We see in Joshua chapter seven and verses two through eight that the Israelites went up to conquer a city called Ai but ended up defeated. Joshua seeks the Lord and asks why defeat happened. The Lord tells Joshua in verses eleven and twelve that Israel had sinned by taking of the accursed and therefore robbing the treasury of God. In verses thirteen and nineteen, Joshua goes through the twelve tribes and calls them out one by one until he reaches Achan. In verse twenty, Achan confesses his sin of taking the gold amd silver. The gold and silver is brought out into the valley of Achor along with Achan, his possessions, and his family where they were stoned and consumed with fire to eliminate their presence. One man's choice of committing a tresspass / transgression by enacting a taboo called disobediance to God bought a man and his family unto the state of death and totem. Two interesting points can be derived from this story:

• Achan, his family, and his possessions was destroyed by fire: God told Joshua in verse fifteen of chapter seven to destroy the man who disobeyed God, his family, and his possessions with fire. We clearly see the fulfillment of God's commandment in verse twenty-five of the same chapter. Why Fire? Many reasons come to mind. By burning Achan, his family, and his possessions with fire, no remnant of the sin committed was left. When I read this portion of the story of Achan, it clearly reminded me of the verse in Hebrews 12:29 where the Apostle Paul states that "...our God is a consuming fire". When the fire is hot enough to consume anything in it's path, the materials being burned become the fuel to keep the fire burning. Also in this burning process, the energy is used up from the materials now burned and all that is left is the ashes of the consumed energy sources. Therefore, the consumed energy source has now been made dead. The living matter once organic is now dead, inorganic, and consumed matter. By putting to death Achan by fire, God showed us that His holy fire will consume the energies of the things that are not holy and pleasing in our life. If our hearts are so hardened and non-repentent to the point of either reprobation or refusal to obey his commandments, we may end up drying out and withering away and our flesh actually becomes the fuel of the holy fire of God that destroys us totally. In fact, by choosing to trangress by tabooing God's holy presence through the lighting of strange fires (Leviticus 10:1-3) will cause the fire of God to consume us also and make us become the state of totem that God's consuming fire desired to purify us and to save us from.
  

  If you notice, in 1 Peter 1:3-10, Peter talks about the believer in Christ being refined by fire in order to be pure and holy. In purifying Gold, gold is placed into huge vats and melted down into a liquid form. During this melting stage, any impurities and dross within the gold will begin to make their way to the top of the gold and begin to float on the surface of the Gold, the refiner would then take a ladle and scoop up the impurities and dross from the gold. By doing this, the gold becomes purer and more valuable when repoured into jewerly and into gold bars. Another trick the refiner would use to further purify the gold is to make the temperature of the fire hotter. By doing this, the refiner would discover more dross and hidden impurities that would not have been revealed at a lower temperature and repeat the process of taking a ladle and scoop up the impurities and dross from the gold creating a more purer and valuable gold that gold refined at a lower temperature. When I used to work in a printed circuit board assembly area, the same analogy of the purification of gold was applied to the solder used to make mechanical and electrical connections to the copper PCB assemblies. By heating the solder hotter and hotter, more and more dross (believe me, solder dross like gold dross in the physical sense it's nasty in appearance, smells awful, toxic and poisionous in waste disposal handling, and useless to anybody) and impuruties would float to the top of the solder bath in order for the dross could be easily seen and removed by a ladle in order to generate a purer and higher quality solder.
  

  Peter, in this analogy compared the Christian walk to the refinement of precious metals. The child of God, like the precious metals experience heat that melts us into a spiritually liquid form. However, like the precious metal, the heat present is hot enough to force our impurities to the surface level where it can be seen by ourselves and others where we can obtain assistance from God to remove the sin and impurities from our lives in order to be a purer and holy child of God. As we grow, progress, and draw closer to God, the heat of life will get hotter and hotter to the point where our flesh feels like we can not handle the heat. However, we see more and more impurities, nastiness, toxins, and imperfections of our fleshly character rise up to the surface to manifest their ugliness for everyone to see. A child of God, with more heat applied to his life, has to do the same thing he or she did when the heat was not as hot. That thing to do is to cry out again to God not to remove the heat, but to purge and remove the dross in our lives in order for us to be even more purer and holy in his sight. Like the precious metal that becomes purer and purer, the precious child of God becomes more like the image of the likeness of Christ and less and less of his selfish and sinful nature. In fact John 3:30 sums the process up when John the Baptist said about Jesus "He must Increase, I must Decrease"
  

  But notice here that the child in God, like the Gold, still remains intact before, during, and after the purifying state, but in a purer form. The heat generated is hot enough to bring out the impurities but the heat generated is not hot enough to consume us. 1 Corinthians 10:13 states that "There is no temptation that has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful. For He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it". God can use temptation as the fire that brings out our weaknesses and impurities. But bless God, he controls the heat source to where we are not consumed. It is similar to baking a turkey at Thanksgiving, we control the temperature of the heat of the oven in order not to destroy the turkey, but enjoy the taste of the turkey with our family at Thanksgiving. God, controls the heat not to overcook and destroy his children, but to enjoy the purer results of His children. In Hebrews 4:15, we see the Apostle Paul state that "For we do not have a high priest which can not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Jesus went through and conquered every temptation here on earth without falling short. Jesus also shed his blood to where we can have the same victory and enter into the holy of holies to praise his name.
  

• Israel was purified and Judah was restored to it's prominence in battle: If you look at Joshua chapter seven and verse eighteen, we see that Achan was from the tribe of Judah. In case you did not know, Judah, in Hebrew means "Praise". With Achan transgressing by taking what was not his, the praise that would come out of the Israelite children would not be of a sweet smelling incense, but of a strange fire unto the Lord. How can one effectively praise God when they light strange fires unti God? In order to praise the name of the Lord, our hearts, minds, and our spirits must be made pure and holy through the refiner's fire. If you would read later on in the Old Testament, praise was used as the first weapon of battle to defeat the enemy to bring forth breakthrough prior to the armed soldiers performing their military duties. Praise is part of a three fold balance of a Christian's life when in conjunction with the Word and prayer. It takes praise to conquer the Jerichos of lor life. It takes praise to conquer the insanity that tries to defeat us when we are down. In fact, God told Joshua that the Israelites would never progress until the sin was dealt with. When the sin was dealt with and Judah (i.e. Praise) was brought back into perfect alignment with the commandments of God. God's hand was now placed back among his children and the Israelites experienced victory over the enemy at Ai.
  

Click here for part three of Tresspass / Transgression to Temple.