Joshua 24:14-18 "Joy in the Service of God"

I. A Choice is Given

Today’s scripture is one of those places in the Bible where things are laid out so very clearly that it is hard to miss the point that is being made. But let me set the scene for you anyway.

The people of Israel had spent generations as slaves in Egypt. God sent Moses to them and they were delivered from that life of slavery. They wandered for forty years in the wilderness as the generation of slaves in Egypt died away and their children grew. Then God brought them into the Promised Land. After having wandered their whole lives, they were now entering a land that was to be their own. People who should have defeated them in battle inhabited it, but God was with them and again and again, they were victorious in ways that proved to them that it was God delivering this land to them. And now, they were ready to go and settle this land, and Joshua, Moses’ successor and their leader, gathered them together and gave them a choice.

He starts out by telling them to “Fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness… But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.” And then comes Joshua’s great pledge of faith and faithfulness, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The people are given a choice by Joshua and by God. Are you going to serve the God who has been so faithful to you or are you going to get caught up in your surroundings and follow other paths. The people, resplendent in the glory of their victories, pledged to serve God. They were at that high point where God was so very real to them and they knew for a fact that they could practically see him. So they pledged to serve him completely.

But the story goes on past what we read this morning. Joshua doesn’t believe the people. He knows how fickle they can be. He continues on, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”

The people respond even more vehemently, “No! We will serve the Lord.”

Joshua responds to this by basically saying, “God’s going to hold you to this. You claim a lot in this time of joy, but God is going to remember your promises in times where it is harder to follow him.”

II. Easy Faith / Hard Times

You see, there are times in all of our lives where it is easy to have faith. There are times that we all have where God is so very clear to us and so very real. I went through a time like this in high school. I was a part of a prayer group where powerful things were happening. I was at a place, spiritually, where I felt that I could actually feel God’s Spirit within me. I thought that faith was easy because it wasn’t faith. I believed in God because I felt him. I knew he was there and therefore it didn’t take any faith at all to believe in him. It was during this time that I truly decided in my own life to serve God. I had been a Christian long before this, but it was during this time that I truly felt the call to ministry and decided to accept the call.

But this certainty of God did not remain. In college I began to question my understanding of God. I never really questioned him, but I didn’t any longer trust my ability to sense his call. There were a couple things that led to this, some of them academic and intellectual, some of them personal and relational. Academically, I began to read Biblical study that I didn’t necessarily agree with. And I discovered that some of it was as reasoned and logical and spiritually sound as what I believed. Oh, there are people out there who are attempting to tear down the Bible and its message, and they are easy to dismiss when you see where they are coming from, but there are people who are equally passionate about following God’s will in their lives and yet they see that following God in a completely different light than I do. And their reading of scripture is just as legitimate as mine.

And relationally I watched myself attribute my own feelings and emotions to God and claim that God wanted something that in truth I wanted. I found myself using God as an excuse to do what I wanted. And I realized that as I did this I did not realize that I was doing this. I realized that I could no longer trust myself to sense God, my own emotions got in the way too much… but I still longed to serve him.

And so faith became something new to me. It became something different. It became surety of what we hope for and certainty of what I could not see. I could no longer see God’s call on my life, I hoped it was still there, but I wasn’t sure. There is a concept that has entered Christian theology. It comes from a 16^th century priest. The concept is that of “the dark night of the soul”. It is that time in your spiritual life, that time in your walk of faith where it seems that God is not with you. It is that time of wilderness where God seems to have abandoned you. Often, in Evangelical circles, we are told that this time is not supposed to be a part of the spiritual walk, but in truth, when we look at God’s followers in the Bible they each go through it. There are times in our lives that God seems distant, unknowable, unreal. These are the times where faith is really needed. These are the times where we truly need to decide whether we are going to stay faithful to the promise we made to follow God.

And as I felt this dark night of the soul in my own life, Joshua’s choice was put before me once more. Do I serve God or do I serve the distractions that this world puts around me?

III. Joy in Service

Joshua calls for us to serve God even when it is not easy. He encourages us to be faithful to a God that will not always seem to be faithful to us. He tells us to trust God even when God doesn’t seem trustworthy, or at least, when we don’t seem capable in trust.

But there is something more to Joshua’s choice as well. He isn’t just calling for us to have faith. He isn’t just asking us to believe in God. He is looking for service in our lives.

How do you answer Joshua’s choice? Are you ready to serve God? You see, we don’t necessarily see it here in Joshua, but there is good news as well. There is joy when you commit to serve God. There is peace when you find yourself serving God in whatever way you can.

I don’t know why, but we so often don’t allow this joy of service into our lives. I think it might be because of fears we have. During my time of questions and unknowing, I didn’t mistrust God. I mistrusted myself and other Christians. I didn’t think we were capable of truly knowing God and his will. I doubted myself and this kept me from truly finding the joy that is serving God. But there are other doubts we have when it comes to serving God.

A song by a Celtic Christian group, Eden’s Bridge, poetically asks these questions: What if I am too small? What if I am too weak? What if I should lose my way? What if I cannot serve? What if I cannot give? If I fail who will be there for me?

We not only question ourselves, we question God. We don’t necessarily trust that he is great enough to make up for our weaknesses. But God is and he will.

Perhaps we choose not to serve God not out of fear but out of busyness or because we already have too many other commitments. And so I put before you the same question Joshua put forward: Who are you going to serve: the God above or the gods of this world? Saying that you are too busy to serve God is putting a god of this world before the Lord. Saying that you are too weak or small to serve God is saying that you don’t trust God to be with you. But when you show God trust and when you put him first, you will discover a wonderful gift from God. You will find a joy in the service. You will find that God is strong enough to make up for your inadequacies. And you will find yourself used in ways that you never thought possible.

Today is All Saints Sunday. It is the day that we especially remember the saints who have gone before us. I think they can be the best example of people who found joy in the service of God. They faced hard lives and worked through difficult times and yet they chose to follow God and serve him. And it is so much their examples to us that have grounded our faith so well. And they found a joy in their lives as they turned them over to God and lived out lives of service. We can only hope that we might be the same kind of examples to those who come after us.

There is joy in the service of God. If we take Joshua up on his choice and choose wisely; we will find a joy that we did not know existed. I encourage you to discover that joy for yourself by finding ways in which you can serve God in your own life: be it at church, at your job, in your family. Open yourself to the possibility of service of God and watch as he makes opportunities available to you. Amen.