As for me and my house we will serve the Lord – a sermon on Joshua 24:1-15 by Rev. Colin Pretorius.

What do you see as your main task as someone who belongs to God? What is each one of us called to do? Throughout God’s Word we are called to “fear” the Lord, aren’t we? Jesus calls on us to love the Lord our God with everything we have – with heart and soul and mind and strength. In the words of the song, we must surrender all to Jesus. Joshua puts it in a different way, when he talks about serving the Lord. “Serve the Lord” is the major theme of this passage – he refers to it not just once or twice, but seven times between verses 14 and 24. It’s clearly a priority for him, and he calls on the people of Israel to do just that – to serve the Lord. He does it by first delivering a bit of a history lesson, reminding God’s people of who it is that has brought them to this point. Then he reminds them of the choice before them – they have to choose who they’re going to serve. We’re going to look at the text under these two headings too, and as we do so we’ll also see at how it applies to us. So let’s look at

• The history lesson; and
• The call to serve.