“If it doesn’t please you to serve the Lord, resolve right now whom you’ll serve, the gods your fathers served past the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose nation you are actually dwelling. As for me and my family, we are going to serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).
This passage comes from the Guide of Joshua, the sixth e-book of the Outdated Testomony, based on the web site Bible Gateway. It is named after Joshua, the chief of the Israelites.
The twenty fourth chapter of Joshua “has typically been cited as a seminal passage of Scripture, the place historic ritual fractures fashionable routine to re-establish devoted worship for God’s folks,” Carlos Campo, PhD, informed Fox Information Digital.
5 BLESSINGS FROM GOD ARE AT OUR FINGERTIPS IF WE HAVE FAITH, INSISTS WASHINGTON PASTOR
Campo serves as CEO of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
“What makes the passage highly effective for me is its formal name for a response and its emphasis on how we’re a ‘forgetting folks’ in practically fixed want of reminding of what God has executed for us,” he stated.
Carlos Campo, PhD, CEO of the Museum of the Bible, described Joshua 24 as “a seminal passage of Scripture.” The U.S., he additionally stated, could also be in want of a “name to motion.” (Museum of the Bible; iStock)
Within the chapter, Joshua gathers the Israelites for a “covenent renewal ceremony” in a spot that was “fraught with that means for them.”
Shechem, the place Joshua had everybody meet, “is the place the place Abram (even earlier than he grew to become Abraham) first encounters the Lord and enters right into a covenental relationship with him in Genesis 12,” Campo famous.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
It is usually the identical location in Genesis 33 the place “Jacob ‘pitched his tent for 100 items of cash'” and “the place Joseph requested to be buried as he lay dying in Egypt” in Genesis 50, Campo stated.
“As one commentator has stated, Shechem is ‘Lexington and Plymouth Rock and Independence Corridor multi functional,'” Campo famous.
The biblical metropolis of Shechem, seen right here on this 2022 picture, was the location of many notable occasions within the Outdated Testomony, Campo famous. (iStock)
Location apart, “the ritual itself is a remembrance and a name to motion,” he stated, noting that Joshua “seemingly shocks his viewers by proclaiming that ‘your ancestors … worshiped different gods,’ a truth solely implied in earlier narratives.”
Joshua informed these assembled about God’s faithfulness to different prophets “proper as much as the current day.”
VIRGINIA PASTOR CITES ‘PROFOUND’ MESSAGE IN PSALM 145 AS ‘LIFELINE’ IN ‘DARKEST TIMES’
“They’ve all ‘crossed the Jordan’ collectively, however now the fateful alternative stays for all,” Campo stated. “Will the Israelites proceed to worship the gods of their ancestors or, like him, ‘serve the Lord?’”
“Joshua requires the folks to affirm their alternative 3 times — simply as Jesus requires of Peter after the resurrection — emphasizing the solemnity and finality of this final, binary alternative: ‘Whom will you worship?'” Campo stated.
“As for me and my home, we are going to serve the Lord.”
However earlier than something could be stated, Joshua leads together with his declaration, one which has “change into a mantra for God-followers all through the ages,” he stated. “‘As for me and my home, we are going to serve the Lord.'”
This declaration “stands in distinction to the vacillation of the Israelites,” Campo stated, “who appear given to azab or ‘forsake’ as simply as they’d abad or ‘serve’ the Lord.”
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER
“Of their religious equivocation, the Israelites set up a sample that historical past has repeated endlessly: God’s folks renewing their religion solely to stray after which be ‘revived’ to serve him as soon as once more,” Campo stated, pointing to the numerous revivals which have occurred in the USA all through the centuries.
Joshua’s declaration, “As for me and my home, we are going to serve the Lord,” has “change into a mantra for God-followers all through the ages,” Campo stated. (iStock)
These revivals “have served to awaken the slumbering devoted, punctuating the forgetful nature of a fallen folks, given to mammon as an alternative of manna, to Babylon as an alternative of Bethlehem,” he stated.
SOUTH CAROLINA PRIEST SAYS MESSAGE OF UNITY IN PSALM 133 IS NEEDED NOW MORE THAN EVER
“Joshua’s folks had handed into the promised land however had additionally forsaken the edicts of the Lord. That they had change into assimilated with the neighboring folks and are actually distracted by ‘overseas gods’ and the attract of the brand new and unique,” Campo stated.
“Of their religious equivocation, the Israelites set up a sample that historical past has repeated endlessly: God’s folks renewing their religion solely to stray after which be ‘revived’ to serve him as soon as once more.”
Joshua knew it was apt to “collect and collectively keep in mind God’s faithfulness and renew the covenant, pledging to be devoted,” he added.
The U.S., Campo stated, could also be in want of “that very same reminder and name to motion.”
For extra Way of life articles, go to www.foxnews.com/life-style
“Within the face of accelerating rancor and divisiveness is a few new return to faithfulness ready to be birthed to a somnambulant nation,” he stated.
“Time will reveal all issues, however Joshua’s covenantal name appears as related as ever.”
