The Agony Of Defeat

The Agony of Defeat (Josh. 7:6-7; 7:10-13, 16-21, 24-26) Some sins damage deeply the spiritual life and witness of the entire body (church/nation) Spiritual failure impacts others beside the sinner(s) God viewed the nation as a unit. What one did was viewed as a sin for the whole nation because Israel’s corporate life often illustrates truth and warnings for us as individuals (1 Cor. 10). As a warning for the church, it shows us we cannot progress and move ahead for the Lord with known sin in our lives because that constitutes rebellion against the Lord’s direction and control (Eph. 4:30; 1 Thess. 5:19). When King Ahab led the Israelites into the worship of a pagan god, the Lord raised up the prophet Elijah to call the king and his people to repentance. When they ignored Elijah, the Lord then put a remedial judgment on the land in the form of a severe three and a half year drought (1 Kings 17 and 18). The book of Joel tells about a locust invasion that afflicted Judah. This was one of the worst calamities that could befall an agricultural society. It appears that people began bemoaning their “bad luck,” when God sent the prophet Joel to inform them that the disaster had nothing to do with luck. Joel boldly proclaimed that the locusts had been sent by God to call the people to repentance. He warned that if they did not repent, the Lord would send something even worse an enemy army. The people ignored Joel and the prophets who followed him, and God ultimately sent the army, delivering them from judgment to destruction. A true spiritual leader leads his people to the throne of God (Lam. 3:40-41) Abraham Lincoln when he evaluated the cause of the Civil War. In a proclamation dated March 30, 1863, the President called for “a national day of prayer and humiliation.” He began the proclamation by observing: “It is the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon.” The heart of the proclamation read as follows: “And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Mature believers confess their failures to God and seek help in dealing with them (1 John 1:9) London held its breath in June 1987. While working on a building site, a construction foreman thought his workers had hit a cast iron pipe while using a pile driver. After picking up and then dropping the huge object, they realized the pipe looked like a bomb. It was a 2,200-pound World War II bomb, one of the largest the Germans dropped during the blitz which killed more than 15,000 Londoners. After evacuating the area, a 10-man bomb disposal unit worked 18 hours before deactivating the seven-foot device. Unconfessed sin, like an unexploded bomb, can rest in the heart of an individual or in a church. Unless it’s deactivated through forgiveness, it can detonate and cause great damage. D.L. Moody, 5-5-91. Confession is an act of praise in that it acknowledges God’s holiness and mercy The Hebrew would for “confess” also means “praise” The Greek word for confess, exomologeo, means to fully acknowledge.. Confession without repentance or a genuine change of mind is hollow. Sometimes confession is too late to stop the discipline. God will allow you to reap according to what you have sown (Gal.6:7-8) Your sin is your own fault, not anyone else’s. You must accept responsibility for your sin. You will never correct anything until you face up to your responsibility. (Prov. 28:13) We are called to “keep on” confessing our sins (Homologeoo, Gk) If you continue to sin, God will chastise you as a father chastises his son. (Heb. 12:5-11) They must also seek consecration/sanctification/holiness (Joshua 7:13; Joel 2:16) so that our relationship to God may be restored. “ … if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) The word “holy” itself is used at least 549 times in the Scriptures. In the Hebrew (Old Testament) the word for holy is Qadash (kaw-dash’) and in the Greek (New Testament) the word for holy is Hagiazo (hag-ee-ad’-zo). It means “set apart for a sacred purpose”. We are called to sanctification (to be pure, set apart, holy) (Exod. 19:10; Lev.11:44; Joshua 3:5; 1 Thess. 4:3 & 7; Rom. 12:1; Eph. 1:4; 1 Pe. 1:13-16). God will never stop calling us into holiness. One of His deepest desires for our lives is that we embrace the call to holiness, and by His grace live a holy life.

Sanctification is a theological term that describes the ongoing process of the Holy Spirit rooting out sin from our hearts. It is both an event and a process. We can say with confidence that we have been sanctified and we are being sanctified. Holiness is the end result of sanctifying grace at work in our hearts. God will not remain among a people who tolerate sin (Joshua 7:12; Ps. 5:4; Isa. 59:2; Prov. 15:29) God’s people must not tolerate anything God forbids. (Exod. 22:18; Deut. 7:26; 1 Cor. 5:1-6; Rev. 2:20) Our authority to judge (krinw, Gk.)sinful behavior/actions/lifestyles comes from the Word of God. Those who knowingly tolerate sin share in its guilt (Joshua 6:18) Every spiritual leader has a responsibility to address, wisely and immediately, the moral failures of the body (church/nation) (Deut. 19:19-20; Gal. 6:1) “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”(2 Tim. 4:2-4) Sin is no small matter to God. The words, “therefore the anger of the Lord burned against the sons of Israel,” dramatically call our attention to the holiness of God and the fact that sin is no small matter with Him because it is rebellion and rebellion is as the sin of divination (1 Sam. 15:23). Even though the Lord died for our sins and stands at God’s right hand as our advocate and intercessor, God does not and cannot treat sin in our lives lightly. It is against His holy character (His holiness, righteousness, love, etc.) and against His holy purposes for us since it hinders His control and ability to lead us. Yeast, or leaven in dough, is the analogy Paul uses to describe the effects of sin on a body. Yeast adds carbon dioxide uniformly to a lump of dough by a process of digestion or putrefaction. The yeast digests the sugar then expels CO2. You put just a little yeast into the dough, and let it sit. That yeast will fill the whole dough with that Carbon Dioxide. Sin, if not dealt with does the same thing. We’re talking here about open that everyone knows about. If you fail to deal with it then the enemy can start working in a pattern of sin. Pretty soon you have a church filled with sin and the gospel, which represents a way of escaping sin becomes useless. The world accuses the church of judging them condemning them. That’s wrong. We’re not the ones to condemn, we’re the ones to bring the good news. The world confuses God’s judgment of sin, which is anything that is not in line with God’s character, with our judgment because we bring to them the information about what God will do to sin. But even as we don’t judge or condemn those on the outside of the church, there is a responsibility to judge what’s going on in the church.

Without God we will not be able to stand against attack (Joshua 7:13) “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”. (2 Tim. 4:2-4) Evidence that that time has come: "Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code." Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health (The Massachusetts Decision legalizing same sex marriage) November 18, 2003, quoting Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S.Ct. 2472, 2480 (2003) (The decision overturning anti-sodomy laws in Texas), quoting Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 850 (1992) (One of a line of cases legalizing abortion). 18 U.S. states have approved “gay civil rights” legislation, with California being the most recent.