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Please turn in your Bibles to Joshua 2. That's our text for tonight. And as you're doing so, I'd like you to be thinking on a question. What is faith? Now, if you're like me and you struggle with definitions, particularly when my kids ask me hard words when we're studying the Bible at the end of night, end of the night when my mental gas tank is on E, the good news is the Bible gives us a definition of faith.

It's found in Hebrews 11, which is a passage that is often referred to as the hall of faith. It lists many individuals that are known for their faith. And that chapter starts in verse 1 by saying, Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

I'll say that one more time. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. So that's a good place to start. The next question gets a little harder. What is great faith? Now, to my knowledge, I don't think we can find anywhere in Scripture that there's a specific definition for great faith.

There are a few places in the New Testament, though, where that phrase is used. You might recall Matthew 8, Luke 7, the passage of the Roman centurion. We're told that this centurion had a sick servant that he cared for deeply, and he had built a relationship with some of the Jewish leaders, he had heard about what Jesus had done in Capernaum.

He was aware, and so he sends his men to Jesus because it says he doesn't even feel worthy for Jesus to come under his own roof. He doesn't deserve for Jesus to come to him. So he sends his men to Jesus and says, You don't even have to physically be here to heal my servant.

And Jesus responds that he's amazed, which I must say, I'm amazed that Jesus could be amazed, but he could. He was. And then he says that he has not found such great faith in all of Israel, which is a profound statement for Jesus to make about a man who, by the very nature of his occupation, would have been considered, you know, at the very least, part of the oppressive regime, right, of God's people.

But yet, here is this man with great faith. That phrase is also found in Matthew 15, the passage of the Canaanite woman who has a demon-possessed daughter. And she seems to be making quite a scene to try to get Jesus' attention so that he will heal her daughter.

And Jesus kind of has an odd response initially. He seems to respond with silence, and then so much so that the disciples ask Jesus, you know, do you want us to make this lady go away? And then he seemingly appears to reject her request by saying that he's not there at that time for the Gentiles, but for the Jews.

But really, what he's doing is setting her up to show her faith, to give her a chance to show her humility, because she humbles herself by saying that she identifies with the dog that's willing to eat the crumbs that fall from the table. Jesus, whatever is left over of your mercy and grace, that's enough for me.

And once again, we see an emphatic response from Jesus: Woman, you have great faith. Exclamation mark, at least in my Bible. So we don't have a definition, but we've got these illustrations to go off of. And I think it's a reasonable conclusion to say that those individuals that are listed in Hebrews 11 could be said to have had great faith.

And so we're going to look at one of them tonight. It's Rahab. If you've got to Joshua 2, then you've probably figured that out. Before we get there, though, I'll try to give us some brief background on where we find ourselves in history leading up to Joshua 2.

At the end of Deuteronomy, you had the death of Moses, and he has passed on the leadership torch to Joshua. Joshua has been given the well-known command by God to be strong and courageous. They're finally going to cross over the Jordan River into the Promised Land. And that's where we pick up.

And if you're someone who likes an outline, I'll try to give it to you. We're going to break this up into three chunks. Verses 1 through 7. Great faith will be seen in Rahab's courage. And her conviction. Verses 8 through 16, great faith will be seen in Rahab's confession and her compassion.

And in the last section, it will be seen in her cord and her commitment. So that's six C's in case you were counting. We're going to hit all of them. Let's start in verse 1. Again, I'm in Joshua 2. Then Joshua, son of none, secretly sent two spies from Shittim.

Go, look over the land, he said, especially Jericho. So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. The king of Jericho was told, Look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land. So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.

Now I'll pause here and make a couple of observations. One, and I'm going to apologize, I'm going to need to take drinks as we go along. There's about every symptom of a sickness imaginable going through my house right now. Mine is a sore throat, so I'm going to have to take some drinks as we go.

But some brief observations. One is the spies have made a valiant effort. They've chosen an inconspicuous location to hide out in. It wouldn't have seemed unusual for two strange men walking through to maybe stay at the house of. Prostitute. It is worth noting, many of your Bibles may have an asterisk by prostitute that says that Rahab was possibly an innkeeper.

That is possible depending on how you interpret the Hebrew word. I don't think it changes, moves the needle on what we're looking at today. Regardless, she is probably at the bottom of the social totem pole there in Jericho. She's somehow a part of the economic activity that goes on.

But we're told later in the passage, we'll get there, that her house was in the city wall. So they've chosen an inconspicuous location and one that could provide for an easy escape, and in fact, they'll use it later on. But despite that, they are quickly found out. This job does not go well.

It goes south quickly. We don't know if Rahab was told whenever they got there who they were, if they told her, but regardless, when she gets the second knock of the day on her house door, this is a terrifying situation. And I just want, let me back up because I missed this earlier.

Our goal today are twofold. One is, I just want us to really appreciate Rahab's great faith. I just want us to, as we're going through and we're making these observations, just marvel, kind of like Jesus was amazed at great faith. Let's just be amazed and appreciate this faith that Rahab has.

Has, and I also hope that we're encouraged to have great faith ourselves. And I just forgot to mention that earlier, so I wanted to throw that in. But in terms of appreciating the seriousness of the situation that Rahab is in, this is terrifying. I mean, she is this lay person, nobody, and all of a sudden the king's men show up at your door saying, turn over the men.

We know you have them in your house. And she's immediately faced with a decision. We're going to see later on who she really fears, but do I fear man or do I fear God? So just keep that in mind, the extent of how scary this situation would have been for Rahab.

I'm picking up in verse 4. But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, yes, the men had come to, excuse me, yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, the men left.

I don't know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them. But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof. So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan.

And as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut. Now, before I get into Rahab's courage and her conviction, I want to address a possible abuse. Of this section of text that we just read, and that is that some might say or could abuse this to say that you can, it's okay to lie if it's for the purpose of achieving a greater good.

And I went and double-checked last night for y'all. The ninth commandment is still there. It's there in Deuteronomy and Exodus: thou shalt not bear false witness. Period. Lying is a sin, period. However, this would be one of probably an infinite number of instances where God was willing to use imperfect people to achieve his perfect purposes.

So just wanted to address that. But we do clearly see Rahab's courage and her conviction. Conviction being I know the right thing to do, and courage being the willingness to act on that conviction. We don't yet know what Rahab believes. We haven't gotten there yet. But we know that something, or rather, who she has faith in, but we know that something has caused her to have this conviction: I know what the right thing to do is in this situation.

I am not going to turn these men over. And then she has the courage to actually act on that conviction. Courage and faith are tied together, I think, in Scripture. We see that in a number of places, but a couple, just to kind of help you make those connections.

I think of Peter when he Is stepping out of the boat as Jesus is walking on the water towards the disciples. And as Peter's stepping out, what does Jesus tell him? Take courage. And what does Jesus, or excuse me, what does Peter not do? He does not take courage.

And as Jesus is picking him up from drowning, he admonishes him, you of little faith. So now we've got the correlation negative sense. Little faith, lack of courage. Contrast that with Peter later on. after he's received the Holy Spirit in Acts 4. We're told that Peter and John are standing before the Sanhedrin.

And when the Sanhedrin saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished and took note that these men had been with Jesus. So once again, you kind of see this shock factor of when you see faith and courage acting together, it's amazing to see that.

I recently have been reading more on the early days of our country and the early settlers and the founding fathers. And over and over again, I feel like I see that. I have that reaction as I read about what these people, the convictions that they had and the courage that they had to act on it.

I'm just blown away. You see this. I'll also take us back to a generation prior to where we're at right now, where, once again, the Israelites sent spies out to the land and they lacked. Courage. They had no faith, even though Moses was sitting there telling them, Do not be terrified.

The Lord has given you this land, and they didn't, and were forced to wander for a generation. And so there is this correlation there, whether it's positive or negative, of courage and faith. But what it boils down to is the willingness to act, faith and action. Or another way to say that might be faith coupled with deeds.

And if that sounds familiar, you might be thinking of James 2. There's a fairly well-known passage of scripture where James is contrasting living faith with dead faith. That is to say, the true Christian saving faith with that which is not faith at all. It's dead or useless. And James talks about Abraham, but when he gets to the end, he needs an example of someone that's had this living faith.

And presumably, he has all those individuals from Hebrews 11 to pick from. But he chooses Rahab as his example of living faith. It's in James 2, verse 25. I'll read it to you. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction.

For what she did. Rahab had a conviction on, I know what the right thing to do, and she was willing to act on it. What she did. So we've seen her courage and her conviction, and we'll keep moving. I'm going to pick up in verse 8. Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof and said to them, I know that the Lord has given this land to you, and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you.

We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came up out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted, and everyone's courage failed because of you.

Let's pause. I know I'm pausing mid-verse. But again, a couple of observations. We often like to say among the Christian circles that we walk by faith and not by sight. And I want us to see that with Rahab. She's talking about all that she has heard. She has not seen any of what she's talking about.

Now, I will say, Pastor Tom threw me a bone. I have not been to Israel, but he did let me know that if you're standing where the city of Jericho was, then you can look out across the Jordan and you probably would have been able to see where the Israelites were camped.

And I think at that point, they still had the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. And so maybe there was a glimpse. But largely, Rahab has just heard. She has not seen with her own eyes, but yet there in verse 9, I know that the Lord has given this land to you.

To go back to Hebrews 11:1, the definition of faith, being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see. This sounds like certainty to me, that Rahab, I know that the Lord has given this land to you. I just wanted to point that out.

We're about to get to her confession in the second half of verse 11, but just wanted to point that out. I'm picking up again in the second half there. Here's her confession: For the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below. Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you.

Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death. Our lives for your lives, the men assured her. If you don't tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the Lord gives us the land.

So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. Now she had said to them, Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.

The confession, once again. The Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below. And then she goes on to imply, and he can save me. This is childlike faith. This is a beautiful confession. If you ever forget the basics and you need to go back to the core of what our Christian faith is in terms of a right understanding of who God is and who we are in light of God, this is it.

Despite Rahab's humble circumstances, keep in mind, she probably had no moral upbringing. She's got no Hebrew history. She's got no theology lessons. But yet, she's able to grasp at a childlike level the micro and macro implications of our faith, that she understands this is the God of the universe, and this is also my God.

This is the almighty, powerful God whose hand is with his people and against his enemies, and this is the God who might save me. It's beautiful to me that she's able to grasp this and make this confession once again, despite her circumstances. But we also see her compassion.

I think we've already seen earlier when I gave the illustrations of great faith from Matthew the centurion and the Canaanite woman, we've already seen that compassion. Comes with great faith. If you notice, both of them came to Jesus, both the centurion and the Canaanite woman, came to Jesus on behalf of someone else.

It wasn't about themselves, it was about their family. And once again, with Rahab, her immediate concern is about her family. Did you catch it there in verse 12? Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family because I have shown kindness to you.

Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives. And she goes on. I just want us to remember and remind each of us that great faith cannot come from someone who is self-centered. If it's always about you and not about others, you're never going to get there with great faith.

We have to be seeking to care for others, love for others, serve for others. We should be focused on that would be the direction that our faith should face in having compassion. Okay, last section. I'm picking up now in verse 17. The men said to her, This oath you made us swear will not be binding on us unless when we enter the land you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down.

And unless you have brought your father and mother, your brothers and all your family. Into your house. If anyone goes outside your house, into the street, his blood will be on his own head. We will not be responsible. As for anyone who is in the house with you, his blood will be on our head if a hand is laid on him.

But if you tell what we are doing, we will be released from the oath you made us swear. Agrieved, she replied. Let it be as you say. So she sent them away, and they departed, and she tied the scarlet cord in the window. I know I'm pausing mid-section again, but while we're fresh, let's look at Rahab's cord.

Now, I want to start by once again addressing possible abuse of this, that some would say that this somehow is the literal blood of Christ. It's just a cord, right? It's nothing more. It's an object. However, I think it is clearly intended to point us towards something, to remind us, if we look backwards, towards the blood over the door that allowed death to pass over in Egypt, and to point us forwards towards the blood of the Lamb of God that is to come.

It is clearly intended to remind us that we must take the gift being offered. I don't know if you caught that, but the spies offered her the cord, and she took the cord. If you're here on a Sunday evening, chances are you probably are here on Sunday mornings and you've been hearing Pastor Tom preach through Revelation.

And I know it's been at least a few times that he's referenced it because I spend most of my time in the foyer with the baby, and I've heard at least a few times. He referenced Revelation 3, where God stands at the door and knocks. Well, here we have Rahab.

God's people show up on her door and knock. Opportunity literally comes knocking. And I just want to address anyone in the room who hasn't trusted in what the blood of Christ does for us. That if you haven't accepted that gift and you haven't turned from your old life into a new life, my question would be: why have you not accepted that gift?

Much like Rahab here, we're going to see, spoiler alert, death and destruction is coming for the city of Jericho. Everyone except for Rahab and her family are going to be utterly wiped out. And I'll just go ahead and tell you that if you haven't accepted that gift, you're going to stand before a perfect and holy God and have to give an account for your life.

And you will have nothing to stand in your way between you and God's judgment. That's just true. And whatever walls you think that you've built up, whatever excuses you have for that question, they'll come crumbling down and you'll have nothing to stand in your way. Let's keep moving.

We've seen Rahab's cord. Now let's look at her commitment. When they left, they went into the hills and stayed there three days. I'm in verse 22 until the pursuers had searched all along the road and returned without finding them. Then the two men started back. They went down out of the hills, for to the river, and came to Joshua, son of Nun, and told him everything that had happened to them.

They said to Joshua, The Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands. All the people are melting in fear because of us. Quite different than the last time the spies reported back, right? But we need to tie a bow on Rahab's story. And so, if you will, turn to Joshua 6:22.

And in case you can't read that fast, I'll catch you up on chapters 3, 4, and 5. The Israelites are going to cross over the Jordan. They are going to, as commanded by God, march around the city. The walls are going to fall down, or at least part of the wall.

I did have to look that up. You know, Rahab lived in the city wall. That's what I was thinking. But. It doesn't say that all the walls fell down. And they're going to go in, and let's see. Well, it doesn't cover this, but they do wipe out the entire city.

I'm going to start in verse 22 once again to kind of finish out what we see about Rahab. Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, Go into the prostitute's house and bring her out and all who belonged to her, in accordance with your oath to her.

So the young men who had done the spying went in and brought out Rahab, her father and mother and brothers, and all who belonged to her. They brought out her entire family and put them in a place outside the camp of Israel. Then they burned the whole city and everything in it.

But they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house. But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho. And she lives among the Israelites to this day.

I'll read that again. And she lives among the Israelites to this day. This was not a one-time act where Rahab just made one right decision and then she went right back to her old way of life. She didn't move on to the next town after they spared her and her family and just set up camp as a prostitute in the next city.

No, the old has gone and the new have has come. This is a new New life for Rahab, where she's adopted into the family of God. And so that's the first level of her commitment. And I really just needed a C word. But the word that I would rather y'all think of is endurance or perseverance.

If you're reading through your Bibles and you're seeing faith, those are the words that you would typically see associated here. That's what I'm trying to get at. That your great faith endures and perseveres. And not only do we see that in the last half of that verse in chapter 6, we can go to the New Testament and start at the very beginning, first chapter of the first book, Matthew 1, the genealogy of Jesus, and start reading down, and you'll see Rahab's name.

She married a guy named Salmon. I think I pronounced that right. And they had a son. Their son was Boaz. Boaz married Ruth. If you don't know that story, go read it. It's the easiest read in the Old Testament. But what did Boaz do? He redeemed a Gentile woman.

Wonder why? Maybe because his mom was a Gentile prostitute. He understood how to see through to the character. So, and then keep reading down a couple verses. It doesn't take long to get to King David. And so you could backtrack and do the math and figure out that Rahab was King David's great-great-grandmother.

This was generational impact with her faith. That we see. Commitment that endured beyond her lifetime. I do want to caveat one thing before we conclude. And since it has such a happy ending, I'm going to throw a wet blanket on there. Because it doesn't always end like that, especially since our last point is talking about endurance.

Go ahead and turn to Hebrews 11, where we started. Give everybody time to get there. We're not going to read from it, but when you get there, just look over at chapter 10. And it's not an accident that the chapter right before that which talks about all of these individuals with faith, great faith, is a call to persevere.

It's almost like the writer knew, right? We're going to need to be reminded to persevere. But not only that, on your own time, go through and read the last section of Hebrews 11. It's not a pretty ending to just hit some highlights of people whose faith did not end well in this lifetime.

Some faced jeers and flogging, while others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned. They were salt in two. They were put to death. Death by the sword, went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, mistreated. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.

God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect. I referenced earlier, I didn't want to read from it, but again, I've been reading about some of the founding fathers, and there's an almost eerie similarity between a passage in this book that I've been reading that talked about what happened to many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

It doesn't always end pretty. You know, we might be shooting off fireworks on July 4th, but there's a lot of people who did not have a happy ending on this earth to their convictions and courage that they held going into that. And I just want to remind us that the endurance and perseverance that we're called to in order to have great faith may not have the happiest of endings in this lifetime, but it will be worth it in the end.

So, to wrap up, we'll look at where Rahab is referred to in Hebrews 11. She's found in verse 31. It says, By faith, the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. Pretty simple. Maybe not much to go off of there.

But I think we can take away a few things to take with us. The first is that we can be observant without being passive. When you think about Rahab, her faith, as she talked about, really began in the days, weeks, and months prior leading up to when they showed up on her doorstep.

All of the city of Jericho was hearing about what was going on. The difference was what she did with it. She didn't bury her head in the sand or just melt in fear. She was processing and thinking, who must this God be? And I just want to encourage us: if you're not paying attention to what's going on in the world around you, be observant.

There is a more going on in more ways than one, and we are not called to be passive. Every time it's talked about, faith is talked about in Scripture, the implication is that you're seeking after it, that we're not on the sidelines, that this is faith that we ourselves are seeking to have.

And so this isn't passive. And that doesn't just say that in every moment every moment requires some outlandish action. That's not to say that. Second takeaway I think we can have is that we can be humble without being timid. There's no doubt that Rahab was, by nature of her circumstances, but even beyond that, she was humble.

She had a right understanding of her nothingness before God, but yet that he cared enough to love her. But she was not timid. Keep in mind, God did not give us a spirit of timidity. And so I don't want us to be intimidated by Rahab's faith into thinking, hmm, great faith is only for great people.

In fact, I would say quite the opposite. To put it maybe not so nicely, Rahab was a nobody, which is okay because that's me. And to be honest, you too, we are not great people. We just serve a great God. And in fact, you might even say that anyone who walks around thinking of themselves as great is going to be inhibited from having great faith.

And certainly those that the world would look at as great. It's those that the world doesn't see are great are the ones who would have great faith. And the last thing we see, last takeaway that I'll leave you with, is that we should be faithful with every moment, not just the ones that seem important to us.

I'll go back to verse 31 that we just read in the middle, or by faith, the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies. Another way of saying that part might just be, because she was faithful in the moment. That's all it was. Rahab, in all likelihood, did not realize that this was her one life-defining moment where she's going to take her place and write her name in the hall of faith.

Now, she probably understood there was some significance to it. This was, once again, a serious moment, but she was just faithful with the opportunity that God put in front of her. And that's what I want to challenge all of us with today. It's what I've been challenged by: is to take an inventory of your day and then look back at every single moment throughout your day and ask, have I been faithful with every single opportunity that God has given me to be faithful with?

Was I faithful on the drive into work? Was I faithful with the conversations I had with my coworkers, with the meal I shared with someone, with the time I spent with my family? Was I faithful with the resources that I used throughout the day, the money that I saved or spent or tied or whatever it was?

In every single instance of your day, you can ask yourself, Was I faithful? And by God's grace, if we can do that, we might hear, well done, good and faithful servant, right? And so I'll leave you with a final thought, and then we'll close in prayer. That if we started with a goal of having great faith, I would change.

I challenge you to make your measure of success toward that goal be faithfulness. Say that again. If the goal is great faith, make the measure of your success faithfulness. I hope you've enjoyed looking at Rahab and seeing her faith. If you would, bow with me, and we'll close in prayer.

Father, thank you for your word and thank you for the way that you, by your grace and by your mercy, showed us through Rahab what great faith can look like. I pray that you would help us to have courage, conviction, be willing to make a confession, to show compassion towards others, to remember the blood that was shed for us, and to endure until the end.

And help us not to forget, as Peter wrote, the goal of our faith. When Peter said, Though we have not seen him, him being Jesus, though we have not seen him, we love him. And even though we do not see him now, we are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for we are receiving the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls.

Praise be to you, Father, that our souls have been saved. Thank you for this time, and once again, your word. I pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen.