Not only do we learn that sin cannot be tolerated, but I think we learn something else, too. We learn something about the birth and progress of sin. It’s very seldom when we study the Bible and come across a chapter like this that talks about some great spiritual failure, or some sin on the part of an individual or nation, that we don't find at the same time suggestions as to how sin comes about. Sin very seldom just springs full-blown into our lives. Generally, there’s a process by which it first insinuates itself, and then is nurtured, grows, and eventually breaks forth in destruction. Certainly that is the case with this man, Achan.
Have you ever noticed in your life what a short step there often is between a great victory and a great defeat? One moment you’re riding high on the cloud of some great spiritual success, and the next moment you’re plunged into the valley of some grim spiritual failure. One moment you’re like Elijah on Mt. Carmel, calling down the fire of God on the altar. And the next moment you’re like Elijah at Horeb, complaining to God and asking for death.
Yesterday we introduced the relevance of the genealogy in Genesis 5. Now with that in mind, let me show you how the genealogy teaches us about God’s character. Adam, the first of the patriarchs, born we would have to say in the year one, was created by God at the beginning. He lived 930 years. When he was 130 years old he had his first son, that is, the son through whom the genealogy is traced, whose name was Seth. Seth was born in the year 130 by that kind of reckoning, and he lived to the year 1042.
Well it’s true, of course that the final judgment has not yet come; God has delayed his final reckoning. But if you look to past history, if you look to these great marks of judgments, these things stand there in history and in the pages of the Word of God as warnings. Certainly, this is true of the Jewish invasion of Canaan. It's God's way of saying that there is judgment even among the nations. Righteousness exalts a nation, but a nation that goes the way of sin and perversions is inevitably brought down. These things also stand as a warning of a judgment to come finally at the end of time. We mustn't think that God will be any different with us than he was for those ancient cultures.
All of the wicked practices that Israel was warned against were present in a most perverted and dangerous way in the Canaanite culture. It is, incidentally, something similar to what existed in the time of Noah, and in my view, is one of the reasons for God's judgment upon that culture as well as upon the Canaanites. God is in the battle against the demonic forces of evil, and where there's a great outcropping of those in society, God's judgments are particularly swift. All of that was true of the Canaanites.
