Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 19, 2025 | Joshua - Fear in the Land

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January 19, 2025 | Joshua - Fear in the Land · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Glad to be with you.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Man, Joshua, that bumper video, it's a bit more high energy than some of the other ones we've had.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like ready to run through a brick wall.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, hey, if you're new with us this morning, glad to have you.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are in our second week in our series in the book of Joshua, which is in the Old Testament.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um, Joshua is one of those books where, as we're walking through it together as a church, if you're unaware of sort of the story leading up to it, it can be easy to feel a little bit lost.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so um last week we looked at Joshua chapter one.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Joshua, the book, is about the nation of Israel as they are where we're at right now, just about to head into the promised land, and then ultimately the conquest of that promised land.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: As Joshua 1 said nine different times, God is going to give the land to his people.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question that we often have is how?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: How is that possible?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're familiar with the earlier part of the story, the nation of Israel has been redeemed from Egypt as slaves.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, God has told them he's going to put them back into the land that originally belonged to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And as they're heading back to that land, and God says he's going to give it to them, Israel receives the law, and they also begin to rebel against the Lord.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, they wander for 40 years until it is finally time for the next generation to truly and finally receive the promised land from God.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where we're at in the book of Joshua, is there's over 40 years of history, and before that, 400 years of slavery that has defined this group of people, but they have their God, they have their mission, and in Joshua chapter 1, they have their leader.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um he took over from Moses, and as God has, after the death of Moses, and Joshua is raised up, as God has lifted him to this high place, he has said, You are going to lead the nation of Israel into the promised land, and I again am going to give it to you.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua chapter 2, which is where we're going to look at this morning, is going to basically answer the question: how is it possible that God is giving this land to the nation of Israel?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because from every normal perspective, they shouldn't be able to live in it, right?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're a small nation, they're not very experienced in battle, they don't have the technology of the nations around them, and furthermore, they're going into hostile territory.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are these fortified cities and these huge established nations who fight all the time.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a really intimidating picture of who lives in the promised land.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so as Israel is about to go in, it would be so easy to look at this and say, how is God ever going to just give them this land?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua 2 is going to help us answer that question.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to do it, a very unlikely figure comes to the front, a woman named Rahab, who is a Canaanite prostitute.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: She is going to sort of be the focus of chapter 2, not the lesson, that's going to be something else, but she is going to be the character that really drives this whole story forward.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Through her, through her story, we're going to see how God answers this question of how is he really going to give the promised land to his people?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So in Joshua chapter 2, we see that the leader Joshua is sending out two spies on basically a reconnaissance mission.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're right at the Jordan River.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to go over, they're going to look at the closest fortified city, the one that they would go up in battle against first when they go into the land, and that is Jericho.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua, son of Nun, secretly sent two men as spies from the Acacia grove, saying, Go and scout the land, especially Jericho.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they left, and they came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Joshua, it may be remembered, uh, was is one of only two living people in the nation of Israel who has ever been inside the promised land.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is a guy named Caleb.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Forty years earlier, um God had Israel send spot, Moses send spies into the promised land.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: They really wanted to do it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: God said you don't need to, but they did anyway.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, they sent twelve, and those twelve spent forty days in the land, scouting it out, doing really the similar thing that these spies are doing.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go in?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Will the Lord give this land to us?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: The spies come back after 40 days.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ten of them say, No.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: The people are huge, their cities are gigantic, we're gonna get squished, okay?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're like grasshoppers to them.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: The two, Joshua and Caleb, came back and said, No, the Lord is with us.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: We can go.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: He is, we need to have faith.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna give this land to us.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the nation listened to the ten.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so because of that, they began to grumble and rebel.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, God, why have you saved us from slavery to only come and kill us by going into the land here?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, don't like that.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So they wander for 40 years.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's their judgment.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's then kind of appropriate, I think, that Joshua, one of the two faithful spies, is now sending spies back into the land himself.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that he sends two is kind of an interesting detail.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Did he think something behind that?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we don't know.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But these two spies go in, they're on a secret mission.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Go in, sort of infiltrate the city of Jericho, let us know.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like what are what does it look like?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh can we um give us normal military information?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they find what is truly an appropriate place in the sense that if you were disguised as a traveler and trying to go into a hostile city, coming to some place like Rahab's house makes sense.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about Rahab's uh choice of profession for a moment, okay?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So Rahab, uh, throughout history, especially by Jewish historians, they have tried to change her job title into something much less dramatic or scandalous.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: They have said, well, she was really an innkeeper, or she was a like late Bronze Age barmaid type thing, where she was sort of the host of this like traveler's house, and that is where they've come in.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with that theory is that not only here, but multiple other places, including in the New Testament, Rahab is very specifically described as a prostitute.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you why there's a problem with trying to sort of sanitize her image.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: One of the takeaways from Joshua chapter 2 is going to be God's boundless grace to those who are the most unlikely, including ourselves.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when we begin to take Rahab's image and have her fit into this sort of politically correct idea for Israel, instead of what is a shocking individual in terms of what you would expect Israel to be encountering.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: In the sense that I highly doubt that when the spies go in, we're about to see Rahab's story unfold, that they thought their entire mission was going to hinge upon the information presented by this um Canaanite woman who Israel is in living in the city they're about to destroy, who um has a job that God does not really like.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And yet she ends up being somebody who is lauded, who is applauded for her faith later on in the Bible.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll get to that in a moment, but for the uh present moment, it is just important to see like that's her job, okay?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's what it was, and that's okay, and that God works through that.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the spies, though.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who had another job uh that they didn't maybe do as well was the spies.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to go in secretly, and turns out they got found out like the same day, okay?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: They go into Jericho, they find this place, and immediately the king of Jericho's like, What are you doing?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: King of Jericho was told, Look, some of the Israelite men have come here tonight to investigate the land.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then the king of Jericho sent word to Rahab and said, Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, for they came to investigate the entire land.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the spies are immediately discovered, or at least their location, being that they're at Rahab's house.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And to be fair, um, Israel is not hiding right now.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they're five miles away from Jericho, just on the other side of the Jordan River.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, for like the last 40 years, they've been slowly walking here and have destroyed everybody in their path.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Their reputation precedes them.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so the nations in the promised land, which we'll see is a very important point in a moment, the nations are terrified of Israel, and they're right outside their gates.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it makes sense that they were looking for them.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just think it's funny that Joshua's like, be secret, and they're like, oh no.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: We later that day, the king of Jericho's like, What are you doing?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they go to Rahab's house, and um Rahab saw this coming.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: She knew that people were going to come and investigate.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so what she did was preemptively hide the spies.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Rahab had taken the two men and hidden them.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: So she said, Yes, this is talking to the Jericho officials.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the men did come to me, but I didn't know where they were from.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: At nightfall, when the city gate was about to close, the men went out, and I don't know where they were going.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Chase after them quickly, like hustle, and you can catch up with them.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them among the stalks of flax that she had arranged on the roof.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: The men pursued them along the road to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as they left to pursue them, the city gate was shut.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, knowing that someone would come looking, Rahab takes them up to the roof of her house, which we find out later actually is built into the famous walls of Jericho, or is at least adjacent to it.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And she takes them up to the roof where she was drawing some wild flax, and she hides them there.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then when the officials come, she lies to them.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this lie has received a lot of attention.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Was Rahab right or wrong to do such a thing?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: The text is silent.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk more about that in the podcast because it has sort of been a thorny issue for a lot of people who go over this.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you though, the far bigger point, and the one that definitely concerns Joshua too, is that her lie saved the lives of the spies, and that because of what she did, they were able to go back to Joshua and report about the land.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: The lie that she told, and in fact the faith that she expressed, that is how, by the way, that is how the rest of the Bible takes what she did, not the lie itself, but her act of hiding the spies, even though she was putting her life and the lives of her entire family in danger, that is described as her great faith at work.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's how Hebrew 11 describes it in James chapter 2 as well.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Rahab expressed amazing faith in God.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you think just from her perspective, imagine you are um basically your mortal enemy has come in.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: They are going to destroy your city, uh, their gods are going to fight against your gods, because that is, I'll explain that in a moment, but that's basically how this works out.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, you know that you are on the losing side of all of these things, but if you um side with them, you could easily be killed and your entire family would as well.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And yet Rahab decides to trust in the God of Israel.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: The huge question that comes out of this and all of her acts, and this is not only this is not the only thing that happens, she continues to protect them and guide them and send them off in the right direction.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: She even lets them down out of the window in her house, uh, which is connected to the city gate so that they can escape.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: She continues to aid and abet the fugitives, if you will.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why is the huge question here.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why would she do such a thing?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have to imagine the far easier option is being like, yeah, they're upstairs.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like I hid them under the flax.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a difficult decision for somebody who wants to save their own skin unless you have a deeper faith that is understanding truly what is at work here.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we end up seeing.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Rahab goes to the top of the roof and begins to explain to the spies why she has taken her life and basically entrusted it to these strangers who serve the God of Israel.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Before the men fell asleep, she went up on the roof and said to them, I know that the Lord has given you this land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and everyone who lives in the land is panicking because of you.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: 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 Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings you completely destroyed across the Jordan.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: When we heard this, we lost heart.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: In the Hebrew it's literally our hearts melted, and everyone's courage failed because of you.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: For the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Once the coast has cleared, she goes on the roof.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And why is she doing all this?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because she knows that the mission that they are on will not fail.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: She has faith in this God that she has only heard things about.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Rahab has not seen the miracles and the mighty acts of God that we have been privy to.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't see him part the Red Sea.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't see him as the pillar of fire going through the desert.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't see him do all of these amazing things, provide manna from the ground every single day of the journey.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't see these things yet.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: She had faith in that God.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as she does this, as she explains these things, though, she tells the spies a critical piece of information.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, the key to understanding the purpose of Joshua II, which is that the inhabitants of the land are terrified of them.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: That might not seem like a huge deal right now.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to swing back around to that later to show you why that was such a critical piece of information.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: But for right now, Rahab sort of presents herself as a personification, as an example of those who are living in the land.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: They have heard for 40 years, those two events she describes, the crossing of the Red Sea and the defeat of the Amorites, are separated by 40 years.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: One happened in Exodus, one happened in Deuteronomy.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And, or rather in Numbers and is talked about in Deuteronomy.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But either way, she says we have basically heard that this God who is unstoppable is coming and is now at our doorstep.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody is shaking.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: To understand Rahab's perspective, though, you also need to see and think about how everybody back then thought of warfare, in the sense that wars back then in the Old Testament not fought like wars today.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's very clear that as God was leading the nation of Israel, his interests were represented by that group of people.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so the nation of Israel functions in many ways like an extension of God's hand and in fact his sword against the nations that have opposed him.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: All of the nations during this time, Canaan and many of the others that we'll see throughout the book of Joshua, are nations that are led by and represented by gods.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: The land of Canaan has many: Baal, Asherah, Dagon, and others, that they worship and think bring them success in battle and grow their crops and bring the rain and give them children and all number of things, right?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you think of both Rahab and the spies, but also just how we're supposed to understand what's going on, the armies of the world of the earth are proxies for a spiritual warfare that is happening against the true God and the demonic forces, those who are against heaven.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because what is really going on here, if we pull back the curtain, okay, is that the Canaanites are following false gods.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're not really gods at all.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Baal is not a real thing.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: What that God and all the others are, are demonic forces that have a face or a mask that they have created of wood or stone or clay or whatever.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is evidenced by when we find out that the Canaanites will sacrifice their own children in the fire to their gods.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so what is happening is when Israel goes up in battle against any nation in the promised land, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: They are not just rejecting Israel's God, but God is also bringing justice and judgment against these forces of evil, which are represented by the people.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: The people who, it's important to see, have chosen to not follow after this God like Rahab does.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: When you are thinking about Rahab's confession of faith here, which is amazing, it's actually one of the longest passages in the Bible of a female speaking, is Rahab's confession here.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at what she says, this and in other places, what you get from her is not somebody who says, like, you know, um, if you can't beat them, join them, right?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, I can tell you're coming and you guys are gonna win, and so I'm gonna join your side.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: She is leveraging everything and putting everything up for um uh not debate, everything is vulnerable in her life.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be a better word, because she is putting all of it, and not her life, but the lives of her family, on the God, and as she says here, the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is her statement of faith.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is why she is saving the spies, that is why she is doing such a dangerous thing.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord your God, and she uses, by the way, here the personal name of God, Yahweh.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Your God is God.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's not one of the gods, he's not the best God, he's not the chief, he is God in heaven and on earth.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Two domains, by the way, that basically encapsulate everything that is seen and unseen, and which surely all of the gods of Canaan cover as well.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And yet she says, Your God is the one who is actually over all of these things.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Rahab, her statement here is not just an amazing expression of faith, but it is a testament to the work that God has been doing over the last 40 years in the hearts and the minds of everybody who lives in the land and has been awaiting his arrival with his people.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Rahab is um this is gonna sound like a tease here, but Rahab is not the focus of Joshua chapter 2.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes that is what is talked about because her story is fascinating, okay?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: But Rahab is really somebody that God has used in an amazing way to bring about a truth of what he is doing for his people.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: But before I get to that, which is gonna have to do with what Rahab said anyway, let's finish out her story, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't have any loose ends.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's finish out Rahab's story, what happens to her, and then we'll swing back around, okay?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So after the moment that you read here in Joshua chapter 2, um, Rahab basically makes an agreement with the spies.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Um, I know you're gonna come, I know you're gonna destroy my city.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: When you do, I want you to protect me, and I want you to protect my family.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, Okay, um tie this scarlet rope around your window, uh, which can be seen from the outer wall, and when we come, anybody who is inside this home is gonna be protected.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so Rahab does that, and then she sends the spies off, and eventually they're able to get back to Joshua.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: In Joshua chapter six is where we will see the battle with Jericho, or really it's not much of a battle at all, but the fight.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this is where we pick up Rahab's story.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua said to the two men who had scouted the land, go to the prostitute's house and bring the woman out of there, and all who are with her, just as you swore to her.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the young men who had scouted went in and brought out Rahab and her father, mother, brothers, and all who belonged to her.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: They brought out her whole family and settled them outside the camp of Israel.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: She still lives in Israel today.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: So Rahab's faith is a powerful example of God's grace going to those who we might least expect.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there are really two things that we learn from Rahab's life, really.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the first one is that as much as we can sometimes struggle, admittedly, with the idea that there is only one way to heaven, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: There is one pathway of truth.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: What we have to be reminded of is that over and over and over again, God's offer of salvation is extended to everybody.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: God is giving this opportunity.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: To Rahab, and such that she accepts it.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that we will see, and though God does harden the hearts of some in the land, ultimately those that are lost in battle are those that have rejected this gift of salvation.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so Rahab represents this invitation to every single person, and all she needed to do.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you just think about her background, right?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when sometimes we build up many things about what it means to trust in the Lord.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there are, in many respects, Rahab looks like the thief on the cross, where all you see is faith expressed, and then she receives salvation.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: We don't find any other information about her other than her confession that your Lord, your God is God in this world, in heavens and on the earth.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a rejection of her past life.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is a rejection of her previous of these false gods that she probably had been worshiping, but nevertheless, with faith she is saved.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: But God, if you will, isn't done with her there.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's one other thing that he does, which is pretty neat, is that he takes Rahab, who then comes into the nation of Israel, marries an Israelite man, and has children.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Her son's name is Boaz, who ends up marrying a woman named Ruth.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find her book a little bit later in the Old Testament.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Rahab's great-grandson is King David, and way down the line, she has somebody named Joseph who has a son named Jesus.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so God brings Rahab, who is one of the most unlikely figures of faith in Scripture, and brings her into the direct line of Jesus, the king, and in fact the promise that he had made way back to Abraham.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so through that, we see the final lesson about Rahab, which is that her inclusion in God's kingdom during a time when that was relatively rare, is foreshadowing a period in the future, namely when Christ comes or has come and then will in the future, where uh the Gentiles, those who are not of Israel, those who have not trusted in God or are not a part of his original plan, are then given the opportunity to trust.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: We are the Gentiles and the pagans.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Rahab is a perfect example of that.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Later on, when the gospel is sent into the entire world, it is not just for the Jewish people.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just for Israel, it is for anybody who would trust in it.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so Rahab, in a very unique way, is almost like a mother of our faith because we see in her somebody who was not originally part of Israel, as we are not, unless uh you you come from a Jewish background.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we are Gentiles like Rahab was a Gentile, and yet God chose to bring her into his family just as he has done with all of us.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: We are like Rahab, and that we are people undeserving of grace, who have yet received it in abundance and have found salvation in the true God.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so Rahab's story is amazing, right?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she brings out these wonderful truths about who our Lord is, but that is not the point of Joshua too.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: So let's circle back real quick, because the spies, their story is not finished.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: They go back to Joshua, they make it back, and uh they have a piece of information to give him.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what is interesting about this is of all the things they can tell him, in fact, what is recorded in Joshua 2, is what do they choose to report back?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: The men returned, came down from the hill country, and crossed the Jordan.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: They went to Joshua, son of Nun, and reported everything that had happened to them.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but what is recorded, the Lord has handed over the entire land to us.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone who lives in the land is also panicking because of us.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: The slide there says Joshua 1, but it's the end of Joshua chapter 2.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you're left at the end of Joshua chapter 2, if you don't think any more about it, on kind of um weird note.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: You've had this amazing story of Rahab, this uh story of redemption and God's grace and mercy, and kind of this like intriguing spy ordeal where people are going in and out, and they come back, and Joshua 2 ends with them going, People are afraid of us.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's the point behind that?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, to those who are in the know, this is the critical piece of information that says the land is ready for you to go into it.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: What Joshua understood better than anybody else, and what the rest of Israel was about to remember, is that 40 years earlier, God had given them a prophecy.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: This was right after the parting of the Red Sea.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: So Israel passes through on dry ground the Red Sea.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: God had parted the waters, they've come out the other side, and now the Egyptians are coming in behind them, chasing after them, right?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to kill them, bring them back into slavery, all manner of things.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what God does is he sends the waves back and it drowns the entire Egyptian army.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: As the Israelites are on the bank of the Red Sea, as the waters have come back together, and literally Egyptian soldiers are washing up the next morning.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: God gives them a song to sing.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: A song, sometimes called Israel's song, sometimes called the song of the sea, that he gives to Moses, who then leads the nation of Israel in this worship.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: They sing way more often than we give them credit for.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: They sing this song, and most of it is about the glory of God and the power of God and his hand in delivering them.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a section of that song that you might be very interested to hear about.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Exodus 15, verses 14 through 16.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: When the peoples hear, and what is that here, hear about the works of the miracle of the Red Sea, they will shudder, anguish will seize the inhabitants of Philistia.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then the chiefs of Edom will be terrified, trembling will seize the leaders of Moab.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: All the inhabitants of Canaan will panic, terror and dread will fall on them.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: They will be as still as a stone because of your powerful arm until your people pass by, Lord, until the people whom you purchased pass by.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what God tells Israel hours after the sea has come back together, which, by the way, the Bible tells us that it wasn't the ten plagues, it wasn't that act of God's display of power that made Israel trust in him.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually the Red Sea coming together.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is when we are told in Exodus chapter 14 that Israel began to trust and believe and fear in God and believe that Moses was their leader.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: So at this amazing moment of national unity and faith and worship, right?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things are coming together.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: God gives them a promise.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: He says, When you go into the land that you are terrified to enter, you need to know that they will be terrified of you.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Though there is nothing about you that is, I mean, really worthy of terror, there's nothing about you that is really intimidating from a human perspective.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: They will hear about what I've done, they will hear about my mighty works, and because of me, God says, they will be scared and shaking in their boots when you come.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, Joshua chapter 2, the question of how is God going to give the land to Israel, which is a huge question to ask considering all of the information we know and how unlikely this battle is, again, from a human perspective.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: The spies go in, they come back, and they say, God did what he said he was going to do.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: God made them fearful of us.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: They are terrified.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what we will end up seeing through the rest of the book of Joshua is this prophecy, this truth playing out is nobody wants to fight them.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody, though some will come out and battle, there are plenty of the nations, the Gibeonites do this, where they come out and they just want to like broker a peace deal before Israel even touches them.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, we don't even believe us.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to fight you.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: These huge nations.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And even the ones that do come out and fight, the battles are not pitched, they are one-sided, as we're going to see in the battle against the Canaanite city of Jericho here in a couple chapters.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: So why do we swing back to this point?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because Joshua chapter 2 is not actually about Rahab.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: She is the vessel that God used to deliver this information.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: She is the person of great faith who has shown that the Lord has been working on the hearts and the minds of Israel all this time, and that finally, after waiting so long, they can go into the land knowing that God has prepared it for them.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that when he says, I am giving it to you, that wasn't just an exaggeration, right?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: He says literally that many of these nations are going to hand their land over to you, and your battles, you are going to destroy them.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll get into the battles later on, but Joshua chapter 2 is an answer really of Joshua chapter 1.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I'm going to give it to you.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua chapter 2 says, How?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Joshua chapter 3, which we'll look at next week, they go into the promised land.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's this beautiful movement of God continuing to show his power and purpose and promises to the nation of Israel.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple things that we can take away, a few things that we can take away from Joshua chapter 2.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is that God answers, God's answers come in unlikely places.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard me say this now a couple different times.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Rahab is not who we would expect to deliver this information.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Rahab is not the type of person that you think typically God would involve in his plan, yet he does gladly and gives her great reward for her faith.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: There are many times when we pray to God and we want him to answer our prayers in a very specific way.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Blessing, safety, health, encouragement, success, all manner of things, right?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And yet God doesn't always answer prayers that way.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have lived long enough and have trusted in the Lord, you also know that sometimes the answers to our prayers that didn't meet our timing or our situations, or maybe even the opposite of what we hoped for, occasionally are what is best for us in the long run.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: If that is how God has chosen to answer our prayers, they always are.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, that sometimes the most challenging and unexpected moments of our life are the exact ones where we grow the most, right?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have to remember that as Christians, um, God's primary goal is not making us happy.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh God's primary goal is to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ, our Savior, that each day we would look more and more like Him.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And though I pray every day for God to teach me easy lessons, um, oftentimes the lessons where I grow the most or um am transformed the most, and the same is true for you, are where things are not easy, where they are challenging and unexpected.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so just as when the spies go into the land, there's uh there's no way when Joshua said, Go in, be sneaky, that they were like expecting what came their way.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: And yet that was how God chose to deliver them and bring them the best news possible.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is that God's grace knows no bounds.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is the clearest application to the story of Rahab, right?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And really Rahab's story is a reminder, not just, I know I'm making kind of a Bible point about the inclusion of the Gentiles and the pagans, but if you just want to kind of go on at a higher level, really Rahab's story is about how God's grace has no bounds.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: That by faith anybody can come into his kingdom.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who rejected Jesus yesterday can trust in him today and find salvation.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Rahab's story is that she understood it's it wasn't just about switching sides, you know.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was that she knew that the God that she that belonged to Israel, right, that she now trusted in, was the only one that could actually save her.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: The true judge, the true savior of the world was not found in her idols of wood and stone, and it's not found in any of the things that we pursue in this world outside of Jesus Christ.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: But yet, God's grace knows no bounds because even if we have been mistaken enough to think that way, all we have to do is trust in Him as our Savior, believe that He died on the cross for our sins, and then we find the same type of salvation that Rahab did.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a reminder, frankly, not just that God gives grace to us, but that it is part of our job to extend that grace to other people.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but there are times in my life where I see people that I think of wrongly, the way that um I might have thought of Rahab at first blush.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who, man, doesn't really feel like they fit into God's plan.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I am just so judgmental.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: That part of my brain is just broken, right?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: But yet God reminds me that I am not somebody who deserved his grace.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: I am not somebody who was somehow righteous enough.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, there are things in my past which I have deep shame over, and yet God still saw fit to let me trust in his Savior, and that he wants that for every single person.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that it is not my job to be the judge of who gets to trust in Christ, but rather that it is my job to tell them that by grace anybody can come to the throne, anybody can set off the chains of sin in their past, anybody can come before him and receive cleansing and redemption.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is a reminder that God's grace has no bounds for us, but it has no bounds for the people in our lives as well.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Third and finally, God's kingdom is unstoppable.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: If there is one lesson that comes out of Joshua chapter 2, this is it.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: God's kingdom is unstoppable in the sense that nothing is slowing it down.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: God is moving along at his perfect timing.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And even though Israel has walked through this 40-year wandering period, God has used that time of their appropriate judgment to then bring them to such a place that in perfect timing, as they are about to head into the land, people are terrified of them and awaiting their own destruction.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of people and forces that are going against God's kingdom.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is true in the Bible, and that is true for us today as well.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, it can just be simply that the way that we think about the world is often lacking in trust about how God's kingdom is truly going forward.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can look at the news, things are chaotic.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: We are inundated with more negative information, stories of loss and pain and grief and just destruction than ever before.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just think, a hundred years ago, there was no 24 hours news cycle that was just pumping us full of terrible information.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that that news isn't worthy to be shared in some respects, but you have to understand that we have a burden on our shoulders today that didn't used to exist, which is we have a, even though it is a fraction, a fraction of what the Lord sees, we have a front row seat to how devastating and fallen our world really is.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when you see that, and especially when it affects you personally, it can be so easy to go, like, where is God?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: What is he doing?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is he not moving in this moment the way that I would expect him to, right?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And yet what Joshua 2 tells us is that God's kingdom is moving right along time.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Israel comes along and they recognize that when they thought God was maybe just wandering through the desert with them, really he was doing things that they didn't even know about or see, that later they come to and recognize that God's hand has been moving and his power is evident in where they are.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what you need to know is the exact same thing is that God's kingdom is moving forward in your life and around you at the exact speed that he has set.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it is some of the most unlikely and improbable things that he is often using to redeem and to cast forward his kingdom in different ways.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: But finally, that you and I have a responsibility much like the spies did, that when we see and hear the news of God's great kingdom moving forward and understand that God has used his power and demonstrated it in the world, whether that is individually in our own lives or just as we tell people about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Our job, like the spies, is to go out and tell people.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: The spies report back this information.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: They say, God is doing a work, he's doing it, we can go.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: They are terrified of us.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know a bunch of people thought it wouldn't happen, but it has.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're scared of us.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is what God said was gonna happen 40 years ago, and here we are, right at the edge.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's roll.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what they do in Joshua 3 is they go into, and what you're gonna find is that God parts the waters once again for them to head into the land, because his kingdom is moving at his speed, and nothing can stop it.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you today as a people of your kingdom that is unstoppable.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, Joshua and uh Joshua chapter 2, we see that you used unlikely things in people to bring about this truth, and you do the same thing in our lives.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: God, I thank you that you have extended grace to us, a people who do not deserve it, and yet receive it freely and thankfully.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: God, we praise you that you are working things out in our lives that we don't even realize or acknowledge most of the time.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: That it is some of the most difficult circumstances, some of the most painful experiences, some of the most challenging and unexpected events that ultimately, Lord, you use to bring about your kingdom and to draw us closer to Christ.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: God, I pray that you would help us to look in unlikely places for your truth and that when we see it, we would tell others about it, just like the spies.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: God, give us the faith of Rahab, somebody with a background, a history, and a culture that meant that she was an unlikely recipient of grace.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, Lord, you lavished it upon her such that she was able to call your own son Jesus Christ a grandchild.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, what a gift that is, and what a gift that it is every single day that you have given us that child, Jesus, so that we might be saved from our own sins and find salvation in your kingdom.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.