Rahab’s Faith

Rahab’s Faith

“By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace” (Hebrews 11:31).

In almost every capital city in Europe there are triumphant arches and statues, upon which they have recorded the heroic deeds of the country’s generals, its emperors, or its kings.

On one of the arches you will find a long list of the battles of Napoleon, and on another the victories of England’s Lord Nelson are pictured.

It seems, therefore, that it would be right for faith to have an arch raised to its honor, upon which its valiant deeds could be recorded.

The apostle Paul undertook the task of raising a type memorial to the faithful in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.

There he recites the victories of the faithful.

It begins with one triumph of faith, and then proceeds to others.

In one place we have faith winning over death; Enoch never entered the gates of death, but reached heaven by a highway that no one else has ever traveled.

In another place, we find Noah wrestling with time.

God warned him of a flood that was one hundred and twenty years away, and yet, in faith, he believed God even though such a thing was beyond all rational expectations.

And here we can also find faith overcoming old age-Abraham had a son in his old age.

And then we find faith succeeding over natural affection, as we see Abraham climbing to the top of a hill and raising his knife to kill his favorite son at the command of God.

Then we have faith winning over the appeal of wealth, “By faith Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.”

We have faith dividing seas, and bringing down strong walls.

And then, because perhaps the greatest victory is recorded last, we have faith having a contest with sin and coming off more than a conqueror.

“Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.”

This woman Rahab was no mere hostess, she was a prostitute.

Anyone who reads her story would have to admit that there is no way she could deny her sin.

The triumph of faith over sin may be the greatest victory of all, especially where it had to fight against lust.

It was faith that delivered Rahab the harlot from the detestable vice of prostitution.

Faith saved and rescued her and gave her a pure heart and transformed her into a beauty of holiness.

And now her name is recorded among the faithful; a woman full of sin, yet saved by faith.

In this woman Rahab, we have a noteworthy victory of faith over sin.

This woman’s faith was SAVING FAITH, SINGULAR FAITH, STABLE FAITH, SELF-DENYING FAITH, and SANCTIFYING FAITH.

I want to say something about each one of the divisions of her faith.

In the first place, this woman’s faith was SAVING FAITH.

All the other people we mentioned were undeniably saved by faith, but I don’t find that they were at any time rescued from death by their faith; while this woman was delivered from the destruction of Jericho through her faith.

And her salvation did not just come by delivering her from the swords of the Israelites; it was also that her soul was redeemed from hell.

What a mighty thing faith is when it saves a soul from going down into the pit of hell.

The appeal of sin is so great that only the atonement of Christ can snatch a soul off the pathway to hell.

However, faith is the instrument that God uses to accomplish the saving of a soul.

The sinner is rescued from the river of sin by a faith that reaches out and grabs hold of God.

What a great thing it is to save a soul!

You can’t know how great it is unless you have been a savior yourself; that is unless you have been a hero to someone.

I have known some heroes.

I knew a man by the name of Christianson, who saved the lives of three women by swimming out into the ocean three times to bring each to safety.

He knew what it felt like to be a savior to another person.

Then there was the heroic man who went into a burning house, climbed a creaking staircase, and even though he was almost suffocated by the smoke, he snatched a baby from its bed and a woman from a window and carried them both to safety.

He can tell you what a great thing it is to save a fellow human being.

We can save a life, if we are brave enough, but we will never know what a great thing it is to save a soul.