We breezed through Joshua 7 during last weeks sermon, discussing Achan’s sin.  It was briefly pointed out that sin is communal but there was much more in the passage.   I was struck by the way God reveals the sin.  He didn’t send a prophet or a special message, he allowed the arrogance of the people to defeat them in battle.  They had assumed that the Lord was with them because he had been before, so they carelessly paired down their army.  But there was unaddressed sin in their midst, so they were defeated.  Rather than putting a pillar of fire over Achan’s tent, telling them who was at fault, God takes them through a process which included the whole camp, every tribe of the people.  I don’t think this is just a passing fact.  God is connecting all of the people of Israel together.  Sin is not individual and revealing and dealing with sin is not individual either.  He goes backwards through the levels of oversight that should have caught Achan’s sin, those who should have held him accountable.  You can see the fear and then shame in the people as their tribe is chosen, Judah.  Then the family of Zerahites, as the drama plays out, no doubt the other families were relieved but not completely, they were all there, they were all connected, they had all shared in the defeat and shame.  Then the household of Zabdi was chosen.  They had to all be red faced, here in front of the whole nation their family was guilty. Then Achan was chosen.

This is a similar structure to the one laid out in Matthew 18, which we usually think of as church discipline.  These are levels of oversight because we are so evil, taking evil seriously requires people near us watching out for us.  When you sin your close family members are supposed to point it out, when it is small, before it gets out of hand.  If that doesn’t work take it to a few other families.  If that does not work take it to a few elders in the church.  If that doesn’t work take it to the whole church.

This layered accountability is known as federalism, though the word originally meant covenant. The covenant or Constitution between the thirteen colonies was layerd so the word took on the character of our system. It is a political term, and it was applied here similar to the structure in Ancient Israel.  Authority and therefore accountability is kept as local as possible.  Realizing that people are the most free and the most accountable when they are dealing with people who know them and their situation.  This also acknowledges the reality that groups of people need some sort of structure when relating to one another.  Families form political or church bodies that come together to form larger groups like counties, states and countries.  This is the genius of our country and the wisdom of the founding fathers, who of course, borrowed their idea of federalism from scriptures like these.  They spoke often of the three realms of government; family, church, and state.  State also being a layered entity of towns, townships, counties, states and then the United States.  In our Constitution there are only a few things listed that are the duty of the United States Government, everything else is to be handled by each State.  The idea was, that this is also true of States.  The families reserving the right to handle the majority of issues themselves.

This used to be a common theme, in literature.  Victorian novels all contain court scenes of various types.  Little boys called up before the master of the house.  Men having their cases finally heard after years of injustice detailed in the novel.  Our pastor joked that the story of Achan didn’t have a happy ending.  But like those victorian novels, justice was done, everything was sorted out, that is a good ending in my book.  That is in fact the ending of the good book.  Jesus will judge all things, the secret things will be brought to light.  Justice will be done.  How much better could it get?

But today we have gotten away from Federalism.  No it’s not because those evil people in Washington D.C. did it to us.  It is that very thinking, blaming Washington for everything, that is the problem.  We like to keep government at an arms length, that way we can conveniently blame them for everything while not actually being accountable for our own sin.  If it’s all their fault what is one man to do?  You can see the pattern in the church today.  We rarely use the ‘go to your brother’ portions of Matthew 18 these days.  We don’t stop sins while they are little, we wait until they are huge and then get the whole church to deal with them.  Is it any wonder we do the same thing politically?  We don’t want the responsibility so the people in Washington are happy to fill in the void. Someone has to take responsibility, that’s just how it works here on this earth.  And if you don’t want the responsibility you don’t get the freedom or the glory that goes along with it.  If you want sanctification without following Christ in his death to self, you are a rebel.  When whole nations rebel, God sends a dictator, that’s just how it works.

We do the same thing with the way we raise Children.  We don’t address sins when they are small we wait until they are out of control.  Then we want someone else to fix little Johnny.  We overlook the little sins in the pre-teen years and then when those sins grow out of control in the teen years, we lament that “he used to be such a good kid”.  We don’t teach them to be disciplined with their eating habits and then lament that they can’t handle sex. We don’t point out flaws in the way they mishandle small amounts of time or money and then we lament that they can’t handle all their time and money when they are older.  These problems have become so pervasive that we have begun to think this cycle is normal.  We treat it as a fact outside of our control instead of a failure.

We need to get back to a proper understanding of the serious nature of sin.  Our ancestors were not just prudes and we are liberated.  They put safeguards in place for a reason.  They were aware of the dangers of sin and they seriously wanted to stop it.  They didn’t just play at it like we do, as we follow the world and wonder why things keep getting worse in government and in our homes.  They placed blame where it was due and fixed the problem, we blame God under any number of pseudonyms.  “That’s just the way it is.”  “It’s just how I am.” “it’s a disease.” and on and on.  If the Church does not lead who will?  We have the very words of God.  We need to start acting like it.