My Hand Will No Longer do what my brain tells it. For nearly 50 years I have been writing my thoughts to my friends and fellow saints whom I love across the world, and who in love have responded. Many of my wonderful correspondents have now fallen asleep before me. Some, like Mellie James in Jamaica, Adeline Kinlock in America, Joy Powell in Australia, Bob and Kathy Green in Canada, and Sam and Mary Seager in England, still fill my heart with joy. They write, even when I cannot reply. God bless them. More recently, the kindness of brother Don has meant more of you have shared some useful scriptural ideas. Maybe it is time for me to give you a few final words.
In these days of trial and testing, if there is an event in the Bible that is relevant to us right now, it is the dramatic story of Achan recorded in Joshua 7 and 8. Just think of the wealth of spiritual lessons that it teaches us!
The covetousness of one family impacted on the lives of tens of thousands of God’s people. It shook the confidence of the brotherhood’s leaders, and plunged them for a time into total despair. It resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thirty-six innocent persons. It brought a curse upon the entire community. It cast a dark shadow over their plans for conquest.
We are told that Achan and his family wrought folly in Israel, a folly which evidently merited severe judgment, a judicial execution by stoning and the ceremonial destruction of the corpses by fire. Whatever was that folly?
Achan stole from God. He thought he was simply taking the victor’s spoils. But Jericho had been God’s victory alone, and God alone was entitled to the “devoted things.” Achan broke a solemn covenant, an agreement between himself and God. He did not fear God or truly believe in Him, otherwise he would not have dared to do what he did. He stupidly thought that if he hid the stolen goods in the earth in the midst of his tent from the eyes of men, God couldn’t see, either. He lied. He covered things up. He kept quiet until he was found out, and he could no longer pretend it hadn’t happened.
And what were the consequences of Achan’s folly?
“Trouble” for God’s people. The curse upon the ecclesia of God meant that they could not prosper, because the covenant between them and God had been broken through covetousness. The covetous had to be exposed, and the folly of the covenant-breakers dealt with, before subsequent success and victory could be assured.
From my long experience, I fear that there is a far too prevalent tendency among us to do a cover-up when things go wrong. Even worse, we deceive ourselves that as Christadelphians we can do no wrong and make no mistakes. We are so ready to mock the financial and sex scandals in other churches, but whitewash our own. Really, it’s our pride. Because we teach the truth, we think God will overlook our blunders and be deceived by the whitewash. But God can see us as He saw through Achan and his family.
Achan did eventually confess, but only when he could not deny the facts. We are as foolish as Achan if we reach that point without admitting we are wrong.
The Lord Jesus tells us that all sin needs to be dealt with at its source — the thought. Many in Israel must have coveted those wonderful things in the ruined houses of Jericho. But they remembered the covenant they had made and for them the temptation ended there. Achan fed the covetous thought, and it set in train one destructive sin after another until there was nothing left but a pile of ashes.
Adultery is a sin because it is breaking a solemn covenant. A wildcat strike is a sin because it is the breaking of a covenant. Financial mismanagement is a sin because it is a betrayal of covenant trust. Most important of all is the covenant of baptism which nearly every reader has made. Keep that covenant faithfully, or your end, too, will be a pile of ashes.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One