How To Make Your Life Count Series

A. Background to passage: Rahab was a pagan prostitute, an unlikely candidate for the next linchpin person in the fulfilling of the promise of the land. A person who’s legacy did not end because of a faded beauty in a house of ill-repute, but in the genealogy of Jesus. She is noted in the NT on multiple occasions as an example of faith followed by actions. How did she go from a nobody to a somebody by kingdom evaluation? A zero to a hero?

Joshua 2:1–14 ESV

And Joshua the son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim 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 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 had 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.

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, 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 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, as 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.”

B. Opening illustration: “Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion...You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them.” The preacher who spoke in the Primitive Methodist chapel at Colchester, England, on January 6, 1850, when Charles Haddon Spurgeon was converted, was the Reverend Robert Eaglen, the sermon was based on Isaiah 45:22, and one can see the tremen­dous consequences of this one sermon, preached by an obscure minister

C. Main thought: Three ways a prostitute shows us to make our lives count

1) Embrace the One True God (v. 8-11)

Joshua 2:8–11 ESV

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, 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 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.