Choose This Day

As Joshua approached the end of his life, he summoned Israel to Shechem to renew their commitment to their King, Yahweh. Shechem was the very place where, centuries earlier, God had promised Abraham, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Gen. 12:7, NIV). If Israel had remained faithful, much of the bloodshed of Joshua could have been avoided. God had promised at the Exodus to drive out the nations: “And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you” (Ex. 23:28). Yet Israel’s lack of trust, which had already lengthened their wilderness wandering, again limited how much God could act for them, leading to protracted human battles.

Nevertheless, now that the conquest was complete and the land had been apportioned, it was time for Joshua to call Israel to a decision: Would they serve the Lord, who had redeemed them, or drift into the idolatry of the nations around them? Joshua’s call is among the most memorable in Scripture: “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . .” This call is the culmination of a broader charge:

“Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord! And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of 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” (Joshua 24:14, 15).

The charge is just as timely today as when it was first spoken, because, like the people of Israel, we live in a land filled with rival gods: the pursuit of career success and wealth, the idolization of pleasure and beauty, the exaltation of individualism and personal authenticity, or the fervor of nationalism and tribal politics, to name just a few. By studying Joshua’s charge, we can rediscover how to be faithful to Yahweh in the midst of rival gods.

“Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth”

Joshua begins by highlighting two essential ingredients to true worship: sincerity and truth, paralleling Jesus’ description of true worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).

In the Hebrew Bible the word for sincerity, also translated “blameless,” first describes Noah’s walk with God (Gen. 6:9) and later God’s call of Abraham (Gen. 17:1). Thus, in calling Israel to sincere worship, Joshua is calling Israel to follow these exemplars of faith who displayed courageous loyalty to Yahweh amid near universal apostasy. Church history has added to that list several more names of faithful men and women, from the apostles to the reformers and our Adventist pioneers, to whom we can look for encouragement.

The word for “truth” is also translated “faithfulness” and is certainly fitting for both Noah and Abraham. But the ultimate exemplar of faithfulness isn’t Abraham, Paul, or Luther—note the Pentateuch first uses the word “faithfulness” to describe God Himself (Gen. 24:27). Our faithfulness to God is always a response to His faithfulness to us! As Ellen White observed, God “takes no pleasure in a slavish obedience. He desires that the creatures of His hands shall love Him because He is worthy of love.”[1] Before issuing the call to serve God, Joshua 24 rehearses the many ways God has been faithful to Israel. The gospel story gives ultimate expression to God’s faithfulness in Christ. If we want to promote faithfulness among God’s people today, we should focus on telling and retelling the story of God’s faithfulness.

Every day we put off choosing Yahweh, the more we learn to tune out the conviction of the Spirit, and we remain trapped in our habits.

“Put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord! And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord . . .”

What a jarring statement! How could serving the Lord, the source of everything good, ever be judged as evil?

Here we see the tragic outworking of the deception in Genesis 3. In the garden God granted humanity true freedom in fellowship with Him. But Adam and Eve, deceived by the serpent, accepted a distorted reality. As Creator, God saw and rightly judged what was good. But our first parents seized that prerogative for themselves, seeking to be “like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5).

Eve judged the fruit that God had forbidden as good in her own eyes. Similarly, Adam took God’s place in judging it. But by misjudging the goodness of the fruit, they misjudged the character of God. If the fruit was desirable, then God, who had forbidden it, must not truly desire their good. Thus, by calling evil good, they embraced the lie that God is not.

This inversion of the moral order continues in our own cultural depravities. What God has forbidden is celebrated as good and liberating, while obedience to Him is ridiculed as narrow and regressive. Thus, evil is called good and good evil. Joshua reminds us that such distortions are not new. Since the Fall sin has twisted human perception. Like every generation before us, we must decide whether to trust God’s character and Word or elevate ourselves to His place in our moral judgments.

“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . .”

Given the stakes, Joshua calls Israel to an immediate decision. After all, indecision is already a form of decision, for delay is itself allegiance to something other than God. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal recognized this. After arguing that one must wager for or against God, he maintained that this is not a decision you can put off: “You must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then?”[2]

While some may claim the label of agnostic, the way we orient our lives each day either deepens our worship of the living God or furthers our drift away from Him. Our actions form habits that gradually reshape our brains, so that the longer we persist, the harder change becomes. Thus, every day that we put off choosing Yahweh, the more we learn to tune out the conviction of the Spirit, and we remain trapped in our habits. Therefore, Joshua presses Israel, and us, not to put off the decision for another day, lest we find ourselves unable to break free.

“Whether the gods your fathers served . . . or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.”

There are alternatives to serving Yahweh: Israel can look back to the gods of their ancestors beyond the Euphrates or around to the gods of the Amorites in Canaan. For us living in secular societies, we might think the choice is between worshipping God or nothing, but we humans are worshipping beings; we cannot help giving our ultimate loyalty somewhere. Each of us is animated by a desire. The ultimate end of that desire is the god we serve.

The cultural critic David Foster Wallace captured this insight in his famous commencement address, stating: “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”[3] If it is not God, it will be career, money, sex, comfort, power, or ideology. But these false gods of our age, like those of Canaan, promise fulfillment and security but ultimately devour us. As Wallace warned: “Pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”[4] Ambition and pleasure are part of God’s good design of creation, but when we elevate them to ultimate ends, we ask too much of them. Despite the billions spent in marketing dollars saying otherwise, they were never meant to serve as our ultimate source of fulfillment. Rather, we were made for an eternal covenant relationship with Yahweh, the living God. As Augustine reminds us, our souls will remain restless until they find that end. The only one to whom we should give all—all our desire, all our hope, all our pursuit—is the One who gave all for us.

The only one to whom we should give all—all our desire, all our hope, all our pursuit—is the One who gave all for us.

“But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Joshua does not wait to see how the crowd will respond. Rather, he leads by example.

Pascal insightfully observed, “When everything is moving at once, nothing appears to be moving, as on-board a ship. When everyone is moving toward depravity, no one seems to be moving. But if someone stops, he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.”[5] Amid Israel’s continual drift toward apostasy, Joshua chose to be a “fixed point.” So too we are called to secure ourselves against our contemporary cultural drift and the reactionary countercurrents by anchoring ourselves in the solid rock of Christ.

While faith is deeply personal, Joshua reminds us that it is not merely individual but communal. No one is an island. We play a role in shaping the faith of our households, our churches, and the communities we inhabit. We do this by resisting the rival gods of our age, choosing to exercise sincere faithfulness to Yahweh in response to His faithfulness toward us.

We choose faithfulness to Yahweh by resisting the rival god of Hurry, prioritizing daily worship and Sabbath rest, as Yahweh rested from His creative and redemptive work.

We choose faithfulness to Yahweh by resisting the rival god of Distraction, turning off our devices to hear the Spirit and attend to those God has placed around us, as Yahweh ever lives to make intercession for us.

We choose faithfulness to Yahweh by resisting the rival god of Bitterness, extending grace and pursuing reconciliation in broken relationships, as Yahweh forgave us and restored our relationship with Him.

We choose faithfulness to Yahweh by resisting the rival god of Cynicism, thanking God daily and speaking of His goodness in our conversations, as Yahweh has filled our lives with steadfast love and faithfulness.

We choose faithfulness to Yahweh by resisting the rival god of Self-Interest, opening our homes in hospitality and going out to serve those in need, as Yahweh welcomed us when we were strangers and gave Himself as a servant for our salvation.

We choose faithfulness to Yahweh by resisting the rival god of Consumerism, practicing generosity and faithful stewardship, as Yahweh has lavished upon us every good gift and entrusted us with His creation.

We choose faithfulness to Yahweh by resisting the rival god of Individualism, gathering with the church to worship and submitting ourselves to accountability within the body of Christ, as Yahweh has called us into covenant community.

We choose faithfulness to Yahweh by resisting the god of Tribalism, refusing to be divided by polarized politics, as Yahweh has reconciled us through the cross into one new people.

Through such intentional practices, we resist the gods of our age and bear witness with Joshua: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

[1] Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy (Mountain View, Calif: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1911). p. 541.

[2] Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1660).

[3] “This Is Water,” Kenyon College 2005 commencement address.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Pascal.