Joshua Intensive — Unit 10: "Choose This Day" (Capstone)

Joshua 23 begins where every long obedience eventually ends. "And it came to pass a long time after that the LORD had given rest unto Israel from all their enemies round about, that Joshua waxed old and stricken in age" (Joshua 23:1). The chapter goes on a verse later to record the simple sentence that has been hovering over the book for some time now: he was "ready to go the way of all the earth" (23:14). The general who marched all night to Gibeon, who stood under the unmoving sun, who cut down the Anakim, who allotted the land to twelve tribes — that Joshua is now an old man saying his last words to a people he has carried for forty-five years.

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

The whole book of Joshua has been pointing here. Wayne lays out the structure of the farewell in four lines that mirror Moses' three-fold farewell in Deuteronomy. Joshua bids farewell to the eastern tribes in chapter 22 (we walked that scene in Unit 9 with the altar of witness, Ed). He bids farewell to the leaders — the elders, judges, and officers — in chapter 23. He bids farewell to all the people at Shechem in chapter 24. The purpose of all three speeches is the same: to get the people to resolve to serve God. Joshua issues the challenge in 24:15 — "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

This unit serves as the capstone of the Joshua Intensive. We have walked from the Jordan crossing in Unit 1 through Jericho in Unit 4, Achan in Unit 5, the Gibeonite deception and Long Day in Unit 6, the northern conquest in Unit 7, the inheritance allotment in Unit 8, and the cities of refuge in Unit 9. Now Joshua's life closes, the book closes, and a question is placed in the hand of every reader. Whom will you serve?

Section I sits with Joshua 23 and the farewell to the leaders — the warning he leaves them about the foreign gods still in the corners of the land. Section II opens Joshua 24 at Shechem, where Joshua rehearses the whole story of God's faithfulness from Abraham to the present day. Section III stands at verse 15 itself: "Choose you this day." Section IV listens to Wayne's centerpiece illustration: the old Prussian general Von Zealand and the king who finally fell silent. Section V returns to the seven faith-motifs Wayne pulls out of the entire book of Joshua — faith in God's promises, faith taking possession, faith waiting, faith worshiping, faith meeting God face to face, faith hindered by sin, faith hindered by lack of prayer — and uses them as the doctrinal summary of the course. Section VI closes the book with the burial of Joshua and the long-deferred burial of the bones of Joseph at Shechem (Joshua 24:32). The Closing prays the same prayer Joshua prays over the assembly and over the believer: as for me and my house.

Joshua's first formal farewell speech is to the elders, the heads of the tribes, the judges, and the officers (Joshua 23:2). He speaks to leadership before he speaks to the assembly because leadership is what determines whether the assembly will hold. The chapter has the rhythm of a man who knows what is true and is leaving while he is still able to say it cleanly.

He opens with a fact. "Ye have seen all that the LORD your God hath done unto all these nations because of you; for the LORD your God is he that hath fought for you" (23:3). The verb runs through the whole chapter: the LORD has fought. The same verb that closed the southern campaign in Joshua 10:42 closes the leader's farewell here. Joshua's whole life has had one explanation, and the explanation is not Joshua. It is the LORD who fought.

Then he moves to a warning. There are still nations in the corners of the land — "the rest of the nations that remain among you" (23:4, 7, 12). The Philistines on the coast. The Geshurites in the south. Sidonian fishing villages in the far north. The campaign cleared the heartland; the corners are still under occupation. Joshua warns the leaders that those remaining nations are not just political problems. They are spiritual ones. "Make no mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them" (23:7). The temptation will not be a Canaanite army with chariots; the temptation will be a Canaanite altar with smoke rising over it. Joshua has watched the previous generation fall to that exact temptation at Baal-peor in Numbers 25, and he is determined that the new generation will not.

Then he ends with a promise that runs both directions. If the leaders cleave to the LORD, "one man of you shall chase a thousand: for the LORD your God, he it is that fighteth for you" (23:10). But if they intermarry with the remaining nations and join their gods, "the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land" (23:13). The same God who gave the land can take it back. The covenant cuts both ways.

The chapter is a leader's chapter. Wayne notes the principle: a leader's last words tell you what the leader actually believed. Joshua's last words to leadership are not strategy. They are not military advice. They are not even encouragement in the soft sense. They are a warning that the next battle is for hearts and altars, and the only weapon for that battle is unmixed loyalty to the LORD. The book of Judges, opening on the very next page, is going to read like a study in what happens when the next generation of leaders does not heed Joshua's warning. The corners of the land become snares. The thorns reach the eye. The book reads itself in retrospect across two generations.

Joshua's final farewell happens at Shechem. The location is theologically loud. Shechem is where Abraham first received the promise of the land in Genesis 12:6–7. Shechem is where Jacob buried his foreign gods under the oak in Genesis 35:4. Shechem is where the bones of Joseph were waiting in the ground — bones Israel had carried out of Egypt four hundred years earlier on the strength of an oath (Genesis 50:25). Joshua picks Shechem on purpose. He wants the assembly standing on covenant soil when he asks them the covenant question.

And before he asks the question, he tells the story. Joshua 24:2–13 is one of the great extended speeches in the Old Testament — the LORD speaking through Joshua, summarizing the entire history from Abraham to the present in a dozen verses. Notice how He begins. "Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods" (24:2). The LORD's first sentence about the patriarchs is that they were idolaters. Abraham did not pick the LORD; the LORD picked Abraham out of an idolater's house. Israel cannot stand at Shechem and look back on a heritage of pure faith. They look back on grace.

The story goes on. I took your father Abraham… I gave him Isaac… I gave Jacob and Esau… I sent Moses also and Aaron… I plagued Egypt… I brought you out… I have given you a land… Verses 2 through 13 are a string of first-person verbs from God. Israel did not earn one of them. The whole national biography is on the credit side of God's ledger. By the time the speech reaches verse 13, the listener has heard the LORD say I nearly twenty times in a single recital.

And then verse 14: "Now therefore." Two words on which the entire weight of the chapter pivots. The history of grace requires a response, and the response Joshua names is exact. "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" (24:14). The same gods Terah served, the same gods Egypt served, are still in some Israelite household somewhere in the camp. Joshua does not name names. He simply says: put them away. Whatever is in your bag from Mesopotamia or in your trunk from Egypt, put it away. Serve the LORD.

The speech is a model for any believer's reckoning at the end of any season of obedience. Rehearse the story God has actually written. Recognize that every chapter on the credit side belongs to Him. Then, on that basis, put away the gods you have been carrying alongside Him. Sincerity is not enough; sincerity has to come with a clean shelf.

Then comes the verse the whole book has been moving toward. "And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" (Joshua 24:15).

Wayne pulls out several details about this verse that deserve close reading.

1. The Choice Is Daily

The Hebrew underneath "this day" is emphatic. Joshua does not give Israel weeks to consider. He does not call for a national synod. He does not appoint a study commission. He says, this day — today. The choice belongs to the present. Tomorrow's choice will not save you from this morning's drift. The faith that runs the long campaign is not a single ancient decision held in storage; it is a daily decision made fresh on the morning of each new battle. Wayne notes that in his own pastoral experience this is the difference between believers who continue to grow and believers who plateau. The growing believer treats Joshua 24:15 as a verse for Tuesday, not just a verse for the conversion testimony.

2. The Choice Is Honest

Joshua names the live alternatives without softening them. The gods of Mesopotamia. The gods of Egypt. The gods of the Amorites. Joshua does not pretend the alternatives have been retired. He says, plainly, that there are real options on the table and that Israel can pick any of them if it chooses. This is one of the marks of honest preaching. The preacher who minimizes the alternatives flatters the audience; the preacher who names them honestly forces a real decision. Joshua takes the harder road. He hands Israel the menu in full.

3. The Choice Is Exemplary

The most quoted half of the verse comes last. "But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." Joshua does not require the assembly to choose what he himself has not already chosen. He does not stand on neutral ground and ask the people to declare a position. He stands on his position and asks the people to join him. Leaders who ask their people to choose what they themselves have not chosen are charlatans. Joshua is the opposite. He has chosen, and his house with him, and from inside his already-made choice he calls the assembly to make the same choice.

4. The Choice Is Family-Wide

And it is "me and my house." The unit of choice is not the individual conscience alone; it is the household. Joshua does not say that he has chosen and his children may pick on their own when they grow up. He says that he and his house, as a single covenanting unit, will serve the LORD. That sentence has put more children in church on Sunday morning than any program in church history. Wayne emphasizes the principle for parents and grandparents reading this lesson: your house is part of your choice. You may not be able to choose for them what they will eventually decide for themselves, but you can absolutely choose what your house stands for while it is your house. Joshua did. His house knew it. The assembly heard it.

5. The Choice Is Rejectable

And finally, Joshua's verse contains the unsettling phrase "if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD." He acknowledges the possibility of rejection. He does not pretend the LORD's claim is so obviously good that no one could refuse it. He grants the assembly the dignity of refusal. That is a remarkably high view of human responsibility. The LORD does not want forced lovers. He wants chosen ones. The choice has to be real or it is not a choice. Joshua frames it that way and lets the assembly answer.

Verses 16 through 18 record their answer. "God forbid that we should forsake the LORD… we also will serve the LORD; for he is our God." The assembly responds. Joshua presses them again, even harder, in 24:19–20, warning that the LORD is a holy God and a jealous God who will not forgive their transgressions if they turn from Him. They reaffirm. He sets up a stone under the oak at Shechem as a witness, and the chapter ends with the people sent away to their inheritance.

Wayne's centerpiece illustration for Joshua 24:15 reaches into eighteenth-century Prussia. Frederick the Great's greatest general was a man named Von Zealand. Von Zealand was a Christian. The king was a scoffer. One day the king was making coarse jokes about the Saviour, and the whole place was ringing with the guffaws of laughter from the courtiers and parasites who surrounded him. It was too much for old Von Zealand — the general who had won the most numerous and the greatest battles for Prussia, who had almost put the crown on the king's brow. The old general, with his German militariness, stood up, and amid the hush of the flatterers, shaking his gray old head solemnly, he said:

"Sire, you know I have not feared death; you know I have fought for you in thirty-eight battles, and thirty-eight battles I have won; but, sire, my hairs are gray, I am an old man, and I shall soon have to go into the presence of a greater than thee — the mighty God, who saved me from my sin, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom you are blaspheming against. Sire, I cannot stand to hear my Saviour spoken of as thou hast spoken of him. I salute thee, sire, as an old man, who loves the Saviour, on the edge of eternity."

And he sat down. Frederick the Great, with a trembling voice, said, "General Von Zealand, I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon." The company dispersed in silence. The king reflected that night, as he never had done before, on the One greater than the great Frederick of Prussia, whom his general reverenced even above his visible sovereign (J. Robertson).

That is Joshua 24:15 in eighteenth-century uniform. Von Zealand chose his sovereign at the beginning of his Christian life, but he was still choosing his sovereign at the edge of eternity, in front of an earthly king he had served thirty-eight times in battle. As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. The application Wayne is fond of pressing here is plain: "Stand up for Christ. Be noble in it. You never gain anything by sneaking. Stand up for Jesus. Testify as this man did, and the power of the living Son of God your Saviour will be upon you in your home, in your heart, in the market, in your soul, and in all eternity."

The Von Zealand moment is also a leadership moment. He was the most decorated soldier in the room. He had everything to lose. He had served the king longer than anyone present. And in front of all of them he stood up and said, plainly, that there was a greater Sovereign whose pardon he would soon stand under, and that the king's mockery of that Sovereign was something he could not in conscience hear and stay silent. The king did not punish him. The king begged his pardon. Wayne notes that this is what often happens when a believer chooses honesty in a moment that costs something. The room expects retaliation. What comes instead is, sometimes, an apology — and almost always, a hush of conscience that lasts for years.

Joshua at Shechem and Von Zealand in Frederick's hall are doing the same thing across thirty-three centuries. Each of them stands up. Each of them names the alternatives honestly. Each of them takes a position and invites the assembly to take it with him. Each of them is an old man near the end of his service to a visible sovereign, ready to go into the presence of a greater. As for me and my house.

Wayne pulls a final teaching pattern out of the entire book of Joshua — seven faith-motifs that thread the ten units we have walked together. They are worth gathering at the capstone because they form a doctrinal summary of the course.

1. Faith Believes God Keeps His Promises

Wayne mentions Herbert Lockyer's classic devotional All the Promises of the Bible, and notes that the book of Joshua is the on-the-ground proof that the promises Lockyer catalogues actually paid out. God had promised the patriarchs a land. The promise looked impossible for centuries. Israel went to Egypt and was in slavery for four hundred years. But finally God gave them the land that had been promised. Joshua 21:45 is the receipt: "There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken." Faith starts here, with the conviction that the God who said it will do it.

2. Faith Requires Taking Possession

God hands the deed; the believer walks the land. Even in Joshua there had to be a first man to step into the water. There had to be twelve men to circle Jericho carrying the ark, even when they could see no results. Wayne points back to the two and a half tribes who decided to stay on the wrong side of the Jordan. They were shepherds and liked the grassy plains. But as a result they missed many of God's blessings, and were the first to be defeated later when invasions came.

General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, used to tell the story of a starving man who received a check from a friend promising to pay him a certain amount of money. He held it up and danced around the room in his glee. His wife looked at him and said, "Poor man, I was afraid this would be too much for him. He has suffered until he is unsettled mentally." The husband replied, "Wife, I am going to have it framed and hang it up. I will have it set to music and we will sing it every day." Booth observed that he could have it framed, and could have it set to music and sing it every day of his life, hour after hour until he died, and it would not do him any good if he did not take the check and demand payment. "It is thus we treat God's promises. They are valueless without we present them to Him and believe them" (J. Wilbur Chapman, Present Day Parables). Joshua 1:3 is a check the LORD wrote: "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you." Israel cashed it for seven years across two campaigns. The believer cashes it daily.

3. Faith Means Waiting on God

When the people of Israel got to the Jordan River they had to wait three days. The officers passed through the camp on the third day and gave the order. The waiting was not wasted; it was preparation. Jesus told the disciples at the Ascension to wait for the power on high. Pentecost did not come on the day the disciples wished it would; it came on the day God appointed. Faith waits with confidence, not with anxiety.

4. Faith Means Worshiping God

Before moving against Jericho, all the men were circumcised at Gilgal. During that recovery they were vulnerable to attack. Twelve stones of memory were set up at Gilgal as well — markers of the river crossing. Worship comes before warfare in the book of Joshua. The believer who tries the warfare without the worship will run out of strength before the battle is over.

5. Faith Means Meeting God Face to Face

When Joshua was walking around Jericho he saw a man in front of him with a sword drawn. He called out, "Are You for us or for our adversaries?" The figure said, "No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Joshua fell on his face and asked, "What does my Lord say to His servant?" The Commander said, "Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy" (Joshua 5:13–15). Before any great work can be done for God, the worker must first meet God face to face. Joshua's sandals come off. The campaign begins on holy ground.

6. Faith Is Hindered by Sin (Achan)

The Achan story in Joshua 7 is the photo-negative of the Jericho story in Joshua 6. Same army. Same general. Same God. Different week. The difference is that one man's hidden sin had broken the covenant covering. Faith fails not because God's promises fail but because hidden sin in the camp breaks the channel through which the promises run. The remedy is the one we walked in Unit 5: ring the bell. Open the hand. The Valley of Achor becomes a door of hope only when the cloak and silver and wedge of gold come out from under the floor of the tent.

7. Faith Is Hindered by Lack of Prayer (Gibeon)

And the seventh motif is the Gibeonite chapter. Joshua had a divinely-given mechanism for asking the LORD — the Urim and Thummim in the high priest's breastpiece — and he did not use it. The lie was deceptive, but the failure was Joshua's. Faith that does not ask is faith running blind. The cure for the next moldy-bread incident is the one James spelled out: "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God" (James 1:5). Pray first.

Take those seven motifs together and you have the doctrinal trellis of the entire Joshua Intensive. Promises trusted. Possession taken. Patient waiting. Worship offered. The Captain met. Sin removed. Prayer made. The believer who lives by all seven walks the same campaign Joshua walked, and gets to the same chapter where Joshua got to: I am ready to go the way of all the earth, and as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

The book of Joshua does not end with the choosing speech. It ends with three burials. Joshua dies at one hundred and ten years old and is buried in his own inheritance at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim (24:29–30). Eleazar the priest, son of Aaron, dies and is buried in Gibeah, the city given to his son Phinehas in Ephraim (24:33). And in between those two graves is one of the most theologically beautiful sentences in the entire Old Testament:

"And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph." (Joshua 24:32)

Read what just happened. Joseph died in Egypt in Genesis 50, and on his deathbed he made his brothers swear that when God brought Israel out of Egypt, they would carry his bones up with them to the Promised Land (Genesis 50:25). Israel carried those bones for four hundred years. They carried them through forty years of wilderness wandering. They carried them across the Jordan River. They carried them through Jericho and Ai and the Long Day at Gibeon and the cutting down of the Anakim. They carried them through the seven years of conquest and through the seven years of allotment. And now, finally, at the end of the book of Joshua, those bones are laid in the ground at Shechem — the very place Jacob, Joseph's father, had bought from the sons of Hamor for a hundred pieces of silver four hundred years earlier.

Wayne calls verse 32 the place where the wonderful influence of Joshua becomes most visible. The bones did not bury themselves. The carrying did not happen by accident. From the day Israel left Egypt to the day Joshua died, someone always knew where Joseph's coffin was, and someone always made sure it kept moving north. Joshua, in his last days as leader, made sure the four-hundred-year-old promise to a dying patriarch finally received its closing chapter. He buried Joseph's bones in Joseph's father's land, in Joseph's own tribal inheritance, on the very spot where the LORD had first promised the land to Abraham six centuries earlier. The book closes the longest oath in the Old Testament.

The takeaway for the believer is gentle but firm. God keeps oaths across centuries. The believer's family may not see in this lifetime the full inheritance God has promised. The grandchild may carry the bones one more leg of the journey. But God remembers. He remembered Joseph's coffin for four hundred years. He will remember any oath His people have entered with Him for any number of generations. "There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken."

And so the book ends. Joshua dies. Eleazar dies. Joseph's bones come home. The land rests. The next page is the book of Judges, and it will be a darker book, because the next generation will not entirely heed Joshua's warning. But this book closes on a clean note: a life that wholly followed the LORD, a people who chose Him at Shechem, a coffin that finally reached its grave, and a phrase in capital letters across the whole arc of the Old Testament: God keeps His word.

The Joshua Intensive ends where every believer's reading of the Bible eventually has to end — with a question. Joshua puts it at Shechem under the oak tree. The Holy Spirit puts it now in the hand of the reader closing this last unit. Choose you this day whom ye will serve.

The seven faith motifs lay out the daily shape of the choosing. Believe the promise. Take the possession. Wait when waiting is required. Worship before warfare. Meet the Captain face to face. Deal with hidden sin. Pray first. Joshua walked all seven and finished his life with one sentence over it: he wholly followed the LORD God of Israel. Caleb walked all seven and got Hebron at eighty-five. Von Zealand walked all seven and stopped a king's mockery in mid-laugh. The London waif and the Gibeonite manslayer walked through the same gate — in His name — and were welcomed.

The same gate stands open for the reader of this lesson. The Captain has already drawn His sword. The High Priest has already died and risen. The bones of Joseph are already buried in the inheritance. The Long Day has already shown that the heavens move when prayer is offered. There is nothing left for the believer to do except step forward, take the deed, walk the field, and from inside an already-made choice say, "As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

Wesley's hymn was the closing of Unit 9. The closing of Unit 10 is shorter. It is the verse Joshua himself made the closing of his life. Forty-five years after he came back from Kadesh-barnea with Caleb and a minority report, twenty-five years after he led twelve tribes across the Jordan, seven years after the conquest ended and the land rested from war — on the day he stood under the oak at Shechem and called the assembly to choose — Joshua said the only thing a man at the end of his service is qualified to say:

"As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

God grant the same to every believer who has walked these ten units. By His grace, may the same epitaph be ready when our last day comes. He wholly followed the LORD. Amen.