Beginning of the End: The Importance of Right Choice

 The aged leader urged the people to think about what he had explained to them. If it seemed evil to serve the Lord, the source of power, the fountain of blessing, let them that day choose whom they would serve—“the gods which your fathers served,” from whom Abraham was called out, “or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.”

These last words were a sharp rebuke to Israel. The gods of the Amorites had not been able to protect their worshipers. Because of their shameful sins, that wicked nation had been destroyed, and the good land that they once possessed had been given to God’s people. How foolish for Israel to choose the gods for whose worship the Amorites had been destroyed!

“As for me and my house,” said Joshua, “we will serve the Lord.” The people felt the same holy devotion that inspired the leader’s heart, and they gave the unhesitating response, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods.”

But before they could make any permanent changes in their lives, they must feel their complete inability in themselves to obey God. While they trusted their own righteousness it was impossible for them to obtain pardon—they could not meet the claims of God’s perfect law, and it was hopeless for them to pledge themselves to serve God. Only by faith in Christ could they obtain pardon of sin and receive strength to obey God’s law. They must totally trust in the merits of the promised Savior.

With deep earnestness they once more stated their pledge of loyalty: “The Lord our God we will serve, and His voice we will obey!”

“So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. ... So Joshua let the people depart, each to his own inheritance.”

His work was done. He had “wholly followed the Lord.” The most noble evidence of his character as a leader is the history of the generation that had come under the influence of his work: “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua.”