"My House Will Serve the Lord" - sermon for dedication service on 27 Feb (based on Joshua 24:14-28)

In our home we have a slogan up on the wall. It says, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”. This is not just a slogan of course ... we have read these words from the Bible in Joshua chapter 24 verse 15. The context was Joshua speaking to the gathered people of Israel, challenging them concerning their ongoing allegiance.

God had done so much for these people, bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, raising effective leaders like Moses, and Joshua himself, to guide them into a better future in a better place, constantly considering their welfare. Yet these people had a history of complaining and finding things wrong with their situations. This seems to be a very human trait.

We see the tragedy of Christchurch and appreciate our own safety, yet despite feeling deeply for the suffering, we will still find minor things to complain about. In the case of Joshua’s nation, such complaints tended to disrupt the people’s relationship to God; at worst these people looked in other directions for their needs to be met. So no matter how good God was to such people, it seems inevitably they strayed anyway.

So perhaps it is, that the level to which God has been kind and gracious to us, is not the most important factor in giving God our allegiance. What would be then? Let me suggest, that actually the most important factor in us giving God our absolute allegiance, is us simply knowing and wholly believing that God is truth! No matter what happens in the world, or happens to us, God is truth – and our life is based on that.

God did create us and everything around us. God has intimately known us from our conception. God has given breath and life to everything that lives and breathes. God even entered into all the chaos of the world through Jesus’ life on earth. Jesus, in his earthly life, revealed who God is and what God is about. We have a spiritual void which only God can fill. We were created for relationship with God, and we will only be fulfilled through a relationship with God. In effect ... God is truth!

In this way Joshua is able to state, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”; for what other sensible alternative is there!?! To come up with any other alternative, to invest our lives in any other small “g” god, no matter who or what that is, is to declare that God is not true.

So, in our passage, this is precisely the reasoning behind the choice that Joshua gave the people: “If you really want to serve other “gods”, go do it!” (24:15a). Why would he have suggested this? Joshua needed the people to face this crucial choice head on, because so many of them had spoken as if they were on the Lord God’s side, yet acted contrary to this – they couldn’t walk the talk!

Hence Joshua saying (in verse 22): “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him”. Their actions had betrayed their words. The people had answered in verses 16 to 18 that they are indeed committed to the Lord God of Israel (because of what He had done for them), but Joshua had to reply: “REALLY!?!” The question needed to be put to them: “Are you serious about God or not?”

This was a sober warning! If you are truly on the Lord God’s side, then you will live up to your promises and commitments. Commitment to God is not a matter of ‘lip service’, but a very serious undertaking. Having said ... “a very serious undertaking”, I would need to quickly add ... that it is also ‘a thoroughly wonderful, transforming and fulfilling undertaking’!

So Joshua stridently promotes the need to break all connections with former (and perhaps still current in some ways) small “g” gods that disrupt and compromise our relationship with the Lord God (and service for Him). These small “g” gods are also “foreign” to our best interests. Then we come to that place in our life where we only worship the one true and living capital “G” God.

This will mean standing out against the crowd at times. Going ‘half-way’ in this direction will not be enough, and cannot save us! To regress toward pursuing “foreign gods” of different varieties will not be without consequences. Joshua knew his people well – how even well-meaning God-intentioned people tend to hedge their bets and hang on to quiet superstitions and competing interests.

To say, “As for me my house, we will serve the Lord”, suggests what? It suggests that this particular home will have God in the centre ... that this home will follow the principles of life outlined and lived by Jesus. Even though Jesus lived many centuries after Joshua, we can already see in such texts the preparations being made for the focus we now put on Jesus.

For us today, Jesus shows us what God is like! And, we so much need the peace-making and reconciling mercy shown in Jesus’ life in our lives. This is what we should want in the centre of our home-life, and through our example, in the centre of our neighbourhood.

I was glad to be one of the first homes completed at our end of the street when we made our last move to Sanctuary Lakes, because we had the chance, however short we may have fallen, to set a God-centred tone in our street. I think that it’s wonderful that Gloria and Nevil were able to move into their village early on for the same reasons. We all can show that God is alive to our neighbours ... as we say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”.

But then, there should also be obvious internal benefits for our children, as we say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”. Children born into such God-honouring homes, have the great advantage of seeing the truth of God consistently lived out. Jesus is such a natural companion within the home that the children are never in doubt about God’s existence nor love. Discipline is always applied with good reason. Jesus is the unseen guest at every meal in such a home. The atmosphere encourages growing personalities and broad creativity. At least, that is my experience.

And where mistakes are made, the norm will be towards understanding and forgiveness. No guarantees about the outcomes of course ... everyone has freewill ... we can’t control the future. But we can sow tremendous seeds of knowledge and love in the present (to be drawn on later). Some of us, because of certain circumstances, will have difficulty in formally applying this principle in our homes; yet we can all work away at it quietly - through the integrity of our lives, and the prevailing attitudes we work from.

We know sadly that God has been used in some homes as an abusive weapon to manipulate behaviour and justify oppressive parental control. This of course is not what is being promoted here. What is being promoted here is the centrality in the home of the God that Jesus represents in his healing ministry and in his parables like the one about the prodigal son and his loving father – a God who loves unconditionally, a God who clearly cares, continually seeks out and creatively restores. This is the Jesus who said, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs (Mark 10:14).

Those parents who have made promises today, have really in effect said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”. The children will need to come to know this, by seeing the reality of it – in their parents’ attitudes, priorities and expressions of love (to all people). The most read book in the home will be the Bible. There will be a prayerful and trusting and welcoming atmosphere noticeable to all who enter such a home. We will have to work at this, because sometimes life throws up significant challenges, but we don’t work at it alone – as we discovered last week from Joshua chapter 1, God is present with and supports all those who show courage and seek God’s purposes.

It’s actually difficult to say that we are “serving” God. How do we know? Often we can be actually “serving” our own interests and clothing this as serving in the church or the community. That is why “serving” God will always first and foremost be about our relationship with God, much more so than what we do. We can all be doing things, but the question is whether we are doing our good works out of our heart for God; thereby purifying the motive and releasing the outcomes (to be in accordance with God’s will).

This all sounds a little heavy today ... so let me add this. The centrality of God in our homes should be a really joyful experience. We know firmly what we believe and are peace with that. At the same time we can be humble learners from one another. When we have a need, or feel someone else’s need, we can pray and know that God hears and responds. When we struggle and fail we know that we can access God’s forgiveness (as we are willing to forgive one another). When we have an issue, we are able to talk it through, confident in the help of our Divine counsellor. This means we are far more hopeful and blessed than many people as they experience family life. And God will bless our sincere efforts for good.