The Collect and Lectionary
Guard your Church, O Lord, with your perpetual mercy; and because in our frailty we cannot stand without your support, keep us always from all that may harm us; and lead us to all that is profitable for our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The O.T. Lesson: Joshua 24:14-25. Psalm 92:1-6. The Epistle: Galatians 6:11-18. The Gospel: Matthew 6:24-34.
Joshua
Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods of your forefathers, worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day who you will serve, whether the gods of your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
Then the people answered, ”Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from the land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.
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 sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”
But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”
Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.”
“Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.
“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.” On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he drew up for them decrees and laws.
Matthew 6:24, 33
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.”
WHO WILL YOU SERVE?
Both Joshua and Yeshua [Jesus] pose this question to us, and it is the most important question of greatest consequence ever to be addressed to us - each one of us without exception. The rousing provocation is to seriously consider our foremost yielding and loyalty in life - God or a substitute allegiance. For the Israelites the alternative put to them was “other gods”. For those encountering the claims of Jesus Christ the option of serving Mammon [money and all the benefits it is perceived to provide materially and socially].
In our sincere preference for God competing allurements have to be overcome that have a great appeal for our fallen and sinful nature. Israel’s vow in its first iteration was glib and hypocritical. Joshua knew the hearts of his people well: “You are not able to serve the Lord.”
Their perverse proclivities were predictable to Joshua’s sharp spiritual insight. Attraction to foreign gods was already among them and their brash profession of loyalty to Israel’s Savior, spoken in fake recitation of God’s goodness toward them was a witness to hearts that were already false. Joshua was intimately familiar with these unreliable [rebellious] folk. Genuine followers were among them, undoubtedly. But rarely are large crowds completely converted and conscious of spiritual reality. Sometimes the divine verdict upon the people of God has to be expressed in terms like these: “What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears [Hosea 6:4]. Approaches and responses to the Lord can be uniformly vocal but so apathetic. Our God deserves our full devotion but that will never occur until we crossover into his kingdom of perfection. Israel’s incapacity is ours also. Only divine enabling can cause us to comply with the Lord’s beneficial commands. Our idolatries, wickedness and weaknesses need to be conquered by his expulsive power and he must reign in our subdued hearts.
There is only one true and deserving Master but our loyalties remain divided through our indwelling sin. The conflict is ongoing [Romans 7:7ff, Galatians 5: 16-18]. The preaching of perfectionism in Christian experience is an injurious phenomenon to tortured souls and conflicted consciences. The desire of the true believer is to please one Master only and totally, and that is the leaning of the heart born from above. In the choice that we have between God and our selfish heart, enslaved to Satan, is as clear as love to the Lord and loathing of the devil. God is pure excellence and Satan is entirely obnoxious. The Triune God attracts our love, honor and affectionate admiration. The evil one is justly despised and we constantly petition God for protection from him. Satan’s kingdom is murky, dark, cruel and full of hate, deceit and violence. It ranges across the entirety of mankind and oppresses and depresses the soul of humanity, inflicting injury and injustices everywhere. Yet fallen man is still charmed by its enticements and transient pleasures. Our interior darkness and irresistible lusts keep us captive to its magical mastery of our depraved imaginations and consequent unbearable miseries. Satan, our foul and tyrannical artisan of our bondage, causes us to bludgeon, flog and beat up ourselves. Sinners are inwardly unhappy and distracted souls careering from one personal catastrophe to another, as our celebrity classes frequently illustrate, for they have the freedom and finances to live to self-gratifying excess - the natural way of all flesh.
For the regenerate folk of God, the righteousness of God is their pursuit and delight - his holy character and ways of truth and wisdom issuing in goodness, reliability and love towards his redeemed evermore. What deprivation the choice of the wrong master brings. What irksome and painful service we render to the evil one. What dire rewards we are given by him in his miserly, menacing and mean ways. The result of his control is unimaginably horrific and destructive in terms of eternity. But how safe, blessed, blissful, sublime and serene is the outcome of serving and living with God, because God in himself is the source and sum of all goodness, and in knowing him we receive and possess the gracious donation of himself and all that he is. Who will you serve?