Verse 18
Achan a Representative Man
THERE is nothing old in these words. Achan is "taken" every day. Achan is sure to be "taken." If we are practising the policy of Achan, the fate of Achan we can never avert; the detail will be different the mere map and plan but the issue will be the same, because God's throne is the same, and there is no change in his righteousness. So this is not ancient history, but a line taken out of this day's record a line we would gladly not read; but why should we spoil our schooling because we are eclectic, reading a line here and there just as it may please us, instead of reading straight through, solemnly, minutely, and fearlessly? We do not like to look into perdition we are afraid of being scorched! But whatever we find upon the way of life and in the discipline of life, it will be well to look at steadfastly and reverently, and ask God for that apt mind and interpreting faculty which can seize meanings and secure them and hold them as spiritual riches.
What a representative man is Achan! Does he not represent those, for example, who are continually taking great risks? What a life some men lead! They are always on the brink; an unforeseen pebble might topple them over in a moment. There is a kind of moral speculativeness about them. Their psychology is difficult to understand. They will take chances, they will run into dangerous places; their happiness appears to consist in the number and the quality of the risks they accept. It was very unlikely that any man would escape who took such a risk as Achan took. But we must not lightly dismiss the people who are taking risks. It would be easy to blame them, easy to chastise them with stinging words and bitter and just reproaches; but there is something in the making of a man: we cannot account for it; there is a tincture in the blood. Some men would seem to be almost born to risks and dangers, every laugh a concealment, every joke a new hypocrisy, every appearance of guilelessness an attainment in infernal skill. There is but a step between them and death. The partition which keeps them from the prison and the gallows is almost transparent; a wind of the gentlest kind might blow it down. What an excited life! and not the less excited that it appears to be measured and quiet; every tone is a calculation; the whole life is constructed upon dramatic and poetic lines; not a posture that is not also a confession, or an evasion, or a suggestion, if we had those keen eyes which can see below surfaces into meanings and purposes.
But the mystery of it is that Achan represents also men who have no need to take risks. They have plenty; they have sweet homes; they have gardens rich with all kinds of flowers; and "he very air is made musical by the birds which sing in it. They need not go out of their own doors for a single pleasure: their table is bounteously spread; every corner of the house is built upon a rock, and every voice in the house is charged with some musical message. Yet they covet just a little more: it is only one acre to complete the estate; it is only one thousand pounds more to make the odd figure into an even one then all will go rhythmically in the matter of finance and property; it is only one more slave that is needed, and then the enjoyment will be sphered off into completeness, and will roll and shine among a thousand globes, and be a source of daily joy. If they had need, there would be some excuse. When David ate the shewbread he was excused because of his hunger. So men may do many desperate things, and be excused in some degree for doing them, because of biting hunger and void necessity and tremendous urgency of circumstances. These are not defences, complete replies to righteous impeachments, but they may be construed into extenuations, and the just magistrate may take note of them when he has to pronounce his sentence; they may throw a sob into the judge's speech; they may be the means of suggesting even to the criminal that his punishment has mercy mingled with it. But when men have no need to take risks, and yet take them, it becomes a wonder whether they are so fated, crushed down by Heaven to do this thing, or whether they have attained a mental and moral perversity absolutely beyond the range of any chaste imagination. These things show us the critical nature of life, the awful difficulty of living, and the tremendous pressure that is put upon some men in certain directions. We must be charitable in all our judgments, especially charitable towards those who are young and inexperienced, who do not understand the mischief they are beginning; and something must be set down to an imagination too buoyant to bow before the sober dictates of reason. Then allowance must also be made for men of a certain descent. We carry our fathers with us. We have seen again and again in these studies that no man liveth unto himself, and that no man is himself only. What can some men do who were born in darkness, born in slavery, born just outside hell; who have had no friends, no education, no chance in life, and who. seem to think and not unreasonably that life is a battle in which the strongest wins, a race which is given to the swiftest, and that sometimes strength must be outwitted by cunning, and sometimes swiftness must be deceived by putting the time forward or backward so as to baffle calculation? Thank God we are not judges. We stand in the same dock: let God be judge.
Achan committed a sin which is common to us all, in so far that he felt it extremely difficult to subordinate the personal to the communal. He might have said and in so saying he would have talked good, round English, What can a wedge of gold matter in all this great heap of wealth? What is the difference one Babylonish garment more or less? Who will be the worse for my taking it? Nobody need know. I want a relic of this event, I want a keepsake; this has been a very wonderful miracle, and I want to keep in my house some memorial of it; I could turn these things into good, moral uses: I could preach sermons upon them, I could derive lessons from them. It cannot make any difference where thousands of men are concerned if I take one wedge of gold, two hundred shekels of silver, and a goodly Babylonish garment they are all but a handful, and who will miss them? In fact, there will be no reckoning; things in connection with a battle are done so tumultuously and so irregularly that none will ever think of looking up such a handful of spoil as I may seize. That is the exaggeration of individualism; that is the lie which man is always telling to himself. It is the falsehood which enables him to cheat the body politic: What can it matter if I do not vote? There are thousands of people who want to vote, let them enjoy themselves, and I will take mine ease. What can it matter if I do not keep the laws of the company the municipal or other company? The great majority of the neighbours will keep them, and as for any little infraction of them of which I may be guilty, it is mere pedantry to remark upon it. Who cares for the body politic the body corporate? We are being taught to respect that so-called abstraction; but the lesson is a very difficult one to learn. What seems to belong to everybody, belongs to nobody. When shall we come to understand fully that there is a corporate humanity, a public virtue, a body politic, with its responsibilities, laws, duties, a great training-school in which individualism is subordinated to the commonwealth? We talk today in this matter the language of Achan. Let him who is not guilty say so to himself, for no other hearer could well believe him.
Does not Achan represent those who create unnecessary mysteries in the course of divine Providence? It is the concealed man who could explain everything. It is the thief behind the screen who could relieve all our wonder, perplexity, and distress. We have to search him out by circumstantial evidence. If he would stand up and say, "Guilty!" he would relieve our minds of many a distressing thought even about the divine government We wonder why the people are delayed, why the battle goes the wrong way, why the heathen pursues the chosen man, and beats him down, and scorns his assaults. We speak of God's mysterious way. It is a mistake on our part. The silent man, skulking behind the arras, could explain the whole affair, and relieve divine Providence of many a wonder which grows quickly into suspicion or distrust. There is such a thing, however, as circumstantial evidence: point after point is established, link after link is forged and added, and we watch the chain getting round a man, closing in upon him, beginning at the foot and coiling upwards until it strangles him! That is not a picture in romance; that is the reallest thing in all human affairs. There is a providence of time, circumstance, and the relation of the one to the other. Now the man escapes, and now he is swiftly brought back; at this moment circumstances favour him, and presently they close in upon him with tremendous certainty and awful pressure. So we have bye-circumstances, often so difficult to piece together and put into any meaning shape, to discover crimes which should be confessed openly, and the confession of which would relieve the religious consciousness of men from many an unhappy and unwelcome thought about divine Providence. There can be no escape! The very stones of the field will fight against the criminal; the light will shine at the wrong time. The detection of God is unerring. We say this, but do not realise it. If we could realise it we should begin to consider, and repent, and return.
Look at the case in one or two remarkable aspects. Consider Achan, for example, as a solitary sinner. He was the only man in the host who had disobeyed the orders that were given. Only one! It is therefore incredible. It cannot be that one man would stand apart from the whole host, the solitary criminal. It is excusable, if not incredible. He was the only one. Why judge him? Why arrest a whole army on account of one traitor? Or if it is neither incredible nor excusable, it is trifling. Nothing smaller could have occurred. Let the host go on. So man would say. God will not have it so. He does not measure by our scale. One sin is a thousand. One uplifted arm is a universe in rebellion. How many sins has a man to commit before he is a sinner? God will not allow us to alter the relation of things. It is SIN that is abominable to him not a thousand sins; it is the spirit not the number of actions. This is the rule of the divine judgment, and this is the explanation of the divine movement in a redemptive and judicial direction.
Think of Achan as a detected sinner. For a time there was no prospect of the man being found out. But God has methods of sifting which we do not know of. He himself will say how the sifting process is to be conducted: the tribe, the house, the family, the man! To see the judgment coming, to see it a day nearer, to see it within an hour, to feel the inward fire burning into unquenchable self-accusation, to know that any one moment the arresting hand may fall, that is punishment, that is everlasting punishment. Why this discussion about everlasting punishment? All punishment is everlasting. We have made the word "everlasting" the principal word in the argument, whereas it is merely incidental. The abiding word is punishment. And no punishment is for a day. A man once condemned has to bear the results of that condemnation for ever. The young man commits a crime, and is punished fifty years after; a stone will be thrown at him on that very account. Only God can deal with this great mystery. The great evangelical theology says that it is possible now for God to be just, and yet the Justifier of the ungodly by the great mystery of sacrifice the shedding of atoning blood. But it needed God to work the miracle. Nature never worked it. Conscience never worked it. Law never thought of it This is God's doing, in love, in pity, in the justice which is inspired by compassion.
Then look at Achan as a confessing sinner. He did confess his sin, but not until he was discovered. And the confession was as selfish as the sin. That is a difficulty we must face. A man's religion may be the only thing really against him. Beware of irreligious religion! That is the explanation of your imprecatory psalms. That is the explanation of Pharisaism. That is the explanation of narrow and unworthy views of Providence and heaven. Men may pray selfishly, believe selfishly, attend to religious ordinances selfishly, confess their sin selfishly, make an investment of their tears, and aggravate their original offence by an awful hypocrisy.
The picture of Achan as a punished sinner is appalling. Who punished the sinful man? The answer to that inquiry is given in the twenty-fifth verse, and is full of saddest, yet noblest meaning. Who punished the thief? "All Israel stoned him with stones," not one infuriated man, not one particularly interested individual, but "all Israel." The punishment is social. It is the universe that digs hell the all rising against the one. A great mystery is here, yet a most holy and beautiful point. Society punishes the bad man. When the magistrate pronounces sentence, he does not speak in his own name: he is a representative man; he is Society delivering sentence upon the evildoer. So it will be at last. There will be no one to arise and vindicate the sinner, no volunteer advocate, no man so left to himself as to stand up and say, "I defend the prisoner at the bar." Then things will be seen in their reality. Sin will be measured by the righteous standard, judgment will be meted by the righteous Ruler; and the sinner shall be stoned by the universe, buried by the universe, forgotten by the universe. My soul, come not thou into that secret!
Prayer
Almighty God, feed us with the bread sent down from heaven! This is the true bread, even thy Son Jesus Christ. He called himself the Bread of Life. He gave his flesh for us, and his blood, in mysterious and most holy sacrifice. He could not tell us all he had to tell because of our want of capacity and sympathy and nurture in the Lord; but we begin now to see somewhat of his deep meaning. He laid up words which time would explain: he gave hints which the ages would bring to perfectness of meaning. Now we hear the rising music; it sounds far off, a distant bell, but the sound thereof will grow, and all nature shall answer it, and all hearts shall be made glad by it, and heaven and earth shall melt into one another. We draw around thy Son Jesus, for he has the words of eternal life, and he speaks them as thou thyself wouldst speak them, with such fulness and depth and tenderness that our hearts know them to be true, and say, Of a truth this is a voice from heaven, a gospel from eternity. If we say otherwise, we condemn ourselves, and the truth is not in us. When we are under proper exultation of spirit we answer Christ in his own tongue: for we are taught of God, and being under the direction of the Spirit we understand Christ's language and speak it like our mother-tongue. Reveal to us the unsearchable riches of thy Son. Show us that if we are poor, it is not because the wealth of heaven has not been offered to us. If we are sitting in darkness, it is because we have wilfully shut our eyes. If our souls are not alive with God, it is because we have chosen death. Multiply thy grace unto us according to the need of the hour. Sometimes it is an hour of blackness, yea, of sevenfold night, of darkness gathered and heaped up into gloom that cannot be borne. Sometimes it is an hour of delight, of genial sunshine, of summer hopefulness; and then we think we shall never die, and wonder why we were ever sad. Save us even in hours of exultation, lest we become heedless and forget the littleness of our own strength. Visit us in the house and make the four corners thereof as four lamps, and the table thereof as a board of sacrament, and the fire thereof like an altar kindled from above; thus shall the house be a delightsome place, full of holiest memories, enriched with noblest associations, every footprint marking a progress, every night a rest, every morning a grander vow. The Lord comfort us in sorrow, in affliction, in loss, in trial. Visit our dear ones in the sickroom and in the places of waiting, in the sanctuary of distress and in the places of wonder, sore expectancy, that kills the heart's life because of long and mocking delay. Lift up those who are bowed down, yea, straighten them into their first uprightness, and give them the joy of returning youth. The Lord be our strength when our poor life totters under some tremendous blow. The Lord clothe us for the battle, and bring us home after the war more than conquerors. Amen.
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