Let's go back to that portion
of scripture, or at least close by it. I want you to go to the
last chapter of Deuteronomy to begin with. Let me read a couple of verses
here out of Deuteronomy 34. Just a few verses, verses five
through nine. Deuteronomy 34, 5. So Moses,
the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab according
to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley
in the land of Moab over against Beth Peor. But no man knoweth
his sepulcher unto this day. And Moses was 120 years old when
he died. His eye was not dim, nor his
natural force abated. That is, he still had a strong,
very strong mind, and his body was not feeble. Verse 8. The children of Israel wept for
Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, so the days of weeping
and mourning for Moses were ended. And Joshua, the son of Nun, was
full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands
upon him. And the children of Israel hearkened
unto him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses. Moses has now
died. Joshua is the leader of Israel. It is very important that you
remember that Moses represents the law of God. Moses, being the representative
of the law of God, could not bring the children of Israel
into that land of promise. I know he had been disobedient
to God. We studied last Wednesday night
how the Lord instructed Moses to smite the rock and water would
come out. And indeed it did. On another
occasion, much later, once again Israel was thirsty, and God told
Moses to speak to the rock, and water would come out. Moses was
angry with the people. And instead of speaking to the
rock, he hit the rock again. And water did indeed come out. But in doing that, he ruined
the picture that was to be set forth. Our Lord Jesus had been
smitten once, as pictured by that rock. Now,
if you want water, if you're thirsty for the water of life,
If you're thirsty for the water of salvation, speak to the rock. You come to the rock. He's full of grace and mercy
to all who draw near to him. But because Moses disobeyed God,
God said, you're not gonna lead the children of Israel into the
land of promise. In fact, he could not lead them
in as a picture because Moses portrayed God's law. God's law can't take you into
heaven. God's law can't cause you to
be accepted before the Lord. The only one who can take us
into the land of promise is that one who is portrayed by Joshua,
Jehovah who saves. Only our Lord Jesus Christ can
take us, leading us through the wilderness and at last into the
land of promise. Joshua's name means Jehovah is
salvation. Jehovah is salvation. We read in John chapter one in
verse 17, the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ. Joshua portrays and typifies
our Lord Jesus. We read in Romans for what the
law could not do. Hear it now, what the law could
not do. God got sending his son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in
the flesh. Our Lord Jesus, you see, Jesus
is the New Testament name for the Old Testament name of Joshua. He is Jehovah who saves. And
understand this, all of the promises of God that He made to Israel
were fulfilled by Joshua. And all the promises that God
has made unto us are fulfilled by our Lord Jesus Christ. Let
me make good on that. Hold your place here and turn
to Joshua chapter 21. Look at Joshua chapter 21. Here's what I want you to see
is that the Word of God sets forth a great contrast between
Moses and Joshua. That is, between the law of God
that cannot save, it was never given to save. It is not a means
of salvation, never was, never will be. Well, what then was
the reason why God gave the law? To show us our guilt, to shut
our mouths, making us fully aware of our sinfulness before God
and that we could not produce a righteousness equal to that
which God demanded. If you run to the law of God
for salvation, you're running in vain. and you're running against
the commandment of the Word of God. Salvation is not in the
law, salvation is in Christ, Jehovah who saves. And as all
the promises that God made to Israel were fulfilled, through
the man and by the means of Joshua, all the promises of God in Christ
Jesus are yea and they're amen. Now let me make good on that.
Joshua chapter 21. Look at verse 43. Joshua 21, 43. And the Lord gave
unto Israel all the land which he swore to give unto their fathers. God covenanted with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob that he would give them this land. And they possessed it and dwelt
therein. And the Lord gave them rest roundabout. He didn't give them any rest
in the law, that struck fear in their hearts. But through
Joshua, he gives rest. And you see the law of God, it
kills us. It exposes our sinfulness. But in the Lord Jesus Christ,
we have rest. He said, come unto me, all ye
that labor and are heavily laden. What are we labor under? What
are we heavily laden with? The law of God and its strictness. He says, you come unto me. I'll
give you what God's law can't give you. Rest. We find rest in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now watch it. And the Lord gave
them rest round about, according to all that he'd swear unto their
fathers. And there stood not a man of
all their enemies before them. The Lord delivered all their
enemies into their hand, under the hand and the leadership of
Joshua. All of our enemies have been
conquered by our Lord Jesus Christ. There's not one enemy against
us that He hasn't, by His sacrifice upon the cross of Calvary, put
out of business. Were our sins our enemies? Yes. He took care of those. Was the
devil our enemy? He crushed his head. Was our own guilt and sin our
enemy? He took care of that. the Lord delivered all their
enemies into their hand. Now verse 45, there failed not
ought of any good thing. There failed not ought of any
good thing which the Lord had spoken under the house of Israel,
all came to pass. That's what the Holy Spirit had
Joshua write. All came to pass and all the
blessings of the covenant of grace that we have in the Lord
Jesus Christ in, through, and by him will all come to pass. And we'll wind up safely in the
land of promise at last. We'll go back to The first part
of Joshua here. Let me just say a few things
about Joshua the man, whose name means Jehovah is salvation. Did you know Joshua, he was the
servant of Moses. He was the servant of Moses. He was under the authority of
Moses. Joshua was. Joshua had to do
the will of Moses. And Joshua obeyed Moses every
time he told him to do something, Joshua did it. Even so, our Lord
Jesus was made under God's law. Under the authority of God's
law, he was the servant of God's law, just like Joshua was to
Moses. Our Lord was under the authority
of God's law, just like Joshua was to Moses. Our Lord Jesus
did the will of the law in all things. He said, I always do
the Father's will, just like Joshua did regarding Moses. And
our Lord Jesus Christ always obeyed. God's law, just like
Joshua obeyed Moses. We read in Philippians chapter
two, our Lord Jesus took upon himself the form of a servant. Behold the perfect servant of
God, obedient in all things, just like Joshua was obedient
to Moses. Our Lord Jesus was subject to
the law of God, and he fully obeyed it, and at last died under
the curse of the law, for he must be, as Paul says in Philippians
chapter two, obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Our Lord Jesus was subject to
the law. He obeyed it fully. He died under
the curse of the law and his obedience up to and including
death, his full obedience to the law of God has been imputed
to, charged to, credited to the account of all of his elect. So we have a perfect standing
before God. Well, as we get into chapter
one of Joshua, Israel has encamped on the wilderness side of the
River Jordan, and soon they will cross over into the land promised
them. But that land was at that time
occupied by a powerful, fierce, ruthless, ungodly people. And there was no reason for Joshua
to conclude that the Canaanites would render any assistance or
help them in any way overcoming the greatest, the most powerful
city among the Canaanites, Jericho. And so Joshua sends two spies
into the city to obtain information about Jericho. He had no reason to believe that
anyone in the city would render any help to these two spies in
their difficult task to scout out the city, see what obstacles
were there, find out what kind of armaments they had and protection
and so forth. And yet, God had a woman there
in Jericho. She was a woman of God's choice. and she would provide lodging
and safety for the two spies. As Joe read to us in chapter
two and verse one, and Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim
two men to spy secretly saying, go view the land. And they went
and they came into an harlot's house named Rahab and lodged
there. It's amazing how some of the
commentators try to sidestep around the fact that she was
a harlot. The fact of the matter is she
ran a brothel. She was an ungodly woman, but
God chose her unto salvation. Do you not see a picture there
of God's free and sovereign grace? Of all the women in Jericho,
this was the one that God directed the two spies to go to her place
of lodging, to seek to kind of hide out there. She was a woman
of a very poor reputation. but she was going to be a trophy
of God's grace. For you see, Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners. And Paul said, of whom I'm chief. Our Lord said, I came not to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And he goes into
the city. The two spies go into the city.
They're not looking for somebody who's religious. They're looking for somebody
who will welcome their presence. And they found one. And her name
was Rahab. And I'll say first of all, she
was the object of God's sovereign grace. As I said, religious moralists
and legalists try their best to water down the word harlot. They'd say, well, that simply
means she was an innkeeper. Well, the kind of inn she kept
was the kind of inn that men fully enjoyed going to. You see, back in those days,
the only women who kept public houses and inns were prostitutes. And I really don't understand
the reason that people have difficulty with this, knowing that our Lord
is the friend of sinners. He's the savior of the ungodly. He's the one who came to rescue
the wayward. He didn't come to save those
who could save themselves or could clean up their own lives,
who could rescue their own souls from the madness of sin. He came
to do for sinners what sinners can't do for themselves. He came
to save, He came to rescue. He came to wash sinners in His
bloody death. He came to robe them in His beautiful,
glorious righteousness. Is this so hard to understand? Must men try to water down the
scriptures lest we think that these two spies would actually
go to the hotel of a prostitute? Our Lord met the woman at the
well. She'd been married five times.
She's an adulteress. And the man, she's living with
him. She wasn't even married to him. Our Lord showed mercy
later on in the Gospel of John when a woman who was an adulterer
was taken in her adultery. I don't know why they didn't
take the guy, the Pharisee who was with her, They sure took
her and threw her in front of the Savior. That was the law
of Moses say. Can we get it through our thick
skulls that our Lord Jesus Christ is the one who rescues the perishing? He saves the sinner and you may
be and I hope you are a moral person. But your morality is no better
in the eyes of God than the immorality of Rahab. And the finest of women here,
and you're all fine ladies, I'm quite certain of that. All of
you, really by nature, you're no worse than somebody who's
down on the rough side of Ashland. on drugs and selling their bodies
to meet their, to satisfy their addiction. Tell you, we're self-righteous
by nature. God help us and God forgive us.
I'll tell you what, we read in Romans 5, when we were yet without
strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely
for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good
man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You see, mercy is for the miserable. Grace is for the guilty. Redemption is for the ruined. Righteousness is for the rotten. Rahab was a sinful woman. She worked in a sinful profession. She lived in a sinful city, but
she obtained mercy. She had heard of the God of Israel. Joe read that to us. Look at
chapter two verse, it's what she's speaking to the spies,
chapter two verse nine. She said unto the men, I know
that the Lord hath given you the land and that your terror
is fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land faint
because of you. For we have heard, we have heard,
who told her? God sent somebody who told her
and told a bunch of other people how the Lord dried up the water
of the Red Sea and he did it for you. when you came out of
Egypt and what you did unto the two kings of the Amorites, whom
you utterly destroyed. And as soon as we heard these
things, she says in verse 11, our hearts melt. Our hearts did
melt. Her heart melted. You see, even,
even before the two spies got there, Somehow, someway, God
sent to her and to some other people word that the God of Israel
was leading His people, and they were soon to come into the land.
And I'm sure that the king of Jericho and the armaments of
Jericho, the battalions that were placed outside or on the
walls of Jericho, they saw these people. They saw Israel encamped
on the other side of the Jordan River and they're kind of shaking
in their boots. They had heard what God was doing,
what he had done. They heard this God's powerful.
He just rolls over the enemies of his people. And she heard. And God, you see, was making
ready her heart to receive the Israelites. And when these two spies came
to her door, she's ready to receive them. because God was already
doing the work of grace in her heart to receive these messengers,
these spies from Israel. She had heard of the God of Israel and she believed their report.
She said, I know that the Lord has given you this land. I believe
he's given you this land. She's ready. And I'll tell you,
the Lord gets us ready to receive the message and the messenger. And the Lord graciously sent
these messengers to our house. Little did Joshua realize, though
he was a man of faith, these two spies would be divinely
led to that location. where they needed to be. He just said, go view the city. That's what Joshua told him. But I'll tell you this, the city
of Jericho is not gonna fall. It's not gonna fall until this
woman and her family are safe. In fact, And you know the story,
you know how this works out. All the rest of the houses on
this wall fell, but there's one house, it could not fall. It is upheld by free and sovereign
grace. The Lord himself was the protector
of Rahab's house. The spy said, stay in the house. Let come what may. Don't you
leave that house. Because all the rest of the houses
on this wall, they're going to fall, but yours, yours is going
to stand fast. Stay in it. And I tell you, stay
in the message of grace. Stay with the message of Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. He's the solid rock. Build your
house on Him. All the other houses are going
to fall, but not the one built on Christ. Basically, these spies told her
this, judgment's coming. Everything's gonna be destroyed. But I want you, the spy said,
we want you to put this scarlet rope outside your window. And you just leave it there. And when we come through, and
we will come through, when we see that scarlet rope, your house
will be spared. And the significance of that
scarlet rope is it pictures the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's the only way of safety,
only way of salvation. You see the scarlet rope, the
scarlet line was the means whereby the two spies escaped. It was
the only way out. It was the only way of escape.
Rahab's house, you see, was under the blood, under the blood of
Jesus. That's where safety is. See, not only was Rahab an object
of God's free, amazing, sovereign grace, her house could not fall
under the wrath of God when Israel passed through because her house
was marked with the blood as it were. It's just like the doors
of the Israelites in Egypt. The father of the firstborn marked
the door outside with the blood. For God said, when I see the
blood, I'll pass over you. And that's essentially what the
two spies said, wasn't it? When we see the red, we see the
scarlet, we see the blood, your house will stand. It's not
gonna fall. You see, it's the blood of Christ
Jesus that redeemed, paid our debt. It's the blood of Christ
Jesus that successfully put away our sins and we're forgiven.
It's the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that gives us access to
God. It's the blood of Christ sprinkled
upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit that gives us a blessed peace
and full assurance of faith that we're safe and secure from the
avenging wrath and justice of God. No wrath will fall upon
the people of the Lord. Wrath has already fallen upon
our substitute. What did Rahab do? Simple. She believed God. She believed
God. And you know, in Hebrews chapter
11, she is held up. She is held up as a woman of
faith in what some people call Hebrews 11, Faith's Hall of Fame. You'll find her there. And James says she was justified
by works. She proved her faith by her works. She protected these spies. And
when the king came looking for them, she even lied. She said, they left and gone
out the gates of the city. You better go after them real
quick. Faith proved by works. She believed the report of God's
salvation of the city or of herself through the means of the mercy
of God and the blood that was typified by the red rope. Did you know this? She was so
blessed This woman was. Of course, she was saved and
safe, but she's also included in our Lord's genealogy. And you can look in Matthew chapter
one. We don't have the time to take
a look at it now, but there's Rahab and three other women who
were notorious sinners. That's what we'd call them. Rahab is there. See, Rahab married
Salman. And he had a son whose name was
Boaz. And Boaz married Ruth. And Boaz
and Ruth had a son whose name was Obed. And Obed and Mrs. Obed, they
had a son whose name was Jesse. And Mr. and Mrs. Jesse had a
son whose name was David. And in the New Testament, our
Lord, to begin with there in Matthew, he was the son of Abraham,
the son of David. Look at that, Rahab, the harlot. She's in the lineage of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Like I say, only four women are
in it, Tamar, who was guilty of incest, and Rahab, who was
a harlot, and Ruth was a cursed, unclean Moabitess, and Bathsheba,
and she was an adulteress. Even in his genealogy, our Lord
was associated with sinners. See, her house couldn't fall.
It's protected by grace. Protected by the blood. Protected by the promise of God. And she got what she wanted. Safety. And I don't have time
to go through the whole story, but I do wanna show you something
over here in chapter six. Chapter six. And I'll begin at 17. I'll just
read these to you. This is when the priests blew
the trumpets and the walls of Jericho came falling down. Verse 17, the city shall be accursed,
even it and all that are therein. To the Lord only Rahab the harlot
shall live. and all that are with her in
the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent. And
then drop down a little bit further in verse 22. But Joshua said
unto the two men that had spied out the country, go into the
harlot's house, bring out thence the woman and all that she hath
as ye swear unto her, and the young men that were spies went
in and brought out Rahab and her father and her mother and
her brethren and all that she had, and they brought out all
her kindred and left them without the camp of Israel." Safe! Safe
at last! And they burnt the city with
fire and all that was therein, only the silver and the gold
and the vessels of brass and of iron they put into the treasury
of the house of the Lord. And here's the title of my message
and I'm waiting to the end to give it to you. Joshua saved
Rahab. Right there it is. That's the
title of the message. And I waited to the very end.
I want to keep you in suspense, you see. That's the title of
the message. And you can see this is what
the whole thing has been about. Joshua saved Rahab the harlot
alive. And her father's household and
all that she had. And she dwelleth in Israel. She
dwelt among the people of God, even unto this day, because she
hid the messengers which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. Who saved Rahab? I'll tell you
this, she didn't save herself. Joshua saved her. And I'd say,
are you saved? You didn't save yourself. A greater
than Joshua saved you. He is saving you and at last
you shall finally be saved and give all the glory to Jehovah who saves our Lord
Jesus Christ. Sing a closing song.