PODCAST
The Kindness of God
September 20, 2026 | Brandon CooperBrandon discusses how Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute living in Jericho who made one of the most remarkable declarations of faith in all of Scripture. When Israelite spies entered her city, she hid them, defied her king, and boldly proclaimed that the God of Israel is God in heaven above and on the earth below. Her faith was not just words. It was proven by her actions before she ever spoke them aloud. The scarlet cord she hung from her window became a symbol of salvation, echoing the Passover and pointing forward to Jesus Christ. God not only spared her and her family but wove her directly into the genealogy of His own Son. No matter what is in your past, Rahab’s story is proof that no one is beyond the reach of God’s grace.
TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+
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Good morning, church. You can go ahead and grab your Bibles. Open up to Joshua, chapter two, Joshua two. As we continue in the series we began last week on the book of Joshua. As you are turning to Joshua 2.
There is a familiar trope in cop movies, especially, where there is an insider, somebody on the inside of a gang or a cartel, something like that, who is working with law enforcement. And usually there’s some sort of relationship there, maybe because they’re the informant, they’ve become friends in this process or fallen in love or something, or sometimes it’s somebody they knew previously. This is a family member who took a bad turn or a friend who took a bad turn, ended up in this place. And so at a certain moment, the cop has to come to this insider and say, look, you need to get out. All right?
There’s a raid coming tonight, tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Like, now is your chance. There’s this choice before you. You can either leave the gang, leave the cartel and be saved, or you can stay and be arrested or worse, killed in the raid. And so there’s always that suspense, of course, in the movie at that moment.
That’s why you’re there. That’s why you paid good money to see it and stuff. But there’s also this tension because you’re realizing, you know, you’re asking them to leave people they know, people who have been friends to them, maybe even family. There’s a severing of allegiances that needs to happen. And so it’s this tough, tough moment that’s not altogether unlike what we’re going to encounter in the story before us this morning.
Canaan, Jericho in particular, is about to experience God’s just judgment. And this is a wicked culture. In fact, the whole reason Israel’s been in slavery in Egypt for the past, you know, few centuries was to ensure that the sin of the Canaanites reached its full measure, so that when God brought his judgment on them, it would be just. So there’s this just judgment, the conquest that is coming to Canaan, and we have an insider willing to help. And so it’s got that same suspense.
Will she get out in time? It’s got the same relational tension. Chapter two functions, in many ways, the way chapter one functioned for us last week. So last week we met the Israelites as a people, and we also met one Israelite in particular, Joshua, who was going to be a sort of savior to the people. Well, this week we meet the Canaanites, and we also meet somebody who could be a sort of savior to the people.
But who that savior is is shocking and teaches us so much then about God’s kindness, his grace and love, and also his mission to the world. So we’re going to see that unfold in three scenes as we go. So let’s start with scene one, the commission. Joshua, chapter two, verses one through. Let me read it for us.
Then Joshua, son of nun, secretly sent two spies from Shittim. Go look over the land, he said, especially Jericho. So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. The king of Jericho was told, look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land. So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab, Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.
But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly.
You may catch up with them. But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof. So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan. And as soon as the pursuers had gone out the. The gate was shut.
This story starts off on the wrong foot in just about every possible way. If you were reading this story for the first time, having started at Genesis, like, tracked with Israel’s history until you got here, you would be understandably nervous when you got to chapter two, verse one. First of all, the spies are setting out from Shittim, which means very little to us, I know. But if you were somebody familiar with Israel’s history, having had, you know, ancestors who lived it, you would remember that Shittim is where the Israelites fell into some of their worst immorality, sexual immorality, especially associated with the BAAL of Peor near the end of Numbers, under the treacherous influence of the false prophet Balaam. Not only are they in Shittim, but then they’re also sending spies out.
Joshua’s sending spies out, and you’re thinking to yourself, I’ve seen this movie before, because Moses sent spies out, 12 of them in that case, and it didn’t go well. 10 of the 12 spies come back and go, we have no hope. Like, God can’t possibly deliver us. And so the people didn’t believe and weren’t able to enter the rest of the promised land as a result, but perished out there in the wilderness. So here are their kids.
And it seems like they’re doing the exact same thing. They’re in the same place. They’re sending out spies also. Now, Joshua was one of 12 spies. He came back and said, no, God has got this.
So we’re maybe a little confident there at least. But will it go differently this time?
Joshua sends the spies out to spy out the whole land, but especially Jericho, he says, which is important because Jericho is not just a town. It is a military garrison. It is an outpost. This makes sense because it’s right on the border of the land. Imagine for a moment that you somehow managed to cross the DMZ from North Korea into South Korea.
What do you think you’re going to come to first as you cross into South Korea? Like a nice resort or military. And that’s Jericho. Right. So it’s the military right there on the border, because it’s a military outpost.
There are probably very few families there, very few women there. And so it’s maybe not altogether surprising, then, that the spies enter a brothel. Well, except it is surprising because these are supposed to be moral Israelite men here. And even some of the language that’s used, the Hebrew words, are exactly the Hebrew words you would use euphemistically for somebody who’s visiting a brothel. Like the word translated, stayed means literally lay down there that night.
Now, the Hebrew is quite clear that there was no sexual impropriety in this moment. It goes on to explain that. But even still, we got that nervousness as we start off this story. Now, I said they entered a brothel. They didn’t actually.
They entered the house of a prostitute. That’s a little different. This would have just been an inn or a tavern in this place. But it would have attracted, certainly the usual vices. And so Rahab, whatever else we learn about her, and we will learn lots about her as we go, is guilty of a grievous offense against a holy God.
We have to have that in our minds. And so we’re wondering, then why did the spies head here to this person who’s guilty of this grievous offense against God? Why would they go into a place where you’d have any question of impropriety even? It actually makes a lot of sense that they would have gone to this tavern. If there was a fifth column in Jericho, you would find it here.
And even if not, you would find information. You’re just going to be hearing the gossip as people have a little too much wine or beer. You know, loose tongues are going to let slip the weakness. Or we’re shutting down the power grid for routine maintenance next week. And you’re like, great, that’s the day we should go.
This is how spies work. Plus, it would give them a chance to blend in because this is where you would head if you were visiting. So they’re doing well morally, and they’re doing well maybe vocationally they head to the right spot. Except not so well vocationally. Apparently, they stick out like sore thumbs because they are identified immediately.
Like, they’ve been in that town for 10 minutes and already everybody knows who they are. These are the Jack Sparrow of spies right here. You are, without doubt the worst spies in the world that I’ve ever heard of kind of thing. But at least we’ve heard of them, and we have. So.
So the king sends the message to Rahab, like, look, we know who’s there. Would you send them out to us? It is not looking good for the spies at this moment. Except Rahab surprises us because she hides them and then lies to the king, says they’ve left already. Can I mention here, just as an aside, the Bible says nothing about her lie.
You notice it wasn’t here in chapter two. Didn’t say it. When it talks about Rahab elsewhere, it doesn’t say anything positive or negative about the lie. Doesn’t justify or excuse the deceit, but also doesn’t judge or disdain the deceit. And so it’s not the focus of the story.
Doesn’t need to be our focus right here. And we don’t need to get snagged on it as we’re talking about Rahab. But we need to go where the story is goes. The bigger question is why? Like, why is Rahab so willing to break with her people?
I mean, she puts herself and her family at risk in doing so. If she’s caught, you can assume she’ll be killed just as quickly as the spies are killed. Now, that’s not totally unusual. People do this. I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, who opposed the Nazis and who deceived the Nazis in the process of opposing them and wrote a whole book on the ethics to kind of talk about whether or not that lie was justified.
So, okay, there’s a time and a place to have that conversation. But we understand why Bonhoeffer opposed the Nazis and was eventually killed for it. Punished when he was caught, hanged as a martyr, but we understand why he did it. Because he had a Christian moral framework. He was working from within this book’s moral framework.
And so he knew the Nazis are an evil regime. They should be opposed. Rahab doesn’t have that. So what’s going on? I think we can get hints of it just in knowing the little bit that we know about her.
No little girl dreams about entering this profession when she grows up. And so something has gone badly wrong. Most who enter this profession do so because they are driven there by poverty or terrible circumstances. You think of Fantine and Les Mis or Sonia and crime and punishment. And so here we’re dealing with a woman who would be deeply disaffected with the current regime.
She has got no reason to support the king. These unjust power structures that have pushed her into this. It’s usually the poor that join revolutions, the middle class that starts them, but it’s the poor who join them and fill the ranks. And that’s what she has done. And so even in her treachery, in this moment, we see not just her immorality, but the injustice and the fissures within Canaanite society.
That’s what leads her to make this momentous decision. And it is a momentous decision. She severs her national allegiance here irrevocably. Like, there is no going back. She just renounced her citizenship.
This would be like an Afghan assisting the US when we were in Afghanistan against the Taliban, we were going, okay, if they come back, that’s it. I will be exactly what has happened to far too many of them, hunted down and killed. Like, that’s where she is in this moment.
Her deception works, though, almost certainly because of the urgency of the information she gives them. You know that it’s good salesmanship here, right? You want somebody to buy something, you need to tell them, act now, offer ends soon. You know, that sort of thing. And that’s what she’s done.
Okay? Like, the gate is about to shut. They gotta be out of here before the gate shuts. Which means you gotta be out of here before the gate shuts. Go, go, go, go get them.
Maybe you’ll catch them at the four.
And that’s why they don’t search the house. Then they take her at her word. The thing is, the word she said, though, was true. The spies really do need to leave because the gate is about to shut. And you read it right there in verse seven.
I mean, those last four words, the gate was shut. I mean, that’s it. Suspense peaks. At this moment, the spies are now trapped in Jericho. How long Will they get out?
Scene 2 Confession Let me read verses 8 to 14 for us. Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof and said to them, I know 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, 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. The Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.
Now then, 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 mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death. Our lives for your lives. The men assured her, if you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the Lord gives us the land. The narration is so effective here because I told you.
Suspense peaks Right. This is the. The commercial break, and it’s right at that moment where you see whatever is, like, falling down, and you’re like, they’re about to die. And then finally the commercial’s over and the scene picks back up, except that they’re just somewhere else entirely, like it’s a different person. And you’re like, come on, like, help me out here.
Did they make it or not? But we don’t get the resolution in this moment. We don’t understand what’s going to happen with the suspense. Instead, we get this lengthy confession, and our narrator’s point is clear that Rahab’s words matter more than the plot. Dale Ralph Davis, in his commentary on Joshua, said you could almost summarize what the narrator is doing here in this moment.
Like he’s saying to you, don’t bother your head about those two fellows and how those two fellows will escape. I have something far more important to tell you, and that’s something that’s more important, is Rahab’s true confession. This, by the way, is where Scripture focuses. It doesn’t focus on her deceit, it focuses on the truth she speaks. We read in passage like Hebrews 11, the hall of Faith, as it’s sometimes called.
By faith, Rahab hid the spies, so it’s her faith. That catches the emphasis in Scripture. Now, her confession, though, shouldn’t actually surprise us because she’s already proved her faith by her deeds. That is a good word for us as Christians. Sometimes, of course, we get to declare who we are, what we believe first thing.
Often that’s not the case. Maybe you’re at work, you’re working on a project or something like that. You’ve been interacting with somebody for a while, but haven’t really gotten into your personal life or anything like that. And maybe it’s a few months in, you finally get to chat and they’re asking you something, and, you know, you mention your involvement at church or something like that, and you can kind of see them go, oh, yeah, no, that makes sense. Okay, because I, you know, use these words and you don’t use these words or you’ve mentioned, you know, all that stuff and, like, it clicks in place.
And that’s what’s happened for Rahab here. Of course, we want to be very careful as Christians that we don’t go the other direction. You finally mention to somebody that you’re a Christian and they’re like, really? Like, that would be a bad thing because of what we see here in Rahab’s life, right? She has proved her faith by her deeds.
And that is what we’re supposed to do. Also James, chapter two. This is what James says. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. No, no, no, it’s not up there yet.
Thank you. Okay, I’ll tell you. You’ll know when we get there. You’re stealing my thunder. That’s all right.
So James is saying, like, if faith without works is dead, right? And so it’s not that our deeds save us, but if we have saving faith, it will produce deeds in us. And how does James prove his point? Well, he starts with Abraham, who is, of course, the model of faith for us in the Old Testament. But his next example is Rahab the prostitute, and he writes this, which will be on the screen for you.
Was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. So Rahab has proved her faith, the confession that she now speaks by her deeds. But let’s look at her confession itself. The content of the confession is very interesting.
She had said back in verse four when answering the king, I didn’t know who these people were. And that would make sense. Why would she know who These random visitors are. But she tells us now in verse nine, that she knows a lot more than she let on. Because she says that she knows that God has given this land to the Israelites, that all the people of Canaan are afraid and are, in fact, melting in fear.
She also lets on that she knows a good bit of Israel’s Recent history, last 40 years or so at least. She’s heard about the Exodus, doesn’t seem to know much about the plagues anyway, but she knows they came out of Egypt. She knows they crossed through the Red Sea on dry land. And of course, she’s heard about the defeat of the kings right there on their doorstep, just east of the Jordan. Not only does she know this, but all of Canaan does, which is going to be good for Israel.
But what’s interesting here is that because she knows Israel’s past, she knows the future also. The God who has kept all his promises so far will go on keeping all his promises with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. And so she knows God is going to bring Israel into Canaan. And what a lesson for us who know even more of the record of God’s faithfulness. Because of course, we know the record of Jesus Christ.
Because we know the past, we can have every confidence for the future. I mean, maybe not the specifics of our future. Am I going to get the promotion? Will I recover from this sickness? That’s not it.
But we know without doubt that God will bring us into glory, will set all things right in the end, because he has kept every promise to us so far. What we have here in Rahab is an almost unparalleled declaration of faith, at least up to this point in Scripture. You may notice that she calls God by his covenant name there in verse nine, when it says, I know that the Lord. And you can see the Lord is in all caps. Anytime you find that in the Old Testament, it means it’s the name Yahweh that’s being used.
So she knows God’s covenant name and calls him by it. But what does she say about Yahweh, the God of the Israelites? She says, your God, the Lord, your God, he is God. It’s really interesting, that same construction. I know it doesn’t have it exactly like that here in the niv, but that’s a woodenly literal translation.
The Lord, your God, he is God. That same exact construction is what the Israelites cry out after Elijah has his little contest with the prophets of BAAL a few centuries later, where God is proving himself the one true God. And once it happens, you know, the prophets of BAAL can’t get their God to do anything because he’s not there. He’s not real, he’s not a God. And then God causes fire to fall from heaven and burn up.
Elijah’s sacrifice. And the Israelites start chanting out, the Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. Rahab already has that understanding, probably because of the Red Sea and the defeat of the Amorites and all the rest. So interesting too, because of course, that moment with Elijah and baal, this is.
This is part of God’s mission in the world. Like, the mission of God in the world is to ensure that everybody everywhere knows who he is. So he does that with Elijah and the prophets of baal, but here he’s doing it with Canaan and with Rahab as well. Notice that she says, the Lord, your God, he is God, and he is God over heaven and earth, like, he is the God. Verse 11.
Your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.
That’s a really important phrase. Also, I already mentioned, she renounced her Canaanite citizenship here. She’s repudiating her Canaanite faith because there in Canaan, they would have had lots of gods. Like, you got a God for the heavens and a God for the earth. They don’t rule over both of them.
You got one for the sea, you got one for the harvest. You got one. You name it, we got a God for it. Every God had its own sphere. And here she’s saying, no, there’s one.
There is one God, and he is God over all. It’s so impressive that she knows this, and even more so when you realize that that phrase, heaven above, on the earth below has only been used three times up to this point in Scripture. And every one of them, in the context of God’s exclusive reign, two of them come in the Ten Commandments and the second commandment specifically so Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5. Here’s the version in Exodus 20. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above, around the earth beneath, or in the waters below.
You’re supposed to have no other gods before me. You’re certainly not supposed to make images of these gods. Why? Because there’s only one God. So that’s two of them.
And here’s the third one, Deuteronomy 4. 39. Even more to our point, Moses says, acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. Rahab got the message that even Israel consistently struggled to believe.
And she seems to have this almost intuitive grasp of who this God is. Like she knows so much about him that you’re starting to think flesh and blood did not reveal this to you. But it had to be the Spirit, it had to be God and Heaven who revealed this to you. Because we even get subtle hints of God’s character in her request to the spies. Because what does she ask?
She says, look, I’ve shown you kindness, so please show me and my family kindness. And the word kindness. There is a very important Hebrew word. It’s one of the few Hebrew words I try to teach people. It’s the word chesed, which is God’s love.
King James Version translated loving kindness. Like they had to come up with a new word because it’s so rich. It says covenant loyal love. And that’s the kindness she’s asking them to show her. And then she says, would you give me a sure sign?
And that word for sure there is the word that’s usually used for truth or faithfulness. It is the Hebrew word emet. And I mention these two words because they show up. If you were here with us last fall, they’ll hopefully sound familiar to you. And in Exodus, when Moses asks God, show me your glory.
And God says, I’ll have all my goodness pass in front of you. And he proclaims his name and he says, the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in chesed and emet, love and faithfulness, kindness and sureness. If you want the translation here, it’s like she’s saying to the spies, treat me the way your God treats you.
So in the last section, we saw that Rahab severed that allegiance, renounced her citizenship. Here we see that she’s transferring her allegiance. She’s transferring her citizenship, right, because she’s joining the covenant community, the people of God by faith. That’ll be important for us as we go on. It explains why the Israelites are not disobeying God and not putting her under the ban, under the sword, which we’ll have to come to and reckon with in a few weeks time.
You remember Saul was supposed to kill everybody and he didn’t. And he had the kingdom ripped away from him as a result. So why aren’t the Israelites killing everyone in Jericho, including Rahab and her family? Because Rahab is not part of Jericho anymore. She is now part of the Israel of God.
The other interesting piece to just note Here, and we’ll come back to it in a little bit, is here you have a young woman making decisions for her family. Can I just tell you, that does not happen in ancient Nearston culture. Like, dad makes decisions, and if Dad’s not making decisions, brothers are making decisions. It is not going to be a daughter in a family who makes decisions for the whole family, and yet he or she does. Like I said, we’ll have to come back to that in a little bit.
The spies agree to her request. They do so conditionally. Our lives for your life. Maybe because they’re a little suspicious, like, we just met you. So let’s make sure this thing is real.
But it’s also just really practical. Like, if we get captured, we can’t make sure that your family is safe. There’s nobody to say she helped us out. So, like, our lives are now bound together at this point, and it’s so vulnerable. She says.
They say, like, if you talk, then we’re dead, but if you don’t, and if we can get out, then sure enough, we will abound in love and faithfulness towards you, kindness and faithfulness to you. So everything’s going swimmingly at this point, unless it all falls apart because it’s actually on a knife’s edge. Still, I don’t know if you remember this, because it’s been a long time since we talked about it now. They’re still stuck in Jericho and the gate is still shut. So we still don’t know if they’re going to make it.
Like, what now? Scene 3 Consummation. Let me read the rest of the chapter for us, beginning in verse 15. So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. She said to them, go to the hills.
The pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there. Three days until they return, and then go on your way. 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 your window through which you let us down. And unless you have brought your father and mother, your brothers, and all your family into your house, if any of them go outside your house into the street, their blood will be on their own heads.
We will not be responsible. As for those who are in the house with you, their blood will be on our head if a hand is laid on them. 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. She tied the scarlet cord in the window. When they left, they went into the hills and stayed there three days till the pursuers had searched all along the road and returned without finding them. Then the two men started back. They went down out of the hills, forded the river, and came to Joshua, son of nun, and told him everything that had happened to them.
And they said to Joshua, the Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands. All the people are melting in fear because of us. So we finally get the key piece of information that we’ve been waiting for this whole time. Her house is built into the wall, and there’s a window which was very common back then. Not unusual in the slightest.
Which means, though they can skip that whole shut gate altogether, they can be saved now. Her life, though, is still at risk. And so she tells them exactly what to do. Like, if you get caught, I get killed. I know that.
So here are some explicit instructions for you. Like, they’re going to be waiting at the ford. Like, there’s only one place to cross the Jordan. We’ll see why next week. Even so, don’t cross yet.
Instead, go hide in the hills and on the third day, cross. They’ll have given up by then. They’ll have assumed that you made it across the Jordan already.
So far, so good. But there’s this big question hanging out there still, like the spies dangling from the window. The question is, in the fog of war, how will these spies ensure that Rahab and her family are spared? They need to mark the house, the window, somehow, so that they know not this house. Don’t attack this house.
This is where help came from. And so they give her this scarlet cord and say, you gotta hang this in your window. Now, what’s the scarlet cord? Was it a sign of her trade? Maybe.
Was it something they brought with them because they knew they were going to need to do something like this? Maybe. Doesn’t really matter. The point is it’s a sign. It is interesting.
I’m hoping you all are thinking back in Israelite history in this moment. Going. This reminds me of something. You remember when they painted blood on the threshold of the door so that the angel of death would see them there in Egypt and pass over that house. So this is like the Passover sign in so many ways.
This is the sign. Don’t let the angel of Death come in here. And so, just like that, blood painted on the threshold of the door. In Egypt, the Israelite houses in Egypt would set anyone who was in that household, anyone who’s in that house. So it is here she saves her family.
Any who would come into her house would be saved. Not on the basis of what they had done, by the way, but just by faith, by laying hold of the promise. Death would pass over them.
They get back to Joshua, the expedition started so poorly. Worst spies ever. But it ends so well, right? They wait long enough, they cross the Jordan, report back to Joshua.
It’s so interesting what they don’t bring back to Joshua too, isn’t it? They come back to Joshua. You’re supposed to spy out Jericho, like, help me out here. And you know what they don’t bring back? Blueprints.
Weakness. You know, the timings of the guards. Like anything that would be useful in conquering this town, except they bring back the most important information. Canaan is melting with fear. The Lord has surely given this land into our hands.
And you think of how different that is from the 12 spies, the 10 of them, at least, who returned when Moses had sent them out a generation before. There’s no way we can take over this land here. These two come back and go, it’s ours. God’s already done it. It’s already finished, as we will certainly see.
They are right. There you go. We finished the story. Just one question remaining.
Just why exactly is this story in the Bible? I don’t know if you caught it does absolutely nothing to advance the plot of Joshua.
An editor could cut all of chapter two without losing anything except a bit of local flavor and one human interest story. I mean, yeah, you’d have to cut a paragraph in chapter six as well, but you wouldn’t even notice it was gone since if you didn’t have chapter two. I work with a lot of editors. Can I tell you something? Editors love cutting stuff that does not need to be there.
Like, that’s their favorite thing, whole chapter. Are you kidding me? That’s like their happiest moment right there.
How come God, the divine editor of the Bible, said, we’re not cutting this? The answer, of course, is because this is a model of the process of redemption. This is a conversion story, as Jake told us earlier, the transfer of allegiances. We were all of us created to be in communion with the God who is there. The only true God.
But we broke fellowship with him by our sin. That’s Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, right? By their first act of rebellion. What that means is that no one now comes into the world automatically part of the people of God. You can’t get it genetically.
It comes like we see here with Rahab, by faith. So what that means is every one of us, like Rahab, has no business being part of the family of God.
And maybe it’s not prostitution, but every one of us comes into this world hardwired to offend a holy God by our wicked deeds, like Rahab, then every one of us is under the immediate threat of judgment. Not by a conquering army sent to punish, but under the very wrath of God himself. And yet, like Rahab, every one of us can enter in, can join God’s family, the people of God, the covenant community. The heart of the covenant we see throughout the Bible is when God says, I will be your God and you will be my people. And we all can be part of that covenant.
How? Not by earning it, because Rahab certainly didn’t earn it, but by faith, trusting the God who can and does save. We are saved by grace, through faith, in the finished work of Jesus. And we can enter the covenant community only by his blood.
Okay, but where is Jesus in this story? Like, where am I getting Jesus from? Now some of you are going, I get it, I get it. We talked about this last week. You know, Jesus is the new and true Joshua, all that kind of stuff.
And so the whole idea about entering the promised land is sort of like how we enter heaven. Sure, all of that’s true, all that’s still here. But we can see Jesus so clearly in verse 18 when it comes to that scarlet cord. But not in the way you think, because I know you hear scarlet cord saved by Jesus and you start thinking about blood. Wrong word.
Okay, Blood is described as red in the Old Testament. It’s a different Hebrew word. It’s not this word. You should not be thinking about Jesus blood in this moment. Okay, fine, but it’s the sign, like the Passover lamb, that blood.
We already did all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. But it’s even clearer. It’s even clearer than that because there is only one other scarlet cord in the Old Testament. It comes before this.
In Genesis 38 is the Scarlet thread that the midwife ties around Perez’s wrist when he’s born to Tamar. Tamar, the gentile prostitute. I don’t know if you remember the story, Judah. This is actually his daughter in law, Tamar. Problems, couple sons dying, all that stuff because they were wicked and whatnot.
And so he decided not to give her to the last brother, leper at marriage, all that kind of stuff. We did that in Genesis. You can go back and listen to it. And so she dresses up like a prostitute and basically tricks Judah into sleeping with her. And that’s how these kids are born.
But you see the point. I mean, there’s this connection here. We’ve got two foreign gentile, strike one women, strike two prostitutes for sure. Strike three, bound by a scarlet cord, bound by this scarlet thread that we can trace right to Jesus. Matthew chapter one.
Beginning in verse one, this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, the son of Salmon, the father of baby Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. By the way, that’s how completely a part of the covenant community she was that she was able to marry an Israelite man. She’s Israel now for sure. But you’ve got two foreign prostitutes in the line of Jesus Christ. Could the point be any clearer?
We are all under judgment, but we are all invited to salvation. The call goes out to everyone in Christ, the far off grandson of two gentile prostitutes. What do you have in your past? What guilt? What shame?
What is it that makes you think, surely God would never accept someone like me, Then read the story of Rahab and go, surely he would and does. Like you can’t miss it. God is willing that all would be saved, people from every possible background. And we see here in this story God’s heart, missional heart for all peoples and how awesome that is. We can barely stand our own flesh and blood families some of the time.
Look around the world, it’s pretty clear we have a really hard time getting along with people from radically different backgrounds than our own ethnic, economic, whatever it is we’re talking about. And yet God is bringing us all together under one name, Jesus Christ. That’s why he includes this story here.
Rahab’s welcome in the family of God, which means you’re welcome in the family of God. We’re already preemptively starting to answer the hard question that Joshua raises in all of our minds, which is that whole question of conquest and genocide. We’ll get to it in chapter six. But the the answer is already here. Initially, no one needs to be judged.
No one needs to experience the judgment of God like Rahab and her family. All of Jericho could be saved if they repented like she did and confessed faith like she did. I know this is true because it’s exactly what happens in Nineveh when Jonah shows up to a people every bit as wicked as Jericho and says 40 days and God’s gonna wipe y’ all out. Cause you’re so wicked. And they do not experience God’s judgment because they repent.
Right down to the cows. Another time where, by the way, we see God’s heart for all people. What does this mean for us then? Let me give you the big idea now. And it’s right there from our opening illustration of the cop movies.
The big idea. Leave the gang and join the family. Leave the gang and join the family. That. The invitation.
Invitation. Especially to those of you who may be skeptical, still questioning Christianity, or even hardened against it. Don’t believe. Like, now is your chance. I am the spy in your household right now, in this moment.
Rahab had heard the report of what God had done. Well, now you have heard the report of what God has done for you. You. You, like Rahab, know who God is. So come in.
Come in and join the family. Now, you’re not in Jericho. No. And there is not an army outside your door. But you are facing judgment, just judgment still.
But you don’t need to experience it. Just put that scarlet cord in the window of your soul, that scarlet cord that points to the Savior born in Rahab’s.
We have seen what that means, what it means to put that scarlet cord there. It means to sever allegiances, to renounce citizenship in the world and become a citizen of heaven. It means to turn from sin and trust in the Savior.
And like Rahab, you may be the first person in your family to do it, which is a little bit scary. But don’t be afraid. Like, thank God if that is you. And even more so if you’re going. Not only am I the first one in my family, but I’m not the decision maker in my family.
I’m just. Yeah, it’s my story. I was a teenager when I came to Christ. I did not come from a believing family. Not like this.
It’s terrifying. But like Rahab, you might be the reason salvation comes to your family. Why wouldn’t you take that step? Plus, you get a new family, too. They’re a difficult group.
Yeah, like your old family. But you get a new family. So church a word to you then as well. Are you ready to welcome sinners into the family of God? Like, how do you think Israel felt about Rahab when she came into the camp?
I know how they felt. It’s how most of us feel when sinners come into our midst, forgetting that, of course, we are sinners. How do you feel about sinners? Do you think church is a Place for clean, respectable, middle class folk. God, I hope not.
Jesus Christ came to seek and save those, the lost. And that drives religious people nuts. Where do you find religious people here? Jesus experienced this over and over again. Here’s Luke 15:2.
Jesus is hanging out with tax collectors like Zacchaeus and prostitutes and the Pharisees. The religious people and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them to his shame. And we’re thinking, no, no, this is why I worship him. That’s who Jesus is. And we know this by the way.
This is when he tells a series of parables about a lost coin and a lost sheep and then two really stupid sons who both walked away from their loving father and Jesus. The point is, Jesus goes off in search of all of them.
To think that the church is for respectable people is. I’ll quote Davis again. It’s like saying a hospital is only for doctors and X ray machines and not for sick people. Or if I can extend the analogy and make it more accurate, given our spiritual state when we come into this world, it’s more like saying a morgue is only for caskets and morticians and not dead people. Because we come into this world spiritually dead.
The church is a refuge for sinners. Church is the place for those who have left the gang and joined the family. The church is a place for those who are trying to leave the gang and trying to join the family. So welcome them in Christ’s name. We have, in this unnecessary story, such a beautiful picture of the kindness and faithfulness of the Lord, our God.
God. The God who saves sinners like Rahab. God who saves sinners like me and all of you. Won’t you come to him? Leave the gang, Join the family by faith in Christ.
Let’s pray.
Father, we come before you recognizing that we have much more in common with Rahab than we do with Jesus.
Like Rahab, we begin this world in rebellion against you. That we have made choices time and again that offend you. That we are rightfully under your judgment because of our sin, because we have wished you dead. Because we have wished that you were not there so that we could lead our lives as we please. And yet, like Rahab, we stand before you now not on the basis of who we are or what we have done, but only on the basis of what you have done for us in the Savior, born in the line of Rahab and Tamar.
So God, we give you our grateful worship. And God, we will strive in your spirit and by your grace to offer the same kindness and faithfulness to the people around us who are in need of your kindness and faithfulness and love and grace. And God, I pray for those in the room who do not yet know you, who have not confessed faith like Rahab has. And I pray that even now, Lord, you would draw them to yourself and into your family by grace. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.