God Can Use You!

Illus: When I played Little league baseball, we lost 99% of the games we played in for the first year and a half. The Bad News Bears was a popular movie around that time and people considered our team, the Bad News Realtors. As the second season begin to come to a close our team was beginning to get better. In the last game of the year, we beat the Yankees 18-6, which everyone considered highly unlikely because of our past and they had pummeled us earlier that year.

Prop. Sent: The Bible teaches that God is able to use people in His service most of us would never consider. If you say, “God, you could never use me that matters to anything,” be careful because He may have something mighty special for you!

1. GOD CAN USE YOU IN SPITE OF YOUR PAST!

A. Condition Josh. 2:1-7

1. Of all the people God chooses to work through in a mighty way to demonstrate an active faith, He chooses a prostitute by the name of Rahab.

2. All through the Bible God chooses the weak to shame the wise.

a. Noah – Ark

b. David – slingshot

c. 12 disciples – weak on their own, power through God

d. 120 disciples – all they had was one heart, one mind, one voice to glorify God – they turned the world upside down!

e. The Lord Jesus Christ – looked weak on the cross, yet through His death offers all eternal life!

3. Think for a moment of Rahab’s past.

a. Sinful life – probably full of guilt, shame, fear, etc. Why did I chose this way of life? No one loves me just for who I am.

b. Sinful city – Jericho – this is city that God’s judgment is soon to fall upon. Is the judgment of God about to fall upon America? Ps. 33:12

c. The only hope for a sinful person and a sinful nation is to repent before a Holy God, ask for cleansing, live a godly life, acknowledge the Lord!

4. 40 years God had given to Rahab, Jericho to turn to Him and turn away from sin. How long has God given you? Where would you be today without the love, mercy, forgiveness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?

5. No matter your condition, the God of Heaven and Earth knows you, loves you, wants you to come to Him for life!

6. Refuse to let what people look on the outside determine whether they are going to follow the Lord or not.

a. On the outside, it appeared Rahab wanted nothing to do with God or God’s people, yet on the inside she had a hunger to know and worship the One True and Living God.

7. Think woman at the well – John 4. She’d had five husbands and was with another man at the time Jesus encountered her. She was thirsty for water which would quench her physical thirst, but also thirsty for the living water which would satisfy her spiritual thirst forever.

a. Remember, what God gives you is so much better than what the world gives!

B. Concealing Joshua 2:2-7

1. Much has been made about Rahab’s lie to protect the spies. Many commentators have shamed her for lying and reasoned God would have made a way for His men to be protected without Rahab’s lie.

ILLUS: Corrie Ten Boom’s family hid Jewish families in their home to protect them from being killed by German soldiers. The Egyptian midwives let the male babies live even after Pharoah ordered all male babies must die. Exodus 1:20, “Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. And so it was because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them.”

2. Rahab had a choice to make- she could (1) turn God’s men over to the king of Jericho or (2) seek to protect God’s men to honor the King of Heaven.

3. Hebrews 11:31, “By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace.”

4. James 2:25, “Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?”

5. Those that posses the promised life are going to be those who choose to put God’s will above their own.

6. Had those spies found the Israelite spies, everyone, including Rahab would have lost their lives.

a. Rahab was determined that no matter happened, she would serve the Lord.

C. Confession Josh. 2:8-11

1. I love Rahab’s confession of faith because she is so focused on who God is and what He’s done.

a. She knew He was the God of Superiority, the God of Strength, the God of salvation.