We will serve the LORD
Sermon 25 August 2024
By Rev Prince Devanandan
We will serve the LORD
Joshua 24:1-2 & 14-18
John 6:56-69
Our sentence today is, “… as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
Let me ask a question. Have you ever changed your God?
The people of Israel changed their gods many times. Look at the reading from the Book of Joshua today. Their ancestors worshipped the gods beyond the River Euphrates. Then they worshipped the gods of Egypt. And then the gods of the Amorites in whose land they dwell. This happened over and over in Israel. Baal was one of the gods they served.
Joshua challenged the Israelites saying, “Long ago your ancestors Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
Joshua had already made the decision to serve the Lord God who brought them out of Egypt. But for the rest of Israel, Joshua gave a choice. After Joshua’s challenge, the people declared “we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”
A similar choice is set before the disciples of Jesus in John 6. They had to decide whether to believe in the One whose words are Spirit and Life. Last week we focussed on Jesus’s words of eating his flesh and drinking his blood for him to dwell in the people and for the people to dwell in him.
Unlike the challenge by Joshua, here it is not so evident and logical to change to follow the One God sent. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.
Have you ever changed your God, specifically in difficult situations?
It is not worshipping a different deity now from what a person once worshipped. This happened in the past. My maternal grandparents who were Hindus, changed their gods and became Christians. When the missionaries evangelised, many people changed their gods. This is one form of changing of gods. There are many other ways of changing gods. At times unintentionally, we change our gods.
I wish to highlight two aspects of changing gods.
First, people intentionally change their gods for various reasons. It is not necessarily the changing of a deity. Instead, something else takes the place of God. In Aotearoa, every census shows people changing their God. More people mark they are non-religious. They choose to believe many other things primarily money becomes a god. People think that will solve all their lives’ problems. They want a god within their reach.
Secondly, change of gods becomes an imperative for good reasons. Jimmy Carter, one of the loved President of US made a painful decision in the year 2000 to change god. He broke his ties with Southern Baptist Convention because they insisted on the subservience of women to men and barred women from serving as deacons, pastors, and chaplains in the military service. After belonging to this denomination for six decades it was very hard. But to serve the Lord God, he changed from the god of the Southern Baptists.
God calls people back to the covenant in which God is faithful and all those other gods are not. There’s a distinction even made for the first time between the Twelve and the larger group of Jesus’ disciples. The disciples rightfully ask, who can accept Jesus’s words as truth?
Jesus says, it is the Spirit that is the relationship between them; it is the Spirit that gives life where the flesh is useless.
Going back to the question, have you ever changed your God, it is relevant to ask why people change their gods. People see the alternate gods in the form of what they can touch and feel and opt to serve those gods.
The challenge for us is, which God do we serve. Look at the conversation between Jesus and Peter. Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Dale Bruner translates Peter’s declarative question as “Lord, the alternatives are not good.”
We will serve the Lord our God provided only if we know that the alternatives to God are not good. Let not any other gods to take the place we give to God.
As for us, our household of All Saints, we will serve the LORD God in Christ Jesus.