Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

            Each day we wake up and we are bombarded with choices.  I guess it really begins with choosing to get up or choosing to hit the snooze again.  Of the more than 100 TV channels I have available to me which will I watch as I get ready?  What will I wear today?  What will I have for breakfast?  Regular or decaf?  Will I put the dishes in the dishwasher or leave them soaking in the sink for when I get home?  Will I wear a coat today?  In an average morning one has to make all of these and many more choices even before one leaves the house.  Often times there are underlying or overarching choices that affect the choices we make.  For example generally I choose to be informed about the world around me so I normally watch CNN Headline News while I am getting ready.  However if Andrew is in the room and needs to be entertained we watch Blue’s Clues instead.  Lately I have chosen to diet again so breakfast is not so much a choice as it is a set pattern; oatmeal, juice, and coffee, and that choice about regular or decaf, that really isn’t a choice; we don’t even have decaf in the house but we do choose to buy fair trade coffee to ensure coffee growers in developing countries earn a fair wage. 

            This past Tuesday was an historic day as our nation chose its highest leader, the President of the

            On a much more serious note Joshua, in the passage we read a moment ago, from the book bearing his name, points his wrinkled, crooked, old finger at all the Israelites, knowing that he is now old and soon will no longer be with them to be their leader, and says “choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your ancestors served in the region beyond the River of the gods or the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”   It is interesting to me that given the facts presented about how the people came to be in this time and place, after God choosing Abraham and blessing his offspring to be a chosen people of faithfulness to God and bringing them out of Egypt, through the wilderness, into the Promised Land, and helping them to rout the present inhabitants in that land so that the Israelite’s could poses it; doesn’t sound like much of a choice to me.  Even by our own standards of ask yourself if you are better off now or four years ago or 40 years ago and hands down God has to win.  But Joshua presents it to the people as a legitimate choice, after all God had done for them, Joshua presents it as if they actually had choice other than serving God. 

            Then Joshua goes on to do an even more curious thing.  After telling the Israelites that he and his family will serve the Lord, the people say they want to serve God also.  “But Joshua said to the people, ‘you cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.  He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or you sins.  If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you.”  I don’t know if you picked up on what Joshua is saying here but he is actually trying to discourage the people from rededicating themselves to being God’s chosen people.  This is not a trick; it is not reverse psychology on Joshua’s part.  He is seriously encouraging the Israelites to not choose God, because he is not sure they are up to the task.  What Joshua is saying is this is a big decision, one from which there is no turning back, and a decision that is overarching, not easy to fulfill, and has very serious consequences. 

            Joshua’s warning is that God does not take well to being second place in our lives and his concern for the people of Israel is it may be a little harder for them to keep God in the forefront of their lives now that they have a homeland, and houses with white picket fences, mortgages to pay for the houses with the white picket fences, two and a half children per household, an SUV, HDTV, an I-pod, two dogs and a cat.  Joshua suspects that it may be easier for the Israelites to choose this day than in the coming days.  So he warns them to be careful and take their choice seriously.  Notice also he does not allow for not making a choice, in the words of the rock band Rush and in the spirit of Joshua “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.”  Despite Joshua’s warning the people insist “The Lord our God we will serve, and him we will obey.” 

            I don’t want to give away the end of the story, if you haven’t read about the people of Israel I invite you to do that some time, or suffice it to say they didn’t live up to their end of the bargain very well.  At times through out their history God indeed gets very angry with them and resorts to some pretty drastic measures to correct the Israelite’s behavior and bring them back into line following faithfully.  One advantage we have over the Israelites of Joshua’s day is that we do believe God forgives us.  As the passage we read from 1 Thessalonians 4 says we have hope in the God who loves us so much as to conquer death on our behalf so that we might live eternally with God.  I want to be very clear also that according to our Reformed Theology our choosing is limited when it comes to our salvation.  We can not choose whether or not we want to be saved, only God has the ability to chose who is saved and who is not and there is nothing we can do to make God love us or choose us any more or any less.  We are saved by grace alone through faith alone, but we still have choices. 

            As I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon we are faced with thousands of choices every day and we are still faced with the same overarching choice Joshua posed to the Israelites.  Who will you serve?  Will you serve God, or will you serve the gods of our culture or our surrounding culture.  Will you serve God or will you serve the bottom line, keep up with the Joneses, the gods of fashion, the gods of wall street, or main street, or the god of self?  Or will you put all of that behind you and serve the one and only our very true God.  That choice is yours and it is an overarching choice that has bearing on a lot of the other choices with which we are faced. 

            Mark Hanson one time Presiding Bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America shared a personal experience to emphasize the need for their members to get back into serious Bible Study.  He said “I was sitting on an airplane where we were stuck for a while, without so much as water for thirsty passengers. A flight attendant spotted me seated, wearing my clerical collar. I jokingly said to her, ‘Maybe you could bring me some of those little bottles of wine you sell to passengers and I could turn them into water.’”  Hanson said, “The young woman, perhaps in her 30s, looked blankly at me and said, quite transparently, ‘I’m sorry, Father, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.’”  Obviously this woman had made a choice and it didn’t include serving God or at least not serving God by getting into God’s Word more deeply.

            By comparison Tom Chappell the CEO of the all natural personal hygiene product company Tom’s of Maine 21 years ago had just guided his company through a period of aggressive growth, and now he had enormous wealth. Chappell himself, however, rather than experiencing satisfaction and fulfillment, was feeling drained — emotionally and spiritually. Chappell found direction from a question his pastor’s wife put to him.  “What makes you think Tom’s of Maine isn’t your ministry?” she asked.  My hunch is she knew that Tom was constantly pulled between serving two competing god’s and challenged him to think about how he might serve the Lord our God better through what he did for a job.What Tom decided to do was stay with the company, but also to enroll in Harvard