Choose you this day whom you will serve

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By Dr. Richard Heyduck
 
Perhaps you’ve read or seen on a plaque, this line from the Bible: “Choose you this day whom you will serve… As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” This comes as a climax to Joshua’s recital of God’s mercy and grace shown to the people of Israel, having led them from slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the promised land. Again and again, the LORD delivered the people. Now at the end of his life, Joshua challenges the people to retain their faith in and obedience to this LORD. His audience sounds offended by his challenge. It’s as if they say, “Joshua! How could you say such a thing? We have only and always been faithful to the LORD. Surely you know we’ll keep doing it!” But they didn’t. There was a time in their lives when they had made a commitment to follow the LORD, but they had wavered in their commitment. The fact that they had made a covenant with the LORD, or had been members of the covenant community in the past, was not sufficient. They needed to renew their  commitment to the covenant. We need the same kind of renewal today. Some of us have at some point in our lives entered a covenant with  Jesus. We may call it, “Giving our life to Christ,” “Making a profession of faith,” “Being confirmed,” “Joining the church,” or something like that. And we sometimes think that having done so, we have, in a sense, graduated.
 
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