Today’s reading: Joshua 8; Luke 21
What strikes me most out of today’s reading is what Achan would have had if only he had been willing to wait…
We saw yesterday, in Joshua 7, that Achan and his family were killed because he took some of the spoil from Jericho that God specifically commanded that they not take. When he is caught Achan tells Joshua that he saw these things and coveted them so he took them and hid them in his tent. I have to imagine that if God had told them from the outset, “You can’t have any of the spoil from Jericho or else you will be put to death, but a couple days after Jericho we are going to take Ai and you will be welcome to the spoil there,” then Achan may very well have waited. Knowing up front wouldn’t have made him desire the spoil in Jericho any less, but knowing he only has to wait a couple days to come by spoil legitimately would have likely made it a lot easier to choose to stay faithful to the Lord in the moment.
The fact of the matter is though that that isn’t what God told them, and Achan still could and should have chosen to listen to God and stay faithful. God has already shown Himself to be faithful to the Israelites over and over again. He delivered them from Egypt, fed them miraculously with manna, stopped the waters of the Jordan so they could cross, crumbled the walls of Jericho so they could take the city, etc. There should be no question of God’s ability or willingness to provide for His people’s needs and that should have been well more than enough to Achan to think back on and decide to trust God despite his desire to take what God said not to take. And honestly, even if God didn’t let them take the spoil from other cities, hasn’t He promised to prosper them in the land He is giving them? What’s the need to steal a few trinkets when God is intending that nobody in the country will be in need, the crops will produce abundantly, the rains will come in their seasons, etc.?
This is an important lesson for us to pay attention to because this is often the position we find ourselves in in the Christian life. God rewards faithfulness, but He doesn’t generally say or guarantee up front how He will reward faithfulness. We don’t often get the Lord telling us, “I’m calling you to X, and if you do that, I will give you Y in 3 months.” But despite the fact that we don’t have Him telling us how He will reward our faithfulness in any given situation, we are still called to be faithful and to trust what He says is right and good more than we trust our own understanding.
God is our creator who knows what we are designed for and what we need better than we know that ourselves. For those of us whose faith is in Christ, God is our Father who knows how to give good gifts to His children. God is omniscient and knows all the outcomes of every situation and so can be trusted when He tells us the way that we should go. And God is trustworthy and can be counted on to keep His promises.
We have every reason to listen to God over our own desires. So next time your desires conflict with the Lord’s instruction, its worth remembering the example of Achan and all that he could have had if he had only been willing to trust the Lord and go His way.
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