But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:15)Although not nearly as complete as we usually assume, this is effectively the end of the campaign for Canaan. The tribes assemble and receive from Joshua a challenge to make a commitment. Serve the Lord, or don't serve the Lord, but don't try to have it both ways.
Have you ever stepped from a dock into a rowboat? Or from the boat back to the dock? That's no time to be indecisive. If you pause too long between those two worlds - one foot on the dock and the other in the boat - disaster is almost guaranteed (or at least an embarrassing moment on America's Funniest Home Videos). You've got to make a choice and commit.
The first commandment insisted that God's people put God first. Maybe Joshua knew they couldn't have it both ways, and that vacillating betweenYahweh and foreign gods was every bit as deadly as rejecting Yahweh completely. Remember, Joshua begins the Deuteronomic History, in which Israel's failures to keep the first commandment are tallied up, very possibly to explain to an exiled people (well more than 500 years after Joshua's time) why the unthinkable has happened - why Jerusalem has been destroyed and Israel taken into captivity.
Are you on the dock or in the boat? You can't have it both ways. Have you made a commitment?
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