Would you grab a Bible and open to the book of Joshua chapter 2?
While you're turning there? I'm going to pray for us.
Father God, we are in need of your word again this morning to
sound with power and authority and grace towards us.
So we pray for these next few moments as we turn our attention
to Your Word. We ask you, Lord, as our Father,
in the name of Christ, we ask in the power of your Spirit that
you would speak to us and that you would build up your people.
Speak with clarity, Lord, speak with comfort, speak with
challenge. Those who need to be reproved
and rebuked, would you do that through your Word?
Those that need to be encouraged and strengthened, would you do
that through your Word? And we will give you all the
credit and all the glory as you exalt the name of Christ among
us. We ask it in his name, Amen.
So you're in Joshua chapter 2. The title of today's sermon is a
prostitute in a pickle, which is maybe not the best title of all
time, but we are going to be reading about perhaps the
greatest woman who's ever lived, including Mother Mary.
Rahab is phenomenal and we are, it's a very familiar story to
you and it's a pretty straightforward story.
And so we're just going to take it in chunks.
And I'm going to call our attention to a few things as we
move our way through it and then have some some application for
us at the end. And so the first thing I want to
show you from Joshua chapter 2 verses one through 7 is I want
to show you a sanctioned lie. Can Christians ever lie?
Not to your dentist or your doctor, but you can lie to the
tyrant. OK, let's I'm just teasing.
OK, let's let's read this. So watch this.
He said the the text says. And Joshua, the son of Nun sent
two men secretly from Shatim as spies saying go view the land,
especially Jericho. Now, if you know your Bible, you
might be tempted to start sweating bullets here because
the last time the children of Israel sent spies into the land,
they decided not to go into the land.
And Joshua was one of those spies.
And so he's not sending 12, he's sending two hand picked guys.
I think I know the name of one of them, but I won't fight you
for it. I'll explain that in a little
bit. But he sends 2 spies saying go
view the the land. Especially Jericho.
The question is why especially
Jericho? Well, they're about to cross
over the Jordan and enter into the promised land, and they're
supposed to take Dominion and Jericho's this massive city with
huge walls that's going to take, If all things go normally and
God doesn't give them miraculous victory, it's going to be a
long, hard siege. It's going to take forever.
And you're going to get discouraged.
People are going to die and they're going to go hungry and
they're going to get bored. And he's going to have a fight
on his hands. And so the temptation is, hey,
why don't we just skirt Jericho and go somewhere else, go to the
next, like easy target. But the problem is you're
leaving enemies behind you. And so Jericho is the first mega
city that they come to. Joshua knows I've got to take
it. I have to take the city out.
And so we got to figure out a way to do that.
So he sends spies especially to Jericho, and they went and came
into the House of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and they
launched there. Rahab is one of the heroes of
our faith. She has mentioned repeatedly in
the New Testament as one of the great models of faith.
If you if you remember James too, James talking about
justifying faith also works and he talks about the 2 examples he
gives are Abraham and who else discow Rahab.
What are you doing, James? You're you're bypassing Joseph,
you're bypassing Noah, you're bypassing all of these great men
in the faith. And James says, I know exactly
what I'm doing. It's Abraham you need to look at
and it's Rahab, the Jericho prostitute.
And so they stay with the prostitute most likely to just
be able to come into town and and not acquire a lot of a lot
of visual from the people in Jericho, but that they go to the
prostitute's house. And it was told to the king of
Jericho, Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search
out the land. Then the king of Jericho sent to
Rahab saying, bring out the men who have come to you who entered
your house, for they have come to search out all the land.
And the woman answered them, yes, Lord, I'm a Christian.
I cannot tell a lie. They're hidden up on my roof.
That's not what she says. What does the text say?
The woman had taken the two men and hidden them, and she said
half truth told us a whole truth.
There's a whole lie, my favorite professor used to say.
She says true, the men came to me, but then here's the lie.
I didn't know where they were from, and when the gate was
about to be closed at dark, the men went out.
I do not know where the men went.
Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.
So she lies through her prostitutes teeth now the text
says. But when?
But she had brought them up up to the roof and hid them within
the stalks of flax, that she had laid an order on the roof.
You use, you use flax to make a linen.
And if you're a prostitute you you use linen to make your garbs
of prostitution. So they she hides them in the
stalks of flax. So the men pursued after them on
the way to the Jordan as far as the Fords in the gate was shut
as soon as the pursuers had gone out.
This is in no uncertain terms a sanctioned line.
So the question is did you do the right thing or did she do
the wrong thing. And they like massive hero of
mine in reading commentary his commentary on the book of
Joshua. He says, look, the Lord blessed
and affirmed her intention, but he did not like the way that she
lied to them and I think he's just dead wrong.
This is a mega theme in the scriptures.
I want to call your attention to two things about this lie.
As we think through as Christians our Christ centered
commitment to speaking the truth, the first thing I would
say is it if I were to ask you, why is it wrong for a Christian
to lie, what text would you turn to?
What would you say? Well, it says right here, don't
lie. The the the clearest text in the
world would be Exodus 20 verse 16, one of the 10 commandments.
You shall not bear false witness.
Can anybody finish that sentence?
You shall not bear false witness.
What the rest of that verse is against your neighbor.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You're not. You can't use your tongue to get
someone in social or legal trouble by lying.
It's a thing that you just don't do.
You don't lie to hurt someone. It is disallowed in Scripture.
But listen, that's not the same thing as lying to the tyrant to
protect God's people and God's purposes.
This is not the same thing. If you have ever gone into an
airport and hidden money in your boot, you, you are doing the
same thing that Rahab did. You're just realizing I'm not in
a just society and I'm going to, I'm going to loyally align
myself with God and with his people and I'm going to protect
those that are in my power to protect.
So First off, is just the understanding that the command
is we don't bear false witness against someone, but bearing
false witness to protect someone is a very different thing.
It's the it's the same difference of a doctor going in
with a scalpel and opening someone up to go in and remove a
tumor, right? A cancerous tumor, that's one
thing. A doctor going into surgically
remove human life from a mother's womb.
It looks very similar. It ain't the same thing.
This looks like a lie, but it's not what is forbidden in Exodus
chapter 20. Second thing I want to think
with you about, and this is where it gets more fun and also
more complicated. The model of Scripture
concerning deception is a, a, a principle called lex talionis.
Lex talionis is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
It's justice, it's retribution, It's it's, it's balance.
And so when you think about the very first sin of our parents in
the garden, the enemy of our souls, Satan, lied to our
mother. Eve deceived her so that she
would rebel against our God. And she was, she believed him.
He bore false witness. She believed she ate, She took
some of the fruit, gave it to her husband who was with her,
and he ate. And they all fell the, the
entirety of the race fell into sin.
And from that point forward, what you see is godly men and
women, particularly in the book of Genesis, but also an exodus.
And throughout the entirety of the Bible, you see godly men and
women giving that same initial, that same initial attack back to
the seed of the serpent. So the seed of the woman can
lawfully deceive the seed of the serpent.
So let me give you a few of these.
Abraham lied repeatedly about about Sarah saying she's she's
my sister, which was, as I say, 1/2 truth told as a whole truth,
which is a whole lie. And I used to read that and say
Abraham must have been a coward. What kind of a guy doesn't say,
no, this is my wife, get your dirty hands off of her.
He says, this is my sister. Well, what was going on in that
culture is you have you have men who want to want to marry a
woman go through her brother. And so you can see this in the
in the narrative where Abraham's servant goes to find a a wife
for Isaac and he deals not with Rebecca's dad, but with
Rebecca's brother Laban. And so Abraham is is deceiving
the tyrant so that he can protect his wife.
She ends up getting taken twice anyway.
But that was not sinful. It's not him lying as a coward.
It's a very different thing. You the the interesting story
where Rebecca lies to she, she leads Jacob to lie to Isaac and
we say, wait, is that OK? Can wives do that?
But when you read that story closely, you, you would
understand Isaac got a in vitro prophecy that the older son
would serve the younger. God said the older is going to
serve the younger. And then when they grew up,
Isaac, instead of honoring and blessing Jacob, he just loved
Esau because Esau was a hunter of wild game and Isaac loved
food. And so when you read the story
of the blessing, he, Rebecca leads, leads Jacob to deceive
Isaac so that he can get Esau's blessing.
When Isaac goes out, Esau comes in and he says, father, here I
am, bless me. And Isaac says, I have left.
I've reserved nothing for you. I have no blessing for you.
And so think about what that meant for Isaac to intentionally
plan to go against the spoken word of God about who would, who
would inherit who would be the son of promise.
God said it's going to be Jacob, not Esau.
And Isaac said it's going to be Esau and not Jacob.
And I'm going to completely cut this son out of everything.
Rebecca knew that and loved her husband enough to deceive him so
that he'll wake up when she pulls the covers back.
And very interestingly, in the book of Hebrews in the Hall of
Faith, it mentions Isaac by faith blessing Jacob.
He he didn't do it by faith. He did it because she lied to
him. Well, if you again, if you go
back to that text, she deceives him.
He trembles realizing what what has just happened.
And the next chapter is he from his soul, he blesses his son of
promise. He blesses Jacob on his way.
And so you have this model of Abraham lying, of Rebecca lying
of Pua and Shipra lying to Pharaoh, kill the baby boys.
And they say, we're not going to do that.
Kill us if you must. No, they don't.
They say, hey, we're trying. We're on your side.
It's just the Hebrew midwives and the Hebrew women are very
vigorous and they and they have their babies fast before we can
get there. Kuwa and Shifra lie and are
blessed by the Lord. Abigail lies to Nabal.
Don't name your kids Nabal. It means stupid fool Nathan lies
to David in order to bring about repentance.
He's not bearing false witness against David.
He's lying to him for David's good so that he can say, hey,
here's this situation over here. And David, look without bias and
say that's wrong, that guy deserves to die.
He's going to pay fourfold. And then Nathan can say you're
the man. I, I lied for your sake to bring
about repentance. So listen to me, Rahab is simply
walking in a long line of covenant keeping believers
practicing lex talionis. I would run out of time if I
covered all of the different ways godly men and women
throughout the centuries lied, used deception to bring about
the purposes of God and are blessed for that deception.
Deception is not always simple. OK, so this brings to mind
something we need to think about about Christian loyalty.
When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die and he bids him
to die to all other loyalties. There's a common misnomer that
when you become a Christian now, Jesus becomes number one
priority, and then wife, and then children, and then church,
and then country and then career, and Jesus is the number
one on the priority list. That is fundamentally error.
It's the error of all errors. When you become a Christian,
listen to what Jesus says. Now the crowds accompanied him,
and he turned and he said to them, If anyone comes to me and
does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and
brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my
disciple. We say, Lord, that's a hard
word. I I love, I love my father and
my mother. I love my wife.
I love my children. I love my brothers and sisters.
I love my life. I'm supposed to hate those
things. What he's saying is when you
come to me, I am your chief loyalty.
I'm the only loyalty that matters.
And when that though that can sound oppressive, those of us
who have come and said, look, you have the words of eternal
life. I'll hate who you want me to
hate. I'll honor who you want me to
honor. I just, I'm loyal to you.
What happens is God gives us back all of those things.
He gives them back to us in a way that won't consume us.
If you love your father or your mother or your wife or your
children apart from Christ, they become your God, your chief
loyalty, and they can lead you. Think about this, those of you
who have known years of marriage as unbelievers and you're sort
of chief ethic is just make the marriage work, make it go.
And so husbands who just want to keep the peace will let their
wives lead and they won't say no, we're not going to do that
because there's no higher loyalty to to truth or to
Christ. It's just keep the peace.
But when you come to Christ and you realize Christ is my central
loyalty and everything I do and as a, as a husband, as a son, as
a father, as a pastor, everything I do is aimed at
loyalty to Jesus Christ. Life for sure becomes more
complex, but it's it's simplified in the sense that it
is loyalty to Christ, his people, his purposes, and all of
the gifts that he gives me. But every loyalty given to my
father, every loyalty to my mother, every loyalty to my
wife, to my children, to my brothers, sisters, all of those
are in essence loyalty to Christ.
Above all things, Christ is our highest loyalty.
We love Him, we love His truth, we love His people and His
purposes more than any covenant existing in the world, more than
marriage, children, country, etcetera.
Which means two things for Christians.
We wouldn't have time, but I would love to get questions so
that I can argue for that a little more robustly.
But it is true that Christ is your only loyalty, and all of
those relationships enjoy your faithfulness in direct loyalty
to Jesus Christ. Which means two things for US.
Number one, that Christians are and always have been the very
best citizens of just societies, the very best spouses, the very
best parents, the very best friends.
True Christians are the best at all of these relationships
because we have a reason above those things that tells us to be
faithful. We have loyalty to Christ that
says, I want you to be a good husband.
I want you to be a good citizen in your country.
I want you to be a good friend. And so in loyalty to him, we
become the best of all of those things because we have a reason
again above us that says be faithful here.
It also means that Christians are and always have been the
nightmare of unjust civilizations.
You realize, don't you, that original Christians were thrown
to the lions on the accusation of atheism because they would
not worship Caesar. They worship Christ and him
alone. We will not bow the knee.
And in Rome, Caesar worship is that unifying principle that was
trying to hold together a fragmenting nation.
We need one central idea to bind us all together as a civic
unity. And it's and it's Caesar worship
is what they chose. And the Christian said, no, I'm
not doing that. I don't care what you say, I
don't care what you ask. I'm not doing that.
I will pray for Caesar like we're instructed in the
scripture. I will submit where possible,
where he doesn't try to leave me in the sin.
I will pray for him. I will be the best of all
citizen, but I'm not going to buy in there.
I'm not going to be controlled or coerced into sanctioning a
country like ours that slaughters millions of innocent
babies with tax dollars. A country like ours that is
stripped individuals of life and liberty and property.
Riddle me this Christian. When is the last time you earned
a dollar and were able to keep it?
All of it never in life you've never done that thing.
They tax it on the way in. They tax it when you spend it.
They tax it when you save it. They tax it when you buy
something. When you save something, it's
taxed at every at every turn. And Christians are the ones that
will bring about a fix and a writing to that situation.
So it is an entirely Christian thinking about where our
loyalties lie. And what's got me on this bone
is Rahab. The question is, did she sin
against her neighbors by welcoming spies in so that her
town can be overthrown? And the answer is Rahab, as
you're going to see, has a higher loyalty to anybody in
Jericho. Her loyalty is to the Lord.
And so it is. It's entirely a Christian ethic
to, as an example, serve in the military while actively praying
that God would either grant U.S. National repentance.
Or that he would strike us down as a nation.
Rahab did the exact right thing and under the circumstances, and
there's no caveat to that. There's no Well, we wish you
would have figured out another way.
She did exactly what she was supposed to do in the Scripture.
Never criticizes her for that. Now, I want to show you a true
believer. Look in verse.
Look in verse 8. I want to show you what she says
she knows what her town has heard and then what she actively
believes and acts on. Look in verse 8, it says before
the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and she said to
the men, I know now I want you to to think about that.
She she's just telling them the things that she knows and she's
going to list some things. I know, number one, that the
Lord has given you the land. Rahab, brothers and sisters, is
convinced. I know this.
She's convinced of things she cannot see with her eyes.
In a conversation with a brother this weekend, talking about the
Kingdom of God. Is it here?
Is it not yet? In what way is it here and, and
all that keeps being repeated is, well, I don't see, I don't
see everything getting better. I don't see the line laying down
with the land. I don't see these things.
Well, let me ask you a question from Rahab's perspective.
How much of the promised land is in submission to God into
Israel? None of it with her eyes.
If she just goes up on the wall and looks out over the land of
Israel and says, Look how much of this is in submission to
Yahweh? Answer not a square inch of it
yet. And yet by faith she says, I
know not that you will be given the land, but that the Lord has
given you the land. I know this, and I know that the
fear of you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of
the land melt away before you. OK, These are the things she
knows. The Lord has given them the
land. Would that Christians today
would embrace Rahab's faith to trust and to act upon something
that Christ has said that we can't see with our eyes.
We have to take my faith. Something like all authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Let's just take that as gospel truth, because it's gospel
truth. It's all of it is his.
Would that we had a portion of Rahab's faith.
She knows that the fear of you has fallen upon all of us here
in Jericho and that the inhabitants of the land melt
away. The entirety of the land is
trembling at the presence of the Israelites.
And we might ask, why is that the case?
How did that did they read a social media post?
Like how did they hear about these things?
And she gives us the answer in verse 10.
For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red
Sea before you when you came out of came out of Egypt.
Think about that. They have heard about what God
did 40 years ago and they're still living in terror of that
event. How much more now that Christ
has been crucified and risen from the dead and ascended to
the right hand of of all authority, how much more does
the world tremble at what God has done through Christ?
We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea
before you when you came out of Egypt.
And we've heard what you did to the 2 kings of the Amorites who
were beyond the Jordan, Sahan and Ogg, whom you devoted to
destruction. They were extremely powerful
giant kings and giant people in Israel.
Wipe the floor. And they say we know these
things. We've heard what God has done.
We've heard what you have done. And then in verse 11, she says,
and as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted and there was no
spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God.
And this is her creed. Watch this the Lord your God, He
is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.
Brothers and sisters, that is the most UN Canaanite confession
of faith that you can possibly imagine.
When we see some of these fights, they're going to say
things like Israel beats them in the mountains.
And so they're going to say, well, their gods must be
mountain gods. Let's fight them on the plane
because that's their mindset is you have local deities,
household gods. This is the God of the Martin
family, not the God of the the Kelly family.
So our God is going to overcome their God if need be.
There's gods of of trees and of rivers and of all of these
different things. And so you have local deities
and she says that the God of Israel, the Lord your God, he is
God in the heavens above and he is God on the earth beneath.
She has infinitely more faith than most American Christians.
There is one living and true God.
And she says we cannot stand against him.
And she's going to she's going to act on this faith in verse
12. And I want to show you 12
through the end what I would call the always was nature of
the old covenant. Look in verse 12.
Now then please swear to me by the Lord that as I have dealt
kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's
house and give me a sure sign. She says, don't just give me a
word, give me a sacrament. Give me something material that
I can grab hold of, I can look at and I can say, OK, I know
they're going to keep their word.
Swear to me and give me a sign that you will save a life, my
father and my mother and my brothers, my sister and all who
belongs to them, and deliver our lives from death.
And the men said to her, our life for yours, even to the
death. They are Christ to her.
If you do not tell this business of ours, then we then, when the
Lord gives us the land, notice not there's no if.
When the Lord gives us the land, we will deal kindly and
faithfully with you. She let them down by a rope
through the window, for her house was built into the city
wall so that she lived in the wall.
And she said to them, go into the hills or the pursuers will
encounter you and hide there three days until the pursuers
have returned. It's very interesting.
Go into the hills. One scholar has said this is the
mount of, of temptation, Christ baptized in the Jordan.
And then he goes into the wilderness immediately to be
tempted by the devil. And so these spies, they go into
the wilderness for three days, and then and then they return.
And then she says, Then afterward you may go your way.
The men said to her, We will be guiltless with respect to this
oath of yours that you have made us swear.
Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie.
And if you write in your Bibles, this is it, the scarlet cord.
Tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us
down, and you shall gather into your house your father, your
mother, your brothers, and all your father's household.
And then if anyone goes out of the doors, circle that word.
It's massively important. If anyone goes out of the doors
of your house into this street, his blood shall be on his own
head and we shall be guiltless. But if a hand is laid on anyone
who is with you in the house, this blood shall be on our head.
Please, please see a new Passover for this Canaanite
woman in her family. You have, you have, you have a
red cord hanging and you have protection at the door.
And they are now the new Angel of death coming in and she's the
new Israel enjoying protection. Stay within the door.
But if you tell this business of ours and verse 20, then we shall
be guiltless with respect to your oath that you have made us
swear. And she said, according to your
words, so be it. Then she sent them away and they
departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in
the window. OK, few things here.
The always was nature of the covenant.
This scarlet cord has two big ideas to it.
The first is the word. There I have it on great
authority is thread. It don't see a rope or a flag or
a banner. It's just a thread that's
hanging. It's a cord which can't be
really seen well by anybody, but gone.
It's just like the Passover, the Passover blood.
You were to slaughter a Passover lamb and put the blood on the on
the doorpost and on the lentil. And it did.
You were not to see the blood. You were to shut the door.
God was to see the blood and God was to pass on.
So God is going to make the Wallace fall flat and he's going
to see and he's going to honor the window that he sees the cord
in and they're going to protect those that are behind the door.
And the second thing that I want you to know about this cord is
again, the idea that Rahab's, her vocation was prostitution.
And there's, there's a very high likelihood that this scarlet
cord came from the garment of her prostitution that she has,
that she has torn it asunder. She has turned her back on
former life and she has identified herself with the
people of God. And I want you to be reminded of
this, of this biblical mega theme of two witnesses to a city
about to be destroyed, some sign on the door and protection
beyond the door. So remind, be reminded of Enoch
and of Noah who preached to the antediluvian world.
And then the text says very highlights very significantly
that when Moses or when Noah finished the ark, they went in
and God shut the door and everyone in the door survived
and everyone outside the door perished.
You have how many angels went into Sodom and Gomorrah before
it was destroyed? 2 And is there a theme?
Is there a door there? Yes, there is.
The men come, the homosexual men come and say we want to rape the
men that came to you. And the angels pull them in and
shut the door and they strike them in with blindness.
And they, the text says that they groped about all night to
try and find the door and everyone inside the door was
rescued. Moses and Aaron come into Egypt.
And the highlight, the climax of all of the plagues and the
judgment that got poured out was the Passover where they were to
take blood and paint it over the door and on the sides of the
door. And everyone within the door was
protected. The Angel of death came and saw
the blood and he passed over their house.
You have the Jericho spies protected in the protected those
that were, that were inside Rahab's door.
And then you have, I believe, John and Christ coming to
Jerusalem, Christ being the door and all within him as a they,
they came as a witness against Jerusalem.
And when he came to destroy that place, all that are hidden in
the door, we're safe. OK, three things.
Closing matters. First of all, this gospel.
This is gospel and story form in some fantastic ways.
I can't prove it, but I told you, I think I know one of the
names of one of the spies. And I think his name is Salman.
Not salmon like you eat or catch in a river, but salmon.
And the reason I think that it's Salman is because we're told
later on in the Bible that this Rahab, the Jericho Canaanite
prostitute, was not just rescued, but she married a man
named Salman. And Salman was a descendant of a
guy named Judah who who was prophesied about him that he
would give birth to the Messiah. The Messiah would come from his
line. And so Rahab marries Salman,
who's a descendant of Judah. And Rahab and Salman have a son
and his name is Boaz. And Boaz married a Moabite, A
persona non grata in Israel. Moabites.
All Moabites are to die to the third and 4th generation.
And Boaz, whose Mama was a Jericho prostitute, looks out on
on Ruth and says, I'm going to marry this gal.
And they have they have a son who has a son who is David.
And David marries a woman that he had no business marrying in
Bathsheba. And they give birth to Solomon.
And we read in Matthew's account of the lineage of Christ that
here is this Jericho prostitute, one among many scarlet women in
the lineage of Christ that that the that the people of God
viewed as unclean. This is gospel and story form
because Rahab is a Jericho prostitute under a just sentence
of death and condemnation due both to her family.
She's an Ammonite and a Canaanite.
So she's under the judgment of God according to law.
She's under the judgment of God. So just not only her family, but
also her vocation. She was a prostitute, which is
which is antithetical to life with a holy God.
And yet, listen to me, brothers and sisters, If you don't hear
me on anything else, hear me on this.
She doesn't just get rescued. That would be awesome.
Jericho prostitute. We're not going to kill you with
the rest of Jericho because you've got faith.
You're free to go and roam about the country.
Much better than that. You're free to marry into
Messiah's line. From your loins will come the
one who will be the Redeemer of all of the universe.
She doesn't just get pardoned, she gets pursued.
She goes from being the whore of Jericho to being the Princess of
God's people. Listen to me.
It is her, the fruit of her womb, that is seated on the
throne of authority in the heavens right now.
This is the woman of faith that is the embodiment of the Church.
We who are enemies now, rescued and reconciled and corporately
wed to King Jesus, glory be his name.
So Christian, you are not merely tolerated.
Think about what a great news that would be that like, yeah,
you have this this list of sin that's against you.
Christ died to set you free, and now he's going to bring you to
heaven and he's going to send you into the corners to be free
to kind of wander about his sheep.
That would be amazing, much better than death and damnation.
But how much more wonderful that He redeemed you, not just to set
you free, but He redeemed you to make you His own, His own
people, to have deep and intimate relationship with you.
You have the gospel and story form in the term of covenants
and families. I said Once Upon a time, a long
time ago, that God does not save on the family plan, which was a
well-intentioned error. Everybody, every one of us needs
to repent and trust in Christ and receive from Him mercy.
So in that sense that there is a truism to that statement.
But to say that God, God does not save on the family plan is
to utterly abuse and ignore the scripture pop quiz.
Who gets saved here? Rahab.
Just Rahab? No, she intercedes for her
father, her mother, and all of the people that belong in her
family and all of them get saved.
So does does being a part of a covenant family help you come to
saving knowledge of God? Please say yes.
Would you rather be 1 of Rahab's family members that get saved
and therefore gets to do life with Israel, or would you rather
be one of the Jericho people that just die when the walls
fall? Well, there's great blessing in
the families of God. And so there is a sense of God's
covenant continuity to people and to families, and we see this
lived out here. Secondly, if we come away from
the Old Testament with an idea that Israel is good and Canaan
is bad, or that Jew is good and Gentile is bad, we have not been
paying attention. The original promise to the
original Jew, it was Abraham, was that through him one would
come there. You would have one seed come
from Abraham, and through that seed all of the families on the
earth would be blessed. Not just Abraham's physical
descendants, but all the families on the earth would be
blessed. And as we read the Scriptures,
we see men like Jobe and Melchizedek and Abimelech and
Jethro, the mixed multitude of the Egyptians that came out
under the Exodus. We see Uriah the Hittite,
Sheba's queen, Ruth the Moabite naming the Syrian the widow of
Zaratha, the centurion in Christ day that caused him to marvel.
I have not found faith like this among any in Israel.
And perhaps the most important, Rahab, the Jericho prostitute.
It was never just about Israel, brothers and sisters.
It has always been about Christ, and through Christ to all
nations. And then lastly, you have the
gospel and story form. When you see that the the works
of God have been accomplished in public, it is important for us
to bear in mind that what God did in the Exodus and the
destruction of Sahan and Ogg had universal ramifications.
He did not do these things in a vacuum.
He didn't do them in a corner. He didn't hide them.
He did them publicly in broad daylight, and the entire world
trembled when they watched it. What God had done 40 years ago
to rescue His people had already won the battle in Joshua's day.
How much more can we view the crucifixion and resurrection and
exaltation of Jesus Christ through that same lens?
Does the world know about Christ?
Of course they do, because God did it publicly.
Have you not noticed that in our culture, you can be a radical
Islamite? You can be a baby murdering
feminazi. You can be a sex cult rock star,
a lesbian dance teacher, a dirty dude in women's underwear on a
float in public shaking your goods in front of children.
You can be a pedophile in politics and nobody cares.
You just get away with all of that stuff.
But what you can't do is say Christ is Lord and everyone must
bow the knee or perish. You can't do that.
We won't tolerate that. We'll tolerate all other manner
of evil, but we won't tolerate that because the exclusivity of
Jesus Christ means something to the world.
It means that he still has the power to conquer nations and
that he is bent on doing just that.
He is feared by all and obeyed by some.
This should be radically encouraging to us that the
reason the Jericho folks stayed stayed up at night was because
God and his people were at their gate.
And this is the reason our politicians restrict and
persecute Christians at every turn.
They're not doing it nearly to the measure that they want to do
it. God be praised, but they're
aiming at those things. And the reason is because at
every turn, they know what Christ has done in history.
When people simply trust and obey him, they know that every
single place where the gospel has rooted down into a culture,
that culture has become a Christian culture.
It is a it is a health. Christianity is a healthy
disease that inflicts everything it touches, and they know that.
And they don't want the lordship of Christ.
Christ has never failed to fail wicked regimes when his people
engage in the fight with faith and valor.
And that is why wicked regimes fear the church rightly aligned
according to the mind of Christ above all things.
And it is why we should look at the world with optimism, knowing
that Christ will have the prize for which he died.
And that prize is the inheritance of all nations, all
nations. As Trey read us, we'll give
thanks to this God because they, all of them will speak of the
wonderful works that he has done.
And so. To you, I say, Rahabs one and
all, come to the Lords Table if you have repented of your sin
and then baptized into his triune name.
Then come to the table. If you are trying to hold sin
that Christ abominates in one hand, greed, idolatry,
homosexuality, adultery, porn, cowardice.
If you're holding these things in one hand and reaching for the
bread and the cup with the other, then I'm telling you
because I love you. This table might just be the
last thing you ever do. It might be the last thing you
ever do if you're trying to hold on to your former self.
Hold on to your prostitution while reaching for the Lord.
No, no. But if you have burned the ships
like Rahab torn your garment, and you're, you are desperate to
know the mercy of Christ, then this is your table.
There are none of us so foul in our sin that he refuses us a
place at this table. Brothers and sisters, Rahab is
our mother and she was a prostitute.
She is our example. And so I don't care who you are.
I don't care what you've done, if you have repented and you've
come to Christ, this is your table.
So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.
Let me pray for us. Father, it is marvelous to see
how you would include a woman like Rahab and not just include
her, not just rescue her from destruction, but also marry her
into the lion of the lion of the tribe of Judah.
God, what a blessing for our souls to see the type of people
that you save. Lord, as we come to this table,
I pray for those of us that are struggling with guilt,
struggling to believe the promises that you have spoken
over us, promises of redemption and reconciliation, promises of
love. Holy Spirit, would you come?
Would you take this word? It's encouragement from Rahab.
And would you, would you give us rest in these things, and would
you grant us the faith that she had to come to the table and to
take up the bread and the wine and to enjoy the gifts that
Christ lived and died and rose and ascended so that we can
have? Would you meet us at the table?
We ask it in the name of Jesus, Amen.