"All have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
Romans
3:23
1. Joshua 6:15 – 8:29 Achan’s sin and the glory of God.
(Walk around a table 7 times, at the 6th time start telling the
story). This is THE day. The day on which everything will happen.
We have walked around this city in silence for six days. Now it is the
7th day and we are walking around the city 7 times. God told me that
after the priests sound the trumpet, I have to order all the people to
shout as loud as they can. Oh, listen, I hear the trumpets.
(Directed towards the children)
“Shout with me as loud as you
can, here we go, one, two, three, shout!!!!!!!
The Lord had given us the city, Jericho was ours. However, I had to
tell the people of Israel that there is something important to
remember, it is a message from the Lord: “everything in the city is
for God, no one can take anything for himself.” You see, if anyone
would take anything for himself they would get all the people in
trouble. So all the silver and gold, all the beautiful clothes,
everything nice our people would see, they were not allowed to take it
for themselves. Everybody understood this and no one had a problem
with it. After all we had won the battle and God gave us, the
Israelite the promised land Israel. Jericho was just the first city.
And because God has made everything, everything belonged to him.
As you know, when all the people shouted, God’s power and glory made
the walls of Jericho fall down and all the people went straight in.
Two of our spies, who checked out the city a few weeks ago rescued
Rahab and her family, because she had saved the two spies. But every
one else in the city died, because they did not belong to God’s
people.
Now there were some people who didn’t listen to the important
message that God had told them. There was a man and his name was Achan.
When he got into the city and saw all the beautiful things, silver,
gold and clothes, he thought by himself: “I can have a little bit
for myself, there is so much, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t know
about this, but I found out later. At the moment he had disobeyed God
and did not do what he had to do, God got very angry with him and
other people who disobeyed him.
As I told you before, Jericho was just the first city of the country
of Israel that we had conquered. The next city, was a city called Ai.
I made an army of two-three thousand people and sent them to Ai to
conquer the city. I was sure we were going to win, because God was for
us. But as soon as they got there, the people of Ai fought back, they
killed many of our people. I was extremely sad, and didn’t understand it at all.
(Directed towards the children)
Do you have any idea why this
happened, God was with us?
I fell down on my knees and prayed: “O sovereign Lord, why did you
ever bring us across the Jordan to deliver us into the ands of these
people to destroy us? Other countries will hear of this and they will
all kill us, and more than that, what will they say of you O God, they
will say that you cannot save your own people and that you are not
really God.”!!!
But then God spoke to me. He said to me: “Stand up, what are you
doing down on your face? Israel has sinned, they disobeyed my words.
They have taken some of the devoted things, they have stolen, they
have lied. That is why Israel cannot stand against his enemies. I will
not be with you, unless you destroy the people who disobeyed me.
You have to tell the people that they need to make themselves ready
tomorrow for God. In the morning you have to check all the people and
find out who disobeyed God.
The next morning everybody came forward, one by one, until finally it
was Achan’s turn. I told Achan: “Give glory to the Lord, the God
of Israel, and give him the praise. Tell me, what have you done, do
not hide it from me.” Then Achan said: “it is true! I have sinned against the Lord, the
God of Israel. This is what I have done: When I saw in the plunder a
beautiful robe from Babylonia, five pounds of silver, 3 pounds of
gold, I wanted it so much. So I took it and hid it in the ground.
So, I sent some people to check it out and indeed it was all there in
the ground. So I told Achan: “Why have you brought us in trouble.”
It was because of Achan that we didn’t win and many people were
killed”. This was so serious in God’s eyes, that we had to kill
Achan and his family. This was a very sad day. But because everything
was right now, God was not angry with us anymore.
Then God told me: “Do not be discouraged, do not be afraid. Take the
whole army and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered them into
your hands.” So we made an ambush, we set a trap. Five thousand
people stayed behind, at a little distance from the city. The rest of
the army went up and attacked the city. When the king of Ai saw this,
he got his army and they pursued our Israelite army, but they didn’t
know that we had set up an ambush. The whole army of Ai left the city,
so the city was unprotected and then our five thousand men who had
stayed behind, ran up to the city, set it on fire and conquered it.
God was with them, and his power and glory made them win.
2. Application: Our sin and the glory of God.
How many of you have ever taken something, that you were not allowed
to, a candy, some money, something from the store? (ask children
and ask them what it was?)
You did the same thing as Achan did in the Bible story. And what
happened to Achan? He had to be killed. Don’t you think that is very
serious? Imagine that your punishment for doing something wrong, would
be that you had to be killed.
Why do you think Achan had to die? It was because of his disobedience.
He did not listen and that is why he could not belong to God.
What is the Bible verse that we are memorizing today?
Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God."
Let me try to explain that to you. Here I have six pieces of paper.
Who can come here and make 3 sets of the papers that belong together? (have
6 papers with you in three different colors). Why do they belong
together? (The color is the same.)
Now here is one piece of paper (show paper in circle shape),
and three other pieces of paper (show three other circle shaped
paper, but mark them one with dots, one with stripes and one blank).
Which one of these three papers belongs to this one (the blank
circle)? Why? Because the pattern on it is the same.
(Now have three white heart shaped papers). Now let’s imagine
that this, a white heart shaped blank paper, is God. When God created
the earth, he made people in his image. The people were like him. (show
the other white heart shaped paper). But there is a problem with
people, they find it very hard to obey. Let’s imagine that this
other paper is you. Think back about today, or the last week and tell
me something that you did wrong, a sin that you committed: unkind to
brother or sister, didn’t want to listen to mom or dad, forgot to
read the Bible, made fun of someone, hit someone…… (for every
sin they say, put a little cross on the circle with a black
marker). Now look at what has happened with the circle, it is not
the same anymore. It does not belong to this circle anymore. That is
what happens with us. All of us have sinned and that is why we do not
belong to God anymore. That is what it means that all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God. That is why there is so much trouble
in the world, because we sin. And like with Achan's sin, God is very angry
with our sin and the punishment is death (with your hand crumple
that heart that represents the children). But fortunately God
loves us so much, that he found a solution. Instead of killing us for
what we do wrong, for the sin we do, God punished one person. He
punished his son and killed his own Son, so that we don’t have to be
killed and can live. If we believe in Jesus Christ (the third white
heart) he covers our dirty and crumpled heart, because he was
punished and killed instead of us. (put Jesus white heart over the
crumpled heart). Now when God looks at us, he only sees a perfect
white heart and we don’t have to die, but belong to him forever.
Copyright Lydia Kim
lydiavandaalen@gmx.net
