Joshua said to the people, "You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord, to serve Him." And they said, "We are witnesses."I don't really know why this verse caught my attention. It just kinda leaped off the page at me.
I suppose that part of it is that Joshua had just told the people that they wouldn't be able to keep this promise to serve God, but they insisted that they would. He then binds them by a type of oath, something that we don't really use today.
Honestly, I think this is something that should come back. We are taught in the New Testament that we should not need to take oaths, but most of us fail at that charge in one respect or another. If we were to force ourselves to look at what we say with this type of seriousness, where we are specifically checked on what we say to make sure we mean it, and then it's binding, I think many fewer issues would arise with Christians breaking their word.
I know that I try to mean what I say, but especially in terms of serving God, I often fail. I'm much better at keeping my promises to people here than I am my promises to God. I'm going to try to keep this verse in my head, and run it through whenever I'm promising something. Hopefully, that will help my true sincerity and belief to increase.
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