WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 So we're going to look back now at the passage we read from the Bible from Joshua chapter 7, 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:14.080 if you've got one of these church Bibles, that's on page 182. So if you're visiting with us this 00:00:14.080 --> 00:00:18.960 evening, we've recently started a series in our evening services, what we've called Taking God 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:25.039 at His Word. And we're going through the book of Joshua, and we're looking at what it teaches us 00:00:25.039 --> 00:00:30.799 about who God is as the promise making God. So we've looked at the God who is faithful, the God 00:00:30.799 --> 00:00:38.240 who is merciful, the God who is with us, and so on and so forth. This evening we come to chapter 7 00:00:38.799 --> 00:00:44.480 in Joshua and the story of Achan, and we're going to think about the God who is just. 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:50.879 And I think it's important for us in the world that we live in today to recognize and understand 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:58.000 the justice of God, because we live in a world that is in many ways full of injustice and evil 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:03.920 and suffering and wrong. And for many people today, I think the idea of someone getting away 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:09.920 with a crime, with an injustice, it feels inherently wrong to us as human beings. Maybe you've seen 00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:16.480 on the news recently, there was a car crash that killed a 19-year-old boy, and the woman who was 00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:20.960 involved in the car crash who was a police suspect went back to the US under diplomatic 00:01:20.960 --> 00:01:26.560 immunity. And there's been a huge outcry about this because of this perceived injustice, 00:01:27.439 --> 00:01:32.719 that the media is in a frenzy. There's the sense that this isn't right, someone should answer for 00:01:32.719 --> 00:01:37.600 this. There's anger and confusion from the family at the injustice of the situation. 00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:43.760 In another less extreme example, maybe some of you are familiar with VAR, with video assistant 00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:48.240 refereeing, which has really been introduced in football. And really, it's been introduced to 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:52.719 help ensure that referees get the right decision, because many of you, if you're a fan of football 00:01:52.719 --> 00:01:58.480 or sport, will be familiar with the sense of injustice, a penalty being awarded against your 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:03.360 team when it wasn't a penalty, or a player being called for offside when they were actually onside. 00:02:04.480 --> 00:02:08.960 Or maybe you prefer rugby to football, and you can cast your mind back to the Last World Cup, 00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:15.760 and Scotland are playing Australia, and this penalty is awarded against us. And it stops 00:02:15.760 --> 00:02:22.640 us from getting to the final. And in hindsight, it wasn't a penalty. Anyway, the idea of injustice 00:02:22.640 --> 00:02:28.640 and perceived injustice, I think, is one we're very familiar with. And the point is, even if you're 00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:35.600 not a sports fan, I think you can relate to the idea of something being wrong and unjust and unfair. 00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:40.319 And the Bible reminds us that in the world in which we live, after the brokenness of the fall, 00:02:40.319 --> 00:02:46.639 and after sin and evil come into the world, lots of things happen that aren't fair. But the God of 00:02:46.639 --> 00:02:54.560 the Bible is revealed as a God who is absolutely just, a God who will one day right every wrong, 00:02:54.560 --> 00:03:01.199 and wipe away every tear from our eyes. But we recognize as we come to this part of Joshua, 00:03:01.199 --> 00:03:08.159 sometimes it is hard to come to terms with God's justice. Sometimes for us as flawed and fallen 00:03:08.159 --> 00:03:15.119 human beings, we struggle to grapple with the truth of God's justice. And we recognize this 00:03:15.119 --> 00:03:20.479 evening that this is a particularly difficult and challenging passage, but we know at the start, 00:03:20.479 --> 00:03:25.919 as we begin, that every word is inspired, every word is here for a reason, and we trust that God 00:03:25.919 --> 00:03:31.359 is speaking to us this evening through this part of Joshua. But like last week where Derek took 00:03:31.359 --> 00:03:36.799 us through the story of Jericho and the idea of God as a savior through judgment, we're going to 00:03:36.799 --> 00:03:42.079 have to do some work to grapple with the truth of Scripture in the Old Testament. So we have two 00:03:42.079 --> 00:03:47.199 points this evening as we think about the justice of God in the story of Achan. First of all, we're 00:03:47.199 --> 00:03:52.959 going to think about the seriousness of sin. We're going to think about the fact that God takes sin 00:03:52.960 --> 00:03:59.360 very seriously, and we ought to as well. And then secondly, how that points us to the extravagance 00:03:59.360 --> 00:04:05.680 of grace. So we're going to think about sin, and then we're going to think about grace. So first of 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:09.120 all this evening, the first point, to understand God's justice, we have to come to terms with the 00:04:09.120 --> 00:04:15.520 seriousness of sin. And we see that in this story in several ways. First of all, Achan's sin is serious 00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:22.480 because it is a direct personal rebellion against God. I think sometimes we have quite a trivial 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:29.280 view of sin. Sometimes we underplay the gravity of what sin actually is. We think sin is just 00:04:29.280 --> 00:04:35.040 breaking a rule. We think it's just overstepping a boundary. I think particularly as Christians, 00:04:35.040 --> 00:04:39.759 in light of the gospel and in light of what Jesus has done for us, and all that we have, 00:04:39.759 --> 00:04:45.520 the forgiveness and hope and new life, we sometimes minimize the impact sin can have and its seriousness. 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:51.520 And at first glance, when we come to something like Joshua 7, and we look at what Achan did and 00:04:51.519 --> 00:04:56.560 what happened to him, we might think that it's a bit, what he does is a bit trivial. We're told in 00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:01.680 verse 1, Achan, son of Karmie, son of Zabdi, son of Zera, so on and so forth, took some of the 00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:06.560 devoted things. And later on in the chapter, it expands on that, and it tells us he takes a cloak 00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:11.359 from Shinar, which is Babylon. It's a symbol of status and power. And he takes some silver and 00:05:11.359 --> 00:05:16.959 some gold, some money. But it's the context of the previous chapter, really, that helps us see 00:05:16.959 --> 00:05:22.479 why this is such a serious situation. And if you didn't hear Derek's sermon last Sunday, I'd recommend 00:05:22.479 --> 00:05:29.039 you listen to it if you can. But in chapter 6, we have God's people at Jericho, and God gives 00:05:29.039 --> 00:05:34.799 his people the victory over Jericho. But God tells us people there that everything in Jericho is 00:05:34.799 --> 00:05:41.759 devoted to him, either in salvation or in judgment. And so because the victory at Jericho is God's, 00:05:41.759 --> 00:05:47.599 nothing in the city is to be taken by the people. And so what Achan's doing here in chapter 7 is 00:05:47.599 --> 00:05:52.399 he's directly rebelling against something God has explicitly told him. He is actually stealing 00:05:52.399 --> 00:05:58.000 from God. And in fact, he is identifying himself with those who have rejected God and those who 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:02.959 stand under God's judgment. And right away, I think there's echoes we can see here with the 00:06:02.959 --> 00:06:08.240 Garden of Eden. There's a sense in which what Achan does here in Joshua 7 mirrors the very first 00:06:08.240 --> 00:06:13.199 sin of humanity, the very first time we get it wrong before God in Genesis C. You might have 00:06:13.199 --> 00:06:18.720 the verses on the screen. They are adamant he'd directly rebel against God and his explicit 00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:24.079 instruction. And if you look at the language in both chapters, actually, you can see the parallel. 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:28.800 Genesis chapter 3 in verse 6 says, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food 00:06:28.800 --> 00:06:34.319 and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took an aid. Achan, when he 00:06:34.319 --> 00:06:38.639 confesses what he's done, uses the same kind of language to describe his action. He says, 00:06:38.639 --> 00:06:43.759 when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold, 00:06:43.759 --> 00:06:49.759 I coveted them. It's the same words, desired them and took them. And I think in many ways, 00:06:49.759 --> 00:06:58.399 this breaks down sin for us in some way. Sin can begin very subtly. We see, we desire, we take. 00:06:58.399 --> 00:07:04.879 We take. Adam and Eve's sin destroyed the perfect relationship between human beings and God 00:07:04.879 --> 00:07:12.000 in the garden. But so often our sin reflects that same pattern. We see something, we see someone, 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:16.879 our heart fixates on it and we begin to desire it more than we desire God. And then eventually, 00:07:16.879 --> 00:07:23.439 we're led to act. I think it was John Calvin, French theologian and reformer, who said that 00:07:23.439 --> 00:07:28.959 our human minds can be so much like an idle factory. We're constantly fixating on things to 00:07:28.959 --> 00:07:34.240 worship in God's place. And we see that in the rest of the Bible. It's full of examples of the 00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:41.279 allure and the attraction that money and power and sex and status can have over us as human beings. 00:07:41.279 --> 00:07:44.560 And that there are so many things in life that we can end up worshiping in God's place. 00:07:46.159 --> 00:07:50.560 And so we recognize the seriousness of sin. First of all here in the Achan is directly 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:56.319 rebelled against the God who is so good and so loving and so faithful to his people. Secondly, 00:07:56.319 --> 00:08:02.399 sin is a rejection of what God has promised. The promises of God are a theme we've been looking at 00:08:02.399 --> 00:08:08.879 time and again in Joshua. God is a God who makes promises to us as his people. He promises to give 00:08:08.879 --> 00:08:15.279 us a place to live. He promises us family, a people to live to be part of a family. And he promises 00:08:15.279 --> 00:08:21.759 a special relationship with himself to enjoy and the blessings that that entails. And the point 00:08:21.759 --> 00:08:28.319 Joshua makes time and again is how we respond to those promises is extremely important. We have a 00:08:28.319 --> 00:08:32.879 kind of contrast drawn for us in the opening chapters. We have two different pictures of two 00:08:32.879 --> 00:08:38.639 different responses to God's promises. On one hand you have Rahab. We looked at her a few weeks ago. 00:08:38.639 --> 00:08:44.879 Rahab is this amazing example of the grace that God shows to the outsider. And the fact that her 00:08:44.879 --> 00:08:49.600 story is included right at the beginning I think is really significant because she's a Canaanite. 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:54.559 She is someone who is outside of the people of God. Someone who's part of this culture that has 00:08:54.559 --> 00:09:00.480 rejected God. But she recognizes who God is and she trusts in his promises and so she's included 00:09:00.480 --> 00:09:06.559 in God's people. And then we come to a chapter like this by contrast where we have Achan. Achan is an 00:09:06.559 --> 00:09:12.720 insider. He's someone who is born into the people of God. He has the right family background. He has 00:09:12.720 --> 00:09:19.360 lots of knowledge about God and what God has done. He is someone who has experienced God's power 00:09:19.360 --> 00:09:26.080 firsthand. He has seen God's promises unfolding and yet he turns his back on God and rejects and 00:09:26.080 --> 00:09:32.320 rebels against him. One commentator on this passage said that a really important point of Joshua is 00:09:32.320 --> 00:09:38.399 that outsiders are only a confession away from being included. So Rahab should give all outsiders 00:09:38.399 --> 00:09:45.360 hope. Achan in contrast should make insiders cautious and attentive to keeping our faith in the promises 00:09:45.360 --> 00:09:52.319 of God. When we come to Jesus' message in the New Testament we see clearly how he came for the 00:09:52.319 --> 00:09:58.959 outsiders. He came for those who are marginalized. He came to call not the righteous but sinners 00:09:58.959 --> 00:10:04.720 to himself. He came to seek and to save the lost. So we see the seriousness of sin in that it's 00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:09.840 direct rebellion against God. It's a rejection of what God has promised. But here's the third 00:10:09.840 --> 00:10:15.759 thing and I think this is a key point in the Achan story. His sin is serious because it brings God's 00:10:15.759 --> 00:10:20.639 anger. And you see this if you look at the beginning and the end of the story. Verse one I think we 00:10:20.639 --> 00:10:24.639 might have on the screen. It says there, people who favored Israel broke faith in regard to the 00:10:24.639 --> 00:10:29.680 devoted things for Achan, the son of Karmie and so on, took some of the devoted things. The anger of 00:10:29.679 --> 00:10:35.279 the Lord burned against the people of Israel. And we're told at the end of the story as well in verse 00:10:35.279 --> 00:10:42.959 26, after Achan is punished, how God's anger is turned aside. So the idea of God's anger here is a 00:10:42.959 --> 00:10:48.239 really important theme in this passage and right away we have to recognize that it is a difficult 00:10:48.239 --> 00:10:54.159 concept for us to grasp. It's hard for us to come to terms with the idea of a God who is loving and 00:10:54.159 --> 00:11:01.679 merciful and gracious and a God who gets angry at sin. And that's partly I think because in our 00:11:01.679 --> 00:11:08.240 modern minds we equate anger with the kind of human idea with an erratic rage or loss of control. 00:11:09.519 --> 00:11:16.319 But the biblical reality of God's anger is a measured just fair response to sin, to what is 00:11:16.319 --> 00:11:23.120 wrong, to what's fundamentally not good. And we have maybe a small window into that when we think 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:28.639 about the instinctive response we all feel to injustice. We can relate maybe at some level 00:11:28.639 --> 00:11:33.039 to the idea of a righteous anger when we hear of things happening that are horrific and wrong. 00:11:34.159 --> 00:11:41.200 But that response is amplified for God because God is so holy and so perfect and so just. And 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:49.039 for him to be consistently just, God can never ignore sin. God can never sweep sin under the rug. 00:11:49.039 --> 00:11:55.439 God can never pretend to look the other way. One of the most incredible things about the gospel is 00:11:55.439 --> 00:12:03.039 that on the cross Jesus is turning aside the anger of God. He is taking God's response to sin 00:12:03.039 --> 00:12:10.000 upon himself. Isaiah 53 makes this point we have on the screen as well. Verse 4 speaks about Jesus 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:15.839 taking up our pain and our suffering. Yet we consider it unpunished by God, stricken by him, 00:12:15.840 --> 00:12:21.840 afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquity. The punishment 00:12:21.840 --> 00:12:28.320 that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds we are healed. You see the cross is at the same 00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:34.639 time the most powerful demonstration of God's love and his justice. We have to hold the two 00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:40.879 together. We can't properly understand God's love if we don't understand his just response to sin. 00:12:40.879 --> 00:12:46.399 Sometimes we talk about God as a loving God and it can be very in a very superficial way. But when 00:12:46.399 --> 00:12:51.759 we unpack what that love looks like we see that he is a God who is willing to die in the place 00:12:51.759 --> 00:12:57.919 of sinners and bring them back to himself. We'll come back to that later on. But the reality of 00:12:57.919 --> 00:13:02.960 God's anger is the third reason we need to take sin incredibly seriously because God takes it 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:08.960 incredibly seriously. The fourth way that we see the seriousness of sin in Joshua 7 is the way 00:13:08.960 --> 00:13:14.879 that it affects other people. His sin, Ahan's sin, has an impact on the people around him. 00:13:14.879 --> 00:13:20.080 And again, that's maybe something that's hard for our 21st century minds to come to terms with 00:13:20.080 --> 00:13:25.440 because we're so individualistic. Maybe we think of sin as something that's just between me and God. 00:13:26.560 --> 00:13:31.120 But in God's dealings with human beings there's often a strong link between an individual on one 00:13:31.120 --> 00:13:36.879 hand and the group, the community on the other. And if we look at the passage we see the way that 00:13:36.879 --> 00:13:42.559 reflected in the language. Ahan is one guy who did something wrong but it says that Israel was 00:13:42.559 --> 00:13:48.000 unfaithful. It says that Israel has sinned. It says that God's anger burned against Israel. 00:13:49.039 --> 00:13:55.840 Ahan's individual action led to the death of 36 people. It left families to mourn and to grieve. 00:13:57.039 --> 00:14:02.000 And we know that the world in which we live today which has so much pain and suffering and death 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:08.320 all stem from human sin and from evil. And actually the sin of one individual can have a huge impact 00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:15.440 even in small and subtle ways in our world. The hateful ideology of one man in World War II led 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:20.960 to the death and suffering of millions. Or more recently we've seen how the financial greed of 00:14:20.960 --> 00:14:29.200 an elite few can lead to the huge implications for those who are poor and exploited. Or how the 00:14:29.200 --> 00:14:35.520 individual actions of an abuser can send shock waves through an entire family. The point is that sin 00:14:35.520 --> 00:14:44.160 has an impact on other people. Sin is rarely an individual matter. Imagine a ship that sinks in a 00:14:44.160 --> 00:14:50.000 storm and everyone on board manages to get onto a lifeboat. But suddenly one person grabs a saw and 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:55.360 begins to saw a hole under their seat at the bottom of the boat. And when people try to stop him and 00:14:55.360 --> 00:15:01.279 he says, what has it got to do with you? I'm only sawing under my own seat. And you see the absurdity 00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:07.200 of that statement. Our actions have implications for goods or for ill for other people. And the 00:15:07.200 --> 00:15:14.000 same is true here in the Old Testament with Achan's sin. He is like the guy with a saw 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:18.879 sawing under his own seat. But Paul actually makes the same point in the New Testament when he uses 00:15:18.879 --> 00:15:25.360 the metaphor of the body to describe us as the church. God's people, the church family is like a 00:15:25.360 --> 00:15:32.320 unit. And if the foot stumbles, the body stumbles. Here at St. Columbus we've been doing a series on 00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:37.600 discipleship in our morning services. And we're thinking about helping each other to grow and to 00:15:37.600 --> 00:15:43.519 develop our Christian lives together as we follow Jesus. And a big part of that is taking sin 00:15:43.519 --> 00:15:49.519 seriously together. I think Derek made the point this morning that we don't live our Christian 00:15:49.519 --> 00:15:55.919 lives in isolation. We're not going our own way as Christians. And part of that is we're called to 00:15:55.919 --> 00:16:02.159 confess sin to one another. Do we have biblical friendships where we do that? Where we talk about 00:16:02.159 --> 00:16:07.600 sin? Where we struggle to battle together with one another against sin in our lives? 00:16:07.600 --> 00:16:13.519 It's a biblical idea. Proverbs says, better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend 00:16:13.519 --> 00:16:19.840 can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. So we're called to battle with sin together 00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:25.680 because sin has implications for everyone. But Achan's sin also affected others in that he took 00:16:25.680 --> 00:16:33.600 Canaan inside the camp. So the nation of Canaan where God's people are going into, we've already 00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:39.120 talked about God's judgment against Canaan and all the difficulties that that implies. But this is a 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:44.879 society that is burning its own children in sacrifice. It's a society that's from when all 00:16:44.879 --> 00:16:51.519 kinds of twisted sex acts and corruption and hate and all kinds of other things. And we have to 00:16:51.519 --> 00:16:55.840 recognize as we think about this, and as we grapple with these themes, that this part of the 00:16:55.840 --> 00:17:02.240 Bible is a unique moment in redemptive history. And so the severity of this kind of sin, 00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:08.079 the severity of this kind of story is a unique situation. And we see that played out in the 00:17:08.079 --> 00:17:14.960 consequences of Achan's sin. As we read in verse 24, it says, Joshua and all Israel took Achan 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:19.519 and all the stuff he stole, all his sons and daughters, all his oxen and donkeys and sheep, 00:17:19.519 --> 00:17:25.599 and they stoned them and they burned them. And to us, this probably seems a really difficult 00:17:25.599 --> 00:17:32.000 thing to get our head around. How do we hold together a God who is loving and gracious and 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:36.880 parts the Old Testament like this? Well, I think something really important Derek said last week 00:17:36.880 --> 00:17:42.559 is we must let Scripture interpret Scripture. We must let what is clear in God's word shed light 00:17:42.559 --> 00:17:48.000 on what's not clear. We have to come to pastors like this recognizing that there's going to be 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:53.680 parts of the Bible that are hard. But at the same time, we have to come with grace and humility 00:17:53.680 --> 00:18:00.079 and humble ourselves before God in faith and dependence on him. We have to let God be God 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:05.439 and trust that he is just and will always do what is right in a world full of injustice. And we see 00:18:05.439 --> 00:18:11.359 the way the sin has consequences and implications, not just for ourselves, but for others. So the 00:18:11.359 --> 00:18:16.799 story of Achan demonstrates to us clearly the seriousness of sin and the seriousness of which 00:18:16.799 --> 00:18:24.399 God takes sin. And God would not be a just God if he didn't punish sin. As we say that and as we 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:30.640 think about that, we come to the second point. And I want to think about the extravagance of grace. 00:18:31.280 --> 00:18:35.680 We thought about the seriousness of sin. But I think in this passage, we do in some implicit 00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:41.200 way see the extravagance of God's grace. And you might think as you look at Joshua 7, and 00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:43.840 maybe if you're reading this in your own devotion, you think, how on earth do I 00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:51.280 understand this? How do I apply this to my life today? But here's the thing, we see God's ongoing 00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:57.119 grace towards his people and to this world every day in the fact that this is not his normal response 00:18:57.119 --> 00:19:04.319 to sin. In this unique moment of redemptive history, we have a glimpse into what sin deserves. 00:19:05.200 --> 00:19:11.920 And yet it's not the normal way God responds. We also have a glimpse here, I think, of the cross. 00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:18.879 We have this idea that God's anger is turned aside after punishing sin. We sang earlier that if God 00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:24.560 marked our sins against us, not one of us could stand. But we also sang that with him, there is 00:19:24.560 --> 00:19:28.880 forgiveness. This is what Paul says in Romans chapter 5 and verse 7. He says, 00:19:28.880 --> 00:19:33.120 very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly 00:19:33.120 --> 00:19:39.280 dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, 00:19:39.280 --> 00:19:44.960 Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved 00:19:44.960 --> 00:19:51.759 from God's wrath through him? In other words, it's only when we really grasp the seriousness of human 00:19:51.759 --> 00:19:59.519 sin that we can truly appreciate the profound and amazing love of God. The death of Jesus on the cross 00:19:59.519 --> 00:20:05.759 is the most costly act of love we can imagine. But it only really makes sense when you appreciate 00:20:05.759 --> 00:20:12.559 the extent of human need for a Savior. It only makes sense when we see Jesus as a substitute, 00:20:12.559 --> 00:20:19.759 as one who is in our place. Part of the essence of the gospel message is that Jesus died in my place, 00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:25.919 in your place. I wonder if you were asked this week why Jesus died on the cross, what would you say? 00:20:27.759 --> 00:20:33.359 Because if we reduce God down to some kind of palatable, soft deity who only exists to love 00:20:33.359 --> 00:20:39.519 and only exists to affirm, and in doing so we never really talk about sin and the serious effects 00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:45.440 and consequences of sin, then we actually make the gospel message meaningless. The cross actually 00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:51.279 becomes a failure, and the death of Jesus becomes pointless. There are several different views about 00:20:51.279 --> 00:20:56.400 what Jesus was actually doing on the cross. Some people say he was a moral influence. In other 00:20:56.400 --> 00:21:01.599 words, that Jesus died to show us how to live, to live lives of self-sacrifice and denial 00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:08.079 and kindness. And there's elements of truth in that. Other people focus on the victory of God 00:21:08.079 --> 00:21:15.039 on the cross. That's where evil is defeated and Satan is subdued. But the really important 00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:19.839 point of the cross that we have to return to time and again is that Jesus is there in our place. 00:21:20.399 --> 00:21:26.720 It's that Jesus is actually taking our punishment. And the question for us this evening as Christians 00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:34.480 in a 21st century Western culture is how do we present the cross to our world? Do we dumb down 00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:40.400 the justice of God and try and make it palatable? Or do we, as Paul says, present it in Ephesians 2 00:21:40.400 --> 00:21:47.680 as we were by nature deserving of wrath? But God, because of his great love for us, who is rich in 00:21:47.680 --> 00:21:54.319 mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have 00:21:54.319 --> 00:22:01.039 been saved. In other words, those of us who are so much like Achan in so many ways, who actually 00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:08.159 deserve the outcome we read in this passage, by nature rebels and deserving God's response to sin. 00:22:08.159 --> 00:22:15.759 Instead, are showered with grace and mercy and given life in place of death. So to grasp the gospel, 00:22:15.759 --> 00:22:22.000 we have to hold both of these truths together. We have to take sin seriously. But we also have to 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:28.399 come to the grace of Jesus Christ and to fix our eyes on him and what he has done for us on the cross. 00:22:28.400 --> 00:22:33.120 Tim Keller, author of lots of helpful books, Pastor in New York City, he put it like this, 00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:38.640 and with this will close. He said, the gospel shows you that you are more sinful and flawed 00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:45.120 in yourself than you'd ever dare believe, yet at the very same time you are more loved and more 00:22:45.120 --> 00:22:51.120 accepted in Jesus than you could ever dare hope. We pray that God would enable us to trust in him 00:22:51.119 --> 00:23:00.159 and to rest in that amazing truth this evening. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you so much for 00:23:00.159 --> 00:23:06.239 your Son, Jesus Christ. We thank you for the hope we have through him of life. We thank you Lord, 00:23:06.239 --> 00:23:13.359 that we come to you as those who are broken in so many ways as sinners, as those who are flawed. 00:23:13.359 --> 00:23:19.599 But Lord God, we thank you that you take us as we are and you forgive us and you call us your children. 00:23:19.599 --> 00:23:26.079 Father, thank you for the grace you give us to grapple with hard truths. Father, help us in humility 00:23:26.079 --> 00:23:32.799 and in wisdom to recognize that you are a God who is so just. You are a God who cannot tolerate sin 00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:38.559 or evil, and that one day Lord God, you will return to this world and you will right every wrong. 00:23:38.959 --> 00:23:45.119 And Lord God, we thank you for the amazing hope we have in Jesus. Father, we pray that you'd help us 00:23:45.119 --> 00:23:50.159 this week in our lives, in our workplaces, in our universities, in our family lives, 00:23:50.159 --> 00:23:56.239 to live out our hope in a way that others can see, to be people who demonstrate our 00:23:56.240 --> 00:24:16.240 love for Jesus and our love for others in practical ways. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.