The other reason Joshua says the people can’t serve God is because the Lord is a jealous God.
Again, we have to explore the meaning of the word “jealous” from the ancient Middle Eastern perspective.
According to the god system during Bible times, it was normal that gods were jealous of each other.
The gods were always fighting amongst each other over the most trivial of things such as who would have control over what parts of nature or who would dominate which territory in a given region.
However, the God of Israel was different.
His jealousy was for the allegiance of His people, that they would worship only him.
Of course, the Lord didn’t view the gods of the other nations as competition.
We all know they were just figments of men’s imaginations if not fallen angels.
Therefore, God didn’t direct His anger towards other gods.
Instead He directed His fury towards those who had betrayed Him: His People.
If those whom He had rescued and given His undivided attention to turned away from Him, He would have no choice but to punish them.
However, the punishment leveled would be in the hopes that the people would come to their senses, see the light and come back to Him.
Otherwise, they would be KARET or cut off and be destroyed.
To conclude, when Joshua said “You cannot serve God”, he was indeed revealing an important theological truth.
And that truth is we are just not capable in and of ourselves of serving God.
Our minds are too perverted.
We’ve been too contaminated by the ways of the world.
Our souls are too unclean.
The problem is our level of service has to be perfect because God is perfect.
God’s expectations are just too high for any mere mortal to meet.
The Lord has expectations for His people and if those expectations aren’t met, there will be punishments.
This is the true Biblical definition of justice.
And where do we find the Lord’s divine system of justice laid out?
It’s in that section of the Torah we call The Law.
I’m talking about the part where the Lord gives out rewards for obedience (called “blessings”) and punishments (called “curses”) whenever we slip up and fail.
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