Sermon For Family

Choosing This Day: A Household Built On What Lasts

There is a moment in every family's life when the noise settles, even briefly, and a question rises to the surface. Not a loud question. Not necessarily a dramatic one. Just a quiet, persistent question: What are we actually building here? What holds this household together when the pressure comes, when the years stack up, when the people we love disappoint us or we disappoint them?

Joshua asked a version of that question in front of the entire assembly of Israel. He was old. He had seen what God could do. He had also seen what a people could do when they wandered from God. And so he stood before them and said, in effect, make up your mind. Choose. Not someday. Today.

That word still lands with weight. Let us open it together.

Part One: The Choice Joshua Sets Before Us (Joshua 24:14-15)

Joshua 24:14-15 In The Christian Standard Bible Reads This Way:

"Therefore, fear the Lord and worship him in sincerity and truth. Get rid of the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and worship the Lord. But if it doesn't seem good to you to worship the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will worship: the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. As for me and my house, we will worship the Lord."

Notice the structure of what Joshua is doing. He is not giving a motivational speech. He is not offering a self-improvement plan for better family dynamics. He is making a theological declaration and calling everyone within earshot to do the same.

The command in verse 14 is to fear the Lord and worship him in sincerity and truth. That phrase, sincerity and truth, is significant. The word translated sincerity carries the idea of wholeness, of integrity, of not being divided. And truth here means faithfulness, consistency, the opposite of pretense. Joshua is not asking for a performance of religion. He is asking for a household where the worship is real.

Then comes the harder edge of verse 14. Get rid of the gods. This is not a gentle suggestion. The people of Israel had a long history of carrying old loyalties alongside their confession of the Lord. The gods from beyond the Euphrates, the gods of Egypt, the gods of the Amorites all of these represented alternate centers of trust. They were the things a household leaned on when it did not fully trust God. They were the things that competed for the loyalty that belongs to the Lord alone.

We would be dishonest if we did not acknowledge that households today carry their own competing loyalties. Not carved idols, perhaps. But there are things that quietly shape a family's decisions, its calendar, its conversations, its sense of worth and security, that have nothing to do with the Lord. The pressure to perform. The accumulation of comfort. The approval of people whose opinion has become more important than God's. Joshua would recognize these. He would say the same thing: get rid of them.

And then the famous line. As for me and my house, we will worship the Lord.

Preachers have put this verse on plaques and painted it on walls. There is nothing wrong with that. But let us not domesticate it. This is a declaration made in the face of real alternatives. Joshua is not saying his household is perfect. He is saying his household has a direction. A center. A Lord. He is planting a flag, not in pride, but in commitment.

This is the foundation of a household shaped by faith: a deliberate, ongoing choice to worship the Lord rather than the alternatives that are always available and always appealing.

PART TWO: THE TEXTURE OF A HOUSEHOLD SHAPED BY GRACE (Colossians 3:12-17)

If Joshua gives us the foundation, the Apostle Paul in Colossians 3 gives us the texture, the daily fabric of what a household shaped by that choice actually looks and feels like.

Colossians 3:12-17 In The Csb Reads:

"Therefore, as God's chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since you were called to one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."

Paul opens with identity before he gives instruction. He does not say, try harder to be compassionate. He says, you are God's chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, therefore put on these things. The clothing metaphor is deliberate. You put on what belongs to who you are. A household shaped by grace does not manufacture these qualities by willpower. It receives them from the One who has already declared this family beloved.

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Read that list slowly and honestly. These are not the natural defaults of human households under pressure. These are cultivated. They are chosen. They are put on, day after day, in the ordinary friction of shared life. The person who is hardest to be patient with is usually the one who lives under the same roof.

Then Paul goes to the most difficult territory: forgiveness. Bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. The word grievance here is not trivial. It acknowledges that real offenses happen in close relationships. Paul is not pretending that family life is painless. He is saying that the standard for forgiveness is not whether the offense was small enough to overlook. The standard is the Lord. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.

This is where the gospel becomes intensely practical. Forgiveness in a household is not a technique. It is a response to having been forgiven. When a person understands what Christ has absorbed on their behalf, the calculus of holding grievances shifts. It does not become easy. But it becomes possible, and it becomes necessary.

Above all, Paul says, put on love. He calls it the perfect bond of unity. The word translated bond carries the idea of something that holds all the other pieces together. Compassion without love can become performance. Patience without love can become cold endurance. Love is the animating center that makes all the other qualities genuinely relational rather than merely behavioral.

Then Paul turns to the communal practices that sustain a household of faith. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you. This is not a command to own a Bible. It is a command to let the word of Christ make its home in the household, to be present, to be consulted, to be sung, to be taught. The word richly means abundantly, not sparingly, not only in crisis, not only on Sunday mornings.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. This is the daily application of Joshua's declaration. Every ordinary moment of household life, the conversation at the table, the way a conflict is handled, the way a child is corrected, the way a spouse is spoken to, all of it can be offered in the name of the Lord Jesus. Not perfectly. But intentionally.

The Central Claim

Here is what both passages are saying together: a household is not shaped by accident. It is shaped by worship, by grace, by the daily choices of people who have decided that the Lord is the center of their home. This is not a formula for a painless family. It is a direction for a faithful one.

The families that endure are not the ones where nothing goes wrong. They are the ones where there is a center that holds, where forgiveness is practiced because it has been received, where the word of Christ has room to dwell, and where the choice to worship the Lord is renewed not once but again and again.

Application: What This Looks Like Today

For those who are followers of Christ, the invitation today is to examine the household you are building. Not to condemn it, but to honestly ask: What is at the center? What are the competing loyalties that need to be named and released? Where does forgiveness need to be extended? Where does the word of Christ need more room?

For those who are still working out what they believe, the declaration of Joshua is worth sitting with. He does not say, wait until you have everything figured out. He says, choose. The choice to orient a life and a household around the Lord Jesus Christ is available today, not as a transaction that earns God's favor, but as a response to the grace that has already been offered in Christ.

For those who are carrying grief about a family situation that is broken or painful, the gospel does not promise that every household will be restored to what you hoped it would be. But it does promise that the Lord is present in the grief, that his forgiveness is sufficient for every failure, and that his grace is the foundation that does not shift even when everything else does.

A Closing Charge

As for me and my house, we will worship the Lord. Let those words be more than a decoration. Let them be a decision, renewed today, lived out in the ordinary texture of compassion and patience and forgiveness and gratitude. Let the word of Christ dwell richly. Let the peace of Christ rule. Let everything, in word and deed, be done in the name of the Lord Jesus.

This is not a burden. It is a gift. It is the shape of a life and a household that is being built on what lasts.

May God grant you the grace to choose well, and to keep choosing, all the days of your life together.

Sources Consulted

Trent C. Butler. Joshua. Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 7. Word Books, 1983.

David G. Peterson. Colossians and Philemon. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 1994.

F. F. Bruce. The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1984.

Richard S. Hess. Joshua: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 1996.

Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.