“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 24:15
When we answer a question, most of the time we always choose a safe and easy choice. While we dwell on the middle standard, as long as it continues, we can find ourselves compromising almost everything. The final outcome would always be the easier but the dangerous one. Now, for our verse today, we are also given choices, and may we answer this question not in a manner of finding the safe ground but a firm one.
So, choose this day, whom you will serve? Is it God or evil? There’s no middle ground in this question. No safe answer and no shallow one. Either it is former or the latter. God does not want to share His glory with others and He is the one true God, there’s no other. Either we serve Him, or we are serving the evil. Although this verse was written in the Old Testament, this same message remained even until the New Testament.
Most of the prophets in the New Testament after the time of Jesus reminded us that either we are of God’s or we are the enemy. Now, this is just the same with our verse today. Joshua wants to knock some sense to the people during his time. Seems like the people forgot who delivered them out of Egypt and who made them victorious over their enemies. So, Joshua was so moved to remind the people of God about the one true God whom they should be serving.
Although Joshua was not giving them an option to choose, it was sort of a declaration that as for him and his house, he will serve the Lord. As much as he wanted to knock some sense into those people, he just wanted to use his life as an example. Thus, this verse is also a declaration of commitment to the Lord that he will serve Him with all his heart, mind, soul, spirit, and strength together with his family.
With this amazing example, we must also ask ourselves and decide today whom we will serve. Either God or evil? Either God or the gods we are making for ourselves? Again, God does not want to share His glory, He is a jealous God, and part of His command is to serve Him alone. This command though does not mean that God is selfish, but it just shows that He deserves and He is worthy of all our praises and adoration. After all, serving Him is not even all about what He can get from our service, but it is all about what we will get from that.
All of it is just all for our benefit, because, without us, God remains good, powerful, faithful, honorable, adored, and great. However, without Him we are nothing and without Him, we will be suffering under the bondage of sin and death. However, because of Jesus Christ, God’s beloved Son, we are saved and redeemed. So, to able ourselves to have that salvation is to believe in the work of Jesus Christ, and with that, we will be able to serve Him and follow Him.
However, we are susceptible to sin and we easily bite to temptation. That is why, through the verse from Joshua, we are reminded of who are we going to serve? We must decide and know that by now because true Christians follow and obey God faithfully through Jesus Christ. Now, if we are still in doubt and continuing to follow evil, then we are not serving God. It’s either one of them, there’s no middle ground.
Therefore, who will you serve? Choose this day, are you going to serve God or evil? May we all can say like Joshua that we and our family will serve the Lord. No one else and nothing else, only the Lord God who made the heavens and the earth. Only the Lord came to the world to save us from our sins. Only the Lord who remained inside us as He restored us and strengthened us in faith.
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