Choose this day whom you will serve (Josh 24:15)
When you face a change of lifestyle, a change in your living circumstances etc, there are always multiple decisions to make. Moving house involves all kinds of choices – do we really need this old chair any longer? Has anyone opened this book in the last decade? We couldn’t possibly live without that wardrobe … or could we?
Every time Muriel and I have moved we have had a clearout, so in theory there shouldn’t have been so much to work through this time. So why doesn’t it feel like that’s true!? What have we picked up along the way?
When Joshua was preparing to graduate to the immediate presence of the King, he left the Israelites with a challenge. Who are you going to serve? (Implication – ‘because you will certainly be serving someone’). Will it be the King of kings, who led you out of bondage and into your own land, who provided for you through all those years of wandering in the desert and then fought your battles for you, and blessed you with abundance in your new home? Or will it be some other ‘god’? Something that is served by the peoples around you – like gold, or comfort, or luxury, or power, or sex, or even family? Make a choice, people of God!
We all have to choose regularly and repeatedly to serve the King. When Joshua’s people insisted they would follow the Lord, he told them ‘well get rid of the old idols then!’ What old idols? How had they still got old idols, after following Jehovah for 40 years in the desert?
The answer can only be that they had picked them up along the way, presumably from other tribes and nations.
What gods might we have picked up along the way? What do we need to get rid of from our lives, if we are serious about serving the Lord Jesus?
Make that choice afresh today – as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
