In Joshua 24:15, Joshua famously declares "As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!" In this bold statement we have a glimpse of what it means to be a courageous and godly father. Here we see a man who accepts his God-ordained role of headship and lovingly leads his family in the worship and service of God. Joshua drew a line in the sand with this statement and even now challenges men - husbands and fathers - to join him in stewarding their homes for the glory of God.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is pleased to present Fatherhood. This message is entitled, Profile of a Courageous Father, by Scott Brown. We're going to begin with a profile of a courageous father. Please turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 24. Joshua is like these other fathers.

They cast a vision of hope, or there are some that we'll deal with that cast a vision of warning. But Joshua here casts a vision of hope. And he states a vision for fatherhood that is succinct and it's dense and it's clear and you'll find that he doesn't throw one word away in his coaching of the heads of the households of Israel. What we're seeing today in our land is the coming to life of the valley of the dry bones in terms of fatherhood. For some reason, God is raising up a passion for fatherhood and training the next generation that I've never seen in my years of life.

God is doing something really amazing in this area. It's the valley of the dry bones. It was that same valley of dry bones that Joshua was experiencing. The context of Joshua is like ours, where there was a generation that did not know the Lord. Why did they not know the Lord?

The fathers did not teach the children. And we are in a same kind of context today where there is a revival taking place where the hearts of the fathers are turning toward their children and the hearts of the children are turning to their fathers. We are seeing things that we've never seen before in the last 50 years, at least I haven't seen them. And what Joshua teaches us here is that families need courageous fathers who provide the kind of fatherly leadership that we see in this son of none. He was a true man.

He fulfills the words of David to his son Solomon when he said, prove yourself to be a man. Joshua is one of those great manly paradigms that we can look at. And he shows us so much. How do you inspire your sons and your daughters to walk with God? How do you inspire your son to be a courageous man in this world, not afraid of conflict, not afraid of hardship?

We need men like Joshua who are not afraid to go in the land and obey God no matter what anybody in the church is saying or outside of the church is saying. We often need courage for both, don't we? When you're going into the land to reclaim territory that the devil is burned up, Often you have to deal with the criticism of those in the church and those outside of the church. Joshua had to do that exact same thing. Some of his bitterest enemies were within the camp and we have to understand that Joshua is just a shining example for us.

I want to give you a bird's-eye view of Joshua 24, then we're going to dive into a very specific text. In verse 1, we see that Joshua's ministry is to the heads of the households of Israel. This is very critical to observe. Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for the elders of Israel for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers, and they presented themselves before God. Joshua was dealing with the heads of households.

This is why Richard Baxter said, get masters of families to do their duty and they will spare you a great deal of labor. He said, how much more success will you have for your labors? He said, if a captain can get the officers under him to do their duty, he may rule the soldiers with much less trouble than if he lay all upon his own shoulders. That's the wisdom of God. So we see, first of all in Joshua 24, that he is dealing with the heads, heads of households and other kinds of heads.

And then next we see Joshua recounting God's leading Abraham out of idolatry. In verses 2 through 13 he tells this story of how God rescued Abraham and his family out of idolatry. And then in verse 14, after this long section, he charges the people to serve the Lord he says now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord." And then he says, "...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 that you dwell." So Joshua is coming at the most pervasive problem that we face, and that is it's the faith of our fathers. It's the gods of our fathers.

It's the gods of the Amorites. It's the gods of the Californians, the gods of the Bostonians, the gods of the North Carolinians, wherever they happen to be, the people around us serve gods and they often do it by naming them as the Lord and confusing and syncretizing these gods and Joshua is making a clear line. He really is drawing a line in the sand. He says there really is only one God and it's not the God of the Amorites and it's not the God of your fathers. And then Joshua says, he draws a line in the sand, he says, but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.

And then the people respond in verse 16, so the people answered and said, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went among all the people through whom we passed and the Lord drove out from before us all the people including the Amorites who dwell in the land we also serve the Lord for he is our God So the people respond and then Joshua comes right back with a warning because he knows how presumptuous we often are. In verse 19 he warns them, but Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve the Lord for He is a holy God, He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins if you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods. Then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done you good." He's really putting his finger on the blindness of the people.

We don't know quite thoroughly enough how syncretized we become. We're not aware of how idolatrous we really are and he's warning them about that and that's the warning we should receive in ourselves as well. We're here because we desire to turn our hearts towards our children and we desire our children's hearts to turn toward us. This is a sign of the gospel. We want a good thing but we're still often unaware of the idolatries that are holding us back from these things.

And Joshua is warning them there, and then the people respond in verse 21. They come back. You notice there's this conversation going on between Joshua and the people. Joshua speaks, the people respond. Joshua speaks, the people respond.

And the people respond in verse 21. And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord. And then Joshua confirms their resolve in verse 22. He said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord for yourselves to serve him. Isn't that interesting?

You know Joshua is not the guy with rose-colored glasses on. He understands idolatry. He understands that there's tremendous conflict. He understands that there are distinctions. He understands that people will fall.

He will understand that there will be blood and smoke and fire in this whole game of life. And so he says, you're witnesses against yourselves. It's a warning. It's an amazing warning as he confirms it as well. And then he says, now therefore put away the foreign gods which are among you.

Remember these are the people who have said we will serve the Lord but they still have foreign gods. Here's a question for all of us. What foreign gods are we still caressing? What foreign gods are we still embracing? What foreign gods allow for our acceptability in this world but need to be abandoned?

That's a very difficult question for us to answer but it is the question on the table when you talk about courageous fatherhood. And then Joshua makes a covenant with the people in verse 25. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem and then in verse 26 he writes the words in a book in the book of the law and then he sets up a stone in verse 26 and they took a large stone and set it up there under the tree under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord and Joshua said to all the people behold this stone shall be a witness to us for it has heard all the words of the Lord which he has spoken to us it shall therefore be a witness to you lest any of you deny your God So Joshua let the people depart each to his own inheritance. And then the chapter ends with Joshua's death beginning in verse 29 to the end. He's 110 years old.

He has cast a vision for the kind of fatherhood that should be prevailing in Israel and then he dies. So let's talk about the context of this address that he is giving. This address takes place in Shechem and it marks a formal reaffirmation of the Covenant that God has made to Israel through Moses. So this is really a high point. This is a very unusual and highly charged moment and Joshua's speech illustrates the way that God works through men who will make a covenant with him.

As representatives of the people and of their families, as they are accomplishing the desires of God in this world, God works through men who are willing to serve as representative heads, leaders in the church and in the home. Moses has died 20 years previous in Shechem and now they are here at the end of 40 years of wilderness wanderings. The baton has been passed to Joshua now and Joshua has arisen to his calling to lead Israel across the Jordan into the Promised Land and so now at a hundred and ten years old he speaks these words and you know Joshua from All we can gather was the attendant of Moses from his youth. Isn't that amazing? Here's this man that has spent so many years walking with this great saint.

And now 20 years beyond his death, he is there. And he's marking the way for fathers, for how they should express their fatherhood and as a father of his own household he charges the fathers of Israel to follow in his footsteps. To me that's a vision of hope it really is That there's a man out there who can instruct me in the way that I should go and that when I get up in the morning I don't have to reinvent my life and write a new mission statement. I have Almighty God to instruct me and teach me in the way that I should go." Joshua knew that the behavior of fathers and households would set the course of the nation. And so this speech assumes the truth that fathers play a tremendous role in the nation.

It's very similar to the speech that Moses gave in Numbers 30, where he gathered the heads of the tribes together and he instructed them on how they should deal with a particular problem in the home when a daughter or a wife is disagreeable to the direction of the husband. How do you deal with that conflict? It's a very, very similar structure where the heads are gathered and then commands are given for how to deal with particular issues. Now these words that he gives to Israel are so carefully crafted, they are so precise. One thing I love about this passage here is to get treasure from it.

You only have to read just a few words. So we're going to take these words one by one. The first thing that he did is he dedicated himself first. He dedicated himself first. He says, as for me, as for me.

And this is where it all begins. Moses said, these words shall be in your heart. In other words, they shall be part of you. The leadership of our families begins with our own repentance. It begins with our own understanding of the gospel and receiving the word of the gospel that we are sinners and that our only hope is the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ in the shedding of His blood.

It's the gospel that should be the center of all home life and a Father who has embraced the gospel is the only way that it can be communicated. Unfortunately we have fathers who make many laws but they have no gospel. You need both, you need both, but you can't have one without the other. But Joshua says, as for me. Let this just be an opportunity brothers for us to bring ourselves under the watchful eye of God and say, Oh Lord, is there anything that you are requiring of me today?

Is there any repentance toward you from me that's necessary so that I can say with Joshua, as for me, as for me. We'll begin with ourselves and then we move on. And then he declared his headship over his household, as for me and my house. Notice the word my, my house. When Joshua declared, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, he was laying claim to his divinely appointed role of headship over his household.

And in this statement you find a mixture of courage and vision. You see both there? As for me and my house, I see courage and vision in there. It takes courage to be the head of your household the way that you ought to be. And why does it take courage?

It takes courage because not only are you a sinner, but your wife is a sinner and your children are sinners. And sinners do not like headship. That's just the way we're all built. We haven't liked headship from the very beginning of time and all of our problems go right back to that issue that we do not like headship. We do not like the authority of God.

That's why many people hate the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. They do not like the authority of God. Both male and female do not like the authority of mankind. And so Joshua is declaring himself as the head of his house. He believed that his family was his.

He saw himself as a steward who was fully responsible for a particular house and he calls it my house. Can you say that today? This is my house. I'm responsible for it. It's very interesting that when there's sin in the house, there's a pattern that God has established.

When Adam sinned, what did God do? God did not go to his wife. God went to the man. When Abraham's wife Sarah sinned, Sarah lies in Genesis. She tells a lie.

She's trying to cover up this lie Abraham is married to a woman who just lied has your wife ever lied and what happens God goes directly not to Sarah but he goes to Abraham why Because God views men as the heads of their households and the sooner we assume this disposition the better off we are. Isn't it amazing that God would make you the head of a little church, of a little kingdom, of a little people. Isn't that amazing that he would do that for you? I mean, it's striking to me that God would give so much authority to a man, especially a man like me. Or how about a man like you?

How well prepared were you for this? But God put you into this position to set you there, to teach you, to help you, and to teach you what it means to lead a little community of people called your family. It's just so remarkable that he says here's your realm of personal rulership. I give it to you brother. That's what God has done and Joshua here claims it.

So he sees his family as his territory. The territory that he would rule with strength and courage, which was legendary. His courage was not limited to his military service, for it's so clear that it spilled over into his family life. And he was a man of courage, both in the field of battle and at the head of his house. Isn't that wonderful?

He's a man of integrity. And we can be like that. You know, sometimes you see a contradiction in the life of a leader. He can lead great enterprises, but he's unable to inspire his own family. He's able to lead a great corporation, but his family is completely out of order.

How many times have you seen that? It's better to have your family in order and not be able to lead a corporation than the other way around. That's the principle of scripture. So it's possible to be a courageous military leader or an entrepreneur, but at the same time have no courage to lead your family. We just throw it out there brothers.

Is it possible, is it possible that any of us need to take a greater strength in the leading of our families and do what Joshua did here. Sometimes the neglect of fatherly responsibilities comes from just sheer fear, fear of the reaction. If you would lead your household you may face some difficulty and turmoil. The path to peace in your home isn't always peace at the beginning and that's true with every area of leadership. Often tumult and trial and difficulty precede the peace And men have to be willing to go through the trouble to get to the peace.

We're all married to women. We're all married to sinners. If we have children, They are either male or female and they are both sinners and that causes problems and that means that there are times when we have to take our families through a time of crisis in order to get to the peace. How we do that makes all the difference in the world but we must we must do it sometimes our neglect of this responsibility comes from laziness sometimes it comes from just sheer disobedience so whatever it is fear of the conflict just pure laziness you know lousy habits whatever it is is there anything standing in the way of this kind of courageous leadership that says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So Joshua viewed his household as a holy realm of government under his care, but he was a benevolent ruler.

Well, we can blame all kinds of things for the difficulty and the turmoil in our households, but where should we start? We should start with me and my house and the ownership thereof. And then The next thing we see him doing is he protects their unity. He says, we, we will serve the Lord. Instead of allowing his family to be a group of disconnected individuals, running off in every imaginal direction like chickens with their heads cut off.

He's not casting a vision for that at all. He seeks to bring the whole family together, every family member, for purposes. And this is in such a sharp contrast to the kind of fatherhood that we see today. The godly father today really he's a chauffeur and he's a sender. He's always sending his family out in different directions.

Some of those directions might be regarded as good, but family unity suffers today. Because this pattern, this ethic that we find in the heart of Joshua, seems to have been erased. We seem to value individualism so much that we can't understand how important it is that the family is a unit. In fact, when you see a family that really is a unit, it looks kind of weird. Three months ago, I was at a conference and I was listening to Al Mohler speak and he said, you know, if you've lived out in the desert all your life, every bush looks strange.

And that's what it's like here. When you see a family that is unified, it looks weird. We have to get over that. What does God say? God says that a family is a unit.

A family mirrors the Trinity. It's a unified institution that God has created for his own purposes and there is unity. And we'll talk about how that plays out in a number of different ways. This family would walk together, this family would be a household of unified we instead of a unilateral me. Joshua would leave no one in his family behind and his spirit indicates a loyalty to those that God has given him.

So he's collecting the energies of the family together for godly purposes so that they would form a force on a mission for the glory of God. So like Joshua, this kind of father takes his family in a godly direction and he takes everyone with him and he's like Christ. He says, I will lose none of them. I will take them all with me. This is the fatherly leadership in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's the fatherly leadership that we see in Joshua. It's the fatherly leadership that we see explained in Deuteronomy chapter 6 in Psalm 78 and nearly everywhere else that you see a vision for fatherhood. And then next, he affirmed his devotion to service. The emphasis here is on the word serve. We will serve the Lord.

There are two aspects of service. One is there must be a will for it and where there's a will there's a vision. So how do you see yourself as a family? Do you see your family as a consumer and an entertainment machine or do you see your family as a unit of service that has a will to serve? Families lack will often.

They often lack will because they lack an understanding of the purpose of their family. And so they wrap their family in all these other you know interesting areas of service, but not service of the Lord. But a family must have a will and they must serve. Those are the two aspects of this. So the center of this family life was the work of serving.

This was not a parasitic family but a productive family and this was the perspective behind all that Joshua did in his family. Joshua understood that his personal life was part of a larger whole, his family, and it was the constant around which everything was ordered. All the service of his life would be ordered around this family and that it would continue on out into the community. This is a family that was mobilized for service. Now you see the way that the people of Israel were mobilized for service during this era.

You know what I'm talking about? In the service of the tabernacle, a group of families would be to the north to do one part of service. Another group of families would settle to the east and they would perform a certain service and so forth, north, south, east and west. It was the fathers households that formed the organization for the work for the tabernacle. I honestly believe that that is a pattern that we should figure out in our day how to implement.

How do the heads of households form themselves into ministry groups with their families around them to serve the church and to serve evangelism and to serve missions? We should be seeing the unique giftedness of each family. It's interesting, God doesn't make any individual like another and they have a particular ministry and that seems to be that way with families as well. Some families have interesting gifts in one area and others completely different. You know this conference is being put on basically by my wife and my children.

It's a skill level that they have. They just have been given the different capabilities to do something like this. Well, families have different core competencies in a lot of ways And a father should say, Oh Lord, what have you given me? What skills are in my family? I have a son who's nine years old.

What is his skill? I have a daughter who's 13. What energy driven by her skill and her giftedness can be delivered as a gift to the church and into the world. We should be asking ourselves that question. God didn't give you my family, He gave you your family.

What can your family do? And this is the wisdom of all leadership. All leadership starts with what has God given me? What has God given you? Well my supposition is He has sovereignly designed you as the head of this ministry team for a particular reason.

Don't miss it and don't send everybody out going in different directions Collect the energy and do something for the glory of God Cast the vision for it instruct according to their gifts Your son may not have the same gifts that you have. So don't make him be a little you or your daughter just like your wife. We're multifaceted in our creation and we have to understand that. Think of the amazing energy that God has put within your household right now. I would just encourage you as you're here to begin to profile the giftedness that God has sovereignly given you in your household.

What will you do with this outpouring of grace that God has poured out into your family? Whether you have one child or twelve children, it doesn't matter. God has sovereignly chosen to give you these children. He'll give you as many as he desires, and he will gift them uniquely. But here Joshua is affirming his devotion to service and he understood that a family should be mobilized for service.

Notice that Joshua's covenant with God was inextricably linked with his covenant with his family. I just think that's interesting. There are no separate compartments with Joshua. They all work together. And he's wrapping his whole life as a unified whole with his children, with his nation, with his brothers, with the heads of the households of Israel and he's working them all together in concert and it's a beautiful picture.

Faithful men do not leave their families behind or in the backwater of their lives, but they involve them in everything. I was standing with a man several years ago who had been given children, and he was a successful entrepreneur. And he said to me, I've concluded, he goes to a church, he said, I've concluded that my core competency is not raising children. It's entrepreneurship and that's where my time needs to go and therefore because what God had done with him exempted him from his role as a father. You know this is a person who's been reading too many business books, okay, and not enough Bible because God has established us to serve with our families in this world.

And then He dedicated his family to holiness. We will serve the Lord, the Lord. Here Joshua emphasized serving the Lord instead of serving the other interests around him. His family will not walk in the broad way of worldly living. The world can go its own way.

Joshua will serve the Lord. Joshua understood the importance of working to establish Christian culture in his generation. The world will always try to squeeze the family into its mold and fathers who allow their families to be absorbed into this world culture are in disobedience to the Lord. It's syncretism. It's one of the most dangerous forces at work in the church.

It's the most dangerous in our hearts and in our churches. So according to Joshua, serving the Lord included worshiping the Lord. He was a man of service and a man of worship. Family worship was a priority in Joshua's household. This word serve is used in other places for worship and I believe that divine wisdom places it in this context for that purpose.

It's a worship toward the Lord. It is a fascination and an affection for the things of the Lord and the wrapping around of all of life toward the Lord. What can modern fathers learn from Joshua? I'll just give you a few. We've already covered a number that we won't repeat, but let's at least settle in on these.

First, Joshua was a proactive and courageous father who dared to stand alone among the people of God and among the nations. He did not fear the censure of the world and he kept true to his spiritual compass. You know David said, how long will you accept the persons of the wicked? Joshua wasn't that way at all. This text of Scripture is often depicted as him drawing a line in the sand and that's correct.

That's a correct understanding of this text and Joshua is doing that. We live in a land where many of the people are living like pagan savages. When the first colonists came here they spoke of meeting the savages and guess what I think that the savages have returned. Well they have a different color skin now and we're living like savages today. We are living like pagan worldly people and We've accepted all the propositions of the world and the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, the idols are everywhere.

They are part of us, they are in us, they dog us and they harm us, but we must understand that we must be able to be willing to stand alone in this world lest we be washed away by the propositions of this world. Second thing about Joshua, he understood his role as the head of the household. He assumed that position with boldness and he was not afraid to say this is my house and then thirdly he focused his family on the service of the Lord instead of serving themselves or petty priorities of this world system. Because they served the Lord, his household was a blessing in Israel. And his example would serve to mentor an entire generation in the responsibility of godly fatherhood.

May his tribe increase among us. This is the first deposit in a vision of hope. Here's a man who stands tall among all fathers to lead us the way. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Would you pray with me?

I'm so grateful Heavenly Father for your kindness to us in giving us wisdom beyond our own ability. Oh that you would increase this tribe of faithful fathers like Joshua in us. The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. You