Challenged to Serve, Part 1

Joshua chapter 24. Joshua 24, as we conclude our study of the book of Joshua, we will realize that the book concludes with a funeral. It also begins With a funeral. Interest. The only book in the Bible that begins and ends with a funeral. The beginning one, of course, was Moses, the man of destiny. And then it ends with Joshua, the man of victory. And in between those two funerals is the conquest. Of Canaan and they're occupying the land that was promised to them. And in this 2 chapter of Joshua, it's about the challenge to serve.

What it means to serve the Lord your God. 16 different times that word serve is used in Joshua chapter 24. The Lord is referred to 21 different times in this chapter, meaning that our service is to be centered around the Lord God of Israel. A lot of times we have problems with our services because we serve the wrong person. We serve our husband, we serve our wife, we serve our parents, we serve our boss. That's wrong. You are to serve the Lord God. That's who you serve. Then you know your motives are right.

Then you know that what you do is going to bring glory to the Lord. And if you serve the Lord as Paramount, then your service to others will be great. But if you seek to serve your fellow man. And not the Lord, your service will tend to be manipulative. And so we come to understand tonight that our service is centered around Jesus Christ. our Lord. So let me read to you Joshua 24, and then we'll make some comments about what it means to serve the Lord God of Israel.

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for the elders of Israel and for their heads and their judges and their officers. And they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: From ancient times, your fathers lived beyond the river, namely Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nah. and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river, and led him through all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants, and gave him Isaac.

And to Isaac I gave Jacob, and Esau. And to Esau I gave Mount Seir, to possess it. But Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt by what I did in its midst. And afterward I brought you out. And I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea. And Egypt pursued your fathers. With chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. But when they cried out to the Lord, He put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and brought the sea upon them, and covered them, and your own eyes saw what I did in Egypt.

and you lived in the wilderness for a long time then I brought you into the land of the Amorites, who live beyond the Jordan, and they fought with you, and I gave them into your hand, and you took possession of their land when I destroyed them before you. Then Balak the son of Zi, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel, and he sent and summoned Balaam the son of Be to curse you. But I was not willing to listen to Balaam, so he had to bless you, and I delivered you from his hand. And you crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the citizens of Jericho fought against you.

and the Amorite, the Periz, and the Canaanite, and the Hitt, and the Girgas, the Hiv, and the Jebus. Thus I gave them into your hand. Then I sent the hornet before you, and it drove out the two kings of the Amorites from before you, but not by your sword or your bow. And I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you have lived in them. You are eating of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant. Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth.

And put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves to-day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served, which were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house. We will serve the Lord. And the people answered and said, Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt.

from the house of bondage, and who did these great signs in our sight, and preserved us through all the way in which we went, and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed. And the Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land. We also will serve the Lord. For he is our God. Then Joshua said to the people, You will not be able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after he has done good to you.

And the people said to Joshua, No, but we will serve the Lord. And Joshua said to the people, You are witnesses against yourselves, that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord to serve him. And they said, We are witnesses. Now therefore put away the foreign gods which are in your midst, and incline your heart to the LORD the God of Israel. And the people said to Joshua, We will serve the LORD our God, and we will obey his voice. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.

And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law. And he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us. For it has heard all the words of the LORD which he spoke to us. Thus it shall be for a witness against you, lest you deny your God. Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to his inheritance. And it came about after these things that Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died.

being one hundred and ten years old, and they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath Sarah, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, on the north of Mount Gas. And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, and had known all the deeds of the Lord, which he had done. For Israel, we'll stop right there. The challenge to ser. I want to begin by looking at the obligation to serve. I want you to notice that they gather together in a place called Shechem.

I'm reading this today again and realiz the em behind their gather. Now think about this. They gathered in the place where God spoke to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. Listen to what God said to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, verse number 6. And Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem to the oak of Moray. Now the Canaanite was then in the land, and the Lord appeared to Abram and said to your descendants I will give this l. So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

Now they're in the land. Now Joshua gathers the people in the same location that God had spoken to Abraham years earlier about the promise of that land. This is powerful. Having just come from Israel and realized that when you stand on certain spots and open the Bible and read it, it becomes extremely emotional. We go to a place like Gideon Springs and we open the Bible and read in the book of Judges about how God took 32,000 men down to 300 men at the exact same spring we are standing by. It's quite moving to stand on top of Mount Megiddo and overlook the Jezreel Valley, knowing that one day the armies of the East will gather together in that valley to fight against our God.

To be able to go to a place called Nazareth and go to a precipice called the Mount of the Precipice, a place where they would have taken our Lord to throw him off in Luke chapter 4, and to stand right there and to think that our Lord would have been taken there. To be killed by the people of his own homet. To go to a place like Cana and realize that there was a place where the water was turned to wine by our Lord. And to read the text. To go to a place like Gag and sit there and read the text and realize that our Lord was crucified there.

To go to a place called Gabbatha, a place where our Lord was beaten unmercifully. And to realize that it was at that place that they beat, slapped, spit on our Lord. And to read the text, and to realize that what took place here 2,000 years ago is amazing. That's what Joshua was doing. He takes them to Shechem. He reviews for them their history, beginning with Abraham. Taking them to their time of captivity and their deliverance, and how he would guide them through the wilderness, and how he would provide for them, and take care of them, and bring them into the promised land.

And they would cross the river Jordan, they would fight at Jericho, and it was all. About what God did, the Lord reminds them: I did this. I took you, I gave you, I won this battle. It was me. And Joshua was reminding the people of Israel what God had done for them. And he brought them to this very emotional spot, this place where God spoke to Abraham, and God said to Abraham, This is your land, this is it, it's yours. I'm going to give it to your descendants. And now the descendants are standing on the l.

Land, having occupied the land just as God had said, had to be extremely moving for the people of God. And there, Joshua would review for them their history. I like what it says. It says, and Joshua said to all the people, thus says the Lord God of Israel. 15 times in the book of Joshua, that phrase is used, the Lord God of Israel. 10 times it's used in the Bible. And the God of Israel is used 203 times. It is the Lord God of Israel that has brought you here. And then listen to what it says. From ancient times your fathers lived beyond the river, namely Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nah, and they served other gods.

Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him through all the land of Canaan and multiplied his descendants. Remember, Abraham was a Gentile before he was ever a Jew. He lived beyond the river. That means he lived on the other side of the Euphrates. And to be a Hebrew means to cross the river. That's what the word Hebrew means, to cross the river. They crossed the great river Euphrates. So Abraham was a Gentile before he ever became a Jew. And God called him. God chose him. God hand him.

God elected him. Of all the people to choose, God chose Abraham. And the emphasis here is that God chose your father Abraham, and you are here because of the elective purposes of God. That's why you're here. It's an emphasis on God's sovereignty. It's an emphasis on what God does in the lives of people. And through those first 14 verses, Joshua emphasizes: God, the Lord God of Israel, did this.

Says over and over again, I took, I gave, I gave, I sent, I plagued, I did this in your midst, I brought. I brought, I did, I brought, I was, I delivered, I gave, I sent, I gave you a land. God says, I did all this.

This is why this point number one is the obligation to service. It's because of what God has done. We are obligated to serve him because of what he has done. What does the Bible say in John:? You did not choose me, I chose you. Now, think about that. We didn't choose God. He chose us. God's elective purposes brought us into his kingdom. And now we have Roman responsibility, and that's to serve him, to honor him, and to glorify his great and wonderful name. Why did God save you? He saved you that you might serve him.

Listen to this over in the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Verse number 14. For the love of Christ controls us, Paul says. Having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died. And he died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. So, you see, we live for God because He died for us. That's our obligation. Because of what He did for us, now we serve Him. Peter says the exact same thing in 1 Peter 2, verse number 24: He Himself bore our sins Sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

He died for us. So that we would die to sin and live for righteousness. Live for his sake. That's why the Bible says over in 1 Corinthians 6 that you have been bought with a price.

Therefore, your body is no longer your own. Instead, the Spirit of God dwells within the temple of your body. There, glorify God in your body. Why do we glorify God in our body? It's because we have been purchased with a price. We have been bought by God. We are His, He owns us. And therefore, we are obligated to serve him. Paul said it this way, Romans chapter 12. You know the verse, what's it say? Verse 1, I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

This is your service, and that is to present your bodies to God, to give your life to God. Paul spends 11 chapters talking to us about the great doctrine of salvation and the great doctrine of justification and sanctification and eternal security and how God has placed us into his kingdom. And then he concludes chapter 11 in verse number 36 with these words: For from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be the glory forever. Because everything is about God, because everything goes through him, goes to him, and is For him, what are you to do?

Present your bodies a living sacrifice unto him. In other words, he says, This is the only logical thing to do. Anything else you do other than that is completely illogical for the believer. It's completely out of whack. But the logical thing to do is to present your body to him as a living sacrifice. That is, you give your life to God. You serve Him with all that you have. That's our responsibility. Psalm 103 says it this way, verse number 21. Bless the Lord, all you who his hosts. You who serve him doing his will.

You who serve him doing his will. Listen, folks, we were created by God that he might redeem us so that we might serve him. In fact, listen to the book of Revelation. Revelation chapter 22 says this: And he showed me a river of. the water of life clear as crystal coming from the throne of god and of the lamb in the middle of its street on the on either side and the river was a tree of life bearing twelve kinds of fruit yielding its fruit every month and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations And there shall no longer be any curse, and the throne of God, and the Lamb shall be in it, and his bonds will serve him.

Say, wow. What does that mean? How are we going to serve God in eternity? I don't know. It's not important how. It's important that we will because that's what servants do. They serve their God. You see, there's an obligation for us here. And that obligation is presented by the fact that, as Joshua does, this is what God's done. Look where you're at. Look at all that's taken place.

Now, look where you are standing. You have one responsibility: to fear the Lord and serve Him with a sincere heart and serve Him with truth. That is your obligation. That's your responsibility as a follower of him. Listen, folks, the whole incarnation was about servanthood, right? Philippians 2 tells us that our Lord took on the form of a bonds. And even when it comes to the instruction about our Lord, it was about service over in the book of Mark, Mark chapter 10. 10. It says these words, as our Lord would talk about his death and resurrection, it says these words.

And they came to Caper, and when he was in the house, he began to question them, saying, What were you discussing on the way? But they kept silent, for on the way they discussed with one another which of them was the greatest. And sitting down, he called the twelve and said to them, If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.

And taking a child, he set him before them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, Whoever receives one child like this in my name receives me. Whoever receives me does not receive me, but him who sent me. You see, here where the apostles are arguing about who was going to be great in the kingdom, and the Lord knows what they're talking about and sits them down and instructs. Them one more time about listen: if you want to be great in my kingdom, you got to learn to be last, you got to be a servant of all people.

Because that's what people in my kingdom do. They serve me. And that's why we understand that 2 Peter 1:4 says that we are partakers of the divine nature. That is, we are partakers of God's divine nature. He at his heart. Was a servant, therefore, if we're followers of God, we too will be servants, and the obligation to serve is not a problem for us. But you know what? We find it being a problem, don't we? We don't want to serve anybody else. We want to be served. We want people to serve us. And whenever you want somebody to serve you, you cease to be Christ-like.

Whenever you are asking someone to serve you or in the depths of your heart wishing someone would serve you, you cease to be Christ-like. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life away. So, if you're sitting here tonight and you're wishing someone in the church would serve you, or someone in the church would minister to you. You're going to have a hard time being like the Lord Jesus because that's not how he was. And we need to be like him. And reach out and serve our Lord by serving our fellow man.

So it begins with the obligation. Number two, he moves to the specifications for service. Listen to what he says. Now, therefore, fear the Lord. And serve him in sincerity and truth. These are the specifications for service. If you're going to serve your God, you must serve him unhypocritically. It must be sincere. It must be from the heart. And it must be done in truth. It must be done in line with what God has already said in His Word because He is the God of truth. These are the specific for your service.

There 's a lot of people who pay lip service to God, right? But yet their hearts are far from him. God knows your heart, folks. He knows what's going on inside you. He knows whether or not you're serving him in sincerity and in truth. He knows that. You don't have to try to fool him. Oh, you can fool me, and you can fool the people in the pew, and you can fool the elders of the church, but you can't fool God. He knows your heart's condition. And the true specifications for service fall into two categories.

Number one, you got to do it with a sincere heart. You got to do it with an honest, truthful he. With all that you have. It must be genuine, not hypocritical. You know what? When you realize what God has done for you, that's the way you are. When you realize that you are undeserving of heaven, when you realize that He has purchased you, He has bought you back. And put you to part of his kingdom. There's something about my heart that says, Lord, I want to serve you. And I want to do it with all that I have.

I want to do it in truth. See, people who fear the Lord serve the Lord. People who don't fear the Lord don't serve him. That's why Joshua says, fear the Lord and serve him with sincerity and truth. Fear him. Look what he's done. Look where he's brought you. Look how he has kept you and protected you. That's the way God is. I like what it says over in Ephesians chapter 6. Paul says in verse number 5: Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling.

In the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, not by way of eye service as men pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from The he. Doing the will of God from the heart. You're willing to serve God with all your heart. And therefore, you're serving him, the Lord Jesus, not your boss, you're serving him. And that's the specifications for service. Whenever you serve in any capacity, it must be from a heart filled with commitment and devotion to God, and done in line with what God's word says, in truth, so that you honor only Him.

Because he is your audience of one. You know, what it'd be if we as husbands and wives would go home every day from work saying, I'm going to serve the Lord today by serving my spouse. Or go to church and say, you know, I'm going to church to serve the Lord and I'm going to serve him no matter what, no matter who greets me or who doesn't greet me, no matter what the music's like or what it's not like or what the sermon's like or what it's not like. I'm going to serve the Lord because I want to do it with a pure heart, a true heart, because I love my God.