Will We Serve the Lord? - Church Retreat 2026

Idolatry, Forgotten Works, and the Call to Return

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 2 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 2, 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, other 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.

Joshua's Charge to Fear the Lord and Serve Him Alone

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. But 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 two, verses seven and ten. The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua. This is the direct impact of Joshua 24. That generation serves 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 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.

Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve

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 mind.

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 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.

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 this 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, but 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. And 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.

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 pass 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 eyes.

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.