Man being in honor abides not. Such is the divine testimony. Failure is inherent in man. In innocence, under law, or under grace, no matter what the position or the privilege, he has never abode therein. Failure may first be secret, in the heart, and sometimes even the act is hidden, but if unjudged is sure to appear in its consequences. One would naturally suppose the greater the honor, the greater would be the jealous care to abide therein; this as a rule holds good in worldly honors, but in the things of God the contrary is constantly seen. Through the evil nature of man, favor has led to unwatchfulness, and in many instances with ruinous results, always, in the case of a believer, bringing grievous chastening.
The First Blot
To forget God even while enjoying the blessings is the history of man from Adam down to this day. The first blot upon the honor both in the church and in Israel in the land was visited with death. The pristine vigor and glory of the church had not departed before failure came in, and it was even more ruinous as regards public testimony than that of Israel. To them the special testimony was the truth of the one God. To the church it is God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:1111He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. (John 5:11)). As Israel failed in testifying to the unity of the Godhead and rushed into idolatry, so Christendom has failed to bear witness that life is only in the Son and has placed it partially, if not wholly, in works. The grace which nevertheless maintained Israel in the land (for a time, and not without judgment) now acts more prominently in and for the church, which in a far higher and different way is the habitation of God, not in a temple made with hands but by the Spirit (Eph. 2:2222In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:22)). In Israel it was in such a way as the natural man could apprehend. God through the Spirit dwelling in the church is not discernible by the natural man, but only by faith which alone realizes His presence.
Members Together
It is because of the Spirit’s indwelling that all in the church of God, that is, all true believers, are members one of another. Therefore necessarily if one member fails or suffers, the whole body is affected, and far more intimately than the congregation of Israel could be. This close intimacy of suffering and equally so of rejoicing is through the unity of the Spirit which was not possible before Christ had ascended as the risen Man and had taken His place on the throne of God. Thence He sent the Comforter to abide with us. Thus one Spirit abiding in each, in all, constitutes the one body.
The effect of the sin of one member is not confined to himself. There is what may be called its corporate consequence. If the Spirit is grieved, the whole assembly — the local representative of the body — suffers; corporate blessing is hindered, and the presence of the Lord not realized in the meetings. There is no remedy for this but humiliation and united prayer. The Holy Spirit may, through the intercession of the assembly, lead the failing member to judge himself, and the resultant restoration in the soul allows the hindrance to corporate blessing to be removed. But if not, the Lord will surely make bare the wrong which the assembly is bound to judge; it may be by public rebuke or require excision, but the Lord’s name must be vindicated and the purity of the assembly maintained. When the failing one judges himself before the secret becomes known and is restored in soul, it remains a matter between himself and the Lord. “If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged” (1 Cor. 11:31). This scripture embodies the principle that if sin is discerned and therefore judged by the individual himself, he will not be judged. And this judgment is not the judgment of the world, which no believer can come under, but the chastening of the Lord. The chastening of the Lord is that which is administered through the assembly — not the same as the Father’s chastening in Hebrews 12.
Lessons to Be Learned
When Israel entered the land of Canaan with the joy of their first victory, the first failure occurred. Its effects soon appeared. One man sins — the whole congregation suffers. New circumstances bring the sin to light. Israel left to their own resources find they cannot stand before their enemies. Confident in their own strength and elated with the ease with which Jericho was taken — as if it had been by their own arm — they decide as to Ai. The defiling power of Achan’s sin was already working. Joshua and the priests — all forgot God and attempted to do without Him. Had they asked counsel of God, the sin of the guilty man would have been at once disclosed and the shameful flight from Ai prevented. Israel failed through vain confidence, which was the result of Achan’s sin. Yet all was overruled that they might know the necessity of holiness and of the power of Jehovah for victory. The deeper truth of being members one of another is intimately connected with the church of God, and the call to us to be watchful, to be holy, comes with far more solemn importance to us than it did to Israel, for we are knit together with a closer tie; we are called to a higher inward holiness, to contend with more dangerous foes, and to hear the name of the risen Lord in the midst. It is the church which has the special opportunity of learning from this failure of Israel. But the church is the body of Christ; therefore really it is Christ the Head whose glory is before the mind of God.
Religious Love of the World
The things that Achan coveted pointed also to the evils that have crept into the professing church and have tainted the character of real believers. The wedge of gold and the silver, under the Babylonish garment, are the symbols of the love of the world and of that which gives power in the world — gold under the pretense of religion, that is, the world’s religion which is to God most offensive. Observe the words “and the silver under it,” wrapped in the Babylonish garment. It is covetousness — which is idolatry — covered over and hidden under the semblance of piety which has marked the history of the world-church. And soon every evil will be found in the cup of the scarlet-clothed harlot whose name is “mystery, Babylon the great.” Thus at the very beginning of Israel’s possession of the land are shadowed the evils which have brought ruin upon the professing church. The judgment upon Achan and his house declares how abhorrent this world-religiousness is to God, as well as His holy resentment against the one who had interposed his sin. It was a barrier to the continual display of the glory of Jehovah in His mighty power leading Israel into the possession of the inheritance. God resents nothing so much as interference with His ways of grace.
Further Fighting
At Jericho we see the exhibition of the glory and power of Jehovah and how He would subdue and drive out the Canaanite before His chosen people. At Ai is displayed His manner to those who dim the luster of the glory of their leader, the “Captain of the Lord’s host.” At the beginning they could boast of the great power of their “Captain.” Now it is mingled with a sense of failure and dishonor. And for all among them who cared for the glory of Jehovah, there was the feeling that they had tarnished His glory before the Canaanites. God would continue to display His grace and faithfulness, though Israel had put an obstacle to the visible manifestation of His Godhead to the Gentile as had been seen at Jericho, for there was overwhelming testimony that the glorious conquest might have brought every nation to submit without daring to fight, but Israel’s discomfiture at their first attempt against Ai gave the nations courage to resist Israel’s further advance. It gave them the thought that perhaps they might overcome the dreaded people and that the God of Israel was not so greatly to be feared. Hence Israel had to contest every step of the way. Only the ground on which they stood could they call their own. Was not this the consequence of their own sin? And so the word is fulfilled (Josh. 1:33Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. (Joshua 1:3)), not yet according to the fullness of the original promise, but now modified according to their failure in the matter of Achan.
The Appreciation of Restoration
But Israel’s failure is used of God to teach us now how imperative holiness is in the church of God. Without such teaching, how much we should have lost! Could the holiness which God demands and the revenging of ourselves against all defilement (2 Cor. 6:11) be more solemnly impressed upon the conscience of the assembly than in the judgment of Achan? And without this, we should not have known how grace acts in wisdom, restoring in such a way as to make the restored people remember their folly. Marvelous are the ways of grace. The process of discovering sin in the assembly may be most painful and is always humiliating, but it is in order that the presence of the Lord might again be realized. Achan did not judge his sin, for he valued the things he stole. His own conscience unpurged, he defiled the whole congregation, and Jehovah must step in to purge out the leaven that was leavening the whole lump. The end of discipline is to restore, not perhaps exactly to the same position as before, for the failure will ever remain as a fact, but the restoration of any saint always deepens the power of godliness in his soul and is always to the praise of His grace.
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