When Joshua asked the people if they were willing to serve God wholeheartedly, the people responded positively.
But they were interpreting Joshua’s question through their own filters.
In other words, in their brains, they heard what they wanted to hear and discarded the rest.
Here’s another interesting thing about the ancient Middle Eastern mindset.
The people saw God as the one who had obligations towards them instead of the other way around.
In other words, it was God who was to serve them instead of the other way around.
Therefore, the proper response was of course to in turn serve God but not necessarily on an exclusive basis.
Here’s the important thing Joshua so desperately wanted to communicate to the people.
He didn’t want their relationship with God to be transactional.
In other words,Joshua didn’t want the people’s responses towards God to be like a “if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back” kind of relationship.
Joshua wanted their allegiance and service to God to come from a much stronger foundation than legalistic obedience.
Their obedience to God was to be based on a solid understanding of just who God really is, His character and what He was capable of based on Israel’s history with God that Joshua recounted a couple of verses earlier.
Joshua was also trying to communicate to the people that it made no sense to try to view the God of Israel in the same way they viewed other gods.
If they did that, proper worship of Hashem would become impossible.
Why?
Because of the one single characteristic Hashem possesses that distinguishes Him from any other god in the world forever and for all time.
Of course, I’m talking about God’s HOLINESS.
Here’s something interesting about the attribute of holiness.
It has both “saving” and “destroying” properties.
In fact, the Lord’s holiness should so wow us over we should possess a burning desire in our hearts to mimic that particular attribute of God.
But can you see how Satan has blinded the whole world and planted the desire in our hearts to do the exact opposite?
Men like to brag about how many girls they were able to successfully get to go bed with them (such an unclean practice that rightfully leads to all kinds of diseases).
People could care less about making a distinction between clean and unclean foods and go willy nilly eating everything and anything.
Heck, even the divorce rate in the church is just as high as in the secular world.
But here’s the thing.
Not only should we sincerely desire to mimic God’s holiness, that’s what He expects from us.
But there’s yet another deeper truth behind Joshua’s statement when He said the people weren’t capable of worshipping God.
It is this.
The Lord’s holiness is so deep and awesome and transcends anything we can understand, it’s literally impossible for a mere mortal to meet the Lord’s high standards of holiness.
Yet, on another level, the Lord expects us to meet that standard.
Pretty darn paradoxical, isn’t it?
Yet, that’s the challenge we all face.
And that’s why we need a savior.
That’s why Joshua said to the people…
“You are not able to
serve the Lord.
He is a holy God;
he is a jealous God.
He will not forgive your
rebellion and your sins.”
-Joshua 24:19
Leave a Reply