But if you refuse to serve the LORD, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the LORD.” [Joshua 24.15]
There is so much about this verse in Joshua that speaks to me. I cannot help but recall a Bob Dylan song from many years ago, "Gotta Serve Somebody."
Joshua is very clear that we need to make a decision about whom we will serve.
I think the point of "choosing" is not so we will be one way or the other, but more that God wants us to actively choose Him.
God does not want 'default' believers.
God has no desire to be associated with those whose hearts are not fully and completely devoted to Him. This is the scourge of the modern Church - people going through religious motions with no commitment whatsoever to the LORD God and His Ways.
Far too many people are calling themselves Christian for us to believe they are - because Christ is not seen!
To say the United States is a "Christian nation" is blasphemous in light of the godlessness that has become predominant in it. God does not ordain murder and God does not ordain perverted behavior.
The identity of Christians is in Christ - not 'tolerance,' not progressiveness, not science, and not even in religion. If any casual observer cannot and does not see Christ in another person, then, what right does the one observed have to call himself or herself a Christian? I will tell you ...none!
To choose to be called a Christian and refuse to look and act like Christ is fraud at best, and, as stated above, blasphemy at worst.
Serving God is not just a choice, it is an action. Serving is doing. Doing what? Looking and acting like Jesus!
For Joshua's audience, serving meant following all the laws and rituals associated with God's Tabernacle (and later, Temple). But for us today, serving God means looking and acting like Christ.
So am I saying that if we don't look and act like Christ - easily identified as Christ-followers by the things we say and do - then we are not Christian? Yes, that pretty much sums it up!
If we "say" we are Christians, but nothing in our lives supports our claim, we are nothing more than deceived liars. To "choose" to follow Christ is to "follow Christ" in all the Bible defines His life to have been on earth. ALL is the key word.
May God help us all to look like Christ or stop lying to ourselves and the world who sees us!
Father, I am convicted that my life testimony needs to cry out less of "me" and completely of "Christ."
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