I. In this speech Joshua once more presses upon the people their true character as the chosen people of the Lord God. He is able now to appeal to facts in evidence of the truth which had once been matters of faith; he is able now to point to what God has done, to call the people themselves to witness that all the promises of God have come to pass, and that not one good thing hath failed of all those which the Lord their God had promised them.
II. Joshua found in his old age nothing to retract of what he had said in former times concerning God and the people, and the relation of the one to the other. He next implores the people to guard against backsliding. He says: Go on as you have begun, and God will bless you; your shame, and misery, and damnation will be if you turn back from following the Lord.
III. Once more, looking forward to the future, Joshua declares that, in case of the Israelites going back from their high position as God's people, God would punish them as severely as hitherto He had blessed them bounteously. The possession of the land had been the reward of obedience; the loss of the same would be the punishment of disobedience.
All the points in Joshua's speech might be applied by a Christian minister to a Christian congregation. Consider: (1) whether you are sufficiently alive to your high calling, and profession, and privileges; (2) whether you are guarding against backsliding in your religious course; (3) whether you think sufficiently of the danger of offending God and of the awfulness of that judgment-seat before which the living and the dead must alike one day stand.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,5th series, p. 108.
References: Joshua 23:14. J. Vaughan, Sermons,10th series, p. 256; A. Raleigh, Thoughts for the Weary,p. 81.Joshua 24:4. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxix., No. 1718. Joshua 24:9; Joshua 24:10. Expositor,2nd series, vol. v., p. 407; H. Thompson, Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts,1st series, p. 26. Joshua 24:13. J. Vickery, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 133.Joshua 24:14. G. Woolnough, Ibid.,vol. xvi., p. 307. Joshua 24:14; Joshua 24:15. J. Hamilton, Works,vol. vi., p. 116.