Prostitute in a Pickle

Would you grab a Bible and open to the book of Joshua chapter 2?

Joshua 2 · chapter mention

While you're turning there? I'm going to pray for us.

Father God, we are in need of your word again this morning to

sound with power and authority and grace towards us.

So we pray for these next few moments as we turn our attention

to Your Word. We ask you, Lord, as our Father,

in the name of Christ, we ask in the power of your Spirit that

you would speak to us and that you would build up your people.

Speak with clarity, Lord, speak with comfort, speak with

challenge. Those who need to be reproved

and rebuked, would you do that through your Word?

Those that need to be encouraged and strengthened, would you do

that through your Word? And we will give you all the

credit and all the glory as you exalt the name of Christ among

us. We ask it in his name, Amen.

So you're in Joshua chapter 2. The title of today's sermon is a

Joshua 2 · chapter mention

prostitute in a pickle, which is maybe not the best title of all

time, but we are going to be reading about perhaps the

greatest woman who's ever lived, including Mother Mary.

Rahab is phenomenal and we are, it's a very familiar story to

you and it's a pretty straightforward story.

And so we're just going to take it in chunks.

And I'm going to call our attention to a few things as we

move our way through it and then have some some application for

us at the end. And so the first thing I want to

show you from Joshua chapter 2 verses one through 7 is I want

Joshua 2 · chapter mention

to show you a sanctioned lie. Can Christians ever lie?

Not to your dentist or your doctor, but you can lie to the

tyrant. OK, let's I'm just teasing.

OK, let's let's read this. So watch this.

He said the the text says. And Joshua, the son of Nun sent

two men secretly from Shatim as spies saying go view the land,

especially Jericho. Now, if you know your Bible, you

might be tempted to start sweating bullets here because

the last time the children of Israel sent spies into the land,

they decided not to go into the land.

And Joshua was one of those spies.

And so he's not sending 12, he's sending two hand picked guys.

I think I know the name of one of them, but I won't fight you

for it. I'll explain that in a little

bit. But he sends 2 spies saying go

view the the land. Especially Jericho.

Especially Jericho. The question is why especially

Jericho? Well, they're about to cross

over the Jordan and enter into the promised land, and they're

supposed to take Dominion and Jericho's this massive city with

huge walls that's going to take, If all things go normally and

God doesn't give them miraculous victory, it's going to be a

long, hard siege. It's going to take forever.

And you're going to get discouraged.

People are going to die and they're going to go hungry and

they're going to get bored. And he's going to have a fight

on his hands. And so the temptation is, hey,

why don't we just skirt Jericho and go somewhere else, go to the

next, like easy target. But the problem is you're

leaving enemies behind you. And so Jericho is the first mega

city that they come to. Joshua knows I've got to take

it. I have to take the city out.

And so we got to figure out a way to do that.

So he sends spies especially to Jericho, and they went and came

into the House of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and they

launched there. Rahab is one of the heroes of

our faith. She has mentioned repeatedly in

the New Testament as one of the great models of faith.

If you if you remember James too, James talking about

justifying faith also works and he talks about the 2 examples he

gives are Abraham and who else discow Rahab.

What are you doing, James? You're you're bypassing Joseph,

you're bypassing Noah, you're bypassing all of these great men

in the faith. And James says, I know exactly

what I'm doing. It's Abraham you need to look at

and it's Rahab, the Jericho prostitute.

And so they stay with the prostitute most likely to just

be able to come into town and and not acquire a lot of a lot

of visual from the people in Jericho, but that they go to the

prostitute's house. And it was told to the king of

Jericho, Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search

out the land. Then the king of Jericho sent to

Rahab saying, bring out the men who have come to you who entered

your house, for they have come to search out all the land.

And the woman answered them, yes, Lord, I'm a Christian.

I cannot tell a lie. They're hidden up on my roof.

That's not what she says. What does the text say?

The woman had taken the two men and hidden them, and she said

half truth told us a whole truth.

There's a whole lie, my favorite professor used to say.

She says true, the men came to me, but then here's the lie.

I didn't know where they were from, and when the gate was

about to be closed at dark, the men went out.

I do not know where the men went.

Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.

So she lies through her prostitutes teeth now the text

says. But when?

But she had brought them up up to the roof and hid them within

the stalks of flax, that she had laid an order on the roof.

You use, you use flax to make a linen.

And if you're a prostitute you you use linen to make your garbs

of prostitution. So they she hides them in the

stalks of flax. So the men pursued after them on

the way to the Jordan as far as the Fords in the gate was shut

as soon as the pursuers had gone out.

This is in no uncertain terms a sanctioned line.

So the question is did you do the right thing or did she do

the wrong thing. And they like massive hero of

mine in reading commentary his commentary on the book of

Joshua. He says, look, the Lord blessed

and affirmed her intention, but he did not like the way that she

lied to them and I think he's just dead wrong.

This is a mega theme in the scriptures.

I want to call your attention to two things about this lie.

As we think through as Christians our Christ centered

commitment to speaking the truth, the first thing I would

say is it if I were to ask you, why is it wrong for a Christian

to lie, what text would you turn to?

What would you say? Well, it says right here, don't

lie. The the the clearest text in the

world would be Exodus 20 verse 16, one of the 10 commandments.

Exodus 20:16

You shall not bear false witness.

Can anybody finish that sentence?

You shall not bear false witness.

What the rest of that verse is against your neighbor.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You're not. You can't use your tongue to get

someone in social or legal trouble by lying.

It's a thing that you just don't do.

You don't lie to hurt someone. It is disallowed in Scripture.

But listen, that's not the same thing as lying to the tyrant to

protect God's people and God's purposes.

This is not the same thing. If you have ever gone into an

airport and hidden money in your boot, you, you are doing the

same thing that Rahab did. You're just realizing I'm not in

a just society and I'm going to, I'm going to loyally align

myself with God and with his people and I'm going to protect

those that are in my power to protect.

So First off, is just the understanding that the command

is we don't bear false witness against someone, but bearing

false witness to protect someone is a very different thing.

It's the it's the same difference of a doctor going in

with a scalpel and opening someone up to go in and remove a

tumor, right? A cancerous tumor, that's one

thing. A doctor going into surgically

remove human life from a mother's womb.

It looks very similar. It ain't the same thing.

This looks like a lie, but it's not what is forbidden in Exodus

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

chapter 20. Second thing I want to think

with you about, and this is where it gets more fun and also

more complicated. The model of Scripture

concerning deception is a, a, a principle called lex talionis.

Lex talionis is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

It's justice, it's retribution, It's it's, it's balance.

And so when you think about the very first sin of our parents in

the garden, the enemy of our souls, Satan, lied to our

mother. Eve deceived her so that she

would rebel against our God. And she was, she believed him.

He bore false witness. She believed she ate, She took

some of the fruit, gave it to her husband who was with her,

and he ate. And they all fell the, the

entirety of the race fell into sin.

And from that point forward, what you see is godly men and

women, particularly in the book of Genesis, but also an exodus.

And throughout the entirety of the Bible, you see godly men and

women giving that same initial, that same initial attack back to

the seed of the serpent. So the seed of the woman can

lawfully deceive the seed of the serpent.

So let me give you a few of these.

Abraham lied repeatedly about about Sarah saying she's she's

my sister, which was, as I say, 1/2 truth told as a whole truth,

which is a whole lie. And I used to read that and say

Abraham must have been a coward. What kind of a guy doesn't say,

no, this is my wife, get your dirty hands off of her.

He says, this is my sister. Well, what was going on in that

culture is you have you have men who want to want to marry a

woman go through her brother. And so you can see this in the

in the narrative where Abraham's servant goes to find a a wife

for Isaac and he deals not with Rebecca's dad, but with

Rebecca's brother Laban. And so Abraham is is deceiving

the tyrant so that he can protect his wife.

She ends up getting taken twice anyway.

But that was not sinful. It's not him lying as a coward.

It's a very different thing. You the the interesting story

where Rebecca lies to she, she leads Jacob to lie to Isaac and

we say, wait, is that OK? Can wives do that?

But when you read that story closely, you, you would

understand Isaac got a in vitro prophecy that the older son

would serve the younger. God said the older is going to

serve the younger. And then when they grew up,

Isaac, instead of honoring and blessing Jacob, he just loved

Esau because Esau was a hunter of wild game and Isaac loved

food. And so when you read the story

of the blessing, he, Rebecca leads, leads Jacob to deceive

Isaac so that he can get Esau's blessing.

When Isaac goes out, Esau comes in and he says, father, here I

am, bless me. And Isaac says, I have left.

I've reserved nothing for you. I have no blessing for you.

And so think about what that meant for Isaac to intentionally

plan to go against the spoken word of God about who would, who

would inherit who would be the son of promise.

God said it's going to be Jacob, not Esau.

And Isaac said it's going to be Esau and not Jacob.

And I'm going to completely cut this son out of everything.

Rebecca knew that and loved her husband enough to deceive him so

that he'll wake up when she pulls the covers back.

And very interestingly, in the book of Hebrews in the Hall of

Faith, it mentions Isaac by faith blessing Jacob.

He he didn't do it by faith. He did it because she lied to

him. Well, if you again, if you go

back to that text, she deceives him.

He trembles realizing what what has just happened.

And the next chapter is he from his soul, he blesses his son of

promise. He blesses Jacob on his way.

And so you have this model of Abraham lying, of Rebecca lying

of Pua and Shipra lying to Pharaoh, kill the baby boys.

And they say, we're not going to do that.

Kill us if you must. No, they don't.

They say, hey, we're trying. We're on your side.

It's just the Hebrew midwives and the Hebrew women are very

vigorous and they and they have their babies fast before we can

get there. Kuwa and Shifra lie and are

blessed by the Lord. Abigail lies to Nabal.

Don't name your kids Nabal. It means stupid fool Nathan lies

to David in order to bring about repentance.

He's not bearing false witness against David.

He's lying to him for David's good so that he can say, hey,

here's this situation over here. And David, look without bias and

say that's wrong, that guy deserves to die.

He's going to pay fourfold. And then Nathan can say you're

the man. I, I lied for your sake to bring

about repentance. So listen to me, Rahab is simply

walking in a long line of covenant keeping believers

practicing lex talionis. I would run out of time if I

covered all of the different ways godly men and women

throughout the centuries lied, used deception to bring about

the purposes of God and are blessed for that deception.

Deception is not always simple. OK, so this brings to mind

something we need to think about about Christian loyalty.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die and he bids him

to die to all other loyalties. There's a common misnomer that

when you become a Christian now, Jesus becomes number one

priority, and then wife, and then children, and then church,

and then country and then career, and Jesus is the number

one on the priority list. That is fundamentally error.

It's the error of all errors. When you become a Christian,

listen to what Jesus says. Now the crowds accompanied him,

and he turned and he said to them, If anyone comes to me and

does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and

brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my

disciple. We say, Lord, that's a hard

word. I I love, I love my father and

my mother. I love my wife.

I love my children. I love my brothers and sisters.

I love my life. I'm supposed to hate those

things. What he's saying is when you

come to me, I am your chief loyalty.

I'm the only loyalty that matters.

And when that though that can sound oppressive, those of us

who have come and said, look, you have the words of eternal

life. I'll hate who you want me to

hate. I'll honor who you want me to

honor. I just, I'm loyal to you.

What happens is God gives us back all of those things.

He gives them back to us in a way that won't consume us.

If you love your father or your mother or your wife or your

children apart from Christ, they become your God, your chief

loyalty, and they can lead you. Think about this, those of you

who have known years of marriage as unbelievers and you're sort

of chief ethic is just make the marriage work, make it go.

And so husbands who just want to keep the peace will let their

wives lead and they won't say no, we're not going to do that

because there's no higher loyalty to to truth or to

Christ. It's just keep the peace.

But when you come to Christ and you realize Christ is my central

loyalty and everything I do and as a, as a husband, as a son, as

a father, as a pastor, everything I do is aimed at

loyalty to Jesus Christ. Life for sure becomes more

complex, but it's it's simplified in the sense that it

is loyalty to Christ, his people, his purposes, and all of

the gifts that he gives me. But every loyalty given to my

father, every loyalty to my mother, every loyalty to my

wife, to my children, to my brothers, sisters, all of those

are in essence loyalty to Christ.

Above all things, Christ is our highest loyalty.

We love Him, we love His truth, we love His people and His

purposes more than any covenant existing in the world, more than

marriage, children, country, etcetera.

Which means two things for Christians.

We wouldn't have time, but I would love to get questions so

that I can argue for that a little more robustly.

But it is true that Christ is your only loyalty, and all of

those relationships enjoy your faithfulness in direct loyalty

to Jesus Christ. Which means two things for US.

Number one, that Christians are and always have been the very

best citizens of just societies, the very best spouses, the very

best parents, the very best friends.

True Christians are the best at all of these relationships

because we have a reason above those things that tells us to be

faithful. We have loyalty to Christ that

says, I want you to be a good husband.

I want you to be a good citizen in your country.

I want you to be a good friend. And so in loyalty to him, we

become the best of all of those things because we have a reason

again above us that says be faithful here.

It also means that Christians are and always have been the

nightmare of unjust civilizations.

You realize, don't you, that original Christians were thrown

to the lions on the accusation of atheism because they would

not worship Caesar. They worship Christ and him

alone. We will not bow the knee.

And in Rome, Caesar worship is that unifying principle that was

trying to hold together a fragmenting nation.

We need one central idea to bind us all together as a civic

unity. And it's and it's Caesar worship

is what they chose. And the Christian said, no, I'm

not doing that. I don't care what you say, I

don't care what you ask. I'm not doing that.

I will pray for Caesar like we're instructed in the

scripture. I will submit where possible,

where he doesn't try to leave me in the sin.

I will pray for him. I will be the best of all

citizen, but I'm not going to buy in there.

I'm not going to be controlled or coerced into sanctioning a

country like ours that slaughters millions of innocent

babies with tax dollars. A country like ours that is

stripped individuals of life and liberty and property.

Riddle me this Christian. When is the last time you earned

a dollar and were able to keep it?

All of it never in life you've never done that thing.

They tax it on the way in. They tax it when you spend it.

They tax it when you save it. They tax it when you buy

something. When you save something, it's

taxed at every at every turn. And Christians are the ones that

will bring about a fix and a writing to that situation.

So it is an entirely Christian thinking about where our

loyalties lie. And what's got me on this bone

is Rahab. The question is, did she sin

against her neighbors by welcoming spies in so that her

town can be overthrown? And the answer is Rahab, as

you're going to see, has a higher loyalty to anybody in

Jericho. Her loyalty is to the Lord.

And so it is. It's entirely a Christian ethic

to, as an example, serve in the military while actively praying

that God would either grant U.S. National repentance.

Or that he would strike us down as a nation.

Rahab did the exact right thing and under the circumstances, and

there's no caveat to that. There's no Well, we wish you

would have figured out another way.

She did exactly what she was supposed to do in the Scripture.

Never criticizes her for that. Now, I want to show you a true

believer. Look in verse.

Look in verse 8. I want to show you what she says

she knows what her town has heard and then what she actively

believes and acts on. Look in verse 8, it says before

the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and she said to

the men, I know now I want you to to think about that.

She she's just telling them the things that she knows and she's

going to list some things. I know, number one, that the

Lord has given you the land. Rahab, brothers and sisters, is

convinced. I know this.

She's convinced of things she cannot see with her eyes.

In a conversation with a brother this weekend, talking about the

Kingdom of God. Is it here?

Is it not yet? In what way is it here and, and

all that keeps being repeated is, well, I don't see, I don't

see everything getting better. I don't see the line laying down

with the land. I don't see these things.

Well, let me ask you a question from Rahab's perspective.

How much of the promised land is in submission to God into

Israel? None of it with her eyes.

If she just goes up on the wall and looks out over the land of

Israel and says, Look how much of this is in submission to

Yahweh? Answer not a square inch of it

yet. And yet by faith she says, I

know not that you will be given the land, but that the Lord has

given you the land. I know this, and I know that the

fear of you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of

the land melt away before you. OK, These are the things she

knows. The Lord has given them the

land. Would that Christians today

would embrace Rahab's faith to trust and to act upon something

that Christ has said that we can't see with our eyes.

We have to take my faith. Something like all authority in

heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Let's just take that as gospel truth, because it's gospel

truth. It's all of it is his.

Would that we had a portion of Rahab's faith.

She knows that the fear of you has fallen upon all of us here

in Jericho and that the inhabitants of the land melt

away. The entirety of the land is

trembling at the presence of the Israelites.

And we might ask, why is that the case?

How did that did they read a social media post?

Like how did they hear about these things?

And she gives us the answer in verse 10.

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red

Sea before you when you came out of came out of Egypt.

Think about that. They have heard about what God

did 40 years ago and they're still living in terror of that

event. How much more now that Christ

has been crucified and risen from the dead and ascended to

the right hand of of all authority, how much more does

the world tremble at what God has done through Christ?

We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea

before you when you came out of Egypt.

And we've heard what you did to the 2 kings of the Amorites who

were beyond the Jordan, Sahan and Ogg, whom you devoted to

destruction. They were extremely powerful

giant kings and giant people in Israel.

Wipe the floor. And they say we know these

things. We've heard what God has done.

We've heard what you have done. And then in verse 11, she says,

and as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted and there was no

spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God.

And this is her creed. Watch this the Lord your God, He

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

Brothers and sisters, that is the most UN Canaanite confession

of faith that you can possibly imagine.

When we see some of these fights, they're going to say

things like Israel beats them in the mountains.

And so they're going to say, well, their gods must be

mountain gods. Let's fight them on the plane

because that's their mindset is you have local deities,

household gods. This is the God of the Martin

family, not the God of the the Kelly family.

So our God is going to overcome their God if need be.

There's gods of of trees and of rivers and of all of these

different things. And so you have local deities

and she says that the God of Israel, the Lord your God, he is

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

She has infinitely more faith than most American Christians.

There is one living and true God.

And she says we cannot stand against him.

And she's going to she's going to act on this faith in verse

12. And I want to show you 12

through the end what I would call the always was nature of

the old covenant. Look in verse 12.

Now then please swear to me by the Lord that as I have dealt

kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's

house and give me a sure sign. She says, don't just give me a

word, give me a sacrament. Give me something material that

I can grab hold of, I can look at and I can say, OK, I know

they're going to keep their word.

Swear to me and give me a sign that you will save a life, my

father and my mother and my brothers, my sister and all who

belongs to them, and deliver our lives from death.

And the men said to her, our life for yours, even to the

death. They are Christ to her.

If you do not tell this business of ours, then we then, when the

Lord gives us the land, notice not there's no if.

When the Lord gives us the land, we will deal kindly and

faithfully with you. She let them down by a rope

through the window, for her house was built into the city

wall so that she lived in the wall.

And she said to them, go into the hills or the pursuers will

encounter you and hide there three days until the pursuers

have returned. It's very interesting.

Go into the hills. One scholar has said this is the

mount of, of temptation, Christ baptized in the Jordan.

And then he goes into the wilderness immediately to be

tempted by the devil. And so these spies, they go into

the wilderness for three days, and then and then they return.

And then she says, Then afterward you may go your way.

The men said to her, We will be guiltless with respect to this

oath of yours that you have made us swear.

Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie.

And if you write in your Bibles, this is it, the scarlet cord.

Tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us

down, and you shall gather into your house your father, your

mother, your brothers, and all your father's household.

And then if anyone goes out of the doors, circle that word.

It's massively important. If anyone goes out of the doors

of your house into this street, his blood shall be on his own

head and we shall be guiltless. But if a hand is laid on anyone

who is with you in the house, this blood shall be on our head.

Please, please see a new Passover for this Canaanite

woman in her family. You have, you have, you have a

red cord hanging and you have protection at the door.

And they are now the new Angel of death coming in and she's the

new Israel enjoying protection. Stay within the door.

But if you tell this business of ours and verse 20, then we shall

be guiltless with respect to your oath that you have made us

swear. And she said, according to your

words, so be it. Then she sent them away and they

departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in

the window. OK, few things here.

The always was nature of the covenant.

This scarlet cord has two big ideas to it.

The first is the word. There I have it on great

authority is thread. It don't see a rope or a flag or

a banner. It's just a thread that's

hanging. It's a cord which can't be

really seen well by anybody, but gone.

It's just like the Passover, the Passover blood.

You were to slaughter a Passover lamb and put the blood on the on

the doorpost and on the lentil. And it did.

You were not to see the blood. You were to shut the door.

God was to see the blood and God was to pass on.

So God is going to make the Wallace fall flat and he's going

to see and he's going to honor the window that he sees the cord

in and they're going to protect those that are behind the door.

And the second thing that I want you to know about this cord is

again, the idea that Rahab's, her vocation was prostitution.

And there's, there's a very high likelihood that this scarlet

cord came from the garment of her prostitution that she has,

that she has torn it asunder. She has turned her back on

former life and she has identified herself with the

people of God. And I want you to be reminded of

this, of this biblical mega theme of two witnesses to a city

about to be destroyed, some sign on the door and protection

beyond the door. So remind, be reminded of Enoch

and of Noah who preached to the antediluvian world.

And then the text says very highlights very significantly

that when Moses or when Noah finished the ark, they went in

and God shut the door and everyone in the door survived

and everyone outside the door perished.

You have how many angels went into Sodom and Gomorrah before

it was destroyed? 2 And is there a theme?

Is there a door there? Yes, there is.

The men come, the homosexual men come and say we want to rape the

men that came to you. And the angels pull them in and

shut the door and they strike them in with blindness.

And they, the text says that they groped about all night to

try and find the door and everyone inside the door was

rescued. Moses and Aaron come into Egypt.

And the highlight, the climax of all of the plagues and the

judgment that got poured out was the Passover where they were to

take blood and paint it over the door and on the sides of the

door. And everyone within the door was

protected. The Angel of death came and saw

the blood and he passed over their house.

You have the Jericho spies protected in the protected those

that were, that were inside Rahab's door.

And then you have, I believe, John and Christ coming to

Jerusalem, Christ being the door and all within him as a they,

they came as a witness against Jerusalem.

And when he came to destroy that place, all that are hidden in

the door, we're safe. OK, three things.

Closing matters. First of all, this gospel.

This is gospel and story form in some fantastic ways.

I can't prove it, but I told you, I think I know one of the

names of one of the spies. And I think his name is Salman.

Not salmon like you eat or catch in a river, but salmon.

And the reason I think that it's Salman is because we're told

later on in the Bible that this Rahab, the Jericho Canaanite

prostitute, was not just rescued, but she married a man

named Salman. And Salman was a descendant of a

guy named Judah who who was prophesied about him that he

would give birth to the Messiah. The Messiah would come from his

line. And so Rahab marries Salman,

who's a descendant of Judah. And Rahab and Salman have a son

and his name is Boaz. And Boaz married a Moabite, A

persona non grata in Israel. Moabites.

All Moabites are to die to the third and 4th generation.

And Boaz, whose Mama was a Jericho prostitute, looks out on

on Ruth and says, I'm going to marry this gal.

And they have they have a son who has a son who is David.

And David marries a woman that he had no business marrying in

Bathsheba. And they give birth to Solomon.

And we read in Matthew's account of the lineage of Christ that

here is this Jericho prostitute, one among many scarlet women in

the lineage of Christ that that the that the people of God

viewed as unclean. This is gospel and story form

because Rahab is a Jericho prostitute under a just sentence

of death and condemnation due both to her family.

She's an Ammonite and a Canaanite.

So she's under the judgment of God according to law.

She's under the judgment of God. So just not only her family, but

also her vocation. She was a prostitute, which is

which is antithetical to life with a holy God.

And yet, listen to me, brothers and sisters, If you don't hear

me on anything else, hear me on this.

She doesn't just get rescued. That would be awesome.

Jericho prostitute. We're not going to kill you with

the rest of Jericho because you've got faith.

You're free to go and roam about the country.

Much better than that. You're free to marry into

Messiah's line. From your loins will come the

one who will be the Redeemer of all of the universe.

She doesn't just get pardoned, she gets pursued.

She goes from being the whore of Jericho to being the Princess of

God's people. Listen to me.

It is her, the fruit of her womb, that is seated on the

throne of authority in the heavens right now.

This is the woman of faith that is the embodiment of the Church.

We who are enemies now, rescued and reconciled and corporately

wed to King Jesus, glory be his name.

So Christian, you are not merely tolerated.

Think about what a great news that would be that like, yeah,

you have this this list of sin that's against you.

Christ died to set you free, and now he's going to bring you to

heaven and he's going to send you into the corners to be free

to kind of wander about his sheep.

That would be amazing, much better than death and damnation.

But how much more wonderful that He redeemed you, not just to set

you free, but He redeemed you to make you His own, His own

people, to have deep and intimate relationship with you.

You have the gospel and story form in the term of covenants

and families. I said Once Upon a time, a long

time ago, that God does not save on the family plan, which was a

well-intentioned error. Everybody, every one of us needs

to repent and trust in Christ and receive from Him mercy.

So in that sense that there is a truism to that statement.

But to say that God, God does not save on the family plan is

to utterly abuse and ignore the scripture pop quiz.

Who gets saved here? Rahab.

Just Rahab? No, she intercedes for her

father, her mother, and all of the people that belong in her

family and all of them get saved.

So does does being a part of a covenant family help you come to

saving knowledge of God? Please say yes.

Would you rather be 1 of Rahab's family members that get saved

and therefore gets to do life with Israel, or would you rather

be one of the Jericho people that just die when the walls

fall? Well, there's great blessing in

the families of God. And so there is a sense of God's

covenant continuity to people and to families, and we see this

lived out here. Secondly, if we come away from

the Old Testament with an idea that Israel is good and Canaan

is bad, or that Jew is good and Gentile is bad, we have not been

paying attention. The original promise to the

original Jew, it was Abraham, was that through him one would

come there. You would have one seed come

from Abraham, and through that seed all of the families on the

earth would be blessed. Not just Abraham's physical

descendants, but all the families on the earth would be

blessed. And as we read the Scriptures,

we see men like Jobe and Melchizedek and Abimelech and

Jethro, the mixed multitude of the Egyptians that came out

under the Exodus. We see Uriah the Hittite,

Sheba's queen, Ruth the Moabite naming the Syrian the widow of

Zaratha, the centurion in Christ day that caused him to marvel.

I have not found faith like this among any in Israel.

And perhaps the most important, Rahab, the Jericho prostitute.

It was never just about Israel, brothers and sisters.

It has always been about Christ, and through Christ to all

nations. And then lastly, you have the

gospel and story form. When you see that the the works

of God have been accomplished in public, it is important for us

to bear in mind that what God did in the Exodus and the

destruction of Sahan and Ogg had universal ramifications.

He did not do these things in a vacuum.

He didn't do them in a corner. He didn't hide them.

He did them publicly in broad daylight, and the entire world

trembled when they watched it. What God had done 40 years ago

to rescue His people had already won the battle in Joshua's day.

How much more can we view the crucifixion and resurrection and

exaltation of Jesus Christ through that same lens?

Does the world know about Christ?

Of course they do, because God did it publicly.

Have you not noticed that in our culture, you can be a radical

Islamite? You can be a baby murdering

feminazi. You can be a sex cult rock star,

a lesbian dance teacher, a dirty dude in women's underwear on a

float in public shaking your goods in front of children.

You can be a pedophile in politics and nobody cares.

You just get away with all of that stuff.

But what you can't do is say Christ is Lord and everyone must

bow the knee or perish. You can't do that.

We won't tolerate that. We'll tolerate all other manner

of evil, but we won't tolerate that because the exclusivity of

Jesus Christ means something to the world.

It means that he still has the power to conquer nations and

that he is bent on doing just that.

He is feared by all and obeyed by some.

This should be radically encouraging to us that the

reason the Jericho folks stayed stayed up at night was because

God and his people were at their gate.

And this is the reason our politicians restrict and

persecute Christians at every turn.

They're not doing it nearly to the measure that they want to do

it. God be praised, but they're

aiming at those things. And the reason is because at

every turn, they know what Christ has done in history.

When people simply trust and obey him, they know that every

single place where the gospel has rooted down into a culture,

that culture has become a Christian culture.

It is a it is a health. Christianity is a healthy

disease that inflicts everything it touches, and they know that.

And they don't want the lordship of Christ.

Christ has never failed to fail wicked regimes when his people

engage in the fight with faith and valor.

And that is why wicked regimes fear the church rightly aligned

according to the mind of Christ above all things.

And it is why we should look at the world with optimism, knowing

that Christ will have the prize for which he died.

And that prize is the inheritance of all nations, all

nations. As Trey read us, we'll give

thanks to this God because they, all of them will speak of the

wonderful works that he has done.

And so. To you, I say, Rahabs one and

all, come to the Lords Table if you have repented of your sin

and then baptized into his triune name.

Then come to the table. If you are trying to hold sin

that Christ abominates in one hand, greed, idolatry,

homosexuality, adultery, porn, cowardice.

If you're holding these things in one hand and reaching for the

bread and the cup with the other, then I'm telling you

because I love you. This table might just be the

last thing you ever do. It might be the last thing you

ever do if you're trying to hold on to your former self.

Hold on to your prostitution while reaching for the Lord.

No, no. But if you have burned the ships

like Rahab torn your garment, and you're, you are desperate to

know the mercy of Christ, then this is your table.

There are none of us so foul in our sin that he refuses us a

place at this table. Brothers and sisters, Rahab is

our mother and she was a prostitute.

She is our example. And so I don't care who you are.

I don't care what you've done, if you have repented and you've

come to Christ, this is your table.

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Let me pray for us. Father, it is marvelous to see

how you would include a woman like Rahab and not just include

her, not just rescue her from destruction, but also marry her

into the lion of the lion of the tribe of Judah.

God, what a blessing for our souls to see the type of people

that you save. Lord, as we come to this table,

I pray for those of us that are struggling with guilt,

struggling to believe the promises that you have spoken

over us, promises of redemption and reconciliation, promises of

love. Holy Spirit, would you come?

Would you take this word? It's encouragement from Rahab.

And would you, would you give us rest in these things, and would

you grant us the faith that she had to come to the table and to

take up the bread and the wine and to enjoy the gifts that

Christ lived and died and rose and ascended so that we can

have? Would you meet us at the table?

We ask it in the name of Jesus, Amen.