By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who
were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
As we concluded on Saturday, everyone is still talking about what God did to Pharaoh and his army and so much do they know this really happened, it is not a story,
it is not a fable…it is history and that is why Jericho is locked up in fear. 40 years later and they are brought to trembling at the power of God.
Two reasons this is important for us today. First, the assurance that you belong to the Lord, is not based on what you feel about your experience as a Christian. Rather,
our hope is about what Jesus did in time…what Jesus accomplished in His life, death and resurrection. That is why you are saved. Not the way you feel about those things, but those things Jesus really did!
And second, the church today need not do anything but preach the objective events of redemption, the objective event of the cross. We do not need gimmicks or tricks.
The cross and the empty tomb, that is the message, that is God’s message and it does not need to be dressed up any differently than He has dressed it.
Please don’t misunderstand, the experiences we have, the feelings we have are often legitimate but, your hope is not based on what you did when YOU accepted Jesus…Your
hope is in what God did when HE raised Jesus from the dead.
Rahab confesses the majesty of God. “The Lord your God He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.” Here is her conviction, the conviction of faith, that
there is one God. It is as though now Israel will hear from the mouth of a pagan: “Behold, Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One.”
Rahab is brought to this point, that she confesses that there is only One God in heaven and One God who acts upon the earth, there are no rivals. And all of
this leads her to cry out for the mercy of God as we see in verse 12-13.
This is what faith does, not merely to confess God, to acknowledge that He exists or even to acknowledge what he has done, but to turn to Him and take refuge in
Him. (Davis)
There is a difference between believing God, which all of Jericho did as they were locked up in fear, and trusting God as the only refuge for sinners, which is what
Rahab does.
The questions almost ask themselves! Have you taken refuge in Him? Seriously, have you? Understand that all of us stand with Rahab, our sin places us in line with
the prostitute but that we find refuge as did she, in the Lord!
Think of Rahab the prostitute. She turns to God, to find refuge in Him, to hide in Him. She is no longer identified by her past sin; she is identified by her faith
that chases her to the Lord. Like Rahab you can, you are free from the guilt, from the pain, you are free because of God’s mercy. Live in that freedom, not with the guilt of your sin hanging over you all the time!
Look at this woman. In 6:25 we see that she was indeed spared, as promised, along with the family. And then what? What became of her? Well, she went off to live her
life alone, by herself, with her own interpretations of who God was, a solitary Christian, left alone to worship according to the way she feels God would want her to, after all, you don’t need the church to be a Christian, she can just do her own thing, just
her and the Lord.
But 6:25 tells us, “So she dwells in Israel, to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out the land.”
She belonged to the covenant people of God, she lived among God’s people. She had been given faith and as James points out, it was faith that worked, a faith put into
action, faith that bore fruit. And she becomes part of the covenant people of God. The church becomes her life, the people of God her earthly identity as well as her eternal identity. As one author put it: “The fact that God revealed his self-giving love
in human form tells us that the conversation makes no sense apart from a community of people who thoughtfully and faithfully follow the person of Jesus Christ.”
In other words, none of this makes any sense without the Church, a church that is faithful and devoted to the Lord and His ways. Rahab found such a people and those
people became her people.
The whole confession of Rahab is used by God to give his people great courage. They see that God is at work, that He is keeping his promises. We see this in the confession
of the people in verse 24, “Truly the Lord has delivered all the land into our hands for indeed all the inhabitants of the country are fainthearted because of us.”
They received from this an assurance that God will do as He has promised. Her testimony, which unlike modern testimonies was much more about who God is and what God
has done than it is about Rahab and her lifestyle before, her testimony gave courage to the church.
What we will read in much of the detail that will follow about God destroying enemies, might lead us to forget God’s mercy and grace and to get lost in the wrath,
righteous wrath though it is. But we must not fail to see the precursor, to see the grace, to see the refuge that God is FOR sinners who turn to Him.
Prayer: Father, I pray that You do not give me over to my own heart. I pray that You would keep me from arrogance and from thinking that I need no one or that I
have all the answers in my own mind and heart. Keep me from speaking words that later need to be repented of because I do not live what I so boldly profess. May my words be true and my behavior, faithful and holy. Through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Song: Canon in D