Joshua Chapter 2:12-24

Maybe somebody said, hey, you know, what do you got to do to be a Christian? And maybe you were young, maybe you didn't understand. And you said, oh, well, you can't be doing that now. And we get to cart before the horse. People think, oh, I got to change before I become a Christian.

Well, problem is, if you ever tried to change your behavior on your own and in your own strength, you couldn't do it. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of the bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. No one's past mistakes keep them from following or serving God. Stay tuned as Pastor David talks about God's forgiveness as he continues in the Book of Joshua, Chapter two. But before we join Pastor David, have you ever experienced the time when you felt spiritually drained? Well, the Bible holds the cure that will bring joy and vitality back into your life. That's why we want to send you a copy of Pastor David McGee's video message, a checkup from the neck up. In this inspiring teaching, you'll find biblical truths that can restore your spiritual health. A checkup from the neck up is our way to thank you for your gift this month to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life. So please visit cross the bridge dot com to get your copy of a checkup from the neck up. Now here's David McGee with part two of his teaching.

Now is the time. Joshua, chapter two, verse one. Now Joshua, the son of Nun, sent out two men from Acacia Grove to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, especially Jericho. So they went and they came to the house of a harlot named Rahab and lodged there. And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, Behold, men have come here tonight from the children of Israel to search out the country. So the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, Bring out the men who have come to you, who have entered your house, for they have come to search out all the country. 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.

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. But she had brought them up on the roof and hidden them with the stalks of flax and which she had laid in order on the roof. Now, when you go to Israel, and I think everybody ought to go to Israel, but when you go there, what you notice is there's a lot of flat roofs. So if you're sitting there thinking, My goodness, how did they get up on the peak roof? They weren't peaks, they were flat, and they used to take stuff up there to dry.

And this is a case where the flax is drying out there, and she hid them beneath the flax. Then the men pursued them by the road to the Jordan, to the fords. And as soon as those who pursued them had gone out, they shut the gate. Now, before they laid down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are faint-hearted because of you. Verse 10, For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted.

Neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you. For the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Verse 12, Now therefore I beg you, swear to me by the Lord, since I have shown you kindness, that you will also show kindness to my Father's house, and give me a true token, and spare my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death. She's interested in seeing her whole family saved. Now, this is, I believe, the first conversion, if you will, of a Gentile that the Bible has.

Obviously Rahab was a Gentile. And she's not converting to Christianity. Christianity has not hit the scene yet. She's converting to Judaism, which was the forerunner of Christianity. It's two-thirds of the Bible. Isn't God cool?

Because you know what? We can't drum up a lot of pride about our first Gentile convert, can we? Oh yeah, well, you'll see this man, he was very spiritual, very scriptural. He was studying the scriptures, and this man came up and he converted. It was glorious. We can't say that.

The firstfruits of Gentiles being converted? Prostitute. No, it gets even better than this in a little while, but you know what's cool? Look what these guys didn't say to him.

Well, Rahab, you know, we'd love to hook you up, and we'd love for you to join our exclusive little club, but the problem is, well, you're a prostitute, and we just simply don't let prostitutes in our club. Did they do that? No. No. Did Jesus do that in John 8?

No, he didn't do that. Do we do that? Yeah, we do.

I do. Chances are you've done something just like that. Maybe somebody said, hey, you know, what do you got to do to be a Christian?

And maybe you were young, maybe you didn't understand, and you said, oh, well, you know, well, sir, you know, I noticed you were smoking reefer over there. That's got to stop before you can become a Christian. You can't be doing that now. And we get to cart before the horse, and people think, oh, I got to change before I become a Christian. Well, the problem is, if you've ever tried to change your behavior on your own and in your own strength, you couldn't do it. So guess what we just did. We just set up an impossible hurdle for them to get over before they can become a Christian. No one's past mistakes keep them from following or serving God. No one's past mistakes keep them from following or serving God. That's our next life lesson.

Aren't you glad? Amen. Praise God, man.

Praise God. Now, understand, when somebody wants to serve here, there's four levels of service, one, two, three, four, and there's one app for level one and two, one app for level three and four. Level one and two is basically, you know, are you alive, are you breathing, do you actually have a name, have you been saved, have you been baptized. If no on either one of those, we can hook you up, we can walk you through it, you can be saved, you can be baptized, and you can be serving. But we don't say, you know, have you ever sinned in your life.

That question is not on there. Now, understand, if you're wanting to go into children's ministries, we do do a background check, but we don't do that to see if you've, you know, ever drove too fast or, you know, drank or anything like that. We do that to make sure you've never stumbled with children, that that's not a problem, and certainly if that's a problem, you need to serve in another area, and we want to protect the children that way.

But aren't you glad that you don't get disqualified? That nowhere in there does it say, well, now, you know, if you've ever done this, that's it, God can't use you anymore. You'll see that in there. Now, let me probably step on a few toes here. How come when somebody in the ministry stumbles, all the rules are changing? I mean, I'm going to share from my heart for a minute. Now, don't get me wrong.

Don't misunderstand. I believe that if you're in the ministry and you stumble, there should be a season of repentance and a season of restoration. But I don't believe by any stretch of the imagination God is done with you. You know, what happens is a godly man will slip and fall, and so many of us in the church go, well, he fell. Shoot him. He can't walk.

He broke his leg. That's it. Sorry. Wish we could help you, but you've stumbled. Does that sound right? Does that sound like Christianity? But that's what we do. That's what we do with people in the ministry.

That's what we do with people in life in general. Is that right? No. Is it biblical? No. Is that really following Jesus? Absolutely not.

I mean, really, if a sufficient background check had been done on Rahab, this whole thing probably wouldn't have worked out, you know? 1 Corinthians 1, verse 27 says, But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world, and the things which are despised, God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. See, God in his grace, God in his grace uses people in ministry. Let's be honest. You and I would never choose them.

We'd never choose them. Say, oh, God can't use them. Oh, yes, I've got people that thought that about me.

Yeah, I've probably got people that still think that about me. Maybe they're in the room right now. God, why are you using him?

I don't know. Maybe because of this verse. Verse 14, So the men answered her, Our life's for yours. If none of you tell this business of ours, and it shall be when the Lord has given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you. Or another way of saying that, maybe we die if we don't keep our word. They were men of honor. When the Lord has given us the land, we will deal kindly and truly with you.

May I ask you a question? As you've come into the promises of God, we've talked about that Jordan is our relationship with the Lord, and we come over the Jordan. It's not death. It's because we still have battles.

We still have struggles. The promised land isn't heaven. We've talked about this before, but, you know, coming into the promises of God. So since you are coming into the promises of God, if you're here and you know the Lord as your Savior, may I ask you a question? Are you dealing kindly and truly with those who are just coming to know the Lord or who may not know the Lord?

That's a little ouch, isn't it? Notice what happened with Rahab. Rahab heard, then Rahab believed, and then Rahab acted on those beliefs. Acting on your belief is simply called faith. It's acting on your belief. If I walked out in the middle of the road and I said, you know what, truck's coming by in a few minutes. I'm going to stand here and it's going to flatten me like a pancake. What are you going to be thinking?

Well, other than move. You know, I mean, I guess that's fairly obvious, but you're going to think, well, if you believe that, why are you standing in the middle of the road? I mean, if you really believe a truck's coming, why don't you get out of the road?

That's a good question, isn't it? Do you understand unbelievers look at us in the same way? If you really believe this stuff, why doesn't it affect your actions more than it does? And then they think, well, maybe you don't believe it.

Maybe it's just something you say. But Rahab moved into the realm of faith and actions. Her actions were lining up with her beliefs. See, if I'm standing in the road saying that, my actions aren't lining up with my beliefs. And, guys, it's real easy to believe something, isn't it? Just say, well, yeah, I believe that. Yeah, amen.

I believe that too. But are your actions lining up with your beliefs? If they're not, there's grace, there's mercy. Your actions need to change. They need to change to line up with your faith. You need to ask for forgiveness when they don't line up with your faith.

And that's what Rahab was doing. Is your faith moving you to action in your life? It should be.

It should be. Somebody that's not saved should be able to look at your life, and I'm not saying you're perfect. None of us are perfect. But they should be able to look at your life and go, wow, you're different. Something happened.

What happened? And if they can't, there may be a problem. Maybe, in love, maybe your faith is dead. That's what the Bible says. If your Bible's not leading you to action, then your faith is dead. James 2, verse 17 says, Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Now, don't get me wrong, guys. We teach grace. We walk in grace. It's by grace that we're saved.

No doubt about it. I'm not talking about salvation. But Spurgeon said the grace that doesn't change your life won't save your soul. If you believe it, it should change your actions. Romans 10, 17 says, So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Well, you're in here. You're hearing the word of God. You know, I'm wanting to stir you up into an act of faith.

I'm doing my part. You're hearing the word of God because we're reading the word of God. So let me ask you a question. As you look at the activities in your life, do you have a live, living faith? Or do you have a dead faith? I can't answer that for you. You are the only one that can answer that. But you've got to step out in faith. You know, Hebrews 11, verse 7 says, That is a living faith.

I don't know if you've ever stopped to think about it. In the house, he was building a boat in the middle of the desert. Do you think there was people that were asking him about that? What are you doing? Building a boat.

I mean, seriously, they probably went to town, got a group. Let's go visit Noah. Let's go check Noah. He's building a boat. Building a boat in the desert.

I've never even seen a boat before, but he's building one in the desert. It says it's going to rain. What's rain? I don't know.

Something about water. Man, that's active faith. That is active faith. He was acting on what he didn't yet know. And yet, guys, we've got so much stuff in here that we can act on, that we do know, that we've been told, move into living faith.

And again, it's easy to sit there at night and go, oh, yeah, I need to do that one day. Well, I mean, not today, not this week, but at some point when I achieve balance in my life, I will switch into the living faith. God's giving you opportunity tonight. You're listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge. He'll be back with more powerful insight from God's Word in just a moment. But first, your enemy, the devil, doesn't want you to experience the life-giving truths of God's Word. He wants to rob you of the full life God wants for you.

But you can overcome his attacks, because there is supernatural power in the Word of God. That's why we want to send you Pastor David McGee's video message called A Checkup from the Neck Up. This powerful resource will show you how to revitalize your spiritual health and grow in your faith daily by meditating on God's powerful Word. A Checkup from the Neck Up is our way to thank you for your gift this month to help more people on this station and beyond cross the bridge from death to life.

So please, visit crossthebridge.com now to get your copy of A Checkup from the Neck Up. Now, back to today's message. Verse 15. Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the city wall, and she dwelt on the wall. And she said to them, Get to the mountain lest the pursuers meet you. Hide there three days until the pursuers have returned. Afterward, you may go your way. She told the Jewish man that exchanged his life for her life, that he was going to hide for three days.

Boy, this just sounds so familiar. I'm not sure where I've heard that story before. But verse 17. So the men said to her, We will be blameless of this oath of yours which you have made us swear, unless when we come into the land, you bind this line of scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, unless you bring your father, your mother, your brothers, and all your father's household to your own house. Now notice it was a scarlet thread.

It's a scarlet cord. It's been called the scarlet thread of redemption. And it's throughout the Bible. Oh, you can find it in so many places, because at the time, we'll come back and visit this, but man, throughout the Bible, you find it when God sacrificed animals to clothe Adam and Eve, the shedding of the blood. You find it when Noah was putting the pitch, because the word there in the Hebrew is kophar.

He was covering. It's the same word for atone. You see it in the doorpost of the houses as they took the lamb's blood and put it on the side of the doorpost. And you see it here in this scarlet thread where Rahab makes the journey from forgiveness to redemption and from deliverance when sin will be judged. This guy is judging Jericho. It's all going to come down here in a few chapters, and she's going to miss out on that. Wow.