60 Seconds – Joshua’s Resolution

Dr. G. Campbell Morgan confessed, “My father came into our house soon after I was married and looked around. We showed him every room, and, then, in his rough way, said to me: ‘Yes, it is very nice; but nobody will know, walking through here, whether you belong to God or to the devil.’ I went through and looked at the rooms again, and I thought: He is quite right. So we made up our mind, straightway, that there should be no room in our house, henceforth, that had not some message, by picture or wall text, to tell that we served the King.”

In Joshua 24:15, we have Joshua’s resolution, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…but for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” The Hebrew word bachar, “to choose,” speaks of a deliberate intentional choice, a choice that has been the result of thought, plan, or desire. “Serve” (Hebrew ava ) includes the ideas of worship, follow, and do the will of God.

J. Oswald Sanders, in his book A Spiritual Clinic, wrote of the striking contrast between the choice of two families: “The father of Jonathan Edwards was a minister, and his mother was the daughter of a clergyman. Among their descendants were fourteen presidents of colleges, more than one hundred lawyers, thirty judges, sixty physicians, more than a hundred clergymen, missionaries and theology professors, and about sixty authors. There is scarcely any great American industry that has not had one of his family among its chief promoters. Such is the product of one American Christian family, reared under the most favorable conditions. The contrast is presented in the Jukes family, which could not be made to study, and would not work, and is said to have cost the state of New York a million dollars. Their entire record is one of pauperism and crime, insanity and imbecility. Among their twelve hundred known descendants, three hundred and ten were professional paupers, four hundred and forty were physically wrecked by their own wickedness, sixty were habitual thieves, one hundred and thirty were convicted criminals, fifty-five were victims of impurity, only twenty learned a trade (and ten of these learned it from a state prison), and this notorious family produced seven murderers.”

Take note of the Rabbinic saying, “He who prays within his house surrounds it with a wall that is stronger than iron.”