July 15, 2007 Sermon

As For Me and My House
Joshua 24 (excerpts)

Life confronts us with endless choices. Polo or button-down? Regular or unleaded? Respond to the insult with grace or lose your temper? Wolverines, Spartans or Don’t Care? Believe in Jesus or not?

Some choices do not matter. A few determine the course of our lives. Joshua confronted the Israelites with one such determinative choice. “Choose this day whom you will serve,” he commanded them, “whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” No preacher worth his or her salt can possibly address this passage without looking the congregation in the eyes and repeating these words: “Choose this day whom you will serve.”

As we fight our way through life we make compromises. We grow tired, discouraged. The idealism of youth wears away. The flame of brand-new faith in Jesus Christ dims. We find ourselves serving all sorts of masters, many of whom lead us away from God. Choose this day whom you will serve. Will you serve the gods of our culture? Will you spend your money on, and bend your will toward youth, power, celebrity, status? Or will you serve the Lord God Almighty? You cannot have it both ways. Joshua presented his people with an either/or decision. They could not serve the local fertility gods and Yahweh. Jesus noted you cannot serve God and money. We cannot serve the gods of our culture and God in Christ. Choose this day whom you will serve.

Joshua made his demand at the end. The end of his earthly life approached and he knew it. Just as importantly, the end of an era in Israelite history had come. In his speech leading up to this decisive moment, Joshua reviewed that history. So should we. We go back to Abraham, who lived perhaps 800 years earlier. God had called him to leave his native Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and go to a land that God would show him. Abraham believed God’s promises and went to the Promised Land (modern Israel), where he prospered. But his grandson Jacob fled a famine in that land with his twelve sons and their families. They went to Egypt and prospered again. But eventually the Hebrews became slaves. Hundred of years later Moses, one generation older than Joshua, led their escape from Egypt with God’s backing.

Moses led the Exodus, the escape of the Hebrews through the sea and across the wilderness. Moses died before entering the Promised Land, though not until he had designated Joshua to become his successor. Joshua led the Chosen People well. Under his guidance they fought a decades-long series of battles with the peoples who had moved into the Promised Land. Some they won and some they lost; still, by the end of Joshua’s life the Hebrews had established themselves in the land. But they had not completely removed all those other peoples. They moved in beside these foreigners and began worshipping their gods.

All this history stands behind Joshua’s command to choose whom to serve. Note that he demands that they choose not whom to worship, but whom to serve. Worshipping God is great, but serving God is an even larger category. It includes worship, obedience, sacrificial giving, and a host of other actions. In the Hebrew language he spoke that day, Joshua actually demanded that his people choose to “become slaves” of Yahweh. He demanded that they give themselves utterly into the hands of the One God. He demanded nothing less than total submission. Some made that choice; but as the next book in the Bible, Judges, reveals, many did not.

Do we do any better? Whom do you serve? Choose this day to serve the Lord God Almighty, as you know him in Christ Jesus.

It is always discouraging to track America’s viewing habits. Aside from the sheer ocean of time most of us—especially children—spend watching TV shows and movies, and playing video games, our preferences reveal uncomfortable truths about whom we serve. According to the Nielsen ratings service, the top-rated program of the past five years is American Idol. The name itself disgusts me. The show searches for the next celebrity that America will idolize. Its success proves that our culture does worship celebrity. Please do not think it finds the best singers. Every year the high school across the street turns out singers better than anything I have heard from the American Idol winners. No, the show turns out celebrities: people with a little bit of a voice, who have a certain look, and who sing with a horribly cloying brand of fake emotionalism.

Not that I, the father of serious young singers, am bitter.

Or consider one of the most popular new shows this summer: Age of Love. Its premise gives us one of the most twisted of all plot twists. A 30-something man must choose between twelve women, six of them in their twenties and six of them in their forties. Will our culture’s worship of youth inevitably cause him to choose one of the young beauties, or will he overcome the bias inherent in our society and choose one of the older, um, beauties? You see, all twelve women are impossibly gorgeous. They call this reality television but I can tell you I have never stood in a room with twelve real women of any age who looked like that. And I once helped run the tryouts for the Indiana University cheerleaders.

Let’s take a reality check. Whom do we serve really? Have the battles of our lives worn us down so far that we accept the compromises without even noticing? Have we fallen in with all the fawning our culture gives to youth, to celebrity, to power? Or have we stood firmly on the side of serving God in Christ, and God in Christ alone?

Joshua clearly meant what he said. He meant that our choices decide our place in God’s world, and he meant that he and his family would choose to serve the Lord God Almighty. Can we step up and make the same decisive commitment? We cannot—outside of the church. Joshua and the Hebrews had each other for support as they tried to remain faithful to their God in the midst of the temptations of the surrounding cultures. We need each other at least as profoundly.

I do not call upon the church to withdraw from the world out there. To begin with, I do not believe that the world is 100% evil, nor that God means for us to shun it. Jesus called upon us to be “in the world but not of it.” We must choose what parts of that world out there we will allow into our homes and our hearts. In this, the age of the Internet, those choices have only become more crucial. Without trying we can expose ourselves to false gods beyond the imagination of our great-grandparents.

Use, therefore, the fellowship of the church as your support, your crutch, as together we fight the battles of life in this world. The Israelites faced open warfare as they fought to regain their territory. We face a cultural war, a war that can and does kill souls. Please understand that I do not claim that watching American Idol automatically means you serve Satan. What I do claim is this: we need each other’s help, or we will never be able to resist the idols that compete for our allegiance. Serve God alone. Lean on each other and serve God in Christ alone.

Participate in the family life of the church. Participate in more than worship alone. Attend Bible study. Serve the needy with your brother and sister Christians. Soon we will add a serious involvement with the Safe Harbor mission in our local community. Be a part of that. Spend your time, your money and your effort on the ministry Christ gives to this church to perform. Serve God in Christ alone. Jesus called the church many things, among them the household of God. Let it be said truthfully that as for us and our house, we will serve the Lord.