MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE
JOSHUA 24:1,2a;14-18 AUGUST 25, 2002
1Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.
2Joshua said to all the people, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says...
...14"Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served be-yond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
16Then the people answered, "Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods! 17It was the LORD our God himself who brought our fathers and us up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and per-formed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. 18And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the LORD, because he is our God."
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Dearest Fellow-Redeemed and Saints in the Lord:
Decisions, decisions, choices and choices?our life is full of them, isn?t it? It starts when we get out of bed in the morning. What are we going to eat? What are we going to wear? What are we going to do for the day? Sometimes it seems as if the simplest of choices and the smallest of decisions have the greatest impact for what happens in our lives and in the lives of others. Today, Joshua gives the people a choice?a choice to fol-low God or not to follow him. As we?re going to see, it?s not much of a choice once one stops to think about it. You and I make many choices and decisions, small ones, big ones. Thankfully in our life the Lord has made for us the biggest choice of all. Rather than have us sit in darkness and be doomed for eternal destruction, he has chosen for each one of us eternal life. He has provided for us the light of the knowledge of salvation, so that you and I will eventually rejoice in eternal glory. That choice our gracious God has made for each one of us. We can?t choose God but He has chosen us.
When Moses came to the end of leading the children of Israel, he gathered them together. He told them they would have a choice. They were going to go into the Promised Land, the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (We had that in our readings today.) Moses was concerned about the people because he knew that now as they lived in the lap of luxury, they might be forgetting about God. They would have enough to eat and drink. They would no longer see the glory of God in the pillar of fire or the cloud of smoke, and they just might not remember who gave them all those things. Moses knew that as they would sit in that lap of luxury, the land flowing with milk and honey, they would be tempted to follow other gods, they would be tempted to forget God all together. So he gives them a choice also. We read in God?s Word: "Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him"(DEUTERONOMY 30:19b, 20a). Moses told the people, ?Make the right choice.? Joshua tells the peo-ple, ?Make the right choice.? We are reminded this morning to make the right choice.
MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE
I. Forsake false gods
II. Follow the true God
I. FORSAKE FALSE GODS
The people were in the Promised Land already. Joshua is the next leader. He came after Moses. Some-times we don?t remember Joshua because we know so much about Moses. He was almost as great a leader as Moses because he had to remind the people that, as they were in the Promised Land just as Moses said, to listen to the Lord God. Now they are there in the Promised Land. 1Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. He called to them to make an announcement, to encourage them not to forget God.
When Joshua reminds them that he is still God?s prophet, he?s not trying to tell them what he thinks, but he?s going to tell them what God says. He says in our text: 2Joshua said to all the people, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says...? Joshua reminded them again that it was the God of Israel who had done many things for them. In the verses that we don?t have as part of today?s text, he talks about their deliverance from Egypt; how they were delivered first of all from the land of slavery, how they were delivered through the Red Sea, how they were delivered into wanderings in the wilderness. After he talks about all those things, then he comes to the next verse of our text, verse 14:
14"Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness.? That may sound strange, but Joshua would have to remind the people not to forget about God. God, who for a generation, had been with them day in and day out, providing them with food and clothing that did not wear out. Yet Joshua says, ?Remember the Lord. Serve Him with faithfulness.? Then he explains why?why this encouragement. He says, ?Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.?
The children of Israel had lived in Egypt for a long time. Because of that, some of them had picked up the bad habits of worshipping false gods. Who can forget--when they first got across the Red Sea, Moses went up to get the Commandments, and what happens? His brother Aaron gathers up all the gold in camp and makes a golden calf for the people to worship. This worshipping false gods was something they became all too famil-iar with.
Joshua says, ?Make the right choice.? He says throw away those gods your fathers worshipped in for-eign lands. Forget about them. He gives them a choice. He says: ?15But if serving the LORD seems undesir-able to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.? So they have a choice, if there really was a choice, to serve false gods that their fathers worshipped, or to serve the false gods in this land in which they were now living. Again, it sounds strange that he would even give them a choice. God had called them to faith and now it was their responsibility to remain faithful to the Lord.
The Lord in essence, gives us choices too. He calls us to faith, He makes us His believers, and then He gives us that choice of being faithful or unfaithful, of following God or following false gods. It might seem strange to us that we would talk about false gods in such an enlightened society in which we live. There aren?t idols set up in the city square, there aren?t big pagan festivals that people all gather together at. Yet in our own way we make different false gods that you and I sometimes follow.
Paul wrote to the congregation at Rome and he reminds us this morning with the same words. He says: ?Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles"(ROMANS 1:22,23). You and I don?t have idols of reptiles or birds or animals, but sometimes we hold up men as shining examples in our society. Men who might be sports figures, men who might be rich and wealthy, the world thinks they?re important. We, too, fall into that trap of thinking they are important. Men who become leaders, yet their moral lives are something, which would make God Himself, blush. So there are those false gods, those false things that try to distract us from making the right choice and following the Lord God. Other idols that attract our undue attentions includes those shiny new trucks, cars, farm machinery, new houses and, the list goes on.
Everyday we come closer to judgement don?t we? As we get closer and closer to Judgement Day, the Lord reminds His believers that there will be persecutions in the church, there will be those who don?t care about God anymore. Paul wrote to Timothy: "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doc-trine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear"(2 TIMOTHY 4:3). That appeals to our sinful nature doesn?t it? We gather around us people who tell us what we want to hear. Sad to say, that is the way our society is. People gather around them advisors to say what their itching ears want to hear, even though it doesn?t agree with what God?s word might say. Men begin to follow their own human reason, their own understanding, and they forget to for-sake the gods that are in this world.
You and I live in this world, don?t we? Since we live in this world, the reality is that we spend more time in this world than in God?s house. We spend more time in the world than in God?s word. It has a pro-found effect on us, an effect that can distract us from following God. In James, we have these warnings. "You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God"(JAMES 4:4). He speaks very strongly about being too friendly with the world. Yet how easy that is for each one of us. After all, how are we going to live or do any-thing in this world unless we?re friends of the world? The Lord wants us to remember that being friends with the world and being too friendly with the world makes us an enemy of God.
The Lord says to make the right choice. To make the right choice, we forsake false gods, those things that seem so important in this life, and follow God, which is the most important thing in this life and for eter-nity.
II. FOLLOW THE TRUE GOD
Remember Joshua now gathered all the people before him and he said: ?Now you have a choice. You are in the Promised Land; you are in the lap of luxury, a land flowing with milk and honey. You can worship the false gods that your forefathers knew, you can worship the false gods of the people in this land, or you can worship the Lord God.? That would be their choice. Now he?s going to give them a little direction, isn?t he? He says: ?But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." Joshua already made his choice. He made it for himself and his household. ?We will serve the Lord.?
Now, what were the people going to do? Were they going to listen to Joshua? Were they really going to listen to God?s word through Joshua? Were they going to follow false gods or Joshua?s God? Thankfully, we have their response. 16Then the people answered, "Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods!? They realized that just like Joshua, they too didn?t really have a choice. The only choice was to serve the Lord God. They give the reason why. ?17It was the LORD our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes.?
God gave them manna in the wilderness, He gave them water from the rock and He was with them day in and day out. He goes on: ?He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled.? They weren?t always welcome when they came with hundreds of thousands of people walking across other people?s land and property. The Lord protected them and guided them. The people add: 18And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land.? So now they came to the Promised Land and the Lord says ?Drive out the enemies.? They realized that they weren?t going to drive them out, but it would be the Lord on their side who would drive them out. The enemies were more ?well-equipped?. They drove out the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the list goes on. (It?s in the chapter be-fore Joshua here.) Sadly, we know that as they say they are going to serve the Lord, we do know that in the his-tory of the children of Israel in the Promised Land, it happened just as Moses said. They forgot about God. Living in that lap of luxury, they forsook God. They followed other gods. So it stands as an example for us to make the right choice, to be as enthusiastic as these people, but to remember that following the Lord is the only choice.
Joshua saw in the Lord, the Lord God Almighty. The people saw the Lord, the Lord God Almighty. You and I see the same thing. In the book of the prophet Isaiah we read: This is what the LORD says-- Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God"(ISAIAH 44:6). The Lord reminds us today there is no other God. He is the first and the last, the begin-ning and the end. He is our Creator, He is our Redeemer. There is no god like Him because He is a loving God. The other false gods in this world, when you look real close at them, are vengeful gods. Their people obey them because they are scared to death of not obeying. Our God shows us His love, His mercy, His com-passion. We too, like the children of Israel return God?s love to Him by following Him. That is the right choice that we make. It?s the right choice that our fathers before us, our forefathers generations before us, made?to remain true to what God?s word has to say.
When Jesus came to earth in physical form, the leaders of the church always put him to test. They were always anxious to ?trip him up?, to see if He would not speak the truth. Some of the leaders came one time and asked Him what was the greatest law. Of course there was only one law. It was based on love. He reminded them that it was written in the Old Testament. Jesus said to them: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength"(MARK 12:29b, 30). The Lord is love! And then He tells them, ?Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.? That?s the right choice. That?s the easy choice, the simple choice to make. It?s a little harder to follow because of our sinful nature.
Today we are here because of many right choices that people before us made in this life. We worship in a fine facility of twenty years. Some of you were here at that time and were responsible for making that right choice of giving glory to God. With that right choice came a strong commitment, because in those twenty years the building was paid for, in those twenty years a house was purchased and paid for. It wasn?t just making the right choice; it was also being committed to what God had done for them. We rejoice today because of that. We can celebrate every day because of the choices that others have made?a choice to follow the Lord God.
The choice becomes easier and simpler too, when we consider always when the Lord asks us to make a choice. Always when He asks to follow Him, He gives the reason why doesn?t He? Just like here, Joshua says, ?Now, make the right choice. Forsake the false gods and follow the Lord God because look what He has done for you.? He says that to us too. Listen to this from Ephesians. "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sac-rifice to God." (EPHESIANS 5:2). God asks us to live a life of love because His Son lived a life of love for us. His Son sacrificed His life for us. It becomes easier to make that right choice of following Him. Joshua puts it a different way. Following the Lord is serving the Lord. Serving the Lord is loving the Lord. We love the Lord because He first loved us.
Yes, there are many choices, decisions and options that we make day to day. The right choice, of course, is to follow the Lord. Some decisions, options and choices that we make in our life aren?t so easy. Sometimes we make them more difficult than they ought to be. If we ever need guidance, think of what the Lord Jesus would do. If we ever need direction, think of what Paul says in Corinthians: "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God"(1 CORINTHIANS 10:31). When we?re faced with those difficult decisions, we can always ask ourselves, ?Does it give glory to God?? or ?Does it just put another feather in my cap?? If it gives glory to God, it is always the right choice.
The Lord reminds us today, as believers who have been chosen by God Himself, to be believers and to be His dearly loved children. He says, ?Forsake all other gods and follow the Lord God.? That is the right choice. Amen.
Pastor Timm O. Meyer
