Rahab

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. So, God's story. Rahab's story is God's story. And the first note, the first point, I want to drive home with you today.

If you have your little note card in there and you want to fill something out, God, here's your fill in the blank, searches for us to be in his story. He is searching for you, specifically for you, by name, to be in his story. Now, as Rahab's story opens, this is super, super critical. Joshua and the Israelites, okay, they're on the bank of the Jordan River. They're right across from Jericho.

Jericho. They're waiting for God's instructions to cross and to take the land. Jericho had to be the first city, okay? It had to be the first city to take, as it was the only major city on that side of the Jordan River Valley, and it guarded a main road. Now, Joshua 2.

1 says, Now, look back up just a little bit, okay? Immediately before this, in chapter 1, here's what God says. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them, to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates, all the Hittite country, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.

No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will leave these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them. I don't see anything in there that would inspire me to send spies to scout out Canaan. God said, sit and wait.

I'm about to deliver this land to you. Even more baffling is how they actually take Jericho. Now remember, how many days did they besiege the land? Seven. Seven days only.

There was no need to go into Jericho and scout out the supplies, see what, you know, rations they had. They only laid siege for seven days. The walls. There was no need to scout out weak points, indefensible points, because how did those walls come down? Not by military might.

They came down because people yelled really loud and blew their horns. The spies' mission was militarily useless. So why, then, were those men sent to Jericho? Well, the answer is simple. God was searching specifically for Rahab to insert her, against all logic, against all reason, into his story.

Even though neither Joshua nor those spies knew it at the time, their mission had one purpose, and one purpose only, and that was to save the one woman in that city who wanted to know the Lord. Guys, that's just incredible. I mean, if you think about this, so often we just read these stories as they come, and we don't think about the context. I mean, at the end of the chapter with Rahab, the spies do report back to Joshua and say, they're in great fear of us. Surely we will take this land.

And, yes, God just said that to you yesterday or however many days before. They basically report nothing of any use. There was only one point in sending those spies, and that was to save Rahab, to save the one person in that city who wanted to know the Lord. And, guys, I don't know. If that doesn't make you excited to be part of God's story, to know that out of an entire city that has been doomed to be obliterated, destroyed, every man, woman, and child, God searches for you.

He is looking for you specifically by name, and he will put you in his story. And more important than that, he will make a way to put you in his story. God always makes a way. Now, Rahab, her story started out a little inauspicious. It sounds like a Bond flick, right?

We've got these spies going into Jericho. They find a house of ill repute, and they stay there. But they must not have been very good spies because it says immediately the king knew. I'm trying to figure out how they were such bad spies that the king immediately knew they were there because they literally were staying on top of the wall. I mean, they didn't even go into the city proper.

They basically just stayed right there at the edges. But either way, they weren't very good. The king of Jericho knows they're there, so he comes calling on Rahab. Well, Rahab hides the spies on her roof underneath some flax. Ew, flax is gross, but I'm sure it had other uses back then, probably to make linen.

And she says, you know, yeah, these guys, they came. They came to me, wanted some lovin', but I don't know who they are. I don't know where they came from. And when night fell and it was time for the city gates to be closed, they took off. But you know what?

And she continues this ruse. I bet you can catch them. Run really fast. Just get out of the city and go after them. You can find them.

I know you can do it. Of course, the entire time, they are being hidden on her roof. So Rahab hides the spies, saves their lives, and sends the king and his soldiers elsewhere. Rahab says in Joshua 2, I know, this is her speaking to the spies, that the Lord has given you this land, and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.

When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear, and everyone's courage failed because of you, because the Lord your God is God in heaven, above, and on earth below. Now then, she says, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and my mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death. She makes that confession of faith, and she immediately asks for big things. I just love that about her.

I love that she just jumps right in, and she just asks for the world, because she knows destruction is coming. She knows the end is near. And just like God always makes a way, just like he parted the Red Sea, just like in Egypt, the blood on the doorpost signified Israelite families. He made a way to save the firstborn of all the Israelite families, just like he provided the ram for Abraham. He always makes a way for your story to work.

When you think there is no way, when there seems to be no salvation coming, he makes... Away. God doesn't disappoint her request for a sign. Joshua 2, 17 through 21. Now the men had said to her, this oath you made us swear will not be binding on us unless when we enter the land you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down.

But if you tell what we are doing, we will be released from the oath you made us swear. Agreed, she replied. Let it be as you say. So she sent them away and they departed and she tied the scarlet cord in the window and through that sign, God slotted her into his story and she changed history. God will always make a way.

Now, all of us love a story, right? We love stories. And there's a reason that we love stories. And it goes all the way back to the garden. It goes all the way back to sin entering the world.

Because as soon as sin entered the world, two things were born that really had not been there before, had not been in us. And that's suffering and longing. We see the suffering of Adam and Eve when the curse hit, right? We see the suffering of Job. You know, it's basically an entire book kind of outlining suffering.

We see how God's people suffered under the yoke of slavery over and over and over. We see how the martyrs mentioned in Hebrews 11 suffered. They were mocked. They were scorned. They were stoned.

They were sawed in half. We see the suffering. But we also see the longing. We see the longing of God's people looking for something, looking into the future for something. Everything.

Every person on this planet, regardless of whether they've ever been to church or they know anything about Jesus or they know anything about the gospel at all, deep down, deep down, they have an absolute longing for something more. Guys, we wouldn't have superhero movies otherwise. We wouldn't need superheroes. The desire to escape, it's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing at all.

That desire to escape, that's that part of you who knows that this is not your home, that this story is not the best it can be, that this world is not the best it can be. That longing inside of you for a better story, for justice, for a better world, everybody has it. And the truth is, the gospel, the good news, the old, old story, it's the cure for the longing that you feel. There's no other cure. There's no comic book.

There's no superhero movie. There's no fandom out there that is going to quench that thirst you have, that longing that you have for something more, like the good news of Jesus Christ. And that's, that's the part that's missing in everybody who's longing, right? We are longing for a redemptive ending. I actually love that phrase.

I feel like it's kind of the buzz phrase, you know, in Christian homes. You know, oh, yes, I'm watching this show or this movie, and it's full of naked people and violence. But there's a redemptive ending. There's a redemptive ending. But it is true.

We do want that redemptive ending. Because, why? Because we need a redeemer. We know we need to be redeemed. Me, in my own story, I want to be redeemed.

I want to have my own redemptive ending. And we all want that. And the good news is, God's story, Rahab's story here, his story that he puts you in, always has a redemptive ending. Joshua, in 622 through 25, Joshua says to the two men who had spied out the land, this is after the walls have come tumbling down, go into the prostitute's house and bring her out and all who belong to her in accordance with your oath to her. So the young men who had done the spying, notice that they still aren't named.

It's still just the young men who have done the spying. They went in and brought out Rahab, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters, and all who belong to her. They brought out her entire family and put them in a place outside the camp of Israel. Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house. But Joshua spared Rahab, the prostitute, there it is again, with her family and all who belong to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho.

And she lives among the Israelites to this day. Well, Rahab's story obviously had a redemptive ending. I mean, not only does she survive, she makes a confession of faith. She decides to follow the God of Israel. She is taken out.

And she lives with the Israelites. But her story doesn't end there. And what makes her story so much bigger and so much more important is what happens next. Next, we find in the book of Matthew, chapter 1, the genealogy of Christ. Now, if you're new, you know, to church and all that stuff, you may think the genealogies are super boring, right?

So-and-so begat, so-and-so begat, so-and-so begat, so-and-so begat, so-and-so. And it's just lots of names, and it seems really boring. And I feel like for years as I was growing up, because I grew up in the church, I just ignored it. I didn't read them. I didn't really focus on them.

And that makes me sad, because those genealogies are just incredible. God's sovereignty, the control he has, the benevolent, loving control he has of everything is nowhere more evident than in the genealogy of Jesus. Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar. Salmon, I refuse to call him Salmon. I don't even care if that's how his name is pronounced.

I'm not calling the man Salmon. Salmon, the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. Boaz, the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife. If Rahab not only survives and comes out of Jericho with her family because of her faith, she marries an Israelite man of at least somewhat high standing, because we do see that Ruth later, when she marries Boaz, that lends high standing to her mother-in-law, Naomi.

So we know that Rahab married well. So, she married in to the Israelite line. She became the ancestor of King David. And as we know, he, of course, was the ancestor of Jesus. So God takes Rahab out of her story that she had to have been so disappointed by.

What little girl says, I want to grow up to be a prostitute? None. There's not a woman out there who does that for a living, who said, yes, this is what I want to be when I grow up. Do you think there was anyone more disappointed in her own story than Rahab? How disappointed would you have to be with your story to betray your country?

Think about what she did. It was treason. She betrayed her country. Every living soul in that city. Because she was so.

She's so desperate for her story to be different, and God pulls her out and he puts her into the greatest story ever told. Not to be cliched, but it is. It's the greatest story ever told. The line of Jesus. Now, side note, there are some traditions that say Salmon, the Israelite Rahab eventually married, was one of those two spies, and that's kind of romantic, you know, be a really good Hallmark movie.

There's really not a lot of biblical basis for that. I mean, it's possible. I don't think it's all that likely, because what we do know is that Rahab did not marry for a good while. It was probably a good 30, 40 years later that she actually finally got married. So possibly, but that was a really long courtship.

Other sources suggest that Salmon, maybe he entered the house of Rahab at the beginning of the siege to protect her and her family, and of course, from that couple comes the court of salvation. Just interesting. Really not a part of this message. But I just thought I'd mention that because it would be a good movie. I wonder if that movie is out there.

It would be very romantic, and I love Hallmark movies. Now, we're going to talk about this genealogy just a little bit more, okay, because I want to nail this home. I really, really, really want to send this home. There are five women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Only four of them are named.

Now, before that sounds bad, because this is out of a list of 72 names, keep in mind that most genealogies of this time would have had zero women listed. The fact that any women are listed at all is a big deal, and it testifies to the Bible's accuracy because men of that time would not have voluntarily inserted women's names in a genealogy. They just wouldn't have. And not because they were just naturally evil or bad, but because it just wasn't done. But we know that Scripture is inspired by God, that God's Holy Spirit was guiding the hands of these men who wrote.

So this is actually testifies to this. These are God's words put in here. So really quickly, we're going to talk about the women who are in that genealogy. The first woman mentioned is Tamar. Tamar.

She's mentioned in Genesis. She is the daughter-in-law of Judah, who of course was the son of Jacob and Leah. Now, God kept smiting her husbands because they left the toilet seat up and did other wicked things that are kind of squicky, and we won't talk about them. She is really in a bad place, okay? She's lost two husbands at this point, and she has had no children.

She really wants to pass on. This was very, very important, right? Offspring was incredibly important. So she disguises herself as a prostitute. Where have we heard that before?

And she solicits sex from her father-in-law. I know. Ew. It's gross. She does get pregnant.

Judah is, of course, at first very upset. He does eventually acknowledge his paternity, and he even says in Genesis 38 that Tamar was more righteous than he was because he refused to give his other son to her. He just sought a fleeting sexual liaison. Tamar wanted to protect her future and his future by keeping his line going. So that's the first woman mentioned in the genealogy.

Kind of uncomfortable, but she's there. Next, of course, we have Rahab, who we already know about, prostitute by profession. She produces Boaz, who marries Ruth. Ruth is the next in line. She is the next mentioned person in the genealogy.

Now, Ruth was sexually pure. We don't have any indication that she engaged in any kind of sexual immorality. However, she was also a Gentile like Rahab. So we now have two women who are mentioned by name who aren't even Jews in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Ruth was no less determined than Tamar to protect her future and that of her mother-in-law.

And she and Boaz have a son named Obed, who is, of course, the grandfather to King David. The next woman mentioned is the wife of Uriah. She is not actually named. We do, of course, know that she is Bathsheba. Yet another name involved in a pretty nasty relationship.

She and King David, of course, had an adulterous relationship that produced an illegitimate child who did not survive. David had her husband killed. Once she became the legitimate wife of David, she and David had King Solomon, who continues the line. And the final name in the genealogy is, of course, Mary, the mother of Jesus. So the Redeemer, this line produces Jesus Christ.

The Redeemer, who without even knowing it, Rahab was putting her faith in. I mean, think about that. It's kind of timey-wimey. She put her faith in a Redeemer that she didn't even know was coming. And she had no way of knowing was going to come from her.

Isn't that just miraculous? Isn't that incredible? So this genealogy, it's really important, right? This redemptive ending. So Rahab, I think she could give us some words of encouragement.

And I think the first thing she would say to us is that God, if he invites you to be a part of his story, join him. Don't say no. In John 8, 12, Jesus said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. In Luke 9, verses 23 and 24, then he said to them all, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life will save it. Now, Rahab's story actually tells us a lot more about God's character than anything else, which most of the Bible stories do. For instance, it's really important. The fact that Rahab was a Gentile is very critical. Because if you look at the book of Joshua, the way the stories are set up, we have kind of bookend stories.

We have Rahab's story, and we have Achan's story. Now, Rahab, a prostitute, a Gentile, in her story, she is saved, her family is saved, and Israel is victorious. Just a few chapters later, we have Achan, an Israelite, one of God's chosen people. Because he disobeys the Lord's commands and sins against God by taking spoils of war, which God commanded them not to do, he and his entire family are destroyed, and Israel falls to Ai. God makes it very clear that he is not interested in your background, your breeding, your family, your job, your profession, none of that.

He doesn't care, right? He doesn't care about that. He will lift you up out of wherever you are and give you the victory. He is more interested in your obedience and your faithfulness to the covenant he's made with you than anything else. He wants to graft you into his family, right?

He wants to adopt to protect you. Thank you. You into his family. And if he asks you to, if he asks you to join his family, if he wants to put you in his story, do it. You won't regret it.

Rahab knew. She knew it was worth the pain. She knew it was worth the work. Number two, God wants to surprise you with his love. He wants to.

He wants to surprise you with his love. We should expect it. We should have an expectation of God's loving kindness. Accept him. Hebrews 4, I love this translation, verses 15 through 16, it says we don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality.

He's been through the weakness and the testing. He's experienced it all, everything but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he's so ready to give. Take the mercy. Accept the help.

God is stretching out his hand. He wants to give it to you. All you have to do is take it. All you have to do is take it. Rahab was willing to do that.

She was willing to take it. She was so bold. She made a confession of faith. And then she immediately reached out and sought the Lord's help to save her family. And she accepted it.

Don't be like Lot's wife, right? I mean, she had every reason in the world to accept what God was offering, but she didn't. And so many of us are like that. We keep looking back. We want to look back at the old story instead of to the future.

God wants to surprise you with his love. All you have to do is accept it. God also, number three, wants you to love others with your actions. And you do that by serving him. In 1 John 3, 16 and 18, he tells us this is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. Now, the interesting thing here is that Rahab actually established her faith in all those ways. She first established her faith in word and, you know, with speech because she said to those spies, right, the Lord has given you this land.

She testified, the Lord your God. He is God in heaven above and in earth beneath. She essentially proclaimed that Israel's God ruled over the very world, that her cultural traditions, her religious background said belonged to Baal or Asherah or any other number of false gods. And then she's commended for that in Hebrews chapter 11. By faith, the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not when she received the spies with peace.

But she also established her faith by deed. She also established her faith in action. She gave her faith legs and she made it walk because she acted as God's instrument when she hid the spies and she kept their secret. And in the New Testament, she's mentioned multiple times in the New Testament. James specifically talks about her in his famous Faith Without Works is Dead passage.

And he says, for example, Rahab was shown to be right by God, righteous by her actions when she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road. Rahab risked her own life. She betrayed her city, her people, her cultural background because she wanted to follow the God of Israel. Possibly most indicative of Rahab's faith too is what's not said. We know that her home, was destroyed with her help.

We know that she went to live with the Israelites as it says until this day. We don't know how she was treated there. I can't imagine it was incredibly well. You know, she and her family were the sole surviving aliens in a new land out of a doomed city. She had been a prostitute that would not have been well received.

And as I said before, we are pretty sure that she didn't marry until much, much later. I doubt she was received with a lot of open arms. Serving God, loving others with your actions, it's not always easy, right? I mean, if it were easy, everybody would do it. Sometimes it comes at a great personal cost.

No one knew this better than Rahab. No one knew this better than those heroes of the faith who were mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11. They were willing to lay down their lives. Some of them were martyred, stoned, exiled. And a lot of them, most of them, never even saw the fruits of their labor.

We see it. We see it. We see that Rahab's name is written down. We see that she changed the course of history. But she had no idea.

She could not possibly have known what was going to happen. But she served God anyway. And she served others anyway. But it's not going to be easy. Serving others, doing for other people, getting the focus off yourself, it's hard.

It's uncomfortable. Sometimes we're not going to want to do it. Do it anyway. Dig in. Number four, God himself signs his name to your story.

Thank him. 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 15 through 17 says, this is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am the worst of them all. But God has mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners.

sinners. I love that. I am the chiefest of sinners. But I'm glad I'm the chiefest of sinners because I can be an example of the long-suffering nature of God, of the patience. I like the King James version, I think, of Hebrews 12, 1.

Because I like that word patience instead of endurance. It said, let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author. Oh, there's that word again. He's the author.

He wrote our story. The author and finisher of our faith. God has so much patience and long-suffering for us. Can't we in turn have patience as we're running this race of faith? Just a few minutes ago, we talked about that genealogy, which clearly I am enamored of.

Those five women who were included, just think about it. Think about who those names were, who have a place of honor, who have a place of honor in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, who were named in the New Testament. Most were poor. Some were Gentiles, not even Jews. Some of them were unimportant.

Most of them were unknown. Some of them beset by lives of sin. But all of them literally changed the course of history because of their obedience to and their faith in and their willingness to put their future in the hands of God. of the God of Israel. They were women just like most of us in here, seemingly unimportant, unlikely to change history.

I cannot imagine how I'm going to change the course of history with this life that I'm leading. I don't know about anybody else, but God sought them out. He made a way for them and he placed them in the gospel story to give us, to give you and me hope, and to remind us that Jesus came from a lineage of sinners so that he could save sinners. It's like God makes it a point to include and put names in that line of Christ of just the worst of the worst and the people who failed hard. Just like the disciples, Jesus Christ's own disciples, they failed so hard, guys.

They failed hard over and over and over before they succeeded and before they acted in faith. But Jesus was just driving that home. He says, look, I come from a line of sinners so that I can save sinners. That's what he came for. But Jesus promises, he promises you just like he promised Rahab, even though she didn't even know who he was, that he can give your story significance.

He can make your story matter. Rahab knew that following him was worth it, that it was worth the pain. It was worth more than anything she could have known while being alive. It's something we won't have a real grasp of until eternity, and that's the hard truth. Sometimes we can't know.

Sometimes we don't get to the end of our own story. We don't get to see the awesome ending. I mean, that would be so obnoxious, right, when we see movies. I mean, what if J.K.

Rowling stopped, you know, midway through book seven, and we don't find out if Harry defeats Voldemort. I mean, I would just lose it. It would crush me. Mozart, at the end of his life, he was writing his Requiem, possibly the most famous piece of music that he wrote, and he died before he could finish it. I mean, it's just painful.

We hate not having resolution. We hate that. It is awful. It is uncomfortable. I hate a movie that doesn't resolve.

When music doesn't resolve, it's just like, eh. But sometimes we're not going to get to see that big resolution. But that doesn't make our story any less significant. It doesn't make your part of it any less significant. Again, going back to Hebrews, it says, we are surrounded by this cloud of witnesses.

God knew that walking our faith journey was going to be hard. He knew that serving him and loving others and risking being mocked and laughed at because you're different was going to be hard. But he set it up so that we could do it, so that we could endure, so that we could run with patience. He did that for us because he's a loving God and he's generous. You have this cloud of witnesses around you testifying to what God has done.

All he wants you to do is accept that you have a part in his story. S.C.S. Lewis says that you bear this incredible weight of glory.

That one day in eternity, you will be made perfect, just like Jesus Christ, the morning star. It's why at the very end of Revelation, right, at the final, at the close of the Bible, which is the most redemptive and the greatest story ever told, it ends by going back to the beginning and saying, Eden, where everything went wrong, I'm going to restore it. I'm going to wipe away every tear. There will be no more pain. There will be no more sorrow.

And John, the revelator, says, yes, amen. Come on back. Let's go. I'm ready. And Jesus says, I'm coming soon.

And that's how it ends. And you know what? That's how your story is going to end, too. All he wants is for on your lips every day to say, Jesus, come back soon. I can't wait to see you.

I just want to see your face. And you will one day. If you accept your part in this story, if you allow God to search you out, if you allow him to insert you in this story, if you accept the love that he's trying to give to you, you can have that redemptive ending, too. I want us to pray together right now about that, if we can. Oh, God, sometimes it's so hard for us to run this race and to keep doing it and to run it with patience.

And, God, we just ask that you would help us to constantly look toward Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, the joy of our salvation, he endured the cross, he despised the shame, and he is sitting at the right hand of the throne of God right now, knocking on the door of our heart and asking us to come in and asking us to just accept the love that he has for us. And, God, if there is anybody here, if there is anybody in this room, anybody in this room who doesn't know you, who doesn't know that you are the author of their story, that you want to give their story significance, if there's anyone here who wants to make you, Jesus, the Lord of their life, they can do it right now. You can do it right now. Whatever you're going through, it doesn't matter. Just stop, and right now, I want you to ask Jesus Christ, say, listen, I know I've screwed up.

I don't like how my story is going. I don't like the part that I'm playing in it. I want you to give me significance. I want you to give me significance that matters, that will ring out in eternity. I want you to save me.

Save me. Save me from myself. Save me from everything in this world. Save me from my relationships. Save me from just the crap that's going on in my daily life.

Save me from this. There's something better. There's something more. You have something more for me. Save me.

If you ask him right now, he will do it. He will do it, and he will save you. He will give you a story worth telling. So if there's anybody here, if there's anybody here who wants to do that, please do it right now. Don't wait.

Don't wait. Thank you, God. Thank you, God, that you redeemed me, that you saved me, that I, a Gentile, a non-Jew, you have adopted into your family. Thank you that you do not care about my past. All you care is about the future I have in you.

And I boldly proclaim that I will have the patience and the endurance to keep running this race right until the end. Because you have made a way. Thank you, God. In the precious name of your son, Jesus, we pray. Amen.