Saturday, September 12, 2015
Joshua 24:14 Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord!
THE FEAR OF THE LORD
Sadly, Christians can get lazy. We can begin to "go through the motions" during worship, and start serving our own sinful heart with our day-to-day choices. We can begin to think of God's grace as something common, and therefore not very valuable.
Here Joshua tells his fellow Israelites FEAR THE LORD. Joshua says SERVE HIM IN SINCERITY AND TRUTH. Yahweh (Jehovah) isn't any man's hobby, and His house isn't a social club.
When I lived in Washington State we used to go rock climbing at a place called "Exit 38." One of the routes we climbed started in a cave of sorts. There were two walls, and wedged up between them was a massive boulder about the size of a trailer house.
It wasn't going anywhere, but there it was hanging above your head. And when you stood there and looked up at it for the first time it was unsettling.
That's the feeling we ought to get when we approach the LORD. He's huge. He's powerful. He's holy. We're little tiny sinners who have done nothing but break His laws since the day we were born. He ought to crush us.
But God revealed His heart to us. He's shown us that He loves us, and that through Christ's blood He has purified us. He has taken our sins away. The huge weight of His anger isn't going to come crashing down on those who trust in Jesus. We're safe.
And that fact is what calls us to serve Him in sincerity and truth. From the heart. And when we fail to serve Him as we should, His love endures. When we bring our sins to Him in prayer, with genuine sorrow over what we've done, we can know that in Christ they are washed away.
