At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city. The city shall be under the ban, it and all that is in it belongs to the Lord; only Rahab the harlot and all who are with her in the house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. But as for you, only keep yourselves from the things under the ban, so that you do not covet them and take some of the things under the ban, and make the camp of Israel accursed and bring trouble on it.
– Joshua 6:16-18
Out of curiosity, I did an Internet search to find a definition of fatal error. The first response I got said that a fatal error is “an unrecoverable system or software fault that forces a program to abruptly crash or the operating system to shut down.” According to that definition, a fatal error doesn’t just slow you down; it stops you dead in your tracks. Of course, the things that cause fatal errors are not designed into a system. They sneak in. These are things like computer viruses or malware. Such things always work against you, and at times they can completely shut you down.
This is not a bad description of what happened with the people of Israel immediately after entering their land of promise. They had crossed the Jordan River, were camped in a place called Gilgal, and their obvious next move would involve the city of Jericho. God had disclosed to Joshua the plan for defeating Jericho. The people would march, shofar would blow, and (as the song says) the walls would come a tumblin’ down. While all of this sounds great, there was a critical detail God added to the instructions. “The city shall be under the ban.” If you are not familiar with what this means, it was God’s way of telling the people that Jericho was not going to fall into their hands. It was going to fall into His hands. In the city would be silver, gold, articles of bronze and iron. Such things must be taken into the treasury of the Lord (v. 19). Everything else was to be destroyed. No one was to take any plunder from the city for themselves. To do so would be an act of taking from God, and it would set them up for a fatal error.
The fall of Jericho was impressive, so the people expected continued success in their campaign. What no one except the Lord saw was that one of their own, a man named Achan, kept some of the treasures of Jericho for himself. The effects of his rebellion were not felt until their next attempted conquest, which was a small community called Ai. It was so small that Joshua was counseled to not bother all of the people to go into battle. The victory should be easy. It wasn’t, and the Israelites were embarrassingly defeated. The fatal error had hit, and Joshua didn’t understand why. His fear was that perhaps the Lord had changed His mind about the whole plan of conquest. What the Lord revealed, however, was that one seed of disobedience had been planted among the people, and they needed to deal with it immediately. The fatal error at Ai was to get their attention.
Achan’s actions were no small deal to God. A reading of Joshua 7 will reveal that God was extremely serious about coveting, and ultimately taking, what God claimed for himself. I am very confident in the assertion that God hasn’t changed in that regard. The consequences Achan received might seem harsh to the modern reader, but that should teach us the severity God saw in his actions. As such, a caution is there for us just as it was for those who remained in Joshua’s day. To take what God has claimed for Himself and keep it for ourselves—or give it to another—is a grievous sin.
Translating this into a contemporary Christian framework may seem a little tricky, but application can still be made. Achan’s boundaries were pretty simple. Gold, silver, bronze and iron go into the treasury of God, and everything else gets burned. Living out our obedience to God may in some ways be more nuanced. Maybe the best question we could pose to ourselves is to ask honestly how easy we find it to rob God of what He asks of us. For instance, if we believe God still asks us to give Him time for gathered worship, how easy is it for us to reclaim that time and use it for ourselves? If we believe God still asks for a “first fruits” offering of our earnings, do we give in to the temptation to take that offering and use it in other ways? I am not suggesting some soft form of legalism. Rather, I am working out of a conviction that being in relationship with our Creator means 1) acknowledging what He asks of us, and 2) being unwavering in our commitment to give it.
As in the days of Joshua, fatal errors in our spiritual journey do not take effect in an instant. It may take a bit before the consequences come. Eventually, though, they will, and it can leave us wondering what went wrong. In times like that, a good place to begin our analysis is to check our obedience—or lack thereof.
See you along the Winding Path.
The Winding Path 