Word of Salvation – Vol. 13 No.31 – August 1967

 

The Sanctification Of Joshua’s Home

 

Sermon by Rev. P. J. Berghouse on Joshua 24:15

Scripture Reading: Joshua 24:1-17

Psalter Hymnal: 95; 420:4; 211:8,9; 7; 127:1; 321:1

 

Beloved Congregation, Young People,

Where do you usually spend your happiest hours?  Would that be at home, or are you looking outside the family circle for your real happy moments?

Sometimes I wonder just how many people still seek their happiness at home.  Especially when we think of the statement that much of the delinquency today is due, in some way or another, to broken homes, we get the impression that there are many unhappy homes.

Of course we can mention different reasons for this: We can point to the Industrial revolution of last century, which was responsible for the large industrial cities.  Or we can point to the social, moral, and religious revolutions of our day.

All these have caused certain changes in the pattern of life.  Also in the pattern of the family life in our society.  Yes, even the best Christian home cannot remain unaffected by these changes.

It is obvious that a family in our “high-speed-world” must live differently from a family, say 100 or 200 years ago.

But when we see, how the sacred relationship of husband and wife is more and more degraded to a casual affair – not “till death does us part” – but “till the first deep-going quarrel does us part”.  And when we see how there is a widening gap between the parents and the children; and how the bond between children themselves is often weakened by strong individualism…. when we see all this, we begin to wonder what the future holds in store for the Christian home.

Let us be careful, however, lest we think that this is a problem of our day and age only.  The basic problem is as old as family life itself (as we find, for instance, that the relationship between Cain and Abel was already strained to breaking-point).  The underlying question really is: “Whom do you serve?” or “In whose service is your home engaged?”  Are you serving the God of the Bible?  Or are you serving the gods of yourself, and the gods of your environment?  For instance: Is our pay-envelope a means of satisfying our own desires?  Then we are serving ourselves.  Or do we see it as a gift of God, aimed to be used to HIS glory?  Perhaps we could frame the whole question in slightly different wording and ask: Are our homes sanctified in the service of the Lord, or secularised in self-service?

With this question Joshua confronted the people of Israel.  When the Promised Land was conquered, and Israel was ready to “settle down”, the last thing Joshua had to do before he died, was to renew the Covenant between God and Israel.  In doing this, he first gave a survey of God’s great works of redemption as seen in Israel’s history.  Then came a warning against the threatening dangers.  This was followed by the appeal in vss.14-15, with the “pace-setter” at the end: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Congregation, we in our own “high-speed-world” are faced with the same warning, the same challenge, and we are encouraged by the same pace-setter – as God’s Word speaks to us of…
The Sanctification of Joshua’s Home

1) Threatened

2) Yet safe.

1)  When we read these last words of Joshua, we notice immediately that he is speaking here of his whole family: “as for me and my house, WE…!”

He is not just speaking for himself but he includes his wife and his children.  Of course, this was quite normal in his time, but we would hesitate to apply this way of speaking to our times.  Yet, there is more to it than an old custom.  Actually, this is one of the basic principles of the Bible.  Namely, that the father is regarded as the covenant head of the family, with the mother created as a “help-meet over against him”.  We would say: in order to back him up.  In this way these two form a team.

But when Joshua speaks of “my house”, he also includes the children.  Father and mother form a team, but the whole family is a unit.

And here again, we must see this against the Covenant background.  For the children receive the Covenant promise through the father.  As God said unto Abraham, “For unto you is the promise, and to your children.”

So when Joshua speaks of himself and his house, he speaks of his family as a Covenant family.  And now we must realise that this family is one of the many, settling down in their new country, Palestine.  And when he says that they will serve the Lord, we must not think that he can say that, because his family would be set apart for special service.  Oh no!  His children were not “cut off from the world” in order to make sanctification more possible.  They had their friends, and their contacts.  They roamed the same market place as the others.  The same dangers, for which Joshua warned the others, were threatening his own family.

Now, the dangers which were threatening the sanctification of Joshua’s home were of two different kinds.

First, the dangers from WITHIN.

Israel is warned to put away the gods which their fathers served when they were beyond the river.  It is hard to say exactly which gods they were.  Reading verse 2, we get the impression that it refers way back to the time that Abraham was called out of the land of Ur of the Chaldees.  Although Abraham had left Ur, he apparently had taken some of the idol gods with him.  It had proved just a bit too much for him to make a clean break with the past.  Obviously he had not only taken some of these idols with him, he also had passed them on to the future generations.  For, after all these years they were still found among the people of Israel.  And unless Israel would put them away, these old idols and customs would prove a real hindrance in serving the True God.  Thus they formed a definite threat to the sanctification of the home life.

The second danger came from WITHOUT the family circle.  Joshua speaks also of “the gods of the Ammorites in whose land you live.”  Their heathen idols, their customs and habits, also formed a real threat to the family life.

There was, for instance, the danger that the younger generation would want to adopt some of these heathen ideas, while the older ones wanted to hold on to their traditions, and so there was the danger of a rift between parents and children.  This could lead to a split in the Covenant families, and so the sanctification of their homes was seriously threatened.

Brothers and sisters, young people, when we come to see this text against this background, then it is not hard to hear God’s message for our own life.

Time and again we too are faced with the question: Sanctification or Secularisation.  Also in our family life.  Yes, even in our Covenant homes!  There are the dangers from within AND without.  This does not mean, of course, that we must be old- fashioned.  But it does warn us to keep watch continually.  We must be on the alert all the time.

And we can do this by asking the question, Have we really set our mind on serving the Lord?  Also in the home… are we really “at work for the Lord”?  For instance, if the father fails in his task as Covenant head of the family, then he needs sanctification on that point.  Or what about the relationship between husband and wife (father and mother); or parents and children; or children among themselves?  Are there not many, many things which are a threat to the sanctification of our home, because they are hindering us in our serving the Lord?

Will you try this test when you come home after this service: When you enter your home, let your eye go over the different things you see, let your ear notice the different things that are said; and ask yourself, “Does this, and that and that…, do all these different things I see and hear, HELP or HINDER me to serve as a family?”  And then also take this question with you throughout the coming week, for there may be some things there that you have put away for the Sunday…!

And so the appeal comes, as Joshua spoke to Israel at that time, “Choose you NOW, this day, WHOM you will serve… those heathen idols old or new… or the Lord who has redeemed you.

When we see all these ‘dearest idols we have known’ it seems rather hard, does it not, to have our homes truly sanctified?  Perhaps you will even say: Oh, it is practically impossible!  The dangers from within, as well as those from without are too threatening.

But don’t forget, they were just as threatening for Joshua’s family, and yet Joshua adds: “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

2)  So we see that the sanctification of Joshua’s home is threatened and YET SAFE.

For how CAN Joshua say this?  How can he be so sure of it?  Joshua knows that the sanctification of his home is safe, for two reasons:

The first reason for his assurance lies in God’s mighty acts of Redemption as shown in the history of Israel.  Perhaps you noticed when reading through that Bible passage, how in vss.3-13 the expression “…and I…” appears no less than twelve times!  It is God who brought Abraham out… It is God who delivered Israel from Egypt… It is God who gave them their new country.  Not by their sword or by their bow, but by His own strength!

Well, says Joshua, if God has done so much in the past, He is also able to deliver my house from all these threatening dangers, and thus we will serve Him!

The second reason for Joshua to be so sure of the sanctification of his home lies in God’s everlasting faithfulness.  This may not be as obvious as the first reason, because we read over it rather easily.  Notice, however, that Joshua says: “we will serve the LORD”.  In Hebrew he uses here the Covenant Name of God, Jehovah, that is: The Faithful One.  He who said, “I will be a God to you AND to your seed.”  You see, it is THIS God whom Joshua pledges to serve!  The two reasons: God’s mighty works, and God’s faithfulness, these two, are enough for Joshua.  These two reasons form a firm basis on which Joshua founded his trust, that the sanctification of his home would indeed take place.

When Joshua considered his children, he had to shake his head.  For however saintly these children may have been, they were just like all other children.  They, too, had sinful hearts, and Joshua knew that his assurance could never come from their side.

When Joshua considered the circumstances, he had to shake his head again.  There were many threatening dangers on all sides.

But now that Joshua considered the LORD, yes, now he could be sure, for with the Lord there is grace, not only for justification, but also for sanctification.  The Lord will do it, and therefore Joshua said, We shall SERVE this God.

The word “serve” used here is not so much the word for worship, but rather for plain simple work.  Just like we work for someone else.  So Joshua is actually saying: We shall WORK for the Lord.  Notice now, how this work, this service, has four different aspects:

1. It is a service in unity. Joshua said, WE shall serve.  Thus we find that the family worked together as a unit.  All their inter-relationships were governed by this one aim: to work together for the Lord.
2. It is a service in obedience. First they asked (and this applies to us also): Lord, what do YOU want us to do?  Lord, how must we punish this child?  Lord, how can I make good again with my husband (or wife, or children)?  Lord, how do You want me to obey my parents, when they seem so unreasonable to me?  You see, first they asked God, and then they did serve Him in obedience.
3. It is a service in thankfulness. Joshua’s family was thankful for all that God had done so far.  And they were thankful for all that God had promised to do in the future.
4. It was a service in expectation. They knew that their work for God would be used by God, in the furtherance of His Kingdom.  And so they worked hard, eagerly looking forward to the coming of the Messiah and His Kingdom.

In this fourfold way Joshua and his family would work for the Lord.  And as their mind became more and more set on THIS kind of service, their home became more and more sanctified.

Thus we discover that however difficult the sanctification of our home life may seem, it IS possible, because it is based in GOD!  Whenever we look at our own strength and the dangers that threaten us from all sides, we begin to despair.  But now our assurance is founded in the grace of God.

And so God comes to us, in our modern “high-speed-world”, because we too need the same warning and the same challenge.  But we also need this “pace-setter”: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

However, God not only comes to us through Joshua in the Old Testament.  He comes to us through the Joshua of the New Testament, namely Jesus Christ.  Of Him we read in 1Cor.1:30, that HE was made sanctification unto us by God.  And He is the One, who wrought the great work of Salvation and Redemption through His death on the Cross.  When He poured out His blood He washed our souls.  Yes, but He also washed our Home life and thus He cleansed our family life and made it fit for His service.

Therefore HE is the One (like Joshua of old) who asks us today: “Choose you, NOW, this day, whom you shall serve…!  These dangerous idols or your delivering God?”

But remember now, that He is also the One who says: “As for Me and My House we will serve the Lord”.  Do you belong to His House, that is, to that large family of believers?

If you have put all your trust in His work of Redemption and in His promise, just like Joshua did, then you do belong to His family.  Then you do belong to that family of which Jesus says: We SHALL SERVE the Lord.

And you see, when Jesus says that, there is no power in the world, no danger so threatening, or He has overcome it!

The Sanctification of His large family is guaranteed by God Himself!

Amen.