Will We Serve the Lord? - Church Retreat 2026

Well, it's been a joy to be here over the past several days and especially with this theme of putting away idols.

I have been praying, as I hope you have, that as we saw from Revelation 2 on Friday evening, that the

Lord's presence would be palpable with us and that the Lord's voice would be audible, working through His Word into our ears, into our conscience, into our very heart.

How do we close a weekend like this? Our theme for this year, of course, is putting away idols, and I'll just say my hope in returning home from this weekend is simply an echo of what our brother

Mateo shared last night after the message with tears in his eyes, and I had tears in mine, simply saying,

I don't want to go back. And he meant, of course, not that I want to stay here in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, I don't want to go back home.

No, no. He meant, I don't want to go back to the place that I had fallen from.

And I hope we all feel that way from Revelation 2 as a church, as individuals within this church, that we don't want to go back to the place that we had fallen from if the

Lord has brought us near because He's given us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to us.

We've been looking in many ways at the idolatry that is forbidden from the first and greatest commandment.

This command to love God means that there is no other God before God. And as we saw over the past two evenings, whenever we're speaking of the

Lord, that's always coupled with what the Lord has done. We don't know who the Lord is apart from what the

Lord has done. He reveals himself in what he's done. He reveals himself as a creator in the works of his creation.

He reveals himself as a redeemer in the works of his redemption. He reveals himself as a consuming fire in the works of his judgment.

We know who the Lord is by what the Lord has done. I am the Lord, your God, who brought you up from the house of bondage.

He makes himself known in this way. So as we've said the past two evenings, we don't separate the

Lord who takes us up out of Egypt from the Lord who is holy and alone to be worshipped.

God has been acting throughout history for the sake of his people, for the sake of his promise.

He's made us his own. He's distinguished us from all other peoples, all other tribes and tongues.

He's given us a new heart, a new mind, a new voice that we might worship him. He's brought us into an exclusive relationship.

He's made a marital covenant with us that we might worship him and him alone. And so on Friday evening, we looked at Revelation 2 and we looked at the church at Ephesus and we recognized the presence of the

Lord as he was walking through the lampstands of the churches, as he said, this is what you must do lest I pull the lampstand away from you, remove the light of my presence.

And for a church that we saw that was laboring, persevering, laboring for his namesake without growing weary, a church that was so accomplished was also so lost.

Because the Lord said, I have this against you. You've left your first love.

As we saw with Jeremiah two and connecting that last night with Psalm 78, the reason they had left their first love is because they had forgotten the works of the

Lord. And when you forget the works of the Lord, you forget the Lord himself. The church at Ephesus, just like the

Israelites that we read about in Psalm 78, the nation of Ephraim, as it's called in Jeremiah, too, had forgotten the wonders of his salvation, forgotten the bondage and the darkness and the misery that he rescued them from.

And though they were still going through the rituals of worship and prayer and daily sacrifice along the way of their loves, other drives, other needs had pulled their hearts away from the

Lord. Other things began to eclipse the presence. And without them even realizing it, as they're standing in the temple day and night, even the priests stop asking, where is the

Lord? Even the people of God don't pause to ask, where is the blessedness

I once knew? Where's that soul -refreshing view of Jesus and his word?

What injustice have I done, the Lord asks. What injustice have your fathers found in me that they've gone far from me?

What have I done? That's caused them to forsake me and go after other idols, become idolaters.

They didn't even ask where I am. We saw last night, idolatry is dementia.

In the presence of the things of the Lord, in the presence of the people of the Lord, in the presence of the

Lord himself. But dementia, you don't even recognize him. You've become estranged from him.

This is the cost of idolatry. Neither did they say, where is the

Lord who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness? They again had forgotten the works of the

Lord, so they forgot the Lord himself. Though he's walking in their midst, they do not recognize him.

They do not long for him. They do not care about his presence because they do not care about his absence.

This is the effect of idolatry. What must we do?

We teased it out on Friday evening, followed it through last night, and now we come to answer the fullness of it from Joshua chapter 24.

And of course, that's all held together in Revelation 2, verse 5. Remember from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works.

Let me put another gloss on it. Return to your first love. Let me put another gloss on it.

Get back to basics. Get back to the simplicity of loving

God and seeking him in the wilderness. That's where the blessedness you once knew is.

It's the place you've fallen from when other loves, other affections, other drives and needs began to eclipse that desire in your life.

Well, we've been memorizing children's voices, have been heralding this passage from Joshua 24.

And as we did last night, let's turn there and let's stand and let's read the word of the Lord together. Joshua 24, beginning in verse 14 to 24.

Read along with me. Now, therefore, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt.

Serve the Lord. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the river or the gods of the

Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the

Lord. So 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, who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went.

And among all the people through whom we passed and the Lord drove out from before us all the people, including the

Amorites who dwelt in the land. We also will serve the Lord, for he is our

God. But Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy

God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor 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 you good.

And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord. So Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the

Lord for yourselves to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses.

Now, therefore, he said, put away the foreign gods which are among you and incline your heart to the

Lord God of Israel. And the people said to Joshua, the Lord, our

God, we will serve and his voice we will obey. Be seated. As we read a moment ago from the very beginning of this chapter, we see

Joshua at an elderly age gathering this second generation of Israel to himself with all of the leaders of the tribes.

We see an elderly man who recognizes that he's at a passage in his life where he will no longer be able to lead this people.

And so he gathers them together. And as we saw last evening from Psalm 78 and Psalms 105 and 106, he's recounting the faithful work of God to both bless and to chastise to both redeem and to punish his people, that they might trust and depend and worship him and him alone, that they might receive the blessed inheritance that he had promised.

We find this elderly Joshua assembling the people, recounting these wondrous deeds, and it's all the word of the

Lord. The whole passage up to verse 13 is spoken in the first person. It's the words of the

Lord recounting what he has done among the people. And here, beginning in verse 14,

Joshua now addresses the people. He speaks to them. He makes the exhortation, the demand about what they must do as he recedes away from being the leader, the figurehead of godliness among them.

Now, therefore, he says, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and truth.

The very first thing that Joshua calls his people to do is to have a reverence for the

Lord God. This is why the Lord has recounted who he is by what he has done so that the people might fear him.

That's the starting point. He's about to address the need to tear down idols.

The motivation for that begins with reverence that is built upon the mighty acts of God.

You remember at the beginning of the book of Joshua, it was Rahab who gave this report to the spies.

I know that the Lord has given you this land. The terror of you has fallen on all of the peoples, all of the inhabitants of the land.

Their hearts are melting because of you. This is Rahab's report that all of the peoples in Canaan were struck with fear from the

Israelites because of the mighty deeds of the God of the Israelites. The peoples in Canaan had a fear for the

Lord. What Joshua has witnessed as an old man across these decades now coming to the end.

Is that the very people that caused such a fear of God in the land had lost that fear for themselves.

Now, therefore, he says, fear the Lord. Here we have a striking demand.

Fear the Lord. What we'll see it again in a moment when he gives this shocking counter that these people will not serve the

Lord. It's because he's already detected this insincerity that it comes from a lack of reverence.

You won't serve the Lord, you don't even fear him. Fear is not just the beginning of wisdom, brothers and sisters, fear is the beginning of service.

It's the fear that struck Isaiah in chapter six when his heart melted like wax because of the unfurling presence of God that filled the temple with smoke.

And it was the result of that fear that caused him to not only cry out in the horror of his guilt.

And then in that confession of guilt, saying that he was an unclean man in the midst of an unclean people receiving that cleansing coal from the altar of God.

But it also caused him to serve God. Send me, I will go.

I'll preach to the cities that are in ruin. The fear of the Lord was the beginning of serving the

Lord, and so it is here. And Joshua recognizes that he also recognizes the stakes.

He knows that he's about to die. He knows what his example, not only the example he had been up to this point, but the example he must be now will mean for this people.

They're going to have to go on without his example, without his voice, without his leadership, without his discipline, without his confrontation, without his example.

He knows what that example means, not only for the people now, but for the generation to come. And so he reminds the people of the sins of their fathers, the foreign gods that they served on the other side of the river.

In fact, as we saw at the beginning, the Lord reminds the people of the sins of their father,

Abraham, and Abraham's father, Nahor. He reminds this people that they are an idolatrous people, stewed and born into idolatry, and God has taken them from it.

Joshua knows what his example means, so he reminds the people of the sins of their fathers.

And as we go on toward verses 23 and 24, we recognize the sins of the fathers have clearly become the sins of their sons.

The faithfulness of this generation under Joshua's leadership is noteworthy. In fact, when we turn to the book of Judges toward the very beginning, this generation under Joshua is extolled for their faithfulness.

We look at Judges chapter 2, verses 7 and 10. The people served the

Lord all the days of Joshua. This is the direct impact of Joshua 24.

That generation served the Lord all the days of the elders that outlived

Joshua, who had seen all of the great works of the Lord that he did for Israel. And also all of that generation were gathered unto their fathers.

But there arose another generation after them, and they did not know the

Lord. They did not know the works he had done for Israel. Do you see this theme we've been looking at for the past two nights?

The next generation forgot the works of the Lord, and so they forgot the

Lord himself, the estrangement of idolatry. We don't know him anymore. Francis Schaeffer pointed this out.

We come to a group of people in this Joshua 24 generation who are faced with a choice.

The children of Israel remembered for a time the choice they had made at Joshua's farewell, but the fathers did not pass it on to their sons.

And the sons soon forgot the choice their fathers had made. And thus came the confusion, the sorrow, the lawlessness, the chaos of the book of Judges, every man doing what was right in his own sight.

And Schaeffer remarks, is this not what we see in our own generation? We look at the

Reformation countries that have experienced that that Christian consensus. In other words, he means the salt and light of Christianity impregnated those societies.

It was strongly influenced by those Christian values, perhaps even as the children of this

Joshua 24 generation were shaped and molded in the atmosphere of these values. But they never made that same choice.

They never recounted in faithfulness those same works. And the choices of faith were set aside.

The demands of God's works were forgotten. And so in its place arose confusion and lawlessness, just as we see in our own day.

Joshua says, serve the Lord. And if it seems evil to you to serve the

Lord, what a striking word, evil. We're going to see in this whole address from Joshua, beginning in verse 14, that he is making it as black and white as he can possibly muster.

He is raising the stakes. He's sharpening the contrast. You're going to have to choose this way or that way, this

God or those gods. You're going to have to choose this good or that good.

If it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, why would that be?

Why would it be evil to serve the Lord? Because something else seems good compared.

We're living in the days, as Paul describes in Romans, where good is called evil and evil is called good.

Where the good of serving God seems evil because of the evil that seems good.

If it seems evil to you to serve the Lord. That is

Joshua addressing the true nature of idolatry. You're serving what you believe is a higher good.

You're chasing what you believe is a greater God. And so it seems evil to serve the

Lord. You would never state it that way. Oh, that's horrific. Who would ever even think that way? I'm almost offended you would frame it in that way.

But that's the reality. If it seems evil to you to serve the

Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. You're going to serve someone.

You're going to serve something. You will serve a God, be it the living God or a false

God. We're all going to serve something. We're all going to worship something. We're made to worship. The question is not whether we will worship, but whom we will worship.

Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served, you see that again, that's the issue.

We saw this in some ways without looking at it in Psalm 78 last night.

We began a little bit later in Psalm 78 in verse 12, but Psalm 78, the very beginning of it is a demand for the next generation to be taught the mighty works of God, tell our children what

God has done. I was I was mentioning this couple, poor Bishop Hooper, last night in their rendition of Psalm 78.

And here's how they treat the first four verses. It's a wonderful summary again. Oh, people, listen, incline your ear to the mysteries, to the teaching here, things that we have heard, things that we have known.

Parables our fathers told, oh, no, we won't hide them. We'll let the children hear.

The command was for the next generation to be told and taught by the mighty works of God. But it's not just the mighty works of God.

Psalm 78, Psalm 105, Psalm 106, Psalm 81, Psalm 77, almost anywhere you go here,

Joshua 24. It's not only the great things that he has done that is being recounted in remembrance for the sake of the next generation.

It's not just the great things he has done. It's also the treacherous things we have done in spite of all this.

We sinned, we sinned, in spite of all this, we rebelled again. It's sitting that little

Israelite boy down on your lap and recounting the wonderful graces of God that have surrounded and blessed your life.

And then hanging your head low for a moment and saying, son, in spite of all that,

I sin. I sin, I rebel, that's faithfulness to the next generation.

Do you want to break generational idols? You cannot tear down an unnamed idol.

You simply can't. You can't tear down what you can't name.

If you don't identify it, you won't mortify it. It's as simple as that. So it's not just recounting the faithfulness of what

God has done. It's also recounting the faithlessness that you have responded to God with.

Joshua, of course, stands at the fork in the road of this demand. And he says, you may think it evil to serve the

Lord, but I've made up my mind. I've directed my heart. I've ordered my family. As for me and as for my house, we will serve the

Lord. This is not only an example, this is almost a veiled plea.

Will you join me? Will you follow me? Will my lingering memory have any dent in the way you live the rest of your life?

This isn't the first time Joshua has been at this fork, been at this crossroad.

Remember when the whole nation of Israel was on the verge of entering into the promised land of God, the promised inheritance that God said,

I will give it to you. It's yours. Simply go and take it. It won't be by sword or bow, but by my spirit.

I'm there. It's yours. And the people, so fearful and cautious, sent spies into the land and saw these terrorizing figures.

And almost every step back was a step of decreasing and diminishing faith in God and increasing fear and anxiety about what might happen.

I don't know if they just saw a little four foot five warriors in armor too big.

But by the time they got back to report to the leaders what they had seen, the exaggeration had conquered their minds and their imaginations.

There's giants in the land. They'll crush us. Joshua did not forget the works or the word of the

Lord. He stood there next to Caleb and said, have we forgotten who our

God is? Did he not just deliver us through the wilderness and from the bondage of Egypt?

Is this thing too great for him? And he and Caleb and they alone were of that initial generation, the ones who remembered and trusted in the presence and power of God.

He understood what it was like to be at a fork in the road when almost everyone else was dead set against you.

You might all have lost your faith. You might all have left your first love. The whole nation might be turning its back on God.

So be it. I've been there before. As for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. That's his heart.

And it's a veiled example, who's going to follow? Isn't it a blessing when a man takes a stand like that and speaks?

And when that man can stand forth and his family is there with him, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. The whole. Weight of Joshua's book and the whole weight of Chapter 24 comes hurdling toward this simple verb.

Choose, and it's not just choose, it's choose.

This day, all of the pressure comes down on this moment of decision, on this fork in the road.

Choose not later, not after you've figured some things out, not when life's in a better arrangement and things are more settled, not after you've worked out those things that are making it so hard to be obedient and trustworthy of God, not then choose, but now choose.

Choose right now. Again, he's raising the stakes.

He's sharpening the contrast. He's putting this call, this demand in the starkest terms possible.

It's as stark as Psalm 1. There's only two ways to live. There's a path of wisdom. There's a path of foolishness.

It's as stark as choose life or choose death. Do you want blessing or do you want judgment?

He funnels all of the pressure of all of the mighty works of God at this passage point in his life to the simple act of choice.

Will you choose? He recognizes the stakes. Will you choose? There can be no compromise.

There can be no waffling. There can be no straddling. The issue is very clear.

Gordon McConville, in his commentary, puts it so well. Will Israel remain distinct from the world around it and faithful to God alone?

Or will it cave and compromise to the pressure and conformity of idolatry?

Joshua recognizes how subtle and gradual the creeping influence of idolatry and intermarriage is among the people of God.

His response is not to also give a gradual and patient intermingling of God's command to go match the energy and subtle creep of that idolatry.

He stomps on the serpent's head as soon as it begins to slither into the garden. That's how you deal with idols.

Choose today, right now, who you're going to serve. We see the same thing in first Kings 18, where Israel has come to the great deception under this

Jezebel, under the tyranny and idolatry of Ahab and this mighty man of God, Elijah, who feels so alone as Joshua perhaps felt so alone comes to Mount Carmel.

And he addresses these people who have been bewitched by the false prophets of Baal and he cries out to them.

How long will you waver between two opinions? If the

Lord is God, follow him. If Baal is God, follow him. Elijah is doing what

Joshua did here in Joshua 24. Who are you going to serve? Choose right now who you're going to serve.

Be burning hot. Be ice cold. If you're lukewarm,

God will vomit you out of his mouth. The Lord Jesus said you can't serve two masters.

I don't know why you're trying. You might think you're you've complimented them quite well in your life, but it's painfully obvious who you hate and what master you love.

It's painfully obvious why it seems evil to serve the Lord. And so good and sweet to serve the rival affection.

Francis Schaeffer wrote this tremendous book. I've been enjoying reading it over the past few weeks.

Joshua and the flow of biblical history. In the very last chapter, of course, is a running exposition of of Joshua 24, and the chapter is titled

Choose. He, too, sees the flow of the whole book and that existential crisis pressure point is crashing down on that verb choose.

He writes, Joshua's own choice was emphatic. As for me and my house, we will serve the

Lord. And he notes in the English, we have that as a future tense. But the Hebrew has a fuller meaning.

It expresses a continuous action. It involves the future, but it also carries into it the past.

In other words, Joshua was undoubtedly affirming. I have chosen. And I will continue to choose his words were not just an empty boast because the people standing in front of him knew his past choices.

This was a man who had always consistently chosen the Lord and was continuing to choose the

Lord. Not long after crossing the Red Sea, Joshua stood as the commander against the

Amalekite army when the people all fell down and began to worship this image they made out of gold into the likeness of a calf and said, this is the

God that brought us up out of Egypt, which was just one of the gods that kept them in the bondage of Egypt.

Joshua made a choice. He would not bow down and serve with them. When the spies, as I mentioned, enter the land, it was he and Caleb alone who made a choice.

They would trust God, even if it was just the two of them. But it wasn't just what

Joshua saw in his own life or what the people he was speaking to saw in his life. It was also the memories that Joshua saw in the lives of others.

When Moses died outside of the promised land that he had been seeking for 40 years in the wilderness.

Joshua knew it was because God told him to do something and Moses made a choice to do something else.

Moses made a choice and it cost him the promised land. Joshua, as an elderly man who had spent his whole life continually choosing

God, says to the people, choose right now who you're going to serve.

I'm not going to be here much longer and I can't choose it for you. I can tell you what I've chosen.

It's what I've always chosen. It's what me and my house will continue to choose. We will serve the

Lord. Schaefer writes, this was the character of Joshua.

He chose, he chose, he chose. And he kept on choosing.

Christianity is not the initiation of choice, of course.

I want to be very clear. I'm speaking to a room mostly, I believe, of Calvinists. We do not put man's choice on the sovereign throne of God's salvation.

But let me address you in this way. For that reason, in the sinfulness of our hearts and the polluted corruptions of our affections, we often hide our responsibility as human beings, our responsibility as men behind the sovereignty of God.

We saw at the beginning of Joshua 24, Abraham chose to follow

God. But how did Joshua 24 put it? It's the Lord speaking in the first person,

I took Abraham out of his idolatry. I led him through Canaan.

It was God's sovereign act. God was the one that rescued Abraham from his idolatry.

God was the one that led him. That's the divine perspective. That's the basis. That's the reality of what's gone on.

But what did it look like day to day and season to season in the life of Abraham? It looked like Abraham choosing to follow

God. Brothers and sisters, do not take your responsibility to choose this day who you will serve and hide it behind the sovereignty of God as some great trump card or excuse that means you can straddle between two masters and you don't actually have to make choice after choice after choice.

Don't do it. Don't be an unbeliever sitting in the row and say,

I would choose. He just hasn't done it in my life yet. I actually really, really want it. It's kind of bad that God's withholding on me.

I really do want to choose him, but alas, I can't choose him. Joshua 24 doesn't say that.

Is it the mighty act of God's sovereignty when one is brought out of darkness into light? Yes. Amen. A thousandfold.

But we don't preach the mysterious working of God's sovereignty. We preach choose this day whom you will serve.

We preach repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You choose and only if you've chosen will the rest of us know it wasn't you who chose first, but rather God who chose you.

It wasn't you who loved God, but rather God who loved you. Look at how the people respond.

The people answered and said, verse 16 and following, 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, who did those great signs in our sight, preserved us in all the way that we went among all the people through whom we passed and the

Lord drove out from before us all the people, including these Amorites who dwell in the land.

We will also serve the Lord. He is our God. We're right with you, Joshua. We're going to choose this

God, too. They're recounting the things that they have been taught. Do you see this transmission from generation to generation?

Joshua is recounting what the Lord has brought. This is who I am because this is what I've done.

Joshua relays that to the people. And when the people hear it, they also relay it back to Joshua. This is who the

Lord is. This is what he's done. It's just like Psalm 78. It's just like Psalm 105 and 106.

It's a testimony of God's faithfulness. But Joshua knows something about this people.

It's why he began with fear the Lord. He knows that the resolve of this people is fickle.

He's addressing the second generation of Israelites. Where's the first generation? They're all bleached bones in the wilderness.

They, too, once said at the foot of Mount Sinai, we will serve the Lord. Him only will we serve.

Don't worry about it, Moses. You've got our word. Joshua was there as a witness to recognize how fickle the resolve of this people is.

Joshua knew. There was idolatry among the people. We ought to know there's idolatry among us as much as there ever was among the

Israelites. Different gods, but the same mechanism of idolatry, whether it be of gain, of status, of pleasure, whatever it may be to serve ourselves.

We're beset by idols as much as any Israelite has ever been. That's why the Apostle John, one of our sword drill verses, said, little children, keep yourselves from idols.

That's the closing word. The children of Israel did not keep themselves from idols like foolish children.

They chased after every flashing fancy. And John is addressing the church and saying, little children, keep yourselves from idols.

What does that sound like? Choose for yourselves whom you will serve. Not hiding behind God's sovereignty.

But standing on our responsibility. So he knows how flippant this initial commitment, this initial resolve is.

And he says to the people, verse 19, you cannot serve the Lord. He is a holy

God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If you forsake the

Lord your God to serve foreign gods, he'll turn to do you harm, consume you even after he's done you good.

It's a surprising response, isn't it? The people have just said, we also will serve the

Lord. He is our God. You would want him to say, oh, great. I'm so glad to hear it.

I'm glad you're on board. Now I can die in peace as an old man. He doesn't say that. They think this is an easy commitment.

They think because they're in the right place and they have the right order, their doctrine has crossed the right

T's and dotted the right I's. That this is a natural, almost inevitable commitment. They didn't have their eyes open.

Joshua had his eyes open. They didn't recognize the stakes. Joshua recognizes the stakes.

So he's addressing them out of this fear. He's trying to rattle and break the half heartedness of their lukewarm commitment.

You cannot serve the Lord. What a response to their commitment. We also will serve the

Lord. You cannot. It stops them dead in their track. I can almost imagine him exclaiming that against them mid sentence.

We also will. You cannot serve the Lord. You don't even fear him.

You don't even know who he is. You've already forgotten the things that he's done.

He is a holy God. He is so jealous.

He will not share his glory with another. The most humble man on the face of the earth was the man who shaped me into leadership, and even he died outside of the land.

You don't know the holiness of God. Joshua is saying this is like anti evangelism, isn't it?

You get someone in the workplace, maybe a relative, you know, maybe, you know, I would be interested in going to try.

I don't really know about all the Christianity stuff. I mean, the supernatural stuff's really kind of bogus. And frankly, the way you're kind of ordering your life seems really bizarre.

Is it really necessary? But it would probably be really good for me. Maybe I would start going to church because I'm sure it would help me work through some things in my life and, you know, it might be good.

I could draw, you know, to the man upstairs, get a little bit closer to that higher power, because I do believe there's a higher power.

You know, maybe I will serve the Lord. You cannot serve the Lord. Just the way you're thinking about this so casually.

It's clear you don't know him. You don't know him. It's like Asahel Nettleton in the second

Great Awakening, when they'd have these revival meetings and they'd go from town to town and he'd preach.

And then from time to time, he'd circle back to that. And so he'd keep up with people who had who had seemed to be moved by the

Lord in those in those meetings and those preachings. And there's this account of one young man who found him out in the town the next day.

And he said, Reverend, Reverend Nettleton, I just want you to know the Lord moved through your sermon last night.

I've given my life to the Lord. What is he what is he fishing for? He's fishing for what the people were fishing for when they were replying to Joshua affirmation.

I'm so glad. Praise God. This is wonderful news. Do you know what Reverend Nettleton said to this young man?

We'll see. I'll be back in a few months. We'll see. We'll see if the

Lord moved in your life. We'll know. We'll know if you've actually met with the

Lord. You've just had some emotional, climactic experience that's made you feel warm and fuzzy for about 24 hours.

Don't worry, the side effects will wear off soon. You cannot serve the

Lord. Look at what he says. He drives it home. This is almost uncomfortable to us, is it not?

The Lord will not forgive your transgressions. Do you not feel the the instinct, the knee jerk reaction to rescue the

Lord from that? No, no, that's not true. The Lord, the Lord delights to show mercy and compassion. He's a God full of forgiveness.

I feel that instinct. I want to jump in and rescue the Lord from this word. Don't tell people this.

People shouldn't hear this. This is almost anti evangelism. The Lord won't forgive your sins.

Have you ever witnessed to someone like that? Why would Joshua be speaking to the people in this way?

He's already recounted the long suffering faithfulness of God. He's seen how

God forgave and forgave and forgave in the very way we recounted from Psalm 78 last night.

And so it's out of that whole history and demonstration of God's character that Joshua recognizes your half hearted devotion, your lukewarm commitment, the bare fact that you do not fear

God tells me already the Lord's not going to forgive your sins because you're not going to repent of your sins.

The Lord's not going to forgive your idolatry because you're not going to turn from your idolatry.

You're turning from him. Even as he's addressing you, that's why the day will come where his patience, his patience will run dry, he will not bear with sinners forever and he will turn against you.

Joshua is not speculating. He's seen it happen. I'm glad that's in the

Old Testament. Right, brothers and sisters? That doesn't apply to us today. Until you turn to First Corinthians 10, and Paul says to the church at Corinth, that was written for our sake.

That happened to them so that we would know what it is to fear and serve the living

God. If we're troubled by this pushback, we need to remember all that's contained within it,

Joshua is remembering from his own living experience the mighty acts of God, the long -suffering faithfulness and the hard, calloused, stubborn rejection of the people of God.

And he says he will not forgive your recalcitrant, unbending sin and idolatry.

He is a holy God. He is a jealous God. In other words, he's saying, don't you know who you're dealing with?

Dilrath Davis. Who has this beautiful commentary on Joshua, and he describes this as the cellophane

Christ of modern evangelicalism. You know, what do you use cellophane for?

I honestly have no idea what cellophane is used for in any other application than wrapping a gift basket.

That's the only time I've ever heard of or used cellophane. The cellophane

Christ is a gift basket Christ. And the church offers a gift basket

Christ to so many people. And so Dilrath Davis applying this passage says, don't lightly mouth your profession of faith.

Joshua is saying, don't you know the God you're dealing with? He is a holy

God. He is a jealous God. Don't dare come to him thinking, though it makes him sad to see the way we live, he'll always say,

I forgive. The Lord is not a soft, cuddly Santa in the sky who drools over easy decisions during invitational hymns.

Joshua seeks to stomp out that blathering self -confidence that makes only half -hearted emotional commitments.

He wants to shut its mouth and say, count the costs. We find it rather off -putting when

Joshua says it, perhaps. But doesn't the Lord Jesus say the same thing? Lord, I know you're the one.

And I'm going to follow you, I really am. I really mean it. But my father just died. I'm a son.

Isn't this the right thing? I have to go back and you cannot be my disciple. My instinct is, of course,

I'm going to lower the bar as low as I possibly can just to hope that the dragnet will eventually bring you in.

What does Jesus say? It's what Joshua says. You cannot. You're playing.

You're playing games. You're not choosing who you're going to serve. You're playing. So you can't serve.

You can't be a disciple. You haven't counted the cost. You're not serious. That's why your sins won't be forgiven.

You don't even take them seriously. It's a cellophane Christ. As one said, we should not sell

Christ like that, like that prepackaged cellophane

Christ. But we should warn people about the cost of following him, the cost of encountering him.

He's a holy God. He's a jealous God. God is the same yesterday, yesterday, today, forever.

This is who he is. We may have been dulled to the realization of this, but God has not changed.

Our task is not to trick people into following him, to be used car salesmen of of the gospel.

We're not trying to trap people into, ah, you got me there. I guess

I'll lay my life down for Christ. We want people to squirm like Peter squirmed when

Jesus looked him in the eye after he had been denied and said, Peter, do you love me? Do you love me?

Jesus was asking Peter what he was asking the church in Ephesus in Revelation to what he's asking us as a church, what he's asking you sitting there.

Do you love me? Am I your first love? Peter. Says, Lord, you know that I love you.

That's not enough, he asked it again and he asked it again. He drives us to the point of decision.

Peter, choose, choose. People said to Joshua, no, we will serve the

Lord. Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the

Lord for yourselves to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses now, therefore, he said, put away the foreign gods which are among you.

Incline your heart to the Lord God of Israel. And the people said, the Lord, our God, we will serve his voice.

We will obey. Joshua is no longer speaking about the foreign gods or their fathers.

He's envisaging that they all have foreign gods among them. Put away the idols you have in your pockets.

That's how cheap your resolve is. You have it in your coat pocket. You have it on your iPhone.

You have it in your Amazon cart. You have it in the back of your mind. It's a thing you've been daydreaming about at different intermittent moments throughout the day.

Put that away. Incline your heart to the

Lord God of Israel. That is a very beautiful translation. Incline your heart.

Lean deliberately toward, be pulled by. Because if you're not being pulled toward the

Lord, you're being pulled away from the Lord by something else. Incline your heart.

Here's another thing I love about that word incline. If your heart is not inclined toward the

Lord, what's the state of your heart? Decline. Brothers and sisters, our hearts are either being inclined toward the

Lord or we are in spiritual decline. There is no neutrality in your life.

Do you easily shrug away those direct temptations and just slumber on through the motions?

When we're keeping in step with the spirit, Paul says he yearns within us jealously.

When we have communion with this God who is holy, who is jealous, his spirit dwells on the throne of our heart and yearns within us jealously.

That's why the spirit is at war with the flesh. Are you at war with the flesh?

Is the spirit yearning within you jealously? Or are you like one of those mummies at the

Metropolitan Museum? Your spiritual vitality has been sucked out of your skin follicles.

You're just human leather, spiritually speaking. You slink backward, you're in decline.

You become not just lazy, but immobile, so unconcerned that you can't even muster concern.

If you're not inclined to the Lord, you're in spiritual decline. You begin to forget the works of the

Lord. And so you forget the Lord himself. And against all of that decay and idolatrous pollution,

Joshua cuts through like a knife and says, wake up and choose who you're going to serve.

Choose this day whom you're going to serve. Don't leave Jeffrey, New Hampshire, without having chosen the

God that you and your family will serve. Brothers and sisters, are we in decline?

There's only one reason we're in decline. If we're in decline, it's because we're not being pulled to our first love. We need to return by remembering our first love.

Will we serve other gods? Will we allow other idolatries to trickle in, not only to my mind and then into my affections, into my will, out of my life, into the lives of my wife and my children and my household and the pews of the church and all around me?

Will I put a border against all of that and stand there with my own as a man, as a woman, as a child of God and say,

I will serve the Lord, I have chosen, I will continue to choose. Every time a false flash of temptation, a false whisper of an idol comes forth,

I'll choose again. Every time a setback, a wound, a trial, a valley of despair comes forth in my life, even then

I'll choose again, I'll ever choose to follow the Lord. That's what

Joshua was calling for here. Listen to how

Schaeffer puts it at the very close of this book. He says, what are your gods of Ur? What are your gods of Egypt?

What are your gods of the Emirates? What are your gods? What gods did you leave when you made the great first choice to become a

Christian? God says. You chose then once and for all to be a

Christian. Keep choosing, choose again and continue to choose and continue to choose.

In every season and every trial of your life, choose and then choose again. And every day you wake up and every night you put your head down, choose, choose then and choose again.

You must continue to choose and never stop choosing the living God over against the foreign gods, the false idols.

And don't choose lightly and don't assume you have chosen. Don't be like the kind of half -hearted, dim -witted people that Joshua has to grab by the collar and say, you cannot serve the

God you don't know, the gods you don't fear. You cannot. If you truly encountered the

Lord, there is no quarters for a half -hearted commitment. Half -hearted commitments only come from those who have never encountered the

Lord. When you encounter the Lord, it is a crisis moment of decision. When you encounter the

Lord's presence, not just at the beginning of your conversion, but throughout the Christian life, it's the song that we sang from William Cooper.

In that moment, immediately you recognize, Lord, I hate the sins that drove you from me.

It's a cry. When will you return? When will I love you as I ought? And it resolves in this commitment.

I choose, Lord. I will serve you. Your voice

I now hear, I will obey your voice. Jesus gives a parable of of two sons and the father commands them of a work to be done, and the one son says with such ease, with such self -assurance, with such confidence,

I'll go do that. I will. I will serve, father. The other son says, no.

In time, all that self -assurance, all that ease of commitment begins to fade. Some other distraction, some other love, some other wonder has grabbed hold of this young man's heart.

And so he never does what his father called him to do. He doesn't serve. He had said, I will serve.

Your voice, I hear, father, I will obey, I will do it, I choose. But he doesn't do it.

He leaves like some of us will leave and the work is left unfinished, the work undone. But there's another son, the one who initially said no, the one who didn't even realize why he came here this weekend, because this too, like every other

Sunday up to this point, has just been going through the motions like the priest of Jeremiah, too. But now the voice is clear and the pressure of choosing is profound.

And though he had initially in his own way of living said, no, I will not hear, I will not obey, I refuse to serve.

Now, in remorse and repentance, in light of recounting the mercy and the wonder of God, he says,

I will go. I will serve. And Jesus asks, which of the two sons did the will of the father?

As for you, as for your house, will you serve the Lord? As for us, as for our church, will we serve the

Lord? Do we recognize the Lord who calls us to serve him?

Is our worship suffused with the holiness and jealousy of who God is? Let me close just by drawing our attention back to Genesis chapter 35.

Jacob's heart and the heart of his family was in decline. We know that Rachel, when she left her father's home, had smuggled many of the household gods with her.

And it seems that there were foreign gods in that family's life. As a result, Jacob didn't have the kind of fear of God and reverence for God that actually made its way into the lives of his children or maybe even into his wife's life.

And so, though he himself was oriented toward God, idolatry was alive and well in the household of Jacob.

He was in decline. He was in spiritual decline. We think of the priest

Eli who had his heart toward God and seemed to be a very reverent and devoted man to God, but he didn't know how to influence that reverence toward his sons who built strange fire.

And the day came when they had fallen and he fell back and died as well. As for you, as for your house, will you serve the

Lord? Well, the Lord calls Jacob out of Shechem to return to Bethel.

Bethel, of course, is where the Lord first revealed himself to Jacob. And Jacob seems to know that this call, this this is an answer to the decline, to the spiritual drought, to the idolatry that's been creeping and influencing the ways of his house, the ways of his heart.

And so he immediately, as he embarks on this journey with him in his household toward Bethel, commands them,

Genesis 35, verse two, put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, change your garments.

Jacob was remembering. It had been a long time in Shechem, and as the years went by, it seemed like a distant dream or maybe something that happened to someone else that God would have revealed himself in that powerful saving way at Bethel.

That was just a distant memory, something he couldn't return to. Now he was just slogging it out and weaker and weaker day by day.

But when God called him to return, his memory glittered with the realization that God was going to restore the joy of his salvation.

It was the bulldozer we spoke about last night, the expulsive power of a new affection. Bethel is where God first saved me.

It's where God first made himself known to me. I didn't even understand it now, but he's going to bring me back that I might be revived.

What does that mean for me now? It's Joshua 24. Put away the foreign gods.

Get rid of the clothes that they're stained by. Purify yourself.

We're going to the presence of God, the thing that we've lost, the thing that's been eclipsed all this time.

What is Jacob doing in Genesis 35? It's what we looked at on the first night.

He's remembering from where he had fallen. Joshua 24 is giving us that kind of call.

Repent. Do the first works. It's amazing that this little episode of Genesis 35, too, becomes the foundation of how the priests were to approach

God in his holy dwelling place, they were to become ritually pure and change their garments, that they might come in to worship the true and living

God. Jacob recognized as a result of that call, that call to remember and return that he would address himself and his house and say, put away the foreign gods that are among you.

Put away the gods that our family has served. And serve the

Lord God. Now, therefore, put away the foreign gods which are among you and incline your heart to the

Lord God of Israel. Will we serve the Lord? Will we obey his voice?

Will we choose him? This day, let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you. For this call, thank you for this promise that if we as we humble ourselves and seek your presence,

Lord, you will be found. Not with half resolves, not with cheap attempts.

But Lord, by steadfastly and with eyes wide open, choosing you, devoting ourselves to you in light of the wondrous works that you've done, that reveal who you are, purging the idols of our hearts.

Purging the idols of our homes, purging the idols in this church.

Lord, have your way with us. Let us feel all the pressure of that call to choose.

And let the response be an inclination of our hearts. That is like leaving Shechem to return to Bethel.

Restore to us the joy of our salvation. Bring to our memories and our affections what it was like when we loved our betrothed and pursued you in the wilderness.

Revive your work in us, O God. Revive your presence in our midst. Revive your power in our lives to send holy dove into the throne of our hearts and yearn jealously within us for the glory of the only living