JOSHUA 2 - SAVED THROUGH FAITH
Joshua 2
We often hear repeated the refrain of Benjamin Franklin that nothing can be certain, except death and taxes. And yet that does not prevent us all from spending in ordinate amounts of time, effort and money trying to prevent both. Whether it is hiring a tax specialist to minimize the taxes we pay, or seeking to escape death (or at least it’s affects) through health and beauty products and treatments, men and woman seem in a constant search to limit both. While there is no escape for taxes - even Jesus paid taxes (Matthew 17:24-27), the Bible tells us there is one sure fire means of escaping death: and that is through faith in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.
As Jesus promised to Martha in John 11:25-26: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
While we understand this to be salvation from spiritual and eternal death and not an escape from earthly and physical death, the implications are significantly more important for us now and for eternity. And the Bible shows us how to be saved from death in the example of the life of Rahab, a prostitute living in the city Jericho.
Jericho was the first city the children of Israel were going to conquer as they crossed over the Jordan river and prepared to capture all the land promised to them by God. Joshua, the leader of God’s people who had replaced Moses, sent spies to spy out the land and evaluate the situation (v. 1). Having made their way into the city, while staying at the house of Rahab, the men soon become discovered by the king of Jericho (v. 2).
But they are hidden and spared by Rahab, who risks her life to hide the men. And Rahab tells us exactly why she does this:
“I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us……. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea….and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites …. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, ……for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, ….swear to me by the Lord that, … you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and … save alive my father and mother, ….and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” Joshua 2: 10-13
We often think of faith as believing in what God will do. But true faith is trusting in God because of what he has already done. And having heard of the great deeds that God has done for the Israelites Rahab puts her trust in this God of the Hebrews, and her life is spared. And we are given a beautiful picture of the salvation of Christ through the story of Rahab. The men tell Rahab that in order to fulfill this promise to spare her family, they must all congregate in her house and she is to put a scarlet cord in her window, so that they will know which house to spare (v. 18).
A scarlet cord, reminiscent of the blood that was put over the doorway of the Israelites in Egypt to mark which houses the Angel of death would Passover and reminiscent of the blood of Jesus, under which we are protected from death and judgment, which we are all due because of our sins. And we receive this through faith.
Notice that Rahab was not saved because she was a great warrior who could deliver Jericho to the Israelites. There was not even any requirement that she or anyone in her family help them fight in the coming battle. As well, there was no precondition for her salvation that she change who she is and stop being a prostitute. No, she was simply saved because she trusted in their God, based on the reports she had heard. Likewise God asks nothing of us in order to be saved. Only that we believe in the work of his son, to cleanse us, redeem us and bring us back into right relation with God.
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” Romans 3:23-25