Original Meaning

A Look Backward and Call for Decision (24:1–15)

The Setting (v. 1)

THE SETTING (V. 1). The text opens with a report that Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel and their leaders for a meeting at Shechem.12 The initial verb is in the narrative past, and the language of verse 1b virtually repeats 23:2a. One might read the episodes as close in narrative sequence, perhaps as two sessions of a single meeting. But the specification of Shechem as the location of chapter 24 and the absence of a place in chapter 23 suggest that the present gathering is separate from that of chapter 23, although the two have the same attendees.

Specifically, the assembled Israelites “presented themselves before God,” a formula whose usage elsewhere leads the reader to expect that God himself will speak in response (cf. Ex. 9:23; 1 Sam. 10:14). The formula hints that this is to be a momentous occasion for Israel.13 Shechem held many ancestral memories for Israel. Patriarchal narratives picture it as a kind of “port of entry” into Canaan known especially for its landmark, “the great tree of Moreh” (Gen. 12:6; 33:18). Jacob purchased the site of his erstwhile campsite near the city from the sons of Hamor and built an altar there (Gen. 33:19–20). Later, this positive step turned ugly with the rape of Dinah and the shameful revenge her foolish brothers took on the city (Gen. 34).

Associations with important events involving Israel’s patriarchs, however, may account for the selection of Shechem for the assembly. As if to welcome Abram to his new neighborhood, Yahweh chose Shechem as the first place in Canaan to appear to him (Gen. 12:7). Even more telling, when Jacob returned there after his years in Haran, Shechem was the site where he and his entourage renounced other gods, burying their idols and idolatrous jewelry under the landmark oak (35:4). Those memories made Shechem the ideal place for a later generation, the first one actually to occupy Canaan in fulfillment of the patriarchal promise, formally to renounce its allegiance to other gods and to pledge loyalty to Yahweh alone.14

Certainly, the episode marks the only one in Joshua to take place at Shechem proper, although the city sits in the valley between Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, sites of the earlier altar ceremony (8:30–35).15 Shechem does find mention as a territorial boundary marker (17:2, 7), as a city of refuge (20:7), and as a holding in Ephraim of the Kohathite clan of Levites (21:21). But the book of Joshua mysteriously never accounts for how Israel came to possess it.16 A “holy place of Yahweh” is present near a prominent oak tree (v. 26), perhaps the one that other texts mention.17 Nevertheless, besides its patriarchal associations, the city’s location offered an ideal place for Israel to convene. It sits in central Canaan with excellent accessibility by road, and its surrounding valley could easily accommodate such a large gathering.18

Yahweh’s Speech (24:2–13)

Yahweh’s speech (24:2–13). Joshua launches the proceedings by addressing the assembled crowd. His first words are the so-called messenger formula (“Thus says X”), the standard phrase invoked to introduce a verbatim message from a third party (e.g., Gen. 32:5; 45:9; Num. 20:14; Judg. 11:15; Isa 36:4). In this case, the formula is (lit.) “Thus says the LORD,” the typical preface to oracles by prophets (e.g., Judg. 6:8; 2 Sam. 12:7; Isa. 29:22; Jer. 2:5). It clearly signals that the sound the assembly hears may be Joshua’s but the voice speaking is in fact that of Yahweh. Indeed, this marks Yahweh’s lone, personal, direct address to assembled Israel in the book.

Literarily, the effect is to portray God not as an aloof commander-in-chief speaking from offsite through his field commander, but as a personal participant in the proceedings. On this occasion, God himself personally engages his people “on the ground” and in their midst, a party to the relationship at stake in the present proceedings. He speaks as the “God of Israel”—the God with a long-standing, unique relationship with the people he is addressing. He speaks as someone who wants that long history of relationship to continue and to thrive.

The address reviews Israel’s ancestral history beginning with Abraham (vv. 2–4).19 The initial words (“beyond the River”) transport the listeners from Canaan west of the Jordan to Mesopotamia east of the Euphrates. The combination of “long ago” and the name Terah, father of Abraham and Nahor, recalls Israel’s ancestral past (Gen. 11:26–27). The people know the story well: It marks the beginning of Yahweh’s connection with them as a people. The debut of the chapter’s key word, however, surfaces its key issue: According to Yahweh, what typifies those ancestors is that they “served [ʿabad] other gods” (Josh. 24:2b). The driving theme of the speech concerns Israel’s exclusive devotion to Yahweh alone.

The change of subject from “they” (v. 2) to “I” (v. 3) colors what follows as Yahweh’s personal testimony, a highly-selective thumbnail sketch of Genesis 12 to Joshua 22. The relationship began when “I took” Abraham across the Euphrates (Terah died in Haran [Gen. 11:32]) and “led” him throughout Canaan (v. 3a). There “I gave” him many descendants—Isaac, Jacob, and Esau—and “I” settled Esau in Mount Seir (i.e., Edom) while Jacob and his children (third person) went down to Egypt (vv. 3b–4). Though second-born, Jacob receives first mention since his descendants, not Esau’s, stand before Yahweh on this occasion as his own people.

In Egypt “I sent” Moses and Aaron and “I [lit.] struck Egypt,” an allusion either to the whole plague narrative (Ex. 5–12) or more specifically to the death of the firstborn, the decisive event that finally broke Pharaoh’s will (v. 5; cf. Ex. 12:13, 23, 27).20 Then “I” led their ancestors out of Egypt, and they (lit. “you” [pl.]) came to the shore of the Red Sea, chased by Egyptian chariots and horsemen (v. 6; cf. Ex. 14).21 For Israel this marked a moment of crisis and hopeless despair. The unarmed former slaves now stood helplessly trapped with no way out. Ahead lay the sea, as impenetrable as any thick stone wall, while behind came the Egyptian army in hot pursuit.

In desperation and distress, Israel cried out to Yahweh (cf. Ex. 14:10), and he (third person) interposed darkness between them (lit., “you” [pl.]) and the Egyptians (v. 7a).22 The latter apparently alludes to what Exodus 14:19–20 describes in more detail.23 Militarily, the sudden onset of darkness probably sought to terrify the pursuing Egyptians and to blind them to Israel’s whereabouts. Even worse, the speaker adds, Yahweh caused the sea to swamp and “cover” the pursuers, the latter verb a prominent one in the Exodus accounts (Ex. 14:28; 15:5, 10; cf. Ps. 78:53).

As if to drive the point home, Yahweh appeals to their own experience (“your eyes saw what I did …”), an echo of a common phrase of Moses in Deuteronomy. There it recalls Israel’s witness of Yahweh’s victories over the Amorite kings Sihon and Og (Deut. 3:21; cf. Num. 21), the god Baal of Peor (Deut. 4:3; cf. Num. 25), the rebels Dathan and Abiram (Deut. 11:6; cf. Num. 16), Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Egyptian army at the Red Sea (Deut. 11:3–4; 29:2; cf. 1 Sam. 12:17). In Israelite memory, these kinds of events epitomized Yahweh’s awesome and overwhelming miraculous power. Here they rhetorically display Yahweh’s unquestioned superiority over both mighty earthly kings and would-be rival deities, all in support of the central appeal to Israel that soon follows.

Compared to the text’s parallels (cf. Deut. 26; 1 Sam. 12), it is striking that only Joshua 24 highlights details of the Red Sea crossing. Their special inclusion may sound a thematic echo of the continuity emphasized earlier between the Red Sea and Jordan River crossings (cf. 4:21–24). Further, the broad statement “you lived in the desert a long time” quickly summarizes that forty-year period (24:7b). A full treatment would have remembered the disastrous spies’ report (Num. 13–14) and Moses’ exclusion from the land (20:1–13). But rather than rehash Israel’s shame, in the first person Yahweh skips ahead to the end of that era—how “I brought you [pl.]” into Transjordan, home of the Amorites (v. 8; cf. Num. 21). His focus remains on the good he has done for Israel—grammatically, the indicative mood—to tap into their reservoir of gratitude and win a favorable response (the imperative mood).

The Amorites “fought with you [pl.]” (laḥam ni.), Yahweh says, but “I” gave Israel victory, utterly sweeping them from “your” (pl.) path, so that “you” (pl.) took possession of their land (cf. Num. 32). The plural “you” here actually fits, since some of the attendees at Shechem had actually participated back then and settled in Transjordan after aiding in the conquest of Canaan (Josh. 22:1–9; cf. 12:1–6; 13:8–33).

One memorable event in Transjordan—how Moab’s king Balak tried to get the seer Balaam to curse Israel—receives full treatment next (vv. 9–10; cf. Num. 22–24).24 Yahweh says that “I” refused to listen to him (v. 10), so the seer actually blessed Israel instead—that is, “I” rescued (naṣal hi.) “you” (pl.) from Balaam’s power.25 In similar contexts, that key verb has the sense “to extricate” or “to separate” (someone) from grave danger, much as helicopters extract soldiers surrounded by enemy fire or people from burning buildings.26 Again, many in the listening audience would remember this famous episode from personal experience. The theme of divine rescue marks one of the speech’s key themes, another of a string of divine deliverances from hostile enemies over the centuries (Ex. 18:8–10; Judg. 8:34; 1 Sam. 17:37). The implication is that had Yahweh not intervened, there would be no Israel for him to address on this or any other occasion. Enemies would have overwhelmed them long ago.

But the story then moves closer to home, to the events of Joshua 3–12: the Jordan crossing, Jericho, and the defeat of Canaan’s seven peoples (v. 11). For a third time (cf. vv. 8–9), Yahweh recalls that Israel’s enemies “fought” against Israel but again “I gave” them to “you” (pl.) in defeat. By listing the nations (cf. 3:10), Yahweh highlights how widespread was enemy resistance to Israel—and how sweeping the victory. Like the two Amorite kings, all seven fell to “the hornet,” a kind of advanced guard that “I” sent to drive them out before Israel arrived.

The term “hornet” (v. 12; Heb. ṣirʿah) probably designates either an actual plague of wasps (LXX sphekia “wasp nest”) or a panic-inducing terror.27 The latter seems more likely since, on the one hand, it accords with a prominent theme in Joshua (cf. 2:10–11, 24; 5:1; 6:27; cf. Ex. 15:14–16; 23:27) and, on the other hand, evidence for the use of insects in warfare in the ancient Near East and in the Old Testament is lacking.28 In dispatching “the hornet,” Yahweh kept the earlier promises given to Israel long before they crossed the Jordan (Ex. 23:28; Deut. 7:20).29 The decisive role of “the hornet” supports the main point: Yahweh, not Israel’s military (“not … with your own sword and bow”; v. 12b), swept out the land’s occupants.

That means that Israel’s possession of the land is God’s gift, pure and simple (“I gave you [pl.]”)—the fifth and final such gift in Yahweh’s testimony (cf. vv. 3, 4 [2×], 8, 11). Israel had a hand neither in the land’s conquest nor in its construction (v. 13). Yahweh generously handed over to Israel ready-made fields, vineyards, and olive groves to feed themselves, and ready-made cities in which to live (cf. Deut. 6:11). In short, the defeat of Canaan and the land gift are all Yahweh’s doing. They mark the capstone of the stunning saga of salvation that he has singlehandedly orchestrated for Israel’s benefit since the call of Abram.

The highpoints of that saga presented here attest his long, gracious, generous, and steadfast commitment to Israel through thick and thin. The “I-you” direct address speaks volumes of the profoundly personal connection that Yahweh feels toward his people. The bottom line of the speech: No one hearing his voice at Shechem that day would be there had Yahweh not been true to his covenant promise, “I will be your God, and you shall be my people.” Yahweh’s words argue that he has, indeed, always been there for them as Israel’s faithful God.

Joshua’s Closing Exhortation (vv. 14–15)

Joshua’s closing exhortation (vv. 14–15). A subtle, seamless shift from the divine “I” to the third person signals that Joshua speaks from here on. Syntactically, “now” shows that Joshua will draw out the logical implications of Yahweh’s historical review. A shift from indicative to imperative mood also occurs: Two pairs of imperatives confront Israel with a decision to make in response (v. 14). The first pair echoes the pleas of Moses (Deut. 6:13; 10:20; cf. 10:12; 13:4) and even more closely anticipates that of Samuel (1 Sam. 12:24).30 Israel must both “revere” (yareʾ NIV “fear”) Yahweh (i.e., to treat him with the highest respect) and “serve” (ʿabad) him (i.e., to carry out his wishes as would an honest, loyal servant).

In the second imperative pair, the command to “put away” the gods their ancestors “served” in Mesopotamia and Egypt precedes the command again to “serve” (cf. v. 23). “Put away (other gods)” is a stock phrase meaning radically to renounce loyalty to other deities and exclusively to embrace Yahweh. Jacob demanded it of his entourage upon his return to Canaan from Haran (Gen. 35:2), and Samuel will do so as well, as evidence of later Israel’s repentance (1 Sam. 7:3; cf. Judg. 10:16; 2 Chron. 33:15).

Verse 14 mentions two places where Israel or their ancestors had lived long enough to put down roots, Mesopotamia (“beyond the River” [the Euphrates]) and “in Egypt.” Since polytheism (the worship of many gods) dominates both, Israel’s ancestors were polytheists, adding gods to their worship roster wherever they went. But with Yahweh, Joshua says, the logic of exclusivity applies: Israel may serve Yahweh or their ancestors’ gods, but not both; polytheism is no longer an option.

So Joshua urges his hearers “this day” to make a choice one way or the other (v. 15): If they see service for Yahweh as “bad” (NIV “undesirable”), then choose the god they are willing to serve—for example, the Mesopotamian gods of their ancestors or those of their Amorite neighbors. Joshua’s transition (“but as for me”) draws a firm line between his household and the alternatives: “We will serve the LORD.” In one sense, this announcement is no surprise; Joshua has a sterling track record behind him—a lifetime of devoted, unswerving, and faithful service for Yahweh. To do otherwise here would truly be a shock. The issue is whether other Israelite households will join his or whether his alone will serve Yahweh.

Given Joshua’s expected death (cf. 23:1, 2, 14), at stake is whether the exclusive devotion to Yahweh—the kind typified by Joshua and Moses—will continue into the next generation. In demanding a choice, Joshua mirrors the pattern of Moses, who made a similar passionate plea before Israel entered Canaan (e.g., Deut. 30:19–20; cf. Josh. 23). Here Joshua asks for commitment from the present generation, the first one in Israel’s history to occupy the Promised Land. But his words also confront readers today with a similar choice: Is Jesus your Lord or not?

The Ritual Dialogue: Loyalty Reaffirmed (24:16–24)

Bridging Contexts

THIS PASSAGE MARKS AN important leadership transition in Israel’s history—indeed, the second of two great transitions that the generation gathered at Shechem had seen. The first was the long-anticipated leadership change from Moses to Joshua in the plains of Moab (cf. Deut. 34:5–9; Josh. 1:1–2). That change occasioned the crossing of the Jordan, the conquest of Canaan, and the settlement there under Joshua’s two decades of leadership (Josh. 1:1). The second transition is the one soon to occur—Israel’s transition to settled life in Canaan without either Joshua or a designated successor to convene similar assemblies at Shechem.

In my view, that imminent leadership vacuum forms part of the background of Joshua 24. Joshua apparently gathers the people in order to ensure their allegiance to the leader on whose behalf he led Israel during his tenure, Yahweh himself. With no designated human leader, Israel must now directly follow the guidance of God himself.58 As with any leadership change, the issue for Israel concerns their unswerving loyalty to him—whether or not they will “serve” him.

Idolatry and polytheism. At the same time, the persistence of polytheism in Israel that this passage presupposes may surprise some readers. We usually think that Abraham introduced Israel to monotheism and that as a result, polytheism either died out or became a minority practice. But that assumption conflicts with the implication of Joshua’s call that Israel throw away other gods that remain “in your midst” (v. 23). Apparently, many centuries after Abram, the practice of polytheism persists among God’s covenant people. Israel’s long relationship with God, including their personal experiences of his mighty power in action, have not weaned them from some connection with the gods of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan.

The Israelites have not followed the example of their ancestor, Jacob, who took the foreign gods that his household members had with them and buried them under the oak (Gen. 35:1–4). His actions mark the “first [biblical] instance of disposing of other gods” and make a statement concerning the importance of the matter.59 They prepared his family for the altar-building and sacrifices at Bethel in honor of Yahweh, the God who had safely brought him back to Canaan as he had promised (Gen. 28). By persisting in idolatry, Israel also confirms Yahweh’s word to Moses shortly before the latter’s death (Deut. 31:14–22). Israel is encamped in the plains of Moab along the east bank of the Jordan River, the place from which they will soon launch their invasion of Canaan. Yahweh summons Moses and Joshua to meet him at the tabernacle (31:14), and there he informs Moses:

You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. (31:16).

This is a startling statement given all that Israel has seen Yahweh do during the desert period. One would think that Israel’s arrival at the Promised Land would solidify their commitment to him, but Yahweh tells Moses that that will not be the case. Their expected defection from Yahweh to worship “foreign gods” attests the continuing grip of polytheism on them. In fact, polytheism was the dominant form of religion in the ancient world, and that dominance persisted long after Israel entered its exclusive covenant with Yahweh (Ex. 24).60

These examples bring into sharp relief what really is at stake in Joshua 24. Put simply, Israel faces a decisive choice between irreconcilable options with no safe “middle ground” in between. Israel must either continue to worship whatever gods they choose, or agree to Yahweh’s “intolerant demand for exclusivity” (Reuter’s term). Their ancestors may have added gods along their migrations like theological postcards kept to honor the places they had visited. But from now on it is either Yahweh or the highway. If they choose the “other gods” option, Yahweh will be gone, but to choose him means to throw the other gods away for good. Earlier Moses demanded the same decision of Israel encamped on the plains of Moab (Deut. 30:19–20). And centuries later Elijah would demand the same choice from wavering Israelites on Mount Carmel—either Yahweh or Baal, but not both (1 Kings 18:21).

Now, many readers will regard this point as obvious, but it bears underscoring as a bridge to our discussion below. Consideration of two other questions will also prepare us for that discussion. (1) What were these “other gods” like and how were they worshiped? Interestingly, they functioned not as individuals but as a group in Mesopotamia and at Ugarit (but not in Egypt). Just as the people of the ancient world found their own identity in community (rather than individualism), so they thought that the gods also found their identity in community—each god with tasks and roles.61 The gods comprised the “assembly of the gods,” the body that supervised the cosmos and decreed destinies both in the divine and human worlds. They competed with each other for power, with success or failure in such contests contingent on the success or failure of their human clients.

Further, as Walton observes, “the gods were viewed as having all of the same qualities, good and bad, as humans but without as many limitations.”62 They were presented anthropomorphically (i.e., in human terms), including sexual activity and procreation, and they also functioned within families. They experienced a humanlike existence: the full range of negative and positive human emotions, needs and desires, and daily routines (e.g., meals, sleeping, wake-up calls, jobs). Their temples constituted the geographical and geopolitical homebase from which they, like ancient kings, extended their influence to other territories. They operated within (not outside) the cosmos, each responsible for specific cosmic phenomena (e.g., the sun, moon, storms, fertility, etc.).63

The deity’s image—the tangible sign of its presence—formed the center around which public ceremonial worship revolved. Through the image, devotees cared for the god’s many needs in worship (and they had many needs). The god “was awakened in the morning, washed, clothed, fed two sumptuous meals each day (while music was played in its presence), and put to bed at night.”64 They received the deference and luxurious treatment fit for a king. Several beliefs underlie the rich care provided them by their human worshipers: the belief that the gods wielded more power than humans; that the gods were easily offended and subject to whimsy; that their anger brought all kinds of disasters; and that their anger needed appeasing.65

Their perceived ability to control frightening natural phenomena—thunderstorms, floods, agricultural plagues, extreme heat and extreme cold, sudden death, and so on—enhanced their reputations and retained worshipers. Baal’s reputation as a storm god and dispenser of lightning probably led spectators on Mount Carmel to expect a dramatic display from Baal (1 Kings 18). The divine bent toward whimsy made people’s relationship with the gods “a fragile symbiosis.”66 The deities offered humans protection and the prospect of success, but an accidental misstep by a devotee could cause divine desertion and leave the worshiper vulnerable to misfortunes.

Popular perception traced severe crises back to divine anger, so appropriate rituals—those commanded by the gods—sought from them the healing of deadly diseases or the defeat of dreadful enemies. No doubt, that is why King Ahaziah sent messengers to Ekron, a Philistine city, to ask Baal-Zebub whether or not the king would recover from his injuries (2 Kings 1). Further, the gods’ possession of wisdom and knowledge distinguished them from humans and fostered human dependency on them. That is why the ancients, both public officials and private citizens, often sought their guidance on important decisions. No sense shooting in the dark when a knowledgeable god could reduce the risk!

In general, people thought that Mesopotamian gods had some human traits but also regarded them as superhuman. As van der Toorn remarks, “They surpass humans in size, beauty, knowledge, happiness, longevity—briefly: in all things that were positively valued.”67 In other words, they personified the ideals and perfections toward which their human worshipers also aspired, and so promised a possible resource for humans to improve their lot. At the same time, the national god and state-sponsored religion typically had little place in the day-by-day worship of the common people. They tended to rely more on family and ancestral gods than on the great gods, at times even asking the former to intercede with the latter.

Walton proposes a further plausible explanation for why Israel found the transition from the polytheism in which they grew up to the exclusive commitment to Yahweh difficult.68 The priority in ancient Near Eastern religion was the maintenance of order in the cosmos and in human society. Satisfactory religious rituals upheld the former, acceptable ethical conduct sustained the latter, and together they earned the favor of the gods. Violations of cosmic or societal order earned the opposite—divine disfavor and dire punishments.

Absent from this system, however, is a theology of morality with its abstract notions of right and wrong, a theology rooted in the character of God rather than in the expectations of the cosmos and society. Through revelation from God, says Walton, Israel came to understand what God was like, what sin and guilt were, and the prime importance of imitating God’s character in order to avoid both. In the process, an internal sense of right and wrong and also of “disinterested righteousness” (e.g., Job) came to shape Israel’s conscience.69 In short, the move from polytheism to Yahwism required divine revelation (the Instruction) to shape in Israel an internal ethical sense and to inform their conscience of Yahweh’s expectations.

(2) The second question is: Since Joshua 24 only mentions “foreign gods” rather than specific names, who were some of these “gods”?70 The god El is especially important since El typically comprises part of the names for God in the patriarchal narratives.71 El is the proper name of a deity best known in texts from Ugarit, a Canaanite city (second millennium B.C.) along the present southern Lebanese coast. Those texts present him as “king”—that is, the senior-ranking member of the Ugaritic pantheon and, hence, the one with ultimate authority.72 Ugaritic texts often call him “the benevolent, good-natured El”—probably a reflection of popular affection for him—and he is also known for his great wisdom, strength, and dignity. Some Israelite place names with the suffix- el (i.e., his name) still probably retained the ancient Canaanite name (e.g., Bethel [“El’s house”], Carmel [“El’s vineyard”], etc.).

A thorny question is whether or not the patriarchs actually worshiped El. The altar name El Elohe Israel (lit., “El, God of Israel”; Gen. 33:20) and the phrase (lit.) “El, God of your father” Gen. 46:3 [NIV “God, God of your father”]) might imply that, although we cannot be certain. If so, El may have been one of the “other gods” the patriarchs worshiped that Joshua summons the people to renounce (Josh. 24:2, 14, 23). Alternatively, once in Canaan, they may have borrowed local terminology (El) to name the God who revealed himself to them. At first, they may have associated him with the land but later came to identify him as Yahweh through his revelations (cf. Ex. 6:3).

Of course, the Bible’s best-known “other god” is probably Baal, a god attested in lists as early as the third millennium B.C. and worshiped in Egypt, Ammon, and Syro-Palestine.73 Biblical references to “the Baals” (e.g., Judg. 2:11; 1 Sam. 12:10) and “the names of the Baals” (Hos. 2:17) allude to his worship by various names and in widespread places.74 Ugaritic texts frequently celebrate him as “victorious Baal” or “mightiest of the heroes,” and another title (“Baal Zaphon”) reflects popular belief that his palace stood on Mount Zaphon (northern Syria).

Baal is supremely a weather god—in Ugaritic texts the one presiding over clouds, storms, and lightning. He lifts a booming voice in thunderclaps and dispenses dew, rain, and snow. The son of the grain god Dagan, Baal is also a fertility god. He ensures the annual renewal of vegetation on earth by, first, descending to the underworld (i.e., vegetation decay) and, second, reviving in autumn (i.e., fresh vegetation). Finally, in his running battle with Yam (god of the sea), Baal is the god on whom seafarers depend for protection. In his conflict with Mot (god of death) Baal carries the epithet “healer” (cf. Baal Zebub in 2 Kings 1) and holds sway over the realm of death.

In short, Baal represents a major Canaanite god (he is often called “king”) that offered practical help to ancient farmers, seafaring merchants, and the sick and dying. Thus, it is no surprise that Israelites apparently worshiped both Baal and Yahweh until the mid-ninth century B.C.75 At that time, Ahab and Jezebel changed the royal policy in the northern kingdom to give Baal primacy, especially in the royal court. The Elijah-Elisha narratives reflect the prophetic reaction to that policy change. They attest the battle that begins between Baal and Yahweh over which god actually dispenses rain for agricultural fertility. Some scholars even suggest that the Elijah and Elisha protest mirrors a larger popular response, a “Yahweh-alone Movement,” whose earliest written expression may be in the prophet Hosea.76 If this is so, for more than two centuries, this movement promoted the exclusive worship of Yahweh as Israel’s national God.

Other biblical texts strongly promote a Zero-Tolerance Policy toward idolatry. Early on, Moses forbids the Israelites from pursuing any relationship (not even “idol curiosity”!) with the gods of Canaan (Deut. 12:29–32). Specific Canaanite practices forbidden as “detestable” include child sacrifice, divination or sorcery, witchcraft, the interpretation of omens, the casting of spells, and communication with the dead by “a medium or spiritist” (Deut. 18:10–11). The DH blames the fall of the northern kingdom on the persistence of the “sin of Jeroboam”—his two golden calves and non-Levitical priesthood (1 Kings 12:28–30; 13:34; 2 Kings 17:22–23). In short, Yahweh sees idolatry as a detestable, intolerable insult to his lordship; as a result, when he returns his people from exile, he will simply leave idolaters behind (Isa. 42:17).

What about idolatry attracts people? (1) By nature people typically prefer the tangible and visible over the intangible and invisible. That is especially true of deities. Recall the child who, after bedtime prayers, asks her mother to stay until she falls asleep. When her mother assures her that God is right here with her, the child replies, “But I want somebody with skin.”77 When it comes to gods, people like ones that take on physical form to be located, seen, smelled, touched, carried, bowed down to, and served offerings “in person,” as it were. People prefer gods with images. They perceive a greater sense of closeness to and connection with gods they can see than to ones they cannot.

(2) In my view, idols subtly (and perhaps deceptively) enhance the impression that the gods are subject to human influence. They assume that relationships with deities compare to relationships they enjoy with other humans. Given a choice, most people would rather present an important request in person than through some intermediary (e.g., a representative, a written document, etc.). They assume that it is harder for a recipient to decline the request of a real, live person than one through an intermediary. The very presence of the person carries some, if not great, weight. Similarly, they may imagine that the same principle also governs prayer. Prayers done in person before an idol, they hope, are more likely to win the deity’s response than ones done elsewhere.

The biblical critique against these assumptions pulls no punches. (1) Ancient peoples usually made idols out of wood, stone, silver, and gold (Deut. 29:17; Isa. 30:22). So, the prophet Habakkuk asks, “Of what value is an idol that someone has carved?” (Hab. 2:18a TNIV). The first point of critique argues that, if idols are man-made (as all are!), they have no more power than their human maker. They certainly have nothing approaching the power a real God has. If trouble ever comes, they are worthless because they can effect no rescue (Jer. 2:27–28).

(2) Several prophets point out the obvious as a second point of criticism: Idols are lifeless (Jer. 16:18; Hab. 2:19). They are carved or cast by some human, but their mortal creator cannot breathe life into them as God does into humans. Being lifeless, they also lack the basic capabilities typical of living things. Consider what one psalmist writes:

Why do the nations say,

“Where is their God?”

Our God is in heaven;

he does whatever pleases him.

But their idols are silver and gold,

made by human hands.

They have mouths, but cannot speak,

eyes, but they cannot see;

they have ears, but cannot hear,

noses, but they cannot smell;

they have hands, but cannot feel,

feet, but they cannot walk;

nor can they utter a sound with their throats.

Those who make them will be like them,

and so will all who trust in them. (Ps. 115:2–7; cf. 135:15–18)

Idols, says the psalmist, “have ears, but cannot hear”—a big downside for people who pray! People expect their gods to hear what they have to say and to respond. Certainly, the psalmists expect that of Israel’s God (Ps. 4:1; 17:6; 27:7; 55:2[3]; 86:1). A deaf idol is like a cell phone with a dead battery: The owner may speak into it loudly and with great passion, but not a syllable goes anywhere.

Further, idols have “eyes, but they cannot see”—an even worse divine deficit. Worshipers might tolerate a deaf idol as long as it could see or even recognize them. But, alas, the eyes of idols are simply artistic touches, not actual living organs of sight. The contrast to Yahweh is striking. His eyes “range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chron. 16:9). Yahweh not only heard the cry of the Israelites in Egypt but saw how the Egyptians were oppressing them (Ex. 3:9). He constantly watches the comings and goings of his people, never falling asleep (Ps. 121:3–4, 8).

Also, the psalmist points out that idols “have mouths, but cannot speak”—indeed, their throats can make no sound at all. This is a serious drawback for worshipers who expect to hear guidance from the gods in answer to their prayers (Hab. 2:19). It is a far cry from the many messages from Yahweh that the formula “Thus says the LORD” introduces. One sure thing about the God of the Bible—a feature certainly of Joshua 24—is that he speaks!

Idols also “have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but … cannot walk.” A worshiper may caress an idol’s hands, but they feel nothing, and its lifeless feet can take it nowhere. Instead, as Jeremiah notes, a human has to secure it with hammer and nails so it does not jiggle or fall down, and it must be carried to go anywhere (Jer. 10:4–5; cf. Isa. 40:19). Yahweh, however, moves around freely on his own power. As Nahum says, “the clouds are the dust of his feet” as he roams about (Nah. 1:3).

(3) In short, idols are senseless, inanimate objects that create the impression of competence but that can in fact do nothing. Jeremiah compares them to a scarecrow in a melon patch (Jer. 10:5)—the illusion of a threatening person. The crow cannot distinguish a real human from a fake one and thus lives in a delusion, out of touch with reality. An idol operates similarly. It creates the illusion of grandeur and threatening power so worshipers treat it carefully. They live in fear of a lifeless, impotent object made of gold and silver and dressed in purple and blue (Jer. 10:9). They go to great lengths to placate it. But this is life in a crowlike delusion out of touch with reality. It is just plain lunacy, Jeremiah would say! “Do not fear them,” he says, because “they can do no harm nor can they do any good.” The implication is that idol worshipers are as crazy as crows. Or worse!

The delusion also blinds people to the true majesty and greatness of Yahweh. Unlike idols, the psalmist says, “our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Ps. 115:2). Unlike the scarecrows, Jeremiah exults, “No one is like you, O LORD; you are great, and your name is mighty in power” (Jer. 10:6). To this Habakkuk adds, “The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (Hab. 2:20). These are statements by people who see clearly the glory of Israel’s great and powerful God. One glimpse of what is really real—Yahweh’s majesty and splendor—unmasks idolatry as foolish and futile. It also reveals idolatry for what it is—a terrible insult to God.

Recall the message Elijah gave King Ahaziah: “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?” (2 Kings 1:6; cf. vv. 3, 16). The question shames the king for turning his back on Yahweh, Israel’s God, in favor of a god in a foreign country. Contrast that slight with the confession of the Syrian, Naaman, after his healing: “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15). Which one is deluded and which sees reality clearly?

(4) Finally, idolatry renders its worshipers ritually unclean in Yahweh’s eyes. According to Ezekiel, the making of idols defiles Israel, making her liable to divine judgment, including expulsion from the land (Ezek. 22:3–4; 33:25–29; cf. Deut. 4:25–28). Anyone who enters God’s presence in a condition of ritual defilement puts his or her life at grave risk. The prophet’s visionary experience in Ezekiel 8 suggests a metaphor that captures how offensive idolatry is to God. God’s Spirit took Ezekiel from Babylon to the temple in Jerusalem, where he saw scenes of people practicing all kinds of idolatry. Now, the temple is Yahweh’s house, and he generously hosts the worshipers as one might host human guests at home. But idolatry practiced in the temple compares to thoughtless guests who take over Yahweh’s house without asking and banish him to a small part of it. They invite in all kinds of riff-raff and party days on end with their new-found “friends” at his expense and on his premises. Small wonder that Yahweh later announces that he will kick everyone out and abandon the house himself.

Now, this discussion of idolatry may strike some readers as overdone. They may feel a certain sense of superiority to the idolaters discussed above. But such a view is shortsighted, if not foolish. As we will see, forms of idolatry flourish today. In my view, those forms are just as much human creations as the objects of wood, stone, and precious metals in Israel’s day. They also create the same illusion of power that deludes modern people into trusting in them. At first glance, they seem harmless and acceptable, simply cultural givens, but a closer look shows them to be close kin to the “other gods” Joshua called Israel to renounce. God’s ancient Zero-Tolerance Policy concerning idolatry remains in effect.

Contemporary Significance

Contemporary Significance

THREE PRIMARY CONCERNS PREOCCUPY Joshua 24: to review Yahweh’s mighty acts on Israel’s behalf, the problem of other gods in Israel, and the demand that they renounce them and serve only Yahweh. The text’s contemporary meaning revolves around the last two of those subjects framed as two questions: What (if any) false gods may tempt Christians today? And what does it mean for Christians to serve God today?78

What is a god? The great reformer Martin Luther once said that anything that one relies on and trusts in is a “god.” Luther, of course, did not have in mind ways in which we exercise a normal, healthy trust or reliance on things. We rightly rely on and trust other people to advise, support, and help us with all kinds of things. We legitimately trust in a bank to guard the money we deposit there and in the school that our children attend to educate them well. We cannot live a normal life without relying on and trusting in institutions and people. Further, we properly value, lay out money, and devote time and energy to many worthy pursuits, some formal and others more casual, that no Christian would find offensive to God. Thus, the danger that Luther decried is that at times we rely on and trust institutions, people, and pursuits more than might be spiritually healthy. In his view, such times of unhealthy reliance amount to polytheism.

What makes something usually thought normal or healthy a “god”? It might be “god” if we willingly yield it excessive authority to direct our lives. For example, we may follow its advice or demands without even considering whether God has anything to say about the matter. It might be a “god” if it in any way plays a more significant, casual role in our lives than God does. That was what Israel did that so seriously offended Yahweh. They trusted other gods instead of Yahweh; they granted those deities a large role in their lives and ceded them authority over them rather than Yahweh. In short, the danger of polytheism is that we may be completely committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, yet still “rely on and trust in” other things with such a commitment and passion that makes them “other gods.” We may “worship” (i.e., highly value) them, give them “offerings” (i.e., spend money on them), and “serve” them (i.e., devote time and energy).

Polytheism today. What (if any) false gods may tempt Christians today? In my view, the modern pantheon of “other gods” comprises a long list, but what follows suggests a few of the more popular “gods.” (1) The ideology of materialism teaches that all human needs may be met by material means. It avers that happiness and satisfaction come through financial success, possession of material goods, and pleasure. “The more the merrier” states this god’s torah concerning money, possessions, and the good life. It promotes leisure activities—travel, hobbies, recreation, sports, and the like—as spiritual retreats in its honor. The ideology of materialism is the consummate televangelist. Its prime icon is the “media ad” aimed at convincing unbelievers to convert to consumerism. Chris Hedges has such media influence in mind when he writes about our

household gods, no longer made of clay, but all promising to fulfill us. Our computer, our television, our job, our wealth, our social status, along with the brands we wear and the cars we drive, promise us contentment and inform our identity. These household gods seem to offer well-being, health and success. But all these gods create cults. And all these cults circle back to us, to a dangerous self-worship fed by forces who seek to ensnare us in idolatry.79

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with owning a computer, television, or nice car. I am writing this book on a computer; a TV set sits in the other room, and a nice car is parked outside in the driveway! In my closet hang clothes bearing brand names, and I enjoy a certain level of comparative wealth and social status. The problem arises when we really believe—and, I mean, really believe—and act on the exaggerated claims that ads make about the value and benefits of their products. They may create the same illusion as the ancient gods did—that something material can satisfy people’s basic needs. They lead people to believe that they have the power that only God has. I see three dangers in the view that this ideology propounds.

(a) Its claim to satisfy basic human needs promotes trust in a lie. At best, material goods offer an escape or distraction from our worries, concerns, fears, or pain. Like a ride at the amusement park, they help us temporarily to forget them, but when the ride ends—they always do—the emptiness returns. “Comfort food” may make us feel a little better, too, but it may also leave behind the “discomfort” of an expanded waistline.

The song “Part of Your World” sung by the beautiful Ariel in The Little Mermaid captures the emptiness of consumerism and the yearning for something more satisfying. Surveying her “stuff,” she confesses a contradiction in her life between appearance and reality. On the surface, she seems to be the “girl who has ev’rything”—all the material things she could want—but she concedes that, at the end of the day, she in fact wants something more. “Stuff” or “activities” conveniently available simply cannot satisfy our basic human needs. Ariel eventually finds her satisfaction in love with a man, but I would argue that ultimately only Jesus can offer full satisfaction. Only he has the power truly to satisfy human longings.

(b) Finding our happiness-fix in things may reduce our dependence on God from total dependence to only partial dependence. We seek God to meet some needs, but also seek material pleasures and amusements to take care of others. Certainly, occasional enjoyment of fun things or interesting places is restorative in a healthy sense. The Bible is full of people feasting and celebrating and enjoying life’s good things—but not every week, much less every day. The danger comes with unnatural dependence or addiction—when we need something or someone other than Jesus for a “fix”; I would compare this to polytheism. Spiritually, the god of materialism subtly aims to convert us to monotheism—to replace Jesus with hard goods as the true source of our comfort and well-being.

(c) Finally, undisciplined consumerism eats up financial resources that might otherwise be invested in the kingdom of God. A current facetious expression says, “You can tell the age of the boys by the price of the toys.” But the harsh reality is that every dollar spent on something less than necessary (“toys”) denies us the chance to invest it in the kingdom.

But how do we know when we have begun to worship the materialism god? In his book The Agony of Affluence, William Wells suggests a helpful standard by which to judge whether we have crossed that line into evil and idolatry. When career or the drive to accumulate adversely affects our relationship with our spouse, children, and local church, a mental red flag should wave. He writes:

The Bible does not condemn the desire for worldly goods, but it does condemn perversions of that desire. Specifically, the Bible condemns desire that eclipses our love for God, our love for those around us, and our love for the weak and the poor. There are, therefore, limits on the pursuit of wealth. To transgress those limits is to be guilty of greed, covetousness, and oppression.80

(2) The close ally of the god of materialism is the god of convenience. Americans place a high value on convenience. The defining attributes of this god are omnipresence and omni-availability. No worshiper should have to travel any great distance to reach a sanctuary. And perish the thought that they should wait on this god because the nearest one is closed!

The prime icon of this god is the “convenience store,” a local sanctuary where all manner of needs may be quickly met. Any telephone directory confirms the convenient ubiquity of stores belonging to the better-known “denominations.” While they serve larger parishes than convenience stores, sanctuaries such as gas stations and supermarkets now offer services 24/7 in order to attract new believers and to increase the sanctuary’s intake of offerings.

And lest the sanctuaries inconvenience any worshipers—for example, by requiring them to stand in line for service—many markets and gas stations now feature a special self-ministry option. Electronic, self-service altars permit worshipers to satisfy their needs without even consulting the clergy on duty. Above all, in a very impersonal world, the god of convenience makes people feel important or special. Its sanctuaries are open to serve them.

But why does “convenience” pose a spiritual problem? Certainly, there is nothing especially virtuous or spiritual about “inconvenience.” But worship of this god has three harmful side-effects. (a) It makes consumption more available and, hence, promotes the god of materialism. Its allure may lead believers to forget an important demand of Christian discipleship, the responsible stewardship of their God-given resources. Were the opportunities to buy less convenient, there would be less impulse-buying, more second thoughts given to it, and more resources left for kingdom use.

(b) It demands more of employees who staff places of convenience. Simply put, to remain open longer hours and more days requires staff to work them. Consider Christian employees whose employers are open on Sundays and ask them to work on the Lord’s Day. In this case, the god of convenience may put the believers in a dilemma: They must choose between serving the convenience god on Sunday or risk unemployment by serving their own God.

(c) Also, consider employees whose employer is open evenings and asks them to work those hours. To do so means to sacrifice the time when family and friends are most available and when many church activities occur. The priority of convenience makes the priority of relationships take a back seat.

(3) Greek mythology tells the sad fate of a handsome young man named Narcissus. A beautiful nymph named Echo fell in love with him, but his good looks drew enough admirers so he sent her away into the woods. Later, Narcissus tried to find her, but he refused her invitation to come where she was and left the forest. All alone in the woods, Echo prayed, “May he who loves no one love himself.” Meanwhile, Narcissus had gone to find water and was kneeling over a lake. Staring into the water, he saw his reflection and realized how beautiful he was. In essence, he fell in love with himself. Echo’s prayer had hit its target, but Narcissus also became aware of how much pain his beauty had caused his female suitors. He dove into the lake and took his own life. Later, when nymphs sought to find his body, instead they found a beautiful flower at the spot. They named the flower Narcissus after him.81 From this name comes the common term for excessive admiration for or preoccupation with oneself—narcissism.

The consort of the gods of convenience and materialism is the god “Me!” This god preaches narcissism, the belief that every individual can be the center of his or her own world. Each person can be a kind of incarnation of “Me!”—the sun around which the entire surrounding galaxy spins. “Me!” inflates people’s sense of importance through a unique kind of meditation—self-absorption. Worshipers of “Me!” are always preoccupied with their own needs and wants, and “I Gotta Be Me” is their favorite hymn. (If this sounds vaguely like a two-year old or early teen, you are getting the idea!)

In his book The Culture of Narcissism, sociologist Christopher Lasch illumines the theology of “Me!,” the god of self-preoccupation.82 Lasch argues that modern American society is self-absorbed (but not self-aware), greedy, and frivolous. Consumerism thoroughly dominates it, and its self-definition or identity depends completely on demographic analyses, opinion polls, and government policy. According to Lasch, you know you are a narcissist if you …

• are haunted by anxiety rather than guilt

• are seeking meaning in life

• are fiercely competitive for approval and acclaim but distrustful of competition

• secretly believe that normal rules and regulations do not apply to you

• give little thought to making provisions for the future

• love to acquire “stuff”

• find in “stuff” a sense of immediate gratification

• feel restless, your desires always unsatisfied83

The god of materialism says, “You need this,” but the god “Me!” preaches, “You deserve this.” The appeal is to the human ego and its deep desire “to be somebody.” Like Narcissus, we love to look at ourselves—or better, to be seen as important by others. We have long honed clever ways to project importance. Name-dropping is one means (“Why, just this morning I was talking with [here fill in some VIP or celebrity name] …”). Other strategies are to drive the right cars, wear the right clothes, attend the right meetings, and sit next to the right people. Worshipers of “Me!” need constantly to gratify their craving for importance. To do so, however, is to indulge in what Hedges calls “a dangerous self-worship fed by forces who seek to ensnare us in idolatry.”84

The delusion of “Me!” is that our sense of importance depends on external things, not on who we really are inside. It draws on what other people think about us, not on what we think about ourselves. More important, while “Me!” welcomes the ego-stroking of others, it tends to shove the friendship of a loving God to the side. God requires the renunciation of the ego and its craving for importance and offers a transformation that changes us inside out. Only that inner transformation makes us comfortable with our true self in Christ.

A recent episode of the comic strip “Opus” offers a mirror reflecting something of ourselves. One night Opus the penguin and two young friends are staring up at the stars. Beside them stands another friend, the bespectacled African-American boy-genius Oliver Wendell Jones, peering through a telescope into space. “I love these summer evening reality checks from Oliver,” Opus tells his two companions. Oliver opens the session by holding up to his rapt audience something tiny between his thumb and forefinger.

“Hold out a speck of sand at arm’s length,” he says. “That’s the portion of the night sky at which they pointed the Hubble telescope for a week. It was there—deep within that dot of dark nothingness ten billion light years distant—that they found the unexpected. All in the space of a single grain of sand on the vast beach of the cosmos,” he says, pointing his three rapt listeners skyward.

“Which nicely frames the question man has been asking for millennia,” he adds, looking directly at the three.

“What question?” one of them asks.

Gazing quietly off into space, he answers, “What’s the center of it all?”

Immediately and simultaneously, two of them think to themselves, “Me.”

“Me, baby,” Opus himself thinks contentedly.85

Opus and his friends are definitely devotees of the god “Me!” And they are not alone. Indeed, the god “Me!” may be the hardest for people to renounce in order to submit to Jesus as Lord.

(4) The final god in today’s pantheon is the god of nationalism. The inclusion of this god on my list may come as a surprise, especially to readers who live in modern, Western democracies. But history shows that the influence of governments on their Christian citizens is often subtle and almost imperceptible—and not always healthy. This oft-overlooked god takes on as many forms as there are nations that demand loyalty from their peoples. By nationalism I mean the claims of a nation to being uniquely great and especially virtuous—that is, godlike—and hence to feel justified in demanding the unswerving loyalty of its people.

A successful nation may even come to think of itself so highly that it demands that other nations submit to its wishes because of that presumed greatness and virtue. It may even invoke religion or the Bible to support its claims. The loyalty sought from citizens is often called patriotism—a special pride in, love for, and devotion to one’s own country. Now, nationalism or patriotism is different from what one might call “national, patriotic pride”—a healthy respect and affection for the history and cultural achievements of one’s home country. That is a good, commendable spirit; it often produces united efforts in pursuit of the common good of people. Christians should always strive to be good citizens; they should support worthy causes and promote the common good of their fellow citizens.

The god nationalism emerges, however, when normal pride in one’s country feeds a feeling of superiority that may lead a nation and its people, even from pure motives, to pressure other nations to do what it wants. Sometimes nationalism blurs the line between genuinely Christian virtues (what God expects of them) and genuinely patriotic ones (what their country expects of them). In reality, the two sets of values are not always the same; they often collide.86 In times of crisis, a groundswell of popular pressure may urge citizens, including Christians, to rally in loyal support of some national policy. For believers, the danger is that such pressure may lead them to go along with the crowd and bypass the key step they normally take—to seek what the Bible says about things. At that moment, the nation has become a god—a competitor of the God of the Bible—because God’s wishes for the world are probably different from the plans of any nation or world leader.

In fact, to assess one’s country from the Bible’s perspective is always a necessary practice, whether in crisis or not. The priority of any nation is, after all, to look after its own interests, and those interests may or may not coincide with God’s purposes for his larger world. The best way to avoid the sway of the god nationalism is to ask, Do my country’s policies, lifestyle, values, and actions coincide or conflict with biblical teachings?

Joshua 24 demands that Christians today say “no” to other gods. So, even in today’s humane, freedom-loving countries, it is worth taking what I might call “a reality check”—a review of what it means to be a Christian living as a citizen of our specific country. The crucial question for us is this: Does loyalty to a country, however biblical and noble its aims, compromise or detract from our exclusive commitment to the Lordship of Jesus? In this regard, missionary statesman Arthur Glasser states my standard of evaluation plainly: “There is but one acid test that should be applied to all activities that claim to represent obedience in mission. Do they or do they not produce disciples of Jesus Christ?”87

Put differently, if a nation achieves its political agenda, will more people have become Christians than would have otherwise? Will the kingdom of God and the gospel have been advanced or hindered? Throughout history, Christians have been tempted to help the gospel advance by allying themselves with political movements of all kinds, rather than through the power of the gospel message on its own. But here is a radical difference between genuine evangelism (sincere conversions of people by the Holy Spirit) and imperialism with a Christian veneer (conversions to a Christianized culture). In my view, to pair politics and evangelism is like being a polytheist—to rely on the power of Jesus as well as on the power of something (or someone) else. Paul is right: The gospel is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16), not an alliance of various powers. Also, such ventures may ultimately end up harming God’s work through us rather than advancing it. As Philip Yancey comments:

A political movement by nature draws lines, makes distinctions, pronounces judgment; in contrast, Jesus’ love cuts across lines, transcends distinctions, and dispenses grace. Regardless of the merits of a given issue—whether a pro-life lobby out of the Right or a peace-and-justice lobby out of the Left—political movements risk pulling onto themselves the mantle of power that smothers love. From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.88

Joshua 24 calls us to renounce all other gods and to serve only Yahweh, and Jesus warns us that we cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13), one a god other than Jesus Christ. But to renounce our reliance on gods other than Jesus is one thing, to “serve him” as Joshua 24 commands is another. What follows explores what it means today to serve Jesus only.

Reclaiming our identity: to serve Christ. What does it mean to serve Christ? (1) The starting point, certainly, is to affirm afresh Jesus’ lordship over our lives. Remember that we confess that “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; cf. Heb. 13:15), a confession that not all people who believe in God make. Notice, first, that it is a confession specifically about Jesus, not God. Jesus (meaning essentially “Savior”) is not a generic title but the personal name of the flesh-and-blood human person born in Bethlehem.89 Observe, second, that the confession affirms Jesus as “Lord” (Gk. kyrios). The Greek term bespeaks his authority (“master, owner”) and, more importantly, his divinity. In the LXX kyrios is the primary translation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton yhwh (“Yahweh” or “the LORD”). Thus, to say that Jesus is kyrios is to identify him with the God of the Old Testament. The confession of Thomas (“My Lord [ho kyrios] and my God [ho theos],” John 20:28) makes the same identification. It applies to Jesus the language that the psalms use for Yahweh.90 In short, Jesus is the personal name of the God-Man, the one to whom we surrender control over our lives as Master.

Let us be clear, also, that he differs radically from some popular images of God in American culture. He is not the vague, sentimental “Man Upstairs” or “the Good Lord,” and “Somebody Bigger Than You and I” is not really a hymn about him. He is far, far more than the distant, impersonal “Nature’s God” or “Divine Providence” of America’s founding documents. This is clear from Scripture:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16–18)

He is God’s one and only Son, and he did not come from heaven to earth on his own—God sent him. Jesus’ mission was not to condemn the world but to save it. His unique role as Savior of the world implies that the world (and we) need saving—that it is not OK as it is. Divinely sent, his demands are absolute, not optional. One either believes in him or stands condemned. For us, the choice is simple: voluntarily to submit to him and verbally confess that “Jesus is Lord” now, or be compelled to do so at the end of history (Phil. 2:9–11; cf. Isa. 45:23). There is no escaping Jesus’ divine-human nature and absolute lordship. To be truly Christian is to avow that “Jesus is Lord”—and no one else.

In his book Everything You Always Wanted to Know about God (but Were Afraid to Ask), humorist Eric Metaxas clarifies the nature of the commitment that Jesus demands of us. It compares to the well-known song by Aretha Franklin in which a woman confronts her man with her sole demand to remain with him: “All I’m askin’ is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit) … R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.” As Metaxas writes:

If a guy is married and he tries to persuade his wife that he needs to have a few other women on the side, his wife will likely say, “Sorry, Romeo, but that’s not going to fly. If you want to be married to me, you have to forego those other women. Period.” It’s just like that with God. He doesn’t force us to pick him, but he does force us to choose between him and the others. We can’t have both.91

The first step of service for Christ is to pay him R-E-S-P-E-C-T—to say “I have decided to follow Jesus—no turning back, no turning back.”

(2) To serve Jesus also means to do what he taught. As Joshua obeyed the Instruction of Moses, so believers today are to do what Jesus taught. For example, he taught that “no one can serve two masters,” especially “God and Money” (or the god of materialism). The reason is because each master has the right to demand exclusive devotion rather share their servants (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13). Jesus has no part-time servants. Certainly, Joshua understood that when he said that to serve the Lord was to “yield your hearts to the LORD” (24:23). “Yield” literally means “to turn, to guide” (naṭah hi.), and as I noted above, in Hebrew psychology the heart is the center of human thought, emotions, and will.

To “guide [one’s] heart” toward Yahweh is to reorient one’s whole self toward God and to let him call the shots. It means to dethrone the god “Me!” and to enthrone King Jesus in its place. Jesus also taught us to love fellow believers just like he loves us (John 13:34–35). The second of the two greatest commandments was “to love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39; cf. Lev. 19:18; Gal. 5:14). Paul spread that attitude among early Christian churches, urging them to “be devoted to one another in love” and to “honor one another above yourselves (Rom. 12:10 TNIV; cf. 13:8; Gal. 5:13).92 He encouraged early Christians to treat each other kindly, with humility and patience, freely cutting each other needed slack (Eph. 4:2). This is, of course, easier said than done, as this poetic quip admits:

To live above with saints we love—

Oh, that will be glory.

To live below with saints we know—

Well, that’s another story.93

The Christians in Corinth certainly had trouble making it work. They had a competition going over who had been baptized by the more prestigious church leader (1 Cor. 1:12–13). Meanwhile, at Philippi two women had some sort of falling out (Phil. 4:2). Then there were those pesky promoters of circumcision setting the churches in Galatia at odds.

We are no different today. Jealousies and feuds occasionally flare up within church communities. It is not uncommon for fellow believers not to get along in other ways, or at least to regard each other warily. As someone once said, “The church is like Noah’s ark. If it wasn’t for the storm outside, you couldn’t stand the smell inside.” But Jesus’ clear teaching—authoritative “Instruction” on par with that of Moses—is that we do more than just “get along.” We must diligently transcend our dislikes, give each other the benefit of the doubt, treat others as if they were better than us, and maintain harmony and unity.

Further, Jesus commanded something that seems counterintuitive:

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.… If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” love those who love them. (Luke 6:27–28, 32)

Naturally, people react to enemies and abusers with outrage and a desire for revenge, and to friends and allies with affection and affiliation. But that is not the norm for Jesus’ followers—and for one good reason. How they react to enemies measures the extent to which they remain “sinners” or have truly become “children” of their heavenly Father. Do they show his family traits—kindness and mercy to “the ungrateful and wicked” (Luke 6:35, 36)—and enhance his reputation? Do they resemble their Father in eschewing revenge or retaliation? If so, they demonstrate the inner transformation that Jesus offers and attract people to explore relationship with him. They prove themselves to be obedient followers of their Lord’s example (cf. 1 Peter 2:21–23) and living proof that the kingdom wields incredible power.

On October 2, 2006 a milk deliveryman entered a one-room schoolhouse for Amish children in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Heavily armed, he barricaded himself inside, apparently prepared for a long siege. By cell phone, he told his wife that he was seeking revenge for something that had happened twenty years earlier. Before state police could storm the building, the man killed five young girls and then took his own life. The tragedy devastated the tight-knit Amish community, a religious group known for its simple, rural lifestyle and pacifism.

But as the world watched, the story took two interesting twists. The first was the demonstration of forgiveness and compassion by the Amish toward the family of the man responsible. The grandfather of one of the victims went to the man’s home to assure his wife that the Amish forgave him. The Amish community established a fund not only to help families of the victims but also the widow and children of the gunman. The second was the announcement by a pastor from the Midwest that he and his church would picket the girls’ funerals, claiming that God had punished the Amish for alleged unorthodox beliefs. (Later, after a radio talk-show host offered him an hour of free air time, the pastor cancelled the demonstration.)

How strange the opposite reactions of two Christian groups to the same tragedy. Those devastated by it truly offered forgiveness to the offender’s family. In my view, they obeyed Jesus while the church group sadly did not, ignoring Jesus’ express command to extend mercy (Luke 6:37). But what about the rest of us who have not suffered so terribly?

My wife made an excellent point as we discussed the Amish tragedy. She pointed out that we rarely, if ever, pray for people with whom we disagree strongly—for example, public officials whom we oppose. She is right. I do not have enemies like the Roman soldiers who might have harassed Jesus and his disciples in biblical Palestine. But I do have enemies in one sense: Sometimes I have to deal with people with whom I strongly disagree. Convinced that I am right, I am tempted to feel myself smugly superior to them. Sadly, I confess I rarely pray for them, am quick to point out their faults, and am slow to extend them compassion. Subtly, I hate them and am disobedient to Jesus’ commands. I do not show myself the true son of a merciful, forgiving heavenly Father. I am a poor imitation of Jesus Christ, the Lord whom I claim to serve.

Who are your enemies? Perhaps it is someone at work—perhaps your boss—who makes life tough for you. Perhaps it is someone competing with you for a promotion or pay raise. It may be a relative who quietly ridicules your commitment to Christ and his church. It may be a friend whose strong views on certain matters violently clash with your equally strong opposite views. It may be a cranky neighbor with whom it takes great effort to get along. If my experience is any guide, you may unconsciously feel a smug self-righteousness and superiority that (you think) exempts you from extending mercy or forgiveness. Unfortunately, Jesus does not let us off the hook on this one. I can hear his voice simply saying something like this (my own words):

Someone slap you on the cheek? Give him the other one to hit. Someone steals your coat? Let her take your dress, too. Someone borrow something without returning it? Let it go. Forgive and forget. Not happy about that? Yes, I know. But you’re a child of the heavenly Father. Just do it! Just like I did for you.

Finally, Jesus taught that the kingdom comes first (Matt. 6:24–34; cf. Luke 16:13). In his view, the kingdom is far more important that our typical, short-sighted preoccupation with houses, clothes, food, and drink. Jesus pointed out that pagans (and polytheists!) chase after such things, but we need not. Our heavenly Father faithfully feeds birds, beautifies fields with lilies, and clothes the ground with grass, so we need hardly fear destitution. He says, “Look, make kingdom work your first priority, and trust me for the rest.” What is “kingdom work”? Jesus’ own statement of his mission sums it up:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18–19, my italics).

We can recognize that kingdom work is being done by the evident anointing of God’s Spirit on it and on those doing it. Kingdom work is present when God’s people endeavor to make the lives of the poor better, to free prisoners wrongly held, to heal the blind, to seek the release of oppressed people, and to implement the equality provisions of the biblical year of Jubilee.94 In short, kingdom work comprises the preaching and living out of a full-orbed understanding of the Gospel. It includes all efforts to get the word out about who Jesus is and his offer of salvation (cf. Rom. 1:9). It also includes all Christian efforts to counter societal values and priorities out of keeping with God’s desires for his creation and his creatures. As James writes, what God regards as “pure and faultless” religious life is “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).

(3) To serve Jesus not only means to do what he taught but also to do what he models. Jesus’ own life exemplifies the attitudes, priorities, and values he desires the Holy Spirit to cultivate in us. For example, in his message to the household of Cornelius, Peter remarked “how he [Jesus] went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil …” (Acts 10:38). He did so when, on the Sabbath, he healed the man with the withered hand—to the consternation of the Pharisees (Mark 3:4; Luke 6:9). He did so when he graciously accepted the expensive perfume a woman poured on him in Bethany—contrast the Pharisees’ pious condemnation of the gesture as wasteful (Mark 14:3; John 12:3). He did so at Jericho when he answered the pained cry of blind Bartemaeus for healing (Mark 10:46–52). He did so near Tyre and Sidon when he healed the daughter of a Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:21–28).

In short, Jesus did a lot of good in the lives of ordinary people, and he blazes a trail for us to follow, too. There is a lot of good to be done today. There are hurting people in need of healing right in our neighborhoods or in our extended families. The list of possibilities is endless: kids that need tutoring, families barely making ends meet, lonely people needing friendship, and ignorant victims of oppression needing advocacy. The Hippocratic Oath to which physicians subscribe wisely counsels, “Do no harm.” Jesus also wisely counsels us, “Do all kinds of good and dispense all kinds of healing.”95

In his conversation with the woman at the well, Jesus exemplifies thinking outside the box for the sake of the gospel (John 4). First, he quietly breaks the mold of Jewish-Samaritan relations by simply asking a Samaritan (and a woman, too!) for a drink (v. 7). Normally, Jews would avoid travel through Samaria, much less converse with a local woman of questionable morals. Jesus, by contrast, shows us that sometimes disciples must set aside personal scruples, religious traditions, and accepted norms for the gospel’s sake. Sometimes they must cross from their comfort zones into dangerous territory in order to reach people there. Jesus also acknowledges the woman’s checkered life but moves on to the key issue, whether she will believe in him as Messiah. Again, Jesus models a strategy of letting a person’s sinful side speak for itself but not dwelling on it. Amazingly, from the conversation about living water a mini-revival breaks out among the Samaritans (vv. 39–42)—of all places!

In Vietnam, I once studied the military map of a helicopter pilot I met. With a grease pencil he had drawn boxes with crossed lines over certain places. In each box he had scribbled brief notations like “Beware: enemy turf” or “Avoid low altitude.” They were his Samarias—dangerous places to be traversed with caution. All of us have Samarias and Samaritans on our mental maps of our own little world. They mark places or people thought “dangerous,” “unpleasant,” or “to be avoided.” On some maps we label our own homes “off limits” to certain kinds of people we think undesirable or risky. A map identifies people I know whose chaotic lives threaten to consume my time or disrupt my routines. It blocks out places to avoid—nursing homes, AIDS clinics, hospital cancer wards, hospices, Muslim community centers, Mormon churches, certain ethnic neighborhoods.

Now, I am not arguing that we must go anywhere without concern for our safety or ordinary courtesy. I am suggesting that we expose our secret maps to the searching light of Jesus’ example and the gospel mandate. I am asking that we face them and revise them, adopting a stance of openness to think outside the box. The worst thing would be to not go to places of great need because of personal scruples, religious traditions, or fear. Jesus came to messy old earth to filthy old us to bring us good news. How can we do less in return? To not do so is to worship the god “Me!” What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” about the twentieth century church applies to the church in the present one:

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.96

(4) Finally, to serve Jesus is to share in his suffering. This is the demanding side of being Jesus’ disciple. It marks an extension of the theme of following his example. By “suffering” I do not mean the hurts and pains that life’s hard edges inflict on us. These are important, too, and Jesus certainly offers us healing and comfort for them. I refer specifically to the hurts and pains that result from our faithful obedience to Christ—difficulties we would avoid by holding back rather than stepping out in obedience. They comprise moments in which we pay a heavier than usual price simply for doing good in Jesus’ name. In paying that price we follow Jesus’ example and win God’s commendation (1 Peter 2:20).

This is what Paul means when he embraces “the fellowship of sharing in [Christ’s] suffering, becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:10). Far from being a shame or pity, Paul reckons suffering on behalf of Christ to be a special privilege on par with the gift of salvation (Phil. 1:29). Peter even calls Christians to rejoice over their participation in it (1 Peter 4:13). Early Christians experienced it through social ostracism and physical persecution. In 2 Corinthians 11:24–28 Paul tallied up the price he paid for serving Christ—truly an incredible inventory of physical, emotional, and spiritual hardships (cf. Acts 9:16).

Since most readers will not suffer outright persecution, in what ways may we share in Christ’s sufferings? We participate in his sufferings every time we grieve over things that deeply moved him. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept both over the sad reality of human death and the hard reality of human unbelief (John 11:35). We share in that suffering when we comfort people grieving the loss of a loved one, especially an unbelieving one. At Jerusalem, Jesus bitterly lamented the city’s rejection of his loving offer to protect its vulnerable citizens from the coming doom. We share that suffering every time someone spurns our gentle, genuine attempts to draw them to Christ. One reading used during communion at my church has this poignant line about Jesus: “For us he became poor, and knew the sadness in our days.”97

To share Christ’s suffering also is to share as he did in the world’s great ongoing “sadness”—in the ordinary, everyday sufferings of a broken world. We share this sorrow when we cry with people who are physically and spiritually destitute. We share this grief when we stand with weak and confused friends helplessly trying to navigate huge, cold bureaucracies. We share this anguish when we grieve with people in places ravaged by floods, droughts, tornados, and mudslides. We share this suffering when we mourn with innocent people caught in the crossfire of political upheaval, social collapse, and bitter warfare. We share in Christ’s suffering when we weep with parents whose children have been denied opportunity because of prejudice. We share in his suffering when we agonize with families falling apart. We share in his suffering when we walk with people through the messes their own foolishness or stubbornness have created. To share in Christ’s suffering is to live out in service his vision of his world.98

Conclusion. Joshua 24 has taken us a long way. It has challenged us to cast aside our modern false gods in favor of unwavering devotion to Jesus as Lord. It has sent us back to Jesus to hear afresh his words of command and again to glimpse him in action. At his ascension, Jesus left the work of his kingdom in the hands of his disciples, and they have passed it down to us (Acts 1:4–11). His final message was, “Once the Holy Spirit comes on you, go and be my witnesses everywhere.” The “savior” called Joshua confronted Israel with a critical choice for their future (Josh. 24:15), and so does the “Savior” called Jesus. The question is, How will we respond?

In her book Girl Meets God, Lauren Winner tells a Talmudic story that suggests what a good response to Jesus’ demand to serve him as our Lord might look like. The tale reports a conversation between Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi and the prophet Elijah. The rabbi asks the prophet when the Messiah will come.

“Go and ask the Messiah yourself,” Elijah answers.

“But where is he?” says the rabbi.

“At the gate of Rome,” answers Elijah.

“How will I recognize him?” Rabbi Yehoshua asks.

“He sits among the wretched ones with sores and wounds,” Elijah says. “All the others uncover their wounds all at once and bind them up again all at once, but he uncovers and binds each one separately, for he thinks, ‘Maybe I will be summoned today; I don’t want to be detained.’”

So the rabbi leaves Elijah, finds the Messiah, and greets him.

“Peace be with you, Master and Teacher,” he says.

“Peace be with you,” the Messiah responds.

“When is the Master coming,” the rabbi asks.

“Today,” says the Messiah.

Disappointed and annoyed, Rabbi Yehoshua goes back to Elijah.

“He lied to me,” he tells the prophet. “He said he would come today, and he has not come.”

But Elijah replies, “He meant ‘today’ if you would only listen to His voice.”99

In essence, to serve Jesus is to “listen to His voice”—to shut out the voices of the other gods once and for all and to tune only to his. It means to obey what he taught and to pattern our lives after his model. It means daily to affirm “we will serve the LORD.” It means to take to heart words often spoken in some congregations as a benediction at the end of morning worship: “So, reader, go from this place (or text) to love and serve the Lord.”

Original Meaning

The Ritual Dialogue: Loyalty Reaffirmed (24:16–24)

AT LAST, THE PEOPLE themselves speak in response to Joshua’s call to decision (v. 16). The narrator portrays a collective voice (“the people answered …”), a narrative device attested elsewhere (cf. 22:15; 1 Sam. 11:12; 14:45; 2 Sam. 18:3). But here it may specifically serve the ritual back-and-forth that now ensues between Joshua and the people. His speech done, literarily Yahweh now stands off-scene, apparently leaving the moment of decision for Joshua and Israel to handle through the ritual dialogue that follows.

The decision phase of the process (vv. 16–21) opens with the people’s opening line, “Far be it from us …” (in modern terms, “No way!”). They emphatically renounce any thought of abandoning Yahweh for the service of other gods. The Transjordanian tribes had invoked the same phrase to deny alleged rebellion against Yahweh (22:29), and it undergirds Samuel’s promise to pray for Israel (1 Sam. 12:23).31 To “forsake [ʿazab] the LORD” for other gods is to break the covenant with him and to risk the resulting terrible consequences, a certainty that Joshua himself will shortly reaffirm (Josh. 24:20).32 Covenant breach is the ultimate outrage against God, so their emphatic denial of that possibility is not surprising.

They state their rationale just as Yahweh did, in their own historical review, their own testimony of what—and this is the main point—Yahweh “our God” (not other gods) has done for “us” (vv. 17–18a). Their review is briefer and less dramatic than Yahweh’s, focusing on his miraculous rescue from Egyptian slavery, his protection amid hostile nations, and his expulsion of Canaan’s residents including the Amorites.33 By a subtle sound play, the people show keen awareness of what constitutes covenant breach: to abandon (ʿazab) Yahweh and “serve [ʿabad] other gods” (v. 16; cf. 23:16; Deut. 7:4). To “serve Yahweh,” by contrast, is to “put away” (sur hi.) foreign gods” (cf. vv. 14, 23), “incline” (hiṭṭah) one’s heart to Yahweh, and obey (šamaʿ ) his voice (vv. 23–24). Their decision lays the foundation for the covenant they will soon make (v. 25).34

The people also know who Yahweh is to them. He is the one who brought them and their ancestors out of Egypt, here remembered poignantly as (lit.) “the house of slaves” (cf. Ex. 20:2//Deut. 5:6; 8:14; 13:5, 10; Jer. 34:13), and who performed “those great signs” during that historic escape (v. 17).35 Also, it was Yahweh who “protected us” during the subsequent journey, including Israel’s passage through other nations. The latter refers broadly to the period between the Exodus and Israel’s stay in the plains of Moab along the Jordan’s east bank. They remember that period as one in which Yahweh warded off attacks by various hostile peoples through whose territories Israel passed.36 The omission of the momentous two years at Mount Sinai seems striking but is explained by the people’s focus on Yahweh the warrior, the one whose decisive victories has brought them to this moment. Here the ongoing covenant relationship is simply presupposed. Finally, their historical review ends with the most recent period, the decisive events of the Conquest (chs. 1–12), where Yahweh “drove out before us” the land’s former inhabitants (v. 18a; cf. v. 12).37

The people’s response to Yahweh’s mighty deeds is that “we too will serve the LORD” (v. 18b). Literarily, it corresponds to Joshua’s “we will serve the LORD” (v. 15b), affirming that they side with him. Their reason for doing so—namely, that “he is our God” (cf. “the LORD our God” [v. 17]; the liturgical echo in Ps. 95:7)—affirms that they also side with Yahweh against the alternative gods. Orally, the phrase may have sounded emphatic like this: “for he (not ancestral, Egyptian, or Amorite gods) is our God.”

At first glance, Joshua’s reply (“You cannot serve the LORD”) sounds like an irritated rebuttal (v. 19; in modern terms, “In your dreams!”).38 But his seeming rejoinder in fact dispenses to theologically naive Israel a strong dose of divine reality in order to dispel a dangerous delusion. Probably Joshua senses in Israel’s response (vv. 16–18) a mistakenly narrow preoccupation with Yahweh’s ability to protect.39 The danger is that they fail to reckon fully with Yahweh’s unique character compared to the gods they have known. His audience viewed the latter as so easy to please that they could serve several of them at the same time. They would, thus, assume they could easily get along with Yahweh in a mutual back-scratching relationship: They protect Yahweh and he protects them. Rhetorically, Joshua’s reply underscores that two unique character traits of Yahweh—his holiness and his jealousy—make serving him all-demanding. Those traits also make the present moment a deadly serious transaction, not a simple, casual formality to be endured and then ignored.

(1) He is a “holy [qedošim] God.”40 To be “holy” means that he is one of a kind, not just any old “god,” a truth that Hannah’s memorable words reflect: “There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you” (1 Sam. 2:2; cf. Ps. 89:6–7[7–8]; Isa. 40:25). This poses a problem for humans since, when they approach him, his holiness explosively collides with their sinfulness. In other words, Yahweh is not as easy to get along with as Israel’s quick, sincere reply might suggest. Humans may only come near him on his own terms, as Israel learned the first day they met at Mount Sinai (cf. Ex. 19:10–13, 21–24). Later, when seventy Israelites died for innocently peeking inside the ark of the covenant, the people of Beth Shemesh lamented, “Who can stand in the presence of the LORD, this holy God?” (1 Sam. 6:20). Humans must always reckon with the ever-present threat that Yahweh might “break out against” those who fail to honor his holiness (Ex. 19:22, 24; 1 Sam. 5–6).

(2) He is a “jealous God” (ʾel qannoʾ ). He does not tolerate deviations from his policy. Instead, in defense of his honor he angrily lashes out at those who slight his sovereignty or oppose his plans (Nah. 1:2).41 That is why, rather than forgive their “transgressions” and “sins,” he will hold Israel accountable for them (v. 19b). It is simply out of character for him to let such conduct slide. In short, what Reuter calls “an intolerant demand for exclusivity” comprises his demand to be Israel’s only God and not to share his claim for their worship and love with any other deity.42 Yahweh is passionately possessive of his prerogatives.

This leads Joshua to issue a stern conditional warning (v. 20). If Israel does, indeed, break its solemn word—i.e., to “forsake [ʿazab] the LORD and serve foreign gods” (cf. v. 16)—“disaster” will surely follow. He will “turn (around),” bring terrible “disaster” on Israel, and even “make an end” (killah, “consume, finish off, exterminate”) them—all this “after he has been good” to them. Joshua disabuses Israel of the misperception that Yahweh’s goodness toward them will continue no matter what. On the contrary, Joshua says, make no mistake: The “[very] bad” (NIV “disaster”) will replace the “good” should Israel drop Yahweh and take up with foreign gods.43 That coming “bad” will meet the same high standard of quality as the “good” (cf. 23:15; Deut. 28:63).

But Joshua’s stern warning does not deter the people, who again commit themselves to serve Yahweh (cf. v. 18b). Their word choice and word order are emphatic: (lit.) “No! To the contrary, the Lord we’ll serve!” (cf. 5:4; 1 Sam. 12:12; 2 Sam. 12:18).

Joshua’s tone now softens, and the confirmation phase of covenant-making follows (vv. 22–24). In the absence of written records, ancient Israel relied on witnesses to legal transactions to verify their validity (Jer. 32:10) or to voice public acceptance of the outcome (Ruth 4:9–11). But here Joshua declares that the assembled crowd—the only ones taking on the covenant—are witnesses against each other in the present matter. That “witnesses” is plural implies that their testimony is individual, not corporate. Each person attests the participation of the others in the covenant, and each is responsible to hold the others accountable for keeping it.

What they witness is that they have “chosen” Yahweh as the one they will serve, a choice that also implies the rejection of other gods. The word choice implies an action of reciprocity: As Yahweh has “chosen” Israel as his treasured possession (e.g., Deut. 7:6; 14:2; Jer. 33:24), so Israel now properly has again “chosen” him as their God. With one voice, the people affirm, “Yes, we are witnesses,” formally accepting their obligation to serve Yahweh exclusively.

Almost abruptly, as if dramatically setting off the moment, verse 23 opens with Joshua’s command rather than the expected “And Joshua said.…” (it is added in NIV). He commands Israel to evidence its commitment by a twofold step: to “throw away the foreign gods” from their midst (a simplified reiteration of v. 14) and to “yield your hearts” (naṭah hi., “tilt, bend [their] hearts”) to Israel’s God, Yahweh.44 In Hebrew, the “heart” connotes emotional feelings, rational thinking, and chosen resolve, so Joshua orders the Israelites to surrender themselves totally to Yahweh. To be ambivalent, double-minded, or wishy-washy, or to divide their efforts among several gods, is no longer an option.

The people’s response (v. 24) reiterates their twice-voiced earlier promise (vv. 18, 21) to “serve the LORD” (vv. 18, 21), again affirming him as “our God” (v. 18) Joshua’s tone now softens, “obey” him (cf. Deut. 13:8).45 That the crowd three times affirms “we will serve the LORD” (vv. 18, 21, 24) “impels the reader to go along with assembled Israel and to concur with the text’s agenda.”46 Israel’s promise to serve and obey Yahweh exclusively brings the ritual dialogue part of the ceremony to a close.

The Ceremony: The Book and the Stone (24:25–28)

Bridging Contexts

THIS PASSAGE MARKS AN important leadership transition in Israel’s history—indeed, the second of two great transitions that the generation gathered at Shechem had seen. The first was the long-anticipated leadership change from Moses to Joshua in the plains of Moab (cf. Deut. 34:5–9; Josh. 1:1–2). That change occasioned the crossing of the Jordan, the conquest of Canaan, and the settlement there under Joshua’s two decades of leadership (Josh. 1:1). The second transition is the one soon to occur—Israel’s transition to settled life in Canaan without either Joshua or a designated successor to convene similar assemblies at Shechem.

In my view, that imminent leadership vacuum forms part of the background of Joshua 24. Joshua apparently gathers the people in order to ensure their allegiance to the leader on whose behalf he led Israel during his tenure, Yahweh himself. With no designated human leader, Israel must now directly follow the guidance of God himself.58 As with any leadership change, the issue for Israel concerns their unswerving loyalty to him—whether or not they will “serve” him.

Idolatry and polytheism. At the same time, the persistence of polytheism in Israel that this passage presupposes may surprise some readers. We usually think that Abraham introduced Israel to monotheism and that as a result, polytheism either died out or became a minority practice. But that assumption conflicts with the implication of Joshua’s call that Israel throw away other gods that remain “in your midst” (v. 23). Apparently, many centuries after Abram, the practice of polytheism persists among God’s covenant people. Israel’s long relationship with God, including their personal experiences of his mighty power in action, have not weaned them from some connection with the gods of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan.

The Israelites have not followed the example of their ancestor, Jacob, who took the foreign gods that his household members had with them and buried them under the oak (Gen. 35:1–4). His actions mark the “first [biblical] instance of disposing of other gods” and make a statement concerning the importance of the matter.59 They prepared his family for the altar-building and sacrifices at Bethel in honor of Yahweh, the God who had safely brought him back to Canaan as he had promised (Gen. 28). By persisting in idolatry, Israel also confirms Yahweh’s word to Moses shortly before the latter’s death (Deut. 31:14–22). Israel is encamped in the plains of Moab along the east bank of the Jordan River, the place from which they will soon launch their invasion of Canaan. Yahweh summons Moses and Joshua to meet him at the tabernacle (31:14), and there he informs Moses:

You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. (31:16).

This is a startling statement given all that Israel has seen Yahweh do during the desert period. One would think that Israel’s arrival at the Promised Land would solidify their commitment to him, but Yahweh tells Moses that that will not be the case. Their expected defection from Yahweh to worship “foreign gods” attests the continuing grip of polytheism on them. In fact, polytheism was the dominant form of religion in the ancient world, and that dominance persisted long after Israel entered its exclusive covenant with Yahweh (Ex. 24).60

These examples bring into sharp relief what really is at stake in Joshua 24. Put simply, Israel faces a decisive choice between irreconcilable options with no safe “middle ground” in between. Israel must either continue to worship whatever gods they choose, or agree to Yahweh’s “intolerant demand for exclusivity” (Reuter’s term). Their ancestors may have added gods along their migrations like theological postcards kept to honor the places they had visited. But from now on it is either Yahweh or the highway. If they choose the “other gods” option, Yahweh will be gone, but to choose him means to throw the other gods away for good. Earlier Moses demanded the same decision of Israel encamped on the plains of Moab (Deut. 30:19–20). And centuries later Elijah would demand the same choice from wavering Israelites on Mount Carmel—either Yahweh or Baal, but not both (1 Kings 18:21).

Now, many readers will regard this point as obvious, but it bears underscoring as a bridge to our discussion below. Consideration of two other questions will also prepare us for that discussion. (1) What were these “other gods” like and how were they worshiped? Interestingly, they functioned not as individuals but as a group in Mesopotamia and at Ugarit (but not in Egypt). Just as the people of the ancient world found their own identity in community (rather than individualism), so they thought that the gods also found their identity in community—each god with tasks and roles.61 The gods comprised the “assembly of the gods,” the body that supervised the cosmos and decreed destinies both in the divine and human worlds. They competed with each other for power, with success or failure in such contests contingent on the success or failure of their human clients.

Further, as Walton observes, “the gods were viewed as having all of the same qualities, good and bad, as humans but without as many limitations.”62 They were presented anthropomorphically (i.e., in human terms), including sexual activity and procreation, and they also functioned within families. They experienced a humanlike existence: the full range of negative and positive human emotions, needs and desires, and daily routines (e.g., meals, sleeping, wake-up calls, jobs). Their temples constituted the geographical and geopolitical homebase from which they, like ancient kings, extended their influence to other territories. They operated within (not outside) the cosmos, each responsible for specific cosmic phenomena (e.g., the sun, moon, storms, fertility, etc.).63

The deity’s image—the tangible sign of its presence—formed the center around which public ceremonial worship revolved. Through the image, devotees cared for the god’s many needs in worship (and they had many needs). The god “was awakened in the morning, washed, clothed, fed two sumptuous meals each day (while music was played in its presence), and put to bed at night.”64 They received the deference and luxurious treatment fit for a king. Several beliefs underlie the rich care provided them by their human worshipers: the belief that the gods wielded more power than humans; that the gods were easily offended and subject to whimsy; that their anger brought all kinds of disasters; and that their anger needed appeasing.65

Their perceived ability to control frightening natural phenomena—thunderstorms, floods, agricultural plagues, extreme heat and extreme cold, sudden death, and so on—enhanced their reputations and retained worshipers. Baal’s reputation as a storm god and dispenser of lightning probably led spectators on Mount Carmel to expect a dramatic display from Baal (1 Kings 18). The divine bent toward whimsy made people’s relationship with the gods “a fragile symbiosis.”66 The deities offered humans protection and the prospect of success, but an accidental misstep by a devotee could cause divine desertion and leave the worshiper vulnerable to misfortunes.

Popular perception traced severe crises back to divine anger, so appropriate rituals—those commanded by the gods—sought from them the healing of deadly diseases or the defeat of dreadful enemies. No doubt, that is why King Ahaziah sent messengers to Ekron, a Philistine city, to ask Baal-Zebub whether or not the king would recover from his injuries (2 Kings 1). Further, the gods’ possession of wisdom and knowledge distinguished them from humans and fostered human dependency on them. That is why the ancients, both public officials and private citizens, often sought their guidance on important decisions. No sense shooting in the dark when a knowledgeable god could reduce the risk!

In general, people thought that Mesopotamian gods had some human traits but also regarded them as superhuman. As van der Toorn remarks, “They surpass humans in size, beauty, knowledge, happiness, longevity—briefly: in all things that were positively valued.”67 In other words, they personified the ideals and perfections toward which their human worshipers also aspired, and so promised a possible resource for humans to improve their lot. At the same time, the national god and state-sponsored religion typically had little place in the day-by-day worship of the common people. They tended to rely more on family and ancestral gods than on the great gods, at times even asking the former to intercede with the latter.

Walton proposes a further plausible explanation for why Israel found the transition from the polytheism in which they grew up to the exclusive commitment to Yahweh difficult.68 The priority in ancient Near Eastern religion was the maintenance of order in the cosmos and in human society. Satisfactory religious rituals upheld the former, acceptable ethical conduct sustained the latter, and together they earned the favor of the gods. Violations of cosmic or societal order earned the opposite—divine disfavor and dire punishments.

Absent from this system, however, is a theology of morality with its abstract notions of right and wrong, a theology rooted in the character of God rather than in the expectations of the cosmos and society. Through revelation from God, says Walton, Israel came to understand what God was like, what sin and guilt were, and the prime importance of imitating God’s character in order to avoid both. In the process, an internal sense of right and wrong and also of “disinterested righteousness” (e.g., Job) came to shape Israel’s conscience.69 In short, the move from polytheism to Yahwism required divine revelation (the Instruction) to shape in Israel an internal ethical sense and to inform their conscience of Yahweh’s expectations.

(2) The second question is: Since Joshua 24 only mentions “foreign gods” rather than specific names, who were some of these “gods”?70 The god El is especially important since El typically comprises part of the names for God in the patriarchal narratives.71 El is the proper name of a deity best known in texts from Ugarit, a Canaanite city (second millennium B.C.) along the present southern Lebanese coast. Those texts present him as “king”—that is, the senior-ranking member of the Ugaritic pantheon and, hence, the one with ultimate authority.72 Ugaritic texts often call him “the benevolent, good-natured El”—probably a reflection of popular affection for him—and he is also known for his great wisdom, strength, and dignity. Some Israelite place names with the suffix- el (i.e., his name) still probably retained the ancient Canaanite name (e.g., Bethel [“El’s house”], Carmel [“El’s vineyard”], etc.).

A thorny question is whether or not the patriarchs actually worshiped El. The altar name El Elohe Israel (lit., “El, God of Israel”; Gen. 33:20) and the phrase (lit.) “El, God of your father” Gen. 46:3 [NIV “God, God of your father”]) might imply that, although we cannot be certain. If so, El may have been one of the “other gods” the patriarchs worshiped that Joshua summons the people to renounce (Josh. 24:2, 14, 23). Alternatively, once in Canaan, they may have borrowed local terminology (El) to name the God who revealed himself to them. At first, they may have associated him with the land but later came to identify him as Yahweh through his revelations (cf. Ex. 6:3).

Of course, the Bible’s best-known “other god” is probably Baal, a god attested in lists as early as the third millennium B.C. and worshiped in Egypt, Ammon, and Syro-Palestine.73 Biblical references to “the Baals” (e.g., Judg. 2:11; 1 Sam. 12:10) and “the names of the Baals” (Hos. 2:17) allude to his worship by various names and in widespread places.74 Ugaritic texts frequently celebrate him as “victorious Baal” or “mightiest of the heroes,” and another title (“Baal Zaphon”) reflects popular belief that his palace stood on Mount Zaphon (northern Syria).

Baal is supremely a weather god—in Ugaritic texts the one presiding over clouds, storms, and lightning. He lifts a booming voice in thunderclaps and dispenses dew, rain, and snow. The son of the grain god Dagan, Baal is also a fertility god. He ensures the annual renewal of vegetation on earth by, first, descending to the underworld (i.e., vegetation decay) and, second, reviving in autumn (i.e., fresh vegetation). Finally, in his running battle with Yam (god of the sea), Baal is the god on whom seafarers depend for protection. In his conflict with Mot (god of death) Baal carries the epithet “healer” (cf. Baal Zebub in 2 Kings 1) and holds sway over the realm of death.

In short, Baal represents a major Canaanite god (he is often called “king”) that offered practical help to ancient farmers, seafaring merchants, and the sick and dying. Thus, it is no surprise that Israelites apparently worshiped both Baal and Yahweh until the mid-ninth century B.C.75 At that time, Ahab and Jezebel changed the royal policy in the northern kingdom to give Baal primacy, especially in the royal court. The Elijah-Elisha narratives reflect the prophetic reaction to that policy change. They attest the battle that begins between Baal and Yahweh over which god actually dispenses rain for agricultural fertility. Some scholars even suggest that the Elijah and Elisha protest mirrors a larger popular response, a “Yahweh-alone Movement,” whose earliest written expression may be in the prophet Hosea.76 If this is so, for more than two centuries, this movement promoted the exclusive worship of Yahweh as Israel’s national God.

Other biblical texts strongly promote a Zero-Tolerance Policy toward idolatry. Early on, Moses forbids the Israelites from pursuing any relationship (not even “idol curiosity”!) with the gods of Canaan (Deut. 12:29–32). Specific Canaanite practices forbidden as “detestable” include child sacrifice, divination or sorcery, witchcraft, the interpretation of omens, the casting of spells, and communication with the dead by “a medium or spiritist” (Deut. 18:10–11). The DH blames the fall of the northern kingdom on the persistence of the “sin of Jeroboam”—his two golden calves and non-Levitical priesthood (1 Kings 12:28–30; 13:34; 2 Kings 17:22–23). In short, Yahweh sees idolatry as a detestable, intolerable insult to his lordship; as a result, when he returns his people from exile, he will simply leave idolaters behind (Isa. 42:17).

What about idolatry attracts people? (1) By nature people typically prefer the tangible and visible over the intangible and invisible. That is especially true of deities. Recall the child who, after bedtime prayers, asks her mother to stay until she falls asleep. When her mother assures her that God is right here with her, the child replies, “But I want somebody with skin.”77 When it comes to gods, people like ones that take on physical form to be located, seen, smelled, touched, carried, bowed down to, and served offerings “in person,” as it were. People prefer gods with images. They perceive a greater sense of closeness to and connection with gods they can see than to ones they cannot.

(2) In my view, idols subtly (and perhaps deceptively) enhance the impression that the gods are subject to human influence. They assume that relationships with deities compare to relationships they enjoy with other humans. Given a choice, most people would rather present an important request in person than through some intermediary (e.g., a representative, a written document, etc.). They assume that it is harder for a recipient to decline the request of a real, live person than one through an intermediary. The very presence of the person carries some, if not great, weight. Similarly, they may imagine that the same principle also governs prayer. Prayers done in person before an idol, they hope, are more likely to win the deity’s response than ones done elsewhere.

The biblical critique against these assumptions pulls no punches. (1) Ancient peoples usually made idols out of wood, stone, silver, and gold (Deut. 29:17; Isa. 30:22). So, the prophet Habakkuk asks, “Of what value is an idol that someone has carved?” (Hab. 2:18a TNIV). The first point of critique argues that, if idols are man-made (as all are!), they have no more power than their human maker. They certainly have nothing approaching the power a real God has. If trouble ever comes, they are worthless because they can effect no rescue (Jer. 2:27–28).

(2) Several prophets point out the obvious as a second point of criticism: Idols are lifeless (Jer. 16:18; Hab. 2:19). They are carved or cast by some human, but their mortal creator cannot breathe life into them as God does into humans. Being lifeless, they also lack the basic capabilities typical of living things. Consider what one psalmist writes:

Why do the nations say,

“Where is their God?”

Our God is in heaven;

he does whatever pleases him.

But their idols are silver and gold,

made by human hands.

They have mouths, but cannot speak,

eyes, but they cannot see;

they have ears, but cannot hear,

noses, but they cannot smell;

they have hands, but cannot feel,

feet, but they cannot walk;

nor can they utter a sound with their throats.

Those who make them will be like them,

and so will all who trust in them. (Ps. 115:2–7; cf. 135:15–18)

Idols, says the psalmist, “have ears, but cannot hear”—a big downside for people who pray! People expect their gods to hear what they have to say and to respond. Certainly, the psalmists expect that of Israel’s God (Ps. 4:1; 17:6; 27:7; 55:2[3]; 86:1). A deaf idol is like a cell phone with a dead battery: The owner may speak into it loudly and with great passion, but not a syllable goes anywhere.

Further, idols have “eyes, but they cannot see”—an even worse divine deficit. Worshipers might tolerate a deaf idol as long as it could see or even recognize them. But, alas, the eyes of idols are simply artistic touches, not actual living organs of sight. The contrast to Yahweh is striking. His eyes “range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chron. 16:9). Yahweh not only heard the cry of the Israelites in Egypt but saw how the Egyptians were oppressing them (Ex. 3:9). He constantly watches the comings and goings of his people, never falling asleep (Ps. 121:3–4, 8).

Also, the psalmist points out that idols “have mouths, but cannot speak”—indeed, their throats can make no sound at all. This is a serious drawback for worshipers who expect to hear guidance from the gods in answer to their prayers (Hab. 2:19). It is a far cry from the many messages from Yahweh that the formula “Thus says the LORD” introduces. One sure thing about the God of the Bible—a feature certainly of Joshua 24—is that he speaks!

Idols also “have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but … cannot walk.” A worshiper may caress an idol’s hands, but they feel nothing, and its lifeless feet can take it nowhere. Instead, as Jeremiah notes, a human has to secure it with hammer and nails so it does not jiggle or fall down, and it must be carried to go anywhere (Jer. 10:4–5; cf. Isa. 40:19). Yahweh, however, moves around freely on his own power. As Nahum says, “the clouds are the dust of his feet” as he roams about (Nah. 1:3).

(3) In short, idols are senseless, inanimate objects that create the impression of competence but that can in fact do nothing. Jeremiah compares them to a scarecrow in a melon patch (Jer. 10:5)—the illusion of a threatening person. The crow cannot distinguish a real human from a fake one and thus lives in a delusion, out of touch with reality. An idol operates similarly. It creates the illusion of grandeur and threatening power so worshipers treat it carefully. They live in fear of a lifeless, impotent object made of gold and silver and dressed in purple and blue (Jer. 10:9). They go to great lengths to placate it. But this is life in a crowlike delusion out of touch with reality. It is just plain lunacy, Jeremiah would say! “Do not fear them,” he says, because “they can do no harm nor can they do any good.” The implication is that idol worshipers are as crazy as crows. Or worse!

The delusion also blinds people to the true majesty and greatness of Yahweh. Unlike idols, the psalmist says, “our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Ps. 115:2). Unlike the scarecrows, Jeremiah exults, “No one is like you, O LORD; you are great, and your name is mighty in power” (Jer. 10:6). To this Habakkuk adds, “The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (Hab. 2:20). These are statements by people who see clearly the glory of Israel’s great and powerful God. One glimpse of what is really real—Yahweh’s majesty and splendor—unmasks idolatry as foolish and futile. It also reveals idolatry for what it is—a terrible insult to God.

Recall the message Elijah gave King Ahaziah: “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?” (2 Kings 1:6; cf. vv. 3, 16). The question shames the king for turning his back on Yahweh, Israel’s God, in favor of a god in a foreign country. Contrast that slight with the confession of the Syrian, Naaman, after his healing: “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15). Which one is deluded and which sees reality clearly?

(4) Finally, idolatry renders its worshipers ritually unclean in Yahweh’s eyes. According to Ezekiel, the making of idols defiles Israel, making her liable to divine judgment, including expulsion from the land (Ezek. 22:3–4; 33:25–29; cf. Deut. 4:25–28). Anyone who enters God’s presence in a condition of ritual defilement puts his or her life at grave risk. The prophet’s visionary experience in Ezekiel 8 suggests a metaphor that captures how offensive idolatry is to God. God’s Spirit took Ezekiel from Babylon to the temple in Jerusalem, where he saw scenes of people practicing all kinds of idolatry. Now, the temple is Yahweh’s house, and he generously hosts the worshipers as one might host human guests at home. But idolatry practiced in the temple compares to thoughtless guests who take over Yahweh’s house without asking and banish him to a small part of it. They invite in all kinds of riff-raff and party days on end with their new-found “friends” at his expense and on his premises. Small wonder that Yahweh later announces that he will kick everyone out and abandon the house himself.

Now, this discussion of idolatry may strike some readers as overdone. They may feel a certain sense of superiority to the idolaters discussed above. But such a view is shortsighted, if not foolish. As we will see, forms of idolatry flourish today. In my view, those forms are just as much human creations as the objects of wood, stone, and precious metals in Israel’s day. They also create the same illusion of power that deludes modern people into trusting in them. At first glance, they seem harmless and acceptable, simply cultural givens, but a closer look shows them to be close kin to the “other gods” Joshua called Israel to renounce. God’s ancient Zero-Tolerance Policy concerning idolatry remains in effect.

Contemporary Significance

Contemporary Significance

THREE PRIMARY CONCERNS PREOCCUPY Joshua 24: to review Yahweh’s mighty acts on Israel’s behalf, the problem of other gods in Israel, and the demand that they renounce them and serve only Yahweh. The text’s contemporary meaning revolves around the last two of those subjects framed as two questions: What (if any) false gods may tempt Christians today? And what does it mean for Christians to serve God today?78

What is a god? The great reformer Martin Luther once said that anything that one relies on and trusts in is a “god.” Luther, of course, did not have in mind ways in which we exercise a normal, healthy trust or reliance on things. We rightly rely on and trust other people to advise, support, and help us with all kinds of things. We legitimately trust in a bank to guard the money we deposit there and in the school that our children attend to educate them well. We cannot live a normal life without relying on and trusting in institutions and people. Further, we properly value, lay out money, and devote time and energy to many worthy pursuits, some formal and others more casual, that no Christian would find offensive to God. Thus, the danger that Luther decried is that at times we rely on and trust institutions, people, and pursuits more than might be spiritually healthy. In his view, such times of unhealthy reliance amount to polytheism.

What makes something usually thought normal or healthy a “god”? It might be “god” if we willingly yield it excessive authority to direct our lives. For example, we may follow its advice or demands without even considering whether God has anything to say about the matter. It might be a “god” if it in any way plays a more significant, casual role in our lives than God does. That was what Israel did that so seriously offended Yahweh. They trusted other gods instead of Yahweh; they granted those deities a large role in their lives and ceded them authority over them rather than Yahweh. In short, the danger of polytheism is that we may be completely committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, yet still “rely on and trust in” other things with such a commitment and passion that makes them “other gods.” We may “worship” (i.e., highly value) them, give them “offerings” (i.e., spend money on them), and “serve” them (i.e., devote time and energy).

Polytheism today. What (if any) false gods may tempt Christians today? In my view, the modern pantheon of “other gods” comprises a long list, but what follows suggests a few of the more popular “gods.” (1) The ideology of materialism teaches that all human needs may be met by material means. It avers that happiness and satisfaction come through financial success, possession of material goods, and pleasure. “The more the merrier” states this god’s torah concerning money, possessions, and the good life. It promotes leisure activities—travel, hobbies, recreation, sports, and the like—as spiritual retreats in its honor. The ideology of materialism is the consummate televangelist. Its prime icon is the “media ad” aimed at convincing unbelievers to convert to consumerism. Chris Hedges has such media influence in mind when he writes about our

household gods, no longer made of clay, but all promising to fulfill us. Our computer, our television, our job, our wealth, our social status, along with the brands we wear and the cars we drive, promise us contentment and inform our identity. These household gods seem to offer well-being, health and success. But all these gods create cults. And all these cults circle back to us, to a dangerous self-worship fed by forces who seek to ensnare us in idolatry.79

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with owning a computer, television, or nice car. I am writing this book on a computer; a TV set sits in the other room, and a nice car is parked outside in the driveway! In my closet hang clothes bearing brand names, and I enjoy a certain level of comparative wealth and social status. The problem arises when we really believe—and, I mean, really believe—and act on the exaggerated claims that ads make about the value and benefits of their products. They may create the same illusion as the ancient gods did—that something material can satisfy people’s basic needs. They lead people to believe that they have the power that only God has. I see three dangers in the view that this ideology propounds.

(a) Its claim to satisfy basic human needs promotes trust in a lie. At best, material goods offer an escape or distraction from our worries, concerns, fears, or pain. Like a ride at the amusement park, they help us temporarily to forget them, but when the ride ends—they always do—the emptiness returns. “Comfort food” may make us feel a little better, too, but it may also leave behind the “discomfort” of an expanded waistline.

The song “Part of Your World” sung by the beautiful Ariel in The Little Mermaid captures the emptiness of consumerism and the yearning for something more satisfying. Surveying her “stuff,” she confesses a contradiction in her life between appearance and reality. On the surface, she seems to be the “girl who has ev’rything”—all the material things she could want—but she concedes that, at the end of the day, she in fact wants something more. “Stuff” or “activities” conveniently available simply cannot satisfy our basic human needs. Ariel eventually finds her satisfaction in love with a man, but I would argue that ultimately only Jesus can offer full satisfaction. Only he has the power truly to satisfy human longings.

(b) Finding our happiness-fix in things may reduce our dependence on God from total dependence to only partial dependence. We seek God to meet some needs, but also seek material pleasures and amusements to take care of others. Certainly, occasional enjoyment of fun things or interesting places is restorative in a healthy sense. The Bible is full of people feasting and celebrating and enjoying life’s good things—but not every week, much less every day. The danger comes with unnatural dependence or addiction—when we need something or someone other than Jesus for a “fix”; I would compare this to polytheism. Spiritually, the god of materialism subtly aims to convert us to monotheism—to replace Jesus with hard goods as the true source of our comfort and well-being.

(c) Finally, undisciplined consumerism eats up financial resources that might otherwise be invested in the kingdom of God. A current facetious expression says, “You can tell the age of the boys by the price of the toys.” But the harsh reality is that every dollar spent on something less than necessary (“toys”) denies us the chance to invest it in the kingdom.

But how do we know when we have begun to worship the materialism god? In his book The Agony of Affluence, William Wells suggests a helpful standard by which to judge whether we have crossed that line into evil and idolatry. When career or the drive to accumulate adversely affects our relationship with our spouse, children, and local church, a mental red flag should wave. He writes:

The Bible does not condemn the desire for worldly goods, but it does condemn perversions of that desire. Specifically, the Bible condemns desire that eclipses our love for God, our love for those around us, and our love for the weak and the poor. There are, therefore, limits on the pursuit of wealth. To transgress those limits is to be guilty of greed, covetousness, and oppression.80

(2) The close ally of the god of materialism is the god of convenience. Americans place a high value on convenience. The defining attributes of this god are omnipresence and omni-availability. No worshiper should have to travel any great distance to reach a sanctuary. And perish the thought that they should wait on this god because the nearest one is closed!

The prime icon of this god is the “convenience store,” a local sanctuary where all manner of needs may be quickly met. Any telephone directory confirms the convenient ubiquity of stores belonging to the better-known “denominations.” While they serve larger parishes than convenience stores, sanctuaries such as gas stations and supermarkets now offer services 24/7 in order to attract new believers and to increase the sanctuary’s intake of offerings.

And lest the sanctuaries inconvenience any worshipers—for example, by requiring them to stand in line for service—many markets and gas stations now feature a special self-ministry option. Electronic, self-service altars permit worshipers to satisfy their needs without even consulting the clergy on duty. Above all, in a very impersonal world, the god of convenience makes people feel important or special. Its sanctuaries are open to serve them.

But why does “convenience” pose a spiritual problem? Certainly, there is nothing especially virtuous or spiritual about “inconvenience.” But worship of this god has three harmful side-effects. (a) It makes consumption more available and, hence, promotes the god of materialism. Its allure may lead believers to forget an important demand of Christian discipleship, the responsible stewardship of their God-given resources. Were the opportunities to buy less convenient, there would be less impulse-buying, more second thoughts given to it, and more resources left for kingdom use.

(b) It demands more of employees who staff places of convenience. Simply put, to remain open longer hours and more days requires staff to work them. Consider Christian employees whose employers are open on Sundays and ask them to work on the Lord’s Day. In this case, the god of convenience may put the believers in a dilemma: They must choose between serving the convenience god on Sunday or risk unemployment by serving their own God.

(c) Also, consider employees whose employer is open evenings and asks them to work those hours. To do so means to sacrifice the time when family and friends are most available and when many church activities occur. The priority of convenience makes the priority of relationships take a back seat.

(3) Greek mythology tells the sad fate of a handsome young man named Narcissus. A beautiful nymph named Echo fell in love with him, but his good looks drew enough admirers so he sent her away into the woods. Later, Narcissus tried to find her, but he refused her invitation to come where she was and left the forest. All alone in the woods, Echo prayed, “May he who loves no one love himself.” Meanwhile, Narcissus had gone to find water and was kneeling over a lake. Staring into the water, he saw his reflection and realized how beautiful he was. In essence, he fell in love with himself. Echo’s prayer had hit its target, but Narcissus also became aware of how much pain his beauty had caused his female suitors. He dove into the lake and took his own life. Later, when nymphs sought to find his body, instead they found a beautiful flower at the spot. They named the flower Narcissus after him.81 From this name comes the common term for excessive admiration for or preoccupation with oneself—narcissism.

The consort of the gods of convenience and materialism is the god “Me!” This god preaches narcissism, the belief that every individual can be the center of his or her own world. Each person can be a kind of incarnation of “Me!”—the sun around which the entire surrounding galaxy spins. “Me!” inflates people’s sense of importance through a unique kind of meditation—self-absorption. Worshipers of “Me!” are always preoccupied with their own needs and wants, and “I Gotta Be Me” is their favorite hymn. (If this sounds vaguely like a two-year old or early teen, you are getting the idea!)

In his book The Culture of Narcissism, sociologist Christopher Lasch illumines the theology of “Me!,” the god of self-preoccupation.82 Lasch argues that modern American society is self-absorbed (but not self-aware), greedy, and frivolous. Consumerism thoroughly dominates it, and its self-definition or identity depends completely on demographic analyses, opinion polls, and government policy. According to Lasch, you know you are a narcissist if you …

• are haunted by anxiety rather than guilt

• are seeking meaning in life

• are fiercely competitive for approval and acclaim but distrustful of competition

• secretly believe that normal rules and regulations do not apply to you

• give little thought to making provisions for the future

• love to acquire “stuff”

• find in “stuff” a sense of immediate gratification

• feel restless, your desires always unsatisfied83

The god of materialism says, “You need this,” but the god “Me!” preaches, “You deserve this.” The appeal is to the human ego and its deep desire “to be somebody.” Like Narcissus, we love to look at ourselves—or better, to be seen as important by others. We have long honed clever ways to project importance. Name-dropping is one means (“Why, just this morning I was talking with [here fill in some VIP or celebrity name] …”). Other strategies are to drive the right cars, wear the right clothes, attend the right meetings, and sit next to the right people. Worshipers of “Me!” need constantly to gratify their craving for importance. To do so, however, is to indulge in what Hedges calls “a dangerous self-worship fed by forces who seek to ensnare us in idolatry.”84

The delusion of “Me!” is that our sense of importance depends on external things, not on who we really are inside. It draws on what other people think about us, not on what we think about ourselves. More important, while “Me!” welcomes the ego-stroking of others, it tends to shove the friendship of a loving God to the side. God requires the renunciation of the ego and its craving for importance and offers a transformation that changes us inside out. Only that inner transformation makes us comfortable with our true self in Christ.

A recent episode of the comic strip “Opus” offers a mirror reflecting something of ourselves. One night Opus the penguin and two young friends are staring up at the stars. Beside them stands another friend, the bespectacled African-American boy-genius Oliver Wendell Jones, peering through a telescope into space. “I love these summer evening reality checks from Oliver,” Opus tells his two companions. Oliver opens the session by holding up to his rapt audience something tiny between his thumb and forefinger.

“Hold out a speck of sand at arm’s length,” he says. “That’s the portion of the night sky at which they pointed the Hubble telescope for a week. It was there—deep within that dot of dark nothingness ten billion light years distant—that they found the unexpected. All in the space of a single grain of sand on the vast beach of the cosmos,” he says, pointing his three rapt listeners skyward.

“Which nicely frames the question man has been asking for millennia,” he adds, looking directly at the three.

“What question?” one of them asks.

Gazing quietly off into space, he answers, “What’s the center of it all?”

Immediately and simultaneously, two of them think to themselves, “Me.”

“Me, baby,” Opus himself thinks contentedly.85

Opus and his friends are definitely devotees of the god “Me!” And they are not alone. Indeed, the god “Me!” may be the hardest for people to renounce in order to submit to Jesus as Lord.

(4) The final god in today’s pantheon is the god of nationalism. The inclusion of this god on my list may come as a surprise, especially to readers who live in modern, Western democracies. But history shows that the influence of governments on their Christian citizens is often subtle and almost imperceptible—and not always healthy. This oft-overlooked god takes on as many forms as there are nations that demand loyalty from their peoples. By nationalism I mean the claims of a nation to being uniquely great and especially virtuous—that is, godlike—and hence to feel justified in demanding the unswerving loyalty of its people.

A successful nation may even come to think of itself so highly that it demands that other nations submit to its wishes because of that presumed greatness and virtue. It may even invoke religion or the Bible to support its claims. The loyalty sought from citizens is often called patriotism—a special pride in, love for, and devotion to one’s own country. Now, nationalism or patriotism is different from what one might call “national, patriotic pride”—a healthy respect and affection for the history and cultural achievements of one’s home country. That is a good, commendable spirit; it often produces united efforts in pursuit of the common good of people. Christians should always strive to be good citizens; they should support worthy causes and promote the common good of their fellow citizens.

The god nationalism emerges, however, when normal pride in one’s country feeds a feeling of superiority that may lead a nation and its people, even from pure motives, to pressure other nations to do what it wants. Sometimes nationalism blurs the line between genuinely Christian virtues (what God expects of them) and genuinely patriotic ones (what their country expects of them). In reality, the two sets of values are not always the same; they often collide.86 In times of crisis, a groundswell of popular pressure may urge citizens, including Christians, to rally in loyal support of some national policy. For believers, the danger is that such pressure may lead them to go along with the crowd and bypass the key step they normally take—to seek what the Bible says about things. At that moment, the nation has become a god—a competitor of the God of the Bible—because God’s wishes for the world are probably different from the plans of any nation or world leader.

In fact, to assess one’s country from the Bible’s perspective is always a necessary practice, whether in crisis or not. The priority of any nation is, after all, to look after its own interests, and those interests may or may not coincide with God’s purposes for his larger world. The best way to avoid the sway of the god nationalism is to ask, Do my country’s policies, lifestyle, values, and actions coincide or conflict with biblical teachings?

Joshua 24 demands that Christians today say “no” to other gods. So, even in today’s humane, freedom-loving countries, it is worth taking what I might call “a reality check”—a review of what it means to be a Christian living as a citizen of our specific country. The crucial question for us is this: Does loyalty to a country, however biblical and noble its aims, compromise or detract from our exclusive commitment to the Lordship of Jesus? In this regard, missionary statesman Arthur Glasser states my standard of evaluation plainly: “There is but one acid test that should be applied to all activities that claim to represent obedience in mission. Do they or do they not produce disciples of Jesus Christ?”87

Put differently, if a nation achieves its political agenda, will more people have become Christians than would have otherwise? Will the kingdom of God and the gospel have been advanced or hindered? Throughout history, Christians have been tempted to help the gospel advance by allying themselves with political movements of all kinds, rather than through the power of the gospel message on its own. But here is a radical difference between genuine evangelism (sincere conversions of people by the Holy Spirit) and imperialism with a Christian veneer (conversions to a Christianized culture). In my view, to pair politics and evangelism is like being a polytheist—to rely on the power of Jesus as well as on the power of something (or someone) else. Paul is right: The gospel is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16), not an alliance of various powers. Also, such ventures may ultimately end up harming God’s work through us rather than advancing it. As Philip Yancey comments:

A political movement by nature draws lines, makes distinctions, pronounces judgment; in contrast, Jesus’ love cuts across lines, transcends distinctions, and dispenses grace. Regardless of the merits of a given issue—whether a pro-life lobby out of the Right or a peace-and-justice lobby out of the Left—political movements risk pulling onto themselves the mantle of power that smothers love. From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.88

Joshua 24 calls us to renounce all other gods and to serve only Yahweh, and Jesus warns us that we cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13), one a god other than Jesus Christ. But to renounce our reliance on gods other than Jesus is one thing, to “serve him” as Joshua 24 commands is another. What follows explores what it means today to serve Jesus only.

Reclaiming our identity: to serve Christ. What does it mean to serve Christ? (1) The starting point, certainly, is to affirm afresh Jesus’ lordship over our lives. Remember that we confess that “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; cf. Heb. 13:15), a confession that not all people who believe in God make. Notice, first, that it is a confession specifically about Jesus, not God. Jesus (meaning essentially “Savior”) is not a generic title but the personal name of the flesh-and-blood human person born in Bethlehem.89 Observe, second, that the confession affirms Jesus as “Lord” (Gk. kyrios). The Greek term bespeaks his authority (“master, owner”) and, more importantly, his divinity. In the LXX kyrios is the primary translation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton yhwh (“Yahweh” or “the LORD”). Thus, to say that Jesus is kyrios is to identify him with the God of the Old Testament. The confession of Thomas (“My Lord [ho kyrios] and my God [ho theos],” John 20:28) makes the same identification. It applies to Jesus the language that the psalms use for Yahweh.90 In short, Jesus is the personal name of the God-Man, the one to whom we surrender control over our lives as Master.

Let us be clear, also, that he differs radically from some popular images of God in American culture. He is not the vague, sentimental “Man Upstairs” or “the Good Lord,” and “Somebody Bigger Than You and I” is not really a hymn about him. He is far, far more than the distant, impersonal “Nature’s God” or “Divine Providence” of America’s founding documents. This is clear from Scripture:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16–18)

He is God’s one and only Son, and he did not come from heaven to earth on his own—God sent him. Jesus’ mission was not to condemn the world but to save it. His unique role as Savior of the world implies that the world (and we) need saving—that it is not OK as it is. Divinely sent, his demands are absolute, not optional. One either believes in him or stands condemned. For us, the choice is simple: voluntarily to submit to him and verbally confess that “Jesus is Lord” now, or be compelled to do so at the end of history (Phil. 2:9–11; cf. Isa. 45:23). There is no escaping Jesus’ divine-human nature and absolute lordship. To be truly Christian is to avow that “Jesus is Lord”—and no one else.

In his book Everything You Always Wanted to Know about God (but Were Afraid to Ask), humorist Eric Metaxas clarifies the nature of the commitment that Jesus demands of us. It compares to the well-known song by Aretha Franklin in which a woman confronts her man with her sole demand to remain with him: “All I’m askin’ is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit) … R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.” As Metaxas writes:

If a guy is married and he tries to persuade his wife that he needs to have a few other women on the side, his wife will likely say, “Sorry, Romeo, but that’s not going to fly. If you want to be married to me, you have to forego those other women. Period.” It’s just like that with God. He doesn’t force us to pick him, but he does force us to choose between him and the others. We can’t have both.91

The first step of service for Christ is to pay him R-E-S-P-E-C-T—to say “I have decided to follow Jesus—no turning back, no turning back.”

(2) To serve Jesus also means to do what he taught. As Joshua obeyed the Instruction of Moses, so believers today are to do what Jesus taught. For example, he taught that “no one can serve two masters,” especially “God and Money” (or the god of materialism). The reason is because each master has the right to demand exclusive devotion rather share their servants (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13). Jesus has no part-time servants. Certainly, Joshua understood that when he said that to serve the Lord was to “yield your hearts to the LORD” (24:23). “Yield” literally means “to turn, to guide” (naṭah hi.), and as I noted above, in Hebrew psychology the heart is the center of human thought, emotions, and will.

To “guide [one’s] heart” toward Yahweh is to reorient one’s whole self toward God and to let him call the shots. It means to dethrone the god “Me!” and to enthrone King Jesus in its place. Jesus also taught us to love fellow believers just like he loves us (John 13:34–35). The second of the two greatest commandments was “to love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39; cf. Lev. 19:18; Gal. 5:14). Paul spread that attitude among early Christian churches, urging them to “be devoted to one another in love” and to “honor one another above yourselves (Rom. 12:10 TNIV; cf. 13:8; Gal. 5:13).92 He encouraged early Christians to treat each other kindly, with humility and patience, freely cutting each other needed slack (Eph. 4:2). This is, of course, easier said than done, as this poetic quip admits:

To live above with saints we love—

Oh, that will be glory.

To live below with saints we know—

Well, that’s another story.93

The Christians in Corinth certainly had trouble making it work. They had a competition going over who had been baptized by the more prestigious church leader (1 Cor. 1:12–13). Meanwhile, at Philippi two women had some sort of falling out (Phil. 4:2). Then there were those pesky promoters of circumcision setting the churches in Galatia at odds.

We are no different today. Jealousies and feuds occasionally flare up within church communities. It is not uncommon for fellow believers not to get along in other ways, or at least to regard each other warily. As someone once said, “The church is like Noah’s ark. If it wasn’t for the storm outside, you couldn’t stand the smell inside.” But Jesus’ clear teaching—authoritative “Instruction” on par with that of Moses—is that we do more than just “get along.” We must diligently transcend our dislikes, give each other the benefit of the doubt, treat others as if they were better than us, and maintain harmony and unity.

Further, Jesus commanded something that seems counterintuitive:

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.… If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” love those who love them. (Luke 6:27–28, 32)

Naturally, people react to enemies and abusers with outrage and a desire for revenge, and to friends and allies with affection and affiliation. But that is not the norm for Jesus’ followers—and for one good reason. How they react to enemies measures the extent to which they remain “sinners” or have truly become “children” of their heavenly Father. Do they show his family traits—kindness and mercy to “the ungrateful and wicked” (Luke 6:35, 36)—and enhance his reputation? Do they resemble their Father in eschewing revenge or retaliation? If so, they demonstrate the inner transformation that Jesus offers and attract people to explore relationship with him. They prove themselves to be obedient followers of their Lord’s example (cf. 1 Peter 2:21–23) and living proof that the kingdom wields incredible power.

On October 2, 2006 a milk deliveryman entered a one-room schoolhouse for Amish children in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Heavily armed, he barricaded himself inside, apparently prepared for a long siege. By cell phone, he told his wife that he was seeking revenge for something that had happened twenty years earlier. Before state police could storm the building, the man killed five young girls and then took his own life. The tragedy devastated the tight-knit Amish community, a religious group known for its simple, rural lifestyle and pacifism.

But as the world watched, the story took two interesting twists. The first was the demonstration of forgiveness and compassion by the Amish toward the family of the man responsible. The grandfather of one of the victims went to the man’s home to assure his wife that the Amish forgave him. The Amish community established a fund not only to help families of the victims but also the widow and children of the gunman. The second was the announcement by a pastor from the Midwest that he and his church would picket the girls’ funerals, claiming that God had punished the Amish for alleged unorthodox beliefs. (Later, after a radio talk-show host offered him an hour of free air time, the pastor cancelled the demonstration.)

How strange the opposite reactions of two Christian groups to the same tragedy. Those devastated by it truly offered forgiveness to the offender’s family. In my view, they obeyed Jesus while the church group sadly did not, ignoring Jesus’ express command to extend mercy (Luke 6:37). But what about the rest of us who have not suffered so terribly?

My wife made an excellent point as we discussed the Amish tragedy. She pointed out that we rarely, if ever, pray for people with whom we disagree strongly—for example, public officials whom we oppose. She is right. I do not have enemies like the Roman soldiers who might have harassed Jesus and his disciples in biblical Palestine. But I do have enemies in one sense: Sometimes I have to deal with people with whom I strongly disagree. Convinced that I am right, I am tempted to feel myself smugly superior to them. Sadly, I confess I rarely pray for them, am quick to point out their faults, and am slow to extend them compassion. Subtly, I hate them and am disobedient to Jesus’ commands. I do not show myself the true son of a merciful, forgiving heavenly Father. I am a poor imitation of Jesus Christ, the Lord whom I claim to serve.

Who are your enemies? Perhaps it is someone at work—perhaps your boss—who makes life tough for you. Perhaps it is someone competing with you for a promotion or pay raise. It may be a relative who quietly ridicules your commitment to Christ and his church. It may be a friend whose strong views on certain matters violently clash with your equally strong opposite views. It may be a cranky neighbor with whom it takes great effort to get along. If my experience is any guide, you may unconsciously feel a smug self-righteousness and superiority that (you think) exempts you from extending mercy or forgiveness. Unfortunately, Jesus does not let us off the hook on this one. I can hear his voice simply saying something like this (my own words):

Someone slap you on the cheek? Give him the other one to hit. Someone steals your coat? Let her take your dress, too. Someone borrow something without returning it? Let it go. Forgive and forget. Not happy about that? Yes, I know. But you’re a child of the heavenly Father. Just do it! Just like I did for you.

Finally, Jesus taught that the kingdom comes first (Matt. 6:24–34; cf. Luke 16:13). In his view, the kingdom is far more important that our typical, short-sighted preoccupation with houses, clothes, food, and drink. Jesus pointed out that pagans (and polytheists!) chase after such things, but we need not. Our heavenly Father faithfully feeds birds, beautifies fields with lilies, and clothes the ground with grass, so we need hardly fear destitution. He says, “Look, make kingdom work your first priority, and trust me for the rest.” What is “kingdom work”? Jesus’ own statement of his mission sums it up:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18–19, my italics).

We can recognize that kingdom work is being done by the evident anointing of God’s Spirit on it and on those doing it. Kingdom work is present when God’s people endeavor to make the lives of the poor better, to free prisoners wrongly held, to heal the blind, to seek the release of oppressed people, and to implement the equality provisions of the biblical year of Jubilee.94 In short, kingdom work comprises the preaching and living out of a full-orbed understanding of the Gospel. It includes all efforts to get the word out about who Jesus is and his offer of salvation (cf. Rom. 1:9). It also includes all Christian efforts to counter societal values and priorities out of keeping with God’s desires for his creation and his creatures. As James writes, what God regards as “pure and faultless” religious life is “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).

(3) To serve Jesus not only means to do what he taught but also to do what he models. Jesus’ own life exemplifies the attitudes, priorities, and values he desires the Holy Spirit to cultivate in us. For example, in his message to the household of Cornelius, Peter remarked “how he [Jesus] went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil …” (Acts 10:38). He did so when, on the Sabbath, he healed the man with the withered hand—to the consternation of the Pharisees (Mark 3:4; Luke 6:9). He did so when he graciously accepted the expensive perfume a woman poured on him in Bethany—contrast the Pharisees’ pious condemnation of the gesture as wasteful (Mark 14:3; John 12:3). He did so at Jericho when he answered the pained cry of blind Bartemaeus for healing (Mark 10:46–52). He did so near Tyre and Sidon when he healed the daughter of a Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:21–28).

In short, Jesus did a lot of good in the lives of ordinary people, and he blazes a trail for us to follow, too. There is a lot of good to be done today. There are hurting people in need of healing right in our neighborhoods or in our extended families. The list of possibilities is endless: kids that need tutoring, families barely making ends meet, lonely people needing friendship, and ignorant victims of oppression needing advocacy. The Hippocratic Oath to which physicians subscribe wisely counsels, “Do no harm.” Jesus also wisely counsels us, “Do all kinds of good and dispense all kinds of healing.”95

In his conversation with the woman at the well, Jesus exemplifies thinking outside the box for the sake of the gospel (John 4). First, he quietly breaks the mold of Jewish-Samaritan relations by simply asking a Samaritan (and a woman, too!) for a drink (v. 7). Normally, Jews would avoid travel through Samaria, much less converse with a local woman of questionable morals. Jesus, by contrast, shows us that sometimes disciples must set aside personal scruples, religious traditions, and accepted norms for the gospel’s sake. Sometimes they must cross from their comfort zones into dangerous territory in order to reach people there. Jesus also acknowledges the woman’s checkered life but moves on to the key issue, whether she will believe in him as Messiah. Again, Jesus models a strategy of letting a person’s sinful side speak for itself but not dwelling on it. Amazingly, from the conversation about living water a mini-revival breaks out among the Samaritans (vv. 39–42)—of all places!

In Vietnam, I once studied the military map of a helicopter pilot I met. With a grease pencil he had drawn boxes with crossed lines over certain places. In each box he had scribbled brief notations like “Beware: enemy turf” or “Avoid low altitude.” They were his Samarias—dangerous places to be traversed with caution. All of us have Samarias and Samaritans on our mental maps of our own little world. They mark places or people thought “dangerous,” “unpleasant,” or “to be avoided.” On some maps we label our own homes “off limits” to certain kinds of people we think undesirable or risky. A map identifies people I know whose chaotic lives threaten to consume my time or disrupt my routines. It blocks out places to avoid—nursing homes, AIDS clinics, hospital cancer wards, hospices, Muslim community centers, Mormon churches, certain ethnic neighborhoods.

Now, I am not arguing that we must go anywhere without concern for our safety or ordinary courtesy. I am suggesting that we expose our secret maps to the searching light of Jesus’ example and the gospel mandate. I am asking that we face them and revise them, adopting a stance of openness to think outside the box. The worst thing would be to not go to places of great need because of personal scruples, religious traditions, or fear. Jesus came to messy old earth to filthy old us to bring us good news. How can we do less in return? To not do so is to worship the god “Me!” What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” about the twentieth century church applies to the church in the present one:

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.96

(4) Finally, to serve Jesus is to share in his suffering. This is the demanding side of being Jesus’ disciple. It marks an extension of the theme of following his example. By “suffering” I do not mean the hurts and pains that life’s hard edges inflict on us. These are important, too, and Jesus certainly offers us healing and comfort for them. I refer specifically to the hurts and pains that result from our faithful obedience to Christ—difficulties we would avoid by holding back rather than stepping out in obedience. They comprise moments in which we pay a heavier than usual price simply for doing good in Jesus’ name. In paying that price we follow Jesus’ example and win God’s commendation (1 Peter 2:20).

This is what Paul means when he embraces “the fellowship of sharing in [Christ’s] suffering, becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:10). Far from being a shame or pity, Paul reckons suffering on behalf of Christ to be a special privilege on par with the gift of salvation (Phil. 1:29). Peter even calls Christians to rejoice over their participation in it (1 Peter 4:13). Early Christians experienced it through social ostracism and physical persecution. In 2 Corinthians 11:24–28 Paul tallied up the price he paid for serving Christ—truly an incredible inventory of physical, emotional, and spiritual hardships (cf. Acts 9:16).

Since most readers will not suffer outright persecution, in what ways may we share in Christ’s sufferings? We participate in his sufferings every time we grieve over things that deeply moved him. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept both over the sad reality of human death and the hard reality of human unbelief (John 11:35). We share in that suffering when we comfort people grieving the loss of a loved one, especially an unbelieving one. At Jerusalem, Jesus bitterly lamented the city’s rejection of his loving offer to protect its vulnerable citizens from the coming doom. We share that suffering every time someone spurns our gentle, genuine attempts to draw them to Christ. One reading used during communion at my church has this poignant line about Jesus: “For us he became poor, and knew the sadness in our days.”97

To share Christ’s suffering also is to share as he did in the world’s great ongoing “sadness”—in the ordinary, everyday sufferings of a broken world. We share this sorrow when we cry with people who are physically and spiritually destitute. We share this grief when we stand with weak and confused friends helplessly trying to navigate huge, cold bureaucracies. We share this anguish when we grieve with people in places ravaged by floods, droughts, tornados, and mudslides. We share this suffering when we mourn with innocent people caught in the crossfire of political upheaval, social collapse, and bitter warfare. We share in Christ’s suffering when we weep with parents whose children have been denied opportunity because of prejudice. We share in his suffering when we agonize with families falling apart. We share in his suffering when we walk with people through the messes their own foolishness or stubbornness have created. To share in Christ’s suffering is to live out in service his vision of his world.98

Conclusion. Joshua 24 has taken us a long way. It has challenged us to cast aside our modern false gods in favor of unwavering devotion to Jesus as Lord. It has sent us back to Jesus to hear afresh his words of command and again to glimpse him in action. At his ascension, Jesus left the work of his kingdom in the hands of his disciples, and they have passed it down to us (Acts 1:4–11). His final message was, “Once the Holy Spirit comes on you, go and be my witnesses everywhere.” The “savior” called Joshua confronted Israel with a critical choice for their future (Josh. 24:15), and so does the “Savior” called Jesus. The question is, How will we respond?

In her book Girl Meets God, Lauren Winner tells a Talmudic story that suggests what a good response to Jesus’ demand to serve him as our Lord might look like. The tale reports a conversation between Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi and the prophet Elijah. The rabbi asks the prophet when the Messiah will come.

“Go and ask the Messiah yourself,” Elijah answers.

“But where is he?” says the rabbi.

“At the gate of Rome,” answers Elijah.

“How will I recognize him?” Rabbi Yehoshua asks.

“He sits among the wretched ones with sores and wounds,” Elijah says. “All the others uncover their wounds all at once and bind them up again all at once, but he uncovers and binds each one separately, for he thinks, ‘Maybe I will be summoned today; I don’t want to be detained.’”

So the rabbi leaves Elijah, finds the Messiah, and greets him.

“Peace be with you, Master and Teacher,” he says.

“Peace be with you,” the Messiah responds.

“When is the Master coming,” the rabbi asks.

“Today,” says the Messiah.

Disappointed and annoyed, Rabbi Yehoshua goes back to Elijah.

“He lied to me,” he tells the prophet. “He said he would come today, and he has not come.”

But Elijah replies, “He meant ‘today’ if you would only listen to His voice.”99

In essence, to serve Jesus is to “listen to His voice”—to shut out the voices of the other gods once and for all and to tune only to his. It means to obey what he taught and to pattern our lives after his model. It means daily to affirm “we will serve the LORD.” It means to take to heart words often spoken in some congregations as a benediction at the end of morning worship: “So, reader, go from this place (or text) to love and serve the Lord.”

Original Meaning

The Ceremony: The Book and the Stone (24:25–28)

THE VOICES OF JOSHUA and the people fade and the narrator—unheard since v. 1—steps forward to present the ritual’s final phase. He looks back on “that [momentous] day” in that place (“at Shechem”) and reports tersely that Joshua “made [lit., ‘cut’] a covenant for the people” (v. 25). At first glance, the action seems to renew the Sinai covenant, but despite Yahweh’s earlier address (vv. 2–13), the text omits mention of him as a party. Instead, the covenant Joshua makes simply formalizes the people’s prior verbal commitment (vv. 21, 24) as a self-imposed mandate or obligation.

This covenant most closely resembles two other transactions, the covenant David made with the northern tribes to submit to him as king (2 Sam. 5:3//1 Chron. 11:3) and the one Jehoiada made with the Carites to protect six-year-old Joash (2 Kings 11:4).47 The following phrase confirms the transaction as an “obligation covenant.” Joshua institutes “decrees and laws,” a phrase that elsewhere suggests a hendiadys (“decree-and-law” as a single idea) summarizing a legally binding, standing policy (Ex. 15:25; 1 Sam 30:25; Ezra 7:10).48 In short, the people take on themselves the “covenant” here enacted as a permanent, official, self-imposed public policy that Israel will serve Yahweh alone.

Two subsequent actions further confirm the covenant (v. 26). (1) Joshua writes down “these things”—“for the record,” so to speak—in (lit.) “a book of God’s instruction.”49 Apparently, this was a special document penned by Joshua here and separate from the Pentateuch (usually called “the law of Moses” or “the law of the LORD”). We know nothing further about this book since the term’s only other appearance designates either a similar sacred writing or (more likely) the Pentateuch (Neh. 8:8, 18).50 Its written form, of course, bespeaks its ongoing authority and accessibility for reading or consultation if needed.51

(2) Joshua erects a large stone under the oak tree at Shechem either “in” (NRSV) or “near” (NIV) “the holy place of the LORD,” a reference either to the tabernacle (cf. Num. 19:20) or to space around the tree familiar to the readers as a sacred place.52 The oak tree at Shechem had been a sacred landmark since the patriarchs. As noted above, it marked the first place in Canaan at which God appeared to Abram after his arrival (Gen. 12:6; cf. Deut. 11:30). It also may have been the site where Jacob later buried the foreign gods of his entourage (Gen. 35:4).53

The custom of raising a stone (or stone pile) to memorialize memorable events or people is well attested in the Old Testament, especially in Joshua. Joshua set up twelve stones in the Jordan’s dry riverbed and at Gilgal to ensure that future generations remembered Israel’s miraculous crossing (4:9, 20). Also, still-visible heaps of stones recalled the trouble Achan caused (7:26) and the execution of the king of Ai (8:29).54 Jacob especially favored the custom, erecting a stone pillar at Bethel where God first appeared to him (Gen. 28:18, 22; 31:13; cf. 35:14) and a stone pile to attest his agreement with Laban (31:44–52).55

According to Joshua, the present stone pillar is to serve as a “witness” (ʿedah)—i.e., tangible evidence like a modern contract, sworn statement, or verbatim report—against him and the people concerning the transaction (v. 27; cf. Gen. 21:30; 31:52). The reason is that the stone, like any human witness, has “heard” Yahweh’s speech (vv. 2–13)—metaphorically, of course—and, hence, amounts to a symbolic transcript of what he said that day. It offers irrefutable, unambiguous proof of Israel’s pro-Yahweh choice. It protects against any future Israelite attempt to deny that fact by being “untrue to God” through apostasy (cf. Isa. 59:13; Jer. 5:12).56 In short, the “book” and the “stone” guarantee indisputable condemnation should Israel seek to fudge, finagle a compromise, or worm out of their obligation.57

Finally, the narrator reports that Joshua dismisses the assembly, each participant returning “to his own inheritance” (v. 28; cf. Judg. 2:6). The conclusion leaves the impression that all is well with Israel: They possess the long-awaited promise of land, and their commitment to Yahweh stands firm. According to Judges 2:7, that commitment redounds to the glory of the leadership that Joshua and his generation provided. Later, the DH will show it did not last long.

Bridging Contexts

Bridging Contexts

THIS PASSAGE MARKS AN important leadership transition in Israel’s history—indeed, the second of two great transitions that the generation gathered at Shechem had seen. The first was the long-anticipated leadership change from Moses to Joshua in the plains of Moab (cf. Deut. 34:5–9; Josh. 1:1–2). That change occasioned the crossing of the Jordan, the conquest of Canaan, and the settlement there under Joshua’s two decades of leadership (Josh. 1:1). The second transition is the one soon to occur—Israel’s transition to settled life in Canaan without either Joshua or a designated successor to convene similar assemblies at Shechem.

In my view, that imminent leadership vacuum forms part of the background of Joshua 24. Joshua apparently gathers the people in order to ensure their allegiance to the leader on whose behalf he led Israel during his tenure, Yahweh himself. With no designated human leader, Israel must now directly follow the guidance of God himself.58 As with any leadership change, the issue for Israel concerns their unswerving loyalty to him—whether or not they will “serve” him.

Idolatry and polytheism. At the same time, the persistence of polytheism in Israel that this passage presupposes may surprise some readers. We usually think that Abraham introduced Israel to monotheism and that as a result, polytheism either died out or became a minority practice. But that assumption conflicts with the implication of Joshua’s call that Israel throw away other gods that remain “in your midst” (v. 23). Apparently, many centuries after Abram, the practice of polytheism persists among God’s covenant people. Israel’s long relationship with God, including their personal experiences of his mighty power in action, have not weaned them from some connection with the gods of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan.

The Israelites have not followed the example of their ancestor, Jacob, who took the foreign gods that his household members had with them and buried them under the oak (Gen. 35:1–4). His actions mark the “first [biblical] instance of disposing of other gods” and make a statement concerning the importance of the matter.59 They prepared his family for the altar-building and sacrifices at Bethel in honor of Yahweh, the God who had safely brought him back to Canaan as he had promised (Gen. 28). By persisting in idolatry, Israel also confirms Yahweh’s word to Moses shortly before the latter’s death (Deut. 31:14–22). Israel is encamped in the plains of Moab along the east bank of the Jordan River, the place from which they will soon launch their invasion of Canaan. Yahweh summons Moses and Joshua to meet him at the tabernacle (31:14), and there he informs Moses:

You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. (31:16).

This is a startling statement given all that Israel has seen Yahweh do during the desert period. One would think that Israel’s arrival at the Promised Land would solidify their commitment to him, but Yahweh tells Moses that that will not be the case. Their expected defection from Yahweh to worship “foreign gods” attests the continuing grip of polytheism on them. In fact, polytheism was the dominant form of religion in the ancient world, and that dominance persisted long after Israel entered its exclusive covenant with Yahweh (Ex. 24).60

These examples bring into sharp relief what really is at stake in Joshua 24. Put simply, Israel faces a decisive choice between irreconcilable options with no safe “middle ground” in between. Israel must either continue to worship whatever gods they choose, or agree to Yahweh’s “intolerant demand for exclusivity” (Reuter’s term). Their ancestors may have added gods along their migrations like theological postcards kept to honor the places they had visited. But from now on it is either Yahweh or the highway. If they choose the “other gods” option, Yahweh will be gone, but to choose him means to throw the other gods away for good. Earlier Moses demanded the same decision of Israel encamped on the plains of Moab (Deut. 30:19–20). And centuries later Elijah would demand the same choice from wavering Israelites on Mount Carmel—either Yahweh or Baal, but not both (1 Kings 18:21).

Now, many readers will regard this point as obvious, but it bears underscoring as a bridge to our discussion below. Consideration of two other questions will also prepare us for that discussion. (1) What were these “other gods” like and how were they worshiped? Interestingly, they functioned not as individuals but as a group in Mesopotamia and at Ugarit (but not in Egypt). Just as the people of the ancient world found their own identity in community (rather than individualism), so they thought that the gods also found their identity in community—each god with tasks and roles.61 The gods comprised the “assembly of the gods,” the body that supervised the cosmos and decreed destinies both in the divine and human worlds. They competed with each other for power, with success or failure in such contests contingent on the success or failure of their human clients.

Further, as Walton observes, “the gods were viewed as having all of the same qualities, good and bad, as humans but without as many limitations.”62 They were presented anthropomorphically (i.e., in human terms), including sexual activity and procreation, and they also functioned within families. They experienced a humanlike existence: the full range of negative and positive human emotions, needs and desires, and daily routines (e.g., meals, sleeping, wake-up calls, jobs). Their temples constituted the geographical and geopolitical homebase from which they, like ancient kings, extended their influence to other territories. They operated within (not outside) the cosmos, each responsible for specific cosmic phenomena (e.g., the sun, moon, storms, fertility, etc.).63

The deity’s image—the tangible sign of its presence—formed the center around which public ceremonial worship revolved. Through the image, devotees cared for the god’s many needs in worship (and they had many needs). The god “was awakened in the morning, washed, clothed, fed two sumptuous meals each day (while music was played in its presence), and put to bed at night.”64 They received the deference and luxurious treatment fit for a king. Several beliefs underlie the rich care provided them by their human worshipers: the belief that the gods wielded more power than humans; that the gods were easily offended and subject to whimsy; that their anger brought all kinds of disasters; and that their anger needed appeasing.65

Their perceived ability to control frightening natural phenomena—thunderstorms, floods, agricultural plagues, extreme heat and extreme cold, sudden death, and so on—enhanced their reputations and retained worshipers. Baal’s reputation as a storm god and dispenser of lightning probably led spectators on Mount Carmel to expect a dramatic display from Baal (1 Kings 18). The divine bent toward whimsy made people’s relationship with the gods “a fragile symbiosis.”66 The deities offered humans protection and the prospect of success, but an accidental misstep by a devotee could cause divine desertion and leave the worshiper vulnerable to misfortunes.

Popular perception traced severe crises back to divine anger, so appropriate rituals—those commanded by the gods—sought from them the healing of deadly diseases or the defeat of dreadful enemies. No doubt, that is why King Ahaziah sent messengers to Ekron, a Philistine city, to ask Baal-Zebub whether or not the king would recover from his injuries (2 Kings 1). Further, the gods’ possession of wisdom and knowledge distinguished them from humans and fostered human dependency on them. That is why the ancients, both public officials and private citizens, often sought their guidance on important decisions. No sense shooting in the dark when a knowledgeable god could reduce the risk!

In general, people thought that Mesopotamian gods had some human traits but also regarded them as superhuman. As van der Toorn remarks, “They surpass humans in size, beauty, knowledge, happiness, longevity—briefly: in all things that were positively valued.”67 In other words, they personified the ideals and perfections toward which their human worshipers also aspired, and so promised a possible resource for humans to improve their lot. At the same time, the national god and state-sponsored religion typically had little place in the day-by-day worship of the common people. They tended to rely more on family and ancestral gods than on the great gods, at times even asking the former to intercede with the latter.

Walton proposes a further plausible explanation for why Israel found the transition from the polytheism in which they grew up to the exclusive commitment to Yahweh difficult.68 The priority in ancient Near Eastern religion was the maintenance of order in the cosmos and in human society. Satisfactory religious rituals upheld the former, acceptable ethical conduct sustained the latter, and together they earned the favor of the gods. Violations of cosmic or societal order earned the opposite—divine disfavor and dire punishments.

Absent from this system, however, is a theology of morality with its abstract notions of right and wrong, a theology rooted in the character of God rather than in the expectations of the cosmos and society. Through revelation from God, says Walton, Israel came to understand what God was like, what sin and guilt were, and the prime importance of imitating God’s character in order to avoid both. In the process, an internal sense of right and wrong and also of “disinterested righteousness” (e.g., Job) came to shape Israel’s conscience.69 In short, the move from polytheism to Yahwism required divine revelation (the Instruction) to shape in Israel an internal ethical sense and to inform their conscience of Yahweh’s expectations.

(2) The second question is: Since Joshua 24 only mentions “foreign gods” rather than specific names, who were some of these “gods”?70 The god El is especially important since El typically comprises part of the names for God in the patriarchal narratives.71 El is the proper name of a deity best known in texts from Ugarit, a Canaanite city (second millennium B.C.) along the present southern Lebanese coast. Those texts present him as “king”—that is, the senior-ranking member of the Ugaritic pantheon and, hence, the one with ultimate authority.72 Ugaritic texts often call him “the benevolent, good-natured El”—probably a reflection of popular affection for him—and he is also known for his great wisdom, strength, and dignity. Some Israelite place names with the suffix- el (i.e., his name) still probably retained the ancient Canaanite name (e.g., Bethel [“El’s house”], Carmel [“El’s vineyard”], etc.).

A thorny question is whether or not the patriarchs actually worshiped El. The altar name El Elohe Israel (lit., “El, God of Israel”; Gen. 33:20) and the phrase (lit.) “El, God of your father” Gen. 46:3 [NIV “God, God of your father”]) might imply that, although we cannot be certain. If so, El may have been one of the “other gods” the patriarchs worshiped that Joshua summons the people to renounce (Josh. 24:2, 14, 23). Alternatively, once in Canaan, they may have borrowed local terminology (El) to name the God who revealed himself to them. At first, they may have associated him with the land but later came to identify him as Yahweh through his revelations (cf. Ex. 6:3).

Of course, the Bible’s best-known “other god” is probably Baal, a god attested in lists as early as the third millennium B.C. and worshiped in Egypt, Ammon, and Syro-Palestine.73 Biblical references to “the Baals” (e.g., Judg. 2:11; 1 Sam. 12:10) and “the names of the Baals” (Hos. 2:17) allude to his worship by various names and in widespread places.74 Ugaritic texts frequently celebrate him as “victorious Baal” or “mightiest of the heroes,” and another title (“Baal Zaphon”) reflects popular belief that his palace stood on Mount Zaphon (northern Syria).

Baal is supremely a weather god—in Ugaritic texts the one presiding over clouds, storms, and lightning. He lifts a booming voice in thunderclaps and dispenses dew, rain, and snow. The son of the grain god Dagan, Baal is also a fertility god. He ensures the annual renewal of vegetation on earth by, first, descending to the underworld (i.e., vegetation decay) and, second, reviving in autumn (i.e., fresh vegetation). Finally, in his running battle with Yam (god of the sea), Baal is the god on whom seafarers depend for protection. In his conflict with Mot (god of death) Baal carries the epithet “healer” (cf. Baal Zebub in 2 Kings 1) and holds sway over the realm of death.

In short, Baal represents a major Canaanite god (he is often called “king”) that offered practical help to ancient farmers, seafaring merchants, and the sick and dying. Thus, it is no surprise that Israelites apparently worshiped both Baal and Yahweh until the mid-ninth century B.C.75 At that time, Ahab and Jezebel changed the royal policy in the northern kingdom to give Baal primacy, especially in the royal court. The Elijah-Elisha narratives reflect the prophetic reaction to that policy change. They attest the battle that begins between Baal and Yahweh over which god actually dispenses rain for agricultural fertility. Some scholars even suggest that the Elijah and Elisha protest mirrors a larger popular response, a “Yahweh-alone Movement,” whose earliest written expression may be in the prophet Hosea.76 If this is so, for more than two centuries, this movement promoted the exclusive worship of Yahweh as Israel’s national God.

Other biblical texts strongly promote a Zero-Tolerance Policy toward idolatry. Early on, Moses forbids the Israelites from pursuing any relationship (not even “idol curiosity”!) with the gods of Canaan (Deut. 12:29–32). Specific Canaanite practices forbidden as “detestable” include child sacrifice, divination or sorcery, witchcraft, the interpretation of omens, the casting of spells, and communication with the dead by “a medium or spiritist” (Deut. 18:10–11). The DH blames the fall of the northern kingdom on the persistence of the “sin of Jeroboam”—his two golden calves and non-Levitical priesthood (1 Kings 12:28–30; 13:34; 2 Kings 17:22–23). In short, Yahweh sees idolatry as a detestable, intolerable insult to his lordship; as a result, when he returns his people from exile, he will simply leave idolaters behind (Isa. 42:17).

What about idolatry attracts people? (1) By nature people typically prefer the tangible and visible over the intangible and invisible. That is especially true of deities. Recall the child who, after bedtime prayers, asks her mother to stay until she falls asleep. When her mother assures her that God is right here with her, the child replies, “But I want somebody with skin.”77 When it comes to gods, people like ones that take on physical form to be located, seen, smelled, touched, carried, bowed down to, and served offerings “in person,” as it were. People prefer gods with images. They perceive a greater sense of closeness to and connection with gods they can see than to ones they cannot.

(2) In my view, idols subtly (and perhaps deceptively) enhance the impression that the gods are subject to human influence. They assume that relationships with deities compare to relationships they enjoy with other humans. Given a choice, most people would rather present an important request in person than through some intermediary (e.g., a representative, a written document, etc.). They assume that it is harder for a recipient to decline the request of a real, live person than one through an intermediary. The very presence of the person carries some, if not great, weight. Similarly, they may imagine that the same principle also governs prayer. Prayers done in person before an idol, they hope, are more likely to win the deity’s response than ones done elsewhere.

The biblical critique against these assumptions pulls no punches. (1) Ancient peoples usually made idols out of wood, stone, silver, and gold (Deut. 29:17; Isa. 30:22). So, the prophet Habakkuk asks, “Of what value is an idol that someone has carved?” (Hab. 2:18a TNIV). The first point of critique argues that, if idols are man-made (as all are!), they have no more power than their human maker. They certainly have nothing approaching the power a real God has. If trouble ever comes, they are worthless because they can effect no rescue (Jer. 2:27–28).

(2) Several prophets point out the obvious as a second point of criticism: Idols are lifeless (Jer. 16:18; Hab. 2:19). They are carved or cast by some human, but their mortal creator cannot breathe life into them as God does into humans. Being lifeless, they also lack the basic capabilities typical of living things. Consider what one psalmist writes:

Why do the nations say,

“Where is their God?”

Our God is in heaven;

he does whatever pleases him.

But their idols are silver and gold,

made by human hands.

They have mouths, but cannot speak,

eyes, but they cannot see;

they have ears, but cannot hear,

noses, but they cannot smell;

they have hands, but cannot feel,

feet, but they cannot walk;

nor can they utter a sound with their throats.

Those who make them will be like them,

and so will all who trust in them. (Ps. 115:2–7; cf. 135:15–18)

Idols, says the psalmist, “have ears, but cannot hear”—a big downside for people who pray! People expect their gods to hear what they have to say and to respond. Certainly, the psalmists expect that of Israel’s God (Ps. 4:1; 17:6; 27:7; 55:2[3]; 86:1). A deaf idol is like a cell phone with a dead battery: The owner may speak into it loudly and with great passion, but not a syllable goes anywhere.

Further, idols have “eyes, but they cannot see”—an even worse divine deficit. Worshipers might tolerate a deaf idol as long as it could see or even recognize them. But, alas, the eyes of idols are simply artistic touches, not actual living organs of sight. The contrast to Yahweh is striking. His eyes “range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chron. 16:9). Yahweh not only heard the cry of the Israelites in Egypt but saw how the Egyptians were oppressing them (Ex. 3:9). He constantly watches the comings and goings of his people, never falling asleep (Ps. 121:3–4, 8).

Also, the psalmist points out that idols “have mouths, but cannot speak”—indeed, their throats can make no sound at all. This is a serious drawback for worshipers who expect to hear guidance from the gods in answer to their prayers (Hab. 2:19). It is a far cry from the many messages from Yahweh that the formula “Thus says the LORD” introduces. One sure thing about the God of the Bible—a feature certainly of Joshua 24—is that he speaks!

Idols also “have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but … cannot walk.” A worshiper may caress an idol’s hands, but they feel nothing, and its lifeless feet can take it nowhere. Instead, as Jeremiah notes, a human has to secure it with hammer and nails so it does not jiggle or fall down, and it must be carried to go anywhere (Jer. 10:4–5; cf. Isa. 40:19). Yahweh, however, moves around freely on his own power. As Nahum says, “the clouds are the dust of his feet” as he roams about (Nah. 1:3).

(3) In short, idols are senseless, inanimate objects that create the impression of competence but that can in fact do nothing. Jeremiah compares them to a scarecrow in a melon patch (Jer. 10:5)—the illusion of a threatening person. The crow cannot distinguish a real human from a fake one and thus lives in a delusion, out of touch with reality. An idol operates similarly. It creates the illusion of grandeur and threatening power so worshipers treat it carefully. They live in fear of a lifeless, impotent object made of gold and silver and dressed in purple and blue (Jer. 10:9). They go to great lengths to placate it. But this is life in a crowlike delusion out of touch with reality. It is just plain lunacy, Jeremiah would say! “Do not fear them,” he says, because “they can do no harm nor can they do any good.” The implication is that idol worshipers are as crazy as crows. Or worse!

The delusion also blinds people to the true majesty and greatness of Yahweh. Unlike idols, the psalmist says, “our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Ps. 115:2). Unlike the scarecrows, Jeremiah exults, “No one is like you, O LORD; you are great, and your name is mighty in power” (Jer. 10:6). To this Habakkuk adds, “The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (Hab. 2:20). These are statements by people who see clearly the glory of Israel’s great and powerful God. One glimpse of what is really real—Yahweh’s majesty and splendor—unmasks idolatry as foolish and futile. It also reveals idolatry for what it is—a terrible insult to God.

Recall the message Elijah gave King Ahaziah: “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?” (2 Kings 1:6; cf. vv. 3, 16). The question shames the king for turning his back on Yahweh, Israel’s God, in favor of a god in a foreign country. Contrast that slight with the confession of the Syrian, Naaman, after his healing: “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15). Which one is deluded and which sees reality clearly?

(4) Finally, idolatry renders its worshipers ritually unclean in Yahweh’s eyes. According to Ezekiel, the making of idols defiles Israel, making her liable to divine judgment, including expulsion from the land (Ezek. 22:3–4; 33:25–29; cf. Deut. 4:25–28). Anyone who enters God’s presence in a condition of ritual defilement puts his or her life at grave risk. The prophet’s visionary experience in Ezekiel 8 suggests a metaphor that captures how offensive idolatry is to God. God’s Spirit took Ezekiel from Babylon to the temple in Jerusalem, where he saw scenes of people practicing all kinds of idolatry. Now, the temple is Yahweh’s house, and he generously hosts the worshipers as one might host human guests at home. But idolatry practiced in the temple compares to thoughtless guests who take over Yahweh’s house without asking and banish him to a small part of it. They invite in all kinds of riff-raff and party days on end with their new-found “friends” at his expense and on his premises. Small wonder that Yahweh later announces that he will kick everyone out and abandon the house himself.

Now, this discussion of idolatry may strike some readers as overdone. They may feel a certain sense of superiority to the idolaters discussed above. But such a view is shortsighted, if not foolish. As we will see, forms of idolatry flourish today. In my view, those forms are just as much human creations as the objects of wood, stone, and precious metals in Israel’s day. They also create the same illusion of power that deludes modern people into trusting in them. At first glance, they seem harmless and acceptable, simply cultural givens, but a closer look shows them to be close kin to the “other gods” Joshua called Israel to renounce. God’s ancient Zero-Tolerance Policy concerning idolatry remains in effect.

Contemporary Significance

Contemporary Significance

THREE PRIMARY CONCERNS PREOCCUPY Joshua 24: to review Yahweh’s mighty acts on Israel’s behalf, the problem of other gods in Israel, and the demand that they renounce them and serve only Yahweh. The text’s contemporary meaning revolves around the last two of those subjects framed as two questions: What (if any) false gods may tempt Christians today? And what does it mean for Christians to serve God today?78

What is a god? The great reformer Martin Luther once said that anything that one relies on and trusts in is a “god.” Luther, of course, did not have in mind ways in which we exercise a normal, healthy trust or reliance on things. We rightly rely on and trust other people to advise, support, and help us with all kinds of things. We legitimately trust in a bank to guard the money we deposit there and in the school that our children attend to educate them well. We cannot live a normal life without relying on and trusting in institutions and people. Further, we properly value, lay out money, and devote time and energy to many worthy pursuits, some formal and others more casual, that no Christian would find offensive to God. Thus, the danger that Luther decried is that at times we rely on and trust institutions, people, and pursuits more than might be spiritually healthy. In his view, such times of unhealthy reliance amount to polytheism.

What makes something usually thought normal or healthy a “god”? It might be “god” if we willingly yield it excessive authority to direct our lives. For example, we may follow its advice or demands without even considering whether God has anything to say about the matter. It might be a “god” if it in any way plays a more significant, casual role in our lives than God does. That was what Israel did that so seriously offended Yahweh. They trusted other gods instead of Yahweh; they granted those deities a large role in their lives and ceded them authority over them rather than Yahweh. In short, the danger of polytheism is that we may be completely committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, yet still “rely on and trust in” other things with such a commitment and passion that makes them “other gods.” We may “worship” (i.e., highly value) them, give them “offerings” (i.e., spend money on them), and “serve” them (i.e., devote time and energy).

Polytheism today. What (if any) false gods may tempt Christians today? In my view, the modern pantheon of “other gods” comprises a long list, but what follows suggests a few of the more popular “gods.” (1) The ideology of materialism teaches that all human needs may be met by material means. It avers that happiness and satisfaction come through financial success, possession of material goods, and pleasure. “The more the merrier” states this god’s torah concerning money, possessions, and the good life. It promotes leisure activities—travel, hobbies, recreation, sports, and the like—as spiritual retreats in its honor. The ideology of materialism is the consummate televangelist. Its prime icon is the “media ad” aimed at convincing unbelievers to convert to consumerism. Chris Hedges has such media influence in mind when he writes about our

household gods, no longer made of clay, but all promising to fulfill us. Our computer, our television, our job, our wealth, our social status, along with the brands we wear and the cars we drive, promise us contentment and inform our identity. These household gods seem to offer well-being, health and success. But all these gods create cults. And all these cults circle back to us, to a dangerous self-worship fed by forces who seek to ensnare us in idolatry.79

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with owning a computer, television, or nice car. I am writing this book on a computer; a TV set sits in the other room, and a nice car is parked outside in the driveway! In my closet hang clothes bearing brand names, and I enjoy a certain level of comparative wealth and social status. The problem arises when we really believe—and, I mean, really believe—and act on the exaggerated claims that ads make about the value and benefits of their products. They may create the same illusion as the ancient gods did—that something material can satisfy people’s basic needs. They lead people to believe that they have the power that only God has. I see three dangers in the view that this ideology propounds.

(a) Its claim to satisfy basic human needs promotes trust in a lie. At best, material goods offer an escape or distraction from our worries, concerns, fears, or pain. Like a ride at the amusement park, they help us temporarily to forget them, but when the ride ends—they always do—the emptiness returns. “Comfort food” may make us feel a little better, too, but it may also leave behind the “discomfort” of an expanded waistline.

The song “Part of Your World” sung by the beautiful Ariel in The Little Mermaid captures the emptiness of consumerism and the yearning for something more satisfying. Surveying her “stuff,” she confesses a contradiction in her life between appearance and reality. On the surface, she seems to be the “girl who has ev’rything”—all the material things she could want—but she concedes that, at the end of the day, she in fact wants something more. “Stuff” or “activities” conveniently available simply cannot satisfy our basic human needs. Ariel eventually finds her satisfaction in love with a man, but I would argue that ultimately only Jesus can offer full satisfaction. Only he has the power truly to satisfy human longings.

(b) Finding our happiness-fix in things may reduce our dependence on God from total dependence to only partial dependence. We seek God to meet some needs, but also seek material pleasures and amusements to take care of others. Certainly, occasional enjoyment of fun things or interesting places is restorative in a healthy sense. The Bible is full of people feasting and celebrating and enjoying life’s good things—but not every week, much less every day. The danger comes with unnatural dependence or addiction—when we need something or someone other than Jesus for a “fix”; I would compare this to polytheism. Spiritually, the god of materialism subtly aims to convert us to monotheism—to replace Jesus with hard goods as the true source of our comfort and well-being.

(c) Finally, undisciplined consumerism eats up financial resources that might otherwise be invested in the kingdom of God. A current facetious expression says, “You can tell the age of the boys by the price of the toys.” But the harsh reality is that every dollar spent on something less than necessary (“toys”) denies us the chance to invest it in the kingdom.

But how do we know when we have begun to worship the materialism god? In his book The Agony of Affluence, William Wells suggests a helpful standard by which to judge whether we have crossed that line into evil and idolatry. When career or the drive to accumulate adversely affects our relationship with our spouse, children, and local church, a mental red flag should wave. He writes:

The Bible does not condemn the desire for worldly goods, but it does condemn perversions of that desire. Specifically, the Bible condemns desire that eclipses our love for God, our love for those around us, and our love for the weak and the poor. There are, therefore, limits on the pursuit of wealth. To transgress those limits is to be guilty of greed, covetousness, and oppression.80

(2) The close ally of the god of materialism is the god of convenience. Americans place a high value on convenience. The defining attributes of this god are omnipresence and omni-availability. No worshiper should have to travel any great distance to reach a sanctuary. And perish the thought that they should wait on this god because the nearest one is closed!

The prime icon of this god is the “convenience store,” a local sanctuary where all manner of needs may be quickly met. Any telephone directory confirms the convenient ubiquity of stores belonging to the better-known “denominations.” While they serve larger parishes than convenience stores, sanctuaries such as gas stations and supermarkets now offer services 24/7 in order to attract new believers and to increase the sanctuary’s intake of offerings.

And lest the sanctuaries inconvenience any worshipers—for example, by requiring them to stand in line for service—many markets and gas stations now feature a special self-ministry option. Electronic, self-service altars permit worshipers to satisfy their needs without even consulting the clergy on duty. Above all, in a very impersonal world, the god of convenience makes people feel important or special. Its sanctuaries are open to serve them.

But why does “convenience” pose a spiritual problem? Certainly, there is nothing especially virtuous or spiritual about “inconvenience.” But worship of this god has three harmful side-effects. (a) It makes consumption more available and, hence, promotes the god of materialism. Its allure may lead believers to forget an important demand of Christian discipleship, the responsible stewardship of their God-given resources. Were the opportunities to buy less convenient, there would be less impulse-buying, more second thoughts given to it, and more resources left for kingdom use.

(b) It demands more of employees who staff places of convenience. Simply put, to remain open longer hours and more days requires staff to work them. Consider Christian employees whose employers are open on Sundays and ask them to work on the Lord’s Day. In this case, the god of convenience may put the believers in a dilemma: They must choose between serving the convenience god on Sunday or risk unemployment by serving their own God.

(c) Also, consider employees whose employer is open evenings and asks them to work those hours. To do so means to sacrifice the time when family and friends are most available and when many church activities occur. The priority of convenience makes the priority of relationships take a back seat.

(3) Greek mythology tells the sad fate of a handsome young man named Narcissus. A beautiful nymph named Echo fell in love with him, but his good looks drew enough admirers so he sent her away into the woods. Later, Narcissus tried to find her, but he refused her invitation to come where she was and left the forest. All alone in the woods, Echo prayed, “May he who loves no one love himself.” Meanwhile, Narcissus had gone to find water and was kneeling over a lake. Staring into the water, he saw his reflection and realized how beautiful he was. In essence, he fell in love with himself. Echo’s prayer had hit its target, but Narcissus also became aware of how much pain his beauty had caused his female suitors. He dove into the lake and took his own life. Later, when nymphs sought to find his body, instead they found a beautiful flower at the spot. They named the flower Narcissus after him.81 From this name comes the common term for excessive admiration for or preoccupation with oneself—narcissism.

The consort of the gods of convenience and materialism is the god “Me!” This god preaches narcissism, the belief that every individual can be the center of his or her own world. Each person can be a kind of incarnation of “Me!”—the sun around which the entire surrounding galaxy spins. “Me!” inflates people’s sense of importance through a unique kind of meditation—self-absorption. Worshipers of “Me!” are always preoccupied with their own needs and wants, and “I Gotta Be Me” is their favorite hymn. (If this sounds vaguely like a two-year old or early teen, you are getting the idea!)

In his book The Culture of Narcissism, sociologist Christopher Lasch illumines the theology of “Me!,” the god of self-preoccupation.82 Lasch argues that modern American society is self-absorbed (but not self-aware), greedy, and frivolous. Consumerism thoroughly dominates it, and its self-definition or identity depends completely on demographic analyses, opinion polls, and government policy. According to Lasch, you know you are a narcissist if you …

• are haunted by anxiety rather than guilt

• are seeking meaning in life

• are fiercely competitive for approval and acclaim but distrustful of competition

• secretly believe that normal rules and regulations do not apply to you

• give little thought to making provisions for the future

• love to acquire “stuff”

• find in “stuff” a sense of immediate gratification

• feel restless, your desires always unsatisfied83

The god of materialism says, “You need this,” but the god “Me!” preaches, “You deserve this.” The appeal is to the human ego and its deep desire “to be somebody.” Like Narcissus, we love to look at ourselves—or better, to be seen as important by others. We have long honed clever ways to project importance. Name-dropping is one means (“Why, just this morning I was talking with [here fill in some VIP or celebrity name] …”). Other strategies are to drive the right cars, wear the right clothes, attend the right meetings, and sit next to the right people. Worshipers of “Me!” need constantly to gratify their craving for importance. To do so, however, is to indulge in what Hedges calls “a dangerous self-worship fed by forces who seek to ensnare us in idolatry.”84

The delusion of “Me!” is that our sense of importance depends on external things, not on who we really are inside. It draws on what other people think about us, not on what we think about ourselves. More important, while “Me!” welcomes the ego-stroking of others, it tends to shove the friendship of a loving God to the side. God requires the renunciation of the ego and its craving for importance and offers a transformation that changes us inside out. Only that inner transformation makes us comfortable with our true self in Christ.

A recent episode of the comic strip “Opus” offers a mirror reflecting something of ourselves. One night Opus the penguin and two young friends are staring up at the stars. Beside them stands another friend, the bespectacled African-American boy-genius Oliver Wendell Jones, peering through a telescope into space. “I love these summer evening reality checks from Oliver,” Opus tells his two companions. Oliver opens the session by holding up to his rapt audience something tiny between his thumb and forefinger.

“Hold out a speck of sand at arm’s length,” he says. “That’s the portion of the night sky at which they pointed the Hubble telescope for a week. It was there—deep within that dot of dark nothingness ten billion light years distant—that they found the unexpected. All in the space of a single grain of sand on the vast beach of the cosmos,” he says, pointing his three rapt listeners skyward.

“Which nicely frames the question man has been asking for millennia,” he adds, looking directly at the three.

“What question?” one of them asks.

Gazing quietly off into space, he answers, “What’s the center of it all?”

Immediately and simultaneously, two of them think to themselves, “Me.”

“Me, baby,” Opus himself thinks contentedly.85

Opus and his friends are definitely devotees of the god “Me!” And they are not alone. Indeed, the god “Me!” may be the hardest for people to renounce in order to submit to Jesus as Lord.

(4) The final god in today’s pantheon is the god of nationalism. The inclusion of this god on my list may come as a surprise, especially to readers who live in modern, Western democracies. But history shows that the influence of governments on their Christian citizens is often subtle and almost imperceptible—and not always healthy. This oft-overlooked god takes on as many forms as there are nations that demand loyalty from their peoples. By nationalism I mean the claims of a nation to being uniquely great and especially virtuous—that is, godlike—and hence to feel justified in demanding the unswerving loyalty of its people.

A successful nation may even come to think of itself so highly that it demands that other nations submit to its wishes because of that presumed greatness and virtue. It may even invoke religion or the Bible to support its claims. The loyalty sought from citizens is often called patriotism—a special pride in, love for, and devotion to one’s own country. Now, nationalism or patriotism is different from what one might call “national, patriotic pride”—a healthy respect and affection for the history and cultural achievements of one’s home country. That is a good, commendable spirit; it often produces united efforts in pursuit of the common good of people. Christians should always strive to be good citizens; they should support worthy causes and promote the common good of their fellow citizens.

The god nationalism emerges, however, when normal pride in one’s country feeds a feeling of superiority that may lead a nation and its people, even from pure motives, to pressure other nations to do what it wants. Sometimes nationalism blurs the line between genuinely Christian virtues (what God expects of them) and genuinely patriotic ones (what their country expects of them). In reality, the two sets of values are not always the same; they often collide.86 In times of crisis, a groundswell of popular pressure may urge citizens, including Christians, to rally in loyal support of some national policy. For believers, the danger is that such pressure may lead them to go along with the crowd and bypass the key step they normally take—to seek what the Bible says about things. At that moment, the nation has become a god—a competitor of the God of the Bible—because God’s wishes for the world are probably different from the plans of any nation or world leader.

In fact, to assess one’s country from the Bible’s perspective is always a necessary practice, whether in crisis or not. The priority of any nation is, after all, to look after its own interests, and those interests may or may not coincide with God’s purposes for his larger world. The best way to avoid the sway of the god nationalism is to ask, Do my country’s policies, lifestyle, values, and actions coincide or conflict with biblical teachings?

Joshua 24 demands that Christians today say “no” to other gods. So, even in today’s humane, freedom-loving countries, it is worth taking what I might call “a reality check”—a review of what it means to be a Christian living as a citizen of our specific country. The crucial question for us is this: Does loyalty to a country, however biblical and noble its aims, compromise or detract from our exclusive commitment to the Lordship of Jesus? In this regard, missionary statesman Arthur Glasser states my standard of evaluation plainly: “There is but one acid test that should be applied to all activities that claim to represent obedience in mission. Do they or do they not produce disciples of Jesus Christ?”87

Put differently, if a nation achieves its political agenda, will more people have become Christians than would have otherwise? Will the kingdom of God and the gospel have been advanced or hindered? Throughout history, Christians have been tempted to help the gospel advance by allying themselves with political movements of all kinds, rather than through the power of the gospel message on its own. But here is a radical difference between genuine evangelism (sincere conversions of people by the Holy Spirit) and imperialism with a Christian veneer (conversions to a Christianized culture). In my view, to pair politics and evangelism is like being a polytheist—to rely on the power of Jesus as well as on the power of something (or someone) else. Paul is right: The gospel is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16), not an alliance of various powers. Also, such ventures may ultimately end up harming God’s work through us rather than advancing it. As Philip Yancey comments:

A political movement by nature draws lines, makes distinctions, pronounces judgment; in contrast, Jesus’ love cuts across lines, transcends distinctions, and dispenses grace. Regardless of the merits of a given issue—whether a pro-life lobby out of the Right or a peace-and-justice lobby out of the Left—political movements risk pulling onto themselves the mantle of power that smothers love. From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.88

Joshua 24 calls us to renounce all other gods and to serve only Yahweh, and Jesus warns us that we cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13), one a god other than Jesus Christ. But to renounce our reliance on gods other than Jesus is one thing, to “serve him” as Joshua 24 commands is another. What follows explores what it means today to serve Jesus only.

Reclaiming our identity: to serve Christ. What does it mean to serve Christ? (1) The starting point, certainly, is to affirm afresh Jesus’ lordship over our lives. Remember that we confess that “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; cf. Heb. 13:15), a confession that not all people who believe in God make. Notice, first, that it is a confession specifically about Jesus, not God. Jesus (meaning essentially “Savior”) is not a generic title but the personal name of the flesh-and-blood human person born in Bethlehem.89 Observe, second, that the confession affirms Jesus as “Lord” (Gk. kyrios). The Greek term bespeaks his authority (“master, owner”) and, more importantly, his divinity. In the LXX kyrios is the primary translation of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton yhwh (“Yahweh” or “the LORD”). Thus, to say that Jesus is kyrios is to identify him with the God of the Old Testament. The confession of Thomas (“My Lord [ho kyrios] and my God [ho theos],” John 20:28) makes the same identification. It applies to Jesus the language that the psalms use for Yahweh.90 In short, Jesus is the personal name of the God-Man, the one to whom we surrender control over our lives as Master.

Let us be clear, also, that he differs radically from some popular images of God in American culture. He is not the vague, sentimental “Man Upstairs” or “the Good Lord,” and “Somebody Bigger Than You and I” is not really a hymn about him. He is far, far more than the distant, impersonal “Nature’s God” or “Divine Providence” of America’s founding documents. This is clear from Scripture:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16–18)

He is God’s one and only Son, and he did not come from heaven to earth on his own—God sent him. Jesus’ mission was not to condemn the world but to save it. His unique role as Savior of the world implies that the world (and we) need saving—that it is not OK as it is. Divinely sent, his demands are absolute, not optional. One either believes in him or stands condemned. For us, the choice is simple: voluntarily to submit to him and verbally confess that “Jesus is Lord” now, or be compelled to do so at the end of history (Phil. 2:9–11; cf. Isa. 45:23). There is no escaping Jesus’ divine-human nature and absolute lordship. To be truly Christian is to avow that “Jesus is Lord”—and no one else.

In his book Everything You Always Wanted to Know about God (but Were Afraid to Ask), humorist Eric Metaxas clarifies the nature of the commitment that Jesus demands of us. It compares to the well-known song by Aretha Franklin in which a woman confronts her man with her sole demand to remain with him: “All I’m askin’ is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit) … R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.” As Metaxas writes:

If a guy is married and he tries to persuade his wife that he needs to have a few other women on the side, his wife will likely say, “Sorry, Romeo, but that’s not going to fly. If you want to be married to me, you have to forego those other women. Period.” It’s just like that with God. He doesn’t force us to pick him, but he does force us to choose between him and the others. We can’t have both.91

The first step of service for Christ is to pay him R-E-S-P-E-C-T—to say “I have decided to follow Jesus—no turning back, no turning back.”

(2) To serve Jesus also means to do what he taught. As Joshua obeyed the Instruction of Moses, so believers today are to do what Jesus taught. For example, he taught that “no one can serve two masters,” especially “God and Money” (or the god of materialism). The reason is because each master has the right to demand exclusive devotion rather share their servants (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13). Jesus has no part-time servants. Certainly, Joshua understood that when he said that to serve the Lord was to “yield your hearts to the LORD” (24:23). “Yield” literally means “to turn, to guide” (naṭah hi.), and as I noted above, in Hebrew psychology the heart is the center of human thought, emotions, and will.

To “guide [one’s] heart” toward Yahweh is to reorient one’s whole self toward God and to let him call the shots. It means to dethrone the god “Me!” and to enthrone King Jesus in its place. Jesus also taught us to love fellow believers just like he loves us (John 13:34–35). The second of the two greatest commandments was “to love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39; cf. Lev. 19:18; Gal. 5:14). Paul spread that attitude among early Christian churches, urging them to “be devoted to one another in love” and to “honor one another above yourselves (Rom. 12:10 TNIV; cf. 13:8; Gal. 5:13).92 He encouraged early Christians to treat each other kindly, with humility and patience, freely cutting each other needed slack (Eph. 4:2). This is, of course, easier said than done, as this poetic quip admits:

To live above with saints we love—

Oh, that will be glory.

To live below with saints we know—

Well, that’s another story.93

The Christians in Corinth certainly had trouble making it work. They had a competition going over who had been baptized by the more prestigious church leader (1 Cor. 1:12–13). Meanwhile, at Philippi two women had some sort of falling out (Phil. 4:2). Then there were those pesky promoters of circumcision setting the churches in Galatia at odds.

We are no different today. Jealousies and feuds occasionally flare up within church communities. It is not uncommon for fellow believers not to get along in other ways, or at least to regard each other warily. As someone once said, “The church is like Noah’s ark. If it wasn’t for the storm outside, you couldn’t stand the smell inside.” But Jesus’ clear teaching—authoritative “Instruction” on par with that of Moses—is that we do more than just “get along.” We must diligently transcend our dislikes, give each other the benefit of the doubt, treat others as if they were better than us, and maintain harmony and unity.

Further, Jesus commanded something that seems counterintuitive:

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.… If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” love those who love them. (Luke 6:27–28, 32)

Naturally, people react to enemies and abusers with outrage and a desire for revenge, and to friends and allies with affection and affiliation. But that is not the norm for Jesus’ followers—and for one good reason. How they react to enemies measures the extent to which they remain “sinners” or have truly become “children” of their heavenly Father. Do they show his family traits—kindness and mercy to “the ungrateful and wicked” (Luke 6:35, 36)—and enhance his reputation? Do they resemble their Father in eschewing revenge or retaliation? If so, they demonstrate the inner transformation that Jesus offers and attract people to explore relationship with him. They prove themselves to be obedient followers of their Lord’s example (cf. 1 Peter 2:21–23) and living proof that the kingdom wields incredible power.

On October 2, 2006 a milk deliveryman entered a one-room schoolhouse for Amish children in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Heavily armed, he barricaded himself inside, apparently prepared for a long siege. By cell phone, he told his wife that he was seeking revenge for something that had happened twenty years earlier. Before state police could storm the building, the man killed five young girls and then took his own life. The tragedy devastated the tight-knit Amish community, a religious group known for its simple, rural lifestyle and pacifism.

But as the world watched, the story took two interesting twists. The first was the demonstration of forgiveness and compassion by the Amish toward the family of the man responsible. The grandfather of one of the victims went to the man’s home to assure his wife that the Amish forgave him. The Amish community established a fund not only to help families of the victims but also the widow and children of the gunman. The second was the announcement by a pastor from the Midwest that he and his church would picket the girls’ funerals, claiming that God had punished the Amish for alleged unorthodox beliefs. (Later, after a radio talk-show host offered him an hour of free air time, the pastor cancelled the demonstration.)

How strange the opposite reactions of two Christian groups to the same tragedy. Those devastated by it truly offered forgiveness to the offender’s family. In my view, they obeyed Jesus while the church group sadly did not, ignoring Jesus’ express command to extend mercy (Luke 6:37). But what about the rest of us who have not suffered so terribly?

My wife made an excellent point as we discussed the Amish tragedy. She pointed out that we rarely, if ever, pray for people with whom we disagree strongly—for example, public officials whom we oppose. She is right. I do not have enemies like the Roman soldiers who might have harassed Jesus and his disciples in biblical Palestine. But I do have enemies in one sense: Sometimes I have to deal with people with whom I strongly disagree. Convinced that I am right, I am tempted to feel myself smugly superior to them. Sadly, I confess I rarely pray for them, am quick to point out their faults, and am slow to extend them compassion. Subtly, I hate them and am disobedient to Jesus’ commands. I do not show myself the true son of a merciful, forgiving heavenly Father. I am a poor imitation of Jesus Christ, the Lord whom I claim to serve.

Who are your enemies? Perhaps it is someone at work—perhaps your boss—who makes life tough for you. Perhaps it is someone competing with you for a promotion or pay raise. It may be a relative who quietly ridicules your commitment to Christ and his church. It may be a friend whose strong views on certain matters violently clash with your equally strong opposite views. It may be a cranky neighbor with whom it takes great effort to get along. If my experience is any guide, you may unconsciously feel a smug self-righteousness and superiority that (you think) exempts you from extending mercy or forgiveness. Unfortunately, Jesus does not let us off the hook on this one. I can hear his voice simply saying something like this (my own words):

Someone slap you on the cheek? Give him the other one to hit. Someone steals your coat? Let her take your dress, too. Someone borrow something without returning it? Let it go. Forgive and forget. Not happy about that? Yes, I know. But you’re a child of the heavenly Father. Just do it! Just like I did for you.

Finally, Jesus taught that the kingdom comes first (Matt. 6:24–34; cf. Luke 16:13). In his view, the kingdom is far more important that our typical, short-sighted preoccupation with houses, clothes, food, and drink. Jesus pointed out that pagans (and polytheists!) chase after such things, but we need not. Our heavenly Father faithfully feeds birds, beautifies fields with lilies, and clothes the ground with grass, so we need hardly fear destitution. He says, “Look, make kingdom work your first priority, and trust me for the rest.” What is “kingdom work”? Jesus’ own statement of his mission sums it up:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18–19, my italics).

We can recognize that kingdom work is being done by the evident anointing of God’s Spirit on it and on those doing it. Kingdom work is present when God’s people endeavor to make the lives of the poor better, to free prisoners wrongly held, to heal the blind, to seek the release of oppressed people, and to implement the equality provisions of the biblical year of Jubilee.94 In short, kingdom work comprises the preaching and living out of a full-orbed understanding of the Gospel. It includes all efforts to get the word out about who Jesus is and his offer of salvation (cf. Rom. 1:9). It also includes all Christian efforts to counter societal values and priorities out of keeping with God’s desires for his creation and his creatures. As James writes, what God regards as “pure and faultless” religious life is “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).

(3) To serve Jesus not only means to do what he taught but also to do what he models. Jesus’ own life exemplifies the attitudes, priorities, and values he desires the Holy Spirit to cultivate in us. For example, in his message to the household of Cornelius, Peter remarked “how he [Jesus] went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil …” (Acts 10:38). He did so when, on the Sabbath, he healed the man with the withered hand—to the consternation of the Pharisees (Mark 3:4; Luke 6:9). He did so when he graciously accepted the expensive perfume a woman poured on him in Bethany—contrast the Pharisees’ pious condemnation of the gesture as wasteful (Mark 14:3; John 12:3). He did so at Jericho when he answered the pained cry of blind Bartemaeus for healing (Mark 10:46–52). He did so near Tyre and Sidon when he healed the daughter of a Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:21–28).

In short, Jesus did a lot of good in the lives of ordinary people, and he blazes a trail for us to follow, too. There is a lot of good to be done today. There are hurting people in need of healing right in our neighborhoods or in our extended families. The list of possibilities is endless: kids that need tutoring, families barely making ends meet, lonely people needing friendship, and ignorant victims of oppression needing advocacy. The Hippocratic Oath to which physicians subscribe wisely counsels, “Do no harm.” Jesus also wisely counsels us, “Do all kinds of good and dispense all kinds of healing.”95

In his conversation with the woman at the well, Jesus exemplifies thinking outside the box for the sake of the gospel (John 4). First, he quietly breaks the mold of Jewish-Samaritan relations by simply asking a Samaritan (and a woman, too!) for a drink (v. 7). Normally, Jews would avoid travel through Samaria, much less converse with a local woman of questionable morals. Jesus, by contrast, shows us that sometimes disciples must set aside personal scruples, religious traditions, and accepted norms for the gospel’s sake. Sometimes they must cross from their comfort zones into dangerous territory in order to reach people there. Jesus also acknowledges the woman’s checkered life but moves on to the key issue, whether she will believe in him as Messiah. Again, Jesus models a strategy of letting a person’s sinful side speak for itself but not dwelling on it. Amazingly, from the conversation about living water a mini-revival breaks out among the Samaritans (vv. 39–42)—of all places!

In Vietnam, I once studied the military map of a helicopter pilot I met. With a grease pencil he had drawn boxes with crossed lines over certain places. In each box he had scribbled brief notations like “Beware: enemy turf” or “Avoid low altitude.” They were his Samarias—dangerous places to be traversed with caution. All of us have Samarias and Samaritans on our mental maps of our own little world. They mark places or people thought “dangerous,” “unpleasant,” or “to be avoided.” On some maps we label our own homes “off limits” to certain kinds of people we think undesirable or risky. A map identifies people I know whose chaotic lives threaten to consume my time or disrupt my routines. It blocks out places to avoid—nursing homes, AIDS clinics, hospital cancer wards, hospices, Muslim community centers, Mormon churches, certain ethnic neighborhoods.

Now, I am not arguing that we must go anywhere without concern for our safety or ordinary courtesy. I am suggesting that we expose our secret maps to the searching light of Jesus’ example and the gospel mandate. I am asking that we face them and revise them, adopting a stance of openness to think outside the box. The worst thing would be to not go to places of great need because of personal scruples, religious traditions, or fear. Jesus came to messy old earth to filthy old us to bring us good news. How can we do less in return? To not do so is to worship the god “Me!” What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” about the twentieth century church applies to the church in the present one:

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.96

(4) Finally, to serve Jesus is to share in his suffering. This is the demanding side of being Jesus’ disciple. It marks an extension of the theme of following his example. By “suffering” I do not mean the hurts and pains that life’s hard edges inflict on us. These are important, too, and Jesus certainly offers us healing and comfort for them. I refer specifically to the hurts and pains that result from our faithful obedience to Christ—difficulties we would avoid by holding back rather than stepping out in obedience. They comprise moments in which we pay a heavier than usual price simply for doing good in Jesus’ name. In paying that price we follow Jesus’ example and win God’s commendation (1 Peter 2:20).

This is what Paul means when he embraces “the fellowship of sharing in [Christ’s] suffering, becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:10). Far from being a shame or pity, Paul reckons suffering on behalf of Christ to be a special privilege on par with the gift of salvation (Phil. 1:29). Peter even calls Christians to rejoice over their participation in it (1 Peter 4:13). Early Christians experienced it through social ostracism and physical persecution. In 2 Corinthians 11:24–28 Paul tallied up the price he paid for serving Christ—truly an incredible inventory of physical, emotional, and spiritual hardships (cf. Acts 9:16).

Since most readers will not suffer outright persecution, in what ways may we share in Christ’s sufferings? We participate in his sufferings every time we grieve over things that deeply moved him. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept both over the sad reality of human death and the hard reality of human unbelief (John 11:35). We share in that suffering when we comfort people grieving the loss of a loved one, especially an unbelieving one. At Jerusalem, Jesus bitterly lamented the city’s rejection of his loving offer to protect its vulnerable citizens from the coming doom. We share that suffering every time someone spurns our gentle, genuine attempts to draw them to Christ. One reading used during communion at my church has this poignant line about Jesus: “For us he became poor, and knew the sadness in our days.”97

To share Christ’s suffering also is to share as he did in the world’s great ongoing “sadness”—in the ordinary, everyday sufferings of a broken world. We share this sorrow when we cry with people who are physically and spiritually destitute. We share this grief when we stand with weak and confused friends helplessly trying to navigate huge, cold bureaucracies. We share this anguish when we grieve with people in places ravaged by floods, droughts, tornados, and mudslides. We share this suffering when we mourn with innocent people caught in the crossfire of political upheaval, social collapse, and bitter warfare. We share in Christ’s suffering when we weep with parents whose children have been denied opportunity because of prejudice. We share in his suffering when we agonize with families falling apart. We share in his suffering when we walk with people through the messes their own foolishness or stubbornness have created. To share in Christ’s suffering is to live out in service his vision of his world.98

Conclusion. Joshua 24 has taken us a long way. It has challenged us to cast aside our modern false gods in favor of unwavering devotion to Jesus as Lord. It has sent us back to Jesus to hear afresh his words of command and again to glimpse him in action. At his ascension, Jesus left the work of his kingdom in the hands of his disciples, and they have passed it down to us (Acts 1:4–11). His final message was, “Once the Holy Spirit comes on you, go and be my witnesses everywhere.” The “savior” called Joshua confronted Israel with a critical choice for their future (Josh. 24:15), and so does the “Savior” called Jesus. The question is, How will we respond?

In her book Girl Meets God, Lauren Winner tells a Talmudic story that suggests what a good response to Jesus’ demand to serve him as our Lord might look like. The tale reports a conversation between Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi and the prophet Elijah. The rabbi asks the prophet when the Messiah will come.

“Go and ask the Messiah yourself,” Elijah answers.

“But where is he?” says the rabbi.

“At the gate of Rome,” answers Elijah.

“How will I recognize him?” Rabbi Yehoshua asks.

“He sits among the wretched ones with sores and wounds,” Elijah says. “All the others uncover their wounds all at once and bind them up again all at once, but he uncovers and binds each one separately, for he thinks, ‘Maybe I will be summoned today; I don’t want to be detained.’”

So the rabbi leaves Elijah, finds the Messiah, and greets him.

“Peace be with you, Master and Teacher,” he says.

“Peace be with you,” the Messiah responds.

“When is the Master coming,” the rabbi asks.

“Today,” says the Messiah.

Disappointed and annoyed, Rabbi Yehoshua goes back to Elijah.

“He lied to me,” he tells the prophet. “He said he would come today, and he has not come.”

But Elijah replies, “He meant ‘today’ if you would only listen to His voice.”99

In essence, to serve Jesus is to “listen to His voice”—to shut out the voices of the other gods once and for all and to tune only to his. It means to obey what he taught and to pattern our lives after his model. It means daily to affirm “we will serve the LORD.” It means to take to heart words often spoken in some congregations as a benediction at the end of morning worship: “So, reader, go from this place (or text) to love and serve the Lord.”