The Cross as our Stoning Experience

I gave a talk to a youth group in Peru the summer before my Senior year of high school. It was about the story of Achan found in Joshua 7. My point in the story was to point out a key verse and have everyone apply it to their own life. It's found in verse 13 and its God's response to Joshua as Joshua is weeping and tearing his clothes asking God why He had brought them out of the desert only lead them to defeat at the gates of their enemies (Chapter 7- Defeat at Ai). God's response is this:

"Get up, sanctify the people, and say, 'Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because thus says the Lord God of Israel: "There is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel; you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you."

My thoughts were challenge everyone to find that 'accursed' thing in our lives (Achan took gold from Jericho and hid it in his tent) that are keeping us from an intimate relationship with Christ. And for years, that is the only thing I got from the story.

Tonight I talked at K-Life about the same passage, with the same hopes of challenging everyone to ask themselves the question of "Is there something in my live and is separating me from the Grace of God?" As I got into the talk, the story of what took place after the 'accursed' thing was found in the tent of Achan really hit home. Joshua takes Achan, his family, and all his possession out to a field and the story follows:

"And Joshua said, 'Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day.' So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. Then they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day."

Is the Cross our Stoning experience? God is consistent. We know He is both loving and a jealous God. My experience is too often Christians fail to see the severity of our sin because of how accessible Grace is. Yes we have the Cross, but God is Just as He is Love. And we see the product of sin throughout the Old Testament is the "fierceness of His anger". So what changed from the Old to the New Testament?

Here is my belief. The Cross is our Stoning experience. Christ on the Cross took the stones and the fire as nails and a crown of thorns, and the heap of stones raise to remind us that Christ is our propitiation of sin is the Cross. Behind the Grace of the Cross is a loving and jealous God and I hope we never fail to recognize the severity of our sin ('so the anger of the Lord burned against Israel' Joshua 7:1).

The story may or may not be about what is our 'bag of gold hidden in out tent', but here is a thought: every sin we commit against our Father God is worthy of justice, a fate spared us by the Cross. God has an image in our mind of a caring father, but if we believe that about God, we have to take God in His entirety, and that includes a God that burns with anger when we sin against Him.

Don't Abuse Grace. Don't fail to recognize the severity of sin. Don't forget the sacrifice at the Cross.