Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
A Woman and a City
Sunday, 20 April 2003
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Every religious system in the world except true biblical Christianity is based on a doctrine of justification by works. If you do the right things then your god will regard you favorably. It was the failing of the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. It is the main problem with modern Roman Catholicism, and Protestant legalism. It is thoroughly entrenched in the folk religion of our society. It finds expression in such phrases as, “You’ve got to be good to go to heaven” , “You say you know you’re going to heaven. What makes you think you’re better than I am?”, “if I go to church the roof will fall in.”, “Don’t have anything to do with those Christians. They’re such hypocrites. They reckon they’re so good but let me tell you....”.
One particular manifestation of this false doctrine is that people are often convinced that because they know that they are not good, then God will have nothing to do with them. They won’t approach God or his representative, the minister, because they know they are bad and God is only for good people. Over the years I have found that this is particularly so amongst women whose particular badness, at least in their eyes, has been their sexual promiscuity in their younger years. Now I believe that we have particular hang-ups about sexual sins, in many cases assigning them to a special category of unforgivable sin, but God ways are not always our ways, mainly because our ways are often not God’s ways.
The story of Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho, is a direct refutation of the idea that if you’re a sinner God won’t have anything to do with you, particularly if you’re a sexual sinner. Let me read you her story from Joshua Chapter 2.
Well that’s the bare bones of the story. The spies come to Jericho where they stay at the house of Rahab the prostitute. Some commentators have tried to sanitize the story by making Rahab an innkeeper whose prostitution is only a matter of reputation rather than fact. After all everyone knows that innkeepers are thoroughly disreputable characters. The bible doesn’t let us do this. In Joshua 6 we read, “Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho--and she lives among the Israelites to this day.” And in Hebrews in the New Testament Rahab is referred to as “Rahab the prostitute” not “Rahab the innkeeper”
The Israelites are camped across the river. Their reputation has gone before them. They’ve already defeated such people as the Moabites, the Amalekites, the Ammonites and the Kryptonites. Their God, Yahweh, was with them and the Jerichoites had good cause to be worried. Only their walls stood between them and certain destruction at the hands of the Israelites. But Rahab was a survivor. By protecting the spies Rahab hoped that her future safety would be secure. Living as she did in a house built either against the wall, or perhaps even built into the wall as part of the wall she was particularly vulnerable. I bet the king’s palace was fair and square in the middle of the city, where it was safe. Rahab asked for kindness to be shown to herself and her family in exchange for the kindness she had shown the spies. The men agreed to this and after she had let them down over the wall instructed her to place a scarlet cord in the window of her house so that the Israelites would know not to attack that house or anyone in it. The arrangement would be void if she told the authorities about it.
What follows next is that famous story of how the walls of Jericho fell down. I’ve been reading about the archeology of Jericho and sure enough according to the archeologists, the walls did fall down and the city was burnt to the ground at the time of Joshua’s invasion. There were two walls each about 2 meters thick separated by a moat in some places but with houses built between them in others. It may have been one of these house, which would not be as well protected as those within the inner wall that was the house of Rahab. When the walls fell down and the Israelites entered the city, Joshua instructed the spies to collect Rahab and her family and take her to safety outside the Israelites camp before the city was burnt to the ground. An interesting thing is that the archeologists have found one fairly well preserved house standing between the inner and outer walls. Unfortunately there is no evidence of a scarlet thread so whether or not this is Rahab’s house cannot be determined.
Rahab doesn’t get any further mentions in the Old Testament but her story doesn’t stop there. According to Jewish, rabbinical tradition she was one of the four most beautiful women in the world and married one of the spies whose name was Salmon and was the ancestress of a whole string of prophets including Jeremiah. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that she married Salmon who was the father of Boaz, who was the husband of Ruth, and they were the great-grandparents of king David and so on down to Jesus. So one of Jesus’ ancestors was the prostitute Rahab.
Rahab gets two other mentions in the New Testament . The first is in the letter of James. James is stating that faith without works is dead. He uses two people for his examples. Abraham who is the great example of faith in both the Old Testament and the New Testament , but surprisingly his other example is Rahab the prostitute. Let me read what he wrote:
“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder. You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”
James makes an important point here. The apostle Paul has clearly stated that works without faith are useless. Works alone will not get us to heaven. But here James is telling us that faith without works is dead. If you claim to have faith it must show in how you live. In Rahab’s case her faith showed in her protection of the spies and her placing of the cord in the window. And her faith, demonstration by her good deeds led to her being considered righteous. Rahab the prostitute was forgiven her sin and accounted righteous before God because of her faith which was attested to by her deeds.
The other mention she gets in the New Testament is in the list of heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. In fact she is one of only two women who gets a specific mention by name in that list.
Heb 11:31 (NIV) “By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.”
Far from being rejected by God because she was a prostitute, Rahab is accounted a hero because of her faith. What is more she was chosen by God to be in an ancestress of Jesus.
The story of Rahab tells us two things.
The first. God works through people, like Rahab, whom we are often all too eager to reject. We remember her because of her moral failing, which the Bible never denies, but God remembers her because of her faith.
The second is that no matter how bad our moral failing, our faith will make us whole. Remember the flak that Jesus got because he befriended such wicked sinners as the tax collectors Levi and Zachaeus. In John’s Gospel we have the story of the woman taken in adultery. Jesus does not condemn her but he does tell her to go and sin no more. Faith must result in appropriate behavior.
The action that originally showed the faith of our heroine Rahab was her protection of the Israelite spies. But later she leaves her prostitution and marries one of them. God does forgive on the basis of our faith but faith and repentance and good deeds are all part of the same package. James reminds us that they must go together. Abraham’s faith resulted in obedience, Rahab’s faith resulted in obedience and our faith must result in obedience.
Which brings us back to our opening statements. Our sins do not prevent us from knowing the love of God. Paul in Romans reminds us that God’s love is shown in the fact that while we were still sinners he sent Jesus to die for us. Whatever our sin, whether it is gross sexual sin or some of the more socially acceptable sins, the condition for coming into God’s presence, is faith in Jesus Christ, leading to repentance and demonstrated by how we then live.
Rahab was a sinner, a prostitute. Now she is a saved sinner. God doesn’t lock us out because of what we were but welcomes us in because of what we have become. Paul wrote these words to the Christians in Ephesus:
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Let’s pray.
