Joshua: 2-Suspect Spies and a Shady Lady Audio Transcript
Joshua: Pursuit of the Promise
Joshua: Pursuit of the Promise
03-JOSHUA 2 – SUSPECT SPIES AND A SHADY LADY – Ryan Aufenkamp
Intro
That’s what we’ve come to do this morning, is to praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Spirit. As we look at His Word, we know that His Word is God-breathed, and so as we read His Word, He speaks to us through it. If you have your Bible, go ahead, get it out, turn it on, turn over to Joshua chapter 2.
If you don’t know me, my name is Ryan, I’m one of the five pastors here. And we had the realization this couple weeks ago, maybe last week in the office, that all five of us pastors, actually last week, was our last week being all in the office together for I think the next six weeks.
Jacob just left, Jacob and his wife Cana, they are in the Czech Republic, they’re suffering right now over in Europe. That was a joke, they’re, yeah, no one, yeah, they’re not. They’re over in the Czech Republic at a conference through a missions organization called Josiah Venture, and they’ll be attending classes and a conference about what it looks like to minister to youth in a post-Christian context, and that would be really, really valuable for them, especially as our culture and sort of our world really moves post-Christian, and so that’ll be a really good time for them.
They’ll spend some time just vacationing over there afterward as well, so they’ll be gone for a couple weeks, and then right as soon as they get back, Toby and Ryan Donovan will be leaving for Rock Nest up in Canada.
They’ll be gone for two weeks serving up there at Rocknest Ranch. It’ll be Toby’s first time actually being up there at Rocknest, and so they’re going with a team, and that’ll be really good, and then right after they get back, I will be leaving for a short paternity leave because we’re having baby boy, number three in our household, so yeah, thank you.
We’re so excited about that, and just in the last kind of couple weeks of preparing for another kiddo in our house, we’re excited that—I’m excited that we’ll have another boy in the house. Right now, we have lots of girls in the house, and it’s great.
It’s great, but it shows, as well, so in the midst of all of that, Joe will be here consistently, which is also awesome.
We’re so grateful for Joe and his ministry, and so just, yeah, I wanted to let you know about things you can be praying for the pastoral staff over the next month or two, and if you’re new or just joining us, we just started a series through Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, and so you haven’t missed much.
We’ve only started two weeks ago through this continued story of the Israelites as they enter into the promised land. Last week, Toby preached chapter one in which God is preparing Joshua, who is a new Moses-like figure who’s gonna lead his people into the land of promise, and God gives him some critical words for being prepared for the task at hand.
Spies!
Joshua chapter two this morning adds to the suspense that has been building of the Israelites crossing over. Before they cross over, Joshua is going to send spies into the land, and so our text this morning is full of spies and espionage. Who here is a fan of a good spy or espionage story or book or movie?
Okay, some of you, so some of you are James Bond fans, I assume, right? British spy, MI6, 007, right? Known for his cool gadgets and his cooler hair and swagger. This is a pro tip for anybody that just wants instant swagger. If anybody asks you your name, just reply first with your last name, right?
Like, Aufenkamp, Ryan Aufenkamp, right? It’s an instant trick for swagger. It’s great. We can learn from James Bond. That might be the only thing I’ve learned from him, but that’s okay. But if you’re into the more American style of spy or espionage, you think Mission Impossible, right?
Any Mission Impossible fans here? Okay, a couple of you, Ethan Hunt, yeah, not quite as good as James Bond. I’m convinced he puts a mask on every movie because of that, trying to cover up. If you’re not into either of those two, then maybe you’re into the Bourne series.
Jason Bourne, anybody into, yeah, okay, I feel like we all resonate with that. If you don’t know the Bourne series, it’s essentially a spy organization that made this guy named Jason Bourne into a spy.
But then he loses his memory, and he’s a danger to the spy organization. So the spies spy on the spy that they made into a spy, and he spies back on them. It’s just a lot of spying. So if you’re into spies, Jason Bourne, all of those, they’re thrilling series, right?
Of espionage and characters going behind enemy lines, gathering intel, stopping the bad guys. And while all of those are awesome, none of them come close to what is in our text this morning. What really does come close to our text this morning is more like the series or the movie Johnny English.
If any of you have ever seen Johnny English, yeah, right on, Matt Strawn’s like, yes. It’s like, it’s Mr. Bean essentially in a spy suit, and he just bumbles his way through missions and somehow succeeds, and it’s awesome.
Or if you’re not familiar with Johnny English, you probably are familiar with Get Smart, right? How many of you are Get Smart fans? Yes. Okay, so Johnny English, Maxwell Smart, a lot more like the spies that we see in our narrative this morning. The spies that Joshua sends, they are nothing like James Bond, Ethan Hunt, or Jason Bourne.
They are given one job, which is to report on the land of Canaan and on Jericho, and they fail to do so. Pretty much immediately after they’re sent on their mission, they find themselves in the house of a prostitute, which can’t be good. They are caught almost immediately, and their lives are put into jeopardy, and they’re completely dependent on a foreigner to save them, and yet somehow, after all of this, their mission succeeds, right? It’s very reminiscent of the story of Johnny English or Maxwell Smart.
And it’s very intentional. In Joshua 2, we get our first glimpse at how God intends to prove his faithfulness, and it’s not through the quick wit and cool gadgets and cunning plans and epic espionage of these two spies that go into the land.
In Joshua 2, we see that God’s plan to give his people the land of Canaan had been enacted long ago by his own sovereign hand, and his people, even these bumbling couple of spies, they’ll be used as heralds of his coming reign, and heralds in ways unexpected.
So if you have strength to stand this morning, let’s read the narrative, Joshua chapter 2. Stand with me in honor of God’s word. I’m reading from the ESV. We’re going to read the whole of chapter 2, so it’s a long text this morning, but there’s a lot of cool details in here.
Joshua 2
And Joshua, the son of Nun, sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, Go view the land, especially Jericho. And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and lodged there. 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.
But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.
But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords, and the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out. Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you.
For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. 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, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that as I have dealt kindly with you, you will also deal kindly with my father’s house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.
And the men said to her, Our life for yours, even to death. If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the Lord gives us the land, we will deal kindly and faithfully with you. Then she let them down by a rope through the window. For her house was built into the city wall, and 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. Then afterward you may go on your way. And 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 this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household. Then if anyone goes out the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall all be guiltless.
But if a hand is laid on anyone who is within you in the house, his blood shall be on our head. But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be guiltless with respect to your oath that you have made us swear. And she said, According to your word, so be it.
And she sent them away, and they departed. She tied the scarlet cord in the window. They departed and went into the hills and remained there three days until the pursuers returned. And the pursuers searched all along the way and found nothing. Then two men returned.
They came down from the hills and passed over and came to Joshua, the son of Nun. And they told him all that had happened to them. And they said to Joshua, Truly, the Lord has given all the land into our hands. And also all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us.
Let me pray.
Father, thank you for this really important story that you put right here before the Israelites are going to enter the land. You place this narrative really strategically to help us to hone in on this one little interaction between Rahab and these spies.
And Lord, you have so much to show us here from the text this morning about your mercy and how it extends beyond enemy lines. Lord, you love even people who seem so far away from you, and you show us that through this testimony of Rahab’s. And so, Lord, help us this morning to see how vast your love is.
We pray that in Jesus’ name, amen.
Go ahead and have a seat.
Story Overview
All right, let me give us just a little recap of the main details in our story here. This scene, first and foremost, it should make us think back to Numbers chapter 13, right? Moses had convened an envoy of 12 spies, and he sent them into Canaan, the promised land.
And they go and spy out the land, and they see that it’s flowing with milk and honey, and they also see that the men there are really giant. And they come back, and 10 of them give a bad report, right? We remember this? And the whole of the congregation hears this report, and they rise up against Moses, and they say, we don’t want to go to the promised land. We want to go back to Egypt, right? So that is kind of the background of this narrative.
Now Joshua is a new Moses-like figure, and right at the start of his entering into the promised land, before they’re going to enter into the promised land, he does the same thing as Moses, but with two critical alterations to that plan.
Remember last time, only two people came back with a good report. And so this time, Joshua only sends two people into the land. And last time, Moses had told the whole congregation that this is what he was going to do. This time, Joshua sends the spies into the land in secret.
He doesn’t want the congregation to know in case there’s a bad report that comes back. I think it’s because Joshua knows that he’s going to go whether or not the report is good or not, right?
So things are off to a good start in the narrative, right? So Joshua sends the spies into the land, and then verse two, they go into the land and they find themselves in the house of a prostitute. What are you doing, people, right? What’s going on? Why are you in Rahab’s house of all places?
And not only that, but the verse after that shows us that these spies are terrible at their jobs, right? It’s as though they waltzed into the city, waving their national flag and saying, hey, guys, we’re just across the Jordan River. We’re going to come and take over your city. Can you just tell us a little bit about what the walls are made of and, you know, here’s our whole plan, right?
Because the king of Jericho, he seems to know everything about them. He knows they’re Israelites. He knows that they’re about to enter into the promised land, and he knows exactly where they went, that they’re in Rahab’s house. So from the get-go, the whole narrative seems like it’s just falling apart. What is going on? These spies are horrible at their jobs.
And then the most unexpected thing happens. Rahab, the prostitute, gets caught. She harbors them. She lies about how they’ve already come and gone when really she’s hidden them in her bedroom, right?
And if that wasn’t unexpected enough, she then later comes up to them and starts to converse with them. And what does she confess?
That Yahweh, their God, the Israelite God, the only God, is the Lord of heaven and earth, right? How unexpected for this lady in the land of Canaan to be proclaiming these things about the Israelites’ God. She helps them to escape and the Israelites, they go back, the spies, they proceed to tell Joshua everything that happened.
And I’m sure that Joshua probably has his head in his hands and he’s just thinking like, I really sent these guys into the land. You guys failed, right? But why is this narrative here? Why are the spies just, I think it’s really intentional that we see them as like total failures at their job, right?
I think that that’s a critical piece of the narrative. What is this text here for? In Joshua 2, we get an up-close look at what God was doing in the hearts of the Canaanites before the Israelites ever entered the Promised Land. And we see this through the perspective of this woman named Rahab.
It’s one of the seldom times in the scriptures in which the narrative zooms in on one of the enemies of God’s people. And it shows us that God’s mercy reaches even to those who seem furthest away from the kingdom. With the majority of our time this morning, we’re gonna focus on Rahab’s confession and the spies’ response in the very middle of the narrative.
Rahab’s Confession
It’s beautiful. The first thing we see in Rahab’s confession is that God had been at work in the land of Canaan through all of the Israelites’ wilderness wandering.
Seems like, you know, everything, uh, well, like, Israel had just been a failure and they’re gonna enter into the land and what, how was the promised land, how were the Canaanites gonna know anything about God? And what becomes apparent through Rahab’s confession is that God had already been at work in the land of Canaan.
Verse nine. She confesses, I know that the Lord has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land, they melt away before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt.
And what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.
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, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.
Rahab confesses to these spies that her heart and the hearts of all in the land of Canaan, they are melting in a fear of God.
She proclaims a fear of God
She recounts to the Israelites, essentially, the whole of their story up to this point, that God had brought them out of the land of Egypt, that he had used them to defeat these other kings and all of their wilderness wandering. And she proclaims that we’re afraid, our hearts are melting in fear of what God is going to do in coming into the promised land.
And I want us to notice that it’s not as though Rahab doesn’t know who’s behind it all.
Notice the name that she uses in verse 10. She says, for the Lord, that is Yahweh, your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. If we remember back to Exodus for a moment, this was God’s expressed purpose in doing all of the signs and wonders and sending the plagues on Pharaoh and the Egyptians in Egypt.
God had expressed, I’m doing this to get glory over you, Pharaoh, so that the world, that the nations would know that I am God. Right, and as the Israelites, they come up out of Egypt and they cross the Red Sea, right on the other side in Exodus chapter 15, they sing this song called the Song of the Sea or the Song of Moses.
And in the middle of the song, they sing, the peoples have heard, they tremble. Pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed. Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them.
All right, and these aren’t just empty words. God had done this and he was doing it actively in the land of Canaan. God was going before the Israelites and we see in this narrative in Joshua chapter two that God was tilling the soil before the Israelites ever set their foot in the land of Canaan.
And I came across this quote from an author and speaker, Nancy Guthrie, that I really appreciated, specifically speaking of Rahab.
She says, “While the hearts of all the rest of the people in Jericho melted into fear,” this is really important, “Rahab’s heart melted into faith.”
Rahab feared God. But it didn’t just stop at acknowledging that God is God in the heavens and the earth. It made her turn to him.
God is not powerless to save, even in pagan lands and in prostitutes’ homes. God has all the power to save. And we see it here in this narrative after professing a fear of God, Rahab takes a critical next step. She says 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 that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters and all who belong to them and deliver our lives from death.
Now, Rahab’s faith in God didn’t just stop at belief, but she sought refuge in him. She had the audacity to say, I acknowledge that God exists and is there mercy for me? She’s afraid of God’s might, she’s heard of all that he has done. She’s the first one to admit that God has given the land of Canaan to Israel.
She seeks refuge in God
But unlike the typical responses to fear, which are flight or fight, right? That’s the typical response to fear. It’s as though Rahab is standing there and she’s looking up at storm clouds that are up in the sky, right? If you just picture this with me, if you are standing there and you see that scene in front of you, right, are you gonna put your hands up and you’re gonna say, all right, bring it on storm?
Who here has the audacity to try to fight that? And who here is gonna look at that storm and say, yeah, I bet I could outrun it, right? No, weather systems move fast. The only right response when you see this in the sky is to do what? Seek shelter and to take refuge.
And this is exactly what Rahab does. She sees this on the horizon and she doesn’t try to stand her ground and fight it. She doesn’t try to run away from it. She sees it as it is and she says, I gotta find shelter. I have to find refuge. And so what does she have the audacity to do?
She sees these spies and she sees that even though they’re terrible spies, they’re probably, I don’t know, in the city telling people that they’re Israelites.
She sees them and she sees an opportunity and she brings them into her house and she asks, Is there mercy for me? Is there mercy for my family? And she’s asking more than to just be spared. She’s asking, will you take me into your family? Can I become one of you?
She’s asking, Can I come under the banner of the Israelite name? Can I join your household and be protected and sheltered?
Her fear of God drives her into a faith that would be willing to give up her whole way of life, her nationality, to become a completely new and different person.
She gives up everything and it’s for the sake of her family as well.
Friends, some of you are here today. I believe this. Some of you are here today and you look up to the heavens, you look up to God and you acknowledge him. You say, okay, I believe there’s a God. I believe he’s real, but I’m not gonna seek shelter. I’m not gonna seek refuge. If God wants me to change, I’m gonna put my hands up and I’m gonna fight him or I’m gonna run away.
Some of you are here today and you acknowledge that God exists, but when he calls you to change your life, you say, no, that’s too much. I’ll give you my belief, but I won’t give you a cent more. And friends, that is faith, but I must inform you that is not saving faith.
You can believe God exists all you want, but that is not saving faith.
Saving faith is a faith like Rahab’s, who would believe that God exists and seek refuge in him. That would surrender and say, okay, I’m willing to give up my whole way of life, my nationality to come under your banner. Is there protection? Is there mercy for me? It’s willing to say that.
Friends, Jesus reminds us that even the demons believe, but demons, they hate everything that they believe about God.
She displays radical obedience
What saves us, saving faith is a belief in God that leads to a repentant heart that seeks refuge in him. And notice that Rahab’s faith and her surrender, it leads her to a radical obedience. All right, Rahab has already harbored the spies. She misled the guards and she ultimately saved their lives.
And just a side note, as I was reading this week and reading commentaries and just thinking about this, we could get really caught up in the fact that Rahab lied to the guards, right?
Like, does this mean that God condones the lying of people? And I’ll just say, if we get hung up on that question in the narrative, then we’re totally missing the point, right? And the Bible is written, sometimes it’s written really prescriptively, but what this story is, it’s descriptive of an event, right?
Rahab’s lying is not prescriptive for you. God hates lying. But what we see here is this woman, Rahab, she sees that the will of God is to give the Canaanite land to the Israelites. And so she does whatever is in her power to seek God’s will over her own, right?
And that’s the critical part of the story. She acts in obedience to God’s will and she risks everything for it. What she realizes is that she has nothing to lose. She has everything to gain. If Yahweh truly is who she believes him to be, she’ll lose everything if she tries to fight him.
She’ll gain everything if she joins hands with him and obeys him. So she doesn’t try to twist things to thwart God’s will. She seeks to see it come to pass.
Friends, saving faith, it leads to a radical obedience in seeking God’s will over our own, his kingdom first.
James, the brother of Jesus in the New Testament, he writes a letter and he goes to great lengths in his letter to explain that faith and works are two sides of the same coin. Right?
And in James chapter two, he actually uses Rahab as an example in his argument. The faith and works, they go together, he says in 2:25 through 26, in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way.
For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. God had tilled the soil of Rahab’s heart and she responded by placing her faith in Yahweh, seeking his mercy and radically obeying his will and plans.
And here’s the incredible thing, if we fast forward in the narrative to Joshua chapter six, that the Israelites, they cross over the Jordan River, they enter the land of Canaan, they go and march around the city of Jericho, the walls fall flat, and we read Joshua 6:25, but Rahab the prostitute and her father’s household and all who belonged to her, Joshua saved alive. And she has lived in Israel to this day because she hid the messengers who Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. And not just her, but her whole family, they were saved. She had the audacity to ask for mercy. And God extended it. He saved somebody who was the least likely to be saved. His arm extended across enemy lines, tilled the soil of Rahab’s heart, and saved her.
My hope this morning, friends, is that someone, maybe it’s you, would read this story, would hear this story this morning, and you would say, wow, if God really has mercy for somebody like that, who is worshiping pagan gods, who is a prostitute, then maybe he would have mercy on me.
Maybe that’s you this morning. You feel like, man, I’ve messed up so much in my life. This story is here to remind us that God’s arm is greater and stronger and further than you could ever run away. God is powerful to save, even in foreign lands, even in prostitutes’ homes.
And I also want to remind you this morning that it’s not just Rahab that are saved, but it’s her whole family that are saved by her faith. And there are some of you that you’ve got family members in your households, maybe it’s your kids, or maybe it’s siblings, or maybe it’s your parents, aunts and uncles, it could be anybody.
And you’re watching their life, and maybe you’ve been praying for them, but you’re watching their life as they just run, hightail away from God and make all sorts of choices that are averse to the Lord. And I want to remind you this morning that God saved Rahab’s whole family by her faith.
Friends, if you have somebody like that in your family or a friend in your life, do not give up on them. Continue to pursue them, continue to pray for them, continue to seek opportunity to sow seeds into their life. You never know how God is tilling the soil of somebody’s heart.
If he tilled the soil of Rahab’s heart, he could still till the soil of anybody’s heart.
There’s no one who is too far gone to be saved. Do not give up on the hope of the gospel at work in the lives of people who seem so far away from God. God will continue to work, be encouraged this morning, take heart.
The Spies Reconnaissance
Now I briefly want to shift our attention to the other main characters in the narrative: our friends, the air quote “spies”, who we might actually call Dumb and Dumber. And I joke about them, like they’re not great at their jobs, but God uses them for some really miraculous things. Two things that I want to point out from these spies. First, their response to Rahab in verse 14.
Rahab asks for mercy, for kindness, and verse 14, the men said to her, Our life for yours even to death. If you do not sell this business of ours, then when the Lord gives us the land, we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.
Rahab asks for mercy and these spies, they’re not reticent to extend it.
They know and extend God’s mercy
They know and they extend the mercy of God to her. And one could argue that this is just maybe simply the response of somebody who’s in a horrible situation, right? These spies, like, won’t they just say anything to get out of the situation that they’re in?
And you could believe that, but I think that their response is so telling of their heart.
How do they respond? They don’t just say, yeah, let’s make an oath. They say, your life for ours. I believe what they’re doing is they’re saying, yes, Rahab, come be a part of our family. Right here, right now, you have proclaimed and professed Yahweh as Lord. Come be one of us. Come be under our protection, right?
And there’s a critical detail in here in verse 12, when Rahab is confessing and she’s asking for mercy, Rahab requests that the Israelites would deal kindly with her and her father’s household. And that word in the Hebrew, kindly, is the word chesed.
And that word, it means, will you deal faithfully or loyally? And the Israelites, they knew that word really well. Why were they able to extend kindness to her, chesed? It’s because that’s the way that God had described His own love for His people, as a loyal love.
He’s telling them back in Deuteronomy chapter 7 why He has saved them. He says this in Deuteronomy 7:7 through 9, It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set His love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all people.
But it’s because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love, that is chesed, with those who love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations.
God does not show His loyal chesed to His people because they’re the greatest people. He shows it because that’s His character. Because He chose to set His love on their forefathers and He swore an oath and He intended to keep it. And so the Israelites know firsthand it’s not because we’re a great people that God loves us. It’s simply because that’s the character of God.
And so what do these men do?
When they hear that Rahab is hoping for kindness, they say, well, that’s the character of our God. We will gladly extend chesed to you. We will gladly extend our loyalty to you because God first extended His loyalty to us and has continued to be faithful to us.
Friends, if you know the love of God this morning, it is only because God first loved you. And it’s not because you were the smartest or the most special or whatever you might think in your head. It’s because God chose to set His love on you. And so friends, you get the privilege, just like these spies, of showing that chesed off to the world, of going into your neighborhoods or your families or your workplaces or even to the least of these, to those who seem furthest removed from God and His kingdom.
And if there’s an inkling of somebody who would say, yes, I’m curious about the love of God, we have the opportunity as His ambassadors to go and extend that, to not be reticent to extend it to people, even people who are currently living in sin. God will work out those details later.
But if anybody calls on the name of the Lord and repents and believes, they will be saved. And we get that opportunity as Christ’s ambassadors to bring that message to the world. That’s you and me, church. May we see it. God used these spies as a means of grace to Rahab, the least of all people, and saved her.
What good news.
And secondly, skipping down to the end of the narrative, we see another beautiful act from these silly spies. They come back to Joshua and instead of reporting their own truth about what happened in the events of them going into the promised land, they report God’s truth.
They report God’s truth, not their own
If you remember back to Numbers chapter 13, there’s a big contrast here. Numbers 13, the spies enter the land and most of them come back and they twist all that they saw based on their own perceptions. They limit the hand of God. They say, there’s no way that God is giving us a land that’s full of giant people.
And what do these spies do?
They come back to Joshua, they return in 2:23 through 24, they came down the hills and passed over and came to Joshua, the son of Nun, and they told him all that had happened. And they said to Joshua, truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands.
And also all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us. Right? And I just think that this is amazing because they could have come back to Joshua and they could have said everything was terrible. It was a mission failure. We went in, we tried to do the spy thing. They found us out immediately. Some crazy lady saved us and we barely got away with our lives. There is no way that God is going before us and giving us the land, right?
They easily could have spun the story and said that this is the story. There’s no way we should enter the promised land. They come back and they report the one piece of truth that God had given them, through the mouth of Rahab, that the land was theirs, that God had given it to them.
They choose to see things from God’s perspective and not twist it based on their own perceptions. And I was thinking about this this week and I was so convicted. This week was just, it’s been a really long week in our household. I’ve been here a lot and a lot of evenings and I had a moment where I was talking with Emily in all sorts of situations.
One of our toddlers is teething right now and not sleeping well.
So I just had this moment with Em where I was like, everything is awful. Like there’s just nothing good right now, right? How many of you have like, been there? I’m sure some of you have been there. And I was so convicted as I was reading this text this week and having my own internal pity party that like, these spies, they could have easily said that.
Everything is awful, but no, they look for God’s hand and they look for the little thread of grace. They look for the ways that God was speaking in the midst of their, what could have become a failed mission, that God caused to succeed. And how often do I get out of my own head and my own little pity parties and look at things from God’s perspective and look for the ways that God has weaved his mercy into my life this week?
Oh church, that we would be a people that are, are reticent to look at things from our own perspectives that we would pull back and look at things from the perspective of how has God spoken to me this week? How has God weaved his mercy in through my life, even in hard circumstances?
One last thing I want to point out before we wrap up this morning is the sign of salvation that’s given in, in our text, right? Rahab asked for a sign that, that she would be saved. So look at verse 15 with me:
And then she let them down by rope through the window for her house was built into the city wall so that she lived in the wall.
Skipping to verse 17, Then the men said to her, we will be guiltless with respect to this oath of yours that you’ve made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land, we shall tie, you shall tie the scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down and you shall gather into your house, your father and mother, your brothers and all your father’s household.
Verse 21, She said, according to your words, so be it. Then she sent them away and they departed. She tied the scarlet cord in the window.
The Red Thread
If you notice, it’s this red thread, this scarlet cord, that is the thing that saves both the Israelite spies and Rahab in this narrative. It’s the same rope, right?
They’re let down through this, this red scarlet rope through the window. And they say, this is the sign. If you tie this in your window, everybody that is in your house when we come, they will be saved.
And church, some would say that that is just a tertiary detail in the text, that it doesn’t really mean that much.
I think it means everything. That scarlet thread, it is the sign of salvation for us. There is a red thread that weaves its way all throughout the scriptures. It started back in Genesis chapter three, when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. And what God does after cursing the ground and cursing circumstances around child rearing and cursing the snake is He covers Adam and Eve in the skins of an animal.
He sacrifices, there’s bloodshed, it’s the first in the world. And He uses it to cover the sins of His people.
And in Exodus chapter 12, what is the thing that, that the sign that covers God’s people from the coming wrath of God? It’s the blood of a perfect lamb that’s to be painted over their doorposts so that God’s judgment would pass over them.
And in Leviticus chapter 16, what is the thing that cleanses the whole camp of the Israelites on the day of atonement? Sacrificial blood of a lamb on their behalf. High priest goes into the holy of holies.
We fast forward all the way to the New Testament, that red thread runs all the way through when Jesus is sitting and dining with His disciples in Matthew chapter 26. And instead of a Passover lamb, He gives them His own body and blood and says, I am the lamb of God that will cover your sins.
There’s a red thread of salvation that runs all the way through the scriptures, and one of the reasons that it’s red is because our sins, they’re like scarlet.
Scarlet stains
That’s what Isaiah 1 says, your sins are like scarlet, they’re red like crimson. A moment that will forever stick with me, back when when I was going to Clark College, I was a senior in high school doing the Running Start program, and I was in a college level English class, and I was taking the class with my friend.
We had taken a test a couple of days before, and we were getting our tests back that day, and I was a pretty good student. I had gotten pretty good grades, and so I was confident that I was going to get a good grade on this test, and my friend was as well, he got his test back first, and I saw the look on his face and thought, oh, like maybe he didn’t do so well, and I got my test back as well, and our professor was pretty old school in the way that she did things.
She used red pen, and on my test she had just put a big F and circled it, and it was the first F that I had ever received in school, and my heart in that moment sank, and the reason is not because I had gotten an F on that test. Mercifully, the professor actually pulled me and my friend out into the hallway to chat with us, and she proceeded to tell us that as she was going through the tests, she got to one particular question.
She was looking at my friend’s test first, and there was an answer that he had written down that she laughed at because he didn’t know the answer, and so he just put down a joke answer, and then she was reading through my test, and she got to that same question and saw the same answer and thought, there’s no way that they both put down the same joke answer.
Apparently the joke went right over my head because I had totally cheated off of him on that test, and that’s why that my heart sank with guilt, and she proceeded to tell us, one of you has got to fess up or I’m going to get the, you know, academic suspension might be involved here, and of course I fessed up right away.
I told her it was totally me. I had no idea what the answer was. I glanced over at his paper. I wrote it down, and the weight of guilt, I mean I was probably just flush red. The weight of guilt that I felt in that moment, especially just walking back into the classroom, and not only that, but I had like really sinned against a good friend of mine, cheating on him and almost causing him to like fail this test because of my blunder, right?
And I think of the scarlet stains of our sin, and that is what it feels like. Friends, maybe some of you have come in this morning, and you are feeling that weight of guilt heaping up on you.
Your sins heaping up on you. Man, I have totally botched it. I have messed up. I am a guilty person. You are scarlet red, or maybe you are here this morning, and you are somebody who says, yes, I profess Jesus as Lord, but my sins, especially sins from my past, they are so vibrant and red that I could never be used for God’s kingdom purposes.
Or maybe you’re in a place where, yeah, you’ve got scarlet sins, but they’re so covered up by clothes that you put on on the outside that nobody would ever be able to see them, not even God. You don’t let God look in to what’s really going on in your soul, and you put on a face in front of everybody else.
Let me just tell you this morning, friends, that we are all in the same boat. All of our clothing, it is stained like scarlet.
Their crimson cost
All of us are guilty. And all of our sin has incurred, what one of my favorite bands says, a crimson cost. Scarlet stains have incurred a crimson cost. Those stains, they must be paid for. The guilt, the shame, it must be paid for. And you can’t pay for it.
You’d never be able to. Even the blood of goats and bulls, it doesn’t last. You need to have somebody else pay for it. And so the scarlet thread, it leads to the only sacrifice that is able to pay the debt that you owe, which is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only one that can pay the debt that you owe.
And friends, I pray that if you are here this morning and you’re feeling that way, like your guilt and your sin has heaped up on you and you are a broken and messed up person, that there is mercy for you. There is a red thread for you. And his name is Jesus Christ.
And his offer, just like the offer of the spies, I love that the spies respond to Rahab and they say, our life for yours. Because what does Jesus say? My life for yours. For anybody who would call on my name and come under my service and take refuge in me.
And maybe you’re here this morning and you just feel like, how could I ever be used in the kingdom of God?
I’m so broken and messed up and all the stuff from my past keeps flooding into my memories. And how could God ever use me? What does Isaiah say? God says that though your sins were like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. They shall become like wool.
Pick up. If you are in Christ, you have a new identity. You are washed clean. God can and will use you for his kingdom purposes. And if you’re here and you’re somebody who has put on layers of good clothing to cover over all of the stains, instead of actually dealing with the stains and letting God deal with them, strip off the outer clothing.
Let him actually do the work of cleansing you.
Friends, trying to to save ourselves is like throwing pennies at a billion dollar debt. You’ll never get there. Jesus is the only one that can pay it for you. And here’s the incredible, incredible thing about God’s loyal love offered to anybody who would accept Jesus Christ, the red thread, on their behalf.
God turns lives around. He redeems. If you think about just the life of Rahab, the least likely of people to be redeemed, if you fast forward in the biblical narrative to Matthew chapter 1, and you start reading the genealogy, right? Many of you probably skip over the genealogies, that’s okay.
But genealogies are really cool because what does the genealogy in Matthew 1 include?
Rahab. She’s right there. God took her life from the pit and redeemed it, and from her line comes the Savior of the world. God loves to redeem and restore and mend and heal, should you let him. Amen. Amen. I’m going to invite the worship team up and they’re going to help us to respond and worship to our God.
Would you pray with me?
Father, thank you that you redeem and you restore and you heal and you offer salvation even to those who seem furthest away from you. That it is never too late.
Father, I think of the sinner on the cross. It wasn’t too late for him to be with you in paradise. It wasn’t too late for Rahab.
Lord, and if there’s somebody here this morning that has been feeling like it is too late for me, I’m too stained and I’m too guilty, Lord, help them to see that there is mercy for them at the feet of Jesus Christ.
Lord, and for those of us here that are thinking of people in their lives right now that have been running away from God, I just pray that you would encourage them this morning to not give up on sowing the hope of the gospel into their lives.
Lord, you show us that you go before the Israelites into the land of Canaan and you’re sowing the land, you’re tilling it, and Lord, you go before us into the world and you are right now tilling the hearts of people. We have no idea what you might be doing in the lives of co-workers and friends and family members.
Lord, give us encouragement that that maybe you’re tilling the heart of somebody that we’ve been praying for for a long time.
Lord, and give us the courage to have a conversation, to offer gospel hope to those people that you’re putting on our minds right now.
And we thank you that you are a God who loves to turn lives around and use broken, messed up people for your good purposes.
And we worship you now earnestly in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Would you stand? Let’s worship the King of Kings together.