DON’T GET YOUR FOCUS WRONG

Reference text: Joshua 24:15-18

Our text today is one we are familiar with. It is the scene where Joshua calls an assembly of Israel and asked them to make pick a clear side with the question “choose this day whom you will serve”(Joshua 24:15)

I read the text in the RSV translation and was intrigued by the use of “therefore” as used in the peoples answer to Joshua. After Joshua’s question, the elders proceeded to answer him based on all that the Lord had done for them, beginning from how he got them out of Egypt to preserving them through all the lands they had passed. “Therefore”, they will also serve the Lord for He was their God.

I found the text intriguing because for a moment I thought ‘we are very much like them, aren’t we?’ Whenever there is provision and a display of might, God is our Lord. However, at the slightest sign of the tables turning, we change sides. It’s almost as though we are with God on the sole basis of what we can get from Him and nothing else. And we treat men the same way too.

Beloved, we cannot treat God as a means to an end because He is the beginning and the end. You have to make a conscious decision to choose Him not because of what you get, but because of who He is. What God does is part of who He is, but don’t get caught hooked on the doing, that you forget His person.

#sly