven there. He says.

So he says, I'll meet you at one place only. I'll meet you at the cross.

So this evening, if you are holding on to something in your heart, maybe a sin you have welcomed into your life and brought into your own life, tonight, deal with it. Because your sin isn't just affecting you or your family, it's affecting this church family. And it's a safe place to confess our sins and find forgiveness.

The Valley of Achor must have symbolised God's complete hostility to sin. When people walked through that valley, they must have remembered the trouble that Achan had brought. And maybe some people feel helpless and hopeless in the face of their sin and the sin of others. Maybe you do. Tonight you feel helpless and hopeless.

But the Lord takes that place of judgement, the Valley of Achor, and he promises that even there, there can be restoration. There's no sin so bad that cannot be forgiven and we cannot find restoration. And so later in the Old Testament, in Hosea 2:13, the Lord promises, he says, I will make the valley of Achor a door of hope. Even that place of terrible judgement, even that terrible moment in your life, that can be forgiven. That can be a new start.

So whatever mess you or I might find ourselves in, the gospel means there is always hope. The cross means that it is safe to confess our sins, no matter what sinful mess we have put ourselves in. However long we have been there, however wrapped up in it we feel entangled in it, There is hope because of the cross. There is always forgiveness if we confess our sins.

So we're going to do that in a moment, as a church family, we're going to confess our sins. First, we're going to sing. So I'd like to invite the band to come up, ready to lead us in our next song. But perhaps before they sing, come up and be ready. And as you're ready, maybe we'll just have a moment or two of quiet while we each respond to God's word and then, please just leave us in our next song.