At the end of the book of Joshua, Joshua was 110 years old—too old to lead the army of Israel into battle against the remaining Canaanite strongholds and so God told him that it was now up to each of the 12 tribes to conquer their own portion of land that the Lord had given to them.  

 

The problem was that by this time many of God’s people were tired of war—they didn’t want to fight anymore—all they wanted to do was to settle down in peace and comfort and enjoy what they had already taken possession of.  

 

And Joshua seeing this attitude of compromise and complacency beginning to settle over God’s people when there was still so much work left to be done—this was no time to rest the enemy had not been completely driven out as God had commanded. Joshua being a man of deep conviction and wholehearted obedience toward God knew that partial victory was not ‘good enough’—not for him and certainly not for God.

And so he gathers the nation together in Chapters 23 and 24 to give them his farewell address. In Chapter 23 he addresses the leaders of Israel one last time and the theme of the chapter is—

 

 

Of course this was something that Joshua had exemplified in his own life as a leader over many years of ministry.  There is something deeply moving and powerful to me about a man who has faithfully walked with God over all of the years of his life. 

Someone whose faith never suffered shipwreck or whose ministry for God was never tarnished by scandal or weakened through compromise or corrupted by greed.

 

A man who could come to the end of their life and say with all conviction, like Paul the Apostle, 

 

Joshua was that kind of man—and there’s something powerful about a man like that—he’s someone you can focus on and say,

It’s not impossible to live for God—he did it and if he could do it then by God’s grace I can do it. I don’t have to listen to the voices of those who feel because things are so bad morally and spiritually, so decadent and so dark that it’s impossible to really live for God in this present age.

 

I can look at the Daniels, the Pauls and the Joshuas, and those like them who stood up against the evil attitudes of their day, who stood fast against the current of the world and against the pressure of the enemy and said, “I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to live for God.  I’m going to stay faithful because I love God more than I love my sin and myself.”

 

Joshua was that kind of a man; and when a man like that speaks I want to hear what he has to say.  And so in chapter 24 Joshua now brings these final exhortations in chapters 23-24 to their climax and conclusion—

 

I want you to notice that Joshua didn’t say “choose for yourselves this day if you will serve some god…”  

 

It’s not a question of whether or not you will serve some god—the question is whether or not you will serve the one and only true and living God—the Lord God Almighty who made the heavens and the earth.  You see not everyone serves the Lord God Almighty but everyone serves some god.

 

Joshua didn’t say,  “Choose this day if you will serve” he said, “Choose this day whom you will serve” —and then he quickly added—“as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Your god is the passion that controls your life.

 

 

Many people are controlled by money. Money is their god. They live for it; it’s what motivates and drives their lives. It’s all they think about and it’s all they want.  They work sixteen to eighteen hours a day devoting themselves to their god to gain more and more money.

 

 

There are many people today who worship pleasure. Their whole life is devoted to the pursuit of pleasure.  That’s all they care about, it’s all they’re interested in.  They only work because they have to have money to buy the things or do the things that will bring them pleasure.  We could also add those who are obsessed with and ‘worship’ the concept of sexual pleasure.

 

 

There are many today who absolutely worship the concept of power.  They are consumed with a desire for power—whether it be power in the corporate world, the political world or the underworld—they are obsessed with a desire for power—it’s what they live for, it’s what they worship, it’s their god.

 

 

There are many today who worship the god of partying. This would apply to young adults mostly who seem to be preoccupied with a desire to party, to get drunk and have a good time. 

 

And of course we could add to these those who worship the god of vanity, intellect etc. Now when Joshua challenged the people of his day to choose who they were going to serve; we read in v.16—

 

We read that and say,  

—however Joshua knew better.  He knew they were pledging with their lips but not really with their hearts and lives.  You see by this time they had already turned to other gods in the privacy of their homes and hearts.

 

 

But Joshua said to the people, “You cannot serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God…

 

In other words Joshua is saying to them,

 

 

 

And the people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord!” So Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord for yourselves, to serve Him.” And they said, “We are witnesses!” “Now therefore,” he said, “put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord God of Israel.” And the people said to Joshua, “The Lord our God we will serve, and His voice we will obey!”

 

Unfortunately, we don’t have to look far to see that the nation didn’t follow through on their promise to serve and obey the Lord—all we have to do is turn the page to the book of Judges to see that.  Right after Joshua’s death the people turned their backs completely on God and began to worship and serve the gods of the Canaanites.

 

This began a long slow downward spiral in Israel’s history until God could take no more and He had the people carried away into captivity.   Paul said, 

 

America was founded by God as a nation under God but is now a nation that has turned its back on God. We have filled our lives with idols and God will not wait forever for us to repent. Hopefully we’ll learn from their mistakes and make better choices when confronted with choosing between living for and serving the true God or the false gods of this world.

 

Hopefully, like Joshua, we also will say,