Joshua Series Conclusion: Choosing Whom to Serve

Choose this day who you will serve.

Famous words from the end of Joshua, the end of his life, that has inspired many hymns, many poems, and just inspired many people as we think about that question. You know, there comes a time in each of our lives when we are faced with this question, and we have to make the choice in a big way at one point or another. Which kingdom will we serve and pledge our allegiance to, Christ and His kingdom, or the kingdom of this world and my own selfish desires?

Who will I serve? And it, but it's probably a question that we need to answer on a daily basis because we need that daily reminder of who we are and who we belong to. And here in the book of Joshua, this is ultimately the question that the children of Israel are faced with, and we're going to get to that. But when you think of this day, choose this day who you will serve, it brings the thought of today.

And Scripture talks a lot about that, about today, you know, that we don't focus so much on the future or on the past, but we focus on today. And the important thing is what is going on today. What am I choosing today, this day?

So while this is a very important question to answer, like I said, at some point in our lives in a big way, I think it's very important to answer it today.

So this is part eight in the Joshua series that we've been going through, and also the conclusion to the series. We're going to be covering chapters 10 to 24, so hang on.

We'll get there.

I will just mainly be highlighting certain events and then focusing on the last couple chapters. I don't think anyone here wants to sit and listen to, like, half of those chapters or more are just names, names and more names.

Names of people, names of tribes, names of cities and places that they inherited. So we will not be going over that. You're welcome to go read that if you want to.

But my main objective this morning is kind of to step back a little bit in the book of Joshua and try to get a big picture view. It's, it's, I don't know, what I found about this book is you kind of get into it and you're reading about how they went into this city and they destroyed everyone and left, you know, and go to the next city and destroy everyone and this king and that king and the next king. And you kind of get bogged down in that detail, like, man, this is just gruesome. This is kind of discouraging.

But I think it's important to step back and see why. Why is this happening? What is God trying to accomplish here? And there is actually something very important that He's doing. It's a very important time in the history of the children of Israel. If you think about it, they've never had their own land. They've never really had their own country. They've never had anything to call their own. They, you know, kind of form in the country of Egypt. Well, before that, I guess they were already, in a sense, a nation, but a family. They go into Egypt and that's where they kind of explode into a nation, but they're enslaved in Egypt and they're freed from Egypt.

They wander around, wander around for years and years. And so they are finally getting a homeland. They are finally getting an inheritance. And so this is a very big deal for them and for God because He's accomplishing more than one thing at the same time.

So hopefully we can learn some lessons through this.

If you remember back in chapter five, just before conquering Jericho, just before kind of the invasion started, like they had, they had, I think, crossed the Jordan at this point. And Joshua was kind of out there walking around. It looked like, it seems like he was out there surveying Jericho, probably wondering how this is going to go down, how are we going to take on a big city like this. And he has this encounter with this person or this angel who told him that he has now come the chief captain of the host or army of the Lord.

And just the fact that someone like this has shown up on the scene tells us that something big is going on here. This isn't just a small invasion happening. It's actually God's very involved in this. And He sends, I don't know, they say it could have been the archangel Michael. I don't know, it could be Jesus himself.

Because Joshua, He tells Joshua to take his shoes off his feet because the ground is holy. So I don't know what all that means. But this was a big deal. This was the invasion of Canaan was a big deal. And God was getting involved right from the get-go. And He shows up His army. He said, you know, I'm here. And obviously that means the army's here.

And we're going to, we have some work to do.

And so from the get-go, we see that the invasion of Canaan is at least accomplishing two things. Number one, the children of Israel are claiming their inheritance. I already mentioned that. This is the land promised to the Israelites clear back in the time of Abraham. When Abraham was called out of his country, he had this promise that there was, there was, he was going to a place that was promised him. Abraham never got to see that. But this is where this is the children of Abraham, the children of Isaac and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A place for them to live and claim as their own.

And so one of the big responsibilities of Joshua and the people is to conquer this land. Obviously, they can't just walk in and say, okay, we're going to live here. Man, we, you know, we, this is, this is a great place to live. We got all kinds of nations and cities and people and giants and who knows what all that, that's got to be dealt with.

The second big picture, the second big thing going on here is that God is using this invasion to bring judgment on the nations of Canaan. And instead of sending fire and brimstone to destroy them like He did Sodom and Gomorrah, God could have easily done that. He could have just cleared the way in front of the people, just wiped them out. I mean, God obviously has that ability. He's done it before.

He chooses to use Joshua and the people to go in and just completely destroy these nations.

But they're not on their own. God is going before them. And many times He uses supernatural intervention to help them. And that's, that's an important part of this. Joshua told the people over and over, he's like, you know, and I look at it, I'm like, man, these people did a lot of fighting.

I mean, talk about just hand-to-hand combat and blood and whatever. Like these people did a lot of fighting. But, you know, at kind of the end of it, Joshua's looking back and telling the people, you know, God just kind of went in front of you and did a lot of this for you. Like really, in His mind at least, like God had just about done it for them.

But at the same time, they had done a lot as well. And God used a lot of supernatural. So it's not like God didn't do anything. It's not like He stepped back and said, okay, you guys go in there, wipe everyone out and claim your land. He actually did help them. So how did God intervene for Joshua and the people? What did this divine intervention look like? Well, we know the one. He knocked over the walls of Jericho.

And I mean, I don't know how He did that. They walked around this city and the walls fall down. Like, did an earthquake happen or what happened there? Was God's army there somehow tearing this down? I don't know what happened, but this was divine.

There was, there was nothing that Joshua and the people did except obey and follow the command to walk around this city. They had, they did not do anything to get the walls to fall down. That was something that God took care of. The sun and the moon stand still. This happens in chapter 10. We're going to read those verses, but this is a very important, just kind of, it's almost like a sideline in the story in the book of Joshua, but it's a very important part of it. Something that like never happened, never happens that here we are, the sun and the moon stand still. So let's read that. This is in chapter 5, verse 12.

Then Joshua spoke to the Lord on the day God delivered the Amorites into the hands of Israel. So this is just after, you know, the Giving Knights had come and deceived them and kind of made peace with them. And God allowed that. They made a covenant with them that they wouldn't kill them.

Well, now all these other nations around there, they saw what was going on. Giving apparently was a very sizable place with a big army. And so they decided, well, we won't mess with the children of Israel, but we'll go take out Gibeon. So all these other nations come in and they siege the city of, I guess Gibeon's the city, name of the city.

And they call for Joshua and the children of Israel to come and help them. And so this is, this is kind of what was going on there. And I think there were like five kings came in with all their armies.

So they were crushed before the face of the sons of Israel. For Joshua said, let the sun stand still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Agilon. So the sun and moon stood still until God brought vengeance against their enemies. The sun stood still in the midst of heaven and did not set in the west until the end of one day.

Now we tend to think, well, okay, the sun always sets at the end of one day, but this was like, in my mind, I think it was 24 hours, a 24-hour period where the sun just like stayed bright. There was no day like that day, either before or after, that God should hear a man because the Lord joined in war with Israel.

So God shows up and He joined in war with Israel and He granted Joshua's request to keep it daylight, like to keep the sun out. And it says it stood still. Like, I don't know what that did to the universe. I have no idea what that does. Like if everything stops, like what else stopped? I don't know.

But this, it stood still until the enemies were defeated.

And that, that worked in Joshua's favor because they wanted to get this battle over with and taken care of it and taken care of. And I guess it would have been hard to do at nighttime.

We have often noted that Joshua is a type of Jesus. And this particular incident could very well be looking ahead to the crucifixion when Jesus is on the cross. And it says the sun was darkened and God brought vengeance on the powers of darkness. Like a lot happened in that moment. And we look back here in the book of Joshua, a lot happened when that sun stood still. Joshua and the people with the Lord's help crushed five armies. Like these were big armies, five different kings. And these kings went and ran and hid in a cave and they blocked up the cave until all the fighting was over. Then they went and dragged him out and killed him.

But thinking of Jesus, Joshua as a type of Jesus, Jesus hung on the cross and a lot was going on in that moment. He wasn't just there dying for no reason. He was dying. And the powers, I think they're in a song somewhere that says, you know, the powers of hell did their best, but they were defeated.

All right, God sent hailstones from heaven. We're told in that this instance that more died from the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with a sword in the battle. And this was part of almost that same battle. I don't know, a little before or after, but kind of it's all kind of coming at once. All these armies keep coming in at once. And God sends hailstones. I mean, just rained them out from heaven.

And so again, it says more, you know, died from the hailstones. So this was divine intervention. And then we have hornets. And I don't know, we were not told specifically when this happened until chapter 24 when Joshua at the end of his life and he's kind of giving them these reminders of what God did for them. And he tells them that God sent hornets before them to drive out the 12 kings of the Amorites. I don't even know when that happened. It's not recorded in the book specifically, but it's just we know here from Joshua that it happened that God drove out these, some of these armies by sending hornets.

The people were given supernatural strength. I think this is probably one of the biggest things through this whole time. And I don't know how long, I don't know how long this period was of fighting, possibly years. Because I mean, they would go north and south and, you know, east and all these armies would show up. It said, you know, there were like multitudes of horses and chariots and they would go out and fight for days.

You know, and sometimes destroy the cities, completely burn them, sometimes not. But without supernatural strength, I don't think Joshua and the people could have accomplished this. There was some kind of almost superhuman strength going on there. They went up against army after army and fought battle after battle, fighting until the enemy was completely destroyed.

Joshua reminded the people later that one of you chased a thousand because the Lord your God fought for you. That's not possible to do just a, just, you know, normally. And that's your Samson. So again, we have this cooperation between God and the people to accomplish the mission. God could have went and wiped everyone out before they got there, but He chose to have Joshua and the people involved, very involved. And we'll come back to that later. But now we finally come to the end of the fighting. And we have in chapter 11, verse 23, this verse. So Joshua took all the land as the Lord commanded Moses. And Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel by division according to their tribes.

Then the land rested from war. It was finally over. There was even after this different small things that they had to go and either drive people out, but no other like really big major battles where they just completely destroyed everyone.

Joshua conquered 31 kings and their nations. I was going to put the list up. I didn't of the kings in all their cities. He lists them out. Well, first he says, well, here's what Moses did. And Moses has like two or something, two kings like Og and Bashan, Bashan or however you say that. We always, he always talks about that, how, you know, these, they fought them when they were still out in the wilderness. And then for Joshua, there's this whole list of 31, 31 kings and nations that were destroyed, completely destroyed.

And even after that, you know, there were some nations on the outskirts kind of of Canaan that had to be driven out, but it appears that they weren't completely destroyed for whatever reason God showed mercy to them. And unfortunately, they ended up in some ways becoming snares.

But this was no small feat. Joshua had really, really worked hard to get this all accomplished. I want to note Caleb, who along with Joshua had been sent into Canaan by Moses to spy out the land and out of the 12 spies who were sent, only he and Joshua had come back with a good report and encouraged the people to go in and conquer the land. I think you all should know that story. When the 12 spies went in originally to the promised land, you know, they come back, I think there were 12 of them representing each of the tribes.

And only Joshua and Caleb were like, let's do it. Let's go in. We can do this. We can, we can definitely conquer this and take it out. And the other 10 spies, you know, gave this awful report. And there's giants and we can't do it. They're going to squash us. And they basically caused a big rebellion there. And that's kind of when God said, well, this, they're not going in. This generation isn't going in.

And Caleb and Joshua were the only two men from their generation who were allowed to enter the promised land. So Caleb, I'm just noting Caleb as a man of courage because of what he does here.

Hopefully, you guys know this story. So I'm going to read what Caleb did. Caleb comes to Joshua. Okay. They have conquered these 31 kings and nations, you know, fighting, just fighting, fighting, fighting in wars and battles. Now Caleb comes to Joshua and he says, you know, the Lord promised me an inheritance here. He wants to claim that. And he says in verse 12, I didn't even know it's a chapter. I think, I don't know if it's chapter 12. Now therefore, I ask you for this mountain as the Lord said in that day, since you heard this word in that day. And he's talking about back when him and Joshua had been faithful, the faithful spies.

For now the Anakim are there with large and fortified cities. Therefore, if the Lord is with me, I will utterly destroy them as the Lord said to me.

This guy is 85 years old. All right. This is an 85-year-old man. He's coming to Joshua and he's saying, I want that mountain. I want that part of the land where the Anakim or the giants live. And he says not only that, but he plans on going in there and destroying them.

And I don't think he was going to do it by himself, but basically him and his family or whatever. And he wants that as his inheritance. And these are giants. These are people of war that they must have been kind of holed up there in the mountain in their fortresses.

I'm not sure why they hadn't gone in and destroyed them yet up to this point. But Caleb goes in and destroys them. And he claimed the land as his own and for his children. Man of courage and faithfulness who never gave up on God's promises. There he was. He was part of, he had to wander around in the wilderness for 40 years just like everyone else, but he made it into the promised land because of his faith and obedience.

But he didn't stop there. Like he could have said, wow, I made it in. You know, I'm done. You guys do the fighting. Like I'm too old for this. But he just jumps in here and goes in and actually takes out these awful giants. We're not going to get into that. I don't know that much about them, but I don't think they were an easy bunch to go after.

So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give to their fathers and he took possession of it and dwelled in it. The Lord gave them rest all around as he had sworn to their fathers and no one rose up against them from all their enemies. The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hands. Not a word failed of any good thing the Lord had spoken to the children of Israel all came to pass.

Okay.

They completed the mission. They had done exactly what they were supposed to do and God had helped them. All right. The altar that almost started a war. I'm kind of jumping around here just a little bit and then we're going to get to the end and kind of bring this all together. But just this is just kind of a thing that happens. It's interesting.

So if you guys remember two and a half of the tribes, the tribe of Reuben, the tribe of the children of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh, they had wanted their inheritance to be on the other side of the Jordan.

And Joshua said, okay, but we're going to make this agreement. You're going to come in with us to the land of Canaan and you're going to help us, you know, fight and destroy everything. And once it's all over, once we've claimed our inheritance, then you can go back to that land that you want. You can go back across the Jordan. So that had been the agreement. So now he sends them back to receive their inheritance, you know, after they'd helped their brothers conquer the land. And Joshua blessed them and he encouraged them to serve the Lord and walk in his commandments. And so they return. Well, as they're returning, they build an altar beside the Jordan, you know, before they cross.

They built this altar.

And when the rest of Israel hears about this, okay, they just hear, oh, those guys built an altar. It says they gathered together and prepared for war. Like they were going to go out and actually destroy these two and a half tribes, thinking that they had just transgressed the covenant by building their own altar to God and becoming rebels.

So in other words, they had one altar to offer sacrifices on. That was part of the covenant that there was to be no other altar for sacrifices. And here they had just built this altar.

Fortunately, before they kind of go as an army, they send the priest and I think like 10 of the rulers to find out what's going on, to kind of confront them with this and say, why did you build this altar? What is going on here? And they learned that the altar had actually been built as a memorial, not as an altar to burn sacrifices on. It was a witness and a reminder to them, the people that were going back over the Jordan, because they were going to kind of be separated from the rest of Israel. But it was a witness and a reminder to them and to their children of what God had done for them.

And to actually, they had built it to keep peace between them and the rest of the tribes. And here it had almost worked against them. So the conflict was avoided. Everyone was happy after that. And Joshua, you know, blessed them for he named the altar and said that it was a witness in their midst that the Lord is their God.

So that's just kind of an interesting story that happened here.

Then we come to chapter 23 and Joshua's final words to the people. And we're going to go ahead and read this chapter. It's not very long.

Now it came to pass that after many days, the Lord gave rest to Israel from all their enemies round about. And Joshua was old and advanced in years. So Joshua summoned all the children of Israel and their elders and leaders and their scribes and judges and said to them, I am old and advanced in years.

And you have seen everything the Lord your God did to all these nations before you, that the Lord your God is he who fought for you. So that's what I was talking about before in Joshua's mind. I mean, here's the guy that had did so much. I mean, he's giving credit to God and saying, he's the one who fought for you. I mean, there's, I think he recognized there's no way they could have done this without God intervening.

See, I have added to you these nations that are left to you by lots to your tribes, beginning at the Jordan and bordered by the great sea westward, all the nations I utterly destroyed before you. For the Lord your God, he will utterly destroy them before you until they perish, and he will send wild animals against them until he utterly destroys them and their kings from before you. And you shall inherit their land as the Lord your God said to you.

Therefore, strive diligently to keep and to do everything written in the book of the law of Moses, lest you turn aside from it to the right or to the left, and lest you go among these nations, those that remain among you, those that remain among you.

The names of their gods shall not be mentioned among you, and neither shall you worship them nor serve them. But you shall cleave to the Lord your God as you have done this day. For the Lord has utterly destroyed them from before you, great and mighty nations, and no one has stood against you to this day. One of you has chased a thousand for the Lord your God, fought for you, as he said to you. Therefore, take great heed to love the Lord your God. For if you turn away and attach yourselves to the remnant of these nations among you and intermarry and become mingled with them and they with you, know for certain that the Lord will no longer utterly destroy these nations before you, but they shall be snares and traps for you and nails in your heels and darts in your eyes until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you.

But I am going the way of all the earth, of all those on earth, and you shall know in your heart and soul that not one word has failed for all the words the Lord our God spoke concerning everything that pertains to you. Not one word of them has failed.

Therefore, it shall come to pass that as all the good things came upon you, which the Lord promised you, so the Lord God will bring upon you all the evil things until he utterly destroys you from this good land, which the Lord has given you, when you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you and go and serve other gods and worship them.

You can sense in Joshua's words this concern, and it's a valid concern that these people are going to forget. They're going to get, they're going to start looking at these other nations. They're going to start talking about their gods, and they're going to embrace their gods and serve them and worship them and become just like the other nations and basically destroy their own selves, just like these other nations got destroyed for their idolatry and rebellion.

And you can tell he's very concerned about this, and for good reason. You know, Joshua was with the people probably, I guess Joshua would have come out of Egypt originally. So, I mean, you have them. It doesn't, you know, coming through the wilderness and they're just constantly this bent to either rebel against God or, you know, worship the golden calf or do something like to just get sidetracked and get away from God. And he's very concerned about this. He said, you know, God has done all this for you. He's given you this land. You have your inheritance, but you can't relax now. Like you can't let down your guard. This is, it's important to make sure you don't get drawn into these other gods and this idolatry that's around them still.

There's still parts of it around them.

What are the lessons in all this for Israel?

What was it that God wanted the children of Israel to learn from this mission? I think God wanted them to see firsthand what happens to nations who forsake him, who sell themselves into idolatry. Like I said, God could have went in and did all the work for them, but by having them involved, it's like they're seeing firsthand what happens when we go after other gods. I mean, this is the end of it. This is, it's like self-destruct when we embrace other gods.

Like they should have seen that and that should have, and I think they did. I think that they recognized that. They also learned that God fought for them when they obeyed his commands. You know, when Joshua met the captain of the Lord's army, the question wasn't if he was on their side. That was kind of Joshua's original question. Were you for us or against us? And he said, I'm the captain of the Lord's host.

Basically, like, were you on my side? You know, that's the question. Are you going to be obedient and follow the directives given, you know, by God? Like, it's not about is God on my side or not. It's, am I on his side?

And then just the warning to stay away from other gods.

I think one of the reasons for the total destruction of these Canaanite nations and the people, and it's a thing that it's hard to wrap our minds around the way they had to go in and just completely destroy and annihilate these places. But I think one of the reasons was to minimize, not only, obviously it was God's judgment, like their cup was full, if we could say it that way. Like the sin, the utter rebellion, and they had long ago forsook God, like wanting nothing to do with him. And I think, you know, it's, it's, we have to remember that, you know, someone like Rahab came out of that. Like God still was merciful. He was, if somebody was wanting to repent and come out, he was, he was open to that.

But I think God wanted to minimize the influence that the idolatry would have on God's people. I really think God, that's one reason he just wanted them to wipe it out, kill everything, kill everyone. He didn't want any influence on his people. God knew that they struggled with an attraction to this anyway. Like it didn't take much for them to kind of just lose, like they wanted to worship something physical and tangible. Like they wanted to be like the other nations around them. So the less it was around them, the better.

And Joshua warned them to not even mention the names of these other gods. I think that's interesting. Like don't even talk about them and not to attach themselves with the other nations in any way because they will become a snare and a trap to them, and you end up getting destroyed yourself.

How serious is idolatry? Well, the first commandment of the 10 commandments given by Moses was, you shall have no other gods before me. That was like God's first commandment to them. Like you shall have no other gods, but no other gods before me. I think just means no other gods because he knew that if they have any other gods, they are going to be before me. Like that just happens.

Tertullian said, the principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment is idolatry. I never quite thought about it in that strict of a sense that it really is idolatry that brings God's judgment. It's an awful thing. Idolatry is taking our devotion, our worship, our service, and everything that is meant for God and giving it to something or someone else.

Usually, if you know, especially in this time, it was a physical object, something carved from stone or gold or silver or bronze. You know, many, many times the prophets talk about this, like, what are you thinking? You know, this thing, this piece of wood can't even, it just sits there. It can't do a thing for you, and yet they want to worship it.

It can do absolutely nothing for you.

God takes that very serious when we give that devotion to something or someone else besides him. Jesus said, you can't serve two masters. And this was obviously in the context of serving money, but I think the principle applies in other areas as well. Like we can't give our devotion and loyalty to God and something else at the same time. Like we think we can and we try it. You know, we try to have two masters, but it doesn't work. At the end of the day, one of the masters has our allegiance. One of them has our loyalty. One of them has our heart. So we can't serve two.

And now that brings us to the famous words of Joshua in chapter 24. Choose for yourself today who you will serve. And I'm not going to read all chapter 24, but we're going to read some of this and then we'll try to get this wrapped up. But it's important, some of the things that Joshua says here at the end.

And he's just really trying to get the children of Israel to remember, like remember what God did for you, how he brought you here. Just clear back starting from Abraham being called out of his country and away from idolatry. And you know, here you are.

You've come here. He says that God's given them a land which they didn't labor, cities that they didn't build, eating from vineyards and olive gardens that you didn't plant. Like all this was just given to you.

And now, are you just going to, you know, turn away from God and serve other gods after all this was given to you? All right, so verse 14. Now therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in justice and righteousness. Remove the foreign gods your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. So you almost get the picture that maybe these people still were carrying some of these gods with them, like, you know, had a few gods in their backpacks or something.

But if it does not please you to serve the Lord, choose gods for yourself today whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers that run the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites among whom you dwell in their land. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord because he is holy. Then the people answered and said, far be it from us to forsake the Lord so as to serve other gods. The Lord is our God. He is God. He brought us and our fathers from Egypt and preserved us on the whole journey where we went and among all the nations through whom we passed.

The Lord cast us out before, the Lord cast out before us the Amorites and all the nations that inhabited the land. But as for us, we will serve the Lord for he is our God. But Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve the Lord for he is a holy God and he being jealous will not forgive your sins and your lawless deeds whenever you forsake the Lord and serve other gods. Then he shall come and deal harshly with you and will consume you after he has done you good. Then 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 to serve the Lord.

Now therefore, remove the foreign gods from among you and make your heart straight toward the Lord God of Israel. I like that thought. Make it straight. Again, the people said to Joshua, we will serve the Lord and obey his voice.

So Joshua established a covenant with the people on that day and gave them a law and judgment in Shiloh before the tabernacle of the God of Israel. Then he wrote these words in the book of the law of God and he took a large stone and set it up under the terrible tree before the Lord. After this, Joshua said to the people, behold, this stone shall be a witness among you because it has heard everything said to it by the Lord, whatever he spoke to us today. This stone shall be among you as a witness in the last days whenever you lie to the Lord my God. Did you ever think about a stone being a witness?

Like this stone heard everything. You know, he's saying, we're going to keep this stone here and that's the witness. And it's going to witness against you whenever you lie. I think that's interesting. So God sent the people away and they went forth each one to his place.

Then Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders, as many as were with Joshua and saw the works of the Lord, which he did for Israel.

Now it came to pass after these things that Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. They buried him within the boundary lines of his inheritance at Timnath, Sarah, on Mount Ephraim, on the north side of the Mount Gash.

In his grave, they placed with him the stone knives, which he with which he circumcised the sons of Israel at Gilgal when he brought them out of Egypt, as the Lord ordered them. They remained there to this very day.

The children of Israel also brought up the bones of Joseph from Egypt and buried them at Shechem in the plot of land which Jacob purchased from the Amorites who dwelled in Shechem for 100 lambs and which was given to Joseph as his portion. After this, Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the high priest, died and was buried in Gebath, which belonged to Phinehas, his son, in which he had given him on Mount Ephraim. On that day, the children of Israel took the Ark of God and carried it about among themselves.

And Phinehas held the office of priest in place of Eleazar, his father, until he died and was buried in his own place at Gebath.

But each of the children of Israel departed to his own place and to his own city. Then the children of Israel worshipped Astarte and Astaroth and the gods of the nations round about them. So the Lord gave them over into the hands of Eglon, the king of Moab, and he ruled over them for 18 years. That kind of takes us right in the book of Judges.

It's a testimony to Joshua's leadership that Israel served the Lord all his days.

And all the days of the elders, as many as were with Joshua, like everyone that had been with Joshua around him, surrounding him, as long as they were alive, the people were faithful. Joshua had faithfully led the people into the promised land and given them their inheritance.

And now the children of Israel are faced with the choice of who they would serve. And Joshua makes it clear that he and his house would serve the Lord. This again reminds us that as humans, we have free will and can choose one way or another.

Even after, you know, we experience God miraculously doing things for us, we can still choose to walk away from that. And although God reminds us of his goodness and faithfulness, he doesn't force us to serve him because he wants that to be our choice and something we do willingly out of our love for him. He's never forced it.

He punishes. He shows his goodness. He draws people out of his goodness, but he doesn't force us to follow him. Joshua understood that as long as the people kept looking at the foreign gods, they wouldn't be able to serve God because their heart was divided. I think he saw that. That's why he told them. He basically told them, you can't do it.

And sadly, at the end of the book, we see the people worshiping the gods of the nations around them. And that marked the beginning of lots of hardships for them in years to come. Like they were told, they knew what would happen, but people are very forgetful.

So what about us? Jesus, our Joshua, has led us through baptism into his kingdom. And in a sense, his kingdom has invaded this world. And we're a part of that invasion if we're a part of his kingdom. He has conquered sin and death and saved us from our enemies and raised us up to sit in heavenly places. And through his death and resurrection, we are more than conquered. Like we're so far ahead of the children of Israel, if you want to look at it that way.

We have been given so much more than they were. And unlike them, we don't need the constant reminder to choose who we are going to serve or do we.

Let's be courageous like Caleb and conquer the giants and faithful like Joshua and choose this day, today, who we will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Hopefully, we can say that along with Joshua.