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We are going to be tonight in Joshua chapter 2. You want to turn there. And I guess it's been a couple of weeks since Justin had us in chapter 1. Just real quick, I want to give a recap of where we are in Israel's history. Moses has just died.

And of course, Israel has been through the, when they came out of Egypt, Moses led them out. They came through the Red Sea. They had some battles early on there. And then they sent two spies, or they sent a bunch of spies into the land at that time when they got to the Promised Land.

And only two of the spies came back with a good report. And those guys were Joshua and Caleb. Okay, so because the rest of the spies came back with a bad report and the Israelites sided with them, the Lord said, okay, fine, you're going to wander in the wilderness for 40 years and you're all going to die there.

Your children are going to be able to go into the land. The only two guys that survived it, Moses has now died, are Joshua and Caleb. And so they are now all camped out at the Jordan River opposite Jericho. And so they're getting prepared for that. And I was just, I want to encourage, you know, if you are advanced in years and you feel like sometimes that all your friends are dying off and And the only people left are all these young punks.

That's exactly what Joshua and Caleb were dealing with. They were the oldest, they were the only two old guys left of their generation. Everybody else was younger. And in chapter one of Joshua, God is basically just a big pep talk. God is giving Joshua a pep talk. He's saying, if you will read and meditate on my word, stay in my law, meditate on that, and do what I tell you to do, I'm going before you, and nobody can stand before you.

So the Lord has really been sort of preparing Joshua mentally for this task at hand. And I want to go back really quickly to look at what God has promised regarding what's about to happen. Because it didn't start with Joshua, it started actually way before that. If you look back in Genesis 15, this is when God is cementing his covenant, making his covenant, literally cutting his covenant with Abram.

This is before he's changed his name. And he's making a covenant with him. And he's had Abram cut up all these animals and lay them out. So this is obviously a very bloody arrangement of all these animals. And then Abram is just, he's waiting to see what the Lord is going to do.

It says, when the sun was going down, this is Genesis 15, starting in verse 12. When the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and behold, terror. And great darkness fell upon him. And God said to Abram, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed 400 years.

So that's Egypt. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried at a good old age. And then in the fourth generation, they will return here.

So Abram right now is actually in the promised land, camped out. So God says, Your descendants in the fourth generation will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. And the Amorite is just a blanket name for all of the Ites, all the people who live in the Promised Land.

And if you think that our culture is decadent, you should have seen these folks. They were bad, bad. Can't even talk about it in the pulpit, bad. And they had had over 400 years now of time to repent. And you remember Melchizedek? Remember the story of Melchizedek when Abraham ran into the high priest of Salem, which would later be Jerusalem?

Melchizedek was the high priest of God, and he's kind of a mystery man. You can read about him in Hebrews. God had a witness in the land that whole time. It wasn't as if he just deserted those people with no word from him. He had people witnessing for him for those 400-plus years.

Exodus 23. God is now speaking to Moses. He says, For my angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, all the Ites. And I will completely destroy them. And he goes on to say some more things.

Exodus 33. Again, the Lord spoke to Moses, Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, To your descendants, I will give it. I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

So, God has promised over hundreds of years' time to do what to all the people of the land. Drive them out, completely destroy them. That entire land, all of the ites, are under a sentence of death. They have been condemned to death by God. And he's just using Israel as an agent for carrying out his judgment on them, for turning completely away from him.

Okay, so as we read Joshua 2, just bear that in mind, that these people are all, every last one of them, under a death sentence. Joshua 2. Then Joshua the son of Nun sent two men as spies secretly from Shatim. Saying, Go, view the land, especially Jericho. So they went and came into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab, and lodged there.

It was told the king of Jericho, saying, Behold, men from the sons of Israel have come here to-night to search out the land. And the king of Jericho sent word to Rahab, saying, Bring out the men who have come to you, who have 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, Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And it came about when it was time to shut the gate at dark that 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 hidden them in the stalks of flax which she had laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued them on the road to the Jordan, to the fords, and as soon as those who were pursuing them had gone out, they shut the gate.

Now before they 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 terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted 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 utterly destroyed. When we heard it, our hearts melted, and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you.

For the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Now, therefore, please swear to me by the Lord, Since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father's household. And give me a pledge of truth. And spare my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters with all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.

So the men said to her, Our life for yours, if you do not tell this business of ours. And it shall come about when the Lord gives us the land, that we will deal kindly and faithfully with you. And then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the city wall, so that she was living on the wall.

And she said to them, Go to the hill country so that the pursuers will not happen upon you. Hide yourselves there for three days until the pursuers return. And then afterward you may go on your way. And the men said to her, We shall be free from this oath to you, which you've made us swear, unless when we come into the land, you tie this cord of scarlet thread in the window through which you let us down.

And gather to yourself into the house your father and your mother and your brothers and all your father's household. And it shall come about that anyone who goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be free.

But anyone who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if a hand is laid on him. But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be free from the oath which you've made us swear. And she said, According to your words, so be it.

So she sent them away, they departed, and she tied the scarlet cord in the window. And they departed, came to the hill country, remained there for three days until the pursuers returned. And the pursuers had Sought them all along the road, but had not found them. And then the two men returned, came down from the hill country, crossed over, and came to Joshua, the son of Nun, and they related to him all that had happened to them.

And they said to Joshua, Surely the Lord has given all the land into our hands. Moreover, all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before us. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you again for your word and just for the richness that you've put all the way through it.

And I pray that as we mine some of the truths here tonight, that you would speak into our hearts and our lives and give us some meat, Lord. Feed us from your word. Amen. All right, I want us tonight to really focus on verses 9 through 11 because I want to look at Rahab's faith.

The chapter as a whole, at first glance, would just seem to be sort of a confirmation of what God was promising to Joshua. Hey, look, I'm with you. Nobody's going to be able to stand before you. That's kind of what the spies come back with. Yep, the Lord's already been here, and these people are scared to death, and this is going to be a cakewalk.

But right in the middle of this chapter, you see this woman, and there's some very fascinating things about her faith. Because you have this woman who is an outcast in her society, even, which is this terrible, horrible pagan culture, and yet she has this faith. And she finds salvation 1,400 years before Christ took on flesh.

Let's look at this. First of all, I want to look at what her name means, because names have important meanings in Scripture. Rahab, there are actually two Hebrew words that are transliterated Rahab in the Scripture. So if you do a word search on Rahab, you're going to come up with two different, actually, two different words.

One of them is Rahab, with just kind of more of an H, regular H sound, and it means a tumult or a storm. And it's used in Job to talk about a sea monster. It's in Psalms as a prophetic name for Egypt, this storm of people. That's not this Rahab.

Rahab, her name is actually Rahab with the CH, and I'm probably, my Hebrew is not great, but it's more of a Rachab. And the meaning of the word is actually, it's best understood like if you're walking through a dense forest and you step out of all the trees into this wide open clearing.

Okay, that idea of all of a sudden your way is widening out and your life, your way is opened up. That's the connotation of her name, which I think is beautiful because that's exactly what God does in her life. So I want us to look really quickly here at what Rahab said because that reveals to us what she knows about God.

And then I want to look At what she concluded and how she responded to God. So let's start in verse 9. First words out of her mouth. She said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land. Now, the word there for know, if you've got a little, if you can tap and get the Hebrew or the Greek, which is kind of cool, the Greek word, I mean, not the Hebrew word there is yada, like yada yada.

Y-A-D-A is the English transliteration of it. And in English, we would say, I know that 2 plus 2 equals 4. And then I would also say, I know Tom Baber, he's my friend. Right? Those are actually two very different kinds of knowing. And in English, we don't really differentiate, but Yadda, the Hebrew word yadda, has a connotation that is much deeper than that.

If you look in Genesis, and I'll just run there, Genesis 3, God knows that in the, this is a serpent speaking, God knows that in the day you eat from it, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So you're not just going to have a head knowledge about good and evil, you're going to know it. You're going to experience it, is what we see. And in fact, if you go to Genesis 4, in some translations, they say, the man knew his wife, Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.

In the New American Standard, it says, now the man had relations with his wife, Eve. That's the same word, Yada. So it is much more than just a head knowledge. This is an experiential part. Heart, mind, soul, and strength kind of knowing is what that word conveys. And what is it that she says?

She says, I know that the Lord has given you the land. And the word she uses for Lord is not the pagan name for one of their pagan gods. She uses Yahweh. She knows the name Yahweh. Yahweh is the name that God gave himself for the Israelites. So somehow, we don't know how, but God has revealed himself to Rahab.

And we know part of this. We can see part of how he has revealed himself to her. But she has clearly meditated on this, as God told Joshua to do, to meditate on his word. Meditate on the truth that I've given you. He's given her some truth, and she's meditated on it because she knows that what's going on in her land now is from Yahweh.

This is not just random coincidences or anything like that. This is something that Yahweh is doing. And she believes it to the core of her being. And the men buy it. The two spies, they buy it. They believe her completely. We know this because if you go to the end of the chapter, they quote her words.

What they tell Joshua is almost word for word what she said to them. So they believe that she believes what she's telling them. So she knows what's going on. On. She knows the Lord is giving the land to the Israelites. She says the terror of Israel has fallen on them.

And this involves different kinds of fears, both the fear of God and the fear of man. But ultimately, it really is just part of God's promise. From Exodus 23, he says, I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.

And he goes on there, but that's just the terror of them. God promised to send that, and sure enough, he did. And she says, This is interesting, that the inhabitants have melted away, and it's literally dissolved. It's like if you took a sugar cube and dropped it into a cup of hot coffee, it's just going to dissolve.

And that's the connotation of the word she uses. And you can see that various places in Scripture. It talks about the mountains melt like wax before the Lord, that kind of language. Now, how does she know these things? What is it that drove her recognition of all these things?

She says that too. She says, For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites, to Sihon and Og. So think about that. They've seen the Lord destroy, or at least Rahab recognizes that it was the Lord's doing, destroys Sihon and Og and Pharaoh, three of the most powerful kings on the face of the earth, and the business with the Red Sea.

What does that tell Rahab? What does that say to her about the nature of Yahweh? What two things? He can do what he wants. He can do what he wants. He's bigger than any of the kings of the earth, and he's bigger than nature itself. He can control the wind and the waves.

So, at the very least, we know that she's had that revealed to her, and she's meditated on that. Now, where she learned the name Yahweh, I don't know, but she probably could have gotten it from asking around. So, she knows that he is sovereign. She knows these truths about God: that he is sovereign, he is greater than the greatest kings, he is sovereign over creation, and she also understands that she's under a sentence of death, right?

That's why she's asking him, hey, deal kindly with me. She's going against her own government, she's going against her king and his officials because she believes so strongly that God is the one that she needs to be in good with, not her king. And I want to look at her conclusions.

She says, The Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Literally, she says, Yahweh is Elohim. Yahweh, your God, the name, she uses the name, is Elohim. Elohim is the highest of the high, he is the highest. He is the biggest of the big, the best of the best.

Elohim is the ultimate. He is the ultimate God of everything. And she also recognizes, because she says, therefore she says, deal kindly with me. She wants them to promise to take care of her because what she's recognized is that Israel is his chosen people. And the only hope she's got is to become part of his chosen people.

She recognizes that God blesses those who bless Israel and curses those who curse her. That one part of the promises he made to Abraham: I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who bless you. She gets that. She wants to be part of his chosen people.

And so let's look at what she does. Let's look at her response. First of all, verse 12, she says, Therefore, please swear to me by the Lord, since I've dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father's household. Give me a pledge of truth.

So she trusts in the name of Yahweh. She did. She went against her own king, and she's asking these guys to deal kindly with her. You know, this is the old story about the bridge. You know, you have this bridge, and it looks solid. You can look at the blueprints, the engineering drawings, and you can see that bridge is well built.

It's anchored well, it's supported well, it can hold this much weight. It can easily hold my weight. No problem. I have full confidence in that bridge. But until you actually take a step out onto the bridge, You're not putting any faith in it. Faith is something that is really a verb.

You are faithhing in something. Well, she did. She put her faith in Yahweh, trusted in him. She acted on her faith based on what she knew about God. And what's really neat to me is that she obeyed very quickly. If you run down to verse 21, she sends them away, and as soon as they're out the window, she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

And that was just sort of an odd thing. Has God ever asked you to do something really kind of odd? Have you felt like, why am I doing this? What is this about? Sometimes something that seems insignificant to you, if it's something that one of those good works that God has laid out for you to do, you may not really understand it.

And I don't know what the red cord is, it may have just been they figured they could see it easily. And they could tell their boys, well, they don't have to give an address. They can just say, look for the red cord. That's the place. There are some commentaries, and you'll hear a lot of preachers that will talk about that red cord being symbolically tied to the atoning blood, the blood of Christ, or the blood of the Passover.

And there's a very beautiful symbology that's nice. But the thing to remember about that kind of thing is that it has to come from the truths of the text. It sort of bubbles up naturally. I think the Lord puts it. Has put some beautiful symbolism and thematic elements in the scripture, but you don't come at them top-down.

You come at them from the truths of the text, exegeting the text, inductively studying what the Bible has to say, and then those things will become evident, and they're useful in their own way, or just beautiful sometimes. But here, the starlet cord is really just, it's an outworking of her faith.

She is stepping out in obedience, much like we would be baptized as an act of obedience, first act of obedience. She did it. And I've been talking about her, you know, finding salvation. So, how do we know that? If you look at Joshua 6:25, they've gone in, they're destroying the city.

It's relating all of that. It says, However, Rahab the harlot and her father's household and all she had, Joshua spared. And she has lived in the midst of Israel to this day, for she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. Which is kind of a cool ending.

She got adopted into the chosen people. She's there to this day. But of course, there's more to the story. That's not the end of the story of Rahab. She's mentioned three times in the New Testament. Look at Matthew chapter 1. Very beginning of Matthew is the genealogy of Jesus.

And in verse 5, it says, Salmon was the father of Boaz. By Rahab. And it goes on in the genealogy. So, Boaz, the guy who married who? Ruth. You ever wonder why Boaz kind of took to this woman who was an outcast, this Moabitis that no one was really sure about?

She's kind of foreigner, out of her element, but she's become part of it. Ever wonder why he kind of took to her? I don't think it was just because she was pretty. I think it was partly because of his mama, who his mama was. I like to think that maybe Salmon was one of the spies, but we don't know that.

That's just kind of a romantic, you know. Somebody needs to make a movie or something. Look in Hebrews chapter 11, the hall of faith, verse 30. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they'd been encircled for seven days. By faith, Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient after she had welcomed the spies in peace.

Rahab the harlot. And then in James chapter 2, verse 24, you see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?

For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works. Is dead. Isn't that cool? Now, I read as I'm studying for this, I read several commentaries, and I've actually seen some things online where people take issue with this particular story, and they say, and there's others like it elsewhere in the scripture, but this is one that they hit on.

Rahab lied. She lied to the king. She lied to his officials, right? Is God okay with that? And my response to that is: so you're okay with God using a prostitute as long as she tells the truth. But if she's going to be a lying prostitute, then no, no, I can't even.

No. No. No. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 26. Consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world, and the despised.

God has chosen the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became To us, wisdom from God and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, so that just as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord.

The whole point is that God uses the base, the despicable things of the world, so that we can't boast in ourselves. That's exactly what he did with Rahab. You know, that lying prostitute's name appears twice in the New Testament as an example of faith. She's in the lineage of Christ, King David's great-great-grandmother.

She's got her name right there in the lineage of Jesus. Every time somebody reads the words of the scripture, that lying prostitute gives glory to God. And there's nobody on the face of the earth that can make that claim. That reminds me that maybe I need to do a little bit less judging and do a little bit more of the rending of the garments and Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner, that kind of thing.

Because if you want to be the kind of person that God can use, then you really have to be somebody like Rahab. You know, she understood the truth about God. She understood the truth about God. About herself. He is the omnipotent creator of everything, and I am a nothing.

I am worth less than nothing. And my only hope is that he will reach down and pull me out of myself, into himself, and adopt me as one of his chosen children. And we know that he did that for Rahab. He drew her into himself. And Jesus said in John 12, he said, If I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.

And so if something in you should resonate that God is drawing you, your creator is drawing you into relationship. And that is the Spirit of God drawing you as he drew Rahab. If God has already drawn you into himself, if you're already walking in Christ, what are you doing for all the other Rahabs like you out there who need to hear about this God, this Yahweh that draws them into relationship with him?

So ask yourself, what do you say about Jesus? Do you give the good confession in your word and in your deed, as Peter did, that you are the Christ? Jesus is the Christ. Is that what you say about him? What do you know? Do you know what Rahab knew?

Do you just know about him or do you know him relationally, experientially? And what have you concluded? Have you concluded that being in him, being in the blessings of Christ, is superior to anything this world has to offer? Even if it means risking your life, giving your life for it?

And how far are you willing to go to follow? Is there anything Jesus could ask you to do that would make you falter? You know, like the rich young ruler. Hey, I want you to, you know what, those riches of yours are a stumbling block to you. They're coming between you and me.

I want you to get rid of all those things and then come follow me. What is that in your life? Is there anything like that? If he asked you to lay down your life or if he just asked you to hang a red cord out a window, are you willing to follow and go there?

Let's pray. Lord, again, thank you for the faith of Rahab. Thank you for drawing her in and leaving a record of it here in your word for us to learn from, to be enriched by. Lord, would you so impact our own faith by what we see here in this woman that we would be aware of?

To step out in a more powerful way in our daily life, ministering to our own families, to our neighbors, to this community, and Lord, wherever you send us to the ends of the earth or give us that kind of a strong faith. May we learn from Rahab's example.

In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. All right, you're dismissed. I think. Is there anything?