"Raising Rahab" Selected Scriptures Sunday Morning Worship Service

The nature of living a life that's not in conformity to this world.

This has been on my heart a lot these last few months, that I just become more and more persuaded with every passing season of my own life that the biggest threat to Christianity, the biggest threat to our church, the biggest threat to a life that wants to be sold out to the Lord is the desire to live a life in conformity with the world.

The world has temptations, and its biggest temptation is to get you to be accepted in the world.

The biggest temptation we face in our Christian life is not necessarily from the devil.

It's not necessarily from the, you know, the sins that we think of as the bad sins.

The biggest threat to our spiritual growth and to the integrity of our faith is the desire for us Christians or the church to be accepted of and well thought of by the world.

The desire to make this world our home is the root of so much that is wrong with the American church, so much that is wrong with evangelicalism is just seen in this latent idea that we can live in such a way that the world will like us.

And we think if we conduct our lives in the right way, the world will like us, the world will respect us, and then they will learn to like and respect Jesus.

And that just has everything reversed.

That is the horse tripping all over the cart.

The world will not learn to love Jesus because they see how well we fit in with the world.

The opposite happens.

When the world learns to love Jesus, they will have an affection for his church.

And to compromise the truth for the sake of fitting in with the world is a recipe to dilute your faith and to dilute your integrity in your own relationship with the Lord.

The desire to be like the world or well thought of by the world will end up robbing you of what makes you different from the world.

The scripture refers to us as light that shines in darkness.

We are salt that purifies and stands out.

And Jesus says, if the salt loses its saltiness, what's it good for?

If you have salt that doesn't taste anything like anything, I mean, just you may as well put it in your coffee.

Who cares at that point?

You are designed to be different from the world.

The world is supposed to feel offended when they're confronted with authentic Christian faith.

You know, ten years ago, I preached a series here at Emmanuel through Psalm 119.

And as I look back on that time going through Psalm 119 with you all, it is just the part of that book that stands out the most in my mind is how often the psalmist refers to us as aliens or strangers or pilgrims.

We are walking on a path in this world that is not the path that is worn out by others in the world.

We are on our own path.

We are strangers in this world.

We are pilgrims or prisoners, is the language of Psalm 119.

We're being taken away often to a place we don't want to go in this world, but we recognize that this world is not our true home.

We are aliens in this world.

Every believer has dual citizenship.

We all are citizens of this world and citizens of the next.

We are citizens of the nation that we live in, the nation in which we were born.

But our true citizenship is not that.

Our true citizenship is in heaven.

But I often fear that if the passport of your heart was checked, it would match this world and not the next.

And I hope that you have seen that temptation in your own life.

The Lord has given you a stewardship over time and talents and energy and thoughts and your capacity to think about things and do things in this world.

And it's worth asking yourself, what are you doing with all the Lord has given you?

Are you building a cathedral in this world and sending the leftover scraps and spare parts to the next?

I hope not.

I hope what captivates your thought more than anything else is not this world, but the next.

That you have a desire to send your treasures to heaven where moth will not corrode it, where thieves will not steal it, or rust will not destroy it.

This world is at best a hotel room, and you don't renovate a hotel room.

And you know what?

It's not even hotels are, you know, get nicer and nicer every year.

It's not even normal, it's a hostel.

It's the cheap you rented one bed shared with, you know, a leper from Airbnb.

That's the that's what this world is like.

It's not your home.

And we are so prone to thinking and caring too much about this world.

Especially in the DC area, you know, we think, if only we can get the government to accept us, then we'll be able to live our lives like we want to.

It's not gonna happen.

Okay, if only we can get the government to leave us alone.

And some of you fall into the trap of thinking, if only we can get the government to be better.

And you devote your life to that.

And you know, I'm thankful there are people that labor for that.

But I wonder if behind so much of it is a misplaced fear about what will happen to this world when you're gone.

This world is not our home.

What is the root of our infatuation with this world?

The root of our infatuation with this world, I think, is we have diluted the concept of faith.

When faith becomes mental ascent, you lose a huge component of faith that drives you to put your hope in the next world, not this world.

And Paul defines faith as the substance of things hoped for, the essence of things, not or the assurance of things not seen.

And then he gives you a little bit of a description of faith.

He says, For someone to come to God, without faith, it's impossible to please God.

For someone to come to God, he must first believe that God exists.

And often that's where we put the period.

But that's not faith.

Faith is not believing that God exists, it's the rest of the verse.

You must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him.

That's the substance of faith right there.

It's one thing to believe that God exists.

That's just mental ascent.

That's not faith.

It's one thing to believe the Bible is true.

Again, that's not faith.

That's mental ascent.

The demons believe that, James says.

It's a totally different thing to say that God is true and his word is true, and it has a value above everything this world has to offer, and that motivates me to live for Christ.

That's faith.

It was Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian, who defined faith this way, and I I love this definition.

He said, faith, quote, is an act of the intellect when it ascents to divine truth.

So far, that's not sufficient.

It's the act of an intellect that ascends to divine truth, but you have to get the rest of his definition.

Under the influence of the will moved by the Holy Spirit through grace.

In other words, you look at the weather report and it says it's gonna be sunny tomorrow, and you believe that it will be sunny tomorrow.

That's not faith in the biblical sense.

That's mental ascent.

You know, look at the scouting report.

You think the redskins are gonna do well this year?

You know, that's not faith.

It may be supernatural, but it's not faith.

Saving faith is more than mental assent to, you know, you check the scouting report.

That's not saving faith.

Saving faith, biblical faith, is the acknowledgement intellectually that this book is true, that God exists, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, divine, the divine essence in human flesh.

That's a part of saving faith.

But more than that, saving faith is the idea that not only does he exist, but that all that matters in life is found in the pursuit of him.

That this world is not my home, only the next world is.

This is where Christian saving faith is so different than the kind of faith required in every other religion.

And too often we don't think like that.

We think that every religion requires faith, just ours is in faith that something is true, and other religions are faith and things that are false, but negative.

Really, Christianity is the only religion that has that concept of faith.

The Holy Spirit has to move your heart supernaturally to cause you to treasure the next world more than this world.

That's saving faith.

You heard in the testimony of the waters of baptism today.

Zechariah saying, you know, I was just believing that, you know, I'm a good person and the Bible is true, but that's not saving faith because it didn't change my life.

I mean, there it is, right there.

One Bible dictionary I read said in the in the scriptures the Bible defines faith as setting it your heart firmly on something.

I like that description too.

I'm you can tell I'm a pastor when I get excited about a Bible dictionary definition of something.

Faith is setting your heart firmly on something, more than the ascent that it's true, but I'm setting my hope in this thing.

That's faith.

I want to pursue this thing because that's where there is value in it.

That is faith.

And that Anchor Bible Dictionary went on to say faith isn't really defined in the Bible, but it is demonstrated.

And so this morning I want to look at four pictures of faith from the Old Testament.

Because let me give you the big picture and then we'll look at the details here.

The big picture is I'm becoming more and more persuaded that we too are too eager to want to look like the world, to raise kids that look like the world, to try to fit in comfortably in the world, to have the world's approval so they don't think less of us or whatever, and that leads to an erosion and a corruption of faith.

When you look at people that the Bible calls out for their faith, one characteristic most of them have have in common.

Their faith was such that it was countercultural.

Their faith was such that it wasn't just a faith in God or the truth of God's word.

It was a faith that set them apart from the world.

That's the key part.

It was faith that differentiated them from the world, where the world is over here and they're over there, and they're just different than the world.

And they don't have the attitude of, let me fit in with the worlds, and they'll know that I believe in the in the Bible and whatnot as I fit in the world.

No, that's not their attitude.

Their attitude is I'm going to be separate from the world based upon my faith.

Based upon my faith.

It's a counter-cultural faith.

The first of these examples is, of course, Abram.

And you can open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Abram.

Abram is known as the father of faith.

He is the one when you Galatians 3, verse 7 says that those who are in faith are sons of Abraham.

Galatians 3:7

Abram, in this sense, is the first model of faith.

It's to the extent that as we come to faith, we are called children of Abraham.

When you say somebody is a child of somebody, you're saying he looks like that person.

My dad is in town this weekend.

He was at the first service, and there would be no mistaking him.

When you see the two of us next to each other, I remember when Deedra first met him, she's like, I've got no excuse now.

I know what you're going to look like.

When the Bible says that you through faith are children of Abraham, that's what it means, that your faith makes you look like Abraham.

He, in that sense, is the father of our faith.

Our faith traces its roots back to him for lots of reasons.

One, you know, of course, God calls him to launch the Jewish race, and the seed of the Savior comes through him.

But there's even a more basic level than that, that our saving faith should look like the faith of Abraham.

No better place to look at that than Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

The Lord Yahweh said to Abram, verse 1, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

Often our eyes just go right to verse 2 where it describes the Abrahamic covenant, but I want you to focus for a second on verse 1 and the content of verse 1 and how ludicrous it is what God commands in verse 1.

This is not something people do.

People don't relocate back in the ancient Near East.

They don't, you know, get to 75 years old and say, you know, I'm going to start over somewhere.

There's no midlife crises that cause you to, you know, pack up life in Virginia and move to LA just to start over and get better weather or something like that.

This is radically unheard of.

In fact, in Genesis 10 and 11, it shows you that after the flood, how the earth was repopulated, people went to where the Lord had appointed, and all of the rest of chapter 10 and chapter 11 is showing which families had which land.

It's the begats, who begat who.

Everyone's identity is connected to who their father and their mother was, and they had this child, and he married this person.

They had this child.

That's all of Genesis chapter 11.

Genesis 11 · chapter mention

They dwelt here.

Here was their land.

Here are their people.

If you didn't have children, you were still under the heading of your father or your father-in-law.

His land was your land.

That's where you were.

That was your place.

That's where you belonged.

People did not move around the world.

And then you get after chapter 11, you just look, uh, Tarah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and they were trying to get out to Canaan, but they didn't.

They settled in Haran, and that was where their family would be.

That's where their descendants would be.

That was their lot in life.

And Terah died at 205 years old.

He died in Haran, and that's where they would expect to see Abram and Sarah.

Abram and Sarah don't have children yet, it said back up in verse 31.

They're barren, they don't have children.

They don't have a life apart from the land of their family.

And it's in that world.

The father is dead now, Tarah is dead.

It's in that world where Yahweh tells Abram, pack up and leave.

Leave your land.

Do you notice that?

Leave your country, leave your family, leave your father's house, leave the land.

It's not a grocery list, it's a list of everything that gives you your identity.

And Abram is supposed to leave all of it.

He's going to separate from his family.

He's going to separate from his country.

He's going to separate from his land.

That's his future.

That's his future.

And the Lord says that I will bless you.

But has this promise been given before?

Abram doesn't know what's coming.

So he has to choose between security in this life, living with my father's family and his land and his people where I would be expected to live, where I'd be provided for.

That's the question.

And Abram does.

He packs up and he goes.

Verse 4, Abram went as Yahweh had told him, and Lot went with him.

This is, if you're familiar with the whole Abram narrative here, this is his first attempt to help the Lord out in the promise.

Remember, the Lord tells him you're going to have an offspring who's going to be the savior of the world.

This is a promise back from Genesis 3 that there will be a seed.

There will be a descendant to mankind that will crush Satan and bring forgiveness of sin.

That seed was not Abel because he was murdered.

It was not Seth, who was named seed because he died and was in it.

It wasn't Noah, even though Noah's dad thought it was him.

We don't know who it is.

Now the promise goes to Abram.

It'll be his descendant, but Abram has no kids.

So he's going to try all kinds of things.

He's going to make Lot his heir.

That's step one here.

That does not go well.

Remember, Lot gets kidnapped.

He's got to, you know, go fight and get an army and bring him back.

And then the whole Sodom and Gomorrah thing, it does not go well.

Lot plan fail.

So then he tries a servant and that doesn't work.

And he sleeps with the servant and that doesn't work.

And, you know, and then God blesses him and gives him a child.

Well, this is step one.

He brings Lot with him.

He's trying to help God here.

God doesn't need help, but Abram's doing what he can.

He took his wife and Lot, his brother's sons, all their possessions that they had gathered, the people they had acquired in Haran, speaking of their slaves, and they went out to go to the land of Canaan.

And this doesn't go well for him.

Remember verse 6?

At that time the Canaanites have the land, and they're going to stumble upon famine in verse 10.

Look at this.

Verse 10, there's famine in the land.

So Abram leaves there and goes to Egypt to sojourn there.

The famine was severe back where he thought he was supposed to go.

And remember what happens to his wife?

His wife gets kidnapped, ends up in Pharaoh's household.

I mean, the wheels are coming off this thing, right?

He left his father's land, and you could picture, you know, a father-in-law, like, I told you this would happen.

You leave your land and now you're stuck in a famine.

And now you've lost your wife.

You're stuck with Lot.

I mean, that's also its own punishment right there.

Things are not going well.

And yet Abram is noted as the example of faith.

Why is he called an example of faith here?

Because he left this world for the sake of following Christ.

He left this world for the sake of following the promise of the Savior that would come to this world.

I use the word Christ intentionally.

God had promised to send a Savior.

The Savior was going to be through his seed, and he believed the promise and left everything.

Romans 4 9 says that the faith at this moment, Genesis 12, verse 1, kind of faith, was credited to Abraham as righteousness.

Genesis 12:1

This was not mental ascent.

This wasn't one in a long line of decisions Abram made.

This was a life-changing decision right here.

He sees the promise of the world, the path of the world to live your life here and in this way with this family on this land.

And God's word tells him differently, and he chooses to obey God's word.

He says it would be better for me to suffer in famine, suffer in hardship, suffer in loss, and be faithful to God and his promise for people than it would be for me to live a nice, normal life with my own family in my own place.

And that is world-changing faith, so much so that Romans 4 says it was credited to him as a righteousness.

What that means is that at that moment when Abram says, This is it, I believe you, God, I'm going, at that moment, God removes Abram's sin from him, takes his sin away from him, and he will have lots of sin still coming forward, lots of sin all removed from him, and God declares Abram to be righteous regardless of anything else he does.

That's what it means.

His faith is credited to him as righteousness because he has sin.

And he will stand before God for judgment and give an account for his sin.

But because of this kind of faith that I will leave the world and trust the promises of God over and against the world, that faith is so outlandish, it is so substantial that God removes Abram's sin from him and says, You are now righteous based upon your faith.

And of course it's faith that produces action.

It's not mental ascent.

Abram's not chilling on his hammock out there in Ur and saying, you know what, I believe God probably is true, and the promise probably will come, but I like this life here.

That is not faith.

Faith says, I believe God, and I will live differently than the rest of the world.

And that is the kind of faith that is credited to someone as righteousness.

He was 75 years old.

I mean, that's a little bit old to start your life over.

But that's what he did.

Based upon his faith.

Flip over to Exodus chapter 2 now for our second example of this kind of saving faith, Exodus chapter 2, and we're going to look at Moses.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention Exodus 2 · chapter mention

I know you're all familiar with the Moses story, but I want to pause and focus on the moment where Paul says that Moses' faith was credited to him as righteousness.

Moses, remember, was a Hebrew baby, supposed to be killed, but instead sent onto the water by his mother, fetched out of the water by Pharaoh's daughter, named Moses, which means from the water or from the reeds, taken in, raised in Pharaoh's household.

That's Moses.

Pharaoh's households.

We often in our minds think of the you know, the Egyptians or others in the ancient near East as backwoods, backwater, illiterate, barbaric people, but historians say it's not true about this generation of Egyptians.

This was an Ariodite society.

This is the society that built the temples.

They were educated, they had uh science, they had extremely high literacy rates.

This was a very well-educated and Areodite group of people, and Moses is now being raised in Pharaoh's household.

He's part of not just this very educated society, but he's at the top of that society.

The Egyptians had this hierarchical system, the top of which was Pharaoh.

The Egyptians patented and trademarked and reproduced the whole idea that your political leader was a god.

The Egyptians believe that.

Pharaoh had uh divine attributes to him.

You wouldn't wrong Pharaoh or his household because Pharaoh might withhold rain from you.

I mean, talk about that.

In our world, you don't want to offend political leaders because they might say mean things about you or withhold funding to your state or your county or anything.

In their world, you offend Pharaoh and he might, you could get struck by lightning.

You would die in a famine.

You don't want to offend Pharaoh.

This is the household Moses is growing up in.

Treated like Pharaoh's son.

Acts chapter 7, verse 22 says that Moses possessed all the wisdom of Pharaoh's household, which is huge.

Acts 7:22

He was being educated like an Egyptian.

At the top of this very educated society was Moses, with all the wisdom of Pharaoh's household, all the knowledge of Pharaoh, all the royalty, all the luxury, all the privilege of that life.

There would be few other people in the world with that kind of privilege, that kind of proximity to power, servants and slaves, and whatever he wanted.

In many senses, the law wouldn't apply to him, and we'll see the limits of that in a second, by the way.

But that's his life.

It's tough for us to even Imagine a life like that.

But that's what Moses had.

It's been 75 years or so since Joseph's death.

Maybe around there.

We don't know exactly how long, but probably something like that.

In those 75 years, Moses has not heard from Yahweh.

Moses doesn't know the Lord.

But Moses has heard of him.

He's heard of the promise.

He knows why the Jews are in Egypt.

He knows why they're in slavery.

I'm sure he's heard the story of Abraham leading him out there, and he knows who his people are.

He's not naive.

He's aware that he is a Jew in Pharaoh's household.

He's aware that in many senses he can be a prince in this kingdom.

But he's a Jew.

And that's what's in the background of verse 11.

One day when Moses has grown up, and by the way, he was 42 during this exchange, 42 years old, Paul tells us he goes out there to see his people.

The verb tense, even for he went out, is this elongated action.

It has this idea that almost it was a repetition.

They had gone out there many times, out among the Jews, out among the slaves working, making the pyramids and walls and manual labor.

And here comes the prince of Egypt walking around them, looking at them.

What an insane scene this would be.

And he's not identifying at this moment.

Do you catch the gist here?

He's not identifying with the people who are supervising the work.

They might even be working on Pharaoh's house.

He's not identifying with Pharaoh's house, although he's a member of that house.

He's identifying with his own people.

That's what's going on in his heart right now.

He went out to his people, verse 11 says.

He looked on their burdens.

That's what he's staring at.

How much these people are suffering.

And then one of these days he's out watching, he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew.

One of his own people.

This is a window into Moses' mind.

You know, Moses wrote Exodus, right?

This is a window into what he was thinking.

He's describing out there, it's third person, but this is really a first person account.

He's describing what was going through his mind.

Here is a slave being beaten, and he sees himself in that slave.

So he looks around.

This way and that.

See his eyes going all around.

Certainly he would have had his own servants with him, but he sees nobody else.

He strikes down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

I mean, there's all kinds of irony to this.

They're building these blocks where the temples are deprived of straw, and Moses ends up, you know, murdering some guy and burying him in the Egyptian sand.

The guy didn't deserve to die.

It's not a capital crime to be a slave in Egypt.

But Moses kills him.

Why?

What broke Moses?

What brought him to that point?

He's so identified with God's people over and against the luxuries of Pharaoh's household.

Now the Bible never commends the murder here.

The Bible doesn't say it, so it's good to murder someone who abuses a slave.

The Bible doesn't say that.

Moses is not commended for murder, but Moses is commended for the war in his heart that he finally decides whose side he's on.

Is he on the side of this world and the whole society that would love him and pamper him and exalt him, or is he on the side of God's people?

By the way, do you think God's people are going to like Moses?

Have you read the book of Exodus?

God's people do not like Moses.

So he's identifying with a group of people that don't even like him.

He's forfeiting in this action right here, he is forfeiting wealth and luxury and privilege and an exalted status, a godlike status.

He is forfeiting that to rather be identified with people that will suffer, the people that are slaves, and people that don't even like him.

He's going to find that out the hard way in verse 13.

He went out the next day back, as apparently his custom was to go watch the Jews laboring.

You can just imagine the war going on in this guy's heart.

Behold, two Hebrews now are fighting together.

And he said to the man in the wrong, Why'd you strike your companion?

So Moses here is acting like royalty the next day.

You know, Tuesday he murders the dude and buries him in the sand.

Wednesday he's back out there acting like a prince and taking an interest in two slaves fighting, and he's rebuking one of the slaves, and the slave turns on him.

Who do you think you are?

He says, Verse 14.

Who made you a prince and a judge over us?

Notice the irony here.

I mean, Moses is a prince.

Do you mean to kill me as you kill that Egyptian?

This is going to be this is prophetic here of the rest of Moses' life, you know.

He will do one thing after another for the Jews and they will turn on him.

Mana again, Moses?

Come on.

Manana pot pie.

We had that yesterday.

Moses doesn't know what to do.

Moses becomes terrified.

He says, I gotta get out of here.

I gotta get out of here.

Because Pharaoh's gonna hear.

What's Pharaoh gonna do when he finds out Moses killed a slave to defend the Jews?

Pharaoh's gonna find out who Moses is, of course.

That ruins that relationship right there.

No more ascendancy in Pharaoh's kingdom.

Pharaoh does hear about it in verse 15 and seeks to kill Moses.

Now it's worth asking here: was Pharaoh's decision to kill Moses just?

And the answer is yes.

Moses does deserve to die.

He should be put to death for murdering that guy.

That's the punishment of that.

So Pharaoh is not acting against justice right here.

Pharaoh isn't acting outside the law, he is the law.

And Moses certainly deserves death, but Moses flees and goes to Midian.

Moses is going to spend the next 80 years of his life in the wilderness and he will die there.

That's what happens to Moses.

So why is Moses a model of faith?

Because he decided he would rather invest his life with God's people, even if it means living in the wilderness for 80 years, then he would rather invest his life in Pharaoh's household.

He would rather die on the Jordan looking into the promised land than die in the life of luxury back in Egypt.

That is faith.

Moses sized things up here and says, I don't care what the world offers.

I don't want it.

I would rather be with God's people.

As I mentioned earlier, Moses is not commended for the murder.

He's not commended for his flight from justice.

He's commended by the scriptures for valuing the life of an outlaw over the life of a scholar.

He sized up the education in Egypt and all that it had to offer and decided he couldn't do it.

And remember, this is 40 years before the burning bush.

This is 40 years before God speaks to him through the bush.

He would rather identify with the suffering people of God than with the prosperous Egyptians.

I mean, that is so easy to say.

It is so easy to see in Exodus 2.

It is so much harder to live.

It is so much harder in your own life to say, I would rather identify with Christians and with God's people than I would with the comforts and the identification that my own family and my own home and my own nation provide.

Especially when you live in such a wealthy nation like ours.

There's so much comforts to be had in our nation.

If only you don't stand out as that outrageous of a Christian.

Fear of God was more significant than fear of Pharaoh.

And Moses chose likewise.

Turn over to Joshua chapter 2.

Joshua 2 · chapter mention

No look at faith in the Old Testament would ever be complete without looking at Rahab, who is identified repeatedly in the scripture whenever you meet her as Rahab, the harlot, or Rahab, the prostitute in the ESV.

Turn over to Joshua chapter 2.

Joshua 2 · chapter mention

You'll see so many similarities between Rahab and Moses.

Of course, that's designed by God and his providence, inspired by the Holy Scripture to the Holy Spirit to describe them that way in Scripture.

Rahab is at the bottom of society morally speaking.

As soon as you meet her, in verse 1 of chapter 2, you find out that she is a prostitute.

She sells herself for money.

She's esteemed in the city.

She's at the city gate.

She's at the bottom of society morally.

But she's going to be an example of saving faith.

Joshua, the son of nun, sent two men secretly as spies.

And by the way, why secretly?

Why are the men sent secretly?

Because Joshua learned a lesson from Moses.

Moses sent 12 spies not secretly, like out in the open, and they came back, and the Israelites rebelled and had to spend 40 years in the wilderness.

So Moses Joshua has learned Moses' lesson here.

There ain't going to be no spies with some public report, and we're taking a vote.

No.

Two spies, you go secretly.

You report back to me and nobody else.

That's the charge.

So two spies go to Jericho.

They cross the Jordan River.

If you're familiar with the topography here, you cross the Jordan River.

It's about a two to three hour walk from the 20-minute bus ride, but two to three hour walk from the Jordan River to Jericho.

They can see you coming.

I mean, the tallest bush out there is like, you know, shoulder height.

There's not a lot.

You would see two dudes crossing the river and walking to Jericho.

So there's no hope of a sneak attack here.

So these spies have got to come in, they've got to blend in the city.

If they're going to get away with this, they've got to find somebody who will shelter them.

So if you're two spies and you're trying to go into a city that has travelers in it and find a place where travelers would often go that perhaps has a good view of the city gate and a good view of everybody else, and values discretion, where would you go?

So these two spies figure out, you know what?

A prostitute checks all of those boxes.

Values discretion.

Travelers go see her, and she's at the entrance to the city gate.

So I really think this is a strategic decision by the spies.

It just makes a lot of sense.

They find Rahab, they think they'll blend in there.

It wouldn't be unusual for travelers to come from far away and go stop at the prostitute.

So that was that's the plan here.

And they go in, and if you think you know the story, I mean, I thought I was very familiar with the story, and I've just been reading it over and over again the last few months, and I realized my timeline was all off in this story.

Because what happens is not the way I remembered it, or certainly not the way it was described in Veggie Tales, which definitely did not have the story, by the way.

So they go to Jericho, they lodge with Rahab.

In other words, they pay for a room there, and this is told to the king of Jericho.

So as soon as the spies come in, the king finds out about this.

Again, Rahab's house is right by the city gate.

There's guards that are on the lookout there, of course.

They they know the the Israelites are preparing an attack.

And so the guards see what happens.

I don't know how the guards knew these people were Israelites.

You know, were they wearing Israelite clothes?

Did they have the the were they already keeping the Torah and not cutting their sideburns?

Did they say Shalom at the gate?

I mean, I don't know.

Somehow the guards figured it out.

They report to the king.

The king immediately summons Rahab.

Verse 3.

The king talks to Rahab.

Bring out the men who've come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.

The king is not wrong.

The woman who had taken the two men and hidden them, and she said, True, the men came to me, but I don't know where they're from.

Now at this point, you don't even know if that's true.

Right?

You don't know what Rahab knows.

She says, I don't know who these people are.

What do you want from me?

Leave me be.

When the gate was about to be closed down, well, uh, sorry, verse 4, and the woman had taken the two men to hidden them.

She said, Sure, the men came to me, I didn't know where they were from.

And when the gate was about to be closed at dusk, the men went out.

I don't know where they came from, I don't know where they went.

Pursue them quickly, though, for you'll overtake them.

Now, this is the lie right here, right?

Yeah.

I don't know, I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't know who they are, where they came from, but they came in really fast.

They left really fast.

If you run now towards the river, you might catch them.

And you picture like you know, the dispatcher sending all units and all the soldiers running out the door and booking it down towards the river.

And Rahab's off the hook.

Why did Rahab do this?

Certainly it's a lawful order.

You want to deal with just like a legal standard?

A king who says, Spies came into your room, you need to turn them over.

That is a lawful order.

There's no legal loopholes in this, unless you have a grid that elevates God's people and identification with God's people over those of the world.

That's Rahab's grid, which still you don't know what she's even thinking at this point of the story.

Verse 6.

She had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stocks of flax that she had in order to that she had laid on the roof.

So the men pursued after them on the way, verse 7, to the Jordan, as far as the fords.

The gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out.

For the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof.

So she came back that night onto the roof to find them.

And she said to them, I know that Yahweh has given you the land.

The fear of you has fallen upon us.

All the inhabitants of the land melt away before you.

Do you see her using God's covenant name?

She's heard the name.

She knows more than Moses did.

We've heard, verse 10, how Yahweh dried up the water of the Red Sea.

And she begins to recount some of the things that Yahweh did.

Verse 11, as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted.

There's no spirit left in any man because of you, for Yahweh is your God.

He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.

I mean, this is what Rahab knows.

Yahweh is the true God.

She's probably gonna die.

She also knows that.

Verse 12.

Please swear by Yahweh, as I've dealt kindly with you, you'll deal kindly with my father's house and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and my mother, my brothers and sisters, and all I belong to them and deliver our lives from death.

I mean, this is desperation.

Do you notice this agreement comes after she already acted?

She is not acting to save her own skin.

People misrepresent Rahab all the time and say she did this because she knew she'd get rescued because she knew the Israelites would win.

She didn't know any of that.

All she knew is that Yahweh is the true God.

That's the extent of her knowledge.

Now she appeals to these spies.

She doesn't know these spies.

She doesn't have any grounds to trust them except their connection to Yahweh.

That's it.

They're connected to God.

I believe in God.

I'd rather die in a pile of rubble trusting in God's people than live in this kingdom.

She thinks her family's gonna die.

Her father, her mother, her brothers and sisters, she thinks her land is gonna be lost.

The city walls are going to come down.

This is a city that is totally morally depraved.

You know, we often think like this country or that country is morally depraved, and God's good, God better judge them.

This Jericho is that place.

They're gonna get destroyed brick by brick in like a week from this.

I mean, there at the end, do you remember why Abraham couldn't go into Canaan all that time ago?

Because they weren't ready for this kind of judgment.

Yeah, God kind of moved them to the back burner and let them simmer in their sin for about four centuries, and now is gonna bring them down because now their depravity is at the level they deserve to be destroyed.

That's this culture, and Rahab's a prostitute in that culture, but when she hears of the Lord, she rather identifies with God's people than with her own civilization.

That is a profound act of faith.

She would rather die than live without being identified with God's people.

Now, of course, she doesn't know how the story will end.

And we know how the story will end, so we slide over this.

She didn't know.

Again, compare her to Moses.

Moses was not commended for murder, and Rahab is not commended for lying.

This is not a justification for lying any more than Exodus 2 is a justification for murder.

Moses is commended for choosing to leave his world behind to identify with God's people.

Rahab is commended for choosing to leave this world behind in order to be identified with God's people.

Abram was commended for leaving this world behind in order to go out and be identified with God in his word.

I mean, that's this, it's the same faith in all three places.

It's saving faith justifies, takes away their sin because of their supernatural faith in the Lord.

James 2, verse 25.

James 2:25

Was not Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the spies and sent them out another way?

Faith, of course, is the answer.

And we trip over, like they just said justified by works.

You're not allowed to say that.

That's the Bible, by the way.

When you understand that faith compels action, true faith compels action, that's not a contradiction.

You're not justified based upon your works, but faith that justifies produces this kind of work that separates her from the rest of the world.

You can flip over from Rahab to Daniel chapter six.

Daniel chapter six, and that'll be our last little vignette for the morning.

In Daniel chapter six.

You see Daniel 80 years old, probably?

82, 83, depending on how you date Daniel's life, somewhere around 80 years old, serving in the Persian Empire.

This is his second empire he served in.

Remember, he was kidnapped by the Babylonians.

He rose to the ranks and became basically the prime minister of Babylon before they were overthrown by the Persians.

Now he starts over and rises through the ranks.

You know, he's the Persians are overthrown when Daniel's 60.

So he's been in the in the Persian.

I mean, the Babylonians were overthrown when Daniel was 60.

So he's been in the Persian Empire for 20 years, and in 20 years he's risen to the top again.

You know, he had a career change at 60, and he rose to the top to be CEO a second time around.

I mean, Daniel is an incredible, incredible leader, and everybody recognizes that.

The Persians had a different approach to governing the Babylonians did.

The Babylonians insisted on conformity and uniformity.

The Persians did not.

The Persians celebrated diversity.

They were fine having people from different uh kingdoms and tribes and languages and positions of political power.

They thought it was more effective to keep the kingdom under control that way, and that's what Darius's approach is going to be in Daniel chapter six.

It pleased him to set over the kingdom 120 satraps to be throughout the whole kingdom.

This is kind of a, you know, a governor of a province, you could say, or a senator, because these satraps would have oversight of a province, but they would spend most of their time in the capital, so maybe a senator would be one way we would think of it as an American.

Over them are three presidents, of whom Daniel was one.

This might be a cabinet member kind of position.

To whom these satraps could give an account so the king would suffer no loss.

So see the king's structure here?

Kind of three different cabinet members that have oversight of all these different senators or governors that all report to him.

And Daniel became distinguished among all those presidents, all those satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him.

The king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.

He's going to be prime minister.

And the presidents and the satraps sought to find ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could not find any ground for complaint or any faults because he was faithful.

No error or no fault was found in him.

Do you notice here that Daniel stands out?

This is if you've worked on a team before, or if you've you have bosses over you or employees underneath you, you know that everybody has a weakness.

You can find some reason to not like anybody at work.

You know that?

The boss over you, he's, you know, he's too strong or he's too weak, or the employees under you, they're too lazy, or they do too much.

You know, who are they trying to impress?

You can find some way to complain about anybody.

But not Daniel.

These guys are studying his life, and they can't.

He shows up for meetings too early.

Nope.

He shows up too late.

Nope.

There's nothing wrong with this guy.

He has such integrity and he does everything so well.

Obviously, the Lord is blessing him.

It says in verse 3 that an excellent spirit was in him.

That's, I think, Daniel's attempt at humility there.

This is God's work in him, because of course Daniel is writing this.

This is God's work in his heart.

So the presidents and satraps sought to find this ground against him.

Notice what they do in verse 5.

They say, we can't find anything wrong with this guy.

But let's go after him the end of verse 5 in connection with his God.

Now appreciate what they're doing.

They're not saying we're going to pass a law making it illegal to be a Jew.

They're not saying we're going to pass a law to make it illegal to pray to Yahweh.

They're doing to use American language, they're going to pass a universally applicable law.

We're not targeting any one group.

We're just going to pass this law that applies to everybody equally.

It's just that the Jews are the ones that happen to break it.

Look at how that works out.

We don't want to, you know, pick a fight with religious people, so we're going to cast a law that governs all of society that only religious people will break.

It sounds a little familiar to me.

I can't quite place from where though.

All the they all get together.

Verse 6.

The presidents, the stat traps, they came by agreement to the king.

It said, Him, oh King Darius, live forever.

All the presidents of the kingdom, the prefects and the stat traps, and the counselors and the governors.

I mean, there's a list of every governmental position.

They all agree on this.

All of the experts agree, Daniel.

All of the experts agree.

When you get all of the experts in a country together and they all agree on something, you know that it's true, right?

All the experts agree.

The king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction.

Notice the legal language.

We do nationwide injunctions.

All the experts agree is necessary.

Whoever makes petition to any God or man for 30 days except you, O king, shall be cast in the den of lions.

Notice they had way more buildup about how everybody agreed on this, and they had an actual explanation of the edict.

O king, establish the injunction, sign the document.

It cannot be changed according to laws and the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.

So King Darius signed the document, already prepared for him and everything.

Signed the injunction, boom.

It's done.

Can't pray to any God except Darius for 30 days.

Verse 10.

Daniel knew the document had been signed.

He went to your house and knocked on your door.

And said, Oh, brother Christian.

Oh, sister in the faith, help me.

What should I do?

At your door.

You weren't expecting him, but there he was at your door.

How do you answer Daniel after he rang your doorbell?

You don't know how Daniel 6 ends.

Think about what you know.

He's the prime minister.

He's the most powerful person in the country other than the king.

He's Jewish, and there's about to be a serious need for a Jew in authority coming up in a decade from now.

The Jews are going to try to rebuild the temple.

It's going to go crazy bad.

Lots of persecution.

How helpful would it be to have a Nehemiah in the prime minister's position to help the Jews?

I mean, this is so important for the rebuilding of God's kingdom.

I mean, Esther is on the horizon here.

You need a Jew on the scene who's in authority and power, and lo and behold, you have a Daniel.

Don't mess this up, Daniel.

That might be what you would tell him.

Don't mess this up.

In fact, Daniel, let's think about this.

Was this law passed through legal channels?

Yes.

All the governors agreed.

Everybody signed off on it.

Okay.

Is there a way for you to comply, Daniel, without getting in trouble?

Can you comply?

Like, how about this?

For 30 days, can you you would, you're too godly to say, for 30 days, don't pray.

You would never say that.

But would you say, for 30 days, can you pray in your closet?

30 days have somebody else pray at mealtime, Daniel?

Lots of people will take the fall for you, but not you can't go to jail, Daniel.

For 30 days, why don't you just do what Jesus will tell you in a couple hundred years and pray silently in your closet?

That's not sinning.

You don't have to pray out loud for everybody to hear you.

Just comply for 30 days to flatten the never mind.

All it will take is 30 days.

I mean, you laugh, but I'm telling you, the temptation to give that kind of counsel would be extreme, wouldn't it?

Do you know how Daniel responded when he was 20 years old to this?

When Daniel was 20 years old, he tried to negotiate out of this.

Remember, he called the police into his cell and said, let's come to an agreement.

Give me an accommodation.

I'll eat vegetables, you can weigh me out later, we'll see how happens.

When Daniel was 40 years old, do you remember how he responded there?

He didn't ask for accommodation.

When he was 40, he chose confrontation.

He and his friends got in the king's face and was like, you know what, you're wrong and you're going down and God's gonna judge you and your cat.

I mean, he's gonna destroy your whole family and throw us in the fire, and then you'll be sorry.

When he was 60 years old, how did he respond?

Indifference.

Handwriting on the wall, and Daniel's like, whatever at this point, whatever.

You do your thing, Emperor.

God's gonna kill you.

I mean, what do you want from me now?

I just find it fascinating.

At 20 years old, he looks for an accommodation.

At 40 years old, it's like right in your face.

At 60 years old, he's like, whatever.

Look at him at 80.

At 80 years old, he walks up to the top floor of his house, throws open his window, it says in verse 10, goes to a prominent position where he would be seen by everybody, got down on his knees, and prayed out his window.

This is not trying to just blend in and get along for 30 days, is it?

This is like letting a bomb off on the roof of your house.

Well, the men, of course, come and find him there, arrest him, take him before the king, and they throw him in the lines down.

You know how it goes.

Do you see the same faith here?

With Abraham, with Moses, with Rahab, looking at all that you have in this world and saying, you know what, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if I'm prime minister, it doesn't matter if I'm a prostitute.

It doesn't matter if I'm in Pharaoh's household, it doesn't matter if I have a a handful of slaves and a nephew I can't stand.

Saving faith is looking at all of it and saying, I would rather be with God's people than have the pleasures of this world.

It's just not worth it to try to fit into this world while identifying with Christ.

It's just ultimately not worth it.

I mean, time would fail me.

There's so many more examples.

Time would fail me to talk about Jeremiah, who chose to get thrown into the pit rather than staying quiet for ten more minutes.

Or Micaiah, who prophesied in front of the king.

Something the king wanted to hear.

And if he just would have stopped there, it all would have been okay, but he couldn't resist one more word to the king and finds himself in jail.

Left to be killed.

I mean, over and over and over again, you see person after person the Old Testament.

This is the common denominator with saving faith.

People that identify with God and his people over and against the plan for the world.

Do you also understand with none of these people, it didn't go well with any of them.

Do you notice where we left all of them?

We didn't read the good news with any of them.

Did you notice that?

We left Abram in a famine.

We left Moses hiding in the wilderness.

We left Rahab in a house that was about to come crumbling down and would leave Daniel in the lion's den.

Now, of course, you know it does work out for all of them if you read one more chapter.

If you just keep reading, Abram is rescued and ends up in the, you know, having an offspring and God blesses him.

And Moses ends up leading the Israelites out of slavery, and Rahab ends up coming down the rope and ends up in the line of Christ.

She becomes David's great, great, great, maybe another great in their grandmother.

And Daniel gets out of the lion's den and the king totally repents.

It's like, oh, I had no idea they would use this law against believers.

My bad.

I just signed what they put in front of me.

I didn't know.

I mean, it works out good for all of them if you read the next chapter.

And the same thing is true in your own life.

I hope you understand that.

When you identify with God and his people, if difficulties come and trials come or you get fired, or this and that come, just read the next chapter.

Keep going.

And eventually you're martyred and you wake up in heaven.

I mean, you just have to keep reading the next chapter.

It always works out for those who have faith.

I called this sermon Raising Rahab for a specific reason.

When Madison, my oldest, was born, uh Deedra's mom gave me a book on parenting.

I don't even remember what the title of the book was.

I just remember the first page of it was pretty sobering.

I was in the hospital waiting for her to be born.

I just flip opened this parenting book, and the first page of it gives some very practical parenting advice.

It was so world-changing for me.

It seems so dumb to say it out loud and say it like this was had a profound effect on me because it's super obvious.

But it said, imagine what kind of kids you want to raise.

Like, what do you want your kids to look like when they grow up?

And then model that for them, and they'll grow into that.

It was like, whoa.

That's insane.

Like you want your kids to be missionaries and talk about missionaries at home and go on mission trips and host missionaries in your house and give to missionaries.

You want to be evangelists?

Then have them see you sharing the gospel with other people.

Do you want you the you know think about what you want them to be like?

You want them to grow up and take risks for the gospel?

Then model that for them.

And the author said this Do you want them to conform to this world?

Then conform to this world.

You want them to learn that fitting in and succeeding in life is the most important thing?

Then model that.

And they'll grow into that just fine.

Nobody says, I want to raise a rahab.

Nobody says I want to I want my girls to be rahabs.

Nobody says that for obvious reasons.

Just marvel for a second about what might be lost.

You know, I hope some of you feel convicted when you say things like, if this election doesn't go this way or that way, we're gonna lose our country, and this is our last election to keep our country in the right place, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Do you recognize what you're advertising?

You're advertising this world is what counts.

This world is where it's all at.

The action is here in this world, and if things don't go according to my plan, well, I don't know what kind of country my kids will grow up in.

It's just don't they hear that?

Where do you want their home to be?

What passport do you want in their pockets?

It's better to raise your children not expecting this world to be their home.

With a boldness to stick out.

Lord, we're grateful for the gospel of Christ.

We see, of course, him modeling this for us.

He was persecuted and said, of course, if he's persecuted, we would be as well.

He was not esteemed, and if they don't esteem him, they won't see esteem his disciples.

He was neglected and abused, and said that those who are his disciples will be treated likewise.

May we value that.

Lord help us treasure the cross more than the riches of this world, recognizing that our Savior died on a tree outside the gates, even outside the gates.

It wouldn't even kill him in the city, outside the gates.

May our hearts be outside the gates as well.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.