to Joshua chapter 2. Now last week in Joshua we did
an overview of that entire chapter, the story of the spies being
sent in secretly, that is not secretly from the people they
were going to spy on, that's kind of assumed in the word spy,
but Joshua sent these spies out without telling the rest of the
Israelites, quite possibly because he did not want the Israelites
thinking that this was another espionage tactic such as was
used 38 years previous when they sent in 12 spies and 10 gave
an evil report. This time sending in the spies
would not be for the purpose of finding out whether it was
a good idea to go in, but mostly I would say just what's the best
way to approach it. So we looked at the entire story,
particularly at that woman named Rahab, who was a harlot, also
a, well, probably what we would call a motel, My understanding
is the word motel came from mixing the words motor and hotel together. So they wouldn't have had motels
back then. So I guess it was a hotel, an inn. But that was
a common practice in that day, that those who ran inns, that
is women who ran inns, also were engaged in the business of prostitution. And she is an example of free and sovereign grace. She was a woman from a Gentile
city, a city on which a curse had been pronounced, a city that
the Lord God was determined to destroy, a city that the Jews
would be the agent of destruction. And when they went into the city,
she recognized them for who they were. And despite all that may
be said about her that would be the opposite of a commendation,
nonetheless, she was one of the elect of God, chosen before the
foundation of the world in Christ Jesus. He would come in due time
and redeem her. The Spirit evidently had already
called her and given her at least an understanding of what was
going on in her day and how it related to the God of the universe.
And so she made an agreement with those spies. She hid them
from those that were looking for them to destroy them. And
once the searchers had gone outside the city, to see if they could
find them out in the countryside somewhere, she let them down
from a window and told them, go hide in the mountains for
three days. And then she said, however, when
it comes time to destroy this city, spare me and my family,
my parents, my brothers and sisters and their family. told her, we make that oath,
however, we'll be free of that oath if you do not hang a scarlet
cord out the window. And in hanging that scarlet cord
out, which, and I can't say this with any authority, it may have
been something she normally hung out the front window of the place
to indicate what kind of place it was, a sort of sign, I don't
know, Now she hangs on the outside because her house was built into
the wall of the city. She hung it on the outside. Therefore,
in a sense, she declares to the world what she is. You know,
the Lord God has never granted salvation to someone not willing
to confess their need of it through sin. As long as we attempt to maintain
our righteousness, even the least bit of it, as long as we try
to argue that in the presence of God or even argue it within
our own mind as a way to appease our conscience, so long as we're
doing that, we are not the objects of the grace of God. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I've
come to seek and to save that which is lost. And a person unwilling
to admit that they're lost, well, there's no Savior for them.
And as someone pointed out, when the Lord said, I've come to seek
and to save that which was lost, it didn't mean they were lost
to him, as though he didn't know where they were. They were lost
in the sense that they didn't know where they were. But he will seek them, he will
find them, and he will save them. I remember within a couple, three
years after I got out of college, I was listening to the pastor
of our church, and he quoted that scripture where the Lord
said, I have come to seek and to save that which is lost. And
he said, and you know, the Lord is going to save every lost person. And coming from the area I come
from, southeast of this United States, which is dominated by
freewillism. You know, they use the word lost
to describe anyone whom the Lord has not yet saved. And so when
Henry made the point, Jesus Christ is going to save everyone who's
lost, he goes, you might think everybody's lost. He says, no,
they aren't, just ask them. And that's the truth. Don't want
to admit they're lost. But this woman was lost. She
was willing to proclaim who she was and then also by hanging
that scarlet thread out the window, she was confessing who she identified
with. In the war to come, in the conflict
in Jericho, she was siding with the Jews. You know, those who
claim to love God, but will not associate publicly with his people,
that's pretty serious business. To say, yeah, I'm a Christian
in secret, I know that at any given moment,
the most faithful of believers can prove unfaithful. I understand
that. I'm talking about someone They
know what the truth is. They know that what they're hearing
really is not the truth. And then they know that the truth
is within their reach. But they won't go where the truth
is preached because of tradition and fear of men, fear of being
ostracized. That's kind of a scary thing.
It says concerning some of the Pharisees that they believed
Christ They listened to Him, and it was obvious what He was
saying was true. They believed, but they would
not confess Him out of fear. And those that will not confess
the Lord as He is, such the Lord will not name before
His Father. And sure enough, when the army
of the Jews They, of course, fought an unusual warfare. They
marched around the city. And for six days, they marched
around it once, and on the seventh day, they marched around it seven
times, and then down came the city. Then they went in and killed
everyone except Rahab. Her family, everyone that was
in that house was preserved. Now this week, we're going to
look just at verse one, and under the subject of pride. Reading verse one of chapter
two, then Joshua, son of Nun, secretly sent two spies from
Shittim, Go look over the land, he said, especially Jericho. So they went and entered the
house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. Now, as we saw in the previous
lesson, she is, this Rahab is a definitive picture of the grace
of God given to the chief of sinners, and she defies the notions
of meritorious religion. She doesn't fit the mold of what
the majority of Christendom imagines to be a saint. Natural religion, that is the
kind of religion that man naturally thinks of and is attracted just
sees that a harlot is a harlot, and a saint is a saint, and never
the twain shall meet. But grace slaps the face of religion. That is, God's grace is a declaration
to natural religion that The way of natural religion is darkness. The way of natural religion leads
inevitably to destruction. The way of natural religion,
man's religion, is that broad road that leads to destruction. God's gospel declares in no uncertain
terms that this blessed woman was both harlot and saint, sinner
and believer at the same time. Her house was a harlot's house. We would be remiss if we did
not consider her trade as it most assuredly means more than
the act that defines it. Throughout the Word of God, harlotry
is used as a symbol, a metaphorical term that speaks of false religion
and idolatry, many times. In fact, and I'm remembering
this as it's described in the King James, that's what I was
raised on, but it rebukes the Israelites for going, quote,
a whoring after other gods. Now, why would the Bible use
harlotry, prostitution, as a illustration of false religion? Well, for
one thing, it tries to give the pleasures of a holy relationship
to those who have no part in that holiness. Now, understand
the word holy as, well, its basic meaning is set apart, but it's
used in many contexts indicating different things. When I speak
of the relationship of marriage as a holy relationship, I don't
mean that God has said that married people are more holy than unmarried
people. your holiness is without regard
to whether or not you are married. In fact, Paul, when speaking
to Timothy and Titus, said, if you can remain single, do so. It was not because he was opposed
to marriage. It was just these men were called
to do a lot of traveling and preaching. That's hard to do
if you have a wife and a family because the most committed and
dedicated preacher of the Gospels, not supposed to ignore his family. I remember showing up at church,
and this had to be sometime before October of 83, because I was
still a member there at 13th Street Baptist Church, but I
showed up about 10 minutes before Bible class was supposed to start,
and Brother Mahan came up to me and said, Joe, he said, Cecil,
an older man named Cecil Roach. He taught the men in Sunday school. And he said, Cecil had a heart
attack last night. He's in the hospital. Can you
teach the old men? And he handed me the notes that
he'd written out, the commentary on that particular portion of
scripture we were supposed to do. And I said, well, I'll do
the best I can with it. So I went in there with 10 minutes
of preparation, you know. And here I was. 26, 27, 28 years old, speaking to a bunch
of men who raised kids and many of them had grown grandchildren.
What am I going to tell them? But I do remember making this
statement to them. I said, you know, I think I've
been called to preach, but I know I've been called to do the work
of a husband and a father because I have a wife and I have children. So when we speak of marriage
and whether a person should be married or not married, that
has nothing to do with fulfilling some command from God. It's called holy marriage because
the two people are set apart to one another, and no one else
is supposed to intrude on that relationship. I'm the only husband
my wife has. She's the only wife I have. There's not another woman in
the world with whom I am to enter into a spousal relationship,
nor is there another man in the world she's to enter into a spousal
relationship. We're set apart for and to one
another. It's a holy relationship. What
does prostitution do? Prostitution attempts to give
at least some of the pleasures associated with that holy relationship
without the holiness of it being there. I mean, a man does not
go to a prostitute with any indication that he's going to set himself
apart to her. Now, how does false religion
do that? Normally speaking, false religion appeals to something
very natural in man. And the most natural thing in
man is pride. Man, in fact, you could define
man by that word, pride, ego. Ego is from the Greek word ego,
which is not the waffle. It means I. Ego. We come into this world, I've
read that when babies are born into the world, they think that
they are the only ones that exist. They think they are the universe.
I don't know how they figured out babies think that, but I'll
take their word for it. Everything you read is absolutely
true. Part of the process of growing
up is finding out that you are not the only one. Not only are
you not the only one, you're not the most important one. They call this the separation
individuation process, and that baby comes in thinking there's
all that there is, then it realized, well, there's me and mama, but
we're kind of two together. And then they realize mama's
a separate one, and daddy's another one, and brothers and sisters,
but they still have, what do they think? Well, yeah, there's
all these other people, but I'm the most important one. And,
you know, if you think that isn't true, all you have to do is take
a couple of kids and one toy. And what's so funny, it won't
even matter if both of them like the toy. They're both going for
it. Why? All things are for me. That's what's natural. And the
greater part of being a good parent is to do the best you can to subdue
this natural pride that's in humanity. Now, I know the word
pride gets used a lot of ways, and we talk about, well, you
ought to do a job you can be proud of. That's a different
thing. We're talking about that kind of pride in which we compare
ourselves to one another and count ourselves to be better
than others. Now, most of religion, and sad
to say, most of what goes under the name of Christianity, is
based on the idea that people are given things to do that enable
them to say, I'm doing better than that person. If you don't think that's true,
the Pharisee praying at the temple is the perfect example. I thank
you, God, I'm not like other men. I pray, I fast, I give a tithe. I'm certainly not like, and he
may as well have said, I'm certainly better than that tax collector
over there. Now, whatever of your religion
promotes in you the attitude that you're better than someone
else. That is nothing but fleshly religion. Now, because we all have the
flesh, even those who are truly and honestly born of God and
believers, those thoughts go through our mind. But the Spirit
is always there to say, no, no, you're not better. As Paul says
in Romans, the way they versified the Bible, at the end of Romans
3, 22, it says, there is no difference for all sin and fall short of
the glory of God. And even if we have a better
grasp on God's truth than all the others around us. And I'm
setting this up as a hypothetical. Even if we do, we have nothing
in which to glory, do we? Why do we know something? If
we know the truth, why do we know it? Do we know it because
we're smarter than our neighbor? Do we know it because we are
of better stuff, a higher level of integrity? There are plenty
of people in all manner of religions who are very decent people, when
you're using the human scale of decency. They love their wives
and their children, they love their neighbors, and they go
out of their way doing good things. And yet they don't know what
the truth is. And then among the people of
God there are some, you know, They've got personalities that
are difficult to deal with. Some of the people of God can
tend to be stingy, they can tend to be unforgiving. All of these things that a believer
ought to be, they might be the kind of person you don't particularly
care to be around. It doesn't change the fact they
know the truth. So you see, knowing the truth
does not arise from anything within us, it is simply because
God was pleased by His Spirit to show us the truth, to open
our eyes to what the rest of the world does not see. Now,
if you can imagine in a world of blind people, everybody's
blind, and then God miraculously heals 50 of them, and they can
see. Now, what would you think of
them if, now that they can see, they look at all their former
friends who are still blind, and when they see them walk into
a wall, they laugh at them? Oh, you stupid blind person.
Or they trip over something, dummy. What would you think of
people like that? We can't take pride in the fact
we see. We see because God opened our eyes. Now the name Rahab means pride,
and pride is the enemy of grace. Pride is groundless. It's baseless,
empty, and always self-justifying. Pride is the first thing that's
mentioned on the roster of those things that God despises. Now, in verse, let's see if I've
got this written down right. Nope. Well, this woman's name
is Rahab. The name Rahab was applied to
Egypt, which was considered a place of great pride because of the
glorious empire that was there. She was a harlot and remained
so. until God tore down her house. Now, it's true that when Jericho,
walls of Jericho were torn down, Rahab's house didn't fall. But
think of it now. What good is that house now? It's made of the same stuff the
rest of Jericho was, it just didn't fall down. Same stone,
same mortar, everything. Do you think that she stayed
living in that house? No. Why? As Jericho fell, so did
her pride. Only God through the preaching of the
gospel, is able to do, as Paul said, cast down strongholds. Jericho, stronghold. Big, thick-walled city. Close
the gates, you weren't getting in. And that's probably true. If we lived at that time and
we had us a big army and horses, chariots, spears, bows and arrows,
whatever they had for warfare back then, if we'd approached
Jericho, we'd have come up and probably one of them said, Captain,
ain't no way we can get in there. Oh, we could lay siege. But that
could take two years. Try to starve them out. We're
not going to be able to knock down those walls. There's just
no way. Why, if we took all of our battering rams and day after
day after day beat upon those battering rams, beat upon the
walls of the battering rams, nothing's coming down. And I
imagine the folks from Jericho, if they'd overheard that conversation,
they'd say, you are certainly right. We're Jericho. Nobody
is taking Jericho. And you know what? The Jews did
not defeat Jericho. They couldn't have. But like gospel preachers, they
went forward with the truth, and when God was pleased, the
walls came down. And a man will hide himself,
a woman will hide herself, behind her religious pride, thinking
that that is an impregnable fortress, that no accusation will ever
make it past there and stick to him or her, and that when
the end comes, she will open the gates and let God in. Let me tell you something, you
can't let God do anything. Say, why can't you let God do
something? Well, because letting him do something implies that
you could stop him from doing it. Isn't that true? I can't let you do something
you could do all by yourself without my permission or help. We don't let God in. I was told
as a kid, you've got to, Let Jesus in your heart. Do you have
any belief that you could keep Him out if He wanted to come
in? Are you under the impression
that the living God is waiting for permission from rebellious
man to do whatever it is He wants to do? When He came to Jericho,
of course, the folks from Jericho didn't see Him. By faith, One
woman and her family, they saw him, the Jews saw him, he came
and down went the walls. And there was nothing to do,
they could have done that would stop him. And either by grace or judgment, God is going to destroy your
pride. Now you think on that a minute. Either by grace or
by everlasting judgment, God will destroy your pride. Oh, I pray it's by grace. The happiest people are those
whose pride has been broken. The thing God delights in most
of all, in men. is a broken heart. Someone once
said, the only thing that's better broken than whole is a heart. If our hearts are broken before
God, not just broken in sadness, the will broken. Because our
will is always in opposition to God. But oh, by grace, he
can break it. And when it's broken, then it will bend to him. All right, you're dismissed there
to the regular service.