An Invitation to Choose

Scripture for meditation: Genesis 12:1-3; Joshua 24:14-25

Joshua...I'm thinking he's not going to be winning many awards for evangelist of the year nor is his "invitation" to the people of Israel going to be published in too many books on "how to have a successful outreach ministry"!

Joshua gives the people an invitation: choose today who you will serve...the one true God and throw away all the other gods OR if that is undesirable to them they can serve the many number of other gods of the day. I'm trying to imagine an evangelistic service today with that kind of invitation...hey guys, you have a choice before you today...you can serve God, but it's going to cost you everything, or if that is undesirable to you, go ahead and continue to serve the gods of our land...self, comfort, materialism, power, etc. I wonder if people would still flock to the front of the church to the tune of "Just as I Am"?

But that's the truth of what it means to be in a covenant relationship with God. Like God's call of Abram's in Genesis to "leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you," Jesus also tells us to leave father & mother, sister and brother to follow Him. He tells us to deny SELF take up our crosses and follow Him. And like Joshua, Jesus lets us know right up front the cost of this covenant relationship.

But the people of Israel respond to this not-so-inviting invitation...yes, we want to follow God! They proceed to then list all of their reasons for wanting to follow God (Joshua 14:16-18)...none of which have anything to do with love FOR Him but everything to do with what He could do and what He did for them. Joshua tells them again, that if they are going to commit to this relationship with God, they must "throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord the God of Israel." Listen to the people's response: "We will serve the Lord our God and obey Him." No mention of throwing away their gods nor yielding their hearts to God. Instead, it sounds to me as if they wanted a list of things to do that would mean they fulfilled their commitment to serve and obey Him (vs. 25).

Maybe I'm reading into things here, but I do believe that this is a significant point of this passage. I think it's significant in helping us understand why things did not go well in that relationship between God and the people of Israel. They never surrendered their hearts to Him and they hung on to their idols.

I can't help but wonder as I read this passage of Scripture and think about the people of Israel, what about us today? Are we really any different? How many of us "sign up" for a relationship with Jesus because of what He can do and what He did for us, but we do not desire to throw away the gods that have control of our lives and yield our hearts wholly to Him? We want to live in the in-between. We want God to rescue us, provide for us, protect us, but we don't want to yield our hearts to Him and throw away our wills, our plans, our pursuit of happiness, pleasure, comfort. We want our lists of things to do to fulfill our commitment to serve and obey God...go to church, tithe, live a good moral life, serve the poor, etc., but we tenaciously hang on to our hearts and our selves and refuse to yield them to God.

It seems a perfectly acceptable thing to do in this day and age...to live in the in-between...But it's not acceptable to God. Each one of us have been given the same choice the people of Israel were given...choose today who you will serve: we either serve God or we serve self ... there is no in-between.

The thing is if we surrender all to Him, we get everything that has any value at all...we get Him, the only treasure worth having.

"Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." ~C.S. Lewis