Day 193—Choose This Day: Joshua's Farewell, Part Two
A Covenant Ceremony at Shechem
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The written portion gives an overview, with verses broken down into smaller bites, and journaling/prayer prompts for reflection. In the podcast, Steve Traylor reflects on today’s passage with Scripture reading, a deeper pastoral teaching, and prayer (about 15 minutes). Perfect for morning coffee, commutes, or when your eyes need a rest.
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Why did God command total destruction—and what does that mean for us? Learn more at: The Devoted Thing: What Cherem Means
Joshua 24:1–28
Read this one carefully, from the beginning.
It is tempting to skim ahead to verse 15—to the line everyone knows—and treat the verses before it as preamble. But the verses before it are the reason the line means anything. Before Joshua says choose this day, he spends thirteen verses making sure the people know exactly what they are choosing. That sequence is not accidental. It is the shape of every real covenant: first the record of what God has done, then the weight of what that requires.
Joshua gathers all Israel to Shechem—every tribe, every elder, every judge, every officer. This is not a speech. It is an assembly. At Shechem—the place between Ebal and Gerizim, where Joshua had once read the whole law to Israel, where Abraham first received the promise of the land, where Jacob buried his household’s foreign gods. Shechem is the place where Israel has met God’s word again and again. They know this ground.
And then Joshua speaks—not in his own voice, but in God’s. “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel.” What follows is not a sermon. It is a covenant preamble: a recitation of everything God has done from Terah in Mesopotamia to this moment standing on the land. I took. I led. I gave. I sent. I brought you out. I destroyed. I gave you the land. Again and again in verses 2–13, God is the actor. The history is not rehearsed to flatter Israel. It is rehearsed to establish what is true—and to place the coming choice in the only context where it makes honest sense.
Notice how briefly God says it in verse 7: “You lived in the wilderness a long time.” Forty years reduced to eight words. Forty years of funerals, disappointments, lessons, failures, and daily provision. God does not erase those years from the story. He includes them. The wilderness was not a detour around His faithfulness; it was one of the places where His faithfulness was displayed.
This is what makes verse 15 not a motivational challenge but a covenant demand. Joshua does not say it would be nice if you served the LORD. He says: here is what God has done; here is what the nations around you worship; here is what your own ancestors worshipped before God called them; now choose—not someday, but this day. And then he states his own position without hedging: as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
But the scene does not end at verse 15. The people answer. Joshua challenges the answer. The people answer again. The covenant is written. A stone is set up under the oak at the sanctuary. “This stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD that he spoke to us.” The stone witnesses. The covenant stands.
Today we see that choosing to serve the LORD is not a single emotional moment—it is a decision made in the full light of what God has done, entered into solemnly, and witnessed by more than the one who makes it.
1. History Rehearsed
Joshua 24:1–13
Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before God. 2 Joshua said to all the people, “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, ‘Your fathers lived of old time beyond the River, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor. They served other gods. 3 I took your father Abraham from beyond the River, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his offspring,[a] and gave him Isaac. 4 I gave to Isaac Jacob and Esau: and I gave to Esau Mount Seir, to possess it. Jacob and his children went down into Egypt.
5 “‘I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt, according to that which I did among them: and afterward I brought you out. 6 I brought your fathers out of Egypt: and you came to the sea. The Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and with horsemen to the Red Sea. 7 When they cried out to Yahweh, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and brought the sea on them, and covered them; and your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. You lived in the wilderness many days.
8 “‘I brought you into the land of the Amorites, that lived beyond the Jordan. They fought with you, and I gave them into your hand. You possessed their land, and I destroyed them from before you. 9 Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel. He sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you, 10 but I would not listen to Balaam; therefore he blessed you still. So I delivered you out of his hand.
11 “‘You went over the Jordan, and came to Jericho. The men of Jericho fought against you, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; and I delivered them into your hand. 12 I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; not with your sword, nor with your bow. 13 I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities which you didn’t build, and you live in them. You eat of vineyards and olive groves which you didn’t plant.’
Again and again God says I before Joshua issues a single command.
This matters more than it might appear. The covenant at Shechem does not begin with what Israel must do. It begins with what God has already done—and with the clear-eyed acknowledgment of where Israel’s story actually started: their fathers served other gods. Not ancient, pure monotheists who strayed. People who began in idolatry and were drawn out of it by grace. The election was not earned. The exodus was not deserved. The land was not won by their military strength. Verse 12 says it plainly: the hornet drove out the kings—not by your sword or by your bow. And verse 13 closes the loop: you live in cities you did not build, you eat from vineyards you did not plant.
The foundation of every covenant demand God makes is the grace He has already given.
Even the demand to choose comes wrapped in a history of divine faithfulness.
This is the shape of biblical covenant: grace before law, gift before command, I gave you before now choose. Israel cannot stand before God as though the choice is a neutral one—as though serving the LORD and serving other gods are simply two options of equal cost. Everything they have, everything they are, every step of ground under their feet arrived by grace. The choice is not neutral. It never is.
Journaling/Prayer: If God recited His faithfulness to you—the specific things He has done in your life, the deliverances and the provisions and the moments of grace you received without deserving—what would that list include?
You may not be able to name a list right now. You may be too exhausted, or too much in the middle of something hard, to feel any clarity about God’s goodness to you. Sometimes faithfulness is remembered before it is felt. Start with one thing. Just one. Even a small thing, if that’s all you can hold. The covenant always begins with what has already been given.
2. The Choice Named
Joshua 24:14–18
14 “Now therefore fear Yahweh, and serve him in sincerity and in truth. Put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, in Egypt; and serve Yahweh. 15 If it seems evil to you to serve Yahweh, choose today whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh.”
16 The people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake Yahweh, to serve other gods; 17 for it is Yahweh our God who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way in which we went, and among all the peoples through the middle of whom we passed. 18 Yahweh drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve Yahweh; for he is our God.”
Notice what Joshua does not do in verse 15. He does not manipulate. He does not say the only real option is to serve the LORD. He says: if you find it too costly to serve the LORD, then choose one of the alternatives—and names them plainly. The gods your ancestors served. The gods of the land you now occupy. These are real options. Joshua does not pretend they are not.
What he does do is plant his own flag without ambiguity: as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. Not I encourage you to serve the LORD. Not I think the LORD is probably the best choice. A declaration. A household covenant. Made in public, before witnesses, with no hedge.
The people respond immediately and correctly—and they ground their answer in the right place. Not in their own resolve. Not in their heritage. In what God has done. “For it is the LORD our God who brought us up.” They are repeating back the history Joshua just recited. They heard it. They received it as the reason for the answer.
The response of faith is always rooted in what God has done, not in what we intend to do.
For those who struggle to make declarations—who distrust their own commitments because they have watched themselves fail them—this is worth pausing over. The people do not respond by saying we are strong enough to serve the LORD. They say God is the one who did these things, and therefore we will serve Him. The orientation is outward, not inward. The confidence rests on His character, not on theirs.
Journaling/Prayer: Is your sense of whether you can follow God based mostly on your own track record—or on what God has shown Himself to be?
It is easy to lose confidence when you look inward. Most of us have track records we would rather not review. The invitation here is to look the other direction—not at what you have managed to sustain, but at what God has consistently done. The history goes before the choice. Let it.
3. The Challenge Heard
Joshua 24:19–24
19 Joshua said to the people, “You can’t serve Yahweh, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your disobedience nor your sins. 20 If you forsake Yahweh, and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you evil, and consume you, after he has done you good.”
21 The people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve Yahweh.” 22 Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen Yahweh yourselves, to serve him.”
They said, “We are witnesses.”
23 “Now therefore put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to Yahweh, the God of Israel.”
24 The people said to Joshua, “We will serve Yahweh our God, and we will listen to his voice.”
Verse 19 is the most startling sentence in this chapter.
The people have just said we will serve the LORD—and Joshua’s response is: you cannot. Not you should not. Not it will be hard. You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God.
This is not reverse psychology. This is not Joshua being cynical about Israel. This is the most honest pastoral word in the entire book—spoken by a dying man who has led this people for decades and knows exactly what they are capable of, which is also exactly what they are not capable of sustaining on their own.
God’s holiness is a comfort to the repentant, but it is never less than a demand, because it requires from us what we cannot produce ourselves.
But Joshua’s concern is even more specific than inability. The people have answered too quickly—with confidence, with eagerness, without pausing to consider what they are actually promising. Joshua is not questioning God’s ability to keep His people. He is questioning whether the people have understood the seriousness of the covenant they are so eagerly affirming. His words are not a counsel of despair but an exposure of presumption: Do you understand what you are saying?
A holy God is not a God who grades on a curve. A jealous God is not a God who overlooks divided loyalties. Joshua does not say these things to discourage the people—he says them so that the choice is made with open eyes. You are not committing to something easy. You are not committing to someone lenient. You are pledging yourself to a God whose standard is His own character, and that standard does not bend.
And yet—the people say no, but we will serve the LORD. Joshua does not reject the answer. He receives it. He makes them witnesses against themselves. He presses the practical implication: put away the foreign gods that are among you. He is saying: if you mean it, it must reach into what you have already kept hidden.
The people affirm a fourth time: the LORD our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.
The repetition is not redundancy. It is the shape of a covenant. Each affirmation is tested, probed, and re-offered—and each time the people answer. Joshua is not making it easy. He is making it real.
Journaling/Prayer: Has the weight of God’s holiness ever felt like an obstacle to coming to Him—as if you don’t belong, or can’t manage the standard He requires?
That feeling is not a lie. God’s holiness is real, and what it requires of us is beyond us. But the New Testament names what Joshua could only point toward: Jesus has kept the covenant we cannot keep (Hebrews 4:14–16). We come to a holy God not in our own sufficiency but through a Mediator whose obedience does not waver. “You cannot serve the LORD”—on your own, that is true. In Christ, God has provided what we cannot produce.
4. The Covenant Sealed
Joshua 24:25–28
25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. 26 Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God; and he took a great stone, and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of Yahweh. 27 Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all Yahweh’s words which he spoke to us. It shall be therefore a witness against you, lest you deny your God.” 28 So Joshua sent the people away, each to his own inheritance.
The covenant is written. Into the Book of the Law of God—alongside Moses’s words, alongside the statutes that have governed Israel since Sinai. This is not a personal decision recorded in private. This is a national covenant entered into the permanent record.
And then a stone. A large stone. Set under the terebinth at the sanctuary.
Joshua does not tell the people to remember what they promised. He tells the stone to remember. “This stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD.” The earth is a witness. The covenant is not just between Israel and God—it is declared in a place, set in the ground, visible to anyone who passes. The oak and the stone at Shechem now carry what the people said.
But notice what else the stone witnessed. Joshua says it heard all the words of the LORD—not only the people’s promises, but God’s words. The same covenant that held Israel accountable also preserved the record of God’s faithfulness. The witness stood for both. That matters: the stone does not only remember what you failed to keep. It remembers what God said first.
What we covenant before God, we covenant before more witnesses than we know.
The people are then sent away—each man to his inheritance. The assembly is complete. The ceremony is over. What happened here will either be honored or betrayed, and either way the stone stands.
For some people, choosing this day does not look dramatic. It looks like another day of trusting God in a hospital room, another day of praying when prayer feels difficult, another day of refusing to walk away even when you do not understand what He is doing. That is what Joshua’s call reaches—not heroic spirituality, but ordinary perseverance. The covenant holds the ordinary days too.
This is how the book of Joshua closes its main narrative: not with a military triumph, not with a monument to Joshua, but with a covenant ceremony and a witness stone. The land is in hand. The promises have been kept (21:45). And now the question that will define everything that follows is not what will God do? but will Israel keep what they have just sworn?
The answer to that question is the book of Judges—and the answer is tragic. But for today, stand in the valley at Shechem and let the weight of this moment settle. A dying man who has spent his life serving God has just gathered everyone who remains and asked them to choose. He has not softened the cost. He has not promised it will be easy. He has made his own position clear, sealed the people’s decision in stone, and sent them to their homes.
Journaling/Prayer: Is there a commitment you have made to God—in prayer, at a moment of clarity, in a crisis—that has faded because no one was holding you to it?
The stone at Shechem was there for the moments when memory fades. What would it mean today to return to what you have already covenanted—not with renewed self-confidence, but with honest acknowledgment that the commitment was made, and a request for grace to live into it?
Summary
Joshua 24 is one of the most complete scenes in all of Scripture. Everything is here: the history of grace that grounds the demand; the honest naming of alternatives; the probing of the answer; the writing of the covenant; the stone as permanent witness.
What does not appear here is sentimentality. Joshua does not close with an inspiring charge and a song. He closes by making the people witnesses against themselves and setting a stone under a tree to outlast them. This is covenant—not a feeling, not a moment, but a binding agreement entered into knowingly, recorded permanently, and witnessed by more than the one who makes it.
Many interpreters across church history have seen in this scene an echo of what the New Testament makes explicit: that we, too, enter a covenant not in our own strength but through a Mediator. Jesus has kept the terms we cannot keep. He is the one before whom every confession of we will serve the LORD is finally heard—and in Him, accepted. The holiness that Joshua named as the reason we cannot serve God on our own terms is the same holiness that Christ has satisfied on our behalf.
Choose this day. Not because you are strong enough to sustain the choice—but because He has done what you could not, and you are not choosing alone.
Action / Attitude for Today
If you have made commitments to God you have quietly let slide—decisions made in a moment of clarity that got buried under exhaustion, discouragement, or the accumulation of ordinary days—today is a day to return to them. Not in self-condemnation. Not with fresh pledges you cannot keep. Just honestly: I said this once. I meant it. I am still meant for it.
If you are too depleted right now to think about commitment at all—if the distance between where you are and where you intended to be feels too great to traverse—receive what the history rehearsal was for. Before Joshua issued any demand, he recited what God had done. Start there. Not with what you have managed to sustain, but with one thing God has given that you did not earn. Let that be the ground under your feet before anything else.
If you are somewhere in between—able to hear the call but uncertain about the cost—listen to what Joshua actually said: you cannot serve the LORD on your own terms. That is not a reason to give up. It is the most freeing sentence in the passage, because it means the responsibility for sustaining the covenant does not rest only on you. It rests on a God who has been faithful from Terah’s household to this morning.
Say this prayer, as much of it as is true for you today: “Lord, I want to say we will serve the LORD—and I am also aware of how many times I have meant it and then drifted. I’m not coming to You with fresh resolve. I’m coming with the history of what You have done, and with honesty about what I cannot sustain on my own. Be my Mediator. Let Your faithfulness hold what mine cannot. I choose You today—not because I am strong enough, but because You have already done what strength could not. Amen.”
The choice is real. The cost is honest. And the God you are choosing has already supplied what covenant faithfulness requires.
The Bible for the Broken is published by Aurion Press LLC. © Aurion Press LLC. All rights reserved.