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A GOOD PROSTITUTE
Joshua 2:1-14
SERMON SUMMARY:
Rahab was a prostitute and an outcast, but correctly
believed in
the God of Israel. Focus is on the
morality of her lie
and the
covenant nature of her salvation, including family salvation.
I. They've
always been with us.
A. Have you
ever known a prostitute?
1) We
may see them, but won't admit to knowing one.
a)
Look how shocked Morristown
was!
b)
Roxbury - Smiles II?
c)
Riding German school bus past "Suzie's" and Messplatz.
2) The
"oldest profession"?
a)
Preaching is just as old.
B.
"Heart of gold" motif.
1)
History of American West, Hollywood portrayals.
2) In
reality, most are opportunitists.
3) They
are in the profession for money.
C. Rahab is
among most famous prostitutes.
1) Key
is not her heart, but her faith.
II. Secret spies.
A. Aren't
all spies "secret"?
After
important negotiations with business leaders in his
high-rise office building, John D. Rockefeller used to say
goodbye to his visitors at the elevator.
While the
visitors filed into the elevator, an innocent looking
man
would slip in and ride with them to the ground floor.
He would
follow the group out the door and then cross the street.
A few
minutes later, the innocent looking man would go back to
Rockefeller's office to deliver a detailed report of what
the
unsuspecting visitors talked about during the ride in
the elevator.
1)
Secret from Israelites as well as enemies.
2) A
negative report might demoralize the people.
B. Is Joshua
displaying unbelief?
1)
Promise of divine help doesn't rule out human responsibility.
2) God
hasn't told him about a miraculous conquest.
III. Rahab's profession.
A. Biblical
view of prostitutes.
1)
Forbidden by law.
a)
Yet existed - Judah and daughter-in-law; Samson.
2)
Interesting restrictions: wages not valid for offering.
3) Not
considered "victimless crime."
4) Eager
for forgiveness, followed Jesus.
B. Why the
spies went there.
1) No
questions asked.
2)
Foreigners common there, easy to get information.
3) Easy
escape route over wall.
4) Led
by God - he knew her heart.
IV. Rahab's lie.
A. How her
generation saw it.
1)
Hammurabi's Code.
"If felons are banded together in a prostitute's house and
she does not inform the palace, that prostitute shall
be put to death."
2) What
she did was just as deceptive as what she said.
3) By siding
with the spies, she became a traitor.
4) Lie
not emphasized in passage.
B. Ways to
understand her deception.
1) It is
acceptable to tell a lie at any time.
a)
(This has never been acceptable.)
2) Jews
saw truth as "loyalty toward God" so she is not lying.
3) She
was deceiving an enemy, which is OK in warfare.
Back
in 1804 the Baptists in Kentucky
had a dispute over
this.
One
side said Christians should never lie, not even to a
hostile Indian if it meant saving a child's life.
The
other side said they would lie to save the child's life.
Ever since they were known as the Lying Baptists.
4) She
was not a Jew, so not accountable to God's Law.
5) She
broke a lesser principle to uphold a greater one -
protecting God's people.
6) God
forgave her lie because of her faith.
C. Should
Christians lie?
V. Rahab's bargain.
A. Main
emphasis in story.
1)
Amazing what she knew about Israel's
history and God's plans.
2)
"The LORD your God is God in heaven and earth."
a)
Remarkable for a pagan to say this.
b)
Evidence of her conversion to faith in Israel's God.
B. A
covenant of love.
1)
Literally, she asks for their kindness = hesed = love.
2) She
is asking for a reciprocal relationship of caring.
3) Our relationship
with God is similar.
VI. Rahab's
salvation.
A. A request
to spare their lives.
1) She
may have expected to be made prisoners.
But alive.
2) Jews
gave them more - they were accepted as Jews. 6:25
3) Spiritual
salvation is better than mere physical.
B. Salvation
of whole family.
1) Note
effect of our faith on relatives.
2)
Corporate solidarity.
Acts 16:31
3) Is
YOUR family all saved?
C. The scarlet
cord.
2:18
1)
Similarity to the passover:
a)
Door marked with red blood.
b)
Family units stayed together inside house.
2)
Similarity to communion - we are marked by blood of Jesus.
D. Commended
for her great faith. Heb 11:31
1) Her
deeds established her faith. Jam 2:25
a)
She was willing to sacrifice what mattered most to her.
2)
Became ancestor of King David and Jesus Christ. Matt 1:5
VII. Are you on same level as this prostitute?
A. Recognize
what God has done, is doing, in history.
B. Stand up
for God before pagan opponents.
C. Seek the
salvation of your family.
========================================================================
FURTHER NOTES from Galaxie Software's "The
Theological Journal Library CD,
version 2"
I. JETS 31/1
(March 1988) 43
Divine
Involvement In Warfare
The Lord not
only commands military action; he also takes an active part in
it. His activity appears on two levels. The use of certain war terms
portrays him
as active on the battlefield: The Hiphil of nkh ("to smite") and
the Niphal of
lhm ("to wage war") are used both of Joshua and all Israel
(e.g. Josh 10:29, 31, 34, 36, 38) and of the Lord (e.g. 10:10, 14, 42).
But he is
active on a psychological plane as well.
The might of the Lord
causes a
great dread in the enemy, rendering them ineffective in battle.
Thus Rahab
says to the two spies, in Josh 2:9, that "the dread of you has
fallen upon
us" and that "all the inhabitants of the land melt away from
before
you." In the next verse we
learn the reason for this great dread:
They have heard of God's great acts for
Israel
against Egypt
and the two
Amorite
kings, Sihon and Og (2:10). "We heard," she says in v 12,
"and our
hearts
melted, and there was no spirit left in any man before you, for the
Lord your God
is God in the heavens above and on the earth below." God's
grandeur thus
overwhelms the enemy. But in
addition God himself controls the
enemy's
psyche: He reaches into their hearts and hardens them for war against
Israel,
that he might make them a hrm (Hiphil) without mercy (11:20).
The
use of war
terms thus portrays the Lord as actively involved in Israel's
warfare and
closely identified with Israel,
since the same terms are used
both of the
Lord and of Israel.
II. Genesis 15:6:
New Covenant Expositions of an Old Covenant Text
WTJ_V42
#2_Spr 1980_284
The example
of Rahab
The point is
illustrated further by reference to the other example noted by
James. Not only Abraham the honorable prince of Israel, but
also Rahab the
adulterous
mother of Israel
was "justified by works" (Jas 2:25). The
interesting
point to consider with respect to Rahab in this context is not
only the
disqualification for being regarded as sinless which her life before
encounter
with Israel
establishes. More specifically, it
is the possibility
of sin
associated with the very act which James declares as the means of her
"justification" that deserves notice.
Admittedly,
it may be possible to defend Rahab's lie to the king of Jericho.
The tendency
today seems to be in the direction of not regarding her
misrepresentation of the facts as sin. Yet the possibility must be granted
that even in
the midst of her noble action, Rahab violated the law of God
concerning
the bearing of false witness.(21) How then could an action which
in itself
incurred additional guilt be the way of achieving a decision of
absolute
guiltlessness? How could this one
action be the way for the removal
of guilt for
all her past life of flaunting the law of God? Yet just such a
concept would
be involved in too facile an interchange of the word-values and
phrase-values
found in James and Paul.
III. JETS 33/1 (March 1990) 27
For brevity's sake, we must forego
looking closely at the examples of living
faith from
the lives of Abraham and Rahab (2:21-25).66 Nonetheless, here is
an abridged
statement of the point James is making: Abraham and Rahab, though
they came
from opposite ends of the social and religious spectrum, both had
an attitude
of willingness to sacrifice what mattered most to them because of
their
faith. That submission was proof
their faith was real.
IV. There is a
tension in the genealogy, of course, since an early conquest date
of ca.
1400-1350 B.C. would place Salmon and Rahab, the parents of Boaz, as
early as 1400
whereas David's birth can be no earlier than 1040. This means
that only
three generations separate Salmon from David, a period of around
300
years. A conquest date of around
1250 would alleviate this tension but
it would also
create far more difficult chronological problems otherwise.
Most likely
the Ruth genealogy, like many others, is selective and retains
only
representative names. See Robert R.
Wilson, "The Old Testament
Genealogies
in Recent Research," Journal of Biblical Literature 94 (1975):
176, 180,
189; E. H. Merrill, "Paul's Use of
'About 450 Years' in Acts 13:20"
Bibliotheca
Sacra 138 (1981): 24
Matthew 1:5
states that Salmon (Ruth 4:21) was the husband of Literary
Structure in
the Book of Ruth_BSac_V148 #592_Oct 91_439 Rahab (presumably the
Canaanite
prostitute of Josh 2:1). Rahab was
probably the "mother" of Boaz
in the sense
of being his ancestress, since she lived in Joshua's day, 200 or
300 years
before Ruth and Boaz.31 This connection with Rahab is especially
interesting
in light of the Judah/Tamar story.
While Rahab was indeed a
prostitute,
the Joshua narrative emphasized her courageous service to the
spies and her
inclusion within the covenant community (Josh 6:25; cf. Heb
11:31). Her character was more nobly presented
than that of the scheming
Tamar. Again the reader is forced to admit that
he would probably not have
picked either
Rahab or her descendant Boaz as participants in the covenant
promises,
much less as contributors to the messianic line.32
Of the
various explanations for the unusual inclusion of the five women in
that
genealogy (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, Mary), the one that works the
most
consistently for all five is that each was shrouded in the suspicion
(not always
justified) of having engaged in illegitimate sexual relations.
Yet God was
sending a deliverer for those kinds of people as well.27 Does
that recast
the not-too-distant debate between Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown in
a somewhat
different light?
It is
remarkable that Obed, the father of Jesse, had a Moabite for a mother
and a
Canaanite (Rahab, Matt 1:5) for a grandmother. This "root" of Jesse
was three
quarters Amorite! IT IS THE FAITH OF
RAHAB AND RUTH, NOT THEIR
PEDIGREE,
THAT COMMENDS THEM TO BE THE MOTHERS OF KINGS. The royal genealogy
in Ruth 4:18,
moreover, reaches back to Perez, born of Tamar, probably a
Canaanite. Tamar, like Ruth,
had been denied her levirate right (Gen 38:28).
By venturing
her reputation, however, she demonstrated her faith. Righteous
Tamar (Gen
38:28) and excellent Ruth (Ruth 3:11) were goodly models for Mary
(Matt 1:3, 5,
16), who likewise risked her reputation for purity to be the
mother of
promise (Matt 1:19).
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