by Lim Kheng Guan (Deacon)

Joshua 24:15 is one of my favourite verse in the Bible. It is about whom we choose to serve. We must make this choice ourselves. There is NO middle ground. When we consciously make that choice, the obvious implication is we are to serve Him alone. How are we to do IWC Replica that? We must commit our lives fully to Him along with His causes. Unfortunately, sin has crept its way into the world, sadly, even among Christians as a result of this disobedience. We become Christians only in name. We need to evangelize to non Christians but many Christians have become unconsciously influenced by them. This has produced many types of confusions and wrong beliefs in people’s lives.

Sin has given Satan a legal right for him to work in the lives of sinful people. Scripture pictures him as the prince and god of this world (Jn 14:30;2 Cor 4:4), and the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God (Eph 2:2). He wants to be served in heaven by wanting to exalt Himself above God (Is 14:13). As a result, he was kicked out of heaven. God wants us to serve Him consciously, openly, and wholeheartedly (Jos 24:14; Jer 29:13; Deut 4:29). On the other hand, Satan is an accomplished opportunist and deceiver. He can be served both consciously and unconsciously. 

Many people are serving the devil while not even realising that, The way we choose to live our lives indicates clearly whom we are serving whether we are willing to admit it or not. We serve God by voluntarily following what He says in His Word. Many Christians do not realise that when they live for self by following false systems is tantamount to serving him. On the contrary, serving God implies dying to self so that Christ can live in us. To serve Satan is based on pleasing and glorifying our self which is REPUGNANT to God. This is what the world is teaching subtlely today. There are many articles, stories, news and writings in the world today which trumpet that it is more important to please ourselves. Even Christians become so gullible to believe and accept them. This is the teaching of individualism which should have no place in a Christian’s life. That is why we must do things together as a Christian family. We should not send a representative from each family to serve while the rest of the family continue to exist and function exactly like non Christians. We are in it together.

Some Christians even dare to boast, “My non Christian friends are better than the Christian in my church.” I assert that there is no non Christian who is better than a transformed Christian. Non Christians are sinful people. The blunt truth is as long as they do not acknowledge Christ as their Saviour, there is only one place they are going to. It sounds very arrogant but it is biblical. For Christians who believe that non Christians are better, they should be thinking, “Since I have so many non Christian friends, I have more opportunities to evangelise to them. Otherwise when I go to heaven, God will ask us the question “Since I allowed you to have so many non Christian friends, how many have you brought to Me? Why didn’t you try all out to bring them to me? Were you afraid that they would refuse to be your friends anymore?” Are we prepared to hear God ask that question?

When serving Satan, something else gets to take the place of God in our lives. In fact, it could be an object we’re idolized, it could be our “hard earned” money, it could be our job, it could be fame, it could be us becoming our own god, it could be false religions, and so forth. It is through that type of living, the enemy gets naive people to unwittingly fulfill his schemes. Let us think about rolexstyle.co.uk what Joshua said.

…But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15).

It is a monumental statement. All the tribes of Israel gathered at Schechem for a great meeting during his old age. It was to reaffirm the covenant the Lord has established with Abraham along with his descendants (Gen 17:9).

One of the things that Joshua did during that event was remind them of how God had been working powerfully within their midst. He had spared them from their enemies. He had granted them victory upon victory He had been faithful to them by keeping His covenant which is an everlasting one. 

The Jews made this critical decision in relation to what God had done for them along with what He had in store for them at that point. God’s ultimate purpose was to make Himself real in their lives in order that they placed their faith in Him alone. Unfortunately, the Israelites did not learn the lesson. Later, they had to pay a terrible price as a consequence of their constant rebellion and idolatry in God’s sight.

The lesson I learned from this verse is that we all have a choice to make regarding whom we want to serve. There is no neutral ground. Either way, we have to serve someone. We can either choose to live for self by following our carnal nature and false systems that appeal to our fallen nature which is the same as to serving Satan. Or we can choose to serve God by walking away from our old ways of lives including the ways of the world through His only Son Christ Jesus. One last thought, our Lord Jesus has our very best interests at heart. while the enemy’s ultimate purpose is to destroy us mentally, physically, and spiritually. Whom do we really want to serve?