Joshua 7:9 For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?
I just got home from a church in Starke, FL. This church has a secondary porch with an awning that has my name on it. It says, “Wil Rice Porch.” It got that name about ten or fifteen years ago, but when I saw it last week, I just laughed out loud. It is named after me because one Saturday after a week of revival meetings, when pulling my fifth wheel through the narrow passage between the tree line and the church overhang, I literally destroyed the porch. It came down with a thud! So, it is named in my honor. You might say it is a porch of infamy not of fame.
All of us have a name, and your name is not good because it is big or bad because it is small. Your name is good or bad depending on where it is with God and what you reflect upon God. When Joshua and Israel went into Canaan to take Jericho, God had said, “Don’t take any spoil of the land.” There was, however, a man named Achan whose name literally meant “trouble.” A valley was named after him in infamy, kind of like my “Wil Rice Porch.” It was named the Valley of Achor, which means the Valley of Trouble. Why? It was because he stole. He didn’t steal from a dead Canaanite; he stole from a God Who had said, “Don’t take any spoil when you go into Jericho.” Achan did, and God judged the nation because of it.
Now, in Joshua 7:7 Joshua basically says, “God, why have you put us out of Egypt just to kill us?” He says, “Would to God that we had been content, and dwelt on the other side Jordan!” Here was a man who was dismayed and thought that Israel would have been better off staying where they had come from.
Have you ever been in a place where you’ve stretched yourself, followed God, and then when things went wrong, you wish you hadn’t don’t anything at all? That is where Joshua was. He was unaware of the sin of Achan. He thought that God had failed, when the fact was that Israel had failed.
Joshua goes on to say, “What shall I say, when Israel turneth their backs before their enemies!” Then verse 9 says, “For the Canaanites and all the in inhabitants of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us round, and cut off our name from the earth: and what wilt thou do unto thy great name?” Joshua was saying, “The Canaanites are going to surround and destroy us, and our good name is gone. God, then what are you going to do with Your name?”
Something you learn from this is that God can only have a bad name if you give it to Him. Why is that? First, it is because God is good. If He is not good, He is not God. In I John 1 it says that God is light and in Him is no sin. God is good. If you perceive something or someone that is not good, they are not of God. I don’t care how eloquent or pious someone is or how many spiritual people someone may lead. If they are not good, they are not godly. If they are not good, they are not great in God’s eyes. God is good. You can give God a bad name, but God cannot.
Second, God defines good. Our sensibilities in this country have changed over time, so sometimes we confuse niceness with goodness. We think, “I don’t want to offend anyone. I just want to be nice.” No, we don’t need to be cantankerous, selfish, or prideful, but sometimes the truth hurts. My goal isn’t to be liked by everyone; my goal is to do right by everyone. God is good and God defines good. The fact of the matter is that there is no good if there is no God. If society is the one that defines what good is, then what is good? There is no such thing as good. Good changes with the wind, with the culture, with the decade, and with the people we elect. So, either God defines good or there is no good.
Finally, God is represented accurately when you are good, which is to say when you do what is right. The books of Titus and Timothy say more than once that we are to do the right thing “that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed.” No one you will see today has seen God, but they have seen you. It is vitally important that if we claim God’s name, that we show His character.