Deception, Exposed!

Reading:  Joshua 6 - 9
My Verse:  "“And Achan answered Joshua, In truth, I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel, and this have I done. When I saw among the spoils an attractive mantle from Shinar and two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. Behold, they are hidden in the earth inside my tent, with the silver" (6:20,21).

Ever since the serpent deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden deception  has been a huge part of our lives.  Someone seems always to be deceiving someone else, in one way or another, in big ways and in little ways.  The amazing thing is that  those deceptions are always exposed by Your revealing  light, LORD God.  The more amazing thing is that people know this and yet still enter into the act of deception, with the hope of getting away with it.

 Deception is defined as:  to cause to accept what is false or invalid, to cheat, to defraud, to betray, to beguile, to lie.

The Bible and all of literature is replete with stories of deception.  In this reading two such deceptions occur.  The first had truly devastating results.  The second seemed to actually serve the purpose of the deceivers and those that were deceived bore the blame.

In the first, You LORD God had given explicit directives against what the man, Achan ended up doing.  He saw and coveted forbidden things, ended up taking and hiding those forbidden things in his tent.  His act caused the death of other Israelites and finally the death of himself, and all his family.  In this case Achan, who blatantly disobeyed Your directive was directly to blame, while others suffered because of his deception, he also paid in full the price of it.

In the second act of deception a people, one of Israel's enemies pretended to be from a far away land because they did not want to be wiped out by the Israelites.  The Israelite “ men . . . did not consult The Lord" and entered into a treaty with these people that You LORD God had directed to be wiped out.  In this case the weight of blame seems to be on the Israelites who were deceived.  This is because they did not consult You.  This is an interesting thing here.  Is this to teach us, Your followers, that we need always to consult You before entering into agreements with others?

Deception, in its myriad forms ultimately ends up  not only hurting the person doing the deceiving but many others, often that person's own loved ones.  Like in the case of Achan, his entire family died with him.

Deception is one of those awful sins that we cannot escape on our own, its draw is too strong, too beguiling  and alluring for us to resist.  Deception can be likened to that deadly light the moth is drawn to.  Only You LORD God can keep us from it if we ask Your help. And only You, LORD God can mitigate the consequences of deception if we come clean before You.

"For there is nothing hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light" (Mark 4:22).

Ditat Deus -God Enriches!