Joshua 24:14-15 PRINCETON CHRISTIAN CHURCH 10 November 2024
“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. 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.”
Our scripture today comes from Joshua, the young man God had chosen and whom Moses mentored to lead the Jews into the promised land after the whiners, grumbles, and disobedient types had died off.
What type of person are you? Some people are consistently faithful, and others are faithfully inconsistent. Do you find yourself often dissatisfied? Are you a whiner or a grumble?
I ask you this because the Scriptures teach us that the whiners and grumblers, those who complained, were not faithful people. Their faith and commitment to God were inconsistent.
Whining, grumbling, gossiping, and complaining are symptoms of a deeper spiritual problem called inconsistent faithfulness or consistent unfaithfulness. We can call it what we want to, but it is a spiritual problem. Now, don’t misunderstand. It is not a problem for God. It’s a problem for unfaithful people, and when we have that problem, we need to deal with it.
Joshua’s audience knew the mighty hand of God. He had already poured plagues down on Egypt; He had caused the Egyptian’s firstborn, and He parted the Red Sea and destroyed Pharaoh’s army.
These people knew how their own people acted 3 days after the Red Sea had been parted, and they were out of slavery and bondage and on their way to the promised land, and they encountered their first problem - water suitable to drink.
What do they do?
They grumbled! Exodus 15:23-25
They wanted to go back to Egypt.
They grumbled—you know what I am talking about when I say grumbling. You speak under your breath like you are not complaining but loud enough so whoever is around you can hear and know exactly that you are dissatisfied.
Whenever we complain about what we have or don’t have, what we thought we should get or didn’t get, we are grumbling. What we are saying to God is what you have given me, the situation I am in is not good enough for me, I deserve more and better and we are grumbling to God.
If we are grumblers, whiners, or complainers, we lack faith, and our commitment to God is inconsistent because the only time we are consistent is when it’s going our way.
These unfaithful Jews who were freed from slavery and bondage were just like many Christians today.
Although they have been set free from the sin, guilt, and shame that came into their lives from living in the world, they only partially follow God. They go in and out of church life and worldly life without giving it a second thought.
We might compare that kind of life to having a huge bungee cord tied to their belt that keeps pulling them back to Egypt, where they had leaks, garlic, onions, and freshwater to drink.
They never see real holiness, sanctification, or consecration. For their entire lives, the benefit of consistently following God remains an illusion never to be realized, yet they believe they are religious people. Of course, we know that there is an enormous difference between being a faithful Christ follower and being a religious person.
The Jews who left Egypt never saw the promised land simply because their commitment to God was inconsistent.
A good question to ask ourselves is this:
“Am I in the promised land of Christianity or do I move in and out, based on my own desires and needs?”
Listen to what Joshua tells God’s people in his farewell address. He is now old and well-advanced in years. He tells them in (23:16):
” If you violate the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you."
Here is what that statement means:
If your commitment to me is inconsistent and you let the things of this world get between you and me, you will experience my anger, and you will not receive the promised and good things I have planned for you.
Joshua knows these people's tendencies, so his last official function as the Lord’s servant is to call God’s people back into a covenantal relationship with their God.
That is what REVIVAL is all about. It’s about calling the church back to their first love and back into a relationship with Christ.
It is a change of attitude!
Joshua recaps the story of Abraham and how God gave him many descendants. He tells them how God had sent Moses and Aaron and how God had afflicted the Egyptians.
How God had parted the Red Sea and let them pass through, while in His next breath, He drowned the Egyptian army and destroyed the entire army.
God fought all your battles and conquered all of your enemies
"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.
Joshua 24:15 "And 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."
And this is our challenge today.
Choose this day who you are going to serve: the Lord God almighty or the world.
The challenge today is to decide: “We will serve God; we will fear the Lord, and we will put away the false gods we worship in the world today.
What keeps people from making that decision daily in their lives?
Whatever the idol it is that keeps us from choosing God, we need to eliminate it from our lives. We need to choose God! Whatever worldly thing, place, or activity it is that we are on fire for.
We must understand that if we are friends with the world, we are enemies of God. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we should never be involved with events and activities that people who are not in Christ participate in.
The matter is that we are sure we can willingly let go of worldly things when we are faced with making choices – do I attend an event on Sunday morning during the set hours of worship in the church, or do I miss the worship and attend the event?
Some of us are old enough to remember a time when very few activities were scheduled on Sundays. Sunday was a day of worship and rest. That has changed drastically in our society today.
The Lord’s Day is when we have the opportunity to put away the busyness of the world and choose to worship our God, to be together as His family, breaking bread together and praising God.
Our text says,
“Serve the LORD in sincerity and truth.”
We must continually check ourselves to see what the level of our service is. Is it sincere? Is it genuine? Do I serve out of obligation or out of devotion?
In other words, is our dedication and commitment to the Lord who we are?
Joshua’s farewell address is really bold.
“Choose, who are you going to serve, but don’t be half committed or half faithful. Either serve God or serve the world.”
Have you ever attended a church service where people are not engaged with one another? That takes place, in most cases, in the larger congregations. What we observe there is pretty much a: “Hi, how ya doin’” kind of gathering. The church will not and cannot be revived if a Sunday morning “hi how ya’ doing kind of place.”
Our lives and His church must be more than lukewarm. Because lukewarm just doesn’t build up the Body of Christ.
Jesus said I will spit the lukewarm church right out of my mouth. What He actually says is, “Lukewarm is, “I will vomit it out.”
Faithfulness takes commitment, and commitment takes perseverance and hard work.
THERE IS SIMPLY NO WAY AROUND IT!
But it is this kind of faithfulness and consistency that God wants from His own children.
A teacher was helping one of her kindergarten students put on his Cowboy boots.
Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn’t want to go on.
Finally, when the second boot was on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost cried when the little boy said, "Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet." She looked, and sure enough, they were.
It wasn’t any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on.
She managed to keep her cool as they worked together to put the boots back on—this time on the right feet.
He then announced, "These aren’t my boots ."She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, "Why didn’t you say so?" like she wanted to. Once again, she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet.
No sooner did they get the boots off, and he said, "They’re my brother’s boots. My Mom made me wear ’em."
Now she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. But she mustered up the grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet again.
Helping him into his coat, she asked, "Now, where are your mittens?"
He said, "I stuffed ’em in the toes of my boots...."
Our commitment to God can take only two forms. We can either be like this teacher who mustered up the grace and strength to continue, or we can whine, grumble, and complain.
How would God describe us?
Whether or not the church survives and we become all that God wants us to be depends on us.
Joshua said, “If this is disagreeable to you, well, choose for yourself what you want to do and how committed you are. But keep in mind none of those adults who left Egypt inherited the promised land.
Joshua was not placed by God to tell the people what they wanted to hear. He was there to tell them what they needed to hear.
Is your commitment to God inconsistent?
Do you whine, grumble, and complain?
Someday, we will all stand before the Lord to give an account of those things we have done while on this earth and in these bodies.
Do we know more about sports, rock stars, fast cars, or a million other things than we know about God?
Are we more consistent with our faithfulness to those things than we are to God and Christ’s Church? Who, or what, am I on fire for?
I said a moment ago that there are a million things that get between our service and us to the Lord, but I don’t need to do that; we know where we are.
I will tell you this, and I know that most, if not all, of you can say with assurance:
“As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
It is not always easy. We have weathered many tears and trials, but we have seen God work, and we have grown in our faith through consistency in our commitment.
We are not going to do it the devil’s way, or the world’s way, or the preacher’s way.
We are going to do it God’s way.
We are going to do it God’s way in our marriage and keep the covenants.
We are going to do it God’s way in the way we raise our children.
We are going to live God’s way in the way we serve His church.
God will honor and bless us when we do.
That decision will not make us popular, but it will make us holy as God sanctifies us through our participation in the gospel.
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