I wonder if you have any embarrassing relatives hanging around your family tree; people you’d rather the rest of us not meet. They’re are an embarrassment to you, you feel like they bring shame to your family, and you feel it’s sort of a reflection on yourself — so you’d rather that we not meet them. Do you have some like that?
Well, who of us doesn’t?
And I wonder if there are some members in your congregation about whom you feel that way. Could that be? There they sit, just a few rows ahead of you, and it’s just terribly hard for you to accept them. You know things about them that aren’t really very complimentary at all, and you wonder how they can sit there in church so nice and fine.
Maybe you’ve heard people who like to raise objections about the church by pointing at situations like that. I’ve heard them. Surely you have too. “If those are the kinds of people you have in church,“ they claim, “I want no part of it!“
Now, suppose that one of those folks sitting there in church were a prostitute. And there she sits right in front of you! Could you handle that? Would you want people to know about that, or meet her? My guess is that we’d all just do our best to keep that a secret and we’d find it terribly hard to accept her.
Well, that’s our situation today when we start talking about Rahab, the lady of our Scripture passage. There’s a real jolt to this story.
We are surprised that we find Rahab, a prostitute, showing up — right in the middle of the chosen people of God, mind you!
If you and I were asked who we think would make the best church member, we’d never include Rahab. I’ve been a pastor for many years and I know how we’re all concerned about the quality of our congregation. So if someone asked us whether this woman ought to be in our church, we’d likely say no and in a hurry. But God has her right in the middle of his chosen people.
Actually, it’s not just here. She shows up several places in the Bible. She’s here in this ancient story at Jericho that we read from Joshua 2. But she also shows up in the genealogy of Matthew 1 in the New Testament, the passage traces the line of Christ and points to all these important people in the lineage of Christ. She’s there. And then she shows up again in the book of James (chapter 2) as someone whose faith was particularly alive and a good model for all of us. And then we read about her still again in Hebrews 11 (30,31) where she’s included as a hero of faith. So the strange thing is that she shows up a lot, over and over, when she’s not the kind you would expect to show up at all. Strange, isn’t it?
So maybe we better ask some questions about all this. What do we know about her? Who is this Rahab lady?
First we know she lived a long time ago. I would estimate just about 1300 years before the first Christmas, back in the days of Joshua, when the Israelites had completed their wilderness journey and were trying to conquer Jericho so they could have the Promised Land. That would put her just about 3,300 years ago.
And the second thing we know is that she lived in Jericho, and that meant that she was not an Israelite. She was a foreigner, an outsider, a gentile. She was, as a matter of fact, one of their enemies. And doesn’t that make it even more strange that she shows up.
And the third thing we know is her profession. She was a prostitute. That is very clear from every reference. Joshua 2 says they went to the house “of a prostitute named Rahab“. Heb.11 talks about the “prostitute Rahab“. And James 2 does the same thing calling her “Rahab the prostitute“. That’s pretty clear, isn’t it?
So that’s what we know about her, an ancient, gentile prostitute. No wonder we are surprised that she keeps showing up.
Well, as you can imagine, there is a story behind this lady and her surprise appearance.
That story begins way back in Egypt when God’s people were waiting to be set free from wicked Pharaoh. After years of slavery there, God finally set his people free. He divided the waters of the Red Sea so that his people could escape. But things got worse before they got better. They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, waiting to enter the Promised Land of Canaan. Now they are along the Jordan River just east of the land that will be theirs. They have to cross the Jordan River to finally get INTO the Promised Land. And God is going to do another of those big miracles; the river will open up so they can cross over. Well, Joshua, as a wise and calculating leader, studies the situation well, and knows its necessary for them to study the land, spy it out, make a good assessment of the enemies they’ll have to battle. So he sends two guys over there as spies to study it all.
And that’s where Rahab comes in.
Those spies came to her house. Her home was in the wall of the city. They probably assumed that this was the most likely place for someone to stop, and probably the most secure place to remain unnoticed, incognito, because people were always coming and going there. She was hospitable to them. But the king got wind of it, and ordered her to turn them in. However, she (and here is the beginning of her courageous acts of faith) didn’t give the straight goods to the king. She hid them on her roof, under stalks of flax that were drying up there in the sun.
And then before nightfall she went up there and they had a heart—to—heart conversation. “Look“, she said, “we know about you, and about your God. The word has spread. We know how powerful he is. We know how he fights for you. We know what he did to the Red Sea. We know what he did to your enemies along the way. And we know that he has given this land to you. (Word gets around, you know!) And we are all standing in awe of your God!“ That’s what she said. They were mighty words of faith, don’t you think!?
And then she had a plan that she laid out before them. You’ll find it in v.8. “I know“, she said, “you are coming back to conquer us and take over this land. I will help you and protect you if, when you come back, you save my family and me. A deal?“ “A deal“, they said, “you help us…we help you.“ So they had a deal. (v.14)
And she faithfully followed through on her part of the commitment. She secretly let them out of the city, to hurry back to Joshua with their report. (She could do that because her home was in the wall.) She gave them advice on how to escape capture in the process. So they went back with their report, with the understanding that when they came back to conquer the city their prearranged plan and signal with her would be implemented. The plan was that she should gather her family in her house, and have a rope hanging outside the window. She promises to have the rope; they promise to watch for the rope; and if the rope is there the deal will be binding. It will be carried out.
So the stage is set for a gentile prostitute to become deeply involved in life of God’s chosen people.
But to understand where all this leads we need to know about two more acts in this three—act drama. So far, we’ve seen only Act 1.
Here’s Act Two. As time passed, the spies went back to Joshua with their report, they mapped out their approach, God miraculously led them across the Jordan River by drying it up, and then they set their plans for attacking this walled city of Jericho. They lined everyone up, priests with the trumpets, and then the ark, then the rearguard and all the people. God gave the instructions. Perhaps you remember and know about that event. It went this way: march around the city; but don’t attack; just march around it…and go home. Same thing the next day…and the next day…and the next. For six days. March, and go home. And then on the seventh day march around it seven times. But all through this strange week of marching, they noticed something…something very strange. One of those homes, in the wall, had, well, sort of like a bed—sheet twisted into a rope hanging out the window. It was just always there. Every day. Flapping in the breeze. And now, on the seventh day, after seven times around the city, the walls came down…but not that part of it…there was the home—in—the—wall, with the rope, standing. So Joshua said to the two fellows who had been the spies, “there it is…go in there…Rahab’s house, gather her whole family, and bring them with us and resettle them in Israel.“ That’s Act Two.
But now if we go on to Act Three we will learn just how thoroughly Rahab became a part of God’s chosen people. Salmon, a Jewish young man, fell in love with Rahab, married her, and God blessed them with a healthy son whom they named Boaz. Does that name ring a bell? You see, he’s the fellow who married a Moabite named Ruth who had come home with her Mother—in—law Naomi. (There is a book in the Bible about the story of this Ruth.) And Boaz and Ruth had a son Obed. And when he grew up he bore a son named Jesse, who was the father of David. And that’s where the genealogy of Matthew 1 comes from — Salmon and Rahab, Boaz and Ruth, Obed, Jesse, David…. You see, this one—time prostitute Rahab became, as the providence of God turned out, the great—great—grandmother of King David, and Jesus the Messiah is called the son of David.
And so…right at the heart of the surprise is the fact that Rahab, a one—time Gentile prostitute, became an ancestor of the Messiah!
Now, what can we possibly learn from her surprising appearance? I mean, why does this lady come into the story and show up among God’s people?
As I answer that, let me remind you that certain OT events are big events, significant in and of themselves, but they have a significance bigger than themselves because they are a pattern, a model, a type of things to come. So Rahab is a pattern teaching us about things to come. Let me spell out a few of the big things she teaches us.
First, She teaches us about shattered barriers.
This world has always been good at building dividing barriers between people. These people are in; those are out. Men are in; women are out. Jews are in; gentiles are out. Jerusalem is good; Jericho is bad. Rich is good; poor is bad. White is good; black is bad. Everywhere you go there are insiders and outsiders. Well, here’s a situation where two spies who are obviously insiders, meet up with a gentile prostitute who is obviously an outsider. And when God brings the barrier down, this outsider Gentile is so thoroughly inside that she is written right there in the lineage of Christ. The message is that when God comes with his Messiah he aims to break down all these barriers that we’ve put up. The Messiah comes to bring a church where there should not be such barriers — where all are welcome. He’s teaching us that such barriers shouldn’t matter anymore.
Secondly, she teaches us about the power of the grace of God.
You see, it’s not just that she’s an outsider, a gentile, but she is a prostitute and that means morally and spiritually impure, sinful, guilty. A prostitute is a symbol, like a leper is a symbol, of someone who is unclean — of someone who seems to us to be beyond grace. How in the world can a sinful prostitute end up in church? The answer is clearly that God is a God who is in the business of being gracious to people, to bad people, sinful people, the people who would seem to be the last you would want to include. He’s in the business of loving the unlovable, of being gracious to the kind of people you and I wouldn’t want in our family tree, or our church. So it means that everybody who comes into the kingdom of God comes in singing “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me“.
Thirdly, she also teaches us another thing — about the value of faith.
Here was a lady of faith. That’s how the NT remembers her. James talks about her in 2:25,26 in that light. She had faith and put it to work. She knew about the power of the God of Israel, she knew the spies needed help, and in spite of all the risks, and all the odds that were against her, she put her faith to work. And that’s why she’s included in Hebrews 11, the chapter of heroes of faith. All the rest in Jericho were killed because they were disobedient. But not her. She had faith; she welcomed the spies, and practiced that faith. And the point is not that she merely said that she believed, she practiced what she believed, courageously. You see, out of all the things we could say about Rahab (lady, Jericho, gentile, prostitute, etc.) none of it really matters, quite like the fact that she was a lady of faith. And in the final analysis, that’s the only thing that will really matter about us too. Not just that we say we do, but we prove it by our living.
And now let me tell you the final thing she teaches us. She teaches us about the value of a rope—a rope.
You remember, don’t you, that she was the lady with a rope. She let the spies down out her window with a rope so they could escape; and that rope stayed there in her window so that when the army came back they saw the rope; and when the walls came down the rope identified the place where they’d find her and her family. She was the lady with the rope. But, did you notice what color the rope was? The story here says it was scarlet. Why scarlet? You know what that meant to the Israelites? It sent them back to the Passover Lamb that Moses had told them about, and the blood that had been sprinkled on the doorposts of their houses. The house with the red/scarlet door is the house where there is salvation. The angel of death knew that and passed over that house. And so in the NT it takes on new meaning and becomes a reference to the sacrificial blood of Christ. The life, the house, with the scarlet blood of Christ is the one where there is salvation. For Rahab the scarlet rope was a badge of identification, like the scarlet doorpost was a badge of identification for the Israelites. And for you, and me, the scarlet blood of Christ is the badge of our identification. The red door, the red rope, and the red blood — there is salvation!!
Well, I know you have some relatives you don’t really want to be identified with. We all do, I’m sure.
And we probably all can identify people near us in church who just don’t seem to be the kind who ought to be there, we think.
And we’ve all surely heard that accusation raised against the church, that it’s full of people like that, people who aren’t particularly reputable at all.
Now, I surely don’t intend to excuse unethical behavior or reckless lifestyles, but when it comes right down to it, we’re all people like Rahab, aren’t we? If we could see, like God sees, what lies deeply within our hearts, we’d had to admit that we’re all strange people to be in church.
And that’s the point. We are all people like Rahab, sinners whose only hope has been in the grace of God; Gentile sinners who were able to come in because Christ broke the barriers down; people with a scarlet rope hanging out of the window of their life; people of faith. And in the final analysis, that is the only thing that matters.
So today, take a fresh look at some of those folks near you in church and look at them through the eyes of the grace of God. And if you are one of those who is staying away from church because of people like that, take a new look again, and remember that church isn’t a place we go to show off how righteous we are, but it’s the fountain filled with the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse us of all our sin. And if you are one of those who feels you can’t go to church because you just don’t fit there, then I want to tell you that that’s exactly why you need to go there. Go to find the forgiving grace of God, and the soul—food to help you live by faith.
You’ll meet people like Rahab there, and you’ll feel very much at home!
Prayer
Let us pray:
Gracious Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, none of us could be included among your children; none of us would be worthy to be called yours. But with you there is forgiveness, for all of us, regardless of whatever barriers may exist here among us.
Today, Lord, will you enable each of us to reach out and receive your gracious forgiveness, to know your acceptance, and to trust the finished work of Jesus Christ to cover all our sinfulness.
And will you make our congregations a place where we can live together in your grace, places of acceptance, of love.
For the sake of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Howard Vanderwell
Howard Vanderwell was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in 1962. He received his M.Div. and Th.M. degree from Calvin Theological Seminary and his D.Min. at Westminster Theological Seminary in California. He has served as pastor to four congregations over 40 years in Iowa, Illinois and Michigan. After leaving the pastorate in 2002 he began a new ministry at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary. He is currently a staff member at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI and Adjunct Professor of Worship at Calvin Theological Seminary. He consults with local congregations, provides worship materials, leads conferences and workshops, and teaches courses on worship at Calvin Seminary. Howard’‘s interests include planning, leading and evaluating worship, preaching, and worship renewal throughout the evangelical church. “My life-long prayer, from my days as a child, was that I might be honored to serve as a Christian Reformed pastor preaching the Word of God to encourage and challenge his people. I consider the forty years of my pastoral ministry to have been the most valuable way in which I could have invested those years! When I consult with pastors, teach and mentor students, hold conferences for worship leaders, or write worship planning materials, my aim is to equip and inspire others to serve their Lord and Savior by making a whole-hearted investment in his church and his people. Such ministry is certainly not without its stresses and discouragements, and those of us who have found such joy in a life-time of ministry are uniquely fitted to encourage others.” Howard lives in Hudsonville, MI with his wife Eleanor. They have three married sons and ten grandchildren ages 5 through 19. His hobbies are yard-gardening, walking, photography and model railroading.
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