“As for me and my house…” [Js 24.15]

Joshua 24.15 KJV

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

 

Most people only memorize and quote the last 11 words of this verse. And we Christians love to put it in our houses. It’s our little reminder everybody in this house follows the LORD.

For some of us, it’s a little threat towards our misbehaving children: Stop following the world. Stop following that influencer, or that pop star, or exalting your money and possessions and collections. We serve the LORD in here.

Well… depending on how much sports memorabilia the parents own. I went to a fellow Christian’s house years ago, and immediately saw everything was about the San Francisco 49ers. Big, big American football fan; lots of Niners memorabilia all over the house. Collector plates, collector steins, framed and autographed photos of running backs, a Niner flag out front, Niner posters in the garage and bathroom. And yet there was a placard over the door: “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Well, maybe you will someday, once you’re done with the Niners.

’Cause in some states of the Union, footbalotry is way more popular than Jesus, despite all the lip service they pay towards Jesus. The high school football stadium is bigger than any church in town, because that’s the real center of worship in town. I’ve lived in such towns.

I’ve also lived in cities where Mammon was far more important. Sharing Jesus with people didn’t get very far, because the riches and cares of this world held their attention—and worship—far more than they were willing to give to Jesus. They made up their minds long ago about whom they’d serve, and were serving it with all their might.

Yeah, there are also alternative religions. In a country with freedom of religion, we have options! We can be Christian; any stripe of Christian, whether Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, high church, low church, the no-church go-it-alone sort, or obey-Pastor-or-you’re-going-to-hell cults. Or we can be Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, or make up our own. Or we can be an apathetic agnostic… or we can be an activist atheist and try to rip down religions for fun.

In Joshua’s day there wasn’t really a wide selection. Other gods existed, but they didn’t have priests in the area; they weren’t accessible; they couldn’t practically be Hindu. The Israelis’ choices came down to the gods of the area. Either the pantheon of their ancestors’ gods, the pantheon of Amorite gods, or YHWH the One God.

But you gotta choose one. Joshua chose the LORD. The leaders of Israel loudly said they too would follow the LORD. Js 24.16 And they personally might have.

But as we know from Judges, all their houses eventually stopped following the LORD and turned to the Amorite gods; to the Baals and the other gods of the land. And thus the Cycle began. And in Judges, Samuel, and Kings, went round again and again, as one generation followed the LORD and another didn’t.

Christian nationalists are terrified the Cycle might start happening in our country: As the United States gets less Christian, maybe God will start smiting us with plagues and enemy nations! Which is why they want to purge America of nonwhites non-Christians, and get us to start following the Ten Commandments again. We don’t get to choose this day which god we serve; it’d better be Jesus, or get out of the country. Joshua gave the Israelis options, but they don’t.

But the nationalists don’t realize (or believe) God has no covenant with the United States; we never cursed ourselves if we didn’t obey the Law of Moses in its entirety. He has a New Covenant with individual Christians, but the rest of our country can go their own way, and many do, and that’s why all the Mammonists, footbalaters, basebalaters, basketbalaters, etc.

So which god do you choose to serve? You gotta serve somebody.

The devil you know and the devil you don’t.

Notice the contrast Joshua made between gods the ancient Israelis knew about, and the Amorite gods they didn’t.

Moses ben Amram died in Moab, so Joshua ben Nun then led the Israelis out of Moab, over the river Jordan, and into Canaan (now Palestine). Jordan is likely the נָהָר/nahár, “stream” (KJV “flood”) Joshua refers to in this verse. Though some commentators think it’s the Euphrates, the big west Asian river which flowed from Syria to Sumer and into the Persian Gulf, which made the Fertile Crescent fertile. Abraham was from Sumer, and his ancestors likely worshiped the Sumerian gods. But the Israelis were hundreds of years and thousands of miles removed from that culture, and it seems unlikely Joshua was worried about them.

The Israelis’ more immediate problem was their Hebrew neighbors east of the Jordan. On the way to their new land, they’d just been in Moab, and before that, Edom and Midian. To Moab’s north, worried the Israelis might invade, Ammon. (Ammon, Moab, and Edom are now part of Jordan, and Midian part of Saudi Arabia.) These three nations were related to Israel: Midian was descended from, and named for, Abraham’s sixth son Midian, Ge 25.1-4 Ammon and Moab were descended from Abraham’s nephew Lot ben Haran, Ge 19.36-38 and Edom was descended from Israel’s brother Esau ben Isaac. Ge 36 They all spoke Hebrew, and they all knew who the LORD was because their ancestors had followed him. But they hadn’t continued to follow him. And along the way to Canaan, some of the Israelis’ ancestors—i.e. their parents—had followed the examples of their cousins, and dabbled in Baalism. With disastrous results.

These were the gods the Israelis knew about. The Amorite gods were the ones they didn’t know yet. They were also called בַּעַל/Ba‘ál, “Baal, master, husband,” but they weren’t the same Baals the Hebrews worshiped. The Moabites worshiped the storm god Hadád, but the Amorites worshiped the sky god Shemyaím. There’s not a lot of point in debating which was a better or worse god to worship: Neither is a real god. Maybe more fun to worship. But in the end, just as destructive.

Our culture is much the same. We have the option to serve Jesus, or to serve known and unknown gods. The known gods are the ones our culture embraces, and sometimes even tries to pass off as Christianity: People worship the United States, their political party, a certain philosophy of government, a certain economic philosophy, wealth, prosperity, the traditional view of history (usually fictional), tolerance and understanding, or an apathetic worldview which looks the other way when sin happens, and hopes others look the other way when we sin.

The unknown gods are the less-familiar ones. Lately eastern religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, and capital-p Paganism, all of which have been around longer than Christianity, but to the west they’re new, untried, and fascinating. New age, new thought, and mind science are simply repackaged forms of gnosticism, but again: New, untried, fascinating. Atheism is still frowned upon by most Americans, but far more people feel free to embrace it. And if you still wanna be Christian, there’s always heresy.

Those are our options. Choose today which of ’em you’ll serve: The old gods, or the new? Or Jesus? I pick Jesus.