EHP Day 28-Commitment to God and His Word
Joshua 23:14 & 24:24-26
“And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed.”
The people said to Joshua, “The LORD our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone and set it up there under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.
The bookends of Joshua’s life signal the key to Joshua’s success in all the years that spanned between. As a young attendant to Moses, Joshua witnessed how weighty the words of God, inscribed in stone tablets, were to Moses. How central they were to be to the life and prosperity of God’s people. When Moses died, God assured Joshua success if “this book of the Law” did not depart from his mouth. If he would “meditate on it day and night.” Then “he would have success and then he would make his way prosperous.
Now, as life this side of glory ebbs, Joshua resolutely restates the utter reliability, and the ongoing significance of the statutes, rules, and words in the Book of the Law of God. To forsake, or even forget, God’s word was to invite both personal and national disaster. Once more, before drawing his last breath, Joshua wanted to hear Israel say, “We will listen to God’s voice; we will obey His word.”
N.T. Wright declared,
“The Bible is the book of my life. It’s the book I live with, the book I live by, the book I want to die by.”
So it was with Joshua. With you? It was God’s presence and God’s Word that brought great confidence, courage, capacity for leadership, and an accomplishment of the will of God. Know God. Read the Word. Take time every day to make a portion of it your daily compass.
Journal Notes