If you'd open your Bibles tonight to Hebrews chapter 11, and we're also going to be spending a little time tonight in the book of Joshua, but Hebrews chapter 11, verses 30 to 31 are the verses we'll be looking at tonight. You follow along as I read the scriptures. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith, Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient after she had welcomed the spies in peace. May we pray. Our Father, we thank Thee for these wonderful examples that we have of faith. What a great legacy we have in the scriptures of people who literally believed Your Word. we commit our time to the tonight and we ask that you would do a faith work in each of us we pray that we would be those who would literally believe by word always we pray this in jesus' name amen it is impossible to have faith that pleases god without literally believing the bible the writer of hebrews literally believed everything that comes out of the old testament that's obvious and he obviously literally believe many things as you'll see in a couple of weeks that came from the new testament as well So if one is going to have a faith that pleases God, you have to believe in the written word of God literally from Genesis to Revelation. The first ten illustrations that show up in this great faith chapter of Hebrews 11 come from the book of Genesis. It starts with creation. Creation by the word of God. God spoke things into existence. It ends with the final chapter of Genesis and the story of Joseph. The next illustration of great faith that we saw last time concerned Moses came from the book of Exodus. And now as we travel through these verses tonight, we move some 40 years ahead to two episodes that come to us from the book of Joshua. Both episodes from Joshua are intertwined chronologically, and the story behind verse 31 actually sets the stage for what happens in verse 30. In other words, in all reality, the story of Rahab took place before Joshua and the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. One question worth asking is, why is there a reversal of chronology here? Arthur Pink said he thought it was because her preservation would come after Jericho actually was destroyed, but I don't think that's it at all. I think what we get here is a breakdown of the whole eschatological plan of God. When it starts off with Abel, he's saved by believing in the blood sacrifice. Enoch's raptured. Then you have Noah, who is that remnant who's saved when God is pouring out His wrath. We know in the tribulation period there will be a small remnant that will actually survive that. Then you go to the plan pertaining to Israel. Three and a half years, you go to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Joshua, who are all focused on land promises. And that's what we're going to see tonight. They start getting the land. Then you come to Rahab. Rahab was the Gentile who hid out the Israelis. She's the one who actually, in my opinion, represents the Gentiles in the tribulation who will be spared the wrath of God because she will, or they will, protect the Jews. There's a real chronology that takes place when you look into this 11th chapter. Both of these episodes from Joshua tonight are intertwined and what we learn here is that faith that pleases God is a faith that literally believes God's word and totally trusts in Jesus Christ for salvation and for victory. Faith that saves is a faith that is believing totally and only in Jesus Christ. It believes there is a pending future judgment that's coming. And when it senses that, it believes that Jesus Christ is the only one who can save us from it. Faith that is victorious is also totally focused on the Word of God and on what Jesus Christ would want us to do. Now there are two heroic faith illustrations that are used here tonight that come to us from the book of Joshua and we want to see them. The first one that's mentioned in verse 30 of Hebrews 11 is the illustration of the faith of Israel in the destruction of Jericho. Now the destruction of Jericho is a big time event for Israel because it's now time for her to begin taking the promised land. And if you're going to start taking that promised land, Jericho is the first big city in the way, and you've got to take it. Moses led Israel through the Red Sea. That's what verse 29 tells us of Hebrews chapter 11. And now after we get into that wilderness area, it's time to go into the promised land. And so you come now to the book of Joshua. And the background of this story comes from Joshua chapter 5. And I'd like you to go back there tonight, Joshua chapter 5. I'm going to read starting at verse 13 and I'm going to read down through chapter 6 and verse 24. Joshua chapter 5 beginning at verse 13 and here's what we read in this narrative account. Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold a man was standing opposite him with a sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, Are you for us or for our adversaries? He said, No, rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and bowed down and said to him, What has my Lord to say to his servant? The captain of the Lord's host said to Joshua, Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy. And Joshua did so. Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel. No one went out and no one came in. The Lord said to Joshua, See, I've given Jericho into your hand with its king and the valiant warriors. You shall march around the city, all the men of war, circling the city once. You shall do so for six days. Also, seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark. Then on the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead. So Joshua, the son of Nun, called the priests and said to them, take up the ark of the covenant and let seven priests carry seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark of the Lord. Then he said to the people, go forward and march around the city and let the armed men go on before the ark of the Lord. And it was so. that when Joshua had spoken to the people, the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the Lord went forward and blew the trumpets, and the ark of the covenant of the Lord followed them. The armed men went before the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rear guard came after the ark while they continued to blow the trumpets. But Joshua commanded the people saying, you shall not shout, nor let your voice be heard, nor let a word proceed out of your mouth until the day I tell you, shout, then you shall shout. So he had the Ark of the Lord taken around the city, circling it once. Then they came to the camp and spent the night in the camp. Now Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the Ark of the Lord. The seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the Ark of the Lord went on continually and blew the trumpets. And the armed men went before them, and the rear guard came after the Ark of the Lord while they continued to blow the trumpets. Thus, on the second day, they marched around the city once and returned to the camp. They did so for six days. Then on the seventh day, they rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. Only on that day they marched around the city seven times. At the seventh time, when the priest blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, shout, for the Lord has given you the city. The city shall be under the ban, it and all that is in it. that is in it belongs to the Lord. Only Rahab the harlot and all who are with her in the house shall live because she hid the messengers whom we sent. But as for you, only keep yourselves from the things under the ban so that you do not covet them and take some of the things under the ban and make a camp of Israel accursed and bring trouble on it. But all the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron are holy to the Lord. They shall go into the treasury of the Lord. So the people shouted and priests blew the trumpets. And when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, The people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city. They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword. Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, Go into the harlot's house, and bring the woman and all she has out of there, as you have sworn to her, so the young men who were spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father and her mother and her brothers and all she had and also brought out all her relatives and placed them outside the camp of Israel. They burned the city with fire and all that was in it, only the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. Moses had died. Joshua was in charge. Israel had finally crossed the Jordan River and Joshua himself had come into the vicinity of Jericho. He wanted to look it over. He was going to personally, as a military leader, look over this city and he came upon some imposing figure who was standing there with a sword drawn. Joshua was not the kind of guy who would back down. So he confronted him, whose side are you on? He said, I'm the captain of the host of the Lord. Actually, this captain that he's talking to is none other than Jesus Christ in a pre-incarnate appearance. This is a theophany. This is the second member of the Trinity and that is why Joshua fell flat on his face and that is why he removed his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. He's standing in the presence of God in the person of Jesus Christ. And this is why this becomes such a critical story in the book of Hebrews. Because this is a story and this is a book that exalts Jesus Christ. And this is a story about trusting Jesus Christ and following the word of God literally for victory over enemies. What Joshua and Israel were about to learn was that God's the one who would protect them. God's the one you can count on to give you victory. God's the one who lays out what you're going to do and what's going to happen. All he asks us is you literally believe my word and you literally obey my word. Now the pre-battle ritual that you see in this book of Joshua is like no pre-battle ritual you'll ever read in any military journey or textbook. Because what God tells Israel to do to prepare for victory is nothing you'd ever learn at West Point. You certainly would not get this from reading some secret ninja tactics. Frankly, this is a good way to get shot. Just go out in the open and march around the city of an enemy. What God's Word told them to do is take the Ark of the Covenant, And the Ark of the Covenant contains the Word of God. I want you to go right out in the open. I want you to march around the city one time for six straight days without saying a word. And then on the seventh day, I want you to march around the city seven times. In other words, I want you to march around this city 13 times. Years ago, I spoke with a man who had been in the special forces of the military, and he told me that one of the things they teach them for success is unpredictability. In other words, you don't do the same thing twice. You don't do what the enemy would think you would do. You don't do anything predictable. He said, for example, if we walk down a path one day, we wouldn't walk down that path another day. We would use a different route. Well, here's the nation Israel. They're right out in the open. They're doing the predictable. They're walking around the city every day. Now, according to those who have uncovered some of the archaeology of the area, the distance around the city, according to archaeologists, is about an eight to nine acre walk. If you walk this at a consistent pace, you could probably make one trip around the city in about 15 to 20 minutes, which would be about the average time that it would take an average person to walk one mile. God specifically laid out the order as to how the procession was to go. First of all, there were to be armed soldiers. Earlier in the book of Joshua, chapter 4, we know that there were probably 40,000 of them. They were to go out in front. Following that group of armed soldiers, there were seven priests who were carrying trumpets. They were to blow those trumpets as they walked around. Behind that was the Ark of the Covenant, which was carried by more priests. They were following the trumpet priest, and in that Ark of the Covenant was the Word of God. Behind the Ark of the Covenant it is said there were to be people. It's questioned whether all the people were in line doing this or just all the people involved like the soldiers and the priests. That's a little difficult to determine. And then you had the rear guard that was also following up in the aftermath of the Ark of the Covenant. Now the seven priests were carrying trumpets and they were to blow them as they went around Jericho to show the importance of the Word of God. As they were signaling to the people, they are carrying the Ark of the Covenant. And if you carefully look down through Joshua 6, you'll notice that that Ark of the Lord or that Ark of the Covenant is mentioned some 10 times. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, what you have here is you have God making a statement concerning Himself and His precious Word. And as these Israelites were just marching around the city and they couldn't talk, They weren't supposed to open their mouths and even say a word. They must have thought to themselves, my goodness, if we're going to ever beat these guys in Jericho, it's going to have to be God that will do it. Because we're certainly not out here doing the norm that would give us victory. And on the seventh day, they were to march around the city seven times. Alan Redpath said, that's probably how long it took them to get the idea that we have to trust God for victory. We have to trust in the Lord for victory. It probably took them 13 times around the city to figure that out. Now for the average person to walk around the city seven times, it'd take you about two hours. And after the seventh time, they were to blow the trumpets with a long single blast and the people were to shout. And when they did, the wall of the city fell down flat. They went into the city. They took it because God had given them the victory. Can you imagine what would happen if Israel right now would believe this? if Israel tonight would say, you know what, we need to totally rely upon Jesus Christ and the Word of God to give us our land. We're not getting it by our military, and we're certainly not getting it by peace talks in the Middle East. What we need to do as a nation is right now turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and trust the Word of God to give us the land. If they were to do that right now, things would dramatically change. But of course, we know that isn't going to happen just yet. Now I want you to think for a moment about what it would be like if you were one of the people living in Jericho looking at all of this. Jericho is one of the strongest fortified military cities with its own king that you can study anywhere in history. And if you study any military history, it will teach you that the way you capture another enemy or the way you conquer a foe is by great force. If you're gonna defeat an enemy, you need a strong military. You need a strong show of force. You can actually scare someone into surrender. You need to bombard them. You need to attack them. So if you're living in Jericho, and every day, and you're used to seeing war, you're used to fighting battles. And every day, you see a group of people marching around your city carrying a golden box. And they're blowing trumpets. They would look like, as Kent Hughes said, a bunch of clowns. This would almost be absurd to watch. They were no threat. Because all you have here are a bunch of people carrying one copy of the Bible, blowing on ram's horns every now and then. This was a big leap of faith for these children of Israel, because this is the first city they have to take in the Promised Land. But God's word was asking them to do just this. And God's word was basically saying, will you literally believe me? Will you literally believe that if you follow my word, I will give you victory? And you just typically don't conquer military cities with a Bible and trumpets. But that's what God's Word said they were to do, and that is what Israel did because they took the Word of God literally. Back in the 1500s, one man went up against all religions with nothing more than the Word of God. His name was Martin Luther. He said the Bible is our only authority and that's all we need. He said salvation justification is by faith alone apart from any works. He said every believer who is a believer in Jesus Christ is a priest unto God. He went up single-handedly against the entire Roman Catholic world. He lambasted the Pope. He took on the priest. They hated him. They mocked him. They tried to silence him. They tried to kill him, but they couldn't stop him. He reformed the world. He tore down the walls of the papacy like Joshua did with Jericho simply by believing literally the word of God. I don't know what your Jericho is tonight, but I do know this. You can literally trust the Lord Jesus Christ and believe the Word of God in anything you're facing. You place your faith totally and completely in the Lord and in the Word of God and you can apply it literally to any situation you are in right now. Perhaps the Jericho you're facing is something physical. Perhaps it's something financial. Perhaps it's something emotional. Perhaps it's something spiritual. You can trust your God for victory. You can depend upon the Word of God and at times a literal faith in God's Word will defy what seems to be even logical. 10 times in this text of Joshua and Jericho that ark is mentioned God says I want you believing me and I want you trusting my word and the main point is when you get God's people who are willing to do that he will give them victory what God's people did is they went to work on carefully understanding and applying the scriptures they didn't even open their mouths They just tried to take in the Word of God and do what it said. And when they did that, man, did the victory come. That's the point. That's the point. That's great faith that literally believes the Word of God and does what it says. The second great faith illustration that is mentioned here is the illustration of the faith of Rahab in the salvation from destruction of Jericho. This is an amazing text of scripture Verse 31 of Hebrews 11 says, By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient after she had welcomed the spies in peace. Now this woman is named in a context with Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, David. This woman that you're reading here, who's a woman, a Gentile, an Amorite, an outcast, a harlot, ends up in the same faith chapter of greatness as those guys. Rahab is one of the most amazing stories of faith you're ever going to see. She's an Old Testament example of a Gentile who had been a depraved sinner, who experienced by faith the amazing salvation of God. She was a harlot, she'd been a prostitute, who experienced pure grace by faith. She so believed in the Lord and so was transformed by the grace of God that she ends up in the lineage of Jesus Christ. She ends up a faith hero in Hebrews 11. Dr. C.I. Schofield said, there's no more unlikely character than Rahab could have been divinely chosen for deliverance from ungodly Jericho. The salvation of Rahab, the prostitute, illustrates that even in a doomed city, a wicked individual could find grace by turning to God in faith. Now I want you to see the background for this story. And in order for us to see the background, we need again to go back to the book of Joshua, this time chapter two. starting at verse 1. Then Joshua the son of Nun sent two men as spies secretly from Shittim saying go view the land especially Jericho. So they went and came into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab and lodged there. It was told the king of Jericho saying behold the men from the sons of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land. And the king of Jericho sent word to Rahab, saying, bring out the men who've come to you, who've 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, yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. It came about when it was time to shut the gate at dark that 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 hidden them in the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued them on the road to the Jordan, to the fords, and as soon as those who were pursuing them had gone out, they shut the gate. Now before they 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 terror of you has fallen on us, and that all of the inhabitants of the land have melded 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 Sikon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. when we heard it our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you for the Lord your God he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath now therefore please swear to me by the Lord since I've dealt kindly with you that you also will deal kindly with my father's household and give me a pledge of truth and spare my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters with all who belong to them and deliver our lives from death. So the men said to her, our life for yours. If you do not tell this business of ours, then it shall come about when the Lord gives us the land that we will deal kindly and faithfully with you. Then she let them down by a rope through the window for her house was on a city wall so that she was living on the wall. She said to them, go to the hill country so that the pursuers will not happen upon you and hide yourself there for three days until the pursuers return. Then afterward you may go on your way. The men said to her, we shall be free from this oath to you which you have made uh... us where unless when we come into the land you tie this cord of scarlet thread in the window through which you let us down and gather to yourself into the house your father and your mother and your brothers and all your father's household it shall come about that anyone who goes out of the doors of your house into the street his blood shall be on his own head and we shall be free but anyone who is with you in the house his blood shall be on our head if a hand is laid on him but if you tell this business of ours then we shall be free from the oath which you have made us swear. She said, according to your words, so be it. So she sent them away and they departed and she tied the scarlet cord in the window. They departed and came to the hill country and remained there for three days until the pursuers returned. Now the pursuers had sought them all along the road but had not found them. That's the background for this story. There are seven facts I want to share with you about it. First of all, Joshua secretly sent two spies on a reconnaissance mission to go into Jericho to scout it out. Now these men are being sent from Shittim. Shittim was located about seven miles east of the flooded Jordan. Jericho is located about five miles west of the Jordan. So these two spies, in order to go in there and search this land out, have to travel about 12 miles. You're looking, if you're trying to do this in a clandestine way, about a four to seven hour mission just to get there. And it'll take them four and seven hours to get back. What they needed to do is they needed to sneak in, take a good look at Jericho, get a look at it, and get out of there. This is the first major city that God wants to conquer as Israel is going to take over this promised land. So Joshua says, I want two spies in there. Look it over. Give me a report. The second fact is the spies are housed by Rahab, a Gentile prostitute. I don't care whether you like this fact or not, but this is the fact. She was a harlot. Hey, porne. She was given over to immoral sexual activity. In fact, the old rabbis believe and the language would certainly give license to the fact that she was running a business of prostitution. The point that she's a harlot is stressed over and over again. Joshua, Hebrews, James, they all mention the point. She was a woman who made her living by taking money for immoral sex. The word harlot, porne, is the word from which we get our English word pornography. And I'm convinced, ladies and gentlemen, by studying the scriptures, and by also talking with those that get involved in these kinds of things, that sexual immorality behind most of it is a lot of pornographic stuff. People who plunge themselves into this type of lifestyle are feeding their minds on pornographic things and that's what pretty much prompts them to go into that type of lifestyle. Now Rehab's life had been a seedy one, a scary one, a shameful one, a sinful one. There's no dodging this point. This is a critical point that's mentioned over and over again in the scripture. This non-Jewish prostitute woman is going to become one of the great women of God. Now, the faith of this previously immoral woman will become something that's going to be honored forever by the Lord. In fact, Rahab becomes a great encouragement to those who perhaps have had some immoral encounter in their own lives. Because what Rahab says to everybody is, You can have been an immoral person, you could have immoral sin in your life, and you can still become a great vessel of honor for God. When you have this harlot who ends up in the lineage line of Jesus Christ, she certainly becomes a great example of the grace of God. John Calvin said that Rahab says something else, though. John Calvin says, Rahab says, that the way you experience God's grace, obviously, and that's what Hebrews is stressing, is by faith. You could be a person who is a real upstanding citizen. You never lived a seedy life like Rahab. You never got involved in the kinds of sins she was in. But unless you are willing to go by faith to Jesus Christ, he says, I tell you this, Rahab shines bright to those who refuse to believe in the Lord. Now the spies chose Rahab's house as their base of operations probably for a couple of reasons. It'd be good to pick a prostitute's house. First of all, they want to hide out in a place where they wouldn't be suspected as being Hebrew spies, so they just went to the home of a Gentile prostitute. It was kind of an undercover maneuver. They probably figured that, look, traveling merchants, typically when they go out of town, they spend the night in a godless way, a godless environment. And so they go typically to a house of prostitution. So if we duck in there and we stay there for the night, people will think, well, we're just merchants traveling through. Secondly, they could get some good information about Jericho in this place. Because as you'll see in just a second, apparently some pretty high-powered political figures graced Rahab's house. They obviously knew of her and they probably figured, you know, this particular woman entertains all kinds of men from the city. We're here to get information about Jericho. This would be a good place for us to duck in and get that information. Which brings us to the third fact. Word leaked out to the king of Jericho that they were hiding there. Obviously, some of the king's informants were there. They were in her home. They suspected they were Israelis. And they sent word to the king that we have these two men from Israel here. Rahab obviously ran somewhat of a high class harlot type of place because the king's men were hanging out there and apparently their plan backfired. So Rahab decides, fourthly, she's gonna protect these spies. And there are two ways she protected them. First, she hid the spies. Rehab took the two men up on top of her house. As we read in Joshua chapter 2, she put stalks of flax over them. She covered them with stalks of flax. Now, stalks of flax were stalks that were about three feet long. They were pulled up at harvest time. Then they were soaked in water for about three to four weeks. Then they were taken up on top of the roof to dry out in the sun so the fibers would separate. And you could turn that flax into linen. And she decided this would be a good place to hide those boys. I'll put them up on top of the roof and hide them under the stalks of flax. And I think there's something we want to observe here. God is in fact protecting these spies, but they're not walking out in the open like Israel would do at Jericho. I think there's a good point here. We have to use our brains in protecting ourselves and then trust God to do the rest. I'm reminded when I read this of Jesus when he was here on earth and he told his disciples, you just go out, you don't need anything, you don't need any money, you don't need a sword, you just go and wherever people take you in, you stay there and you minister there. But then when he was getting ready to leave, He says to them, now I'm leaving. I'm not going to be here physically to protect you anymore. So you're going to need to get a sword, get a weapon, and you're going to need to have some money for traveling purposes. In other words, you've got to use your brain. And these spies did that. They were hiding out because they wanted to be protected from the Jericho king and his mercenaries. The second way she protected them is she lied for the spies. Actually, Rahab tells four lies. She said, I didn't know they were from Israel. Well, she did know, because why would you hide guys up on the roof if you didn't know they weren't from Israel? I mean, you wouldn't hide them up there. So she knew that. She said, secondly, she saw the men leave the city. They hadn't left the city. They were hiding up on the roof. Thirdly, she said she didn't know where the men went. She knew exactly where they were. And fourthly, she said she knew those guys could overtake them if they hurry. And she knew when they went out there, they weren't going to find them. Now I've read page after page of those who've questioned this little lying business of Rahab, but here's the fact. The fact of the matter is, this is a demonstration of her faith in God. She's willing to risk her own life here. She's willing to do whatever it takes to protect these two men of God, and frankly, she's honored for it. Suppose a couple of weeks ago, you'd have been in Tucson. And suppose a gunman walked in and asked you, where's the Congresswoman? Would you say, oh, she's right over there, go shoot her? I don't think so. Suppose someone were to knock on your door tonight with a knife in hand and ask if your spouse is home? Well, maybe some of you would say, oh, yes, she's right over there. But most of us wouldn't. Most of us would say, no, no, she's not here, he's not here. Why? Because we do our best to protect the innocent. That's what Rahab's doing. And because she's willing to do that, God honored her for it. Which brings us to the fifth fact. Rahab informs the spies what she believes. In Joshua 2, verses 8 to 11, she says, I know that God has given you this promised land. When we heard that God was on your side and what He'd done for you, we feared Him and we feared you because of what He did. She is responding to conviction. She literally believes God is on the side of Israel and that's why she's doing what she's doing. And Rahab believed Israel's God is the only one and only true God. She lived in a godless, heathen, polytheistic system of religion, and she says, I know that your God is the one and only true God. She had faith in that God. And so she asked for grace salvation for her and her family. I think that's interesting. She says to these two spies, when you come in here to take this over, grant us grace. Save me and my family. She knew that there would be the people of God who would know what she needed to do to be saved. She knew, I can trust the people of God. They'll tell me what I must do to be saved. And so the spies agreed to save Rahab and her family. The spies who'd entered her home said, you keep quiet about this. Don't tell anybody. But we want you to dangle a scarlet cord out your window if you want to be saved. That is so interesting. Because they don't say to her, we want you to stop being a harlot. We want you to go out and tell people about God. He doesn't say that. What they tell her is, we want you to take a scarlet thread and we want you to dangle that out your window. So in all reality, Rahab is putting all her faith for her salvation in a scarlet thread. Now of course, it couldn't just be any color thread. Why not a blue thread? Why not a green thread? Why scarlet thread? What's the significance of the scarlet cover? We come to the book of Hebrews. Go back to Hebrews chapter 9. And verse 19. Hebrews chapter 9 and verse 19. For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop. and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying this is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you and in the same way he sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with the blood and according to the law one may almost say all things are cleansed with blood and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Why scarlet? Because that scarlet is illustrative of the shed blood that is required for anybody to have forgiveness of sins. For anybody to have salvation. That scarlet thread was the basis of her salvation. You put out a scarlet thread, that is the only thing that will save you. That is the only thing that will save anybody connected to you. As Dr. C.I. Schofield said, that scarlet cord of Rahab speaks by its color of safety through sacrifice. It is the sacrifice, the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And what Hebrews 11.31 says to all of us is, you may have lived a life of raunchy debauchery. You may have lived a life of depravity, sexually speaking. You can end up a champion of faith. You can end up making a great statement for Jesus Christ and for the grace of God. You may have been a person who has had so many immoral encounters, you can't even remember them all or count them all. You can be washed clean of all of them if you're willing to turn to the grace of God that is found in Jesus Christ. And Rahab was the woman who said, I believe in that scarlet thread. I'm placing my faith, and I'll put it out there. And when, ladies and gentlemen, those spies and that nation came in and took Jericho, and those walls went down, when they saw that scarlet thread, they passed over Rahab and her family, and giving her the wrath of God, just like when God sees the blood, He passes over His wrath on us. Can you imagine the story that Rahab could tell in her older years of life? What a life this woman had lived. She could tell her grandchildren, well, I'll tell you, it's not pretty, but I was born in the land of the Canaanites and I pursued a life of sinful pleasure. Then one day, God in his amazing grace saved me, not only put me into his family, but he put me into the pedigree of Jesus Christ. Because according to the book of Matthew, she ended up marrying Solomon, who was the prince of Judah, and through that relationship would come the king of kings. That is an amazing story of grace. When Jericho collapsed, everything except one small section of the city was destroyed. One family escaped the wrath of God. One scarlet cord that was dangled from a window meant that this family would not experience the wrath of God. Now I want to use these two verses tonight to illustrate saving faith in an analogy based on New Testament doctrine. This whole world is sentenced under the wrath of God just like the whole city of Jericho was sentenced under the wrath of God. All the people in the world are doomed just like all the people in Jericho were doomed. All the people in the world are living under the condemnation of God. Just like all people in Jericho were living under the condemnation of God. But there's one way of escape from the wrath of God. There is a scarlet thread that can save sinners. It is Jesus Christ and his shed blood. And any who will believe on Him, though their sins be as scarlet, they can be as white as snow. The way of escape is Jesus Christ. There's only one way. And how do you get this way of escape? Don't miss this. By faith. Not by words. By faith. You see, ladies and gentlemen, by faith, in Jesus Christ and by faith in the literal saving work of Jesus Christ recorded in the scriptures you please God and without that faith it is impossible to please him that is the message of the book of Hebrews may we pray look perhaps you're here tonight you don't have a great track record I don't know what sins you've been involved in none of my business don't care to know but I can tell you this You can have a great future. You can become a great man, woman, boy or girl for Jesus Christ if you will by faith believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and by faith you start applying the Word of God literally to your life. Father, thank you so much. Thank you for the saving work that you have wrought for us through the wonderful work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for the grace of God that saves wretched sinners. Thank you, Lord, so much tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.