After rehearsing all of God’s faithfulness – His choosing of Abraham, His deliverance from Egypt, His protection from enemies, His provision of the Promised Land – Joshua issues a challenge: Choose. Choose this day whom you will serve.
This isn’t a cute verse to put on a decorative plaque. This is a confrontation. Joshua is saying: You’ve heard what God has done. You’ve seen His faithfulness. Now you have to decide. Are you all in or not?
Notice that Joshua doesn’t give them the option of serving no one. The question isn’t whether you’ll serve, but whom you’ll serve. We’re all worshiping something. We’re all giving our ultimate loyalty to something. The question is what.
Maybe it’s your career. You’re always chasing the next promotion, the next achievement, the next level of success. Maybe it’s financial security. You’re constantly worried about money, always calculating, always anxious about having enough. Maybe it’s comfort. You make all your decisions based on what’s easiest, what’s most convenient, what requires the least sacrifice.
Maybe it’s relationships. You’ll do anything to avoid conflict, anything to keep people happy, anything to maintain peace even if it means compromising your convictions. Maybe it’s your reputation. You’re obsessed with what people think about you, how you’re perceived, how you compare to others.
Whatever it is that you think about most, worry about most, organize your life around most – that’s what you’re serving. That’s your god.
Joshua’s challenge is this: Stop serving those things and serve the Lord. Not in addition to those things. Not alongside those things. Instead of those things.
This is the call to exclusive loyalty. And it’s not easy. It will cost you something. It will require you to say no to some things, to walk away from some things, to sacrifice some things. But Joshua’s declaration rings through the ages: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
The question today is the same question Joshua asked Israel: Whom will you serve?