Joshua 24:14-33
14 “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and do away with the gods which your fathers served beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 But 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 Euphrates 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 would abandon 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 slaves, and did these great signs in our sight and watched over 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 wrongdoing or your sins.
This final chapter in Joshua leaves the reader with this picture of Joshua gathering all the people and solidifying them to be one people serving one God. He reminds them of their ancestry and the history that brought them to that point. In verses 14-15 Joshua implores that they fear the Lord and serve Him and Him only. Joshua seems to be aware that they have not fully forsaken other gods. In verse 15 I get the impression that not only is Joshua making a necessary public statement of where his faith lies, but in doing so he is also opening the door for the people to make that statement as well. He is anticipating the likelihood that the people will declare oath to the Lord as well because Joshua is their leader but not out of any true understanding and loyalty to God.
In verses 16-18 the people seem to be saying the right things. Then Joshua makes a statement that can’t be ignored.
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 wrongdoing or your sins.“
Why does he tell the people, right after they declare that they will serve the Lord, that they will not be able to do it? He also says some things that seem uncharacteristic of God.
“He is a jealous God”. Saying that makes God seem petty and immature.
He will not forgive their wrongdoings and sins. Well that doesn’t seem at all like the character and nature of God who is love. Overwhelmingly we read how God is merciful and kind and slow to anger abounding in love. Jesus, God in the flesh declares that we must love our enemies and forgive 70×7 those who wrong us. Yet God is unwilling to forgive sins and wrongdoings?!
Joshua then goes on to say:
20 If you abandon the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and destroy you after He has done good to you.” 21 And the people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord.” 22 So 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 then, do away with the foreign gods which are in your midst, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.” 24 And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and 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.
I’m wondering if there were several things that Joshua was familiar with about the people he was leading and was dealing with things that we reading this passage today would not readily identify with.
The worship of idols The people declared that they “choose the Lord” but it may have been in response to Joshua’s declaration and not wholly from the heart. And perhaps Joshua anticipated this. The people were still holding on to idols. They still had room in their hearts for faith in other Gods. In verse 14 he tells them to throw away their idols and foreign Gods so obviously he is aware that they are still holding onto them. Making this declaration has to be done in conjunction with removing all the foreign gods from among them. Maybe in today’s terms this would be like getting baptized but then continuing to put Mohammed and Buddha on the same level as Jesus. But even more relatable, its like getting baptized but trusting more in our wealth and our own ideas than God. So Joshua continues to move them to a commitment to destroy their idols, declare that they are witnesses against themselves and then take an oath to follow the written laws of a covenant that Joshua creates for the people. It seems that Joshua was taking it past their declaration to follow the Lord, because he wanted to make a point.
They really weren’t able to do it: It is obvious from Israel’s history that they weren’t able to do it. Joshua is prophesying. And perhaps it’s not even obvious to him how much he is prophesying. Israel certainly went on to struggle with idolatry. So much so that they eventually lost the land that they were entering that day to take possession of. They were truly ignorant of who God really is, and what declaring him as their God ultimately was gonna look like for their lives. Coming out of Egypt, they were just getting to know who the God of Israel is.
Joshua is a foreshadowing of Christ: How many of us have stood in the waters of baptism declaring “Jesus is Lord” and yet have not thrown out all our idols? We come into a relationship with God, and we can’t help this but we have preconceived notions of what that’s going to look like. We only know God as we are able to picture him and understand him. Even with the most enthusiastic and best of intentions, we all fail because the journey is not at all what we thought it was going to be. Having preconceived notions about God and what our life will be like as we commit to him is completely unavoidable. None of us know what lies ahead. And all we can do is base our understanding of what seems true to us in the current moment of our life.
Establishing A Point In Time: Even though Joshua predicts, they’re going to fail at remaining faithful to God what he’s doing is necessary. It is crucial to establish a day, a time, a moment or whatever that we can always go back to after we fail. A point in time that we declared to forsake all others and follow the Lord. Great marriages are not great because somehow two people have something that others don’t. They are great because two people stand by the covenant they made.The covenant that says, “for better or for worse, through sickness and health till death do us part.” They take seriously those words. So matter how bad it gets, they have a covenant that they honor that they know on this day and time in front of all their friends, family and god, they declared that this is what they’re going to be true to. It is not so sexy but that is what makes a great marriage great. Their vows are not to each other as much as they are to what they are believe in. So when they take their vows, that point in time acts as a starting point that they can return to over and over and over again.
The Battles Are Over And Just Begun: They were living a life as slaves in Egypt and then as nomads wandering the dessert. An entire generation has now passed away and a new generation is rising up. They don’t really know what they are committing to, but they think they do. The only life this new generation has known is wandering in the dessert and seizing land from those who were living there. To them, God promised the land and gave them victory in their battles. And that was pretty much who God was to them. It is easy for us, reading the bible today, to see that there is so much more to God than that. Because we know Christ and we can look back at how things took shape. They only knew that the God of Israel was not like the gods they worshiped in Egypt. But they tried pleasing Him as if He was. So it made sense to them that he went before them, destroying towns and cities and killing people.
The problem with inspired writings is that even the one doing the writing doesn’t have a very clear picture of all that God is showing him. The Law carried with it a vision of christianity. Within the laws was the heart of God. The levitical laws of not gleaning your fields a third time, leaving some of the harvest for the poor to glean, was an act of loving your neighbor more than obeying God. The laws about rashes and skin diseases were acts of caring more for the welfare of others by not spreading contagious diseases. Learning to lay down your wants, your desires, you life for the sake of others. This is all stuff that Jesus taught but was not so obvious with a surface reading of Leviticus. The law was meant to shape their hearts but they only saw it as rules to follow.
This lifestyle of being slaves, and nomads and land conquerors was about to end and they were shifting into normal everyday life. It think it is much harder for us to rely on God when there is no oppressor or crisis and we are just free to live our lives in a way that is seeking and living out the will of God.Living everyday life we begin to turn to ourselves rather than God. We rely on our strength, our skills, our ideas and plans to live into the life we want to live. Asking God for help living into the life we want to live. Now that they had a place to live, their hopes and dreams started to form around becoming who they want to become. The God that had rescued them would slowly be pushed way down the list of what influenced them. Even if they were good Jews and followed the laws perfectly, they were caught up in doing so in hopes of God blessing their lives with the things they wanted. So the law, that contained a vision for what it looks like when a nation loves God and lives their lives in relationship to loving God by loving their neighbor, seems to be thwarted by Israels lack of vision. To them the law only ever was a set of rules to obey, in exchange for the blessings of God. We can understand why they thought that way when we read Deuteronomy. That way of seeing God started when God rescued them from the Egyptians. How could they see the vision that God saw. All they saw was God favored them and killed their enemies. So when they killed other nations and took their land, that idea that God was going before them, was forged together all the more.
But when we see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law, we see that the law was meant to shape us into a people who love, trust and rely on God. As a chosen people they were to stand out because their currency would be love. They would be blessed by God no matter what other nations were doing or did to them. Jesus, the fulfillment of the law, exemplified that idea as he submitted to God’s will and did not defy the Roman’s who eventually crucified him as the result of a corrupt Jewish leadership that seized him taking advantage of the betrayal of one of His best friends! Jesus didn’t hate. He didn’t resist. He didn’t want revenge. He didn’t fight back. He loved!
We have to be careful that in our 30,000 foot view we don’t imagine our selves as being different from the Jews. Test they had limited understanding of God. and yes we have a much more expansive understanding. We have the risen Lord! But we are the same in that we still want the way we live our lives to be about us, and have God bless them. We may not have carved and shaped idols that we worship but we have idols that we rely on instead of God. We have our bank accounts and our careers and our 401(k)s. We have our nice houses, we drive our nice cars and we buy the brand name stuff. We rely on our own efforts to shape us into the image that the world calls us to be: cool, rich, strong, sexy, and we want God to bless that life. We don’t make the poor and destitute a priority. We schedule our lives in ways that leave very little room for loving our neighbor.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t have careers, bank accounts, nice houses and such. Those are good things that can be helpful in the modern world we live in. Having those things can be helpful in loving our neighbor. Jesus didn’t condemn anyone for having stuff. He only challenged one person to give away their wealth when he saw that their wealth was what was keeping them from following Him. But the heart of that challenge is there for all of us though. How do I view the money I have? Do I trust God with my money? Do I believe that it is God’s anyway? Do I trust God to take care of me?
How do we allow God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to shape our lives and our hearts? How do we live out the vision that God has for humanity? Whatever appeals to my ego is probably not going to get me there. Whatever seems to offer me status in the eyes of my neighbor, is probably not going to get me there. The path of success that is marked with comfort, wealth and status is probably not the path to go down. Just a few minutes on FaceBook and it is clear how fragile we are in our faith. The products and gimmicks that advertise on there because they appeal to our ego. Products to grow hair, get rid of grey hair, get rid of wrinkles, have better sex, look younger, make more money. The filters that are used to make us look slimmer, younger, cuter. The glimpse of our lives that we show people that is only our successes. Facebook is driven by our ego. We become obsessed with how many likes our post received. How many people laughed at our comment. How many friends and followers we have. Jesus didn’t ever spend time counting how many followers He had!
If the path I take asks me to deflate my ego and status, I would then have more room for Christ to walk beside me. The path that requires I be in relation to others, giving to those who have nothing in return to give seems to offer more promise of shaping me to be like Christ. That path is unattractive because it has me walking unnoticed and appearing insignificant to those that my ego is begging to be noticed by.
Jesus says that I must “lose my life so that I may find it”. If that is true, then all I get to do is lose my life. I am not in control of finding it. I don’t get to pick the life I find, and then lose the life I have. I can only lose my life. Losing my life is an ongoing, never-ending venture. As God reveals to me what is not of Christ, I then repent, change my thinking, crucify that in me that is not like Christ. That is losing my life. But it is God who then replaces that empty space I have just made. I don’t get to replace it. What he will replace it with is a mystery. But I can trust that it is good.
Like the Israelites, we are all on a journey even when we think we have arrived. Like the Israelites we are going to eventually have to come to terms with how we sometimes have taken matters into our own hands while claiming the promises of God. Sometimes like them, we take what we want and write the story in our own favor. The God who is forever loving. Abounding in mercy and grace.(psalm 103:8) Patient and slow to anger not wanting anyone to perish.(2Peter 3:9) Calls his “favored people” to be the same. Even commanding his people not to murder.(Exodus 20:13) Yet they went in and slaughtered innocent men women and children in His name?! Seizing their land and claiming it for themselves. At some point they are going to have to come to terms that they acted on an incorrect understanding of God. Did God really tell them to go slaughter people and take their land? Because they worshipped foreign gods?! Didn’t Israel worship foreign gods?! Would you kill your own child if they went to a different church than you? Would you kill your own grand children because their parents explored other religions? Anyone who would kill their own children and grand children and burn their house down and steal their land in the name of God is going to jail! Yet we are really going to believe that that is what God does. We are all God’s children. The Israelites were God’s chosen people only to be an example of what it looks like for a nation to not have a king and trust in their military power but for a nation to have a God and trust in the one true God. Showing what it looks like when a nation welcomes the foreigner. Showing what it looks like for a nations solidarity to be cemented by prayer and faith.
I imagine if the day I stood in the waters of baptism and declared that Jesus is Lord and I will follow him wherever He goes, if Tim, the brother who baptized me said, “You will not be able to for He is holy and jealous and he will not forgive your sins and wrongdoings” and then dunked me. Ha! Would have been shocking but way more true! I would not have been able to understand what he just said. My understanding at the time only allowed me to see God as now being on my side. My understanding at the time was that I was doing what God wanted so God would be with me in whatever I wanted. Furthermore as a follower of Jesus, how could my intentions ever be anything but godly?! It was all I was capable of understanding. Now 34 1/2 years later I am able to see more and understand more because my false preconceived notions of God have been revealed for what they were. Here is the amazing thing about God, He loved me and was just as much with me as wrong as I was about my understanding of him 34 1/2 years ago as he does today in the many ways that I am still wrong about Him.
I still make God out to be who I want him to be. I don’t want to admit it but I have to believe it’s true. All the ways in which I don’t see God correctly are because I am wanting him to be how I want him to be. So if I choose to see God as loving and kind and patient and merciful towards my sinfulness, it is because I want to see him that way. But is he? Yes of course he is. But if I choose to see God in the opposite direction, he is angry at evil and punishes us wrongdoers and makes the guilty pay and humbles the proud, is he those things as well? Yes he is. It is hard for me to picture God as merciful, patient and kind and angered, just and punishing. It is hard because I have no reference point. Jesus exemplified that perfectly but I only know Jesus in a limited way. It is hard to understand God because it is hard to understand Love. God is love and yet God forgives, and shows mercy to the sinner and yet punishes the wrongdoer and does this all out of love. Learning to love is the journey that we are all on, whether we declare Jesus as Lord, Buddha, Muhammad, our political views, money, Nihilism, Atheism or whatever we believe is the ultimate end for all.
There is a lot about scripture, and how it talks about God, and how it communicates the writer’s understanding of God, even when flawed, that somehow we are still able to see truth about God and ourselves and that is what makes it inspired. So when we read v 19, we will never know for sure what Joshua was saying and how the Spirit was carrying the writer along to arrive at what is now written. But I do believe this, as good as our intentions are, and as sure as we feel that we are ready to wholeheartedly live our lives for Christ and forsake all that is not of God, and we should feel that way when we stand in the waters of baptism, we will fail. We all are still holding on to idols, preconceived notions of who God is and how He is going to work in our lives. And that’s ok, because the thing that really matters is that we are right where we need to be to take the first steps of the journey of following Christ and every step after that as well.