By Spencer D Gear PhD
Does this verse mean choice for or against God or gods?
‘And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’ (Joshua 24:15 ESV).
A. When choose does not mean choice
I was sitting in the congregation of North Pine Presbyterian Church on Sunday, 11 September 2016, when the minister, Rev Paul Cornford, preached on Joshua 24. The title of his message was âThe Covenant at Shechemâ. When he got to Joshua 24:15, he stated, ââChoose this dayâ is a choice between false godsâŠ. It is not a case of coming to the best Godâ.[1]
So âchoose this day whom you will serveâ does not mean a choice as to which god/God you will choose to worship. It only applies to choosing among false gods, according to Rev Cornford. Below we will check to examine whether this preacher accurately engaged in correct exegesis of this Scripture in context.
After the service, I challenged the preacher over his failure to exegete the verse in context. He engaged in eisegesis, imposing his Calvinistic meaning on the text.
What is exegesis? âExegesis is the process of interpreting a text of Scriptureâ (Grudem 1994:109). The problem any interpreter of the Bible faces is that âeveryone who interprets a passage of the Bible stands in a present time while he examines a document that comes from a past time. He must discover what each statement meant to the original speaker or writer and to the original hearers or readers, in their own present timeâ (Mickelsen 1963:55). This is the process of exegesis. It is critical for the understanding of any text written in the past.
What is eisegesis? See Exegesis v. Eisegesis. Here is a quote from Dr. James Whiteâs forth-coming book âPulpit Crimesâ on eisegesis, which indicates that it means:
The reading into a text, in this case, an ancient text of the Bible, of a meaning that is not supported by the grammar, syntax, lexical meanings, and over-all context, of the original. It is the opposite of exegesis, where you read out of the text its original meaning by careful attention to the same things, grammar, syntax, the lexical meanings of the words used by the author (as they were used in his day and in his area), and the over-all context of the document. As common as it is, it should be something the Christian minister finds abhorrent, for when you stop and think about it, eisegesis muffles the voice of God. If the text of Scripture is in fact God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16) and if God speaks in the entirety of the Bible (Matt. 22:31) then eisegesis would involve silencing that divine voice and replacing it with the thoughts, intents, and most often, traditions, of the one doing the interpretation. In fact, in my experience, eisegetical mishandling of the inspired text is the single most common source of heresy, division, disunity, and a lack of clarity in the proclamation of the gospel. The man of God is commended when he handles Godâs truth aright (2 Tim. 2:15), and it should be his highest honor to be privileged to do so. Exegesis, then, apart from being a skill honed over years of practice, is an absolutely necessary means of honoring the Lord a minister claims to serve. For some today, exegesis and all the attendant study that goes into it robs one of the Spirit. The fact is, there is no greater spiritual service the minister can render to the Lord and to the flock entrusted to his care than to allow Godâs voice to speak with the clarity that only sound exegetical practice can provide (in Reformation Theology, emphasis added).
James White is a Calvinist and among the chief proponents of eisegesis are Calvinists who impose their Reformed Calvinistic meaning on a text with doctrinaire repetition.
If one wants to convey this message to a contemporary audience, the speaker engages in the discipline of exposition, but exegesis precedes exposition: âHe must see what meaning these statements had in the past, but he must also show what is their meaning for himself and for those to whom he conveys these ideasâ (Mickelsen 1963:55).
B. Calvinism and no choice in choosing God
(courtesy PinsDaddy)
To understand why Rev. Cornford takes this line, it is consistent with his 5-point Calvinist theology. You used to be able to listen to his sermons on TULIP Calvinism on the churchâs website [Note: The sermons are no longer available on the website. Rev Cornford committed adultery and has been defrocked from the Presbyterian Church of Australia.]
However, this article is not designed to respond to the following teaching of Calvinism, but to examine Joshua 24:15 in context. What does it teach regarding a personâs ability or inability to choose to serve God?
What does Calvinism believe about choice in salvation and/or serving God? These are only a few examples from leading Calvinists:
âIn order for one who is dead to the things of God to come alive to God, something must be done to him and for him. Dead men cannot make themselves come aliveâ (Sproul 1986:114). Norman Geisler describes this comment as an example of âthe extreme Calvinistsâ viewâ (Geisler 1999:57).
I have responded to the extreme Calvinistic position in:
Loraine Boettner, a leading Calvinist of the past, could not state the Calvinistic position clearer:
Man is a free agent but he cannot originate the love of God in his heart. His will is free in the sense that it is not controlled by any force outside of himself. As the bird with a broken wing is âfreeâ to fly but not able, so the natural man is free to come to God but not able. How can he repent of his sin when he loves it? How can he come to God when he hates Him?…
We read that that âThe natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned,â I Cor. 2:14. We are at a loss to understand how any one can take a plain common sense view of this passage of Scripture and yet contend for the doctrine of human abilityâ (Boettner 1932:62, 63).
These articles of mine cover some of this opposition to âwhosoever will may comeâ (John 3:16).
Do Arminians believe in election and total depravity?
Does regeneration precede faith?
In this one paragraph, John Calvin emphasised double-predestination twice:
âThe predestination by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal deathââŠ.
âEach has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to deathâ (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.21.5, emphasis added).
My replies to this view are in,
Did John Calvin believe in double predestination?
Godâs foreknowledge and predestination/election to salvation
Based on this kind of Calvinistic theology, there could be no way that any human being would be able to choose to follow God. Thatâs because of Calvinismâs bias against it with its unusual understandings of,
- The meaning of âdead in trespasses and sinâ;
- Regeneration precedes faith;
- Total depravity;
- Unbelievers are all predestined to damnation (not all Calvinists accept this view that is endorsed by John Calvin himself).
C. What does Joshua 24:15 teach?
Letâs develop a textual outline of Joshua 24:14-28 so that we obtain some context. The heading for this section in the English Standard Version is âChoose Whom You Will Serveâ. When I prepare to preach an expository sermon (which is my normal approach to preaching from any biblical section), I begin by preparing a textual outline,
1. Textual outline: Joshua 24:14-28
This is based on the ESV text:
1. (A command to the Israelites) fear the Lord and serve him (v. 14);
2. (Command to) put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River (v. 14);
3. (Command to) serve the Lord (v. 14);
4. If it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve (v 15)
5. Choose the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites (v 15);
6. But as for me [i.e. Joshua] and my house, we will serve the Lord (v 15).
7. The peopleâs answer was: âFar be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other godsâ (v 16);
8. The Lord our God brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of slavery, and who performed the great signs in our sight and preserved us (v 17);
9. The Lord drove out all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God (v. 18);
10. Joshua said: You are not able to serve the Lord for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins (v. 19).
11. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good (v. 20);
12. The people said to Joshua, âNo, we will serve the Lordâ (v. 21).
13. Joshua said: âYou are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve himâ. The Israelites agreed: âWe are witnessesâ (v. 22).
14. Joshua said: âPut away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israelâ (v. 23);
15. The people said to Joshua: âThe Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obeyâ (v. 24);
16. Joshua made a covenant with the Israelite people that day at Shechem to put in place statutes and rules (v. 25);
17. Joshua wrote words in the Book of the Law of God and set it up with a stone (v. 26);
18. Joshua said to all the people that the stone would be a witness against us/you lest you deal falsely with your God (v. 27).
19. Joshua sent the people away to their own inheritance (v.28).
2. Homiletical outline: Joshua 24:14-28
This is designed to summarise what the text is saying and grab the attention of the congregation or readers with relevant information that comes directly out of the text. This is the outline for a sermon that I will preach (not prepared yet) on this text. It may take 2 sermons of 30 minutes each to cover this material.
a. God does not deceive you: A command means you can do it (v. 14)
- Fear the Lord
- Serve him
- Put away the other gods.
God would not be commanding you to do it if you were incapable of acting on the instruction.
b. Honest! You can choose today which God or gods you will serve (v. 15)
- The choice is yours: Choose gods or THE GOD
c. They chose the Lord (vv. 15-18)
d. You are not able to serve the Lord (v 19)
- Is this a contradiction? (You can choose the Lord, v. 15; you canât serve the Lord, v. 19? You have chosen the Lord, v. 22)
- Why this inability? (v. 19)
- Why it happens â when you forsake the Lord (v. 20)
e. We will serve the Lord (v. 21)
f. KEY VERSE FOR INTERPRETATION: You have chosen the Lord (v. 22)
g. You can put away the foreign gods and serve the Lord (vv. 23-24)
h. Signing the covenant to serve the Lord (vv. 25-28)
D. Choosing God or gods
(El, the Canaanite creator god, courtesy wikimedia.commons)
What does this outline demonstrate regarding the ability to choose God or other gods?
1.  The command to fear the Lord, serve Him and put away the other gods infers that people are able to choose to do it (v. 14).
2.  You can choose to serve other gods or the Lord (v. 15).
John Calvinâs commentary on Joshua 24:15 is:
By giving them the option to serve God or not, just as they choose, he loosens the reins, and gives them license to rush audaciously into sin. What follows is still more absurd, when he tells them that they cannot serve the Lord, as if he were actually desirous of set purpose to impel them to shake off the yoke. But there is no doubt that his tongue was guided by the inspiration of the Spirit, in stirring up and disclosing their feelings. For when the Lord brings men under his authority, they are usually willing enough to profess zeal for piety, though they instantly fall away from it. Thus they build without a foundation (Calvinâs Commentaries: Joshua 24, Bible Hub).
Calvin gives them the âoptionâ to serve God or not â as they choose â but he considers this one where Joshua âloosens the reinsâ, giving them the opportunity to rush into sin.
3.  They chose the Lord (vv. 15-18).
4.  After the previous and following verses, verse 19 seems like a contradiction, âYou are not able to serve the Lordâ. This is especially a paradox in light of verse 22, âYou have chosen the Lordâ. Verse 19 is an irony with Joshua 24:31 (ESV) in view, âIsrael served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israelâ. Keil & Delitzsch (n d, vol 2:231) consider that ââye cannot serve Jehovahâ ⊠in the state of mind in which ye are at present, or âby your own resolution only, and without the assistance of divine grace, without solid and serious conversion from all idols, and without true repentance and faithâ (J. H. Michaelis)â. What also is puzzling is the statement, âHe will not forgive your transgressionsâ, because there are many affirmations in the OT that God is a forgiving God. See Exodus 34:6-7a where the Lord revealed to Moses, âThe Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guiltyâŠ.â Surely this is meant to be hyperbole to demonstrate that God will not deal lightly with sin.[2]
5.  Verse 22 gets to the crux of interpretation for this passage. It leaves no doubt as to what the meaning is in context: âYou have chosen the Lordâ. No matter what the opposition from the Calvinistic camp, anybody anywhere can choose to serve pagan gods or the Lord God.
However,
- since Christâs death on Golgotha for the sins of the world (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2), people need to be drawn by God the Father:
- âNo one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last dayâ (John 6:44 ESV).
- How many will be drawn and how many will be forsaken? Jesus was clear about that: âAnd I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myselfâ (John 12:32 ESV).
So, since Christâs death and resurrection, all people are drawn to Jesus but many reject his offer of salvation. Why?
- âSo what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak?â (Heb 2:3 NLT).
- Romans 1:18 (NLT) gives us further insight into why people reject Godâs evidence: âBut God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickednessâ.
How did John Calvin understand Joshua 24:22. In his commentary on this verse he stated:
We now understand what the object was at which Joshua had hitherto aimed. It was not to terrify the people and make them fall away from their religion, but to make the obligation more sacred by their having of their own accord chosen his government, and betaken themselves to his guidance, that they might live under his protection. They acknowledge, therefore, that their own conscience will accuse them, and hold them guilty of perfidy [i.e. deceitfulness], if they prove unfaithfulâŠ. But although they were not insincere in declaring that they would be witnesses to their own condemnation, still how easily the remembrance of this promise faded away, is obvious from the Book of Judges. For when the more aged among them had died, they quickly turned aside to various superstitions. By this example we are taught how multifarious are the fallacies which occupy the senses of men, and how tortuous the recesses in which they hide their hypocrisy and folly, while they deceive themselves by vain confidence (Calvinâs Commentaries: Joshua 24:22, Bible Hub).
He did not deny that the Israelites were in a situation of âhaving of their own accord chosen his [Godâs] governmentâ.
6.  The Israelites could choose to put away the foreign gods in their midst and serve the Lord. This they did and signed a covenant of commitment (Josh 24:23-28).
D. Conclusion
A doctrinaire, Calvinistic, presuppositional view of no choice in salvation is what drove Rev Paul Cornford, an evangelical Presbyterian, to reject the clear teaching of Joshua 24:15 in context. âChoose this day whom you will serveâ means that the Israelites could choose to serve other gods or the Lord God.
Joshua 24:22 drives the interpretation home, âYou have chosen the Lord, to serve himâ (ESV). Other translations are as affirmative:
âYou have chosen to serve the Lordâ (NLT);
âYe have chosen you the Lord, to serve himâ (KJV);
âYou have chosen for yourselves the Lord, to serve Himâ (NASB);
âYou have chosen the Lord, to serve himâ (NRSV);
âYou have chosen to serve the Lordâ (NIV);
âYou have chosen the Lord for yourselvesâ (NKJV);
âYou have chosen to serve the Lordâ (ISV).
God desires that all unsaved people will change their mind (i.e., repent), for âhe is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentanceâ (2 Peter 3:9).
Like the alternatives of life and death that Moses gave to Israel, God says, âChoose lifeâ (cf. Deut. 30:19). Joshua said to his people: âChoose for yourselves this day whom you will serveâ (Josh. 24:15). God sets morally and spiritually responsible alternatives before human beings, leaving the choice and responsibility to them. Jesus said to the unbelievers of His day: âIf you do not believe that I am ⊠you will indeed die in your sinsâ (John 8:24), which implies they could have and should have believed.
Over and over, âbeliefâ is declared to be something we are accountable to embrace: âWe believe and know that you are the Holy One of Godâ (John 6:69); âWho is he sir? ⊠Tell me so that I may believe in himâ (John 9:36); âThen the man said, âLord, I believe, â and he worshiped himâ (John 9:38); âJesus answered, âI did tell you but you do not believeââ (John 10:25). This is why Jesus said, âWhoever believes in [me] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of Godâs one and only Sonâ (John 3:18) [Geisler 2004:130, emphasis in original].
E.  Works consulted
Boettner, L 1932. The reformed doctrine of predestination. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.
Delitzsch, F. n.d., Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon in C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament in Ten Volumes (vol. 6). Grand Rapids, Michigan: William E. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Geisler, N 1999. Chosen but free. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House Publishers.
Geisler, N 2004. Systematic theology: Sin, salvation, vol 3. Minneapolis, Minnesota: BethanyHouse.
Grudem, W. 1994. Systematic theology: An introduction to biblical doctrine. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.
Keil, C F & Delitzsch, F n d. Commentary on the Old Testament: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I & II Samuel, two vols in 1, vol 2. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Madvig, D H 1992. Joshua, in F E Gaebelein (gen ed), The expositorâs Bible commentary, vol 3, 239-371. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.
Mickelsen, A B 1963. Interpreting the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Sproul, R C 1986. Chosen by God. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
F.  Notes
[1] I take notes in an exercise book for sermons I hear and these comments are based on the notes I took for the sermon on 11 September 2016, 9.00am service, North Pine Presbyterian Church, 55 Old Dayboro Rd., Petrie Qld. 4502, Australia. My wife and I have attended this church for 5 years at the time of writing this article (8 October 2016).
[2] This was the interpretation by Madvig (1992:369).
Copyright © 2016 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 17 August 2018.