Sermon January 15, 2006

The Faith Full Family:
Choosing the Lord
Joshua 24:14-24

Introduction: Families can be wonderful things. If you survive the holidays you can look back and see the good family time you had. Families can also drive you crazy and sometimes we don’t even know why. Families give gifts to their descendents. We sometimes marvel at the ways family members resemble one another. Matt is the tallest person in my immediate family going back a couple of generations at least and that is a gift, probably, from a great-great grandfather who was exceptionally tall.
But families also give gifts that are not so good; we might even refer to them as curses. What do we do with such ‘gifts’?

I. A Journey’s End
Our text in Joshua comes at the end of a journey that had lasted over forty years. Only a few people remained who remembered Egypt and the harsh slavery they had lived under. Most could only remember the harsh life of the desert and the fulfillment of God’s promise to give them a land and a home.

Joshua is an old man at the end of the book that bears his name. All the tribes have come to Shechem to renew the covenant that had first been established at Sinai. Like Moses before him, Joshua was concerned about the future of his people. Would they be faithful to the covenant promises they had made to Yahweh, the maker of heaven and earth? Joshua issues a challenge to the families of Israel, “Choose!” Choose whom you will serve.

It would seem that the choice would be a ‘no-brainer’. God had delivered them from slavery, saved them from the Egyptian army, sustained them for forty years in the wilderness, and given them victory over their enemies. Of course they would serve Yahweh. I mean what were the other choices? The people of Israel made the right choices, at least with their mouths. But other choices still pulled at them.
II. Family gods
Joshua makes a surprising and amazing statement when he commands them, “Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt. For forty years the Israelites had been wandering in the desert, under the Lord’s leadership and discipline and yet they continued to carry ‘gods’ that had been in their families for generations.

I don’t know how many times you have moved in your married life. We moved four times in Kenya before we returned to Livonia. Right after we first arrived in Kenya we bought an old cassette stereo. By the time we moved to Nairobi we had replaced it but we carried it with us every time we moved. Finally in 2000 when we moved back to the States we sold it in a garage sale. Why did we move that four times? I don’t know. We could probably ask the same question of other things we carry with us from our families.

The Israelites had carried ‘gods’ with them for many generations. ‘Beyond the river’ refers to where Abraham had come from or possibly the ‘gods’ that Rachel had stolen from her father when Jacob returned to Canaan. They had been in Egypt for 400 years and collected other ‘gods’ and now forty years after Sinai they are still carrying those ‘gods’. Joshua calls for a house cleaning, a choosing between those worthless ‘gods’ and God the savior.

III. Cleaning House
You don’t have any ‘gods’ hidden in your closet do you? We have moved beyond graven images for the most part but the principle is still quite true, to allow Yahweh to be our God we must remove some things, some of the baggage that we carry with us.

This is not easy to do. I would imagine that some of those ‘gods’ that Israel had carried had been forgotten about for the most part. They carried them, were burdened by them but were unaware of the impact. Not only were these things a burden they were also a curse. Their continued presence disrupted their relationship with God. It’s like keeping an old picture of a girlfriend of long ago in your wallet.

So much of this comes back to one of the basic laws of the universe, you reap what you sow. Paul writes of this to the Galatian Christians, Gal. 6:7-8. But there is a corollary to this concept; you often sow what you reap. Think about a person who has been abused as a child. Too often that person becomes an abuser. A father cheats on his wife, years later his son cheats on his wife. This is part of the curse of sin; the family idols that are hidden and forgotten but still bear fruit in the life of a family. It is true also of righteousness but the harvest of sin in our world is something we have all seen and experienced. We don’t have to be slaves to the past. Paul understood that we don’t have to keep sowing death and destruction in our lives and in the lives of our children and grandchildren, Rom 8:1-2. The curse of sin has been broken because Jesus became cursed for us, Gal. 3:13. But for the curse to be broken the idol has to be cast out.
Joshua presented the challenge to his people, “Choose whom you will serve.” To us the choice seems obvious but I doubt it was so easy or obvious to them. The cycle of failure that continued to follow them is proof of how difficult it can be. It is probably obvious to us also, but not easy. The question we need to ask is what do we need to put away from our lives. Peter reminded the church, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” 1 Peter 1:18-19. All of us have received both good and worthless gifts from our ancestors. What will we keep? What needs to be put away? I pray that we can learn to bless our children and grandchildren with good seed to plant.



Livonia Church of Christ: January 15, 2006