I invite you all to open up your Bibles and turn to Joshua 2, and we're going to read about this Rahab, who we've been hearing about this morning. Joshua 2, and I'm going to read to you the entirety of the chapter. 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 spy 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 spy 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 at dark, the men went out. I do not know where they went. Pursue them quickly, and you'll 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 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. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the waters 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 Yahweh, 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 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.' And the men said to her, our life for yours, even to death. If you do not tell this business of ours, then when Yahweh 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 so that she lived in the wall. And she said to them, go into the hills or the pursuers will encounter you and hide there three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterward, you may go on your way. The men said to her, we will be guiltless with respect to this oath of yours that you have made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie 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 of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be guiltless. But if a hand is laid on anyone who is with you in the house, 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. Then she sent them away and they departed. And 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 the 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, Yahweh has given all the land into our hands. And also all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us. Well, as has already been mentioned, we are obviously taking a break from our sermon series through the book of Romans, though last week in Romans 10, we did hear and consider that faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. And for whatever ills of social media, I am grateful that while I was at home feeling like my lungs were melting, that I was still able to listen to that sermon, actually live at the same time that you guys were listening to that sermon. And as I was listening to Romans 10 and listening to the Apostle Paul's great commission where he asked the rhetorical question, how will people be saved if they don't hear? How will they hear if we don't go? people go if we don't send them. I was praying during that sermon that we would hear this and we ourselves would grow more bold in evangelism. And I was praying that we would grow more selfless in missions, that we would grow more confident in the fact that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. That's what I was praying for us as we were hearing Romans 10. And I'm still praying those things for us this morning as we shift to a totally different part of the Bible, right? We're in a very different part of the canon. We've gone from the New Testament to the Old Testament and we're not reading a letter, we're reading a historical narrative. But I believe that as we consider this narrative this morning that we will be further strengthened in our faith, further strengthened in the message of Romans 10 because of the unity and the consistency of the Bible. The Bible is all God's Word and that unity will help strengthen us as we think about this Old Testament example of saving faith. Because that's what we're seeing when we're reading Joshua 2. That's what we're seeing in the life of Rahab. This is an Old Testament example of saving faith, a rather prominent one. As we read earlier, Rahab makes it into the mention during the genealogy of Christ. Matthew mentions Rahab. She ends up being the great-great-grandmother of King David and then ultimately an ancestor of our Lord Jesus himself. Rahab even makes it into the highlight reel of the Old Testament, right? That's Hebrews 11. As we read, by faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days, and by faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. And so my hope this morning as we consider the faith of Rahab, is that God will continue to press his truths upon our hearts so that we will continue to grow more bold in our evangelism, more selfless in missions, and more confident in the fact that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. And in order to facilitate this work this morning, I'm gonna highlight five components of Rahab's faith in Joshua 2. Five pieces of what's going on here in Joshua chapter 2, and we're gonna meditate on them one by one in light of our Christian faith. So five components of Rahab's faith, and we'll think about those in light of our own Christian faith. So let's just begin. Number one, Rahab was a Canaanite. Rahab was a Canaanite, right? She's a Gentile outsider to the people of God. Remember the grand Bible context. God grabs Abraham, he removes him from Ur of the Chaldees, and he makes a covenant with him. And he says, I am going to give you, I'm going to turn you into a mighty people. and I am going to bless you and your descendants, and I am going to give you a home. I'm going to give you land. And this land was not just to be a home for Abraham, just so Abraham could have a home, but it was to be a home for Abraham so that Abraham could live together with God, so that Abraham's descendants could be together with God. God is saying, I'm going to make a place where I will be your God, and you will be my people, and we will live together. And then Abraham's descendants do grow into a mighty people. However, they take this kind of detour, at least it must have felt like that to them, of slavery in Egypt. And the people, hundreds of years after Abraham, we come to them in the book of Exodus and they're slaves in Egypt. And God comes and He rescues them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. The plagues of the Exodus. and the Passover, and he brings the people out. of Egypt, and then through some sin of theirs and failings, they have to wander for 40 years, not being able to enter the Promised Land. But then, that time ends, and we come to this point where they're right about to enter the Promised Land. That's where we are in history, right? They're right about to enter the Promised Land, which is currently being occupied by the Canaanites, which is currently being occupied by a hostile force. Remember, the Canaanites, they were not good people, right? They weren't unfortunate, innocent bystanders. God had told Abraham way back when he had first made the promise that the sin of the Amorites had not yet been full, but when it does, when it got to that point of fullness, God was going to have to expel them from the land, and they were going to face the judgment of God. And that's what we see in the conquest, the very instance of God's judgment actually being poured out. The Canaanites were not good people. The Israelites had to be warned, you shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. And then God gives them many examples of the types of things they were not supposed to do that the current peoples of the land were doing. Some of which, you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife and so make yourself unclean with her. You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Moloch. No child sacrifice and so profane the name of your God. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It's an abomination. You shall not lie with any animal, and so make yourself unclean with it. Do not make yourself unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean. So these are the people who are currently in the Promised Land, and that's where we're at, right? The Israelites right on the edge of the Promised Land, right about to enter, right about to conquest, and this is who you have inside, the Canaanites. Rahab was a member of the hostile Canaanite people, the current inhabitants of the land. And don't forget what the standing command was for the people of Israelites with respect to the Canaanites in the land. In Deuteronomy 20, you get the laws for warfare and various types of warfare and God tells the Israelites, now when you go to war with people outside the promised land, this is what you're going to do, you're going to offer them in terms of peace and things like that, but he says in Deuteronomy 20, with respect to the cities of the people that the Lord your God has given you for an inheritance, in these cities you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as Yahweh your God has commanded. that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods. And so you sin against Yahweh your God. The standing order, the standing command with respect to the Canaanites was, you wipe them all out. Inside the promised land, they cannot remain. They cannot stay. And then we have Joshua 2, and we have a Canaanite saved in the very first city of the conquest. At the very beginning of the conquest, we have recorded for us in the Bible, so that we never forget, in the very first city of the conquest, a Canaanite saved. Now this, It actually shouldn't come as a shock. It actually shouldn't come as a shock. It does kind of come as a shock, but it shouldn't, right? There were provisions in the Old Testament for joining the people, right? Very back at the beginning when God promised Abraham, I'm gonna make you a blessing. He said, I'm gonna make you a blessing so that through your offspring, the nations of the world would be blessed. And then we see in the Pentateuch, there are provisions for joining the people, right? When they all left Egypt, a number of Other peoples went with them. We get that note. And we also see if, in terms of the laws for the sacrifices and the participating in the temple worship, we read things like this in Exodus 12 where it says, shall live among you and wants to keep the Passover to Yahweh, let all his males be circumcised. In other words, let him keep the covenant, let him join the people, that he may come near and keep it, and he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you." In other words, people could join. They could get circumcised. They could become Israelites. We also see that there's provision for blood-borne Israelites being cut off, right? This is from Numbers 9, if anyone who is clean and not on a journey fails to keep the Passover. In other words, if anyone does not participate in this commanded worship that I am giving you, anyone among the people, that person shall be cut off from his people because he did not bring the Lord's offering at its appointed time. that man shall bear his sin. And if a stranger sojourns among you and would keep the Passover to the Lord according to the statute of the Passover, according to its rule, so shall he do." So people, outsiders, non-Israelites could be grafted in and Blood-borne Israelites could be cut off. That provision existed in the law. It existed in the revelation of God. So, Rahab shouldn't have been a total, complete surprise. However, even though those provisions existed, that didn't stop Israelites from becoming arrogant. That didn't stop blood-borne Israelites from getting puffed up in their privilege and in their heritage. That didn't stop them from starting to think stuff like, well, no, someone like Rahab couldn't be saved. And I think that's why, remember, so much stuff happens in history. There's no way that we could record all of it, and yet... God chooses to tell us in the very first city of the conquest that a Canaanite was saved. This is intentional. This is to fight against that idea that could crop up in the Israelites' head, right? You see, Rahab is not an obvious candidate. for salvation to an Israelite from a cultural or sociological point of view. Rahab is not an obvious candidate for salvation to an Israelite from a cultural or sociological point of view. And we need to take that truth and first apply it to ourselves. We need to think about that fact in light of ourselves, right? Come to Joshua 6, and Rahab's in her house. and the walls of Jericho come tumbling down. She didn't even necessarily know that there was gonna be some miraculous stuff happening when the Israelites took the city, but the walls come tumbling down, and you're in your house, which is in the walls, but it doesn't come crumbling down, and then the army marches in. You just have this wave of destruction, a literal manifestation of the wrath of God moving throughout the city, and you feel that relief, right? What relief must Rahab have felt I could have been outside. It could have been me. What if the spies hadn't come to me? What if I hadn't done anything with these things I'd been hearing about, right? Imagine her relief. That relief, that sense of privilege of being there, being safe, that's something we need to apply ourselves. We need to stop thinking of ourselves, if we do, as obvious candidates for salvation. We are not obvious candidates for salvation. We need to kill any inclination that exists in us that gives us thoughts of our own worthiness or fitness for salvation. Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, it is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess the land. Right, an Israelite, because now we have Joshua 2, an Israelite telling the story of the conquest once in the Promised Land, They've got this to deal with. They've always got to be telling the story of Rahab. They're telling the story of Rahab. So Rahab, that knowledge is getting around. It's written down in the Bible. As scripture was read, and as it was shared, and as parents read that to children, children had to hear about Rahab. And maybe you're an Israelite parent, and you tell your child about Rahab, and the child says, wow, that's kind of neat. God also sometimes saves Canaanites. That's great. No, if, this is what Pastor Paul would say, if you were an Israelite parent worth your salt, then you would have said, no, you're missing the point. The point is not, oh yeah, God sometimes saves those people too. No, the point is all of us, all of us relate to God based on faith. We see it with Rahab the Canaanite, that's the point. All of us relate to God based on faith. Just because you were born in Israel does not mean you have any more ultimate privilege before the Lord, right? It's that same dynamic we see in Romans that we've seen as we've been preaching through Romans. What advantages does the Jew have? Yes, the Jew has situational advantage, but does that translate into actually being better off before the Lord? No. No one is actually better off before the Lord. No one has anything that commends them to God and God says, well, I have to save you. I mean, I gotta have you. No one has that. And an Israelite parent reading this to their child is forced to reckon with that and to teach that fact. The Israelite children were supposed to see themselves in Rahab as this story is being shared so that they would, and then the Israelite parents are supposed to then point out those other things that I've read from the law. Outsiders can be grafted in. We can be cut off. The issue is, how do you relate to God? And the ultimate issue there is faith. So that they would tell them, don't say in your heart after the Lord has thrust them out, it is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land. Know therefore that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. That's what you're supposed to be doing when you read the story of Rahab. You are supposed to be applying it to yourself and thinking, yes, I was not an obvious candidate for salvation, regardless of what my actual background was. And feel that sense of awe, that sense of relief, that sense of privilege of having been grafted in. Don't take your grafting in to the people of God for granted. And then secondly, secondly, after you apply it to yourself, you apply it to others, right? Our experience of grace should make us extend grace in our evangelism, right? There are people and there are groups, and each of us probably have different people and groups, that for whatever reason, in our head, we think, Not them, right? I can't really see any of them getting saved. I can't really see any of them. The group's different for all of us, right? You say Muslims. I don't really see Muslims getting saved. I'm going to evangelize this general theist. He's probably easier to evangelize. Or liberals, political liberals. There's just no way. We just disagree too much. We don't have any common ground. How are we going to talk? It's different. Maybe you're a Democrat and you think, there's no way, there's no way God could say these stingy Republicans. And you're a Republican, there's no way, there's no way God is gonna say these crazy Democrats. We all have different groups. But the point is, no one is an obvious candidate for salvation, right? And so recognizing that of ourselves, we ought to extend grace and evangelism. We ought to go and evangelize those groups that in our mind we think, probably not. Right? Because God saves Muslims. God saves liberals. He saves communists. God saves self-assured, arrogant 20-year-olds. God saves self-important atheist professors. He saves out of all the groups. When you read the story of Rahab, you need to remember that, and you need to go to all the groups with your evangelism. Number two, second component of Rahab's faith in this story. Rahab was a prostitute. Rahab was a prostitute. In other words, Rahab wasn't an obvious moral candidate for salvation. Not just not an obvious cultural sociological candidate, she is not an obvious moral candidate for salvation. Rahab didn't stand out among the Canaanites, right? Rahab wasn't running the Canaanite orphans and widow charity. You know, Rahab wasn't, you know, the God-fear, like they heard about Rahab and like, well, here, here is a Canaanite. If there's any Canaanite who's gonna help us, if there's any Canaanite who's gonna join up with us, it's gotta be this Rahab. That's no, that's not why the spies went to her. In fact, probably just the opposite. This is a prostitute, she doesn't probably care about much of anything, and so we probably get fly under the radar hiding over here. Nothing commended her morally outside of her people to the spies. Nothing made her stand out. And this is like her defining trait that we're told about. She's a prostitute. Even still in Hebrews, Rahab, the prostitute. Maybe she's like, I wish you'd drop that part. But that's what we're told about her. She's a prostitute. She's not an obvious moral candidate for salvation. You need to apply that to yourselves too. We are not obvious moral candidates for salvation. And that's regardless, regardless of our personal background prior to faith. Now I know some of us, I am preaching to the choir, I'm preaching to the choir for all of us, but I know for some of us, like, I don't need to hear this. I remember very distinctly what I was before Christ. I remember. I know I am not an obvious moral candidate for salvation. But you see, this truth applies to all of us regardless of our background before we were saved, regardless of how early we were saved. Maybe you only remember faith. Maybe you were saved as a six-year-old. You've been at this church as long as you can remember. Maybe you have walked with Christ for decades and decades and that's all you remember. But you see, this truth, it applies to all of us. That's part of the reason why it appears in the Bible. Part of the reason why we are told this is so that we can read of Rahab, and even though we don't necessarily remember in our personal lives, we aren't able to look back on a time really distinct and outside of Christ, we are able to apply this to ourselves and recognize, yes, regardless of my experience, I am not an obvious moral candidate for salvation. even if I was saved really young. Actually, if you were saved really young, if you were saved when you were six, you had even less to commend you to God. You had very little time to have any sort of deeds that you might have accumulated and think, yes, this is the reason God has to save me. We're tricked. This is this insidious thing in our human nature. We are often tricked into thinking that God's graces in our lives are our merits. We are tricked into thinking that God's grace is in our lives and our merits. And I grew up in a Christian family. I've heard the gospel my whole life. I never ran wild. I never was a partier. I never did this or that. Those are graces. That's not commending you to God. You are not an obvious moral candidate for salvation. If that's your experience, that's God's grace to you. Because still, outside of Christ, we can only be defined by our sins. Outside of Christ, you can only be Rahab the prostitute, or Jeremiah the liar, or the thief, or the cheater. Even today, if you were to delete Christ's righteousness, that God counts for you, that you don't produce yourself, even all the good deeds that God has worked in you, do not make you a candidate for salvation. They do not commend you. You're not standing on the merits of your good deeds before God. Outside of Christ, we are only defined by our sin, not by our good deeds. And it's only in Christ that we get to be defined by God's merciful gift of faith. It is only in Christ that we get to be defined by God's gift of faith. And that's why you come to Rehab in Hebrews 11, and by faith, she was saved alive. And so, now apply that outside. Remember, first we applied inside, and then... then you apply it to others. Among our enemies, right? Among those groups that you look at and you just think, this isn't happening, I can't imagine someone from this group being saved, or I can't imagine bringing the gospel to them. Among our enemies, we don't just bring the gospel to those who seem worthy or especially amenable to it. Right? You say, okay, I really, I can't imagine God saving a radical Muslim. However, I do know this like nominal Muslim next door who's like really nice and we get along and like, okay, so I can go to the one who commends themselves morally to me within the group. No, we don't just go with gospel to those who, for whatever reason, commend themselves to us morally, right? God saves radical Muslims, not just nominal Muslims. God saves disrespectful teenagers, not just polite ones, right? Like, this is a nice kid. He doesn't believe in Jesus, but he's a nice kid, and he has good conversation, and he seems like he likes to listen. I will evangelize him. No, God saves from all parts of the spectrum. God saves hardened atheists, not just your friendly deist. Like this person, this person is an atheist, philosopher, and he's angry, and he is an enemy, and he just seems like he is going to be mean to me the entire conversation. Why would I have a conversation with him when I have my neighbor who doesn't believe in Christ, but he does kind of believe in God, and he's very nice, and he wants to talk about this stuff. So, of course, I'm gonna go to this one. He looks morally better. No, we don't just go with the gospel to those who morally commend themselves, because none of us, none of us had anything moral in us to commend us to God or to commend us to our salvation. And so when we go out with the gospel, we don't just go to the groups that we like, and then among the groups that we don't like, we don't just go to the special cases within those groups. We bring the gospel to everyone. We bring the gospel with everyone. You see, it brings God glory to save those that we don't think He can or should, right? It brings God glory that His Son's salvific work can save Rahab's and Magdalene's and Jeremiah's and Tim's. God is not weak, and the cross is not small, and the spirit is not as impotent as our timidness and our fear sometimes suggest in our choice of evangelistic targets. Rahab was a prostitute. Number three, number three. Rahab heard, right? That sounds kind of obvious, but Rahab heard. She heard the news about this coming destruction. She had heard about the salvation that God had worked for Israel. She says to the people, to the spies, we have heard. We, the Jerichoites, we've all been talking. 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 and 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 Yahweh your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Rahab heard because of the urgency that naturally existed given the nature of the message, right? People in Jericho were talking about this. It was the kind of news that got around because it was life and death. There's this people out there marching around and it seems like they have a god on their side and they beat Egypt. I heard they beat Egypt. and took out Sihon and Og. Sounds like they're coming this way. That's urgent, right? Not all messages are urgent. Some messages you never hear because people will never get around to sharing. Not all messages are life and death. We tend to triage things in our head. We don't necessarily sit down and write down a list, but we just kind of naturally triage things in our head, like, oh, these are the things I'm going to talk about with this person next time I see them. That's important. And this is also important, but not as much. And then we might get to this. And then we'll just shoot the breeze. And maybe if we have time, we can talk about some of the stuff at the bottom of the list. We think about, we put organized messages in terms of relative importance. What types of messages are urgent people talk about, right? What types of things do we think are life and death? Political stuff, political intrigue, you know, what legislation is happening, who's getting elected, what kind of stuff is happening? That seems life and death. We hear about that all the time, right? That makes it on the news. Which politician is doing what? What do the presidents say? Threat of war, right? We hear about, you know, what's North Korea doing? What's going on with Iran? That seems life and death. That's urgent. Disease, right? We hear about that. The coronavirus. People were scared about that. We had cases in Hoffman Estates, right? We all heard about that. Not a single person in this room didn't hear about the people in Hoffman Estates with coronavirus. I know. With SARS and Ebola outbreaks. Those types of things are life and death. So we talk about them, right? My friends, there is an urgency to the gospel, right? There is an urgency to the gospel. Where does the gospel fall in your triage of things that you talk about with your neighbors and your friends? There is an urgency to this message that hopefully we're not just sitting on, right? We talk about disease. We're talking about spiritual disease. We talk about we know. We know the source of all of our problems. We know the source of man's malady. We understand sin and corruption. We understand the problem. We understand our deep spiritual sickness, right? War, what about the heavenly war, right? Do we think about? Passages like this from Revelation, when we're with our friends. Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And the one sitting on it is called Faithful and True. And in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood. and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice, he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great. And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured. And with it the false prophet who in the presence had done the signs by which he had deceived those who had the mark of the beast and those who worshipped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse. And all the birds were gorged with their flesh. Do we think about these things? And by the way, there's a transition for you. Next time you are talking with your friends, and say, I'm worried about Iran, and say, well, I'm worried about Jesus on the horse. Fourth component, fourth component of Rahab's faith. Rahab believed, right? Rahab believed. Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to them, I know. that Yahweh has given you the land, that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that 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 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 Yahweh your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Look at these elements of her confession. Rahab confesses that Yahweh is God over all other gods and over creation. We read that line, and sometimes in English it sounds very generic. I know that the Lord your God, he is God in heavens above and earth beneath, and maybe it sounds to us like she's just saying, yeah, okay, I'm coming to confess that God is God. God is who he says he is. But it's not just what's happening. The Canaanites had other gods. other religion, they followed after different spiritual beings they gave their allegiance to. And Rahab is confessing here, she's saying, I recognize that Yahweh is the one true God. I recognize that he does rule. She's confessing the one true God's sovereignty over all of creation, all of nature. Rahab also confesses that God had saved the Israelites out of Egypt, right? She's recognizing this salvific act that God had done. Right? She's not interpreting history naturalistically. She's not saying, wow, you guys got out of Egypt. That's great for you. That's nice, you know. I'm not sure how you pulled that. She's acknowledging your God was behind that. I know. I know. Right, and she didn't interpret what God did individualistically, right, or nationalistically. She didn't say, well, that's good for you Israelites. I hope that continues to work out for you. I'm gonna keep going my own business now. That's a nice story. She recognizes that this act of salvation that God did for the Israelites, this thing that she's heard about the exodus and God bringing the people, that that's relevant for her. That's relevant for what's going on in her own life. She confesses God's gift of the promised land, the land that she's currently living in. She recognizes, yes, God has given you this land. I know what's coming next, which means she's confessing her own coming destruction. She recognizes, I'm in this land that God has given to you, and you guys are coming in, and you are wiping out. You're bringing God's judgment for our sin against the people. I'm part of that. I'm in the way of that. And these are all necessary elements to our own gospel proclamation, right? When we go out with the gospel, when we go out to our friends, to our neighbors, to our coworkers, to our non-believing family members, these are things that we must be proclaiming. These are things that people need to hear and believe, right? They have to believe and recognize the one true God as their creator. and as the ruler, right? We're not just converting people to some general idea of like, yeah, there's God out there. He's kind of this power you can plug in, and it's good for you, and it will help your life. God will help your life. Christianity will help your life, right? We're not just telling people something like that, right? We're telling people about God and saying, yes, He is your creator. You have a creator. You are made. All things are made. You are subject to a sovereign over all of creation. There is a ruler that you do not recognize. That is an essential part of the Gospel proclamation. God's creation and His rule over all of creation. Right? As well as another essential part of our gospel proclamation is the salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ. Right? History. What has happened in salvation history is essential to the proclamation of the gospel. We're not just telling people, oh, you know, you should come if you pray to Jesus. If you pray and you use Jesus' name, good things will happen for you. God will be on your side. and he'll help you, he'll help you in your life, right? No, the history is important. What Jesus has done is important. Salvation history has marched on since Rahab. So not just the exodus and what God has done then, but we need to be telling people about the cross, right? The incarnation. God became a man. He actually walked amongst us. And Jesus went to the cross and He died, and you see people wear crosses, and people talk about the cross, and you heard that Jesus died. But you have to understand that that was an essential part of history, and that that was God's plan, and that on the cross Jesus bore the wrath that we deserve. That wasn't an accident. We have to explain this to people. We have to explain this history. We have to explain the meaning of this history. And the resurrection, Jesus Christ, the person, he rose from the dead, not just, oh, he was still alive in the hearts of his apostles or, you know, the idea of Jesus transcended death and now we follow after. No, Jesus Christ, the person that you could touch, he died and then he rose again, so you could still touch him. He rose from the dead. The ascension, he ascended into heaven where he rules now. And then the gathering of his people. Jesus is gathering a church together for his people. That's an essential part of the gospel proclamation. God is gathering a people. Not just you pray by yourself and hopefully things will go better for you, but Jesus Christ, God incarnate, the creator incarnate, the ruler of all of everything, The one who gave up his life to pay for our sins so that we have the opportunity to be saved, that Lord is making a people. He's gathering a people. Join up. He's making a people. Right? And the conquering Savior. The conquering Savior. That is an important part of the gospel proclamation. That is an important part of our gospel message. There are lots of different aspects to the gospel, right? Invitation, there's an invitation in the gospel. Come to me all you who are heavy laden and weary, and I will give you rest. There's an invitation. There's proclamation. There's comfort. All of those things are aspects of the gospel. But there is also an aspect of, and don't press this word too far, but there is also an aspect in our gospel proclamation of threat. Right? Have this picture in your mind as you understand your ministry. You are an ambassador of Christ. You are standing in front of the army of heaven. You're up front in front of the army of heaven and you know that the general on the white horse is behind you and he is about to move forward and there is going to be no survivors. You're the ambassador out in front of the army and you're talking to someone and you're like, Yield! Yield! Drop your sword! There is an element of threat in the gospel. Now, I'm not saying that you always emphasize that. I do believe that we use wisdom and we emphasize the parts of the gospel that need to be emphasized at any given moment and we trust the Spirit. However, that's an element of the gospel. Ambassadors in front of the army, you are an ambassador of a coming general. Those are important elements to the gospel, and we should never let those slide. What Rahab recognized is still true today, but to an even greater degree, considering the march of salvation history. Number five, number five, Rahab repents, right? Rahab repents. She's got to go against her culture, right? She goes against everything she knew by siding with the Israelites, and that's what I mean when I say repents. I mean, she takes a course of action. She changes where she was currently heading in life, and she takes a course of action that changes that. When she joins up with the spies, when she goes against her king, Her government, she chooses to hide the spies. She goes against the police at her door. This is an act of repentance. So she has to go against her culture. That's everything she knew, right? And some of the stuff might seem trivial to you, but I mean, really stop and think about it. That's stuff like food. I don't know what the Israelites eat. Joining up with them now. Clothing, art. I mean, it sounds trivial, but you have to understand the weight of what's happening when Rahab sides with the spies. Right? She goes against her people, everyone she knew. She didn't know any of the Israelites. She didn't have Israelite friends that she could say, okay, well, I'll just go hang out with my Israelite friends now. I'll go connect with them. Her people. She has to give up her people. She has to side with the people of God. She has to identify with Israel. She has to identify with this coming army. And of course, this is because she sides with the one true God. She says, what else am I going to do, right? That's the only reason why you do that. That's the only motivation for abandoning your people, your government, everything you know. It's when you recognize that this people I'm joining, they're God's people. She recognizes and identifies with the one true God. Shake off whatever shame or tibidness comes along with your identifying with the people of God. You identify with God. Though she wouldn't have been able to say it this way, Rahab's heart, I presume, sounded something like this. I am not ashamed of the good news of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. You see, when we come to faith in Christ, when we come to believe that God is who He says He is, yeah, He is the Creator. And I am a creation. I am something made by Him. He rules over all things. I am a sinner. I recognize my evil and corruption. I recognize my spiritual disease and my sickness. I recognize His right to have wrath against me. When we come to believe, we have to identify with God and with His people. That's part of conversion. Part of Christian conversion is repentance. It is identifying with God and His people. Now, I understand that most of us haven't been called to totally sever our past relationships outside of Christ. Most of us haven't been called to do that, right? There are still places in the world today where when you convert, that's the end of your whole life. That's the end of your whole life before Christ. Now, I understand that for most of us, when you were saved, it probably wasn't the end of your whole life. You probably still talked to people that you knew before. You probably have family members that haven't kicked you out. I understand that you haven't been called to sever those relationships, however, that doesn't lessen the call on you to identify with God and with His people. You are called to totally identify with God, to repent of your old life. You're not your old you anymore. You are defined by your relationship with Christ. You are defined by your membership in His people. You are defined by your citizenship in His kingdom. You're called to do things. Join up. Be part of the people. Join the church. Have a new identity. Are you Jeremiah the baker who also happens to go to Grace Covenant Church and also happens to be a Christian? Are you Jeremiah the Christian, a member of Grace Covenant Church, identifying with God primarily, who also happens to be a baker, right? Which way is it? Which way is it for you in your mind? Which way is it for your friends? How do your friends think about you? How do your neighbors think about you? How do your non-believing family members think about you? How do they define you? What would they say? Come together, join the church, have friends in the church, right? We're supposed to be participating, we're supposed to be having a new identity. Have friends in the church. Don't just come, don't just join and sign the covenant. Have friends in the church. Have a social circle in the church. Walk together in brotherly love with each other, right? Participate in the ministries of the church. Participate. Serve. Be known as belonging to God, right? Have strange priorities in front of your relatives. Have improper views. Be willing to be ostracized and ridiculed by your family. How often am I with my family or my wife's family, to my shame, I'm just timid. I'd just rather kind of be liked by them in any given moment when I know. I know I need to say something, because my identity in Christ demands it. Whatever the situation is, my identity in Christ demands that I speak up. When we are called to faith in Christ, we are called to repent of our own life, and that means new identification, that means identifying with Christ, and that means identifying with his people. We should all be a strange, peculiar people. We are God's people. So, Rahab was a Canaanite, She was a prostitute. She heard the message. It was an urgent message. She heard it. She believed. She repented, right? And to conclude this morning, I would like to just consider this thing we see at the end of Joshua chapter two, when the spies go back and they tell Joshua about what happened. And they say, truly, Yahweh has given all the land into our hands, and also all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us. Truly, Yahweh has given us the land. The spies come back from their trip and they're confident. They come back confident. They're emboldened, they're excited about the future and their prospects. Now, we do need to understand that there is a difference between our place in salvation history and the Israelites right before they enter the promised land, right? We're not living in the promised land, right? America is not the promised land. And God's people are not organized as a national political entity, right? There's no one nation on earth. We say, that's God's nation. That's God's people. The church is God's people. We exist in all the nations. The church is God's people, right? And so we're not about to enter a land and take over politically, right? We are in a different spot. However, we do have a commission, right? We've been talking about it. We do have an evangelistic commission. We do have a mission. What did the Apostle Paul say? How will people believe if they don't hear? And how will they hear if we don't go? How will we go if people aren't sent? When we read, recognizing the differences in salvation history, recognizing our difference, but when we read Joshua 2, when we read and consider our own unfitness for salvation, both culturally, socially, and morally, when we consider The urgency of our message, what we go out with when we consider God's gift of faith and the things that we recognize and proclaim and have come to believe. When we repent and recognize, now I have to identify with the people of God and now I'm going to be strange and weird and now I have to go back out into this world where I'm strange and weird, we should be emboldened. We should be emboldened considering Ram. We should be emboldened considering ourselves and our own situation when God saved us. Right? Our evangelistic mission has guaranteed success. Has guaranteed success. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He also called. And those whom He called, He also justified. And those whom He justified, He also glorified. Those whom God has predestined, He calls and He justifies and He will glorify them. God's sheep are out there. they're gonna get saved. That shouldn't make us passive, that should make us confident. That should make us confident to go out, confident to be kicked to the streets, confident to be made fun of, because our mission has guaranteed success, because God is the one working to gather his people together and to build his church, right? Our church-building mission has guaranteed success. Jesus said, on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. I understand that sometimes church work is discouraging. Ministry doesn't seem to be having the amount of fruit or the type of fruit you want. or there are scandals, either in your local church or in the church at large, and you hear these things and they're discouraging, and it feels like Satan is getting some really good hits in, and it's like, I don't know if this is going to work out. But our Lord said the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Our church-building mission has guaranteed success. Right. Christ promises that besides we have Christ promises. We have the promises that I just read. And then we also have experientially recognizing our own conversions. We have our own conversions. We have the conversions of our fellow church members. You look around and you see just the disparate group of people that God has saved through various circumstances and ways, and you talk to some of them, and then you're like, wow, how did you ever come to be a believer? And you're here now sitting, you talk after church, we're gonna have a meal together, hear some of you guys' stories about how God saved you. Look at your own life, marvel at your own unfitness and that God still saved you. Listen to the stories of the people around us. Consider Christ's promises, His explicit promises that He tells us. And we ought to be bold. We ought to be confident. Grow in our boldness, in our evangelism with friends, co-workers, neighbors, unsaved family members. Grow in selflessness, in missions, either in the support of missions or in going. I mean, we've won. We've won. And that's what I pray this morning. I don't primarily want you to feel guilty about timidness in evangelism, although if the Spirit is making you feel guilty, I also don't wanna squash that. It's true that we ought to at times feel guilty about our timidness, but that's not my primary prayer this morning. It's not that we would just feel convicted and sad, but that we would feel emboldened and encouraged He said, yeah, I have been timid. I have been silent at work when I shouldn't have been silent. But given what God has done, given who I was, it's time to stop. I'm going to work tomorrow. I'm going to see my dad tomorrow, and I'm going to tell them I'm going to proclaim God's coming kingdom. I'm going to stand as ambassador in front of the army and let them know about the rider on the white horse. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for your goodness to us, and I thank you for what you have done. And I pray that we would never forget that we were not obvious candidates for salvation. I pray that we would never forget the grace that you have shown us. I pray that when we read stories like this in the Old Testament, that we would be reminded and encouraged about your power and your faithfulness to save people, that we would be reminded that there's no singular privilege that we enjoy in this life that commended us to you, but rather your people have always been defined by their faith in you. I pray that we would remember these things and that they would make us bold in going out with your truth, with the message of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised and reigning and coming again in power and judgment. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.