Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve

If you would please turn with me to the last chapter of the book of Joshua, Joshua 24. I'm going to be looking this morning at verses 14 through 24. We'll resume our series through 2 Corinthians next Sunday, but for this first Sunday of 2026, I'd like for us to spend some time meditating on this passage from the last chapter of the book of Joshua. Joshua, as we set our sights on a new year and the providences of God that lie ahead, we do well to stop and consider where our loyalties lie. How wrapped up is my heart in the things of this world?

How eager am I? to worship and serve the one true and living God. The context of the verses we're about to read is one in which Israel is about to enter a new era. It was a transitional time. It was a time of change and renewal, much like a new year.

Joshua, who had led them fearlessly through the years of conquest and the promised land, was about to die. And so he gives the people of Israel one final charge. Let's read the account together, and then we'll spend some time reflecting on our own faithfulness to the Lord. Joshua 24. Verses 14-24.

Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers, Whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And the people answered, Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods.

For it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God. But Joshua said to the people, you are not able to serve the Lord. For he is a holy God.

He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after having done you good. And the people said to Joshua, No, but we will serve the Lord. Then Joshua said to the people, You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him.

And they said, we are witnesses. He said, Then put away the foreign gods that are among you. and incline your heart to the Lord. The God of Israel. And the people said to Joshua, The LORD our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.

Let's pray together. Holy Spirit, please help us to understand and to believe. The words before us today. This is your word. And you've given it to us for our instruction.

So would you use it now to purify our hearts, to make us a people who worship you? and worship you exclusively. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We've all seen movies with the climactic battle scene as two opposing armies are about to collide, and the leader of the good guys begins pacing on his horse back and forth at the front of the line.

And as he paces back and forth, he begins describing all the sacrifices that have been made to get them where they are. He begins to appeal to the honor and courage of his soldiers. He tells his men that even if they should die in battle, they'll be remembered as heroes, legends, men of valor. And then as the soundtrack climaxes, the line of warriors moves out to confront the enemy. They rally behind their fearless leader without so much as a thought of abandoning their post.

They want the glory. They want the honor of laying down their lives if necessary for the sake of victory. The scene begins moving in slow motion as the band of soldiers throw themselves without hesitation into the fray of the battle.

Now we might think of this story in Joshua 24 as one of those moments. Joshua, the renowned leader and warrior, shouts to the men of Israel: Choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And you can almost hear the shouts of the men of Israel as they pledge: Yes, we will serve the Lord. We will serve the Lord.

Now, even though that would make a great Hollywood ending to the book of Joshua. Not every rallying cry is met with valor and loyalty. and honor. On the heels of this closing scene in Joshua's life, the story of Israel transitions to the time of the judges. A period in Israel's history that is characterized by anything but virtue and valor.

A period in which Israel did what was right in their own eyes. Joshua chapter 24 is not a triumphant ending to a dramatic tale. It's a tragedy since it depicts the men of Israel responding to Joshua's rallying cry with compromise and disinterest and ultimately with failure.

Now why do we need to pay attention to this tragedy? Happy endings are so much better, right? Stories of triumph and success are so inspirational. Beloved, we need to listen to this story because we have the same sinful tendencies, the same potential to rebel that God's people had during Joshua's day. And if you don't believe it, just look at the New Testament and see how quickly the church began to compromise and abandon their confession.

The early Christians had seen Jesus in the flesh. And yet by the time of John's first epistle, already he had to say, little children, keep yourselves from idols.

Well, this tragedy unfolds in four scenes. Scene one begins with an exclusive call. There's a word that occurs 14 times in the story. Whenever a word occurs that many times in such a concentrated way, it's usually an indicator that this is a key component to a proper understanding of the text. In this case, it's the word serve.

Over and over again, the people of Israel are told to serve the Lord.

Now, when we think of serving God, perhaps we think of things like volunteering to teach Sunday school or helping to clean the church. Maybe we think of going on mission trips to foreign lands or sharing the gospel in our neighborhoods. And certainly, all those things are ways of serving the Lord. But this Hebrew word has a more specific meaning in the Old Testament. It's a word that's specific to worship.

In fact, it describes much more than just work. It describes work as an act of worship. The noun form of the word is the word slave.

So when Joshua repeatedly calls upon Israel to serve the Lord, he's calling them to enslave themselves to God as an act of unrestrained adoration.

Now, church, we need to realize that a person cannot serve the Lord to this degree if God does not possess that person exclusively. You cannot be a slave to two masters. You cannot be a bride to two husbands. Inherent in the very definition of the word serve is the idea of exclusivity. In fact, look at verses 14 and 15, where we see Joshua's specific call to Israel.

Joshua says, fear the Lord. Serve him. Put away the gods that your fathers served and serve the Lord. You see, it's a call to stop worshiping these gods and start worshiping Yahweh alone. It's a call to exclusive worship.

Well, let's dig a little bit deeper into this call. First, we see Joshua's exhortation. And the exhortation is to be either hot or cold, but not lukewarm. He says, serve God, put away false gods, but if you have a hesitation about serving Yahweh exclusively, verse 15, then choose who you will serve and serve that deity exclusively. In other words, be hot or be cold, but do not be lukewarm.

It would be better to serve your false gods than to pretend that Yahweh has your heart when he really doesn't. Don't demean God. By pretending that he cannot see through your religious charade. Be hot or cold, choose this day whom you will serve. This call to be hot or cold.

Probably reminds us of The letter to the church in Laodicea in the book of Revelation. God tells them that because they're neither hot nor cold, he wants to spew them out of his mouth. God hates lukewarmness. He hates it when people try to synthesize Christianity with things that are opposed to Christianity. The Israelites of Joshua's day were claiming to be worshipers of the true and living God, but at the same time they were holding on to foreign gods, false gods, to idols.

And so Joshua says, make up your mind, quit wavering between two opinions and choose. This is a call to exclusive worship. What is it that makes us waver in our loyalty to the Lord? What is it that prevents us from being hot or cold? What is the source of lukewarmness in the life of the believer.

Joshua puts his finger on two things in particular that tend to draw our hearts away from undivided worship and service to God. The first is our heritage. He says in verse 14, put away the gods that your fathers serve beyond the river. He alludes to it again in verse 15, the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river. Beyond the river is a reference to the pagan world that Abraham left behind on the other side of the Euphrates River.

Israel's forefathers were pagans until God set them apart as his own special people. Israel's heritage was one of paganism. And evidently that heritage had captivated the affection and loyalty of many Israelites. Their heritage became an excuse to mix the worship of Yahweh with idolatry.

Sometimes our idol worship is nothing more than an elevation of our. Heritage, our family traditions, our sense of identity over and above the things of God. Jesus said in Luke 14, 26, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life. He cannot be my disciple. Exclusive worship may require that you abandon a behavior or an attitude that has long characterized your family, your people.

your sense of self-identity. You've got to give up the false gods. Oh, your father's. But there's a second source of lukewarmness that Joshua identifies, and it has to do with the influences of the culture around us. In Israel's case, it was the temptation to serve the gods of Egypt and the gods of the Amorites.

In our case, perhaps it's the God of the American dream or the God of secular humanism or the God of self help. We try to fit the square peg of the world into the round hole of Christianity and it simply won't work.

So we end up compromising. We end up becoming lukewarm. we abandon the call to exclusive worship. Joshua says, make up your mind. Choose whom you will serve, and choose wholeheartedly.

This was his exhortation. But then notice Joshua wasn't preaching something he wasn't willing to practice. We see not only Joshua's exhortation, but also his example in that well-known affirmation of faith. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. This affirmation of faith was both personal and corporate.

He says, As for me, before admonishing others to get right, Joshua settled the issue of religious allegiance in his own heart. But he didn't stop there. He extended that allegiance, that commitment to the spheres of influence that the Lord had entrusted him with. He says, as for me and my house. The word house refers to all those under Joshua's immediate authority, his household, his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his servants, and so on.

Let me speak to fathers for a moment. Dads, do you realize that by virtue of your position as a husband, as a father, as a grandfather, God has given you incredible influence over the spiritual temperature of your family? God has built into fatherhood the ability to impact future generations, perhaps more than anything else in society. Deuteronomy 4:9 says, Keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen. Make them known to your children.

and your children's children. Deuteronomy 6 says, Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. These words shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. Ephesians 6:4 says, Fathers, Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 5 says, husbands, love your wives. as Christ loves the church and cleanse her by the washing of water with the word. Tremendous responsibility is put on fathers, on husbands. I've got family members whose approach to childrearing is this. They say, I don't want to cram religion down my children's throats, so I'm just going to let them decide what they want to believe.

You know, that is a foolish, foolish way of bringing up a child. We don't take that approach when it comes to education or health or safety. Johnny, would you like to go play in the busy road today or not? It's your choice. Our failure to spiritually shepherd our families exposes the fact that we ourselves are not worshiping God exclusively.

Men, part of serving the Lord exclusively involves leading your family to do the same. Not waiting for your children to become compliant, not waiting for your wife to get on board. but taking the lead in following the Lord and in helping your family follow the Lord. with all their hearts.

Well, this brings us to the second scene of our story. How did Israel respond to Joshua's call? Or they responded with great confidence. But as we will see, it was confidence in all the wrong things. Notice that while Joshua calls upon Israel to do two things, To put away their false gods and to serve or worship the Lord exclusively, Israel only commits to serving the Lord.

They do not commit to putting away their false gods. In other words, their response was one of commitment without repentance. At the very least, this was an overestimation of their own resolve. Look at their self-confidence in verse 16. Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods.

It was as if they were saying, Joshua, we're Israel. The sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will never become idolaters. And, friends, how often have we overestimated our resolve? and paid for it dearly. We're conservatives, we're evangelicals, we're Presbyterians, we'll never become idolaters.

Israel overestimated her own spiritual strength by thinking she could coexist with false gods and never worship them. I wonder how many journeys into apostasy have begun with these same words. Far be it from me. God calls us to get rid of our idols. those things that compete for our affections.

And we say, oh, that's not necessary. I don't need to go to that extreme. That's radicalism. I can handle it. I got this.

But people, when we flirt with temptation rather than remove ourselves from it, we're overestimating the strength of our own resolve. It didn't work for Israel. It won't work for you or me. Not only did Israel overestimate the strength of their resolve, they also mistook God's redemptive acts of grace to them as evidence of personal spiritual maturity. To be sure, God had done amazing things for Israel.

In fact, the first half of chapter 24 is a litany of all that God had done for them. I took your father Abraham from beyond the river. I gave him Isaac. I gave Esau the hill country. I sent Moses and Aaron.

I plagued Egypt. I brought your fathers out of Egypt. Your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. I brought you to the land of the Amorites. I gave them into your hand.

I destroyed them before you. It was not by your sword or by your bow. I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built. Israel's response then to all that the Lord had done for them should have been unqualified submission to his demands. They should have gladly enslaved themselves exclusively to him alone.

But instead, they presumed upon past graces and thought that somehow God's goodness to them in the past excused their present compromises. God's grace in their lives had become a license to not deal thoroughly and honestly. With their sin. We're in danger of the same thing when we think. I know a lot of scripture.

I pray every day. I've been a Christian for many years. Therefore, I can make this little compromise. This secret sin won't hurt me that bad. God won't let me go too far down this path.

I'm good. And we presume upon the grace of God. to our own destruction.

Well, Joshua was not so easily fooled. He saw through Israel's half-hearted response. He saw their glaring lack of repentance. Which brings us to scene three and a candid assessment that Joshua makes of Israel in verses 19 through 22. He begins by saying, you're not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.

He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you. Joshua assesses Israel's commitment not in light of Israel's words. but in light of God's Nature.

Dirty snow may look clean, but when fresh snow falls next to it, the dirt becomes very evident. Joshua observed Israel through the lens of God's nature, and God, verse 19, is first. A holy God. Those who would be his people must approach him in holiness. You don't come to God with a divided heart because he is holy, holy, holy.

Secondly, God is a jealous God. He does not share his glory. He does not share the affections of his people with false gods. He wouldn't be God if he did. This word jealous.

In verse 19, is a word used to describe a husband's zeal for his wife. Men, if something threatened your wife, how far would you go for her? you would go to the death. Without so much as a thought for your own safety. That's a husband's jealousy, a husband's zeal.

Well, the flip side of that husbandly ardor is that when a wife spurns her husband's zeal and jealousy for her, that husband's jealousy turns against her. And I think we understand this analogy. We understand the deep emotional bond and loyalty that characterized the marriage relationship. And that bond characterizes God's relationship with his bride as well. But the crucial difference is that human marriage is faulty and imperfect and contaminated with sinful motives and intentions.

A husband's jealousy is not always pure. He may be jealous for his wife, but his own infidelities accuse him. But with God, there is never any infidelity. Therefore, his jealousy for his bride is a holy and just. Jealousy And so in light of God's holy and jealous nature, Joshua says in verse 20, if you forsake the Lord, he will turn and do you harm and consume you.

When we look at our shallow devotion through the lens of God's character, It ought to make us run away from trusting in our own resolve and run to Him begging for mercy. But sadly, that's not how Israel responded to Joshua's assessment of them. They went right back to touting their own ability. Verse 21. No, but we will serve the Lord.

Their rejection of Joshua's assessment is short and self-focused, and still showing no signs of repentance. We demonstrate that same self-focus when we think we can handle temptation on our own without accountability. We demonstrate it when we neglect the means of grace that God has given to us, hearing the word, prayer, observing the sacraments with God's people. We show a spirit of self-effort when we try to live a life of syncretism. Mixing a little worldliness, a little paganism in with our Christianity.

In verse 22, Joshua says, Then you are witnesses against yourselves. And Israel brazenly responds, we are witnesses. In other words, you've just heard the truth and rejected it. You've asserted your own ability at the very point where God says, repent. Therefore, when you fail, and you will fail, your boasting will be used against you.

Verse 22 as Joshua reading Israel there, Miranda writes, They are now without excuse. And so we come to the final scene of this tragedy, and it is a chilling conclusion indeed. Joshua makes a final appeal in verse 23. Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart. to the Lord.

the God of Israel. Once again, it's a call not just to worship the Lord, but to repent of their false worship, to put away the foreign gods. In this final call, Joshua pleads with Israel to incline their hearts to the Lord. The verb incline. is given in a special form in the Hebrew, a form that emphasizes causality.

In other words, Israel is to be actively engaged in causing their hearts to be inclined to the Lord. They're not being called to just sit around and wait passively for some spiritual experience to occur. They're not to passively hope that something will happen to change the inclinations of their heart. They are to proactively, deliberately, zealously begin living life in such a way that the desires of their hearts begin to change. God never calls his children to wait to feel like obeying before they start obeying.

The inclinations of our hearts. Are often shaped and determined by the priorities and values that we act upon. To some degree, We have the ability, according to Romans 6. As regenerated Christians, to make our hearts want one thing and not another. And so, in Israel's case, the first step in bringing about that change of heart was to put away the foreign gods that were among them.

You see, this whole time Israel had been touting their own steadfastness, their willingness to serve the Lord and obey the Lord, this whole time they had had foreign gods among them.

Now it doesn't say that they had been serving those foreign gods. It doesn't say they had been engaged in falsely worshiping these false deities. But they had put up with these things. They had allowed these abominations to remain a part of the culture and the decorations and the conversation and the lifestyle. They had been tolerating the things that God said, destroy.

And so Joshua says, put them away. Notice then Israel's final response in verse 24. And the people said to Joshua, The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey. Still, there's no mention of putting away false gods. What we find instead is another resolution without repentance.

Well, let me tell you the rest of the story. Judges 2:7 tells us that this generation that Joshua had been calling to repentance. Serve the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua. But then Judges 2, 10 through 12 says this. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord.

or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord.

to anger. Israel became lax in their repentance. And it only took one generation. for them to completely abandon God and provoke him to anger. The principle that's staring us in the face as we read this story is this.

Resolution without repentance incurs the judgment of God. Resolution without repentance. incurs the judgment of God. You say you love the Lord. You say you want to serve Him more in 2026.

This passage says, then prove it. You say, well, I read my Bible a lot. I come to church every Sunday. I give money. I give time.

I talk about Jesus in public. I'm the most spiritual person in my workplace. Those are all great things. But they all fall short of the proof God is looking for. The proof we're being called to give is found in the answer to this question: what is the inclination of your heart?

Are you still harboring idols? Or have you put them away to serve the Lord with an undivided heart? Your resolution may carry you to a point. For Israel, it lasted one generation. And I can't help but wonder, had Israel's resolve included a seriousness about repentance and a commitment to teach and model godliness to the next generation, how different things in the book of Judges may have been.

The application of this passage of Scripture then begins with genuine, radical repentance of idolatry on a personal level, but it cannot stop there. The commitment to fear and serve the Lord exclusively needs to be passed on to the next generation. Dads and moms, your view of God will be passed down to your kids. The seriousness with which you take spiritual things, sacred things, will shape the attitudes and values of future generations. The greatest gift you can give your children and grandchildren is not wealth.

or a D one athletic scholarship. It's not a solid start in a lucrative career. It's not influence and recognition. The greatest thing you can give them is the legacy of a holy life. that has been lived out in the fear of the Lord.

And that kind of holiness begins by exterminating idols. in your heart. Friends, my refusal to repent may very well produce grandchildren who are pagans and do not know the Lord. I don't want that legacy. The idols I love are not worth that kind of legacy.

Let's stand with Joshua. As we enter a new year, let's make it our foremost resolution to take repentance as seriously as God takes it. Let's be among those who worship the true and living God exclusively. And then, when we say, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, those won't be empty words that condemn us. Instead, those words will be a God-honoring affirmation to generations yet to come that He alone is God and that He is worthy of our exclusive worship.

Let's pray. You alone are God. May our lives bear witness to the fact that you alone. Our God. Lord, may our children.

and our children's children. outrun us spiritually. And may that race begin today with our own heartfelt repentance of idolatry. There are idols that we may not consciously worship, but we tolerate them nonetheless. Give us grace to incline our hearts after you.

And to count as loss anything that inhibits our love. and adoration of you. Lord Jesus, thank you that your atonement and the gift of your Spirit has enabled us to obey these truths rather than just be condemned by these truths. But with that enabling comes a grave responsibility on our part. to believe your word and to obey your word.

So give us grace to that end, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Mm-hmm.