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 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 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
(600 or more years after Joshua’s time) why the unthinkable has happened – why
Jerusalem has been destroyed and Israel taken into captivity.
You can’t have it
both ways.
TODAY’S MEDITATION
Are you on the dock or in
the boat. If you need to make a commitment, what’s stopping you?
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