In Joshua, chapter twenty-three, verse eleven, Joshua exhorted Israel to cleave to the Lord and love Him diligently, just as He loved them. Love for and gratitude to God provided the inner motivation for them to obey His Word. To remain separate from the ungodly ways of the nations. New Testament believers have a calling to the same kind of love and commitment.
Would we cleave to the Lord? We must always stand upon our guard, for many a soul is lost through carelessness. Love the Lord your God, and you will not leave him. Has God been truthful to you? Be not you false to him.
He is faithful and has promised in Hebrew ten, verse twenty-three. The experience of every Christian witnesses the same truth. Conflicts may have been severe and lengthy, trials large and heavy, but in the end, He will acknowledge that goodness and mercy followed him all the days of his life. Joshua states the fatal consequences of going back; know for sure it will be your ruin.
The first step would be friendship with idolaters; the next would be, marrying them; the end would be, serving their gods. Therefore, the way of sin is downhill, and those who have fellowship with sinners cannot avoid having sociability with sin. He describes the destruction, and He warns them. The goodness of the heavenly Canaan, and the free and sure grant God has made of it, will add to the misery of those who shall forever shut out from it. Nothing will make them see how wretched they are so much as to see how happy they might have been.
Let us watch and pray against temptation. Let us trust in God’s faithfulness, love, and power; let us plead his promises, and cleave to his commandments, then we shall be happy in life, in death, and forever. It requires more watchfulness and diligence than in the wilderness because your temptations are challenging from the examples and insinuations of your bad neighbors.