HIGHLIGHTS IN JOSHUA
Number 23
THE WHOLE DUTY OF MANKIND
Joshua 24:14 & 15
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THE Westminster catechism starts with the question "What is the duty of man". The answer given is "The duty of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." This really is what Joshua is expressing in these two verses before us, where he calls Israel to their duty to God who had chosen them and led them and given them the land he had promised to them. It is true, as we considered in the last meditation, that we fallen creatures fall short of this duty, and that the only motivation that moves to this duty is appreciation of the love of God for us, yet the duty is there. The purpose of this sermon is to learn the truths expressed by Joshua concerning the creative purpose of God as he calls Israel to fidelity to God.

THE NATURE OF THIS DUTY

Joshua calls Israel to 'Fear the Lord'. This expresses the duty laid upon all of humanity by right of creation. It is a proper understanding of what it means to fear the Lord that we must grasp. The trouble with language is that words find their meaning in the way they are used, and in the passage of time, words can by usage change their meaning. The meaning of the word 'fear' is a case in point. Fear as we conceive it in our culture means to be frightened. To fear someone is to be terrified of them, and what they can and may do to us. If we serve in fear it means that we serve to avoid being hurt or harmed. We serve in case the one being served will turn against us and cause us loss or pain. Fear brings torment and places the one who fears in distress. Fear destroys the quality of life.

The use of fear in the words of Joshua here and in the Bible as we consider fearing God, is not like this. The idea of fearing God may have become like this because we have sinned and sin continually, but this is not the idea of fear as is bound up in the words of our text 'Fear the Lord'. Adam feared God before he was disobedient, but this was not a terror which it became after he had been disobedient. It is our sin that turns the idea of Fearing God into terror. God had shown grace, mercy and love to Israel in bringing them into the promised land, so the call to fear God was not so much to do with terror, but something greater and better.

Fear of the Lord is grasped in a serious of concepts. Fear of the Lord is being in awe of God. It is looking up to God and appreciating his essential greatness and glory, and looking with wonder upon that glory. Fear is seeing God as he is and appreciating how high God is above us, and how we have our life from God, and that life depends on God. Fearing God is standing in awe of his majesty and that we owe everything to God. Fearing God is to appreciate the reality of God and his immensity, as Isaiah puts it, that he is the high and lofty one, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy.

Then fearing the Lord is to revere God. It is to see his glory and look up in reverence and worship. This is the seat of all service. Because God is who he is and what he is, we revere him by living for him and prostrating ourselves before him, and giving him all that we are and have, because all is from God and all is too small a tribute to bring to such reverence and glory.

Fearing God is to be devoted to God. He is the essence of our life and living, our loving and feeling. It is an essential aspect of fearing God to have love for God and show it in deep devotion. Fear causes the soul to prostrate ourselves before God and desire to gaze upon him, and dwell in the light of that glory, and to pour out our hearts devotion and love.

Fearing God is to desire to worship God. This worship is not only to bow down in adoration, but to worship God in our whole lives by giving up ourselves to his service, and living before him in holiness and righteousness all our lives. This service is not prompted by a slavish fear which is founded on terror, but is a response to the wonder and glory that is in God, which demands our life and love and our all.

This is the fear Joshua was calling Israel to give the Lord, and it is the fear that the Bible, the word of God, calls from all of us.

HUMAN NEED TO FEAR THE LORD

Joshua, in this call to Israel to fear the Lord, expresses an essential need of humanity. We need to serve someone or something. Built into our creation is the dependence upon God which is bound up in our fearing God. Our life is incomplete if we are not giving fear and reverence. We must have someone to live for. Built into human life is that we have been created to live in order to serve God. This need is further expressed in the fact that Joshua says that if Israel will not serve God then who will they serve. If Israel will not have the Lord, Israel must choose one or other of the God's of the heathen who had been occupiers of the land Israel now possessed by gift of God and by conquest enabled by God.

The reason why so much of human life is empty and unsatisfactory is in this fact that humanity has lost the purpose for which it was created. We were created for God and to please God. Surely humanity should understand this, yet it is blind to this essential truth about life. We should understand this because as part of the image of God in us we have the desire and ability to create in some measure ourselves. We create things. We create systems of thought. We create ideas and much more. We can't create life and things in the way God creates. God created out of nothing. We create in a secondary sense. We commence with something that has been created by God, and within the created system from God, and create other things. However, in all that we create it is a principle that we create for a purpose. A ship is created to move about upon the waters of the earth. This is a ships purpose. The ship was created to give mobility to humanity which created it, so that humanity may travel upon water.

From this illustration we can see why humanity is so hopelessly lost and unsatisfied when it ceases to fear God and serve God. If a ship seeks to operate in any other environment than upon water, then it loses its mobility, its purpose, and its completeness. A ship is only created for water and nothing else. Its design moves in water comfortably and easily. If the ship comes upon land, its whole design is against it. It can't move. It falls on its side. It becomes useless, and if it had conscious life it would be desperately unhappy. This is humanities condition if we do not fear and serve the Lord. We were not created by God to exist on our own and for ourselves. Our design revolves around service for God. This includes our mind and emotions as well as our physical bodies. When we serve ourselves things will grow wrong and life will move with difficulty and fall apart. This we see throughout the world and throughout history.

Further the ship was created for humanity to serve humanity. When a ship can't do this it is virtually useless, and only valuable for scrap. The ship is useless because it is not fulfilling the purpose for which it was built and designed. The same is true of human beings. If we are not living for God to glorify him, then our lives lack purpose. Life is meaningless and lacks satisfaction. Just as a ship seeking to move on land moves with great difficulty, so humans not living for the glory of God find their lives either running with difficulty or in a destructive way.

HUMAN NECESSITY

Although humanity without God feels they are free, this is not in fact true. Having been created by God to serve and live for him, there is an in-built urge to give ourselves to someone or something in worship and service. Joshua recognises this when he calls Israel to make a comparison. Joshua says, if you will not fear and serve God, who will you serve. Joshua recognises that there is within us a desire to give ourselves to some God. This is part of our nature. Then Joshua calls the Israelites to compare. If God is not to be your God, what have you left? Which of the gods of the heathen will you chose. Joshua's purpose is to call Israel to see that the gods of the heathen are nothing compared with Jehovah, and fearing and serving them is nothing to serving God.

The fact that Israel so often in their history left fearing God and went after idols, shows how prone humanity is to give ourselves in allegiance to almost anyone or anything other than God. In our modern culture, we do not consider idols like the heathen of Old Testament times did, though in some religious cultures we get perilously near it in the veneration of sacred images and icons and the like. More common in our culture is that we give ourselves to something or some action. The business man will serve power and money. The devoted husband will worship his wife, not understanding that true love in marriage is only possible if our first worship is given to God. Others seek honour and glory in sport, or science, or even patriotism. In a better sense some give themselves to the worship of good causes, not realising that this service should be done not simply for the good or for our own glory, but for the glory of God. Only then such service will have the right direction and fulfil its potential for the best. Some give their worship to possessions, to their car, or art, or a collection. In this worship humanity seeks to find satisfaction and purpose which can only be found in fearing and serving the Lord. A politician who is not giving God fear and service rarely does more than work for their own glory and the purpose of gaining power and honour and prestige for themselves.

DISHONOURING GOD

What we do not realise in our blindness is that when we do not fear God and serve him, and give our worship to something else, we dishonour God and despise God. God created us. All that we have and are is from God and a gift from God. Nothing we are or have is our own, all that we are and have belongs to God. Not to fulfil the purpose of our being is to dishonour God.

How dishonouring to God to place an idol in his place, or place an object or any idea in his place. How dishonouring to God to give worship to anything before we give supreme worship to God. As Joshua argues, when he ironically calls Israel the ask themselves who they can chose to serve if it is not God, all other objects of worship and service are totally inferior to God, and cannot be compared to God in any way whatsoever. Therefore it is so dishonouring to God to chose to fear and serve some inferior being or thing rather than God.

Choosing to serve other gods is like taking all our parents giving to us, and then despising them and taking them for granted. Choosing to serve other gods is like receiving a large sum of money to help us in our business and then forgetting about the giver. Serving other gods is like receiving a large loan, and then refusing to repay it.

How dishonouring it is to God to leave him out of our lives after we owe him for life and every good thing that makes life worth living. What is even more dishonouring is the way we so often treat God. We forget about him and worship other gods, yet when we are faced with trouble and difficulty which we fear will overthrow our lives, we turn to him and expect him immediately to meet our need, and come to our aid, and then if our prayer is not answered as we would wish, we accuse God of not caring or loving as we expect him to be towards us.

APPLICATION

Joshua called Israel to fear and serve the Lord. How are we to do this? How are we to be motivated to fear God? Just to place in front of us a duty very rarely produces much result. A duty becomes an irksome and tiring thing, which we will neglect.

Joshua's way to motivate Israel, as we saw in our last meditation, is to remind and recall Israel to all the wonderful love of God towards them. We need to recall the goodness of God towards us. It is out of such recollection that our hearts will be moved to fear and serve him. It will be a joy and delight to us.

We need to recollect the wonderful love of God in all the wonders of life and his provision in the world. The life we have is a wonderful treasure. Then we can couple with this all the blessings of the wonderful world he has placed us in, and the many joys and blessings that surround us every day. People may respond that God is not very good to us when we see all the suffering in the world. The fact is that most of the suffering is caused directly by mankind towards mankind, through our greed, pride and selfishness. Of the so called natural disasters, these are disorders which were not written into life by God in creation, but brought about by sin and evil upsetting the order of God. Space does not allow us explore this thought in depth, but the bible tells us that Adam's sin brought a curse upon creation. Further there is much speculation today of how much natural disasters are due to the profligate and selfish way man lives, and so upsets the balance of creation. The wonder is that seeing humanity as we are, that God still pours out blessing in the world and causes the sun to shine on the good and the bad.

For believers in Jesus we need to recall the grace and goodness of God in Christ. How great is the love that God has lavished upon us in Jesus. In Jesus all our sins are purged. We are account totally just in his sight. We are given new, divine and heavenly life, we are given the Spirit of adoption whereby we find in our hearts the love of God as Father to us, and we cry from the heart 'Abba, Father'. In Christ our lives here on earth are under divine control and leading, and we look for glory to come in the heavenly realm.

How can we not fear and serve God who has so loved us with an everlasting love in Christ.