God at Work in History #16: Choose You This Day
Joshua 23–24
There is something deeply moving about the last words of an old man who has spent his life serving God. Especially when that man has seen what Joshua saw: the Jordan River opened before Israel, the walls of Jericho fall, kings defeated, and a land promised to Abraham finally become the inheritance of his descendants.
But Joshua had lived long enough to understand that a great beginning does not guarantee a faithful ending.
The land had been divided among the tribes. Israel had experienced rest from its enemies. Yet the story was not finished. Enemies remained, temptations persisted, and the next generation would have to decide whether the God who had brought their fathers into the land would also be the God they served.
Joshua was old. He knew that he was approaching the end of his earthly journey. He had one last great responsibility: to remind Israel what God had done and to challenge the people to decide whom they would serve.
Remember What God Has Done
Joshua's final message begins with remembrance.
He called Israel's leaders together and reminded them that the victories they had witnessed were not simply the achievements of a successful military commander. The Lord Himself had fought for them.
The land was not merely the reward for their courage. It was the fulfillment of God's promise.
Then Joshua reviewed the story of Israel at Shechem. He took the people back beyond Moses, beyond the Exodus, and beyond the wilderness. He began with Abraham, whose ancestors had worshiped other gods beyond the Euphrates River.
The Lord had called Abraham, led him into Canaan, given him descendants, brought his family down into Egypt, and delivered Israel from bondage. He had led them through the wilderness and brought them into the land.
Notice how Joshua tells the story. Again and again, God is the one acting: I took Abraham. I gave Isaac. I sent Moses and Aaron. I brought you out. I brought you into the land.
Israel's history was not a collection of fortunate accidents. It was the record of God's faithfulness.
And Joshua reminded the people of something else. They had received blessings they had not earned. They lived in cities they had not built and ate from vineyards and olive groves they had not planted.
God had been faithful to His promises.
But what would Israel do with such a gift?
The Danger of a Divided Heart
Joshua knew that Israel's greatest danger was not necessarily another army. It was the possibility that the people would forget the Lord and turn toward the gods of the surrounding nations.
He warned them against compromise. They must not cling to the peoples and practices that would draw their hearts away from God. They must love the Lord, obey His Word, and remain faithful to the covenant He had made with them.
This was not a call to religious ceremony alone. It was a call to wholehearted allegiance.
It is possible to remember God's blessings while gradually losing one's devotion to the God who gave them.
It is possible to inherit a godly tradition without possessing a living faith.
And it is possible for a people who once trusted God for everything to begin living as though they no longer needed Him.
Joshua understood the danger.
He could lead Israel into battle, but he could not make every Israelite love the Lord. He could recount the nation's history, but he could not guarantee that the next generation would remember it. He could warn them about the consequences of disobedience, but each person and each family would have to respond.
The great question was no longer simply whether Israel could possess the land. It was whether Israel would remain faithful to the Lord who had given it.
“Choose You This Day”
Joshua gathered the tribes at Shechem and placed the decision before them in words that have echoed through the centuries:
“Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” (Joshua 24:15, KJV)
He named the alternatives. The people could serve the gods their ancestors had worshiped beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land they now lived. Or they could serve the Lord.
Joshua made his own decision unmistakable:
“As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:15, KJV)
Those words are familiar, and many Christian homes have displayed them on plaques and wall hangings. But they were not spoken as a decorative motto. They were a declaration of allegiance at a decisive moment in Israel's history.
Joshua was not offering the people a comfortable middle ground. They could not faithfully serve the Lord while keeping their other gods available as insurance against an uncertain future.
The people answered with enthusiasm. They remembered what the Lord had done and promised to serve Him.
Joshua, however, did not accept their response without warning. He knew that a spoken promise was not the same as a faithful life. He called them to put away the foreign gods among them and incline their hearts to the Lord.
The covenant was renewed. Joshua recorded the words and set up a large stone as a witness to the people's commitment.
The scene has the solemnity of a final charge. The old leader had reminded Israel of its past, challenged its present, and placed its future before it.
Now the people would have to live out their answer.
A Generation Passes Away
Joshua died at the age of 110 and was buried in the land of his inheritance. The account adds a remarkable testimony: Israel served the Lord throughout Joshua's lifetime and during the lifetimes of the elders who had seen the Lord's works.
Then those witnesses passed away.
The book of Joshua closes with the death of Joshua, the burial of Joseph's bones in the land promised to Abraham's descendants, and the death of Eleazar the priest. These are not merely notices of three burials. They mark the end of an era.
The generation that had known the Exodus and the conquest was disappearing. The promises had been fulfilled, the land had been received, and the covenant had been renewed.
But the question Joshua had raised remained unanswered by the generations to come: Would Israel continue to serve the Lord?
The next book of the Bible begins to reveal the answer.
From Joshua to Judges
The book of Judges opens with Israel still in the land, but the work of possessing it is unfinished. Some tribes fail to drive out the inhabitants of their territories. The danger Joshua had warned about becomes a reality.
The deeper tragedy appears in Judges 2:10:
“And there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.” (KJV)
How could a people who had inherited so much forget so quickly?
The passage does not mean that the next generation had never heard the name of the Lord. Rather, Israel's living knowledge of God and His mighty works had not been preserved in a way that shaped the new generation's allegiance. The people who had witnessed God's faithfulness were gone, and those who followed did not remain faithful to Him.
Joshua's farewell had pointed directly toward this danger.
The transition from Joshua to Judges is one of the most sobering moments in the Old Testament. Under Joshua, Israel had witnessed extraordinary victories and received an extraordinary inheritance. In Judges, the nation repeatedly turns away from the Lord, suffers oppression, cries out for deliverance, and experiences God's mercy through the judges He raises up.
The pattern is painful: disobedience, oppression, distress, deliverance, and renewed disobedience.
God does not abandon His people, but their unfaithfulness brings consequences.
The book of Judges will show us what happens when a generation forgets the Lord and when everyone begins to do what seems right in his own eyes.
The Work of God Continues
Joshua's death did not bring God's work in history to an end. Nor did Israel's failures bring His purposes to an end.
The same God who called Abraham, delivered Israel from Egypt, and brought His people into Canaan remained sovereign over their history. Yet Scripture does not hide the responsibility of the people who received His blessings. God's faithfulness did not make Israel's obedience unnecessary.
That lesson reaches us as well.
We cannot live indefinitely on the faith of our parents or grandparents. We cannot substitute memories of yesterday's blessings for obedience today. Nor can we assume that a godly beginning guarantees a godly finish.
Each generation must hear the Word of God, learn what He has done, and respond to Him in faith.
Joshua's challenge is still before us: Whom will we serve?
It is a question for individuals, for families, for churches, and for every generation that receives the priceless inheritance of God's revealed truth.
Joshua could not make Israel's choice for all the years to come. Neither can we make another generation's choice for it.
can teach, testify, warn, encourage, and set an example. We can tell the next generation what the Lord has done. But we must also live in such a way that our confession is more than a memory or a slogan.
Joshua's life had been a testimony to the faithfulness of God. His final words were a call for Israel to answer that faithfulness with undivided hearts.
The conquest was ending. The test of faithfulness was just beginning.
Next week, we enter the book of Judges, where we will see what happens when a generation inherits the blessings of God but fails to remain faithful to Him.
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NEAR THE CROSS
Jesus, keep me near the cross,
There a precious fountain
Free to all, a healing stream
Flows from Calvary’s mountain.
Refrain
In the cross, in the cross,
Be my glory ever;
Till my raptured soul shall find
Rest beyond the river.
Near the cross, a trembling soul,
Love and mercy found me;
There the bright and morning star
Sheds its beams around me.
Refrain
Near the cross! O Lamb of God,
Bring its scenes before me;
Help me walk from day to day,
With its shadows o’er me.
Refrain
Near the cross I’ll watch and wait
Hoping, trusting ever,
Till I reach the golden strand,
Just beyond the river.
Refrain
Fan¬ny Cros¬by, i1869
But God forbid that I should glory,
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, by whom the world is crucified
unto me, and I unto the world. Gal 6:14
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