It Is Good to Serve the Lord!

14th Sunday after Pentecost
September 14, 2003
Joshua 24:14-15

“Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” (NIV).

I’m going to show my age here, but do any of you remember a singer named Bob Dylan? When he was 37 he became a Christian. He then wrote songs like, “Gotta Serve Somebody.” The lyrics to that song begin like this:

You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

The song continues like that, describing who you might be and that “you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Those are not exactly the words Joshua used with Israel, but the thought was the same. You have to serve someone, either the devil—the gods of their ancestors or of the Canaanites—or the Lord. Joshua knew—as Dylan seems to have learned—that it’s good to serve the Lord and bad to serve the devil. So a person needs to renew or strengthen his relationship with the Lord. That is my goal this morning, that you know that it is good to serve the Lord and that you renew your loyalty to him.

From a biblical perspective, one’s commitment to serve the Lord is part of a covenant. A covenant is an agreement for a relationship between two people or parties based on certain conditions. In the Bible, a covenant always involves some sort of signs, sacrifices and oaths, as well as promises of blessing for keeping it and curses for breaking it. It is very similar to our idea of a contract, except that a covenant focuses on a relationship while a contract focuses on some task to be performed. In the ancient world, there was “no firmer guarantee of legal security, peace or personal loyalty than the covenant.” “Apart from blood ties the covenant was the way people of the ancient world formed wider relationships with each other.”TWOT, p. 129.

Now God has revealed himself in his Word as a God who makes covenants. He wants to have a relationship with people, strange as that may sound to us on occasion. But people are wary or even afraid of God. So he makes covenants. Since a covenant establishes a relationship, it’s a two-way deal. God has a part and people have a part. First, consider God’s part of the covenant.

God’s part of the covenant is to save us from something and do great things for us. In the Old Testament, the basis of the covenant was always the fact that God saved Israel from slavery in Egypt and then gave them the good land of Canaan to live in. So Joshua, when he called the people to a renewed commitment to the Lord and his covenant, rehearsed all the good things God had done for them. Notice how many times God says what he did for the people:

I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the River and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants.
Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I afflicted the Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought you out. . . . You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians.
I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived east of the Jordan. They fought against you, but I gave them into your hands. I destroyed them from before you, and you took possession of their land.
Then you crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho fought against you, . . . but I gave them into your hands. I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you-- also the two Amorite kings. You did not do it with your own sword and bow. So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.
Clearly, God did incredible things for them.

In the New Testament, the focus shifts from the Exodus to Christ. The Exodus and all the events of that time were a preparation for another great act of God, the deliverance from sin, death and the power of the devil. God became a man, Jesus; God gave his son for us; Jesus lived a perfect life for us; he died on the cross to pay for our sins; he rose from the dead so that we might be declared perfectly just; he ascended to heaven to be our mediator with God; finally, he gave the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our resurrection. Just as the Exodus was entirely the work of God, so was the work of Christ. We were mere bystanders, unable to comprehend what happened until God gave us the Holy Spirit. Now we understand the Scriptures which say,

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions . . . 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:1-10.

Christ lived and died for you and me. That is God’s part in the covenant.

What then is our part of the covenant? Our part is to fear, love and trust in God above all things. Our part is to pledge absolute confidence, trust and loyalty to Christ. Our part is to say, God made me, loves me and seeks my well-being. He is even jealous of me and cannot stand me loving and trusting something more than him. Therefore, I will seek to thank and praise, serve and obey him. I will let his Spirit guide me and recreate me in the image of my maker.

Notice that our part of the covenant is a response. We respond to God rather than he to us. God established the basis for our loyalty by giving Christ. We see that and respond with gratitude just as Joshua’s people saw God’s blessing and promised to reject idols and serve him alone. This means, therefore, that we must not think of this covenant as having God on our side. It’s not that he’s on our side, but that he chose us to be on his side. We must not imagine that we are in control of our destiny and that we simply need to harness God’s power to achieve our self-determined goal. Our problem is separation from God. Without Christ, we are unfit for his presence. In the covenant, God does an amazing thing: he accepts us calls us to be on his side.

All right, there’s a covenant, but why all the fuss? Because, as Dylan said, you have to serve somebody! And it’s good to serve the Lord!

The fact is, we’re not the autonomous beings we like to think we are. Even in the petty things of life, we follow others. There are people we admire and imitate. We all belong to some sub-culture and would never dare go outside certain limits of behaviour. For example, each of us has limits to the style of hair or clothing we would wear; we wouldn’t be caught dead in some! We don’t listen to just any music, or go to just any store or restaurant; we don’t live in just any neighbourhood, or drive just any kind of car. Face it, very few of us are trend-setters. We follow the crowd! Some other image controls and moulds you.

On the bigger scale, we either follow and imitate God or the devil in some disguise. What image will you become, your spouse, your children, your friends? Will you be renewed in the image of God, perfect and immortal? Or in some corrupted, mortal image of man or beast or demon? Who will set your moral compass and be the standard by which you judge right and wrong? Your creator or some corrupt, created thing? Whom will you serve? Although we are not truly capable of it, the question is one of exclusive loyalty to God.

Listen again to the Word. Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-- whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? . . . For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:15-16, 23.

Our culture doesn’t like the Bible’s frank language of service and obedience, of the choice between death and eternal life. But that is God’s Word! And he will have the final say when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to judge the living and the dead. He wants to give us eternal life and protect us from all error now. The devil, on the other hand, wants to see us all burn in hell with him. Only he doesn’t present things that way. He lies about pleasures and freedom from all restraints. He makes it seem as if God is our enemy, just as he did in the very beginning with Eve. But God is not our enemy. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.

Like Joshua and his people, therefore, we need to renew our covenant with God. Some of you may never have known that God made a covenant with you. You may feel little or no allegiance to Christ; you may feel that you receive no benefit from him. Now, then is the time to listen to his Word. He extends his covenant to you, because Christ died for all people. He is waiting for you to respond by putting your trust in Christ and pledging him your loyalty.

For others, you have always been a Christian, or at least for a long time. The issue for you may not be a change of loyalty, but an overhaul to some degree of your present allegiance and commitment to Christ. The world has a way of creeping in and making us compromise our principles and ideals. The world-changing idealism of youth often gives way to compromise and apathy in more mature years. While young we would have been ready to join in the march around the walls of Jericho or to burn our idols. But later we don’t have the time because we’re busy with the affairs of this life. The ‘gods’ that pull us away from the Lord might be a partner, a sport, a hobby, a lifestyle, money or wealth in general, pleasure in general. Those are the idols which we must throw away and renew our commitment to Christ.

How do we renew or ratify the covenant? God’s continually renews the covenant through his Word and Sacraments. Every time his word of forgiveness—the Gospel—is proclaimed, every time a person is baptized, every time he gives us Christ’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, he renews his covenant with us. It’s not that the covenant lapsed, but our memory, our trust and our loyalty do. So he reminds us and renews his pledge to us.

We renew the covenant by what we say back to God. When Joshua renewed the covenant, the people made a public confession of their faith in God and their intent to serve and obey him alone. We do much the same when we speak the Creed together in public worship after the sermon. Our Creed is more than a statement of what we believe. It is our promise of loyalty to the Triune God who is our Creator, Redeemer and Keeper. Our participation in the Lord’s Supper is also a confession of faith and promise of loyalty to God. We acknowledge that we receive Christ’s body and blood as God’s pledge of our salvation. We proclaim his death until he comes. We count on his death.

Joshua wrote down the covenant the people made with God. In the same way, we have God’s Word written down for all to see in the Bible. It is always there to remind us of all that God has done and why we should gladly serve him.

Joshua erected a large stone monument as a permanent witness to the covenant. In a similar way, we build churches and gather in them; we put up crosses and other signs of faith; we have a baptismal font at the entrance of the church to remind us of our Baptism. All these things—and others—serve as witnesses to the covenant.

My friends, you have to serve somebody. It’s good to serve the Lord. He made a covenant he made with each of you through the work of Jesus. Join with Joshua and all the saints of old in saying: “As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”