Rahab

Hmmmmmm, so I started writing about Joshua for this weeks Vespers and it morphed into a two part something about Rahab and Faith.

Here is my offering for this week. I'm doing Vespers again next week and plan to do the second part of the Rahab story and link it up with Salvation. Will post it when I finish writing it.

(PS The strange formatting is to show where the breaks are to allow for translation.)

Rahab

Tonight I’m going to tell you half of a story next week I shall tell you the other half of the story.

This is the story of a woman with a great heart.

A woman who showed great faith in Gods promises and power – even though the promises were not given directly to her.

A woman who acted courageously according to her faith in God’s promises, in spite of personal risk and cultural priorities.

A woman named Rahab.

She lived in a huge impregnable city called Jericho. Like everyone in that city she had grown used to living in fear.

Over the years the people of the city have seen the working of the Israelite God.

It began almost precisely forty years ago, when traders and travellers started to arrive from the Empire of Egypt.

The tales the travellers brought were incredible, unbelievable and true.

They told how the God of a small land-less tribe of slaves had destroyed the mightiest nation in the world.

They said He gave every person in the country boils.

They said He sent plagues of frogs and lice, flies and locusts.

They said He turned the Nile River into blood.

They said He caused the sun to stop shinning for days on end.

They said He killed the cattle in the field – but only if it belonged to an Egyptian.

They said He destroyed the harvest and other animals with lightning and hail.

And eventually, they said He killed the first born son of every Egyptian family in the Empire – including the firstborn Son of the Pharaoh, the God King of the Egyptians.

And the stories told that in all this trouble the Israelites were not harmed.

With every story the people of Jericho trembled a little more, worried a little more, became a little more afraid.

Then came the news that the Pharaoh had finally given in to the demands of the Israelite leader, Moses, and had allowed this ragtag group of slaves to leave.

Then the two ultimate pieces of bad news came together.

First, Egypt was destroyed – Pharaoh had changed his mind and taken his army to recapture his slaves and this God had drowned them all, Pharaoh and his army, in the red sea.

Second, that God of fearful power had declared He was leading those slaves to a country that He was going to give them, and that country was Canaan, and Jericho was the first city inside the border of Canaan.

Exodus 23:20,31

“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared ...  My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out ... I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River. I will hand over to you the people who live in the land and you will drive them out before you.”

For the next forty years the people of Jericho followed the fortunes of the Israelites, as they wandered in the desert, being lead and melded into a nation by their God.

There was news of mighty miracles, of an abundance of food, of victories over their enemies.

And with each new story the inhabitants of Jericho become more afraid.

Now the Israelites were camped on the banks of the Jordan river waiting for instructions from their God to cross to   Jericho’s side.

And the people in Jericho are terrified.

All except for Rahab.

Rahab was born during the time the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness.

She grew up listening to the stories of the Israelites exodus from Egypt.

She almost daily heard the news of their travels through the desert

and while the rest of the city became more and more afraid, Rahab became more and more intrigued.

Here was a God with power, a God she could respect, a God who obviously cared for His followers, a God she was attracted to and wanted to know.

At the time of this story Rahab had grown up, she was an adult, and she owned her own establishment.

An inn built into the walls of Jericho, where she supplied weary travellers with the necessities of life, food, rest, gossip and women.

On her roof top she also dyed flax and spun her own red cord for trade.

By the standards of her time she was a successful business woman.

By the standards of Israel she was an immoral woman, a prostitute, doomed to destruction like the rest of the pagan Canaanites.

One day she was going about business as usual when two travellers knocked on her door requesting lodging.

They took the offered food, the rest and the gossip but refused the women.

Rahab quickly realises that these men were different, they were Israelites.

And then there was another knock on her door.

It was the Kings Soldiers.

She was not the only one who had recognised the identity of these men.

And in that moment Rahab had to choose,

would she be a patriot and denounce these men to the soldiers, see that they were arrested and killed for spying?

or would she act on the attraction she had to the Israelite God?

Put her trust in the walls of Jericho to protect her from the Israelites?

Or in the God of the Israelites to protect her from the King and his Soldiers?

Rahab made her choice,

she called to the soldiers that she would be right with them and she hustled the men upstairs to her roof where she hid them under piles of flaxes dyed blood red that were drying on the roof.

Then she ran back down the stairs and tells the lies that turn her into a traitor to everything she has lived with her entire life.

The lies that aligned her future with the Israelites and with their God.

“The men were here,” she said, “but they have gone, and they went that way.” She pointed in the direction of the Jordan River where the rest of the Israelites are camping

The soldiers hurried in the direction she pointed and Rahab went back upstairs to bargain with the spies.

She knew she had just destroyed any future she had in Jericho, but she also believed that the God of the Israelites was going to destroy Jericho,

she believed his promises to the Israelite nation, she believed in His power to fulfil those promises and she believed in and His intention to fulfil those promises.

She did four specific things: (Joshua 2:9-11)

1.       “I know that the LORD has given you this land” - She made a statement of Faith,

to all appearances’ the Israelites are still a ragtag tribe without a home, while Jericho is a huge stone city with walls to protect them from all their enemies.

But, she knew the promises God had made to the Israelites

and she believed those promises in spite of appearances’

and she took those promises for herself.

2.       “We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.”

She based her faith on the way God had acted in the past to fulfil other promises He had made.

3.       “for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.”

She acknowledged that God is God, over all.

4.       Then she acted on that faith and she protected Gods Spies when they are sent to her establishment.

Did God honour her for following the tiny bit of truth she knew about Him? Even though most of her lifestyle was directly in opposition to his way of doing things?

Yes He did! He saved her and all her family from the destruction of Jericho – I shall tell you that story next week.

God has given us many great and precious promises in the Bible, we can take those promises and claim them for ourselves.

Like Rahab we follow the steps of faith:

1.       We can claim God’s promises and expect God to do what He has said He will do.  – Even though it does not look possible in our eyes.

2.       We can base this faith on how we have seen God work in the lives of others, people in the Bible and people in our own time.

3.       We can acknowledge that God is over all

4.       And we can act on our beliefs to the best of our ability.

When we do this God has promised to bless us beyond anything we can possibly imagine.

Ephesians 3:20
“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,”

Psalms 103:12

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.“

Deuteronomy 31:6
“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Read God’s word, claim all the promises you find.

Claim them in faith based on the fact that God is the creator and has already displayed His power and care in the lives of others so we know He will do the same for us.

Then watch to see them fulfilled in your life.