Who Will You Serve?

#16. April 20, 2015

2015 Devotional. Our goal for these weekly devotionals is to grow in humility and to grow spiritually by memorizing selected passages, putting them into context, and by applying them to our daily living. These passages are taken from: “100 Verses Every Christian Needs to Know” by Freeman-Smith. All passages are from the NIV.

Joshua 24:15

¹⁵ But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Joshua 24 is about the renewal of the covenant that God made with Abraham and with all the people of Israel by Moses receiving the “Ten Words, The Ten Commandments”. Reviewing the history of God’s grace to His people, Joshua begins with Abraham and his line from Ur beyond the Euphrates. He continues with God’s care for the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, their offspring’s salvation from Egypt and God’s care of His people in the wilderness. Now they are standing in the “Promised Land” and Joshua challenged them v. 15. Who will you serve?

We know that the god’s of Ur came along with Abraham’s company and were still around with Jacob’s people and I suspect were still with some of the people standing there in front of Joshua. Will you serve them Joshua asks? Or will you serve the god’s of the people among whom you now live? Joshua makes the people choose and sets the direction God wants for them. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”. All of the people answered. Yes! We will serve the Lord!

We know from Scripture that it turned out badly for Israel. It is encouraging for us to see great faithfulness and great blessings, King David and Solomon the most obvious examples. There is also the discouragement of apostasy, like King Ahab and the Kings of Samaria after God split the Kingdom of Solomon and the Kings of Judah who did evil in God’s sight. In the end we read in 2 Ch. 36:15-16 “the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.” First Samaria and second Jerusalem were sent into exile.

But after 70 years of Judah’s exile God brings back to the land a remnant in order to fulfill His promise to Abraham and to David and fulfill His purpose of bring His people, His creation, back to Himself through Jesus Christ His Son. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior we are standing where Israel stood in Joshua’s day, we are standing in the Promised Land, our life of service ahead of us. The very same question faces us: Whom will you serve? Will you take the easy way out? Follow the trends of our culture or will you follow Jesus? Will you allow the secular culture you are familiar with to set direction for your new life or allow the radical and controversial actions of Jesus to set direction for you? It is a personal decision that we must make every day. In faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit we must answer: “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”