Of Whom the World
Is Not Worthy
Joshua 2; Hebrews 11:30-12:2
Dr. Michael Milton, Senior Minister
First Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Many Americans and Presidents have made their way to the center of Arlington Cemetery to a monument that is beloved by all Americans. It is the Tomb of the Unknowns, guarded 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by the Old Guard of the United States Army. This monument has engraved upon it these words:
Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But To God
It’s hard to view that sight and not be moved.
Today we will make our way to a place in God’s Word that has been visited by many be-lievers. Here we will honor whom God has honored and memorialized in His Word. Some of these people will be known only to God. But in His Word, He has erected a monument to the story of His grace in their lives so that we, too, may view that sight and be moved, be strengthened, and be encouraged.
That is my prayer as I read the inerrant and the infallible Word of the living God.
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.” Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall. And she said to them, “Go into the hills, or the pursuers will encounter you, and hide there three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterward you may go your way.” The men said to her, “We will be guiltless with respect to this oath of yours that you have made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household. Then if anyone goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be guiltless. But if a hand is laid on anyone who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head. But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be guiltless with respect to your oath that you have made us swear.” And she said, “According to your words, so be it.” Then she sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window. They departed and went into the hills and remained there three days until the pursuers returned, and the pursuers searched all along the way and found nothing. Then the two men returned. They came down from the hills and passed over and came to Joshua the son of Nun, and they told him all that had happened to them. And they said to Joshua, “Truly the LORD has given all the land into our hands. And also, all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us (Joshua 2:1-24).
By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mis-treated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 11:30-12:2).
It Hits Home
Camp Wolverine, Kuwait, is not where you want to end up. It’s not that it is just another sandy, forsaken sort of place in a far away, war-warped country. It is the home of the 54th Quartermaster Company, which is the mortuary affairs camp for the United States Army in that area of operation. The soldiers stationed there say they like it when they are bored with nothing to do. Lately, there have not been many days like that. One of those young soldiers recently granted an interview and talked about her support role to those on the front line. Pfc. Mari-Ann Lopez is a mortuary affairs specialist serving at Camp Wolverine. As I read her words, I was proud of her determination to carry out her mission, even though it was hard. I was thankful that she could find meaning even in that most difficult of assignments. She felt that she was there to return loved ones to their families. She was one link in the chain to aid a grieving family. And she has ministered to the families of men like
-Staff Sgt. Jorge A. Molina Bautista, 37, 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Bat-talion, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Rialto, California, who died as a result of hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, on May 23, 2004; or,
-Spc. Jeremy L. Ridlen, 23, 1544 Transportation Company, Illinois Army National Guard, Paris, Illinois. Ridlen was killed by small-arms fire after an improvised explosive device hidden in a parked dump truck was detonated as his military convoy was driving by in East Fallujah, Iraq, on May 23, 2004; or,
-Staff Sgt. Jeremy R. Horton, 24, Company B, 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Carneys Point, Pennsylvania. Staff Sgt. Horton was killed when his vehicle was ambushed by a vehicle-born improvised explosive device near Al Iskandariyah, Iraq, on May 21, 2004; then, there was
- Lance Cpl. Andrew J. Zabierek, 25, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, attached to 1st Marine Expeditionary. He died due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, on May 21, 2004.
As of the official count I had earlier this week, there have been 797 others. And every time the remains of those soldiers arrive at Camp Wolverine, PFC Lopez does her job with dignity. But in her interview, her humanity broke through her official words:
“The first time I saw a Soldier in the same uniform as me, it was hard,” she said. “It hits home.”
The truth is that the majority of the heroes throughout all our wars were people just like us, and that hits home. They were plumbers and mechanics; bankers and nurses; housewives, sons, and fathers; the fellow next door. Their lives seemed to be “unworthy” of the honor of being called American heroes. But we know it is true.
And thus it is with faith. In Hebrews 11:38 the Bible speaks about those “of whom the world is not worthy.” Those whom the world would count as unworthy of honor, God honors. Hebrews 11 is a veritable hall of heroes of faith. Those memorialized in Hebrews 11 include names like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, and Moses. But in Hebrews 11:30, the author makes a shift. He includes people whose names are almost hidden in the pages of Scripture, people whose names would be unfamiliar to many Christians and certainly unfamiliar to those who know little of their Bibles. But these people are special to us. Like PFC Lopez, when I see them before me living lives so much like my own, it hits home.
And that is precisely what God wants to do with this passage. The aim of this section of God’s Word is to encourage you in your faith. Heroes of faith are just people like us. In Hebrews 11:30-32 we see the utterly unknown names of Barak and Jephthah mingled with the names of spiritual giants like Gideon and David. But it all starts in Hebrews 11:31 with a woman named Rahab. Let’s listen to the story of her life, learn the lessons of God’s grace, and then look to the author of our faith.
Rahab’s Life
The phrase “of whom the world is not worthy” is a condemnation of the world and its inability to grasp the power of God at work in the most common of lives. It is reminiscent of Paul’s analysis of God’s glorious ways:
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; (1 Corinthians 1:27).
God has elevated what man has despised. God has commended to us as examples those whom the world would throw on the ash heaps of history.
-Consider Her Past
In the Book of Hebrews, Rahab is said to be, in the Greek, a porne. In Joshua 2.1 she is called, in the Hebrew, a zonah. In English, those words reveal that her identity was the epitome of sin and shame for a woman; she was a harlot. She was a woman who operated a sort of inn at the very wall of the city. The passage is clear; she was a woman living in sin, a woman with a past, a woman living off the sins of others, a woman on the edge, a throw away life, unable to be redeemed—or you might have thought. She was an Amorite. Her name was derived from Ra, the name of an Egyptian god. She was a member of an idolatrous people who, many generations before, had left the one true God and who, by this time, were about to be destroyed because of the moral decadence which had polluted the very land. Rahab was not only condemned by the Law of God, but no doubt was also abhorred by her own pagan people. But the Lord had his heart set on this Amorite prostitute, and as Christ stood for the woman caught in sin in John 8, God stood for this woman. Her past in no way could indicate the glorious future God had for her.
We learn more about Rahab and more about what God has for us when we
-Consider Her Plot
The dramatic real-life tale of Rahab and the Hebrews spies surpasses any military espionage novel by Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum or Stephen Coonts. The two spies, sent out by Joshua with a mission to conduct covert operations inside enemy territory for no explained reason, found shelter inside a harlot’s home. They did not go there as other unscrupulous men went, but went there, no doubt, to discover what was really going on from a woman who probably knew the high and the low alike. We are not told. But for whatever reason they took cover there, their covert plan was compromised. They were discovered. And in an amazing scene in Joshua 2:3, the very king of Jericho found his life and nation now subject to negotiation with a prostitute. He ordered her to hand over the men. Troops were sent out to seize the men, but Rahab, in a wartime act, covered the truth of the matter, concealed the spies under stalks of flax drying on her roof, and sent the Amorite Gestapo on a wild goose chase. A deal was then made: because of her aid to the spies, if a scarlet cord was hanging in her window (the sign of her covenant with the spies) when Israel came into the land, they would not destroy her home or her family.
The spies and the plan were secured, and God’s promises were carried out?all because of this woman’s plot. When Joshua “fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came a tumbling” down, Rahab and her family were saved. That is what the writer is saying in Hebrews 11:30-31. First, by faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. Then he shows that it was the faith of Rahab that allowed that great event to take place. In the end, what others saw as a red cord in a harlot’s house, was seen by Israel as a sign very much like the blood of a lamb on the doorposts. This was a sort of Passover experience for this woman.
- Consider Her Profession
No, I am not talking about her old profession at the inn. I am talking about the key to the story in Joshua 2:9-13: Rahab’s profession of faith
“…I know that the Lord has given you the land….For the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on earth beneath (Joshua 2:9, 11).
This passage is amazing. She believes in her heart that there is a God and that He is the only way to be saved. Her faith leads her to works of righteousness out of worship for this God and a heart’s cry for her own salvation. She enters into a covenant with the Lord through God’s people, turning her back on her old ways and turning to the living Lord. And in it all there is the scarlet cord. That scarlet sign in her window became the token of her faith, a sort of sacrament by which she was identified, not with the Amorites, but with Israel. By faith are ye saved. Her faith saved her life and saved her soul. Make no mistake about it. This woman was trusting in all of the promises. She was trusting in a God who could cover her sins, could cover her past, and could secure her future and that of her family. No longer would she be a woman of sin. She would become a woman of faith.
We hear the words of the Apostle Paul echoing through this story:
Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all (Romans 4:16, NIV).
…it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring (Romans 9:8, NIV).
If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29, NIV).
Through her profession, this woman with a past becomes a woman with a place.
- Consider Her Place
Not only is she mentioned in Hebrews and in James, but she also ends up in a remarkable section of Scripture. Her name?the name of this woman of sin who sided with God’s people?ends up memorialized in Matthew 1. There her name is listed as the mother of Boaz, who married Ruth, and as the grandmother of King David, and is in the direct lineage of the Savior of the World, our Lord Jesus Christ.
But the world that is in unbelief, the world that would have accused her for her sins, would not be worthy of her, says the Lord. John Calvin, the Pastor of Geneva who did so much to liberate the life of the common man, wrote,
“Although the world may reject the servants of God as rubbish, the fact that it cannot bear them is to be thought of as its penalty because along with them goes some blessing from God.”
And there are rich blessings of God to be found for you in this woman of God.
God’s Grace
The lessons of God’s grace are many in the life and salvation of this woman of God.
1. By faith in Jesus Christ, human beings are valued. Whoever they are, whatever they have done, there is value in human beings. Like Rahab, behind every broken, sinful person is also a very real human being in need of the love of God. No one can claim moral superiority over another. We are all level before the Lord, all human beings in need of Christ’s righteousness. The church is filled with such people. So Paul would chronicle a list of sins of the worst kind and then say, “And such were some of you.”
2. By faith in Jesus Christ, human pain and sorrow may become transmuted into godly gain. Rahab’s story would not be there if it were not for her pain. In Christ, our broken past becomes the fuel for a testimony of grace. The very things which seem to destroy us become the instruments God uses to transform us. Paul taught us that “when I am weak then I am strong.”
3. By faith in Jesus Christ, the worst sinner may become the greatest saint. Ra-bah was a great sinner, but Christ was a great Savior. And so it is with all of us. Christ taught us that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
4. By faith in Jesus Christ, our painful past is no indicator of a painful future. In fact, God will redeem our painful past and use it to send us into a glorious future. The prophet Joel spoke to a people recovering from the judgment of God against their sin, a people who had been ravaged by the locusts: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…” (Joel 2:25).
I heard of a certain artist who rummages through the junkyard to find what others discard. He locates the broken glass, the twisted steel, the abandoned toasters, the wrecked pieces of junk, and he takes them to his studio. There, with the eye of a master, he takes what the world has left behind and shapes it into a piece of art that sells for millions.
So it is with the Lord of grace. He moves, even this day, across the landscape of our gen-eration, which has been so devastated by pain, and seeks what the world disregards. This Lord of grace locates the broken spirits, the twisted stories of family life, the abandoned dreams of lost people, the poorest of the poor who are but pieces of junk to a world that prizes beauty and fame, and He takes them to Himself. For He, too, was rejected. He, too, was abandoned on a cross. He, too, was left in a grave for three days. But the Christ who was reanimated by the power that created the world, reforms and reshapes and gives eternal life to the abandoned people of this world. They become the prized and invaluable sons and daughters of the King. Their stories are not stories of great power, but stories of great loss redeemed by this beautiful Lord of grace.
Is there someone here today who thinks he or she is beyond repair? Maybe a young girl who is tortured by the pain of a broken family? Or an older man who looks back at life to see mistake after mistake and now the setting sun of life condemns him as being unfit for heaven? Maybe an alcoholic who has been labeled as a failure all of his life and who has no hope for a new life.
The story of Rahab is here for you. Let this story be a giant memorial engraved with the words, “Of whom the world is not worthy.” Then we will begin to understand the glory of this passage and of this story of grace. For Christ Jesus, who redeemed her and put her in the royal line of the Savior, will redeem you and make you an heir of the kingdom of Christ.
The words of CS Lewis ring true in this matter:
“No creature that deserved redemption would need to be redeemed.”
You see, we are all Rahab. We are not only born sinners as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, but we have all prostituted ourselves—sold ourselves into sin by our malicious hearts towards others, our pride before God, the lusts of the eyes and lusts of the flesh.
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— (Romans 5:12).
But thank God, a Savior has come into our camp. A free offer of salvation is here. And all who will call upon the name of Jesus Christ will be saved. Though it rage all over the universe, no fiery judgment will touch you. A righteous God shall surely bring down the walls of this world, but the destruction shall not touch you if you are in Christ. Not even death can destroy you. For there is a scarlet cord hanging in the window of every harlot who professes faith in Jesus Christ. That cord is the blood of a Savior sealing that house. That cord is a sign that you, an unworthy sinner in the eyes of the world, have come into the covenant of grace, and God now calls you His own.
The Author of Our Salvation
Look at Hebrews 12:1-2 and see how the writer makes the transition from chapter 11 and the hall of heroes of faith to showing the reader how we are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses in order to run the race of faith. We see them around us—Abraham and Sarah, Rahab and David, all of them—great sinners who called on a great Savior and who became great people of faith. All of this is given that we might be free from the accusations of self, the accusations of Satan, and the accusations of the world. What God has called clean, let not man call unclean. You are saved. Do not let sin have dominion over you. Do not let your past sins accuse you as you run the race of faith. And how do you do that? We are told,
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2, NKJV).
You will not advance in your faith by looking back at the pain of your past but by looking at the greatness of Jesus:
-Jesus, the great, great grandson of Rahab who bore his grandmother’s sins on Calvary;
-Jesus, the great, great grandson of a harlot, who, though He was without sin, became sin, that we who are sinners might become the righteousness of God;
- Jesus, the great, great savior of sinners, who was punished by God for our sin, that we might be set free from the bondage of sin;
-Jesus, the great, great one who led the captives free and who, from His throne in Heaven, now rules a kingdom of recovering sinners whom he calls saints.
We all know that a ship struggling for safety in the midst of a great storm at sea does not find her way to shore by looking back into to the storm but by looking to the light on the shore.
And you, my beloved, will not recover from the storms of the past or the wounds of your sins by looking back into the storms or by focusing on the wounds of your pain, but only by focusing on the gospel of grace and the Author and the Finisher of our salvation. And when you reach those shores, you will be met by Rahab’s boy, the everlasting Son of God who is the light of the world. And you will then, to the glory of Jesus, come into the company of Rahab and Gideon and Barak and Samson and Paul and Peter and all of the nameless and countless others who by faith in Jesus Christ became people “of whom the world was not worthy.”
