Spies and Allies (Part B)

Now, I have known professed believers, and you probably have too, who had a better outward reputation than Rahab, but they were destroyers. They ruined relationships. They sowed seeds of discord. You know, again, God says, I hate that. I hate when seeds of discord are sown amongst brethren.

You get in there, and you start saying, well, did you know, and so-and-so, and you start causing trouble. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Joshua.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will continue his study called Spies and Allies in Joshua chapter 2. It s very easy to twist the scripture. Satan did it there in the wilderness with Christ.

Of course, the cult, they do it. We come across the false teachers in Peter, and then again in 1 John, and the Pharisees, and the Judaizers in the days of Paul, and we find out they're all twisting scripture to their own satisfaction. Jesus said, for what righteous works are you trying to stone me? Look at what I'm doing and listen to what the prophets are saying. You're asking me if I'm the Christ. I've told you I'm the Christ, and you still don't receive it.

You've made up your mind. I can't be the Christ because you don't like me, and that can be a ticket to hell, an eternal hell. There are a lot of people outside these walls. They don't like Jesus. A great many of them have never met the real Jesus. They're reacting to some heretics presentation or some overzealous yet wrong presentation of Christ. How many people have been raised in Christian homes?

Some in solid homes, and still they depart, but then there are others that were raised in wacky homes, and they depart. It is up to us to bring the light. Maybe, maybe, listen to this, maybe there's some backslidden Christian out there, and their parents are praying that God would bring a righteous soul into their child's life. Maybe you or I can be that person. Maybe you or I can be dispatched like an angel from heaven into the life of some apostate or backslidden child, and win them out of darkness. That is a prayer.

God, make me a messenger to extract from the jaws of hell some child that's landed in the snare of the devil. What a glorious picture. Imagine entering heaven with that ribbon on your chest. You know the song Ballad of the Green Beret, put silver wings on my son's chest, make him one of America's best. I shouldn't be singing army songs.

It's a beautiful song, I think, and it excites patriotism, of course, but it also, it excites a noble spirit. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it's not against Christ. But how much better to say to the Lord, put the messenger of God, that ribbon on my chest, that you can send me out on a noble work, or sit around criticizing the pastor. Verse four, for some other Christian. Did you see the way they were dressed today?

I mean, there's bigger things to do than that. Then the woman took the two men and hid them, so she said, yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. Now, she's risking everything on the basis of this spiritual discovery she has made. She's put the information together. She has the same information everybody else in Jericho has, but what she does with it is entirely different, and she brings her whole family into this. Believers, we often, through history and scripture, and to this day, often we benefit from some unbeliever helping us, putting themselves at risk for us. Moses, of course, floated on water to Pharaoh's daughter, and she fished him out of the Nile. Esther, of course, her husband, and how he was very much a part of the defense of the Jews. As we listen to Rahab, we get the feeling that she didn't care too much for the people of Jericho. Maybe she was mistreated enough that she was ready, she was ripe.

Well, are there not people in the world that have been treated by the world so poorly? Enough times they're ready to come out of it, but they don't know how. There's no light. Jesus said, you are the light. You go get them out. Our mission here is not to seek and destroy, it is to seek and rescue.

That is very at the top of, without love, you can't do it. So I was making a hospital call once. I made quite a few of them. I walk around the hospital, I said, I've been in that room, I've been in that room, I've been in that room. Anyway, I'm making a hospital call and I see a Muslim working there, a woman, she's got the headscarf on. Now, do you think my first feeling was that of love? I'm not telling you.

But it should have been if it wasn't. That's what Jesus means when he says, love your enemies. I can't use you hand to hand, face to face, if you can only be sent to people you like because you don't like the other ones because they're in the darkness that they need to be brought out of and I need you to do it. And so to learn to love people without letting our biases blind us, it is going to take work. It's not going to come easy because, again, the flesh is not subservient to the spirit if it doesn't have to be.

It can force it to be. Well, Rahab, we get the feeling, as I mentioned, she wasn't fond of the place, the people there, but salvation is now knocking on her door and the spies knew God's hand was in this. I don't know that they knew it right away, but by the time this is over and they report to Joshua in verse 24, they're going to say, God was all over this.

They knew they should have been caught and executed if not tortured first. Verse five, and it happened as the gate was being shut when it was dark that the men went out. Where the men went, I do not know. Pursue them quickly, for you may overtake them.

So she's lying to them, of course, and it is nighttime and she's saying, of course, when they come, they're looking for the men. They're not here, but they went out the gate of the city. Jericho had more than one wall, incidentally, and they were sizable walls. A lot of archaeological work has been done and redone and errors have been found in the findings of the first archaeologists and it's very interesting. They knew it was a sudden destruction of Jericho. One of the reasons why is they found whole bags with grain, food, left the way it was. They were not put under siege and evacuated and looted. Very interesting, but let's stay on course here.

We have so much to cover and 24 minutes have been spent. Well, as I mentioned, she's lying to these men. Now, the Bible reports what is going on. It is reported, not exhorted. The Scripture is not saying, Rahab lied. Be like that, O Christian. It is not saying this. It's saying this is what happened.

It's not giving an approval to this and a lot of people get tripped up on that and can't get past it. Well, you can swallow camels and gag on gnats if you want to. Incidentally, gagging on gnats.

Why don't fruit flies taste like fruit? Well, back to this. She had other issues besides just telling lies, but in this case, it was serving the Lord. Now, she wasn't a child of Scripture. She wasn't raised at the feet of Aaron, the high priest. She was a pagan. In a society, we're lying.

If it worked, you did it. And if you didn't lie when you needed to lie, something's wrong with you. The first sin judged in the church was lying. Sapphira and Ananias, God is sort of saying to Christians, this is what I think about you lying, especially in church. And of course, it ended in their death.

Nowhere in all of Scripture is a lie called anything but a lie. So we need to emphasize that in case anyone gets the idea, well, Rahab did it and yet she got saved and God blessed her and she became one of the ancestors of the Christ. Well, that certainly would be a wrong way to see it.

Now, I have known professed believers, and you probably have too, who had a better outward reputation than Rahab, but they were destroyers. They ruined relationships. They sowed seeds of discord. You know, again, God says, I hate that. I hate when seeds of discord are sown amongst brethren.

You get in there and you start saying, well, did you know and so and so, and you start causing trouble. If you feel that urge coming on, you might want to arrest it and not do it. You don't have to. There's nothing wrong with saying, I won't do that.

I'm just not going to do that. Well, she, of course, was convinced and acted upon her conviction. She was convinced that God sent the Jews. She's going to open that whole thing up in a minute, and so she's not hesitating. From the time those men came in to that inn, her wheels were turning in her head, and she chose what side she was going to be on.

She had no reason to believe that Jericho would fall except the record. You see, the world has the record of Christ in the Bible, and they're either going to believe it or reject it, and that is what was going on here on this day in Jericho, and as Ruth one day would choose, Rahab chose, and Rahab comes long before Ruth. She chooses her side, and it's the side of the people of God. She was not only impressed, but she acted upon the things that impressed her.

How many times do people, they're moved emotionally, and they want to give their lives to Christ, or they even say they give their lives to Christ, and then that's it. They go right back to the way they were and disregarding everything that just took place. Well, that wasn't going to be the way for this woman, and which is quite remarkable stuff when she's going against everything around her. This was an irrevocable decision she made when she lied. It was like, okay, hey, I'm just kidding.

Let's come back there inside. They would have gotten despised, and they would have dealt with her too for lying to them like that. Let's take a couple of New Testament verses, Hebrews 11, 31.

They're kind of beautiful. It's enhanced when you have it in the context of Joshua 2. By faith, the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe when she had received despised with peace. That is a picture of our salvation, and of course, James holds up Rahab as a doer of the faith. In James 2, verse 25, likewise was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way. She acted upon what she said she believed.

She didn't just say, I go to church, I serve in church, and really has no passion for the Christ of the church. That is one facet of faith without works. If you're going to believe, it's going to show up in your life. If I had looked at that young lady with the scarf on her head and just dismissed it like, they're here now, that would have been faith without works. Faith says, that is not my concern. What my concern is, is the mission, the message of Jesus Christ.

And this has to be trained into us so that it gets to be done without thinking. Next time it's not, don't tell me. The next time is right to, Lord, what do you want me to do here? Verse six, but she had brought them up to the roof and hidden them with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order on the roof. Now the flax, of course, grows about three foot tall. It is used for making linen, clothes, or wicks for lamps also. When the prophet said a smoking flax, he will not quench.

He's talking about a wick. Once it's matured, they cut it at ground level and they soak it to separate the fibers from the stem and then they put it up on the roof for the sun to dry it. She's in the textile business. She's making money from this. She's on the roof. There's a lot of flax on the roof, enough to cover two men so that no one can see them.

And, of course, it's supplementing her income. We know that, but we'll get back to this, why God just chose everything was right in place. Okay, I'll get ahead of it. There's rigging involved. She's not going to be able to let these men down with a rope like just, you know, here, tie this around your waist.

They're going to fall to their death. There's some apparatus in place to make this happen. Well, her window is on the outside of the city.

That's a natural loading dock. When the flax comes in from the field, they drive the cart right up or the donkeys or whatever up to the wall, and she just drops the rope that's either on a winch or a pulley. I mean, they had ways to pull water out of wells and to put stones up on buildings. The technology was there, and I think that just if they had gone to maybe a poet's house, she said, how are we going to get down?

Well, let's see now. We can tie some parchment together. Maybe we can throw enough paper on the ground. You can jump out and land safely.

It'd be like a trampoline or something. So it's just incredible how this all fits together. Just so happens I have enough flax to cover you. Just so happens I have rigging in place to lower you down safely. I mean, all you see is this woman there with a rope. These guys are like, I can't. It's going to burn my hands.

I know a lot about rigging, and I know you can't fool with it because once it tips, it's gone. Well, anyway, verse 7, and the men pursued them by a road to the Jordan to the Fords, and as soon as those who pursued them had gone out, they shut the gate. Well, the first automobile mentioned in the Bible are Fords. Sorry, Chevy lovers.

It says right there, to the Fords. God would have hidden these men even without Rahab. He would have taken care of them. But this is the process, and that's what counts for you and me. It's not the what ifs and God could have. It's what is he doing, and this is what he is doing. So he permits us to see the process, to join it, to see that here is this harlot, and she is going to get saved right now.

1 Timothy 2, 4, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. So you see somebody. You know, I've said before, I have a neighbor of two, three, four, five, that I really don't like. Not that they've done anything to me. I see them coming. I want to go away.

So, I mean, in the earlier years of life, I was like, yeah, come on. I'm going to preach to them. Now I've got some other moves, and it's namely this. Lord, if you want me to preach to them, you have no problem telling me.

You'll set it up. And, you know, it works. And the other day, one of them caught me. And I just said, this is the Lord. And nothing great came out of it. It's just the Lord reminding me that we're on the same page. Now that works into this story some way.

All right. Verse 8. Now behold, they lay down. Before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof. So they go into bed. It's dark. And she comes up. And the story's not going to really tell us, you know, okay, it's morning now. And then they got up.

The writers just leave out so many things, and you have to get it. Verse 9. And said to the men, I know that Yahweh has given you the land that the terra of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are faint-hearted because of you.

This is remarkable. She cites. She points to God's will. She knows that Jewish army is out there, but that's not going to be the army that's going to take the city. It's going to be God's will. I know that Yahweh has given you the land.

I mean, word got around. The four women of the Old Testament, to me, that are outstanding, Ruth, Esther, Abigail, and Rahab. They are just outstanding women because of the situations they found. And that doesn't take away from Sarah and all the others, and they may be your favorites, and you'll have to work on that.

But these three were just put into situations that were life and death. Even Ruth. I mean, what's Ruth going to do? I have nowhere to go. I can't go back there.

I have to go with you, Naomi. Just courageous, wonderful moments. But anyway, back to this. If you have an urge to feel sorry for the judgments that's coming upon Jericho and the Canaanites, it's a natural, not a spiritual pity. It's misguided. Natural men are often quick to advocate, to come to the support of wickedness that needs to be dealt with and judged. In fact, we say, Lord, how long are you going to let them get away with it? Well, these aren't getting away with it.

They're going to get theirs now. That's where we are. In verse 10, for we have heard how Yahweh dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.

Yeah, the emphasis is critical. She's saying we know the record where it reached us. You can't conceal two million people in the wilderness very easily. In fact, God, not only did he not make an effort to conceal them, he made an effort to publish where they were. They had this big pillar of fire at night around them and this giant cloud in the daytime.

You couldn't miss them. How many people would be out there, you know, with their sheep or just taking a walk in the desert, seeing if they could make it, and see this and want to see what is that and go closer and find out and interact with some of the people on the outskirts of the camp? God made no effort to hide his people. Rahab made it clear that the judgment of God from 40 years ago, that record is retained.

They still have it like we have our Bible. The others in Jericho knew the same story. They're not behaving the same way.

She knew it was time to repent and to reach out to God. What would have happened if the king of Jericho said to all the people, this is a judgment from God, and we have to find a way to get right with God, like they did in Nineveh when Jonah went there. But of course, they become adamant, as the world often does. You can show the world prophecies, you can refute all their arguments, and still they double down. I will not believe it.

I don't want to hear it. That's not reason for us to give up on them, because we don't know who's unreachable and who is and who is not. And so, instead of turning to God, they've turned away. God knows who's reachable, and He hides it from us, unless He has a cause or He makes it obvious we are to always stay open. Verse 11, and as soon as we heard these things our hearts melted, neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for Yahweh, your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.

And so she says, when word got to us about the record from 40 years ago, it was fresh to us. We knew that if God did that to Egypt, the sea parting, and those kings, Og and Sihon, if you could take them out, we're done for, we're toast. And again, it's reason, it's reason, rational to submit. The men of Jericho, they were terrified. In other words, they shared the conviction. They knew, okay, they were convinced these people are going to conquer us. And then they have this insane response to it.

Let's rebel. Deuteronomy 2 25, this day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the nations under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you. Well, that's right out of the book of Acts chapter 2. Word got around, people were fearing the Christians because the Christians held a truth that they didn't have. And it should be some of that left for us today.

It's possible on an individual level for sure. Individual Christians can carry themselves in such a way that those around them have great respect, even if they don't like them. They're just okay. If you argue with that Christian, they're going to win. They're going to make you feel very bad about yourself, and you will have nothing to say in defense. And when it is over, you will be the one with your conscience bothered, not them.

That happens quite a bit. And wherever you find Christians ready to engage the crazy views of the world, would to God that this church of people, if anybody was against us, that they would say, yeah, but you better watch out because God is with them. Who would not want that? Lydia was a businesswoman. She was the first convert to Christianity on Europe's soil. Rahab, a businesswoman also, is the first convert to Judaism, the Promised Land's soil.

Mary Magdalene, she of course, the first disciple of Christ to see the Lord risen. Of course, that took place in Jerusalem. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Joshua. Cross Reference is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you're interested in more information about this ministry, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Joshua right here on Cross Reference Radio.