The Power of His Resurrection # 12

The Waters of Jericho (continued)

(c) Achan

Further, the Achan factor is significant. There were two things connected with Achan's sin, or which were the forms of expression which that sin took. There was the wedge of gold, and the Babylonish garment.

The wedge of gold incidentally is of interest, inasmuch as it has been discovered that wedges of gold, not coins, formed the currency of that part of the world at that time. Business was transacted, and payments were made in this way, and, in a word, credit hung upon these wedges of gold. It was one of those wedges of gold representing the commercial values of this world which Achan took.

The Babylonish garment, on the other hand, is a foreign element, which has proved to have been a link with a religious system, the Babylonish religious system; for that Babylonish garment was nothing other than something connected with the system of worship in Babylon. It might have been a garment of a priestess.

The gold was claimed by Jehovah. When the city was taken it was commanded that the gold should be  devoted to the Lord for His purposes; that is, the Lord laid claim to the gold, and all the  gold was the Lord's property, the Lord's by right. Achan, therefore, appropriated what belonged to the Lord, and sought to turn it to his own account. That is what the flesh always does. The flesh always takes to itself the glory that belongs to the Lord. The flesh is always taking God's rights from Him. The flesh is always putting  itself in the place of the Lord.

As to the Babylonish garment: that was a part of the whole system of things which was to be utterly destroyed from the Lord, and it represented a spiritual order which was in antagonism to God, a worship which was energized by the god of this world, his religious system, in usurping God's place as God; and that whole system, with every accompaniment, every feature, was to be utterly destroyed. But Achan preserved something which was a representation of a spiritual antagonism to God as the only God, so that Achan's sin was a very deep sin.

You see how inclusive Jericho was, in that its every feature foreshadowed, or represented, what the conquest of the land was to be. The judgment of Achan's sin showed that God had first rights, and the flesh must not appropriate what belongs to God, must not take God's place. It showed that the land represents a false spiritual system which had to be blotted out, and not one fragment of it left to survive. When Achan took the Babylonish garment he was violating a law which had to govern the conquest of the land, and he became the enemy's instrument of breaking into the Divine order, so that Jericho gathered up everything through the whole land. We are told in the Book of Acts that the Lord cast out seven nations greater than Israel. The "seven" of Jericho is symbolic of the seven nations which are to be destroyed, and they are virtually destroyed in Jericho.

Thus you have the flesh as energized by satan, and Calvary's inclusive victory over the whole. That is what Jericho speaks of to begin with.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 13 - ("2. The Omnipotence of Faith in the Power of the Cross")