The providence of God Joshua 2:1-24
There was a list of warning labels that were pasted on products that seemed to be somewhat redundant. For instance: There was a warning on a baby stroller that said: remove child before folding. A warning on a brass fishing lure with a three pronged hook that said: may be harmful if swallowed. A warning on a flushable toilet brush: do not use for personal hygiene. A label on a bottle of drain cleaner warned: if you cannot understand or read all cautions and warnings do not use this product. A cartridge for a laser printer warned: do not eat toner. A can of self-defense pepper spray warned: may irritate eyes. (And all I could think of was, I hope so.) A dish washer carries the warning: do not allow children to play inside the dish washer. A household iron warns, never iron clothes while they are being worn. A warning on a knife: never catch a falling knife. A warning on a heat gun paint remover that reaches a 1000 degrees said: do not use as a hair dryer.
I was thinking after reading this list, who are the idiot’s that write this kind of stuff but then I thought, there’s probably someone who’s done all these things and then they wrote to complain about the product.
Now, I’m going to read a rather lengthy passage because this is all one story.
“And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there. And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, behold, there came men in hither tonight of the children of Israel to search out the country. And the king of Jericho sent unto Rahab, saying, bring forth the men that are come to thee, which are entered into thine house: for they be come to search out all the country. And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, there came men unto me, but I wist not whence they were: and it came to pass about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out: whither the men went I wot not: pursue after them quickly; for ye shall overtake them. But she had brought them up to the roof of the house, and hid them with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order upon the roof. And the men pursued after them the way to Jordan unto the fords: and as soon as they which pursued after them were gone out, they shut the gate. And before they were laid down, she came up unto them upon the roof; and she said unto the men, I know that the LORD hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath. Now therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the LORD, since I have shewed you kindness, that ye will also shew kindness unto my father’s house, and give me a true token: and that ye will save alive my father, and my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death. And the men answered her, our life for yours, if ye utter not this our business. And it shall be, when the LORD hath given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with thee.
Then she let them down by a cord through the window: for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall. And she said unto them, get you to the mountain, lest the pursuers meet you; and hide yourselves there three days, until the pursuers be returned: and afterward may ye go your way. And the men said unto her, we will be blameless of this thine oath which thou hast made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let us down by: and thou shalt bring thy father, and thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy father’s household, home unto thee. And it shall be, that whosoever shall go out of the doors of thy house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we will be guiltless: and whosoever shall be with thee in the house, his blood shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him. And if thou utter this our business, then we will be quit of thine oath which thou hast made us to swear. And she said, according unto your words, so be it. And she sent them away, and they departed: and she bound the scarlet line in the window.
And they went, and came unto the mountain, and abode there three days, until the pursuers were returned: and the pursuers sought them throughout all the way, but found them not. So the two men returned, and descended from the mountain, and passed over, and came to Joshua the son of Nun, and told him all things that befell them: and they said unto Joshua, truly the LORD hath delivered into our hands all the land; for even all the inhabitants of the country do faint because of us.”
So far, we have seen how God has invested a lot of time and energy in Joshua’s life. As I said, He used the pressures of his enslavement by the Egyptians, the humility of his service under Moses and his exposure to the presence of God Himself in order to mould him into the man who would lead Israel out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land.
And listen, God does the same with us. When we go through difficulties and face trials that don’t seem to make sense, we need to realize that this is the very time that God is doing His deepest work in our lives. And that’s the message of James 1:2 that says, “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” Did you get that? When the bottom is falling out of your world James says, you have reason to be happy, because God is at work!
You see, it’s our trials that drive us to our knees in prayer and it’s there we’re reminded of our absolute dependency upon God. And listen, maybe if we prayed more often on our own then God would spare us from a few of these trials. And one other thing, no matter what we go through, we have to realize that anything that comes our way is always for our benefit even though it’s hard to see that at the time.
Our trials also remind us of our sinfulness and the sinful condition of the world we live in. Think about it, everything that bothers us is indirectly caused by sin whether it’s sickness, death, strained relationships, financial hardships or social problems, it’s all a result of our being sinners who are living in a sinful world. And rather than allowing ourselves to become bitter we need to focus our attention on the provision of God and remind ourselves that one day He’s going to take us to a world that’s described in Revelation 21:4 that says, “And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; and there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” You see, we won’t need these things anymore because we’ll be perfect.
We also have the promise of Romans 8:18 that says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” In other words, God is using our suffering to mould us into the image of His Son.
We also realize that suffering is a universal problem for all believers and it’s not something we have to endure as though we’ve been singled out for a dubious honor we didn’t volunteer for but as it says in I Peter 5:9, “Knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.” In other words, all believers go through some kind of suffering. I like how someone said, “We’re either going through suffering, we’re coming out of suffering or we’re waiting for suffering” but, listen, all of us get our fair share.
Now, when we talk about suffering, someone will say, “Well, unbelievers suffer too” and that’s true but their suffering is just a foretaste of what’s to come. It has no spiritual benefit, but ours does.
So, we all suffer and all of our suffering has a purpose and that purpose is to mould us into the image of Jesus Christ and to remind us of our dependence on God and direct our thoughts toward the world to come.
And yet, I’m sure that when Joshua was a slave he wasn’t thinking about how God was going to use this experience in his future. He probably just accepted it as his lot in life just like the other two million slaves that lived around him. And then when he served Moses he was content to play second fiddle; he certainly didn’t appear like someone who had any aspirations towards national leadership. But listen, in spite of his limited perspective, God had a plan and all Joshua’s experiences would be foundational to the part he would play in this plan.
I remember when I was a new believer various people would say to me, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” And I used to think they were just trying to encourage me to keep on with the Lord but as I look back over the last thirty years or so I can see they were right. Listen, God has a wonderful plan for all of our lives but we’ll only enjoy the blessings of God’s plan to the degree that we are yielded to Him.
Now, today’s passage is a difficult one and the reason it’s difficult is because we find men of God who are finding safety and refuge in a house of prostitution and a woman named Rahab, who is the owner of the house hides these men and then she lies about them. And not only do these things go against our grain as believers but then we also see her name popping up in of all places, the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 1:5. So, let’s begin by looking at:
I Joshua’s plan
And his plan was to conquer Jericho and I want you to keep in mind that Jericho is about 7 miles from the Jordan River and you can imagine that one day someone from Jericho goes down to the river to fish or swim and they could see all these Israelites across the river and they numbered in the millions. And when he went back and told the people of Jericho what was happening I’m sure fear spread like a disease through the streets and all these residents had good reason to be afraid because they could see two million people who were on their way out of the desert looking for a place to live.
So, here’s Israel camping on the banks of the Jordan and they knew they had to kill everyone in the cities before they could move in and settle down but before they attacked anyone Joshua needed to know about the gates, the towers, the military force and even the morale of the people. So, he sent two spies to check things out. And we also see that he was determined to keep what he was doing a secret because he didn’t need a negative report like the one that was brought back from the earlier spy mission 40 years before that had demoralized the people.
You remember what happened back then; in Numbers 13:1 Moses was told by God to send out the 12 spies; one of which represented each of the twelve tribes. Of the twelve who went, ten came back with a negative report and told everyone the situation was hopeless while the other two, Joshua and Caleb wanted to go forward in the will of God. The people received the report and voiced their opinion and of course they all said no.
So, this time Joshua didn’t need or want the opinion of the people because he knew the will of God. He knew it was time to cross the Jordan, so, he secretly sent two spies whose job was to report back to him. And his sending out these spies wasn’t an act of unbelief on his part because the promise of God’s assistance never rules out human responsibility. I mean, if God promises to provide your needs and He does so by giving you a job and then you refuse to go to work; it’s not His fault that you’re broke.
On the other hand we could also say that God didn’t need any spies to search out the land. So, why did he let Joshua send those men on an unnecessary and potentially dangerous mission? I think God did this to reach Rahab. And this situation is similar to the one in John 4:4 where we are told that Jesus, “had to go through Samaria.” Well, Jesus didn’t have to take the Samaritan road because it wasn’t the only road to Galilee and usually another way was taken to avoid the Samaritans. He had to take that road because there was a lonely woman who had a thirst in her heart to know God. And so, Jesus entered Samaria to save her and then the rest of her village responds to His message when they saw what He had done for her.
Often people say, “Well, what about all the people who were living in Jericho and those other cities, why didn’t God take care of them?” The fact was; the people who lived in the land of Canaan were so depraved that God’s orders were to completely wipe them out and to destroy everything that belonged to them. Archeology has shown that these people routinely participated in homosexuality, child sacrifice, idolatry and witchcraft and since there was no one righteous and nothing to be considered of any value in their culture God said to completely exterminate them.
II Then we see the spies arriving in Jericho
And the first place they headed for was the house of a prostitute. Now, down through the ages well-meaning people have tried to tell us this was a hotel or that since she had hidden them under bolts of flax that she might have been using fabric to make something but the scripture says this was the home of Rahab the harlot. So, whatever else she may have been doing on the side this woman was a prostitute. And keep in mind that since this was Canaan being a prostitute wouldn’t exactly be considered to be the wrong way to make a living.
There are places in our world today where people raise their children to be prostitutes. They have such warped moral values that right and wrong are secondary issues when it comes to making money.
So, not only would a house of prostitution be a good place for a stranger to find an open door but it would also be a great place to find out what the common people were saying about Israel.
And I also want you to notice that Israel wasn’t the only country who had spies because the king of Jericho was following their every move all the way from their camp across the Jordan to the house of Rahab.
III Rahab
Many scholars such as Josephus refer to Rahab simply as an innkeeper but if we look at Hebrew 11:31 it says, “By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.” and then in James 2:25 we read, “Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?” So, Rahab might have been an innkeeper and might have made things out of wool but she was also a harlot, a prostitute, a lady of the night or a hooker, whatever you want to call her she certainly wasn’t respectable or acceptable by any standard.
Nelson’s Bible Dictionary, after discussing cult prostitution, states: "A second class of prostitutes consisted of those who owned bars or inns and had sexual relations with the patrons who desired their services.” So, that’s who Rahab was.
And as an innkeeper she would have been well-informed as to what was going on in the world around her as the various travelers would talk about their journeys and experiences. She told the two spies that she had heard about the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea and that had happened some forty years earlier and then she mentioned the recent conquests Israel had made when they conquered the two kings of the Amorites. And so, there’s no doubt that word of these events had spread through Jericho and frightened the people but listen, fright is not faith.
And although Rahab may have been as afraid as the rest of the Canaanites she went a step further and she came to the conclusion that if Israel had enjoyed such miraculous victories then their God must be the true God. And unlike the rest of the people she went from information to belief and drew a reasonable conclusion; that Jehovah was God. And to prove she really had faith James 2:25 says, "Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?" In other words, she acted different from everyone else because she believed.
So, we see her reaction to their arrival and rather than turn them over to the king which any citizen would, she took them up and hid them under the flax on her roof and then lied to the king’s men about her knowing who they were and where they went and then she sent the king’s men in the wrong direction.
And then we see that she shares with the spies what she believes, which would also be a message of encouragement for Joshua. In verse 9 it says, “And she said unto the men, I know that the LORD hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.” We don’t where she heard it but somehow she knew that God had promised the very land she was living on to the Jews and that her and her people, were simply squatters waiting for their eviction notice.
We have a hard time understanding this because land ownership is something that’s part of our culture. In the Old Testament people didn’t buy and sell land like we do today because they believed that land ultimately belonged to the Lord and they couldn’t sell what they didn’t own.
We have the same problem when it comes to dealing with the Indians, natives, first nations or whatever we’re calling them this week. They believe they don’t own the land but their grandchildren do. So, when a white man comes along and says, “I’ll give you so much for the land” they have no problem taking the money because as far as they’re concerned it isn’t theirs to sell. And so, later on, they’ll act as though there was no agreement. You see, the problem is, you bought land from someone who didn’t own it. And to buy it, you’d have to deal with their grandchildren and they haven’t been born yet. (Of course, I have a problem with the fact that they’d take the money for land they didn’t consider to be theirs but that’s another issue.)
I remember dealing with an Arab in London who was doing the body work on my car. I asked him where he was from and he said he was born and raised in Jerusalem. I asked him why he moved to Canada and he told me the Jews had taken his home where he and his family had lived for three generations. He said they threw him out into the street and when I asked how they could do that he said, “They claimed that God had given them the land.” You see, not everybody thinks the same way we do.
It seems strange but these Jews hadn’t been too sure about God giving them the land but here we see a Canaanite women stating it like it was an accepted fact among her people and on top of that she says, “They’re all terrified of you.”
The last time the spies went out forty years before they came back and said, “We look like grasshoppers in comparison to the Canaanites” and now she’s saying the Canaanites all feel like grasshoppers in the sight of the Jews. I think they were probably both about the same size but fear has a way of making our enemies turn into giants.
And then in verse 10 she speaks about the power of God and says, “For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed.”
So, not only did the Canaanites believe the promises of God but they seemed to have more faith in the power of God than the people of Israel had and the Israeli’s were the ones who saw the miracles while these people had only heard about them. When you look at the two incidents they mentioned, the opening of the Red Sea was at the beginning of the wilderness wanderings and the defeat of Sihon and Og was the battle that took place where the Reubanites, Gadites and the half tribe of Manasseh settled which was where Israel was camped at this time. This tells us they were following the progress of the Jews for the past forty years!
And then we also see that the promises and the power of God were evidence to them of His presence in verse 11, where it says, “And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.”
Think of the encouragement that would come to Joshua and the people when they heard that the enemy was terrified at the prospect of having to do battle with the Jews. And it would also remind them that the reason they were afraid was because God was going before Israel. And that would be a further encouragement for the Jews to draw close to God.
And in light of all this, she makes a request. And here we see that if she was only interested in taking care of herself she would have asked them to take her with them but she was concerned about her family as well. So, regardless of what she did or what she was, she certainly wasn’t your typical prostitute.
I once heard a story about a rather rough, uncultured man who for some reason fell in love with a beautiful vase in a shop window. Eventually he bought the vase and put it on the mantelpiece in his room. There it became a kind of judgment on its surroundings. He had to clean up the room to make it worthy of the vase. The curtains looked dingy beside it. The old chair with the stuffing coming out of the seat just wouldn’t do. The wallpaper and the paint needed redoing. Gradually the whole room was transformed. And that’s what happened to Rahab because when she put God on the mantel of her heart, her whole life was changed.
Then, we see what she did as she sent the spies out in a round about fashion. Since she was living on the city wall, it says she let them down by rope. And she told them their pursuers went to the east toward the Jordan and so they should go west and hide in the mountains for three days until the people who were looking for them had came back.
And in return for saving their lives, she asked that the lives of her and her family be saved and we see a sign was given between her and the spies. As a reminder of the rope by which they had been saved, she was to hang a scarlet thread from her window until the day the Israelites attacked.
And we also see that Rahab’s faith was richly rewarded in at least four ways. First, she had a new God. By becoming a proselyte to the Jewish faith this Canaanite, in effect, said the same thing to the two spies that her future great granddaughter-in-law, Ruth the Moabitess would say to Naomi: "thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."
And then second she had a new husband: while the identity of the two spies isn’t specifically given, people have speculated that one of them was Salmon of the tribe of Judah and he became the husband of Rahab according to Matthew 1:5.
And then third she had an important family in Israel because Ruth 4:21 and 22 tells us, "And Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David." And ultimately, she became an ancestor of Jesus of Nazareth. In addition to the kingly line, rabbinic tradition states that Rahab was the ancestor of eight prophets, including Jeremiah and the prophetess Huldah.
And finally she also had longevity. While we are not informed of the age of Rahab at her death there is evidence that she lived an unusually long life. The book of Joshua was written about 40 years later and it tells us that Rahab was still alive at the time of the writing. Joshua 6:25 says, “And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father’s household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho."
Rahab is a good example of God’s grace in the Old Testament. There were several reasons why she should have died when the Israelites conquered Jericho and yet God makes several exceptions for her. I mean, she was immoral. In the Old Testament God said that any woman who was a prostitute was to die by stoning. And then, she wasn’t part of the Jewish nation and God instructed the Jews to wipe out everyone that was found in the Promised Land. And also, God told the people that they weren’t to make any covenants with the people of the land and yet they made one with her and apparently they had made it with God’s blessing. And finally, God said the Israelites were not to marry the people of the land but Rahab married an Israelite.
Well, let me just deal with the situation involved where some question her lying and deceiving her own people. When the guards came looking for these to agents Rahab said they weren’t there and sent the soldiers on a wild goose chase. Now, in my study I found that commentary writers argue over whether or not Rahab sinned by lying to these soldiers. And I’m no scholar but I for one would say no, she did not sin. I mean, many people have been honored for deceiving the enemy in war time, and this was a time of war. In my mind, she was simply resisting an evil, corrupt government to protect people who were serving God.
Plus, the Bible does teach that it’s okay to lie in order to deceive a godless government. Exodus 1 tells of the time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt and their nation grew so that the Pharaoh told the midwives to kill any baby boys that were born. But verse 17 says that the midwives feared God and did not do what the Pharaoh had asked. When he summoned them to ask why, they lied and said, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” And then verse 20 tells us how God felt about their deception when it says, “So God was kind to the midwives...”
A more modern day example of this can be found in the life experiences of Corrie Ten Boom. In her book The Hiding Place Corrie tells of her father, a devout Christian man who hid Jews in his home and helped smuggle them out of the country under the noses of the Nazis. His pastor came by and urged him not to do these things, saying, “Christians must obey the law.” But her father responded by saying that Christians are to obey God first, above any human law that conflicts with His laws.
So, why were there exceptions made for her? She knew more than she realized. She was told to hang a scarlet cord in her window. Unknown to her that cord symbolized the scarlet thread that would run all through scripture. It began in the Garden of Eden where the first animals were killed to provide coverings for Adam and Eve after they sinned. And then we see it in the book of Exodus as the Jews were to apply the blood of the lamb to the doorposts of their homes. And it runs through the sacrifices of Leviticus and all the way down to the cross of Calvary when in the death Jesus died, He died for sinners such as Rahab.
She believed what she knew and she lived according to her beliefs. She didn’t have a Bible, had never been to Sunday school and she never knew the influence of a godly mother or father. But what she knew about God caused her to turn her back on her pagan upbringing, immoral lifestyle and even the culture she had been born into. And as we read the passage we get the impression that what she had heard about the God’s promises and power were common knowledge among the Canaanites but the difference between her and them was that she acted on what she knew. She’s a good example of the passage that says, “Faith without works is dead.” Her faith resulted in works. She believed that God was going to deliver the Canaanites into the hands of the Israeli’s and that He was willing and able to spare the lives of her and her family. And God who is no man’s debtor rewarded her faith.
We also see how He used Rahab in the lineage of the Lord Jesus as a demonstration that all who repent are accepted as full members in God’s family. There’s no restriction because of your culture, religious heritage or any sins you’ve committed. As a matter of fact, there were other immoral women in the Bible that were used of God. Besides, Rahab, there’s the Samaritan woman who had four different husbands and was living with the fifth in John 4. And then there was the woman who anointed Jesus in the book of Luke. These people who are examples of how God can use anyone, anywhere and anytime He wants to.
And listen, Rahab also teaches us, that your past doesn’t determine your future but your choices do. And at the same time she also teaches us there’s no excuse for sin. No one can excuse themselves by saying, “I’m a product of my parents, the result of a wayward generation, an offshoot of the culture I was born into or a victim of circumstances. Listen, she was all this but she turned to God and by His grace was used by Him. God is able to make all things new and because she was faithful, He did have a wonderful plan for her life.
In November of 1999 in Lubbock, Texas, Jimmy Allen, the former President of the Southern Baptist Convention, spoke about one of the greatest hurts of his life. His daughter-in-law and his two grandsons had all become infected with HIV from a tainted blood transfusion that was received during her first pregnancy and yet the biggest hurt was when they were rejected by church after church, including the church where her husband was the pastor and when the people found out that she and the boys were infected he was fired.
In Allen’s words: "The first man in history to reach out and voluntarily touch lepers didn’t die of leprosy; He died at the hands of the religious leaders who wouldn’t have touched a leper on a bet."
When I heard that it reminded me of Fred Craddock telling a story about a church. It was a church of some stature, located downtown. Anybody who was anybody went to that church. As Craddock tells the story, you had to be somebody to belong to that church, and if you were poor, or from the wrong side of town, or black, or different in any way, you were not welcomed. Few new members ever joined this church, and it grew older in time. Eventually, all the people of status had died and the church closed. Craddock went back to the town years later and discovered that the old building was still standing. Now, however, it was a fancy seafood restaurant. He said he walked in and saw that tables had replaced pews, and waiters had taken over where ushers once stood. Down where the communion table used to be was a big salad bar. And as he walked out of this church he muttered to himself, “Now I guess everybody is welcome to eat that the table.”
For those of us who are struggling with guilt and broken dreams the story of how God used Rahab, a prostitute, offers us new hope because God can and will use us in His kingdom. Others may not forgive us, accept us, or even tolerate us, but God does, because the good news is God has more grace than most people.
