At Arm's Length (You Can't Touch This - Part II)

But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. Joshua 6:18 NIV

In my last post, we looked at the above verse from the angle that God withholds things from us at times - not just to be nasty - but because it is simply not the best time.

Today I want to present another perspective on the same verse. In the NIV above, the accoutrement's of the city of Jericho are called devoted things instead of accursed things as in the version used for the last post.

Devoted things sounds a lot better. Accursed things conjures up images of Greg Brady and that Tiki idol the Brady Bunch discovered on their Hawaii vacation....


Actually the word devoted here refers to things being set apart - in this case set apart to be destroyed. So really, in the same way that the Tiki idol in the Brady's Hawaii adventure was thought to bring bad luck to those who touched it - these devoted or accursed things had an effect on those that attempted to possess them.

It seems that is why God instructed those fledgling conquerors of Israel to completely avoid touching the possessions of the inhabitants of Jericho. Initially, they would grasp and hold the cursed things, but in holding them would become like them. Eventually, the bearer would become, himself, a cursed thing. The malignancy would spread from there and destroy the nation.

The Israelites didn't have to wait long to test the validity of God's claim: in the next chapter trouble began in the camp. Achan took some things he shouldn't have, and the result was trouble for Israel. They took heavy losses in their next battle with a po-dunk little town called Ai... that's it, Ai. Tiny town-tiny name . . .couldn't even afford a consonant. But they routed the mighty Hebrew army and 36 Jews died. Achan's curse was troubling the nation.

In an ominous showdown Achan's sin was revealed and he and all his family were taken down to the Valley of Achor - which incidentally means the Valley of Trouble - and there they were all destroyed. I think I would call this account in Joshua 7, "Achan's Aching Acre of Achor" - catchy, huh?

So rewind back to Jericho - God told the Hebrews not to touch the devoted things. But did He really say don't TOUCH them? Did He really MEAN don't touch them?

Well look at the verse following our opener:

All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the LORD and must go into his treasury. Joshua 6:19 NIV

So how did the Hebrews gather all the silver, gold, bronze and iron to be put into God's treasury if they didn't TOUCH them?!

The answer is they DID touch them - but they didn't hold them they didn't clutch them to their bosom.
I think they held them at arm's length.

In the book of James, we see that when evil desires are "conceived" they bring about sin, and sin always brings about destruction. Hidden among the definitions of the word "conceived" in this verse is the term to clasp. It is sort of the best way of describing what happens when an egg is fertilized, it takes in or clasps.

In our hearts, sin owes it's life to those evil desires that we take hold of... the ones we clutch to our chests.

The lesson from Jericho is that we should take those evil desires - and hold them at arm's length - and offer them up to God. . . He knows what to do with them.

Sometimes we don't clasp things because we desire them... but we tuck them away in hopes of hiding them. We don't acknowledge them, ignoring them and hoping that God won't notice the elephants in our room.

This equates to taking those things into our lives and once they take residence - they take over. Soon we become like the cursed thing that occupies us.

Do you remember Gollum in "The Lord of The Rings"? How he grasped the evil ring of power and soon become evil himself. And then how the ring became his taskmaster driving him to spare no limits in getting it back. Remember how he brooded over that ring ...

my prec -ious-s-s-s-s"

That's what it looks like when a man takes a cursed thing into his possession. Soon the possession becomes the possessor.

These items that we tuck away may be evil desires or lusts but they can be other things too:

• A disappointment or some unforgiven misdeed that someone did to you . . .
• A fear of being inadequate in some area... that can drive a person to deceit, violence, all kinds of destruction...
• A pattern of thinking that becomes a place of escape and that is harmful to your relationships with others . . .
• Bitterness
• Jealousy
• A deep down seething anger...

These are scary things. So scary that our first impulse may be to ignore them and go whistling in the dark. Or perhaps we will want to hide them from ourselves... to hide them from God... to hide them from everyone.

When we hide them, we take them in... and soon they rule over us.

God spoke to a troubled young man one day,whose temper was seething. . . he was upset because he felt rejected, he saw his brother as the reason for his rejection and God stopped him and spoke to him.

It's in Genesis 4, God said "sin is crouching at your door... it desires to have you, but you must master it". Cain didn't listen; sin became his master and drove him almost immediately to commit the first murder. It seemed unavoidable.

Evil desires, fears, disappointment, envy... so many cursed things, things that are beyond my control.

The good news is that God doesn't ask us to control them... He asks us to hold them at arm's length, to acknowledge them...

. . . "that's lust and I shouldn't be dwelling on that" or

. . . "I'm telling a lie because I am afraid that I will lose face before others - that's fear" or

. . . "I can't look at that person in the eyes - I am still hurt because of what they did to me..."

And then just like those accursed things in Jericho... we hand them over to Him.