Fire!
When the Children of Israel were coming back from Egypt they had to fight many battles. The reason was that God had promised them the land and other people had settled on it. Those other people had built large cities with great walls that were almost impenetrable. One of those cities was named Jericho.Jericho was a wicked city whose people worshiped idols and other false gods. It was protected by a wall that was so thick two horse drawn chariots could drive side by side on top of it. The gates were tall and nobody could get through them. God hated the way the people of Jericho were living so he wanted to destroy it. He made up a plan and gave it to the captain of the Jewish army -- Joshua. God told Joshua to take his army and march around the city and the walls would fall down flat. It would be easy. The only rule was that none of the soldiers were allowed to take any spoil home with them.
Usually when the army would conquer a city the soldiers would take home anything that they found in the city. It was called "spoiling" the city. They would take as much as they could carry and when they got back to their camp they would divide it up among themselves. Because the people of Jericho had many idols God was afraid the people would take them back as spoil and worship them. He wanted His people to worship only Him so he told them not to bring anything back with them. The only things they were allowed to bring back was the silver and gold in order to put in the house of God There was a soldier in the Jewish army named Achan. He was with the army when they marched around the city. He heard the trumpets and he felt the earth shake as the walls collapsed to the ground. He ran with the other soldiers over the rubble to capture the city. He was a valuable part of a great effort to conquer the largest city in the land of Canaan. He was part of a group of people who served a great God. As the soldiers were walking away from the demolished city, Achan saw something that changed his life forever. He looked in one of the houses and saw a nice set of clothes, some silver, and some gold. It was instinct to run inside and grab the treasures so he did. He loaded everything into a bag he found in the house and was walking out the door when he remembered the order not to take anything home with him. He looked inside the bag again and thought about how much he could sell it all for. He could be a wealthy man. He had a family to think about too. The journey from Egypt was almost over and they would be settling down soon. He could use the money to buy enough land to take care of his family for years. "It wouldn't really be wrong would it? They had spoiled all of the other cities. What was so different about this one?" And God wanted them to have land for their families. He looked out the door. First to the left and then to the right. Nobody was looking. Soon he would be home and the treasures would be hiding safely under his tent. Not long after the conquest at Jericho God told Joshua that it was time to attack again. This time they were to go to battle against a small city named Ai. The soldiers decided that since it was such a small city they didn't all need to go to fight. "Why make everybody work when it will only take a few of us to take the city?"
The battle went terrible. Thirty-six men from the Jewish army were killed. That high number of casualties was unheard of among the ranks of God's people. The only explanation was that there was sin in the camp, and God told Joshua how to find it.
After a long search the list of possible suspects was narrowed down to one man -- Achan. He was forced to tell everything that had happened at the battle of Jericho. He told Joshua how he had seen the treasures and how he had wanted them so he took them. He told Joshua that it was not really all that bad because God had commanded them to do what he did the last time they fought.
When Achan finished telling about the sin he had committed, Joshua commanded that his family be brought forward. He then commanded that his animals and everything else he owned be placed in the center of a large valley. That day Achan, his entire family, and everything he owned was stoned to death and then burned.
Thursday night at a wilderness outpost camp three boys started a small fire in an attempt to stay warm and have light. It was late at night and none of them could sleep so they got up and tried to occupy themselves by starting a fire. One hundred feet away and on the other side of a small hill the rest of their group tried to stay warm by wrapping themselves in their coats and burrowing under the shelters they had constructed as part of their survival test. Their instructor, knowing how to stay warm under survival circumstances, was sleeping soundly under an emergency blanket just a few feet from them.
A mile away, just upstream and in the same canyon, a small group of people slept comfortably in their tents after a long day of hiking, cooking, setting up camp, and story telling.
In Base Camp, no more than a mile from either group, the camp staff was trying to recuperate after a long day of work. They were planning on a long day Friday and needed their energy.
As the small fire grew, the boys' warmth returned and the flames dancing in front of them were almost hypnotic. Staring into the fire they again grew sleepy and began to doze off. They were laying around the fire and when it started to die one of them would wake up and put more wood on it. When the sky turned from black to gray and the last star disappeared, the boys woke up and hurriedly scattered the coals into the forest without making sure they were out. The instructor had forbidden them to build a fire because there had been very little rain and the danger of fire was very high. They knew that if they got caught with a fire they would be in big trouble.
Now that the fire was scattered no one would ever know that they had built one the night before. The boys had gone through much trouble to cover the evidence. After scattering the coals they sprinkled pine needles over the spot where the fire had been. As they joined the rest of their group at six thirty and walked away from where they had spent the night, they knew they were safe. They were on their way back to Base Camp. Nobody had seen them and no one would ever find out.
At seven on Friday morning the small group that was camping just a mile upstream packed up their equipment and began walking in to Base Camp. They were going to try to make it back in time for breakfast and they were hungry. As they crested the top of the ridge and just before dropping into the valley that base camp was in, one of them thought they saw a little plume of smoke in the distance. The leader of their little expedition said that it was just the guys at the other side of the canyon. No need to worry.
At seven thirty the Base Camp staff was just getting out of their morning meeting. Most were still rubbing sleep from their eyes. The coffee pot was crowded with those that wanted some help waking up. The smell of scrambled eggs and bacon floated out the kitchen door and into the dining hall.
I was putting the plates out on the table when I heard a voice over the radio. It was not uncommon to hear talking on the radio because there were at least nine people who carried them around camp. This voice was different though. I couldn't quite understand everything it was saying, but it sounded like someone was trying to talk into the radio while they were running. All I could make out of the heavy words was, "Fire...East...Almost there!"
I left the dining hall and saw a group of people pointing to the East. I looked and saw a huge cloud of smoke. I followed a friend of mine over to the room where the shovels and rakes were stored and started passing out equipment. Thirty staff members were there waiting to grab something to put the fire out with. I grabbed a couple of shovels and ran outside to where the four wheel drive truck was waiting to go.
I jumped in with the other two rangers and we started out toward the fire. We did not know exactly where it was, but the voice on the radio said it was down the canyon where the survival class had been taught. We tried to get whoever it was who had called in the fire to confirm its location, but apparently he was on the other side of the ridge and could not hear us.
While we were loading the truck with equipment the fire alarm sounded. The meeting place for any emergency was in the parking lot. Immediately the road was filled with people trying to get down to the vehicles. I remembered from the paperwork during registration that there were over two hundred people in the camp, and they all seemed to be in the road in front of us.
The driver honked his horn and the people just turned around and stared at us. I don't know what they were thinking, but they didn't seem to be in any kind of hurry. "Get out of the road! We have got to get through!", the driver yelled. The truck finally squeezed through the mob and we were on our way down a dry arroyo toward the smoke.
We stopped to let two staff members who were running toward the fire with shovels in their hands into the truck. A minute later three more climbed in. The road ended half a mile later and all eight of us scurried out. Someone started throwing shovels and rakes from the truck and the rest of us grabbed whatever we could carry.
None of us knew exactly where the fire was. We knew it was up the canyon a short distance so, with hearts pounding, we ran up the trail. As we grew closer to where we were expecting the fire to be, the smoke was no longer visible. I called back over my shoulder to ask if anyone could see any smoke. Nothing.
We continued to run up the canyon and just when I thought we had gone too far I saw it. My legs were already sore and my lungs were tired, but when I saw the smoke I felt the adrenaline kick in. "There it is! Come on guys! Its just over this small hill!" The smoke was thick and billowing. That meant a ground fire with lots of pine needles. "If a wind starts up this whole camp will be gone." I thought to myself. "I just hope we get there in time."
I climbed a ten foot rise and slid back almost to the bottom on six inches of loose pine needles. I tried again. Success! At the top of the hill one person was trying to hold the flames back by hitting them with a wide piece of bark and stomping with his hiking boots. He was surrounded and was not making any progress. The man that had reported the fire over the radio was there too. He was on his hands and knees coughing and choking. He had inhaled a lungfull of smoke when he first tried to stop the fire and would be useless, at least for a while.
The team that I came with in the truck was on the scene now. There were eight people wielding shovels, coughing, sweating, and, strangely, loving every minute of it. Our eyes were stinging and our lungs hurt, but this is what we were here for. As rangers, part of our duty was to protect the camp. We enjoyed our work and were proud of the job we did.
Still, a fire was started against the rules and it could get dangerous. We threw dirt on the flames, but they kept starting up again. The fire had climbed up some trees and their branches were still glowing red. A fire line was being dug around the blackened area with the hope that no floating embers would cross it. The heat from the ground was starting to get through our boots and to our feet.
Finally, with thirty people on the scene, the fire was out except a small area by one of the charred trees that continued to flare up occasionally. Smoke still swirled from the ground in spots and glowing coals remained on several fallen branches. It was under control and only four of us were needed to douse it. The people who helped were thanked and sent back to Base Camp to eat breakfast. They had been a great help. Without their extremely fast mobilization the fire would have been many times harder to fight.
Back in camp the questions started. "Who lit the fire?" "Don't they know it is against the rules to have fires right now?" "Somebody is going to be in really big trouble!" "It is too bad that other people for the next few years will have to see a burnt area just because of a few boys' disobedience." "Can you imagine how many people could have been hurt or killed if that fire had not been noticed in time?"
The fire that we had to put out because of three boys' disobedience was very similar to the sin that Achan committed. Nobody knew about either of the problems, but sin naturally finds a way out of hiding every time. The fire could have hurt hundreds of innocent people just like Achan's sin caused his family plus many other men to die.
Lessons about sin:
1. Sin has a definite pattern:
In the book of Joshua:
First, Achan saw
Then, Achan coveted
Finally, Achan took
In the book of Genesis:
First, Eve saw
Then, Eve desired
Finally, Eve took