Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How God Deals With Your Sin | Historical Books | Joshua 7:10-26

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

How does God respond to unfaithfulness? Was the Old Testament God a ruthless judge? What does God do about our sin? In today's episode, Jensen shares how Joshua 7:10-26 reminds us of God's divine justice, ultimately displayed in Jesus. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Joshua 7:10-26

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. The Book of Joshua is not an easy one for our modern ears to hear at times. Mixed in with the beauty of God's deliverance and faithfulness to his promises are a number of stories and details that can seem barbaric, unfair, violent, and cruel. Now, tomorrow, Patrick is going to go into more detail on the subject of Holy, Holy, war, how we can reconcile some of the things that we're reading in the book of Joshua. But today, we find ourselves reading a passage that's difficult not because God seems to be passing extreme violent judgment on other nations, but because of his harsh dealings with his own people.

We pick up the story directly following two battles, one at Jericho and one at I. Now, these two battles counter one another. They start. starkly contrast in what they're teaching us about God and his people. In the Battle of Jericho, if you remember, we see God ask His people to fully trust him, to just march around the walls to sing praises to him and to blow their trumpets on the seventh day. And in their obedience, God shatters the walls of Jericho and delivers the city into the Israelites' hands. There's no wondering who won the battle. By their obedience, God is the one who powerfully and faithfully gives victory to his people. And then there's I. Having just seen all that God can do, we would expect

full and total trust, full and total obedience from his people. And yet, this isn't the case. First, the people waver on whether they need to even send everyone to go fight this battle. They get a little proud after Jericho, think they can handle it. They don't need all of God's people. despite the fact that God has already commanded them to fight as one people, to go out together. And it's in the verses directly before today that we learn of their defeat at eye. 36 men are struck down in the battle. They're unsuccessful. Has God not been faithful?

Will he not deliver his people? Why is such a stark difference from Jericho? Well, we find our answer in verses 10 through 12. the Lord said to Joshua, stand up. What are you doing down on your face? Israel has sinned. They have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They've taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen. They have lied. They have put them with their own possessions. That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies. They turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.

See, the story of the Battle of Eye is a story of the Israelites' unfaithfulness. Despite all God has done, despite their firsthand witness of his power and might, they still disregard what he has commanded them. God tells Joshua that there is someone among them who lied and took plunder for himself. We learn that on top of entering battle with only some of the Israel, Israelites, they were doomed already because they broke their covenant with God when the one man stole the plunder for himself. Their relationship was severed, a holy covenant broken. God no longer fought for his people. His words to Joshua echo the severity of the situation, I will not be with you

anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction. And this is where things get pretty tricky. It's in the following verses that we hear of how God instructs Joshua to uncover the stolen goods and the perpetrator. And when they discover a man named Aiken who confess to having stolen from the Battle of Jericho, they stone him and his household, his wife and children, and burn all that belong to him in accordance with the orders given to them by God. They are obedient to their God once again, and the Lord turned from his fierce anger. How do we reconcile a story like this one?

It's uncomfortable to be faced with a God, we believed to be loving and gentle and merciful and good, and see him order the death not only of a man who stole, but his entire family. How can that be good? First, I will say that in the way that human minds and hearts can never be fully pure, fully in the know, fully just and good, God's can. He is always good and always just. He knew the full story. He understood the weight of the sin and the evil that had been done against his covenant and he enacted the justice that was due. He knew if Aiken's family had acted alongside him and encouraged him. We don't. All we can do is trust that God is both good and just. Second, we can also recognize that throughout the biblical narrative, we see instances

where the sin of one has consequences for the many. All the way back in Genesis, the sin of Adam had repercussions for all of humanity, all of creation. His one choice put the rest of us out of the garden, cast into darkness, marred by sin and in need of a rescuer. And finally, we must understand that this was a time before Jesus. God did not change when he came down as a man named Jesus, but the covenant he made of this people did. In the days of the Old Testament, the people of Israel lived in a covenantal relationship with God, he would be their God and they would be his people. This covenant, though, would require obedience, faithfulness from his people. When they were obedient and faithful, God was with them, behind them, fighting on their behalf. Spoiler alert, they couldn't do it. Just like we see here in

Joshua, when the people are unfaithful, when they break that covenant, they must be consecrated again before the Lord, cleansed, brought back into covenant with him, made holy again, set apart, a sacred people. We see in the law the order for God's people to make regular sacrifices, to atone for their sins, to wash them clean. Here in Joshua 7 verse 13, we read that the impetus behind God's command to destroy the one who had sinned was to consecrate them. Go, consecrate the people, tell them, consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, for this is what the Lord, the God Israel says, there are devoted things among you, Israel. You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove them. The people must be made holy again. They must enter into obedience to their God,

faithfulness to their covenant once more. And there must be divine judgment for the disobedience and severe rebellion that had taken place. Aiken had heard God's commands and taken from the plunder anyways, and when he did so, he made God's people unholy, and his actions had led to the deaths of 35 fighting men in the battle of I. His hands were not clean. His sin was not minor. It had severe consequences. God's people were unprotected, their inheritance and jeopardy. And so, through the divine justice God ordered, the death of Aiken, the destruction of all he had dealings with, the people of God were brought back into relationship, into covenant with him once. Again, this wouldn't be the last time the people of God failed. The Israelites would return again

and again to be cleansed from their brokenness from their rebellion. They would face the divine justice for rebuking their covenant with God for their disobedience, and eventually it would lead them out of the promised land they're currently conquering and into exile, wondering if God was still with them, if he saw them, unable to make sacrifices, unable to atone for their sins, wandering once again a people without a land waiting for their God to deliver them. God knew. He knew that sinful humans would never be able to uphold their side of the covenant. And so he became human, fully God, fully man in the person of Jesus. And he did what no one else could. Not Adam, not Abraham, not Moses, not Joshua, not Aiken. He did what no other Israelites could do.

He lived a life of perfectly faithful obedience to God. And then he was unjustly killed. The final sacrificial lamb spotless, perfect, bled out on the altar to atone for the sins of all the people. In Joshua 7, one man's disobedience had severe consequences for all of God's people. And in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, one man's faithfulness would mercifully deliver all people. from the wrath of a good and just God. God's heart has always been and will always be for the good of his people. Living in disobedience bent towards evil, falling into darkness is not the way that he created us to live. In his mercy, in his goodness, he calls us back. In Joshua 7, he would not continue to allow his people to

take hold of the promised land if they did it in a way that was compromising, that would break their covenantal relationship and turn them from obedience. The promised land was no good to them if they did not have their God. He knew on their own. He knew on our own. We could never perfectly uphold the law, never remain in a covenant relationship with himself. He took on our sin. He bore the weight of our rebellion and made a way for you and for me to live with him forever. To find freedom from the sin and brokenness that drags us down into darkness and to live in the light of his mercy, to pursue obedience imperfectly within the mercy of Jesus. The wrath of God has been satisfied. One day he will return and he will complete our full redemption, ridding our bodies of the

curse that Adam's choice thrust upon us. We will live in a world free from violence, with no threat of evil, no need to pick up a sword. We will live in peace. We will live in peace, peace in the kingdom of God. Our only hope is in Jesus, in his work on the cross, in his sacrifice that paved the way for this to be a reality for you and for me. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.