Saturday, March 10, 2012

Day 69: Joshua 22, 23 and 24


But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 25:15)

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. The Israelites reject their foreign gods and pledge their fealty to Yahweh.

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 in the boat and the other on the dock – disaster is almost guaranteed (or at least some airtime 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 that they couldn't have it both ways, and that vacillating between Yahweh 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 (500 or more 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.

Do you need to make a commitment? What’s stopping you?

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