Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Joshua 24:14-24
Pastor: Pastor Berg
Sermon Date:  September 24, 2023

When God created the world, he made mankind the crown of his creation. Man is distinguished from the rest of the creation by the way that he was created. Man was created with an immortal soul. Man was created with a mind that was perfectly in tune with God’s will. However, man was not created with instincts that determined his behavior; he was created with a free will.  This meant that God gave man the ability, the brains to make decisions, to make choices. God didn’t create man to be robotic in his behavior. We can see that in how God treated man. He gave man an opportunity to choose to serve him. God put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden not to tempt man to sin, but to give him an opportunity to serve. It was his choice. That opportunity ended tragically for man. He didn’t choose wisely. His decision not to serve God has affected each one of us. We no longer have the opportunity to choose to serve God; at least not by nature like Adam and Eve did. But God didn’t let Adam’s poor choice ruin his life forever. God gave Adam a second chance by promising to send Jesus to save him.  Adam now had another choice to make. Would he serve God, who loved him enough to save him or would he choose to serve the devil whom he had already chosen once? That is the same choice that faced the Israelites in our text for this morning and that is the same choice that we face today. Our Stewardship focus for the next month is going to focus on Time. There’s a time for everything. We have a choice when it comes to how we use that time. So what is going to be our priority? Whom are we going to serve with our time?

Joshua is standing before the children of Israel as they stand safely in the Promised Land, the very land God had been saying would be theirs for hundreds of years. Even though they didn’t deserve it, God chose them to be his people. He preserved them and saved them. And so, it is simply a response to God’s saving action, God’s love that he has already shown to them that Joshua urges when he says, “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly and faithfully. Remove the gods that your fathers served in the region across the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if you see no benefit in serving the Lord, then choose for yourselves today whomever you will serve—whether the gods that your fathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household—we will serve the Lord!”” 

The children of Israel had seen the love of God. They had seen the evidence of his love for them in the way that he kept his promise to give them the land of Canaan.  God had chosen them to be his people. Even though these people had time and time again rejected God’s love, he had remained faithful to them and continued to love them. The choice that Joshua gives them today is no different than the choice that God gave to Adam and Eve after they had sinned and he promised to save them. It was a choice to respond to God’s love that he had already demonstrated to them. It was a choice to listen to the Holy Spirit who was already residing in their hearts.  The same is true for us today. All people are born in sin and enemies of God. Paul tells us that we are dead in our transgressions and sins. Jesus tells us that we did not choose him but he chose us! The fact is that we can’t choose God until he first chooses us! As dead, hostile, enemies of God, we want nothing to do with God. If we were given the choice, we wouldn’t choose God. Apart from God’s love and goodness, we have no power or desire to choose him. But God has indeed chosen us.  He chose us before the world began. He chose to bring us to faith through the preaching of his Word. He chose to use his Word to tell us about how he sent Jesus to suffer and die and rise in order to make us his children. God chose to do all of this without any promise or payment from us. He did it simply out of his love. 

There are many in the world today who think that they are choosing Christ! They think that they can ask him to come into their hearts. They think by choosing Christ they are participating in their salvation. In essence what they are doing is trying to take credit that rightfully belongs to God. They are trying to make their faith into a good work that they are doing for God rather than seeing faith as a gift of God. And they’re going to try and lure you into the same way of thinking. But our salvation is not something that we can choose! God must choose us first, and he has! And because he has, we now have a choice to prioritize him, to serve him. It’s with that in mind that we look again at what Joshua says.

 “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly and faithfully. Remove the gods that your fathers served in the region across the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if you see no benefit in serving the Lord, then choose for yourselves today whomever you will serve—whether the gods that your fathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household—we will serve the Lord!” “The people responded by saying, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord in order to serve other gods! For the Lord our God, he is the one who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, where we were slaves. He is the one who performed these great signs right before our eyes and protected us on the whole journey that we made and among all the peoples through whom we passed. The Lord drove out of our presence all the peoples and the Amorites who were living in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God!”” 

Joshua presents these children of Israel with a choice: either serve the Lord or serve false gods. That was it.  There was no in between, there was no riding the fence.  It’s one or the other. Jesus said very much the same thing when he said, “he who is not with me is against me.”  This had been a challenge for Israel ever since God called to Abraham. Abraham’s relatives worshiped other gods for a time; in Egypt these people built their own golden calf to worship even after seeing the wonders of God; even shortly before the conquest of the land of Canaan, they had fallen into idolatry. And so Joshua challenges the people. Put away once and for all your false gods and idols. Put them away and recommit yourselves to the Lord. Prioritize! Choose who you will serve! That’s the choice that lay before them. Not to choose to believe, but to choose to serve the God who had saved them or to reject him. It was a call from Joshua to the sanctified hearts of Israel. Let your light shine, O Israel!  Let your service to the Lord display the faith that God has created in your hearts.  

How do the people respond? Do they cower in fear and say, “We’ll serve because God is so powerful and scary?”  They weren’t motivated by fear to serve so that’s not their response. They were, however, motivated by the Gospel and that’s exactly what they point to as their reason to respond in obedience. Look again to what they say, “For the Lord our God, he is the one who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, where we were slaves. He is the one who performed these great signs right before our eyes and protected us on the whole journey that we made and among all the peoples through whom we passed. The Lord drove out of our presence all the peoples and the Amorites who were living in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God!”   The love of God demonstrated throughout their lives was their motivation for obedience. He is their God!  God has made them his own. 

 It’s that same gospel that motivates us to choose to serve our Lord. The same God who chose the Israelites to be his people has chosen us to be the new Israel. We are indeed God’s people. We have been saved just as miraculously as the Israel of old. Our captor wasn’t Egypt, but the slavery to sin. Our enemies weren’t the peoples of Jericho or Ammon, but death and the devil.  And God has freed us from our captor, he has defeated all of our enemies. He has demonstrated his love for us throughout our lives. It’s Time to Prioritize. Who are you going to serve? Are you going to serve the God who has done all these great things for you or are you going to serve the idols of self and wealth and world? The same that was true for the Israel of old is true for us as the New Israel. There is no riding the fence or middle ground. We are either serving the Lord or we’re not.  And every aspect of our lives is the proof of that service.  With every decision that we make, we are choosing whether or not that decision is a God-pleasing, God-serving decision.

Have you ever heard the hog and hen story? Both hog and hen were walking past a church and noted the pastor’s sermon title on the outside bulletin board. It read: “What can we do to help the poor?” As hogs and hens are wont to do, they entered into earnest conversation over the question as they continued on their way. At last, the hen had a bright idea: “I’ve got it!” She cackled, “We can help the poor by giving them a ham and eggs breakfast!” “Oh, no you don’t,” shot back the hog, “for you, that only means a contribution, but for me, it means total commitment.” The hog was right. That is Joshua’s point—there can be no chicken’s way out; we must go “whole hog” for Jesus.

The children of Israel chose to serve the Lord, at least in their words. The hard part was putting it into practice!  The same is true for us as the new Israel. We have all made our choice. Now can we put it into practice?  That’s definitely the hard part. That’s something that we constantly need to work on. And with the Lord’s help, we can serve him. He chose us to be his own. We address him every week as OUR FATHER. Our Father has promised to help us. Our Father has urged us to pray to him boldly and confidently asking for anything in the name of Jesus. Our Father has sent us the Holy Spirit to help us in our daily walk as we seek to serve the Lord.  It’s Time to Prioritize. God has already chosen you, chosen one, now choose to serve the Lord!  AMEN