OF AN OBESE PREACHER
(My friends just call me “Ed.” Both of ‘em!)
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THE HARLOT AND THE SPIES - The Story of Rahab
(Joshua 2:1-23 & 6:17)
As we read the stories about the various persons in Scripture we sometimes find that there are people who just do not seem to belong. By their very nature some of the characters seem incapable of transmitting any sort of religious story. Yet, this is where we find some of the greatest expression of the Grace of God displayed in all of the Sacred Story.
One of those who was blessed by God, in spite of the prejudices of man, was the harlot, Rahab. The following, Joshua 2:1-23 and 6:17, is the story of The Harlot and the Spies.
Chapter Two
1. And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there.
2. And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, Behold, there came men in hither to night of the children of Israel to search out the country.
3. And the king of Jericho sent unto Rahab, saying, Bring forth the men that are come to thee, which are entered into thine house: for they be come to search out all the country.
4. And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus; There came men unto me, but I wist not whence they were:
5. And it came tp pass about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out: whither the men went I wot not: pursue after then quicky; for ye shall overtake them.
6. But she had brought them up to the roof of the house, and hid them with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order upon the roof.
7. And the men pursued after them the way to Jordan unto the fords: and as soon as they which pursued after them were gone out, they shut the gate.
8. And before they were laid down, she came up unto them upon the roof,
9. And she said unto the men, I know that the LORD hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.
10. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red sea for you when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the tow kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side of Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed.
11. And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.
12. Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the LORD, since I have shewed you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my father’s house, and give me a true token.
13. And that ye will save alive my father, and my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death.
14. And the men answered her, Our life for yours, if ye utter not this our business. And it shall be, when the LORD hath given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with thee.
15. Then she let them down by a cord through the window: for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall.
16. And she said unto them, Get you to the mountain, lest the pursuers meet you; and hide yourselves there three days, until the pursuers be returned: and afterward may ye go your way.
17. And the men said unto her, We will be blameless of this thine oath which thou hast made us swear.
18. Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let us down by: and thou shalt bring thy father, and they mother, and thy brethren, and all thy father’s household, home unto thee.
19. And it shall be that whosoever shall go out of the doors of thy house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we will be guiltless: and whosoever shall be with thee in the house, his blood shall be upon our head, if any hand be upon him.
20. And if thou utter this our business, then we will be quit of thine oath which thou hast made us to swear.
21. And she said, According unto your words, so be it. And she sent them away and they departed: and she bound the scarlet line in the window.
22. And they went, and came unto the mountain, and abode there three days, until the pursuers were returned: and the pursuers sought them throughout all the way, but found them not.
23. So the two men returned, and descended from the mountain, and passed over, and came to Joshua the on of Num, and told him all things that befell them:
Chapter Six
17. And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.
Through Rahab we should be able to see the obvious: God will use whom He will. It is the goodness of God, not the works of man, which is important.
One thing especially stands out in the life of Rahab. That one thing is trust. More importantly, how this trust grew in the course of her experiences, stands out in the life of Rahab.
Originally the trust of Rahab was in her own sufficiency.
We are not told why the spies came to Rahab. There may have been an element of unrighteousness in the lives of these men. We don’t know. But, that is not important to the story. The story is not about these men. The story, what is important about the incident, is the trust of Rahab and the way in which she responded to the fact of God when He interjected Himself into the scene.
At the very first, when the men of the city came to find the spies, Rahab handled the problem by herself. She hid the spies. She worked to trick the pursuers.
By the end of the story, however, when the seemingly smart thing to do was to go over the wall and flee before the doom which she was certain was coming, she stayed and waited for the deliverance which God had promised to her.
Often a person will come to a place where he knows that God has said to wait, yet his human reasoning says to go. In such a situation God is always better than go. Although we do not always understand how God will work things out we may always rest assured that He will do just that. The spies gave Rahab the Word of God concerning her deliverance. Her deliverance was predicated on her acceptance of that Word. Rahab trusted the Word.
How like Rahab we need to be today. We need to trust His Word. This is a day, as there have been throughout human existence, when other words seek to gain acceptance. Other words seek to give guidance. Pick up any newspaper today and you will find several columns which will seek to give guidance in our lives. Advice columns, astrology columns, political columns, heath columns, even religious columns and more - these all seek to make sense out the goings and comings of the world’s events. May we trust that Word which God has given us. That Word is the Only Sure Word.
It is worth while to note that Rahab had to ask for that deliverance in order to receive it. It is the same today; we must ask for salvation from God in order to receive it. Although salvation is an offered gift, it must be accepted.
We may not have been asked to drop a scarlet thread from our windows. Still, we do need to look at this event since we know that God has recorded it for a purpose. Part of that purpose is that we may learn from what happened in the lives of these people.
As far as I can personally ascertain from Scripture, these spies are never mentioned again after this time. They were not the focus of the story. What was important was the prophetic Word of God. It was this Word of God in which Rahab put her trust.
Although we often cannot trust the religionist, we can always trust the Sure Word of God!
We Fundamentalist preachers are so often fond of saying, “We live in a day and age when men scoff at the Word of God!.” as though this were a new idea which was peculiar to this time. This is not so! This has been on of Satan’s favorite tools form the dawn of humanity. After all, did not Satan tell Eve, “Yea, hath God said...?” Satan knows that any time he can cause a person to doubt the truth of the Word of God he has nearly won the battle for that soul.
That is one of the problems I have with the newer translations and versions. These newer translations, drawn as they are from the Alexandrian Manuscript base, have one thing in common: They all deny the power of God to preserve His Word. To argue that God has lost control of His Word for several centuries is to introduce doubt in that Word and in the Person of God, with no real purpose whatsoever!
To insert notes in the margins of so-called “Scripture” which state that portions of that Word are not the Word of God is to introduce doubt in the Message of God.
We serve a God Who was powerful enough to preserve His Word. The Traditional Text which underlies the King James Versions can be traced back to at least 150 A. D. That is within one lifetime of the penning of the Book of Revelation by the Apostle John.
The newer versions are based on a text which can be traced back to Origen, the heretic of the fourth century!
We have no need to apologize for, or to find ways to update God’s Word. It is sure, steadfast, unassailable by men of faith and scholarship. It is the Word of God! If we cannot trust Him, and His Word, we are most assuredly unsure of our stand in any point of doctrine - and that includes our hope of salvation!
But, and all praise be to God!, we can trust His Word. He gave it to us and He has preserved it for us!
We may well note that as Rahab trusted that Word in her day, we today - with all the revealed Scripture before us - have even more reason to place our trust in the Word of that same Living God.
Rahab had heard of the evidence of the Power of God. She believed that He was God with enough power to do just what He had said He would do.
Rahab looked and saw that the power of God had been displayed at the Red Sea and on the two kings on the other side of the Jordan. We may also look and see that the power of God has been displayed through prophecy, through history, through Scripture, and through the changed lives of simple sinners who have been saved by grace down through the centuries. We can have just cause to be even more convinced, if that be possible, of the power of God than was even Rahab!
Rahab could see that this was a God Who was powerful enough to be a Judge capable of carrying out His righteous Judgements. Sin must be punished. Rahab realized that she lived in the midst of a sinful people. God would not be a pure and holy righteous God if He did not punish sin. Rahab knew that God was able to carry out His judgements.
This knowledge of hers brings us to the second outstanding feature in the sermon of her life: The Scarlet Thread. This only came about because of her trust in God.
That scarlet thread had a purpose. If these spies had tried to reach the ground by themselves they may well have failed. The wall may have been very high where the house of Rahab was positioned. She may have resided at the top of that wall. The fact that she hid the spies in the flax upon her roof suggest that this is so. To leave the house of Rahab without that scarlet thread may have meant a fall to ground which would have resulted in great injury. Whenever a person tries to bring himself into the presence of God, on his own without Jesus, he will fall and fail!
Without the help of that scarlet thread the spies would have, possibly, even perished from their fall to the ground. Without the help of God, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, man will surely fall and perish through his fall in sin.
I’d like to suggest that there are some other things for which that scarlet thread would stand.
One things it would stand for is a sign of the protection of God in a foreign land. Satan has been designated at the “prince” of this present world system. As we look about in this time of culture flux and degeneration it is not hard to imagine the hold which Satan does have on this present world. Not only are there the wars and rumors of wars of prophecy, we see a world which is in open rebellion against God and anything which speaks of Him. Religion is often sacrosanct, of course, but the God of the Bible is too often not the object of the worship of these religions.
This fact explains the root cause of the trouble that even the Christian has in living the type of life which he knows that he should lead in this era of time when all things of God or foreign to the worlds standards. The things of God are always foreign to the sinfulness of Satan.
Even though the stimuli of this world would cause us to live up to less than the standard which God would cause us to live up to less than the standard which God would have for us to live, we must not falter in our Christian lives.
The Christian, and his Godly lifestyle, are to be a sign to the world - this foreign land - that God still cares fore man and wants to do His work within us. That scarlet thread of our testimony should stand out to speak of God and our faith in Him and in His power to transform and to enlighten.
Of course, as we’ve just noted, it is not always an easy thing to live for God. It was not the easy or expected thing for Rahab to hang that scarlet thread out of her window, either. After all, anyone might have seen it and found out about her alliance with Israel. That would have caused her more than the social discomfort we might feel in our own witness. The cost to Rahab could have been the forfeiture of her very life. After all, this was an alliance with Israel and an act of treason against her city of Jericho!
How we also need to be in rebellion against the things of the world as we pledge our allegiance to God - the Rightful Ruler of the Universe!
But, to Rahab these things were not of concern. Her concern was to keep the testimony which would save not only her life but also the lives of her family. Our testimony, kept pure unto God, may be the means which God will use to draw our family, friends and acquaintances, and even some people we may not have even met!, to His Own loving care. We need to keep that scarlet thread in the window of our lives.
Another thing for which that scarlet thread may have stood was as a sign of the salvation of Rahab. I see it as a sign of her salvation. God has given us also a scarlet thread of salvation. That thread is symbolic of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. His blood is the thread which takes us in safety from the window of this wicked world to the solid ground of His kingdom.
The spies could have believed forever that the thread would carry them to safety. They could have believed it until the walls came a tumblin’ down. That type of belief would have been useless. It would not have helped their situation. That sort of understood but not experienced trust would hot have helped them to escape. Until they put themselves upon that thread they were still in the house of Rahab and the city of Jericho.
Our salvation is just like that. A person may believe that Jesus can save their soul. They may not trust that Jesus has the power to cleanse them of their sin. They may understand that the death of Christ is the means by which God can forgive their sin. However, they still need to put themselves into a place of acceptance of Jesus Christ as the only means of their salvation if they are to be saved.
For the spies to have simply stood in that window would have been for them to fail. For men and women today to fail to accept Jesus’ offer is to fail. For the spies to not have used the thread but, rather, to simply be amused by it would have seen the cause lost their own selves to remain in the wicked city. All of the theological gymnastics of the best minds in history is not salvation. Salvation is to simply accept Jesus Christ at His Word and accept the salvation which He freely offers. That thread was a sign of Rahab’s salvation because of her trust in the God of Israel.
A third sign for which I see the thread standing is as a sign of the contract which Rahab had with the departed who had promised to return for her. Rahab had an agreement with the spies. The spies had told her, “You leave the scarlet thread in the window so that when we come back to judge the city (The Israelites were being used of God to judge this area because of the sinfulness and wickedness of its inhabitants.) we will know that you are to be left in safety.” The Bible, in Hebrews 9:27, says, “...it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgement.”
Nearly twenty centuries ago Jesus Christ physically walked the dusty roads of Judea. He worked many miracles. He displayed His power over sickness, death and nature. He was not an ordinary man. He was (Is!) The God-Man. He said many things. He preached that all men should believe and trust upon Him and repent of their sins. He also said that He was coming back to this world. He did not say when; but, He did say that He would return.
He will!
Jesus is coming back for two reasons: The first of these is that He is coming back to judge the world of sin.
Why is Jesus coming back into this world to judge the world? Since the time of Adam man has lived in rebellion against God. Man has rejected the calling and leading of God. Man has crucified the prophets. Even the very son of God has felt the fury of rebellious mankind. Whenever the Message of God has been proclaimed man has stood against it and said, “No! We do not accept Your rule over us. We follow another way.”
The sad thing about this is that man, in his rebellion, has chosen a way to his own hurt. God, the Creator, knows what is necessary for mankind to have peace and contentment. God knows what is best for mankind. Yet man has scorned the leading of God to not only man’s own hurt but also to the detriment of all creation.
God watched the wickedness and rebellion of Rahab’s day. He was the sins of the people until judgement became necessary. The day is fast approaching when God will finally say to this world, also, “Enough!”
God has an obligation to His Own Nature to judge the world for the sin which has been, and continues to be, in the world. This sin is an open rebellion against the Rightful Ruler of the universe. But it is even more than that.
Racial prejudice which would hold us back from obeying the command to take the Gospel message out into the entire world, wars which by claiming to be in His Name serve only to profane that Name, atheism which unreasonably denies Him His rightful glory, abortion and euthanasia which are a disrespect for the very life which God has given to man and the rest of creation: These and a myriad of other sins demand punishment. God, Who by His very nature is a God of Law, a God of Order, a God of Righteousness, must punish these sins. He must punish sin in order to be true to His Own Divine Nature.
We do live in a world of absolutes. There is a certain standard of right and wrong. We cannot as a people choose our own standards of morality. The choice is God’s! He is the Author of Creation. He alone knows what is best for our lives. What we may think best may be that which would lead to our ruination. Indeed, we see the outcome of the do your own thing mentality of the 1960's in the world all around us. Crime is rampant. It is unsafe to walk the streets in many areas - in the night or in the daylight! A general breakdown of civilization is seen in our lack of respect for the rights of others. “We demand our rights,” is the cry while the word responsibility is a forgotten phrase.
We need the righteous judgement of God to set the world straight. It is only His hand which can bring fulfillment out of the chaos which is modern society!
Yes, Jesus Christ is coming back to judge the world of sin. That is a good thing for all of creation! But, thank His Holy Name, He is also coming back for another reason. As He comes to judge the world for sin He looks out at mankind and sees something hanging out of the window of the world. It is the scarlet thread of the shed blood of Jesus Christ at the cross of Calvary! That is the contact which He has made with mankind. “Hang out that scarlet thread,” He has told us, “and I’ll promise you a place of safety.” Because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ Go has promised to spare us the judgement which we deserve. He even allow us to become His Own people!
This bring us to the third outstanding feature which I find in the sermon of the life of Rahab. The Talk of Rahab. By that I mean both the talk by, and about, Rahab.
The talk, or story, or Rahab is that she was allowed to come from the doomed city where here residence had been - this was a residence among a sinful and dying people, and move her abode to the delivered people of Israel - a residence among those who had the Word of Life from the Giver of Life. She was, through her trust in God, through that scarlet thread and it’s promise, allowed to change her nationality!
It is exactly the same when a person becomes a Christian. He changes his nationality. He leaves the family of Satan and become a member of the family of God. He no longer lives in the place of sin because he now resides in the Palace of Salvation.
That is a great and wonderful privilege which God offers to you, today.
We read further about Rahab that one of her descendants was King David. The song says, “I’m a child of the King, a child of the King! With Jesus, my Saviour, I’m a child of the King!”
That is the great and wonderful privilege which God offers to you, today! “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12) A Christian is one who has been born again into the Royal Family of the Universe. A child of God!
If you’ve never accepted Jesus Christ as your own, personal, Savior, I would very much like to see you do so right now. More than just pleasing me, it would be the greatest favor that you could ever do for yourself. More than that, God, Himself, would be pleased with your decision. That was the whole purpose behind the birth and death of Jesus Christ. That is why He walked that road from Bethlehem to Calvary. He wants to save you from your sins!
Notice how Rahab talked after she had trusted the Word of God. She ran and told her family. She gathered them to herself in that same place of safety. She wanted them to have the same peace which she had found from knowing that she was no longer doomed but was now delivered.
In advertising one of the most impressive statements is the testimonial made by one who has tried the product and been please. May we advertise Jesus Christ to you today? Tie that scarlet thread to your own life and come into the Royal Family.
God is waiting to save you!
