Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church podcast.
If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you.
Thank you for joining us today.
If you get your Bibles, we are in Joshua chapter 2 tonight. I heard Jesse did a
too young to be John. Must have been Jesse.
All right. Let's pray. Lord, just thank you for, thank you for these midweek,
midweek Bible studies. They just pause from work, pause from life, and just look to you
and hear from your word and look in passages that sometimes we don't
typically spend time in. So God, I just pray that your spirit would lead tonight,
that you would lead me as I teach, and that you would just open all our hearts
and eyes to see something impactful tonight, something that we can take and
apply to our lives or help us to see your character more tonight and to just be
more in love with you tonight. We just thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.
All right. Joshua chapter 2. I'm gonna read the first, gonna break it up into a few
sections. First one is, first seven verses we'll read here. And Joshua the son of
Nun sent two men secretly from Shaddam as spies, saying, Go view the land, especially
Jericho. And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was
Rahab, and lodged there. 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. But the
woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, True, the men came to
me, but 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. But she had brought them up to the
roof and hid them with the socks of flax that she had laid in order on the
roof. So the men pursued after them on the way to Jordan, as far as the
fords, and the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out.
We, Tara and I were just in Florida. We had a little babymoon, which was very
nice to be. We love Maria, our daughter, but it was really nice to have a
couple days without her. And I got back, though, and my mother-in-law said to me,
she watched her for four days, and she said, Boy, does she ask a lot of
questions. I ask a lot of questions. And so apparently that gene has passed down.
But one of the questions I had when I was reading this was, Joshua, why are you
sending out more spies? Like, we just read chapter one last week, and he again
reminds him, I'm gonna give you this land. It's yours. Where your feet go, that's
yours, I promised. And we've seen countless, countless armies destroyed and defeated,
by Joshua even, without them even having to lift a finger sometimes. And so I'm
sitting here reading, and I'm going, Joshua, why are you sending out spies?
Why do you even feel the need to do that? But I think as I was trying to decide
the answer to that question, the more I was realizing that this isn't Joshua
distrusting, but rather him acting in his gifting and in his skill set. Moses
was a shepherd, and so when he was leading the people, he led in a manner that a
shepherd would lead. Well, Joshua, if you don't know his background, was a spy. And
so he's gonna lead in the manner that a spy would lead. So he sends out these
two men to go forth. In fact, Joshua was the one 38 years prior to this in
Numbers chapter 11 that was the spy doing this exact same duty, going out
and spying out the land, figuring out what does our enemy look like? What does
our promised land look like? What's there? And if you know that story, you know
that it didn't turn out super well. That was 38 years ago, and they've been
wandering ever since, because Moses sent out 12 men, one from each tribe,
including Joshua and including Caleb. I almost said Jacob. I was like, no, not
Jacob. Caleb and Joshua were two of the men, but he sent them out in not secrecy,
but everybody knew that these spies were going out, and they were actually
going to come back and give a report of the land and of what the people
looked like. And when those men came back, it didn't end in, hoorah, let's
go and take this land. It ended in disunity and frustration and eventually
rebellion. And the only two spies that said no, we can have faith and trust that
God will defeat these people for us was Joshua and Caleb. So he learned from that,
from the mistake of Moses, and over the next 38 years, probably of becoming a
very good spy, he knew that, one, I needed to do this in secrecy. That's kind of like
the whole point of spies. I don't know, Moses didn't understand that, I think, but
spies are supposed to be covert, and so it says that he sent two men secretly. So
he sends them out, not proclaiming to everyone that they're going, and then he
does not ask them to come back and proclaim to everybody what the land looks
like, what the people look like. He heaps that to himself, because he knows that he
can already trust the Lord, and he has faith that the Lord is going to defeat
these people on the other side of the river for them. So that answers the first
question. Maybe you didn't have that question, but that was one that I had.
The second question I had, as I was reading this, as I read verse two, or
so they go out, and it says that they found themselves in the house of a
prostitute. Well, that had me with another strange question. Why did these two men
find themselves in the house of a prostitute? And in fact, I feel like this
is a passage, and Rahab is a person that we can quickly read and go, there's a
real quick, but I think that would be obviously doing disservice to it, because
she's in here for a reason, and she's in the New Testament for a reason. So why are
they in the house of a prostitute? Well, let's start by putting their objective
into the foreground of our minds real quick. They have the job of getting
access and intelligence. Later in verse 15, it tells us that Rahab's
house was inside the wall of Jericho. There's their access. I gave them a quick
getaway if things went wrong. This is also a place where strange men often visit, so
it wouldn't be alarming to see two strangers walking into her home. No one
would ask any questions or be surprised if they saw these two strangers. So they
have their exit, and they have discretion. And finally, the most pivotal part of
their objective, information gathering. Perhaps this is no surprise to you, but
the home of a prostitute is a place where information flows freely. In verse
two, it even indicates that the king knew who Rahab was. He sends to Rahab,
bring out the men who have come to you who entered your house, for they have come
to search out all the land. It doesn't tell us that they had to search and
figure out who's prostitute or which home they were in. They knew exactly where
they were, and they knew who Rahab was, apparently. This is a home that
information went into. These men strategically thought out who they were
going to lodge with that evening. It wasn't just two men looking for
something to do that night. In fact, they were doing their due diligence as spies,
and they were finding the place that gave them access and information. Tara and I
watched a night agent. Have you guys seen that show? We watched that recently, and so
all my mind was thinking about was covert ops. I was like, okay, that's not
necessarily what this passage is about, but that's certainly what these men's
lives were about, though. So that clears up question number two, at least. They
weren't looking for sin, but rather access and intelligence, and they
strategically found the person in Jericho who could give them both, and that's in
the home of Rahab. And then verse two and three, and it was told the king of
Jericho 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. But the woman had taken the two men and hidden
them, and she said, true, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were
from. So even though they came in to try and be covert and secret, apparently
this city is on like high red alert or strangers, and they are made known
pretty rapidly, it seems. And this is a part, however, where we get to see the
character of Rahab, the character of someone that we would assume is not very
good, character, because her last name apparently is prostitute. That was a joke.
But rather we see a character of faith. When they came to her, she told them, they
came to me, but, let me see where I, sorry, verse four, but the woman had taken the
two men and hidden them, and she said, true, the men came to me, but I did not
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. But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with
the stalks of flax that she laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued
after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the Fords, and the gate was shut
as soon as the pursuers had gone out. She hid them, and in this moment her faith
is revealed. See, there's this thing about faith. Nobody knows you have it
until you do something that reveals it. We just talked a lot about faith in
the book of Hebrews, and we know that Rahab is a woman of faith because one, it's
being displayed in this story, but two, it's talked about in that book in Hebrews
chapter 11. Chris taught about this probably three months ago now in what
we would call the Hall of Faith, and in that section of Scripture there are all
these names of great people of faith, and there's two women listed. Sarah, the wife
of Abraham, and Rahab the prostitute. It's in verse 31 of chapter 11 where it
says, by faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient
because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. By her faith she was saved.
She was a woman of faith. We see it right here if we read on in verse 8.
Before the men lay down she came up to them on the roof and said to the men,
I know that the Lord has given you the land. Let me read that again. I know that
the Lord has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us and
that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you, for we have heard
how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of
Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the
Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you've devoted to destruction. 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, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth
beneath. Now then please swear to me by the Lord that I have dealt kindly with
you. You also will deal kindly with my father's house and give me a sure sign
that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all
who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death. And the men said to
her, our life for yours even to death. If you do not tell this business of ours,
then when the Lord gives us the land, we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.
Her faith is evident here. I just want to emphasize two verses. Number nine at the
end there, I know that the Lord has given you the land. And then over to
number eleven, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the
earth beneath. Sounds like a statement of faith if I've ever heard one, isn't it?
Nobody knows you have faith until you do something that reveals it. And here we
see that she does something to reveal it. She hides these men. She protects them.
And in all honesty, she was being really, really, really smart. Because if she
believes what she just said, which is that the Lord had given them the land and
that they were about to be conquered and destroyed, then she knows that if she
gives these men up, there'll be no report that goes back to Joshua, because
these men will probably be executed. And in a matter of days or weeks or months,
she doesn't know, but she knows at some point that Israelites will come, they'll
march, they'll defeat, and she'll be wiped out. But if she does hide them and help
them, then she could get caught. Whoever came to ask where these men were, whether
that's guards or soldiers, could have said, we don't believe you, we're gonna
search your house. And they could have gone upstairs and found the men. I've
never looked through long grass is what stocks are, but I can imagine it's not
that hard to find somebody. But they didn't. But she could have lost her life
that day. And her whole family would have probably been executed as well,
along with the two spies. But again, she already knew that everyone was gonna die.
So it was a risk, but it was a risk she was willing to take. Because in her mind,
it's die today or die in a few weeks by the hands of the Israelites. Or their God
shows me favor right now with my actions, and I don't have to die at all. And that,
as we continue to read, sorry to spoil it, is what happens in the next chapter.
Sorry. There should be no spoilers in this group, because you guys read your
Bibles. So she used wisdom, and she decided, I would rather risk my life and
the life of my family right now for the hope that the God that I am saying is
the Lord. He is the God of earth. He is the God of heavens. It's not little G in
my Bible. It's big old capital G. She is saying, I know he's God. I grew up in the
Canaanite family where we served hundreds of Gods. I'm talking about rehab,
not me. I'm from America. But I know, and I trust, and I'm putting my faith that
your God, he's real, and he is the God, and he's the only rescue that I have. And
these men, being faithful children of God, they honor her faith and agree to spare
her.
And I just want to say to a backstory of Rahab, is that because she's living in
as a Canaanite woman and a prostitute, this isn't, this is not a career path that
she probably thought, you know, I think I'll be a prostitute. Now back in this
time, she was probably forced to become a prostitute by her father so that they
could have a living, so that they could feed the family. And so this is probably
a life of agony and pain and sorrow and abuse. And I say that because I think it's
easy, again, to read Rahab and read prostitute and just kind of skirt right
past it, but I think it's important to realize that she's a lot more relatable to
us than we think. Not saying that you've been abused in the way that Rahab perhaps
was, but we all come into this world and experience pain and hurt and our own
traumas. And like Rahab though, we have a good, good father that wants to rescue us
and wants to save us. So let's keep reading verse 15. Then 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 where the
pursuers will encounter you and hide there three days until the pursuers have
returned. 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 this scarlet cord in the
window through which you let us down and you shall gather into your house, your
father and your mother, your brothers and your father's household, all your
father's household. Then if anyone goes out of the doors of your house into the
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. But if you tell us, if you tell this business of ours, 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. I just want to zoom in on verse 18.
Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie this scarlet cord in the window.
We will save you if, if you tie this scarlet rope in the window. Why an if?
Maybe more importantly, why a scarlet cord? Scarlet being the same color as crimson
or the same color as blood reminds us of what happened in Egypt when the plagues
were going on and the the final plague, the firstborns of every household would
be taken. But God said to his people, to his children, if you put the blood of a
lamb on the door post, the angel will pass over your home. That's where we get
the celebration of the Passover. I was just looking, there was a pamphlet up
here. We have a Passover celebration coming up, Sunday, March 15th. I don't know
if I was supposed to announce that, it was just sitting here, but now you guys know.
So I think it's very, I don't know if they thought it through and intended for
it to be a scarlet cord or if by God's divine intervention there just happened
to be a scarlet cord sitting there and they said grab that cord and when you put
it in the window, we'll know. But we know the significance. This is something I heard
this pastor teach on this and I had never heard this before, but if you're
into colors and how to make colors, then maybe you know this already, but back
then to make the color red or crimson, there was a little worm that they would
squish and it was just full of blood and so you'd squish it and the blood would
just gush out and that's what they used to make the color red. It in Hebrew is
the same word for red. Very random. Why am I telling you this? I don't really
that what saves us is the blood, the crimson red blood. When that is at our door
post or when that is hanging from our window, the judgment passes over because
that's the blood of Jesus. All of this is a picture of what's coming through
Jesus. Even in this story of rehab the prostitute, we get to see a picture of
the coming Jesus. So here she is asked to put her faith in action and what does
she do? Verse 21, she said, according to your words so be it. Then she sent them
away and they departed. This is the best part. She tied the scarlet cord in the
window. She didn't wait. She didn't wait till the next day or the next week. She
did it right away. I don't know if your parents said this or some of you are a
little bit older than me, only by a couple years, but my mom used to always
say this to me, obey today and watch it pay. Any of you parents say that? No?
Alright, just my mom apparently. I haven't said it to Maria yet but give her two
more years and then I'll be saying it to her. Obey today and watch it pay. Rehab
understood that. I'm gonna obey right away. I'm not gonna hesitate. I'm not
gonna spend any time thinking about this, which is the neat thing about this
too is that her home, as we read earlier, is in the wall. Soldiers left. That means
they still had to come back and they might see this scarlet cord hanging in
the window and who knows what that could have meant. Maybe they could have
caught on and been like, hey get that out of the window. We've got soldiers
coming. But she did not care. She wanted to obey right away. She showed
that I have faith even though I don't see my rescue coming yet. She's just
trusting that they're gonna come back. She's trusting that they're not gonna
just destroy her family. She's having immense faith in the people of God and
in verse 22, they departed and went into the hills and remained there three days
until the pursuers returned. And their pursuers searched all along the way and
found nothing and the two men returned. They came down from the hills and
passed over and came to Joshua the son of Nun and they told him all that had
happened to them and they said to Joshua, truly the Lord has given all the land
into our hands and also all the inhabitants of the land melt away because
of us. I wrote down in my notes a sentence, a big idea as I called it. The
one point everything was attempting to lead to. The one sentence God said, this
is what I want you to see and this is why I wrote down. We receive God's
inheritance when we walk in faith. That will make a little bit more sense when
I continue. But in chapter 1 of Joshua in verse 3, I just want to read. It says
this, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to
you just as I promised to Moses. That is a promise verse, a promise of land being
inherited from God. But God specifically said, whatever your foot will tread on,
the land that you step on, meaning you can't inherit what you do not go
and possess. We can't inherit something if we never go and take hold of it. They
could have climbed a mountain, made a city, looked out onto their beautiful
inherited land and thought, wow, isn't it so beautiful what God gave us? And then
continue to just live there on that mountain, dying while looking out onto
the beautiful promised land without ever getting to feel it, taste it, touch it,
walk in it. Now that probably sounds absurd, doesn't it? Like they're literally
right there, why would they do that? They had to act, Ryan, they had to act. Yeah,
we'll read James later, there's a good one in there. It sounds crazy for them to do
that, yet that is how so many Christians live. God has given us amazing promises
and some of us are just looking from a distance in awe of how good God is, but
we never run into the land and capture it and walk in the promises ourselves. We
just talk about our faith, but we never display it in our actions. When we talk
about it from their perspective, it seems silly, but so many of us do that all
the time. The goodness of the Lord, isn't it just amazing? But life is hard, man, and
so I'm just kind of stuck in this sin. But why? God has something better and He
wants you to step in it, to walk in it, to experience it. The amazing part about
the story of Rahab. In other passages of Scripture, we see that women, whenever
they took over land, are captured, women and children are taken into the people of
Israel, but you never really hear much of their stories, much of their lives. You
don't know if that means their lives got better or if their lives got much
worse. Hardship fell or blessing fell, you don't really know, but with Rahab we
see something different. We see her surrender to them and act in faithful
obedience and then she actually later marries one of these men. She has
children with him. She was taken into the family, not made a slave or a servant,
not a laborer, but a child of God through her faith. And as we continue to read in
the Old Testament, her name is forgotten. But then we get to the New Testament. I
mentioned earlier she's talked about in Hebrews, but did you know she's talked
about before Hebrews in Matthew chapter 1, reading the genealogy of Jesus right
there, Rahab. Yes, we'll cover it when we break out into a discussion group, Brian.
But keep thinking because it's incredible. You're reading the genealogy of the
perfect child of God and right there towards the top is Rahab the prostitute.
When we obey, when we have faith in God, we are brought into his inheritance, not
as servants, but as children. That's what it tells us in Hebrews. We receive God's
inheritance when we act in faith. What way is God saying to you, hanging the
crimson cord? If you're from Alabama, that means something completely different.
It's not what we're talking about. In what way is he asking you to trust him, to
rescue you? Trust him when all the walls are crumbling around you. Will you have
faith? Will you trust that he's coming to rescue you? Have faith in me. Tell your
co-workers about me. Go talk to that neighbor that is lonely.
Stop taking shortcuts in your work. Start walking in joy. Faith is seen in what we
do and how we live. There's just one more verse I'll close this with. One verse that
compels us to live with faith like Rahab. It's found in Ephesians chapter 2. In
faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that
no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do
good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. The Israelites had a river
between them and their promised land and it was only a matter of time before they
went over and possessed it. God's given you promises. God has given you an
inheritance. Will you be brave enough, have faith enough to cross over whatever
Jordan is in between you and that inheritance? He has planned out good works
for all of us to do. Small works, big works, all kinds of works, but it's gonna
take faith to walk them out. Amen? Alright, let's pray. Thank you Lord for
your word. Thank you for, thank you for Rahab. Thank you for this obscure scene
of redemption, of hope, of faith. God help us to have faith like Rahab when everybody
is afraid. She acts in faith. Lord we, we have plenty opportunity to be afraid, but
God I just ask that you would help us, strengthen us, to walk instead in courage and in faith.
Amen. Alright, we're gonna break into groups and hopefully you've got a little sheet.
There's a few questions on here. We don't have to answer all of them. They were more
intended to just kind of jot down thoughts as we went through the passage, but if you
wrote something down, if you brought a pen and you wrote something under one of those,
just be willing to share that in whatever group you end up in. And then whoever's kind
of leading whatever group you're in, if there isn't a lot of things to talk about in
our first four questions, you can focus on the last three, which is what principles can
we learn from the spies? What principles can we learn from Rahab? And what does this story
tell us of God's character? Thanks for joining us at Lansdale Life Church as we praise God
and discuss His word. Don't forget to join us for worship live Sunday mornings at 10
a.m. Eastern on YouTube. Be blessed and have a great day!