Many of us have stories of our ancestors don't we. Maybe it's the Grandpa that came to Canada with $5 in his pocket. Or a family member who fought in a famous war. And of course the parent who walked to and from school uphill everyday in 6 feet of snow. I never could figure out how it's uphill both ways.
The point of this whole Bible miniseries is to have the opportunity to see how even the ancient major stories in the Bible are relevant to us and reveal God's intentions toward all of us. This week is no different, in fact it's such a good picture of what God has done for all of us. It is about a prostitute, and my friends, that is what all of us are to God since the original sin. I know that may sound distasteful, but it is a term that God used for his people throughout history.
The reason being that God considers us His bride and we have consistently through the ages chosen to have affairs with the world and the lusts of our flesh rather than be true to our creator and redeemer.
Our story today takes place during the Exodus, the delivery of God's people from slavery in Egypt. If you watched the episode on Sunday night you saw how this began. This Exodus, and the Passover associated with it, are to this day central in shaping the story of our Jewish friends.
It's also our story, because it depicts the reality of salvation in vivid terms, of a God who delivers us from slavery and death, and blesses us with freedom and life. God's people had been delivered from slavery by several miraculous plagues that all missed them, then the great miracle of parting the Red Sea. Yet in spite of all this they still had trouble staying true to God through their 40 years in the wilderness and beyond.
They were free nomads and had received the Law of God, but their deliverance was not complete. There was still a promise to be fulfilled, the Promised Land. We as Christians are also on an Exodus to the Promised Land, we are told that we are aliens in this world. Ours is an eternal spiritual Promised Land that Jesus himself is preparing for us. But like Israel, we too have to be passed over from death to life by the blood of Christ.
Let's watch what happens when the Israelite spies enter Jericho and meet Rahab…
The last line in that clip is wonderful; it's a reference to that great event years earlier, which God's people, including Jesus, had since celebrated every year in the Passover. It's a reference that something like that is happening for Rahab and her family as recorded in the first chapters of the book of Joshua. And again it's not just Rahab's story but it includes all of us because:
I. My story starts out sad too (2:1-4)
You see Rahab was a sinner and in that day, one of the worse kinds. She was a prostitute. But as we know, Jesus has a special place in his heart for prostitutes, and I think I understand why. These are people that often don't know what else to do. They are for the most part slaves that have to sell themselves to survive in a world that is more than happy to take advantage of them. I don't think anyone sets out with their life goal to be a prostitute.
We too are all sinners, and the world that the Bible says Satan rules, has taken advantage of us, luring us into a relationship with it and making us slaves to the idols that bombard us with empty promises every day.
God is coming to completely destroy Jericho, destroy sin, and ultimately sinners. He did it in the flood, he did it in Egypt, and he plans to do it here. The only escape is radical obedience and loyalty to Him, desiring His mercy.
Jericho was a brilliant choice to begin the conquest of the Promised Land. It was the world's oldest and at the time best fortified city. If they conquered it, everyone else would hear about it and be terrified.
God was going to break down the walls and he instructed Joshua not to let anyone or anything in the city survive, and also not to take any of the loot, it was all for God. Only Rahab and her family would be spared.
Sometimes people ask, why does this loving God have to destroy everybody including the children, when they took over the Promised Land. To me it's very simple. These people were despicable idol worshippers that wanted nothing to do with the true God, and anywhere God wants to be has to be completely Holy. He knows that if any trace of idolatry exists it will spread amoung his people like gangrene. Everyone of us knows that. It will be the same in our promised land, nothing unholy will ever enter it. It sounds harsh, but it's the only way, and it's the way we are to treat sin and our old natures.
So while it may seem like a strange choice, God chooses to use the prostitute Rahab who ultimately becomes one of the most important people in the bible as we will see later. Her situation is a depiction of our situation: enslaved by sin. Dress it up however we want; it's not a pretty picture. One sin may seem more respectable than another, but in God's eyes they are all the same, and it's all slavery that leads us to destruction.
Listen to a couple New Testament verses that describe the effects the world and sin have on us - Peter pulls no punches in his second letter chapter 2, and in his rant he says:
"They (people who love sin) promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are slaves to whatever defeats them."
Jesus said in John 8:34, "I assure you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin." And Paul said to the Romans, "For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am made out of flesh, sold into sin's power."
Three of the most influential men of the New Testament all confirm that sin is slavery. And like Rahab and all people made of flesh:
II. My story includes a choice (2:4-14)
Rahab faced a decision, "Our lives or your lives" the spies told her. Basically that is the question for all mankind - God or the world, God or self, or as John says in his first letter, God or the devil.
It's interesting that many people criticize God for wanting us to be his slaves. But so does Satan and the world. Some say the Bible promises freedom but really it makes you live by a bunch of rules with threats if you don't. What we don't realize is that God is just truthful, unlike the enemy. As Paul says, the truth is that you are either a slave to Satan, or a slave to God, either way you're a slave. We are all slaves to advertising for instance.
What did Satan really offer in the garden of Eden. Wasn't it a false sense of freedom? He said God doesn't want you be free, and able to choose for yourself, but I can offer you that. Living as a slave of Satan appears like freedom because he is the great deceiver, but all we do when we live by his freedom is take ourselves farther away from the God who offers real, eternal freedom. God promised death if we disobey, Satan only offers freedom until we die. And it isn't real freedom, because it's still slavery, only this slavery is to our own desires rather than God's.
And it's not just a one time choice, it's a choice we make everyday, probably several times a day as the world tries to tempt us. Sin is always a choice and it makes us feel free when we're really not. There is not one of us who when we sin against God, isn't having to use our will in some way. I'm not saying it's easy, but we always have to choose to sin. But we miss the boat when we think we can choose otherwise under our own power. Sin lives in our flesh according to Paul, and even he found he couldn't fight it. That is why we must focus not on our power, our will, but we must choose God and his power that raised Jesus from the dead.
Two things that does. It gives us the power through the Holy Spirit to have actual victory over sin, and it also gives us victory through Jesus blood when we do fall. When we confess our sin, God is faithful to forgive us, because of the scarlet blood that Jesus shed for us. Our choice is that we must spread that blood over the door posts of our heart, accept His sacrifice, tie the scarlet cord in our window, publicly identify ourselves with Jesus.
And can I tell you what I think that means today since Jesus died? I believe it is the two sacraments that Jesus left us with. Baptism and taking part in the Passover meal - communion. Especially baptism, and that isn't just my opinion. Peter talking about how the lives of Noah's family were saved at the flood, says in 1 Pe 3:21, "Baptism, which corresponds to this (Noah's obedience to build the ark), now saves you, not just as the removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
Baptism doesn't wash sin from the flesh and make us clean before God, but through baptism we identify with his death and resurrection and gain a clean conscience in God's presence by identifying with Jesus' death and resurrection. Nowhere in the Bible does it talk about saying a prayer to be saved, but every person who repented and claimed Jesus blood, was baptised. The prayer can be your point of confessing and repenting, but baptism seals the deal so to speak, and is like the painting of the blood on the door posts, tying the cord to the window, publicly saying this house will not be destroyed, it belongs to God.
If those people in the Old Testament would have continually chanted in prayer that they believe in God, that they accept His salvation from the wrath that was coming, it still wouldn't have saved them unless they painted the blood, tied the cord, or built the ark. Do you see what I'm saying? So again if you have not been baptized, please consider it. Come and talk to me about it. I'm afraid that you may have believed, but haven't done what Jesus asks of you, and commands the church to do, baptize everyone in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God sets us free. Joseph was sold into slavery, and God made him a saviour to his people and one of the most important leaders in a foreign land. He did this kind of thing time and again, and our choice boils down to sin or salvation, slavery or freedom, doing what God says, or what Satan and the world says.
Finally we know that:
III. My story involves a scarlet cord (2:15-21, 6:20-25)
The Passover is the major symbol of escape from death and slavery throughout the entire Bible. No doubt it's one of the reasons Jesus participated and told us to continue to remember Him with taking communion, which for the first disciples happened at the Passover meal the night of Jesus arrest.
Just a quick review. When the final plague was coming in Egypt that would kill all the first born sons in the land to get Pharoah to release the Israelites from slavery, the Israelites were told to sacrifice an unblemished sheep or goat and use its blood to paint on the doorposts of their homes. Then the angel of death would "Passover" their homes and their firstborn sons would be spared while all the Egyptians would experience this plague, including Pharoah himself who would lose his heir. Now did the Egyptians know the Israelites were doing this, and could they have done so themselves? We don't know.
From that moment on the Jewish people were to remember that event permanently each year through a special meal. That meal today continues on the Tuesday of the Holy Week leading up to Easter every year. It is actually a week long festival called Pesach.
Since Rahab and her family were not Jewish, they were not required to sacrifice an animal and use blood, but here the spies give Rahab a scarlet cord to tie to her window frame so that the Israelite army would Passover her house and spare her family.
Now obviously this whole Passover theme is a precursor of Jesus' perfect and permanent sacrifice on the cross. We now claim the blood of Christ in order to be passed over at the final judgment of God at the end of time. We remember this through communion. The Jews had to paint blood on their door posts, Rahab had to tie the scarlet cord, and we have to claim the blood of the Lamb of God and paint it on our hearts.
Of course the entire city of Jericho was destroyed, so Rahab's family became part of the family of God, and not only that, she found a place of honour in the genealogy of Jesus himself.
The thing that gets me is that Rahab basically betrayed an entire city and helped have her people slaughtered, by doing what she did. Why did she do that? Because she believed God would take the city anyway. Why didn't she go and evangelize through her city so that more people could have been saved?
Well, first of all she was told not to. In verse 14 they tell her not to report this mission to anyone. We don't know if she started talking about this powerful God to people during the three days that the spies were hiding in the hills and the six days that the Israelites were marching around the city. The fact also remains that even though apparently the whole city was terrified because of what God was doing through the Israelites, they did not surrender even while the Israelite army was marching around the city for 6 days.
This reminds me of what is said about the Samaritans in 2 Kings 17, that they feared God but at the same time served their own gods. There is every reason to believe that if the people of Jericho would have surrendered and began serving the only true God, that God would have spared them. It's not like they didn't know what was coming.
It's no different from the situation we are in this very day. We know that God is coming to pour out his wrath on the earth one day. Rahab not only feared God, but acted in faith, and served God by protecting the spies even at the cost of betraying her own unbelieving people. Her faith was not in the scarlet cord any more than our faith is in the symbol of the cross, but in God.
We are told that God's wrath is coming to us one day. First of all do we really believe that? The Bible says that in the end times false prophets will try to convince us that if he hasn't come by now, he really isn't coming. Most of the unbelieving world doesn't believe this, so in that way they're different even from the people of Jericho who knew it was coming and were afraid. But secondly, have we in faith done what is required of us to ensure the passing over of ourselves and our family. Are we right with God and dad's have you done all you can to lead your family to Christ? That is where our evangelism begins.
I want to read from Galatians starting in verse 2:22 to verse 3:11…
This sermon is called "Journey from slavery to freedom" and that passage describes it well. Paul also describes this in detail in Romans. The point is that it is by grace through faith that we are saved from God's righteous wrath against sin.
But even Paul later in that book says we have freedom in Christ, but don't use that freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, to continue your own way (assuming that you are forgiven) but to walk in the Spirit so as to not carry out the desires of the flesh.
And of course we know that Peter and James in their letters, make it exceedingly clear that faith that is only words is useless without evidence through deeds. Can faith without deeds save a person, James asks. No, because faith by definition can only be manifest in an action. Listen to James in chapter 2…
You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe-and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"-and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
So the Bible says we are saved by grace through faith. Which Paul says is like becoming an heir, when? When we are baptized into Christ and have put on Christ like a garment.
What does that mean? It means very clearly that we strive to be like Christ as a slave to our Father's will until we claim the inheritance. Now before a bunch of people come up and say please baptize me now so I can put on Christ and be saved. Remember that faith is not just an action either, their has to be real faith in the heart expressed through the mouth as well as through our actions.
What does Paul say in Romans 10:9? "This is the message of faith that we proclaim: if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord" (the Greek word used there meaning literally master or supreme authority, and is to my knowledge the most used word in the entire Bible), and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved".
I know I've harped on this verse before, because it gets used so much. "Believe" means to put our trust in, and the heart refers to thoughts will, and feelings. We can read that as it was originally intended to his listeners as, "Say out loud that you confess (agree) to be a slave to your master Jesus, and with all your thoughts and feelings from the heart, put your trust in the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead, and you will be saved". Then the Bible ties baptism intimately with this.
So getting dunked without that heart is pointless, and confessing and believing as mentioned there is incomplete without baptism. Romans 10:9 must be followed before baptism, to make it have any meaning.
So what do I want you to take home from today? Simply this. We all live in Jericho, and Jericho is headed for imminent destruction. Have you tied the cord to the window? Have you done what I just described in detail, from the heart, so that you don't have to doubt that like Rahab you will be spared? Are you wearing Christ by being baptized into him as Paul says, and can people see the scarlet cord hanging from you? If so, the next question becomes, can your family also be identified by the coming army, so that they too will be passed over?
This is serious stuff and if it scares you or offends you a little, then I have done my job as your loving shepherd and a servant of God.
