Joshua is old. The conquest is essentially over, the tribes are settling into their allotments, and the generation that crossed the Jordan is dying out. He gathers Israel at Shechem — the same valley where Abraham first built an altar — and conducts a covenant renewal. The speech is shockingly blunt. Joshua does not assume Israel's loyalty; he forces a decision. The old gods of Mesopotamia are still on the table. So are the local gods of Canaan. Israel has been quietly hedging, and Joshua names it. Choose today.

From the writers we read together

Francis Schaeffer

pastor and apologist, founder of L'Abri (1912-1984)

Schaeffer's lifelong project was to expose the myth of neutrality. The modern person likes to imagine he stands at a clean intersection, weighing the gods of his fathers against the gods of the land, choosing rationally. Schaeffer said no — you have already chosen. Your time, your money, your fears, and your appetites have already been deposited at some altar. Joshua 24:15 is so direct because Joshua refuses the modern fiction. He does not ask whether Israel will serve. He asks whom.

What makes the verse pastoral rather than merely confrontational is the second half: as for me and my house. Schaeffer wrote often about the family as the smallest unit of cultural witness — the place where a worldview is either lived or quietly betrayed. Joshua does not say, "I hope my children figure it out." He says he has already decided for the household under his roof. That is not authoritarianism; it is leadership. Someone in every house is setting the altar. The only question is which name is on it.