Joshua 24:14-28
Notes
Transcript
14 “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
15 “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
16 The people answered and said, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods;
17 for the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did these great signs in our sight and preserved us through all the way in which we went and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed.
18 “The Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land. We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.”
19 Then Joshua said to the people, “You will not be able to serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgression or your sins.
20 “If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done good to you.”
21 The people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord.”
22 Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord, to serve Him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.”
23 “Now therefore, put away the foreign gods which are in your midst, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
24 The people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and we will obey His voice.”
25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.
26 And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God; and he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.
27 Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord which He spoke to us; thus it shall be for a witness against you, so that you do not deny your God.”
28 Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to his inheritance.
Introduction
Introduction
In our satellite-level view of the Old Testament, we have seen already how much promises and covenants have been made an important part of this part of the Bible.
We have looked at the Davidic Covenant when we went through Psalm 132, how God promised David that the throne will always be occupied by one of David’s sons.
We saw how that was and will be fulfilled in Christ.
We have looked in the past at God’s promise to Adam and Eve that one day their seed will crush the head of the serpent, and how that was an early promise of the coming of Christ and the gospel.
And in the last 2 messages, we looked at the Abrahamic Covenant that God made to Abraham promising him land and a great family of descendants.
In those descendants all of God’s people were included in a spiritual way through Christ’s gospel being preached to every tribe and nation, being brought into the family of God.
In that we saw how the ancient covenant cutting ceremony was made with God walking through the cut up animals as a way of showing He would keep His promises made to Abraham.
And God kept and is keeping His promise to Abraham through a line of descendants that would bring us to our passage today.
There was around 500 years between the life of Abraham and Joshua, and in that time many things had happened to the family of Abraham.
One of them is that they grew into a great nation of people, made up of twelve tribes.
They went to Egypt, and were enslaved.
God brought them out of slavery in Egypt by Moses and great plagues.
They traveled through the wilderness in which time, they were given God’s law and came to the promised land.
Fulfilling the promise of God that they would inherit a great land, Moses’ successor, Joshua, led them to conquering this land.
It was a time of ups and downs, but we come to our passage today on the other end of it and Joshua’s final speech before he passed away and the Hebrew people go on to live in the promised land.
He begins his farewell address, as the NASB labels it, in chapter 23, speaking of all that God has done in conquering the land and calling them to, in verse 6-8
6 “Be very firm, then, to keep and do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, so that you may not turn aside from it to the right hand or to the left,
7 so that you will not associate with these nations, these which remain among you, or mention the name of their gods, or make anyone swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to them.
8 “But you are to cling to the Lord your God, as you have done to this day.
They are cling to God, to hold tightly to Him, to cleave onto God.
This is the same word used by Moses in Genesis 2:24 that husbands are to be joined, or cleave to their wives.
They are to be faithful to God like a husband is to be faithful to his wife.
They are warned that just as God has kept His word to bless them, He will keep His word to punish them if they fail to be faithful to Him.
14 “Now behold, today I am going the way of all the earth, and you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one word of all the good words which the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed; all have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed.
15 “It shall come about that just as all the good words which the Lord your God spoke to you have come upon you, so the Lord will bring upon you all the threats, until He has destroyed you from off this good land which the Lord your God has given you.
16 “When you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you will perish quickly from off the good land which He has given you.”
Then in the first thirteen verses of chapter 24, he recounts their history from Abraham to the present, how God has worked in their nation to keep His promises.
Every step along the way, God has been with them, and has worked for them.
He protected them, fought for them, provided for them, rescued them, and given them everything He promised.
God had kept His word, in a mighty way.
Now Joshua is turning to the people he had led in victory, and is calling on them to make a promise to follow God.
We can learn some things from Joshua’s call and the Hebrew’s response to his call about our lives and commitment to follow God.
Every Believer Must See The Consequences of Deciding to Follow God.
Every Believer Must See The Consequences of Deciding to Follow God.
By understanding the exclusivity of following God. v. 14-18
By understanding the exclusivity of following God. v. 14-18
14 “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
15 “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
16 The people answered and said, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods;
17 for the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did these great signs in our sight and preserved us through all the way in which we went and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed.
18 “The Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land. We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.”
One of the things that has marked our western culture is that we have a lot of choices.
In 1989, Boris Yeltsin visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston. While he was in Houston, he visited a Randall’s grocery store where he, “roamed the aisles.. nodding his head in amazement.” He said that if the people of the Soviet Union saw America’s supermarkets there would be a revolution. This visit was said to spark Yeltsin to abandon communism personally, and to fight for Russia to reform its economy
And so we go to these stores, or now shop online, paralyzed be the sheer magnitude of options that we have, taking for granted how much we have.
Many places in the world would give anything for a roll of toilet paper, when we have aisles of different brands and kinds given for us to choose from.
And so we treat our many options with an air of nonchalance.
It’s no big deal if you decide between Charmin or Cottonelle, I might judge you a little if you choose Scot.
Whatever your preference it is yours to decide and be happy with, the toilet paper won’t hold anything over your head if you try another type.
And so, we take this attitude towards choice onto our freedom of religion as well.
Whether you choose to be religious or just “spiritual” is totally up do you.
You do what makes you feel the best, like choosing the toilet paper that you feel works the best for you.
We treat all choices as equally valid, and equally valuable.
But is this the truth?
No, as Joshua makes clear to the Hebrews in this final address, God will not allow Himself to be placed on a store shelf to be chosen because we like the style of the art on the label a tad bit better than the other brand.
In other worlds, He will only be served exclusively.
The Jews had to choose between worshiping Him, or worshipping the other false gods of their day.
I want you to listen to how many times Joshua uses the word “serve” in verses 14-15
14 “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.
15 “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
7 times. Joshua was making sure that they knew that to worship the one, true God was to serve Him, to be His servant, to do His work, as opposed to being the servant of the false gods of the people of the land they just took.
The choice is between serving God, or serving false gods is exclusionary.
God will share His glory with no one else. He is a jealous God.
Moses explained this before they began their conquest of the promised land.
11 “Be sure to observe what I am commanding you this day: behold, I am going to drive out the Amorite before you, and the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite.
12 “Watch yourself that you make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going, or it will become a snare in your midst.
13 “But rather, you are to tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim
14 —for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—
A passage explaining that God is jealous for His people’s worship like this one is what The Oprah had such a problem with, she couldn’t conceive of God being jealous.
His jealously is not like our sinful jealousy over what others have and we may mis-out on.
He is the God of the universe, there is no other like Him.
All of the false gods that can be made by man are either completely fabricated in the sinful imagination of man, or the wiles of demonic forces.
And He will not share the glory that He deserves with a thing carved of wood or stone, or some vain philosophy or idea of a reprobate generation.
So Joshua is holding this out for the Hebrew people: choose Yahweh, or the demonically inspired idols of the peoples around you.
But you cannot choose both, God will not have it.
Fear Yahweh, serve Yahweh in sincerity, or completeness, serve Yahweh in truth, not just in public.
But don’t say that you do in public, for status or approval, and do something else in private.
Like the Pharisees and Sadducees of Christ’s time.
Christ proclaimed 8 woes on the hypocritical Jews in Matthew 23, the last one in verse 29
29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous,
30 and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’
They were “religious” on the outside, but they didn’t fear or serve Yahweh.
When you are charmed by the overwhelming sentiment of the culture to be “inclusive” and non-judgmental, remember that God will not be served alongside the false ideas of this passing age.
Like Joshua told the conquering Hebrews in verse 15
15 “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
May we make the same choice as Joshua did for himself and his family.
We see the consequences of following God in the exclusivity of worshiping Him, we also see them…
By admitting our inability to follow God in ourselves. v. 19-25
By admitting our inability to follow God in ourselves. v. 19-25
19 Then Joshua said to the people, “You will not be able to serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgression or your sins.
20 “If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done good to you.”
21 The people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord.”
22 Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord, to serve Him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.”
23 “Now therefore, put away the foreign gods which are in your midst, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
24 The people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and we will obey His voice.”
25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.
In the last part of our passage, the people recall what God had done for them and agree with the terms that Joshua had set forth.
18 “The Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land. We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.”
But Joshua, with 110 years of experience with them, knew better.
19 Then Joshua said to the people, “You will not be able to serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgression or your sins.
Joshua was there when Moses sent the 12 spies to check out the promised land.
Remember 12 men went to spy on Canaan, 10 were bad and 2 were good?
Joshua and Caleb were the 2 good spies.
The other 10 men brought a bad report and didn’t trust God.
They caused the fickle Hebrew people to doubt God, and God punished them by making the wander in the wilderness for another 40 years so that the faithless generation would die off before entering the land for conquest.
God allowed Joshua and Caleb to live to see the promised land, but the rest of the adults wouldn’t get to cross the river.
And that wasn’t the last time Joshua would see the stiff-necked and hard hearted people rebel against serving God.
Over and over again in the wilderness and in the promised land, the Hebrews would rebel.
And he knew this, and he was right. The following book of Judges, which we reviewed a couple of months ago, explained how quickly they would break their promise.
So how do we explain this and how do we serve God knowing that we, like the Hebrews, are fickle and rebellious, too?
This is the age old question.
Augustine was a pastor in a place called Hippo in the early church, around the year of our Lord 400.
He found himself in a debate with another man named Pelagius.
Pelagius believed that if God required something of man, man must have the power to obey in himself.
This is makes sense in a vacuum, right?
I mean it would be unfair for God to command something of you, that you couldn’t possibly be able to do.
For example, if you had to walk 500 miles, and then walk 500 more to win a girl’s heart, it would be difficult, but you could eventually get there.
But Augustine said, no, our nature, what and who we are, makes it impossible to obey God to the degree required by His holiness.
It is like being required to swim from New York to England.
Someone who is extremely fit and trained in swimming will certainly get miles closer than I would, but still wouldn’t make it even close.
It’s not in our nature, our very makeup for us to have the ability.
Augustine said in reply to Pelagius’ theory
"Though I am but dust and ashes, suffer me to utter my plea to Thy mercy; suffer me to speak, since it is to God's mercy that I speak and not to man's scorn. From Thee too I might have scorn, but Thou wilt return and have compassion on me. ... I only know that the gifts Thy mercy had provided sustained me from the first moment. ... All my hope is naught save in Thy great mercy. Grant what Thou dost command, and command what Thou wilt"
He realized that it was only by God’s mercy and gift that we were able to obey and worship Him.
God has the right, in Himself, to command whatever He wants from us, whether our ability is there or not.
Our prayer, knowing our inability, is that He would grant to us what He commands.
God is quite pleased and glorified when we come to Him for even our faith.
Joshua knew the people could not do follow God, in themselves.
They would have to look to Him for the second Joshua, who would conquer not other men for them, but the inner sinful man of themselves.
But the people denied this and said in verse 21
21 The people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord.”
They promised to serve the Lord, they made profession to serve the Lord.
Joshua takes this profession as their word and tells them they are witnesses of this promise to each other.
22 Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord, to serve Him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.”
Then he makes it real.
He says that their profession of faith has been given, now we will know the makeup of the tree by the fruit it bears.
23 “Now therefore, put away the foreign gods which are in your midst, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
They can demonstrate the reality of their faith by putting away the idols, and inclining, or bending, their hearts to God.
So they respond
24 The people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and we will obey His voice.”
Richard Hess, when he wrote about this passage, finds their promise lacking.
Joshua: An Introduction and Commentary iii. The Covenant Agreement (24:14–24)
The people do not respond to any of the specifics that Joshua has commanded. They only repeat their earlier promise to serve the LORD. The omission of an explicit note of obedience is ominous… It suggests that, whatever loyalty the people swore, they kept their images and symbols of other deities.
And isn’t this the problem that we have. It is easy to say, “yes,” but it is harder to follow through.
We glory in the first part of Ephesians, as we should, but we find the second part, the putting off of the old self and the putting on of the new self, very difficult.
But our difficulty in doing that, is why the first part is necessary.
And God glories in our looking to Him for help.
Isn’t this what Judges is about?
The people kept doing it there way, God would send an enemy, the people would cry out to God, and He would send a rescuer.
And in every step God would get glory.
Now we do not fall for the blatant sin of worshipping Baal, but we have trouble with the lusts of deceit and unwholesome words, do we not?
And does God not listen when we call out to Him for help?
He does!
The people Joshua was calling to faith were convinced they could follow God, in their own strength!
We need to be convinced that we cannot follow God in our own strength, but in absolute reliance on His gift of Christ and the Holy Spirit!
That a consequence of following God is our great need of His help in following Him, and His great provision towards that need.
Finally…
By memorializing our commitment. v. 26-28
By memorializing our commitment. v. 26-28
26 And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God; and he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.
27 Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord which He spoke to us; thus it shall be for a witness against you, so that you do not deny your God.”
28 Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to his inheritance.
I’m going to be completely honest. I had a hard time deciding what to call this third point.
Joshua does something that is very important for us as men and women to do.
He sets up a memorial as a constant reminder.
He wrote it down in the book of the Law of God, so that it would be read in the future as a reminder, and then he placed a large stone under the oak tree that was by the sanctuary.
Let’s look at these two things Joshua did.
First, he wrote their promise to follow God in the book of the Law of God.
This was to be preserved and read by the future generations as a witness to what they promised to do.
As you go through the Old Testament and find accounts of the people going back on their promise, as Joshua said they would, you will find that it happened when they neglected reading and teaching the book of the Law of God.
After the reigns of David and Solomon, after the kingdom is split into 2 kingdoms, and there are many bad kings and a few kings that followed God, we come to a good king, Josiah.
The temple has been neglected for years, as well as the worship of God, and Josiah wants to restore it.
He commands a man to go and count the money stored in the temple so that they can fund the work.
While they are doing the work, the high priest finds the, apparently, long lost book of the law in the temple. 2 Kings 22 tells the story.
9 Shaphan the scribe came to the king and brought back word to the king and said, “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord.”
10 Moreover, Shaphan the scribe told the king saying, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it in the presence of the king.
11 When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes.
As well as he should have.
The people had forgotten their promise long ago and stopped serving God as they should have.
This is why God commanded the reading of His book, especially by the king.
And Joshua knew His command, so he wrote the promise that the people made in the book, so that it would be remembered in the future.
Then he placed a large stone by an oak tree in Shechem.
Shechem was very significant.
It was the first place that Abram stopped when he reached Canaan after leaving his homeland by faith in the call of God.
If you keep reading to the end of chapter 24 it’s where they buried the bones of Joseph who made the people promise to bury him in the promised land and not in Egypt.
It is also the place that Jacob commits his family to the worship of Yahweh instead of other idols.
Listen to the account in Genesis 35.
1 Then God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and live there, and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”
2 So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods which are among you, and purify yourselves and change your garments;
3 and let us arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”
4 So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods which they had and the rings which were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the oak which was near Shechem.
Isn’t that interesting.
From Abram, to Jacob, to Joseph, to the tribes of Israel in a state of victory and rest, we have a complete circle.
This is the ending of a major part of the story of the people of God.
Promised to Abraham, and fulfilled here in Shechem with a commitment to follow God.
God had kept His word.
And Joshua had set this large stone, under the oak in Shechem.
So know for years to come, and in the following generations, men, women, and children would look there in Shechem and see that stone sitting there, and remember, God keeps His word.
This is how we work. We need things to help us remember.
We have this even today in the church.
We have physical things given to us to help us remember that God keeps His word.
We have baptism, the physical, external reminder that God has buried our old self in the death and burial of our Lord, and risen us with Him in His resurrection.
A physical, tangible stone of memorial to recognize a spiritual, intangible reality.
We have our Lord’s supper, bread to represent His body, broken for us on the cross, and wine, to represent His blood shed for us.
His person and work, who He is and what He has done for us in our salvation.
God knows us, He has considered our frame, and He reminds us in these things He is faithful.
He knows it’s hard work to put off the old self, so He hits us in the face every other month with the absolute amazing grace of the gospel, in ultra hd technicolor in that little piece of bread and that little cup of juice.
That is our stone of memorial that God has given us.
Conclusion
Conclusion
This passage of Joshua could have been a great marker for the worship of Yahweh God in Israel, but as Joshua predicted, it became damning evidence of the faithlessness of the Hebrew people.
The last passage of Joshua that follows this final address tells of Joshua’s death, and how the people followed God and their covenant with him only until the leaders that followed Joshua died.
Then we get to the book of Judges.
It reiterates the last passage in chapter 2 and goes on to explain their failure.
7 The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord which He had done for Israel.
8 Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten.
9 And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.
10 All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.
11 Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals,
12 and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger.
Praise God that we are kept by the Holy Spirit!
Brothers and sisters, do not be like the faithless Israelites, follow God exclusively!, follow God by His strength!, and follow God remembering who Christ is and what He has done for you, by the power of the Holy Spirit and His great grace, follow God!
