God, Who Saw Rahab’s Faith

8Before they had lain down, she came up to them on the roof. 9She said to the men, “I know that Yahweh 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. 10For we have heard how Yahweh 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 to Og, whom you utterly destroyed. 11As soon as we had heard it, our hearts melted, and there wasn’t any more spirit in any man, because of you: for Yahweh your God, he is God in heaven above, and on earth beneath. 12Now therefore, please swear to me by Yahweh, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father’s house, and give me a true sign; 13and that you will save alive my father, my mother, my brothers, and my sisters, and all that they have, and will deliver our lives from death.” 14The men said to her, “Our life for yours, if you don’t talk about this business of ours; and it shall be, when Yahweh gives us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you.” 15Then she let them down by a cord through the window; for her house was on the side of the wall, and she lived on the wall.

Some objects reflect light, but some substances give off light of their own. A substance that gives off light is called a fluorescent material. What we usually call glow-in-the-dark is, strictly speaking, fluorescence or phosphorescence. When light shines on a substance and the substance gives off light, that is fluorescence. When it goes on shining by itself after the light is taken away, that is phosphorescence. Children love things that glow in the dark, which is why such materials turn up in so many products made for little ones. When my own children were small, I covered their ceiling with glow-in-the-dark stars, and we would lie there talking about all sorts of things until we fell asleep.

As I looked at Rahab, the central figure in today’s passage, she reminded me of a fluorescent material. The reason is that she shines with the light of faith after hearing no more than reports of the miracles God worked when Israel came out of Egypt. Rahab was shining in a Jericho filled with spiritual darkness, and God made a plan to save her.

Joshua 2 explains clearly why God set out to rescue Rahab. Joshua the son of Nun sent two men out from Shittim as spies. Their task was to learn what condition the people of Jericho were really in, and how the city could be attacked and won.

The two men decided to lodge at the house of a prostitute, the place where people came and went more than anywhere else, and they went into Rahab’s house. But someone saw them and reported to the king of Jericho that Israelite spies had come to search out the land. The king sent word to Rahab to bring out the spies who had entered her house. Rahab, however, had already hidden the two men, and she lied, saying that the spies had already gone back to their own land.

When the soldiers of Jericho went out of the city to hunt for the spies, Rahab urged the two men to escape quickly before they were caught. She confessed that from the reports she had heard she knew how fearsome God was, and that she believed in him. She told them that she was saving their lives on one condition: when Israel attacked Jericho, they must spare her and her father’s house. And she asked them for a sign of that promise. The spies promised to protect Rahab and her household. Having received this promise of salvation, Rahab helped them flee the city through her window. Then, as she had agreed with the spies, she gathered her family and all her relatives into her house and hung from the window the scarlet cord she had been given as the sign.

Back with Joshua, the spies reported how Rahab had helped them and how all the inhabitants of the land were melting away in fear. Although they had been chased by the soldiers of Jericho, they were confident of victory. Years before, the twelve spies Moses sent had searched out the land of Canaan for forty days without once being attacked, and yet they reported that Israel could never win. This happened because ten of the twelve who received Moses’ command looked at the people living in Canaan rather than at God. The two men who had just returned from Jericho, by contrast, held to the faith that God would help them whatever happened, and Rahab’s help made them all the more certain of victory.

Until he heard their report, Joshua had no way of knowing that Rahab had faith. But because God, who watches over the whole world, had seen Rahab shining with faith in the darkness of Jericho, he used Joshua’s plan to spy out the city as the means of saving her. God brings about his work of salvation through people, surroundings, and circumstances. So if we live by faith wherever we are and whatever our situation, God will see that faith and act.

If you find yourself in trouble, God will rescue you, even by using a wicked person. But if you fail to live according to his will and make an evil choice, God will use that choice of yours to bring someone else to repentance and salvation. A person who does evil may, without knowing it, become the means of another’s salvation, yet they themselves will receive no reward.

Because the two spies looked and behaved differently from the people of Jericho, they would have stood out the moment they entered the city. In the same way, God’s children give off light like a fluorescent material even in a darkness where there is no light, and Satan cannot help noticing them first. We can also think of the spies who slipped into Jericho as a picture of our faith. Before our faith matures, Satan will try to keep it from growing. Why? Because that faith is joined to God and bound up with salvation.

The king of Jericho hunted the two spies because they belonged to Joshua, to the people of Israel, and to God, and he had to kill them before they could return. The faith you hold belongs to Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit, who is helping you. That is why Satan works so hard to bring you down before you are filled with the Spirit.

The soldiers of Jericho came in haste to seize the spies, but because Rahab was protecting the two men, they could not catch them. Likewise, the world and Satan attack the saints to make them fall, yet they can never bring them down, because the Holy Spirit is there to guard them. This is not to say that Rahab is playing the part of the Holy Spirit.

If the two spies had panicked when the soldiers came and run out of the house, they would have been caught. So too, when the waves of the world run high, if we cannot endure but are shaken with fear, the boat of our life can only capsize. Wisdom is to wait quietly and endure until the winds of hardship die down. Just as Rahab protected the spies who trusted her and stayed hidden, those who trust the Holy Spirit and persevere will be thoroughly protected.

For Rahab to betray her own country and hide the people of a God she had only heard about was no small thing, because she had not seen God’s works with her own eyes but knew of them only by report. We too did not witness the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. We heard of them from someone who brought us the gospel, and we believed. For us, born as servants of Satan, to turn traitor to Satan and come to faith is not easy. Yet because God’s help goes with this faith, it has made us able to overcome the world and stand against Satan. As faith saved Rahab, so your faith will give you eternal life.

Romans 10:17 says that faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. In the same way, the word of Christ has power to make us believe what we cannot see as though we saw it. Rahab is living inside Jericho, an impregnable fortress. Yet she knew that if almighty God moved, that great city could collapse in an instant like a castle of sand. How remarkable it is to believe God’s promise on nothing more than rumor, as Rahab did! She was not an Israelite, and her nation did not believe in God, and still here was someone who welcomed him. It is astonishing. It shows us that faith is the gift of God, and that there are souls waiting to be saved in every corner of the world.

Yet God knew that even Rahab, whose faith was so precious, could not escape death when Israel attacked Jericho. So he brought into the open her act of faith in helping the spies, that Joshua might protect her. In this way God loved Rahab, who alone gave off the light of faith in the darkness of Jericho, and he kept her safe.

Like Rahab’s, the words you speak and the things you do now can become a condition of salvation or a condition of judgment. If you live by faith as Rahab did, even before you ask God for help, he will work through people and circumstances to protect that faith. If your faith is like Rahab’s, you will not lose your way in life or walk the road of greed, lust, and covetousness.

We who believe are shining with the light of faith in the darkness of the world, and the deeper the darkness, the brighter our faith will shine. So let us not, out of fear of the world, foolishly hide our own light. Because of that light shining in the darkness, God moves heaven and earth and sends his angels to hold back evil spirits. A faith that doubts this God instead of trusting him without reserve will not receive his protection.

Joshua 2:12

12Now therefore, please swear to me by Yahweh, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father’s house, and give me a true sign;

Because Rahab risked her life to protect them, the spies were able to return safely. The world may attack our faith, but the Holy Spirit guards the lives of the saints to the end. So if we hold a faith like Rahab’s, ready to die if need be, we can enter the Kingdom of God in safety. Had Rahab abandoned the spies out of fear of Jericho’s soldiers, she and her family would have been wiped out by Joshua.

Only when we trust in the blood that Jesus Christ gave us as a sign can we share in the wedding feast when this world is judged. Those whose sins have not been forgiven through the blood of Christ will suffer the torment of judgment together with this world on the last day. If, like Rahab, we hold fast to our faith in the midst of trouble, we can be saved. The scarlet cord the spies had promised was now life itself for Rahab and her family, because when Israel attacked Jericho, Rahab’s house with the scarlet cord hanging from its window had become a house to be protected and saved.

We must guard the salvation Jesus has given us. But the world and Satan keep attacking until we abandon our faith, so unless we resolve to die with Jesus on the cross, we will never be able to hold on to it. Even now Satan is attacking you and everything that belongs to you. But if, like Rahab, you trust in almighty God alone, God will be your Father, and once you are his child, Satan and the world will never be able to bring you down.

Acts 16:31

31They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

This word was now fulfilled in Rahab’s household. The promise that whoever believes in the Lord Jesus will be saved, together with their household, does not mean that we can get into heaven merely by going to church. It is a plea that, to save yourself, you cast off your craving for sin and overcome sin through good deeds.

For us, the salvation of our own family is probably the hardest of all. Your family sees you not as a child of God but simply as family. They see your ordinary self, so however rightly you proclaim the word of truth, they hear it as nothing more than a person’s words. Yet when Rahab spoke, her whole family and all her relatives gathered at her house. Some of them, of course, may have come out of fear, just in case, but they would have listened to her in that hour of crisis because Rahab had earned their trust in ordinary days. What matters now is this: whatever their reasons for coming to Rahab’s house, everyone who was in it lived. All who heard her words and acted on them lived.

Christ did not promise to save us when we are inside a building called a church. He promised to save us when we have faith in Jesus. Just as Rahab received the promise that those in her house would be spared, he has promised to save those who have faith in Jesus Christ. If he had said that he would save only the rich, or only the healthy and the learned, we would probably have been shut out of salvation. But God has promised to save us if we believe in the blood of Christ and have faith, and because of that promise, faith is all we need. Then, when the world is judged by fire, we can live, and we can sing with Christ a new song in praise of God’s glory.

At the tenth plague, the judgment on the firstborn, God promised that if the people put the blood of a lamb on the two doorposts, the angel of death would see the blood and pass over. The Israelites who believed that promise put the lamb’s blood on their doorposts, and just as God had promised, the angel of death passed over. Those who simply live by God’s word gain eternal life in just this way. So we who believe in the blood of the cross must obey his commands, and that obedience will bring us into eternal life.

Do you believe that the blood of Christ has atoned for your sins? Then, just as Jesus died for you, I hope you will die with the Lord on the cross, for your own salvation and for the souls still to be saved. Those who have been born again through Christ do not flare up in anger, do not grasp in greed, and do not lose heart because of the world. They will not treasure only their own feelings, nor exalt their own righteousness to protect their pride. Satan can never block the salvation of those who are filled like this with the Holy Spirit. This is God’s promise, a blessing already fulfilled.

People in the world today have no interest in the Lord’s blood. Even churchgoers fail to give thanks for the blood of Jesus Christ and live hardly any differently from the world. Rahab, however, received great peace and salvation through a single scarlet cord. Even as Jericho came under attack, she was not afraid, because God’s people were protecting her. This is how different life is for those who know what the scarlet cord means and for those who do not. Even if the end of the world comes, those who believe in Christ, the eternal King, can always be at peace.

Friends, if you have forgotten how precious the blood is, I hope you will kneel before the Lord and pray for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Just as Rahab was born a citizen of Jericho, we were all born at first as sinners, with Satan for our father. But as Rahab, once she believed in God, became one of God’s people with no tie left to Jericho, so we become children of God with no tie left to the world when we hear the gospel and believe.

As Rahab’s whole household was saved because of her alone, may you hold the confidence that your household will be saved because of you. And may you carry this sense of calling: I must stand upright first if my whole family is to be saved. Your striving to live by faith is itself a taking of the Kingdom of Heaven by force, and so you and the people you love will be saved. Joshua could take part in God’s plan when he stood strong and courageous. In the same way, when even one member stands upright, the church can grow according to God’s will.

Joshua 2:24

24They said to Joshua, “Truly Yahweh has delivered all the land into our hands. Moreover, all the inhabitants of the land melt away before us.”

The spies passed Rahab’s words on to Joshua just as she had spoken them. Hearing them, Joshua was greatly strengthened, for he had never imagined that in Jericho, a city marked for destruction, there would be someone like Rahab who feared God.

Joshua commanded that the house with the scarlet cord in its window must never be attacked. Because of Rahab alone, the Israelites no longer feared Jericho, and they could taste in advance the blessing God had prepared. So it is with us: because of Jesus alone, we need not fear the world, and we can enjoy here on earth the joy of heaven that God has given us.

So too, the Holy Spirit is watching the lives of those who worship God, keep their faith, and give themselves to him. The Spirit tells God everything: what each of them is doing for him, how much they are sacrificing for the gospel, how patiently they are enduring to remain faithful. And so God knows every act of their devotion.

In a world as dark as Jericho, it must be a great joy to God that there are people who love him. That is how precious the faith you now hold is. This faith moves heaven and earth. This faith has been given the privilege of holding the key that opens the gates of heaven. You who have faith, do not fear the world or Satan. I hope you will live a life of faith alone. Then, in the measure that you strive to live by faith, God will help you so that the world cannot stand in your way.

Matthew 1:5-6

5Salmon became the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz became the father of Obed by Ruth. Obed became the father of Jesse. 6Jesse became the father of King David. David became the father of Solomon by her who had been Uriah’s wife.

Rahab, who helped Israel by faith, became the great-great-grandmother of David. She had heard that God is almighty and had come to believe, and in the end she became one of David’s forebears. Rahab the prostitute, whom no one had looked at twice, received the blessing of becoming an ancestor of David and of Jesus. Now she will live as one of heaven’s people, holding heaven’s citizenship and enjoying eternal life.

What you must not forget is this: because God is self-existent and absolute, he does not plead with you to believe in him. Yet God never abandons those who have faith in him. If we have heard the truth as Rahab did, let us believe it and act on it. Rahab was born and raised in Jericho, but the moment she heard the reports about God, she understood what kind of life she must live.

So, as people who love God, may you always live a life that is being sanctified for him. If you live by faith, God will help you so that you never live a life of shame, and he will lead you into the glorious life of his saints.

May you, whom God loves, give yourselves to a faith more precious still. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.