Choose This Day

God delivers a message through Joshua to the people of Israel whom he has delivered from Egypt and brought into the Promised Land. He tells them their deliverance, their salvation, is all of grace. It is sheer unmitigated sovereign mercy extended to unworthy sinners. And God wants them to remember that, lest their pride carry them away and become the cause of their destruction.

He wants them to know that even in the conquest of Canaan, the destruction of their enemies was His doing, not the result of their own valor.

So it is only after God has made that clear, and has shown them that the only reason they are standing there as a nation at Shechem is His grace, that the call in verses 14 & 15 to a reasonable decision is made. God has saved, now they should respond to that saving work, in faith, submission, and obedience.