The Great Appeal
R. Glover Joshua 24:14, 15 Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth… From the trembling lips of one within a step of death comes the appeal which through all the centuries since has pierced and moved and won the hearts of men. Often urged, it is not always represented accurately. Elijah may address a more degenerate generation with a challenge to serve God or to serve Baal, insisting on this as if the chances of either alternative being adopted were even. Joshua does not say, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve - God or another," but bids them serve God, urging His claims. In the event of their being unwilling to yield to these claims, he urges with some irony, that shows the keenness of moral energy still in Him, that in that case they should choose amongst the deities whose feebleness they had witnessed the one least helpless. There are several things here worthy of notice. Observe, first, an assumption underlying this appeal, viz.: I. SOME PLAN OF LIFE SHOULD BE SOBERLY THOUGHT OUT AND FOLLOWED WITH DECISION. Our "miscellaneous impulses" always prove a poor guide. There can be neither progress, peace, strength, nor usefulness if life is desultory. We cannot employ anything to good advantage, much less life, unless we know its nature, what it is made for, what can be done with it, its resources and its proper ends. The first question of the 'Shorter Catechism,' "What is the chief end of man?" stands as the first question of the catechism of life. Until we form some aim and keep to it, tomorrow will be always moving in a different direction from today, will lose what today has won. An aim permits life to be cumulative, always gathering richer force, fuller joys - always completing and rounding off its conquests. Joshua here assumes that a plan of life is essential to the proper pursuit of it, and on this assumption his appeal is based. Take note of this, for a planless is a powerless life. Observe - II. HE CLAIMS THEIR LIFE FOR GOD. "Now, therefore, serve Him." He does not timorously present any alternative. There is no reasonable alternative to this. One plan, and only one, of life should be entertained by a serious nature. The only wise and only rational plan of life is the service of God. A multitude of reasons concur to commend it. (1) Conscience requires it, as the only right course. Serving God, every law will be kept, every duty done, every claim met, every wrong avoided. Conscience points like a compass needle to the throne of God, and its every suggestion is in one form or other a suggestion to do His bidding. It is a solemn fact that the holiest and the deepest instinct of our nature bids us serve God. (2) Gratitude requires it. God had delivered them, led them, helped them, enriched them; given them liberty, victory, home. In addition to these national blessings, He had to each individual given life, faculty, joys, home loves, duties that dignified, comforts that gladdened life. The instinct of gratitude is to ask, What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits? We have still larger benefits - a Saviour, a home above. Gratitude should constrain us to serve God. (3) Wisdom should constrain us to serve Him. Serve self - and server and served are both ruined. Serve God - and God is pleased, and we are safe. Service of God developes all our higher faculties; is the only state in which we are safe; is the course in which we are useful. Growth, safety, usefulness, what can compare with them? Pitiable is the state of those who do not serve. They do not live in any proper sense of the word. Therefore Joshua urges on them to serve their redeeming God. And the grounds which suited them 4,000 years ago are all intensely valid today. Consider this claim, and if disposed to dispute it, consider next - II. THE CHALLENGE HE GIVES TO THOSE UNWILLING TO SERVE GOD. "If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose ye whom ye will serve; the gods whom your fathers served, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell." Thus he presents them with the discredited deities around them, and bids them choose. Will they choose the gods that Abraham forsook - forsook because power. less to help, degrading in their influence? by forsaking whom he found all his grandeur, all his blessedness, all his reward? or will they take the gods of the Amorites whose powerlessness to protect their servants had been just witnessed, who betrayed those who trusted in them? With what force does the mere form in which he urges his challenge deter men from it! Would that all who reject the Saviour would realise what they are about! If it seems not good to you to serve Christ, whom will ye serve? The gods your fathers left? The gods whose powerlessness to bless men is manifest around you? Such a goddess as Pleasure, which fools think the best to worship, which fritters away all strength of soul, destroys conscience, and heart, and intellect, and body alike - would you choose that? or Money, coyest of all deities? whom he that seeketh rarely findeth, and he that findeth never finds so rich as he had hoped? who seems to be a god that can give everything, but it is found to be unable to give any one of the things most desired by us? Or Power, the deity sought by the ambitious, who never permits any one to say, "He is mine" in anything like the degree he had hoped, and even when possessed is found to be insipid as the insignificance from which men fled? Is it Indulgence? the deity that degrades men? or Self will, the deity that destroys them? Choose which. There ought to be no trifling. We must serve some God. Who is to be the source of all you hope for if you put away the Saviour of Calvary? To use the experience of others is the part of a wise man; to buy experience dearly for yourself is the part of a foolish man. There is none amongst all the deities that clamour for your service which the wise and the good have not forsaken, or the foolish and the worldly have not repented of cleaving to. Betake not yourself to such, but serve the Lord. - G. Parallel Verses KJV: Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD. WEB: "Now therefore fear Yahweh, and serve him in sincerity and in truth. Put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, in Egypt; and serve Yahweh.