Fear the Lord - Reverence him as the sole object of your religious worship.

Serve him - Perform his will by obeying his commands.

In sincerity - Having your whole heart engaged in his worship.

And in truth - According to the directions he has given you in his infallible word.

Put away the gods, etc. - From this exhortation of Joshua we learn of what sort the gods were, to the worship of whom these Israelites were still attached.

1. Those which their fathers worshipped on the other side of the flood: i.e., the gods of the Chaldeans, fire, light, the sun.

2. Those of the Egyptians, Apis, Anubis, the ape, serpents, vegetables, etc.

3. Those of the Canaanites, Moabites, etc., Baal-peor or Priapus, Astarte or Venus, etc., etc.

All these he refers to in this and the following verse. See at the conclusion of Joshua 24:33 (note). How astonishing is this, that, after all God had done for them, and all the miracles they had seen, there should still be found among them both idols and idolaters! That it was so we have the fullest evidence, both here and in Joshua 24:23; Amos 5:26; and in Acts 7:41. But what excuse can be made for such stupid, not to say brutish, blindness? Probably they thought they could the better represent the Divine nature by using symbols and images, and perhaps they professed to worship God through the medium of these. At least this is what has been alleged in behalf of a gross class of Christians who are notorious for image worship. But on such conduct God will never look with any allowance, where he has given his word and testimony.

Now therefore fear the Lord,.... Since he has done such great and good things, fear the Lord and his goodness, fear him for his goodness sake; nothing so influences fear, or a reverential affection for God, as a sense of his goodness; this engages men sensible of it to fear the Lord, that is, to worship him both internally and externally in the exercise of every grace, and in the performance of every duty:

and serve him in sincerity and in truth: in the uprightness of their souls, without hypocrisy and deceit, and according to the truth of his word, and of his mind and will revealed in it, without any mixture of superstition and will worship, or of the commands and inventions of men:

and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; that is, express an abhorrence of them, and keep at a distance from them, and show that you are far from giving in to such idolatries your ancestors were guilty of, when they lived on the other side Euphrates, in Chaldea, or when they were sojourners in Egypt; for it cannot be thought that the Israelites were at this time guilty of such gross idolatry, at least openly, since Joshua had bore such a testimony of them, that they had cleaved to the Lord unto that day, Joshua 23:8; and their zeal against the two tribes and a half, on suspicion of idolatry, or of going into it, is a proof of it also:

and serve ye the Lord: and him only.

These overwhelming manifestations of grace on the part of the Lord laid Israel under obligations to serve the Lord with gratitude and sincerity. "Now therefore fear the Lord (יראוּ for יראוּ, pointed like a verb הל, as in 1 Samuel 12:24; Psalm 34:10), and serve Him in sincerity and in truth," i.e., without hypocrisy, or the show of piety, in simplicity and truth of heart (vid., Judges 9:16, Judges 9:19). "Put away the gods (Elohim equals the strange gods in Joshua 24:23) which your fathers served on the other side of the Euphrates and in Egypt." This appeal does not presuppose any gross idolatry on the part of the existing generation, which would have been at variance with the rest of the book, in which Israel is represented as only serving Jehovah during the lifetime of Joshua. If the people had been in possession of idols, they would have given them up to Joshua to be destroyed, as they promised to comply with his demand (Joshua 24:16.). But even if the Israelites were not addicted to gross idolatry in the worship of idols, they were not altogether free from idolatry either in Egypt or in the desert. As their fathers were possessed of teraphim in Mesopotamia (see at Joshua 24:2), so the Israelites had not kept themselves entirely free from heathen and idolatrous ways, more especially the demon-worship of Egypt (comp. Leviticus 17:7 with Ezekiel 20:7., Joshua 23:3, Joshua 23:8, and Amos 5:26); and even in the time of Joshua their worship of Jehovah may have been corrupted by idolatrous elements. This admixture of the pure and genuine worship of Jehovah with idolatrous or heathen elements, which is condemned in Leviticus 17:7 as the worship of Seirim, and by Ezekiel (l. c.) as the idolatrous worship of the people in Egypt, had its roots in the corruption of the natural heart, through which it is at all times led to make to itself idols of mammon, worldly lusts, and other impure thoughts and desires, to which it cleaves, without being able to tear itself entirely away from them. This more refined idolatry might degenerate in the case of many persons into the grosser worship of idols, so that Joshua had ample ground for admonishing the people to put away the strange gods, and serve the Lord.

Now therefore {f} fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD.

(f) This is the true use of God's benefits, to learn by it to fear and serve him with an upright conscience.

24:14 The gods - Whereby it appears, that although Joshua had doubtless prevented and purged out all public idolatry, yet there were some of them who practised it in their private houses and retirements. Your fathers - Terah, and Nahor, and Abraham, as ver.2, and other of your ancestors. In Egypt - See Ezek 23:3,8,19,21,27. Under these particulars, no doubt he comprehends all other false gods, which were served by the nations amongst whom they were, but only mentions these, as the idols which they were in more danger of worshipping than those in Canaan; partly because those of Canaan had been now lately and palpably disgraced by their inability to preserve their worshippers from total ruin; and partly, because the other idols came recommended to them by the venerable name of antiquity, and the custom of their forefathers.

Margin fear

See Scofield Note: "Ps 19:9".

14-28. Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth-After having enumerated so many grounds for national gratitude, Joshua calls on them to declare, in a public and solemn manner, whether they will be faithful and obedient to the God of Israel. He avowed this to be his own unalterable resolution, and urged them, if they were sincere in making a similar avowal, "to put away the strange gods that were among them"-a requirement which seems to imply that some were suspected of a strong hankering for, or concealed practice of, the idolatry, whether in the form of Zabaism, the fire-worship of their Chaldean ancestors, or the grosser superstitions of the Canaanites.

24:1-14 We must never think our work for God done, till our life is done. If he lengthen out our days beyond what we expected, like those of Joshua, it is because he has some further service for us to do. He who aims at the same mind which was in Christ Jesus, will glory in bearing the last testimony to his Saviour's goodness, and in telling to all around, the obligations with which the unmerited goodness of God has bound him. The assembly came together in a solemn religious manner. Joshua spake to them in God's name, and as from him. His sermon consists of doctrine and application. The doctrinal part is a history of the great things God had done for his people, and for their fathers before them. The application of this history of God's mercies to them, is an exhortation to fear and serve God, in gratitude for his favour, and that it might be continued.