It's About Relationship

We started this Sunday with how much of life runs on transactions. Work for pay. A favor for a favor. Money for goods at the store. It can start to feel like that is the whole story of how we deal with each other.

But if we are honest, we want more than that. We want relationship, not just exchange.

Turan told us about buying a new puffer jacket. At the very last step of checkout, the discount code got denied. It was a small thing, but he felt let down, like the company did not care about him. He almost walked away and started over. Instead he wrote them a heartfelt letter. They made it right. Now he feels he can keep doing business with them.

Why should a business transaction carry that much feeling? Because we were made in the image of God. And with God, a transaction alone is never enough. God wants relationship first.

That set up the last three chapters of Joshua. Bill had brought us near the end the week before, and Turan carried us to the close. The theme that runs through all of it is relationship. With most of the land conquered and the fighting calmed, Joshua sends the two and a half eastern tribes back home across the Jordan.

Joshua 22 gives us a big misunderstanding. On the way home, the eastern tribes build a large altar. The rest of Israel hears about it, assumes rebellion, and gets ready to go to war. A delegation goes first to ask, and it turns out the altar was a memorial, built so neither side would forget they belonged to each other. Turan compared it to an old sitcom, where the whole plot turns on a wrong assumption nobody bothered to check.

The tell is in verse 18. Their very first thought was consequences, what God would do to them. They were so fixed on the transaction that they missed the relationship, with God and with their own family.

In Joshua 23, Joshua is old now, and he reminds Israel that God kept every promise He made. He asks them to keep the law in return. But he presses deeper than the rules. Do not associate. Do not serve other gods. Cling tightly to the Lord. Be very careful to love Him.

The words underneath the law are all about relationship. The law was never the point. It was there to make the relationship possible.

Joshua 24 brings them to Shechem. Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord. One word keeps coming back. Serve.

Love is not a feeling, Turan said. It is a decision followed by action. We show people we love them by what we do. Serving is love put into action. He pictured it in Mary, who spent weeks planning and cooking before their kids arrived, so the family could just be together and enjoy the time.

But serving can be counterfeited. We can do a great deal for God out of obligation, or guilt, or fear, and that is not serving at all.

Israel missed the difference. They said “we will serve,” and in the next breath “we will obey,” as if it were all about the rules and not the heart. The book of Judges shows where that leads.

The takeaway for us was plain. God demonstrated His love by keeping His word completely, and all He asked in return was to be loved back, served from the heart. Israel promised with their words and could not deliver.

We live under a different covenant now. What is impossible for us is possible for God. By His Spirit, when we accept the gift of Jesus, we are given what we need to love and serve Him. And as we learn to love and serve God, we learn to love and serve each other.

Something to sit with this week:

Where are you serving God out of obligation, guilt, or fear, instead of out of love?