Historical Choices

         When the Israelites secured the Promised Land, Joshua gathered all the elders and people of the tribes at Shechem to present themselves before the Lord. “Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord! And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of 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 24:14-15).
            Emboldened by their victories, the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods…we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God” (Joshua 24:16, 18b). In effect, Joshua was echoing the same choices his predecessor, Moses, put before the people just before he died. Moses laid out the curses and blessings in great detail in Deuteronomy 28-30. He then summarized their choices.
             “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them” (Deut. 30:19-20).
            The prophet Isaiah gives us their status report. “Thus says the Lord: ‘Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest? For all those things My hand has made, and all those things exist,’ Says the Lord. ‘But on this one will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word...Just as they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations, so will I choose their delusions, and bring their fears on them; because, when I called, no one answered, when I spoke they did not hear; but they did evil before My eyes, and chose that in which I do not delight’ ” (Is. 66:1:1-4).
            The Chronos Lesson: From what we’ve seen so far, we would have to give their performance a mixed review. But in all honesty, is this unlike our own performance review? Thankfully, we are not under the Covenant of the Law, but under the Covenant of grace. Paul, a Jew himself, explained the purpose of the Law: “It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made” (Gal. 3:19).  In other words, it was given to show God’s standard of right living, a standard that no fallen human could attain. James 2:10 confirms the standard of the Law: “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”
            But before we call God unjust, we need to remember that Abraham was called by faith. “Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?— just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham’ ” (Gal. 3:5-9).
            In hindsight, we now see that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham’s lineage—the promised Seed who would make reconciliation with God possible. Yet as we’ve also seen, God has not written off the Jews. Like Jeremiah and Daniel, Isaiah foresaw their future.
            “For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns. The Gentiles shall see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. You shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord will name…I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest till He establishes And till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth” (Is. 62:1-2, 6-7).
            This promise will unfold when the Jewish remnant are revived at the start of the Day of the Lord, when they see Jesus coming in clouds of glory and finally accept Jesus as the Savior and Messiah.
            When the Antichrist and his coalition of armies are crushed at the end of the first 3½ years of that final 1,000-year Day, this prophecy will be fulfilled. As promised in Deut. 28:13, the nation will become the head and not the tail. That is, they will be set as the natural head of the nations on the earth, under the direction of the heavenly court. They will indeed become the praise of the earth, as all the nations must acknowledge God the Father, Jesus the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit.