What causes ordinary people to take risks? What prompts people to gamble or engage in extreme sports such as skydiving, hang gliding, scuba diving, auto racing, rock climbing and whitewater kayaking? Psychologists have determined that it is more a personality trait rather than a behavior. Some people love to take risks; they thrive on the adrenaline rush and the feeling of escaping the ordinary. However, the majority of us prefer not to take risks we prefer the comfort of some security in our lives. We have committed ourselves to playing it safe. We hedge our bets, cover our tracks and dot every “I” and cross every “t”. From being over insured to eating low fat diets we try to minimize our risks as much as possible. In fact we do not mind taking risks as long as someone else is doing it. Jesus made it clear that following Him would be a risk. In fact He wants us to risk everything that we have to follow Him. He told the rich young ruler to give up all of his possessions to follow Him. In His parable of the talents, Jesus came down hard on the one talent man who refused to take a risk with his money. Jesus tells us to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him. Following Christ is very risky business. Following Christ is not for the faint of heart, it is a life that will challenge us to the very core of our being. Today we are going to meet a woman by the name of Rahab who had a faith that moved her beyond her comfort zone and caused her to take risks.
I. Rahab: a true risk taker.
A. Rahab is a very unlikely person to be listed among the great heroes of the faith.
1. The last thing we would expect to see in this list of great faith heroes is a prostitute.
2. In fact she is given more space than many of those great Bible heroes we grew up hearing about such as Samson, Gideon and David.
3. Certainly she knew the risk of helping the spies, worse, of concealing them. She was especially aware at the inn of the travelers’ talk about the approaching Israelites.
4. From tiny bits of information came enough faith to do one little thing. It was enough to show where her heart was. Faith without accompanying deeds is a useless thing. With them it is powerful.
5. Despite having lived a life of sin she took one great step of faith that made all the difference in her life.
B. Joshua who followed Moses as the leader of the Israelites was preparing to lead the people across the Jordan River to the Promised Land.
1. The spies proceeded immediately to Jericho. They found lodging in the house of a prostitute named Rahab. Perhaps they chose this house of ill repute because they thought that fewer questions might be asked of them there. Even so, the men were quickly spotted, recognized as Israelites, and reported to the king of the city.
2. Messengers were sent to Rahab ordering her to bring out the men who had entered her house. If Rahab was a sacred prostitute connected with one of the temples of the city that might explain why the authorities did not simply barge into the house and seize the strangers
3. Rahab was not too sure that the sanctuary of her house would be respected by the king’s men. She took the precaution of hiding her guests among stalks of flax on the flat roof of her house.
4. As it turned out, this was unnecessary. Rahab was able to convince the soldiers that the strangers had indeed come, but they had left about sundown when the city gate was closed.
C. The question is: What made Rahab such a hero?
1. The story about Rahab also teaches the value of obedience even if it is a small deed.
2. As it did in verse 27 the NIV adds the word “because” as an interpretation of an adverbial participle. The Greek text does not require “welcoming the spies” to be seen as the reason that she escaped death. It may as correctly be translated simply “after she welcomed the spies.”
3. Nothing is mentioned here about her saving her whole family, nor about the scarlet cord which was the means of this preservation. A small deed, done quickly with little advance notice, built on a general fear of dire consequences, was all she had available. It was all she needed.
4. By that one little deed she won for herself a place in the hall of fame of the faithful and in the lineage of the Messiah (Matthew 1:5).
II. The things that Rahab risked are the very things many have risked for the cause of Christ and what God calls us to risk today.
A. We are called to risk our security.
1. As bad as her life as a prostitute must have been, it was her life and what she was used to.
2. So many people, who have had their lives destroyed by sinful lifestyles, refuse to accept Christ because they are comfortable with the familiar.
3. There was more in her heart. She had seen the frustrating impotence and degrading immorality of the gods around her. The stories coming from spies and travelers who kept an eye on the Israelites suggested that their God was a far different kind of god, a good god. She knew little more than his name. Perhaps she had heard some of the very fair laws of this god.
4. Rahab as she was hiding the spies probably reflected upon her life and pondered what it meant to put her trust in this God.
5. Without a doubt she knew that the inevitable future this act of faith would bring meant a tremendous change in her life.
6. After the soldiers left, Rahab went immediately to the roof to converse with her two guests. At the door of her home she had taken a stand. She had renounced her country and its gods. Now she enthusiastically embraced Yahweh as “God in heaven above and earth beneath.”
B. We may be called to risk our livelihood.
1. Deciding to follow the one true God meant a career change for Rahab. Besides what would she do for an income if all her clientele was dead and she was forced to live with a bunch of God-fearing people?
2. For some people coming to Christ may cause them to realize that their career is not consistent with the new life that God had called them to.
3. Besides Rahab another prime example of making a radical career move because of their new faith is Paul.
4. These concrete examples show that faith always looks to God. It seeks him out and aims to please him by doing whatever he says to do. God is trusted to be the designer, the builder and the host of a better city in a better country with better people.
C. We may be called to risk your life.
1. Rahab not only believed in the power of Yahweh, she must have also believed in his mercy. For this reason she pled with the spies to enter into a covenant with her that she and her household might be spared in the day of attack. On condition that she tell no one about their mission the two spies pledged on their lives that Israel would deal “in covenant loyalty and faithfulness,” they would honor the covenant with Rahab.
2. If Rahab had been discovered hiding the spies, she surely would have been put to death.
3. Rahab’s belief in God was so strong that she feared God’s wrath on her city more than anything the people in the city could do to her. She was willing to risk her life and the lives of her family members.
4. Hanging a scarlet cord from her window must have seemed strange to those around her. But she did not care what others thought, she was willing to take that small risk to save the lives of those she loved.
D. Some final thoughts in regard to faith.
1. Faith gives strength to do what men in their weakness could not do. Faith knows that if its own strength fails, God will assist, even if he must do a miracle. When faith seizes the moment, it seizes God.
2. A believer draws others along in his train. He aims to save his family. He works to save the world. He leaves a clear voice when he has gone. God commends the faithful.
3. Though faith leads to new places, new privileges, new privations, it never leads away from God. Faith expects a better future full of God’s own rewards.
4. So what about you? Are you willing to risk losing your security to do what you believe God wants you to do? Are you willing to risk all that you have: your career, your ambitions, even your life for the cause of Christ?
5. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. (Matthew 19:29—NIV)
6. Risking these things or even entertaining such thoughts may seem to some as bordering on fanaticism. But that is only because they have not truly put their faith in the one who created them and risked all He had to come to the earth and die for them.
The famous missionary Jim Elliot and four of his friends were killed by the Auca Indians they were trying to reach for Christ. The world must have thought “What a waste. What a tragedy that these five young men were cut down in the prime of their lives.” Many would have seen this as a senseless tragedy. But a son of one of those men later wrote: “God took five common young men of uncommon commitment and used them for His glory. They never had the privilege they so enthusiastically pursued to tell the Huaorani of the God they loved and served. But there are a thousand missionaries who follow God’s trail more resolutely because of their example. This success withheld from them in life God multiplied and continues to multiply as a memorial to their obedience and his faithfulness.” Eventually the very tribe that killed the young missionaries heard and accepted the Gospel of Christ when the wives of the slain missionaries returned to visit them years later. Jim Elliot wrote in his diary, “He is no fool who exchanges that which he cannot keep for that which he can never lose.”
