“Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.”
The implications of this verse are chilling. Joshua is giving his farewell to the nation of Israel. They have entered into the Promised Land, conquered its armies, and occupied its cities. The future looks bright for Israel—she finally has her own land, her own place to grow as a nation, and to live out her very unique faith before the eyes of the surrounding pagan, lost world. But it seems that she has carried with her a dark habit from her distant past—idolatry. The gods that their forefathers served beyond the River were those of the Mesopotamians, from whom the father of Judaism, Abraham, came. The gods that their fathers served in Egypt were the idols of the nation that they had been enslaved to for over 400 years, and had been miraculously delivered from just 40 years earlier. The reason the verse is chilling is because this people, God’s redeemed, covenant people, still had such idols with them as they entered the land of Promise! The Hebrews had secretly clung to the worship of idols from Mesopotamia for as much as 600 years, and the worship of Egyptian idols for over 400 years. An idol is something—anything—that people turn to in obedience and deference with the expectation of having their most cherished hopes and needs met. It seems that the Lord was not fully trusted by the nation, throughout its entire history, and so other gods (little “g” gods) were packed along the cultural suitcases on the trip to and from Egypt.
What is particularly alarming about such idolatry in God’s chosen people is that the way it must have been, had to have been, practiced and preserved was through the intimate lines of family connections and marriage, through your fathers, Joshua said. This is the reason for the Bible’s pervasive concern that children be raised in households of genuine faith, and marriages be entered into only by those of the same faith. It wasn’t the mixing of diverse bloodlines that concerned the Lord, as in cross-racial marriages—it was the ultimate degradation of the one true religion with the idolatry of another. And so, the problem that Joshua put his finger on was that while God had miraculously delivered the nation from their Egyptian slave masters, many in the nation had chosen to remain enslaved to Egyptian idols—and they secretly practiced their enslavement through the countless family decisions and values that were made and communicated to their children down through the generations.
Today, such little-g idolatry may exist even in Christian families where the decisions of life (schooling, finances, marriage, time-management, housing, etc.) are made according to the standards and beliefs of our surrounding culture, without consideration and obedience to the Word of God concerning such matters. For idols aren’t funny looking statues that sit on our mantles, and they aren’t cars, houses, boats, and vacations—they are the ideas and demands that we create and serve in order to gain the things we want in life, particularly the things that we are unwilling to trust the Lord to provide. And while such idols do often seem to provide such perishable items and soon-to-be-forgotten experiences, no idol provides what you and your children desperately need—forgiveness for your sins and reconciliation with God.
downtownpastor