The Berean Table

Joshua 24 Summary — Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve, the Covenant at Shechem

Companion: Deep Study

A condensed companion to the full study. For each section of the expanded outline: key insights, applications, and the application questions for discussion.

Section 1 — Summoned Before God: Grace Came First (Joshua 24:1–4)

Key Insights

  • Joshua gathers Israel at Shechem, where Abraham first received the promise of the land and Jacob later buried his household’s idols (Genesis 12:7).
  • The LORD begins His address by reminding Israel that its ancestors “served other gods” (v. 2).
  • God took Abraham out of an idolatrous house, so Israel’s existence rests on grace rather than on the merit of its fathers.
  • God’s choice ran through Isaac and Jacob, yet He still gave Esau a land of his own (v. 4).
  • Like Abraham, believers are chosen before they choose, as Jesus said: “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16).

Applications

  • Tell your testimony with God as the subject of the verbs: He took, He led, He gave.
  • Refuse both pride in a Christian pedigree and despair over an ungodly background.
  • Remember where you came from, so that you pray for unbelievers with humility and hope.

Application Questions

  1. When you tell the story of how you came to faith, whose actions stand at the center of it, yours or God’s?
  2. Who in your life is still beyond the River, and how does remembering your own origin change the way you pray for and speak to them?

Section 2 — I Brought You Out: Redemption Given and a Land Unearned (Joshua 24:5–13)

Key Insights

  • The LORD tells the exodus, the sea and the wilderness as His own acts: “and afterward I brought you out” (v. 5).
  • God refused to listen to Balaam and turned the intended curse into a blessing for His people (Deuteronomy 23:5).
  • Israel fought real battles, but the victory was the LORD’s: “it was not by your sword or by your bow” (v. 12).
  • Israel lived in cities it had not built and ate from vineyards it had not planted (v. 13).
  • Christ won the decisive battle at the cross, and His people enter an inheritance they did not earn (1 Peter 1:4).

Applications

  • Practice gratitude by naming specific mercies you did not produce or earn.
  • Turn commendation into praise by acknowledging the grace behind every achievement.
  • Face opposition calmly, knowing that no curse can overturn God’s blessing in Christ (Romans 8:31).

Application Questions

  1. Which blessings in your life are you most tempted to regard as the product of your own sword and bow?
  2. When others speak against you or seek your harm, how does the LORD’s refusal to listen to Balaam steady your heart?

Section 3 — Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve (Joshua 24:14–15)

Key Insights

  • The word therefore ties the command to fear and serve the LORD to the history of grace just told (v. 14).
  • Sincerity and faithfulness call for whole, undivided and steady loyalty rather than religious performance.
  • Joshua’s call to choose is not a neutral menu, because the rival gods had already proved powerless.
  • Joshua declares his own allegiance first: “But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (v. 15).
  • Jesus is the one Israelite who chose the Father’s will perfectly: “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

Applications

  • Name the inherited idols and the cultural idols that compete for your service.
  • Lead your own household, however small, in worship and in the Word.
  • Do not read verse 15 as proof that fallen people can choose God without grace, since verse 19 corrects that reading.

Application Questions

  1. What are the gods of your fathers and the gods of the land where you dwell that most compete for your service today?
  2. What would it look like, concretely, for you to say as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD this week?

Section 4 — Far Be It from Us: The People’s Answer (Joshua 24:16–18)

Key Insights

  • The people answer with revulsion at apostasy: “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods” (v. 16).
  • Their reasons echo the preface of the Ten Commandments, grounding service in redemption (Exodus 20:2).
  • Their confession that “he is our God” (v. 18) puts the covenant formula in the people’s own mouth.
  • A sincere pledge made at a high moment is not the same as persevering faith, as the generation after Joshua shows (Judges 2:10).
  • Peter’s broken pledge and restoration show that perseverance rests on Christ’s intercession (Luke 22:32).

Applications

  • Ground your devotion in what God has done rather than in fluctuating feelings.
  • Watch the quiet seasons of comfort and routine, which often test faithfulness more than crisis does.
  • Make your vows as a dependent child who prays for grace to keep them.

Application Questions

  1. When have you made a sincere promise to God in a moment of strong feeling, and what happened to that promise when the feeling faded?
  2. Are your reasons for serving God rooted mainly in what He has done, as Israel’s were, or mainly in what you hope He will do for you?

Section 5 — You Are Not Able to Serve the LORD (Joshua 24:19–24)

Key Insights

  • Joshua answers the people’s confidence with a shock: “You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God” (v. 19).
  • Joshua is not driving Israel away from God but stripping away its self-confidence.
  • God is holy and jealous, so He will not share His people with rival gods (Exodus 34:14).
  • Joshua demands concrete repentance: “put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD” (v. 23).
  • The holy God who will not overlook sin laid it on Christ, who “was pierced for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5).

Applications

  • Begin every resolution with prayer for grace rather than confidence in your own resolve.
  • Remove the specific idol, habit or device that competes with God for your heart.
  • Never use you are not able as an excuse to stop trying or to deny forgiveness to the repentant.

Application Questions

  1. In what area of your life are you relying on your own resolve to serve God rather than asking Him for the grace to do it?
  2. What foreign gods are among you, in your heart or your home, that you need to put away this week?

Section 6 — The Covenant Written and the Stone of Witness (Joshua 24:25–28)

Key Insights

  • At Shechem Joshua renews the covenant of Sinai rather than making a new one (v. 25).
  • Joshua writes the day’s words “in the Book of the Law of God” (v. 26), adding to the growing record of Scripture.
  • A large stone under the terebinth becomes a witness that has heard all the words of the LORD (v. 27).
  • A stone can hear better than a hard heart, so the witness is also a rebuke.
  • Christ mediates a new covenant in His own blood that writes God’s law on human hearts (Luke 22:20).

Applications

  • Treat baptismal, membership and marriage vows as binding promises made before God.
  • Come to the Lord’s Supper prepared, as a renewal of trust in Christ’s covenant faithfulness.
  • Write down God’s mercies as a personal witness against forgetfulness.

Application Questions

  1. What reminders of your commitments to God has He placed in your life, and how faithfully do you use them?
  2. If the words you have spoken in worship, prayer and song were written down and set up as a witness, where would they testify against you?

Section 7 — Three Graves in the Land of Promise (Joshua 24:29–33)

Key Insights

  • Joshua dies at 110 with the title servant of the LORD, the same title given to Moses (v. 29).
  • Israel served the LORD while Joshua and the elders who had known God’s works were alive (v. 31).
  • Joseph’s bones, carried out of Egypt by faith, are finally buried at Shechem in the land of promise (Hebrews 11:22).
  • The book ends with three graves: the leader, the patriarch and the priest Eleazar (v. 33).
  • Unlike every Old Testament mediator, Jesus “holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever” (Hebrews 7:24).

Applications

  • Build faith in others that rests on Christ rather than on you.
  • Tell the next generation the specific works of God in your own life.
  • Plan even your death and burial as a testimony to resurrection hope.

Application Questions

  1. If your influence were removed tomorrow, would the faith of those around you stand on Christ or on you?
  2. What are you doing to make sure the next generation knows “all the work that the LORD did” (v. 31) for His people and for you?

Joshua called Israel to choose the LORD and then told them they were not able; the Lord Jesus, the greater Joshua, chose the Father’s will perfectly, sealed the new covenant in His blood and gives His people the new heart that gladly serves Him.

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