Joshua 2 - With Faith Like a Prostitute

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Don Filcek, Joshua: Land of Promise; Joshua 2 - With Faith Like a Prostitute

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Join us at Recast Church in Matalon as Don brings us a sermon series entitled
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Joshua, Land of Promise. Like I said, we're going to do things a little bit different.
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Not just because I like change, although I do like change. I like to mix things up from time to time.
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I don't like to get into ruts. But at the same time, I want you to get comfortable here.
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Get ready to listen to God's Word and get in that mindset. It's with intentionality, though, that I'm preaching first.
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There are some times when the text hits us in such a way that we can't do anything but worship.
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And that's what hit me as I was studying this text, as I was working on it. And should we praise God every time we read
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His Word? Yeah, it should lead us to a place of worship. But then there are some passages where it's just overwhelming.
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All of the grace, all of the mercy that has been shown to us. And that's the way that this text hit me this week.
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So as Dave and I got together and kind of put together the order of service, I said, hey, let me preach first, and then we'll respond in worship at the end.
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So that's the reason why we're doing this this way. But as you know, we're going through the book of Joshua right now.
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Last week in Joshua chapter 1, we saw God's commission to Joshua. I mean, two weeks ago we saw
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God's commission to Joshua, that God met with him, told him he was going to be with him, promised that they were going to be able to conquer the land that was given to their ancestors all the way back to Abraham centuries before.
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And then later in chapter 1, which was last week's message, we saw the nation of Israel respond to Joshua and literally say, we'll follow you.
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Wherever you go, we will go. Wherever you send us, we will go. Whatever you command us to do, we will follow you.
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And we saw this amazing confirmation of his leadership. And this morning, we're going to be continuing our study in the book of Joshua, but the text is going to take a little bit of a sidetrack in this chapter 2, so that what we would have expected if we were just following along the logical flow of what we saw in Joshua chapter 1, what would we expect to see the people of Israel doing in chapter 2?
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Anybody have any ideas? Think about what we talked about. Last week, Joshua sent officials through the camp and told them what?
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Get ready, pack up, because you're going to cross the Jordan.
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So what are we kind of expecting to have happen in the text today? What would be kind of logical? Maybe crossing the
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Jordan. That would be what we would think. But instead, we have kind of a flash sideways. Now, how many of you have watched
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Lost? Some of you have watched. Okay, that's old school, right? That's a long time ago.
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You get these flash sideways of stuff that's going on. We're going to see that at the time where the people are confirming their loyalty to Joshua, he has already sent out.
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We're going to see some chronology in three days here and three days there, and I believe those three days match up so that the spies are already in the land.
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And it's as if the author is going to say, oh, by the way, this is what's been going on during this time while the people are back in the camp packing up and getting ready to cross the
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Jordan. Joshua had sent out some spies. And the purpose of our text is not just to show what the spies do, but it's what they encounter, who they encounter, and what the person that they encounter demonstrates is just vital to our text and our understanding.
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And we're going to see how it applies to our understanding of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, although we're looking clear back in the
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Old Testament. We're going to see faith and hope in an extremely unlikely place. So I want you to open your
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Bibles to Joshua chapter 2, and that's page 153 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you.
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So if you have one of those Bibles on page 153 or Joshua chapter 2, follow along with me as I read.
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And we're going to read the entire chapter. Go ahead and just follow along and get the flow of this.
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Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them.
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And she said, True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from.
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And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.
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But she had brought them up on the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid out in order on the roof. So the men pursued after them on the way to the
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Jordan as far as the fords, and the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out. Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men,
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I know the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you.
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For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the
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Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you.
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For the Lord your God, He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the
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Lord that as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and my mother, my brothers and sisters and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.
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And the men said to her, our life for yours, even to the death. If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the
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Lord gives us the land, we will deal kindly and faithfully with you. Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall.
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And she said to them, go into the hills, or the pursuers will encounter you and hide there three days until the pursuers have returned.
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Then afterwards you may go your way. The men said to her, we will be guiltless with respect to this oath of yours that you have made us swear.
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Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers and all your father's household.
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Then if anyone goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be guiltless.
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But if a hand is laid on anyone who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head. But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be guiltless with respect to your oath that you have made us swear.
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And she said, according to your words, so be it. Then she sent them away, and they departed, and she tied the scarlet cord in the window.
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They departed and went into the hills and remained there three days until the pursuers returned. And the pursuers searched all along the way and found nothing.
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Then the two men returned. They came down from the hills and passed over, and came to Joshua the son of Nun. And they told him all that had happened to them.
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And they said to Joshua, Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands, and also all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us.
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Let's pray. Father, as we come to this text, we meet this kind of shady lady,
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Rahab. A demonstration of faith, a demonstration of hope, and just not where we would expect to see it.
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Father, I ask that you would impress on our hearts how that applies to us, where that leaves us in our lives, in our understanding as a people, as individuals, as well as a church.
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Who your grace extends to awes me. And I ask that all of us would stand in awe of the grace that extends to prostitutes and liars and people just like us.
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Father, I ask that you would change our view and our understanding of you to understand and wrestle deeply with your character and your love and your compassion for sinners.
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I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Any of you guys enjoy spy thrillers?
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Any of you enjoy it? Okay, two of you. Two of you enjoy a good spy thriller.
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Amazingly, Joshua 2 contains all of the elements of a good spy movie, a good spy novel. There's close encounters with the enemy.
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There's narrow escapes from detection. There's, of course, the woman of questionable reputation. If you've ever seen a
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James Bond movie, you've had to turn your head a couple times. Right, guys? And there's, of course, in the end, success against all odds.
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That's kind of what the elements of a good spy thriller are supposed to be. Now, you see, when we talk about spies, it's interesting because Joshua had already been a spy.
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Do you remember that in the history? When I went through the introduction of this book, we talked about how
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Joshua, at a younger age, 40 years previously, had been staged there on the south side in this little town called
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Kadesh Barnea, and they were getting ready to go into the land under Moses' leadership. Now, Moses is still alive at that time.
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And Moses sent out 12 spies. I don't know why I held up that. Twelve.
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You see how my mind works. I guess I have to find it. There. So he sent out 12 spies, and Joshua was one of them.
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And they went in, and what was the report that came back? The majority was that 10 of them said, no, there's no way we can conquer this land.
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The cities are fortified. There's too many people. The odds are stacked against us.
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There's no way. But two of them, Joshua and Caleb, said yes. So Joshua is being wise here in that, how are you going to get a majority out of two?
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He's going to send two spies. Otherwise, you're going to be unanimous one way or the other. But you're going to end up with a split vote.
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So he's only sending in two. He's not sending in 12 or 15. What does that say about the size of committees and the way that they ought to be?
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I think you've all experienced that. He sends in two, and they're going to go in. And he says, don't just go in, but I want you to take special note of this place called
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Jericho. Now, if you were to go the route of the spies the first time, Joshua's never seen Jericho. He went from the south to the north of the land, but never got as far east as Jericho.
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So he has seen the land. You remember that? He's been in this land before, years and years ago.
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But he's saying, take special note of Jericho when you go in. So that's what they're going in for. So what is the deal with Jericho?
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What is this city? Well, some things that we ought to know since that's the setting regarding this geographical location.
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It is the lowest city in the world. Still the lowest city in the world. 825 feet below sea level, right up next to where the
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Jordan River comes into the Dead Sea, of course, which the Dead Sea is the lowest spot in the world, below sea level.
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It was located next to a natural ford. How many of you know what a ford is besides something that you drive? A ford is a place that you cross a river without a bridge.
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It's where the water gets more shallow and more broad, and it's easy to cross. So it's usually stony or sandy bottom, and people could cross with horses or on foot, and it would take just a little bit of waiting, and you could get across.
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So a natural ford. So that makes it a key location because Jericho sits five miles in from or west of the
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Jordan River, but it's right next to this ford, a place of common crossing for the Jordan River.
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And the Jordan River is not huge. You don't get in your mind like the Amazon. You could throw a rock across the
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Jordan River in its widest places. So we're not talking about, by even
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Michigan standards, we're talking about an average -sized river here. But it can get extremely fast during flood stage.
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It can be dangerous to cross, especially in certain locations. So the fords would be very key and very important. And when we get down to understanding
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Jericho, it's going to be impossible for 600 ,000
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Israelites to get across. Did you hear that, 600 ,000? For them to get across this river without someone from Jericho knowing.
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It's like it's the gateway city of Canaan, and so that's why it's so, so important that Joshua gets a word about Jericho.
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What is the situation in this city? What is their view? Are they going to meet us at the fords and try to kill us as we cross?
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What's going to happen? So another important thing, because we're going to see some weird things about walls and stuff like that coming up.
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Jericho was very well fortified. Archaeology has demonstrated that there were at least two walls.
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Now, if I use the word casemate, that doesn't mean anything to any of you. It's a type of construction for walls that conserved manpower and actual raw materials that needed fewer rocks for about equal amount of fortification.
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It was an earthen wall, like a retaining wall. So you have a wall, and you build up dirt around that wall on the outside.
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So you have one wall standing here with dirt mounted up against it. And then in the gap between that and the next wall, so you build another wall even higher.
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You get this picture? And you build another wall even higher, and then you've got a gap in here that you could fill in with stones and all different kinds of material.
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Oftentimes there were houses that were built that were used as kind of a squatter's area for building houses and things like that.
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But it was between the walls, so you had basically, in essence, a thicker wall, thicker fortification without filling all of this internal area in with rock that would have required so much more manpower and so much more raw material.
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Does that make sense? This area in the middle here is called a casemate. That type of construction is called casemate wall construction.
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And I say that just because the casemate of this wall of Jericho is going to be the place where we're going to see the primary action of this thing unfold.
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So all of it's going to be there because that's where the house that they go to is located in between the walls.
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Does that make any sense of what's happening here? And we're going to see Rahab actually has a window access.
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The back wall of her house is going to be the outer wall of the city.
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That's going to come in handy here in a little bit. So that provides the setting. So the spies following Joshua's command are going to head to Jericho and they quite naturally head straight to the home of a prostitute.
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What is the deal with these guys? Really? Good choice.
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Now I want to point out that many in church history and many in the modern church have worked really hard to try to explain away
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Rahab's occupation here. She's an innkeeper. Her house is an inn, things like that.
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The only problem with that is that's not what the Bible teaches. We just get uncomfortable. So if somebody is going to come and say
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Rahab was anything less than a prostitute, ultimately it says more about the speaker's issues than it does about the text itself.
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She was a prostitute. The word that is translated, her occupation actually occurs in the book of Hebrews. So we see the word for her occupation in both
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Hebrew, which is definitively prostitute, and then we see the word in Greek, which is porne.
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Can you imagine what that word means? It is a prostitute. So there's no way around this.
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She ultimately is a hooker and this is her hotel. So what are the spies doing here?
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What are they going there for? Well, some will say, and I kind of am leaning in this direction to be honest, is that the place that is her house could quite possibly be an inn.
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So that it's an inn where she works, but it is a common place, like a hostel or something like that, where people can come and gather, but that's where she applies her trade there.
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So that they would be going and going with the intention of getting as much information as they can about the city without being noticed by the authorities.
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But I want to point this out. The text is abundantly clear in the Hebrew language that these men did not go to this place for sexual relations.
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Hebrew, the Hebrew language and the Old Testament does not shy away from that.
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As a matter of fact, it's a language that's full of euphemisms for sexual activity. None of those occur in this text.
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It is abundantly clear that that is not their intention in going to this location. Everything in their interaction with Rahab in the text is completely above board.
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Wise lodging choice? Maybe not. But we're going to see that God's going to take and make some amazing things out of this situation.
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So these guys are really sly, they're really tricky, and they haven't been there for but a few hours, and the king of the entire city already knows they're there.
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And he knows where they're at, and he knows even the woman that he should send soldiers to to arrest these guys.
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So they were pretty sneaky spies, wouldn't you think? They really are masters of stealth. The king catches wind that Rahab may know something about their location.
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And notice in verse 3 how definitive these, I'm going to call them soldiers, because we're going to see them be the actual men who pursue the spies on a wild goose chase down to the
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Jordan River. They must be armed in order to apprehend these spies. I'm just going to say they're the king's soldiers.
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And they come to her and they say, give us these men who have entered your house. They're that definitive. Somebody must have seen this, there must have been an informant somehow.
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They know that these men came to Rahab's house. So the king's soldiers are outside the door, the two spies are inside, they are trapped, and they are totally, at this point, dependent upon what
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Rahab does next. Their life, their future, their ability to go back and report to Joshua, their findings, is completely dependent upon her.
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I want you to consider what the next few things that Rahab does implies about her loyalty.
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Think about the word loyalty. What does this imply about where her loyalty lies?
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What is she trusting in? Whose side is she on?
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Because the next three things she does show that a significant and radical change has happened inside of her.
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Something has transformed and changed. And verses 4 -11 are going to be a demonstration of Rahab's faith.
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So she's going to do three things that demonstrate her faith. The first thing is in verse 6. Now, we're going to see that after the fact, jumping down to verse 6, because it's going to tell us what she had already done.
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So that's why I'm saying it's the first thing. It tells us in verse 6 that she had hid the spies on the roof.
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That was her first act of faith. This shows that she recognizes their value, and even against her own people, she is not willing to thwart their cause.
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Anybody thinking that's a little bit strange? Here's this prostitute in a city that she knows that these guys are going to come and destroy, and she is hiding them on her roof.
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Does that strike anybody as a little strange? A little weird? Nobody's thinking that's weird. Good. Okay. The question is, doesn't she know they're going to destroy her culture?
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Doesn't she know that they are a threat to her people? And I believe she does, but I think she also knows some other things that are extremely crucial to this decision that she makes as an act of faith to hide these spies.
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And we're going to see why I'm going to call it an act of faith in the third thing that she does. The second thing. Hold on tight.
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Her second act of faith is a lie. Does that hit anybody weird?
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Is that striking anybody as awkward? Okay, it should. Good. That's a good thing.
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It should strike you as weird and kind of strange because how can a lie be an act of faith?
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Is that possible? Is that even reasonable? Because we have this whole Old Testament thing where if you were to go to say
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Deuteronomy 5 or Exodus 20 and there are these ten commandments.
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Does anybody know what number nine is? Don't lie!
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Don't lie! So how can she be... It's pretty clear, isn't it?
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But the thing that I want to point out is so many people get hung up here that they never get beyond this lie. They never get past this point of the debate back and forth.
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Isn't lying always wrong? What do you think to that? Is lying always wrong? Yeah. Go ahead and feel free to say, yes, lying is wrong.
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Yes. Okay, everybody okay with that? Everybody okay with me saying lying is wrong? Okay, great.
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I am totally on board with that. I believe that is absolutely true. So how can a lie be an act of faith?
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Well, only in that in this particular historical account it is a demonstration of her loyalty to God.
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She puts a lot on the line. Think about what she is putting on the line by physically hiding the spies.
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That's an act of deception in and of itself, right? She is now physically deceived by hiding them.
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And now she's going to carry through and verbally lie by misleading and deceiving these soldiers at her door.
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Can you imagine how the king of Jericho is going to deal with her if it is discovered that she is lying and harboring these spies?
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She's going to be skinned alive. She's going to be tortured. She's going to be abused and left for dead. It's not going to turn out well.
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Is she putting a lot on the line here? Yes. Does that justify lying? No. No, not at all.
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There are a couple of things that I want to point out about this lie that we need to remember. These are extremely key in looking and understanding this historical account.
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That's number one. It is a historical account. Now let's put this down to where we live.
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If somebody were writing a biography of your life, do you think that there might be the potential, maybe just the potential, for them to include a sin or two in your biography?
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Would there be the potential for maybe just one little mess up that you made probably in junior high, because you probably haven't sinned since then, but something in there?
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Would that be there? Where we are seeing a historical account of a real woman, and she lied.
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Does that stun anybody? That a human would lie? Anybody surprised by that?
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I don't think that should surprise us at all. So that we shouldn't be shocked. We shouldn't be shocked to see a lie recorded in Scripture, because Scripture is
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God writing about his work in the history of real people. And as historical account, it's describing what actually happened, not recommending the way that we should act.
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We don't want to miss the forest for the trees here. Now how many of you, if somebody were writing a biography of your life, would like to hope that maybe something good could be garnered from your life?
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That something, it would actually show something positive. That somebody might learn something from your life.
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Raise your hand. Go and interact with me. I'm getting some blanks. You'd like, so even despite the fact that there might be some sins in there, you'd still like to think that maybe there'd be some positive lessons to learn from it, right?
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And hopefully they'd be more than just don't act like that guy. Hopefully, do you know what I'm saying? Hopefully there'd be some more to it than that.
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But I think we have the tendency to miss the forest for the trees. We are to walk away from Rahab's story understanding something of a deeper loyalty to God, not something about whether or not we should lie if we are hiding spies in our attic.
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How many of you have hidden spies in your attic before? Go ahead and raise your hands. Okay. It's not like God sat down and wrote this and said, okay, just in the event,
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I want to cover all eventualities, and just in the event that Zach Lloyd needs to harbor spies in his attic,
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I want to be sure that he knows how to handle the situation. So it's gonna prescribe this behavior for him.
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Is that the intention of the writing? Or is the intention of the writing to demonstrate this amazing woman who, against all odds, is demonstrating faith in God?
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Rahab, the second thing that we need to note about this lie is Rahab is never commended for her lie.
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She's commended for her faith, but she is, I want to make this abundantly clear, because she's mentioned in the book of James, and she's mentioned in the book of Hebrews, and where she's mentioned is amongst a group of people that are the heroes of the faith, and she's there in those texts, and she is a model, like in the book of James, she is a model of one who acted upon her faith.
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Her preserving these spies is an act of faith.
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Is the way that she did it acceptable? No. Lying is not appropriate.
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So are you getting what I'm saying? Is this making any sense? Let me put this in a different way. Imagine that you have the opportunity to talk to a coworker who's in a really dire time of life.
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They're going through a lot of hardship, and through conversation and talking with them and opening scripture with them, they come to the belief.
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They come to the understanding that Jesus Christ is the answer for them, that he died on the cross to cover their sins, and they want to pray and express that in the only language that they know how.
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And literally in the process of saying, God, would you forgive me? Would you take my life and make something good out of it?
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They literally use some foul language. Can you picture that happening?
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Can you imagine a context in which that would happen, where somebody would be praying and asking Jesus to forgive them, and at the same time letting out expletives?
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I'm still getting kind of blank stares. Is everybody awake? Can you picture an environment, can you picture that happening?
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Can God save somebody who uses a dirty word in the middle of a prayer to him? Absolutely.
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Absolutely. Because the heart of faith... Now, is that an endorsement on that type of language?
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Not at all. Not at all. Is there an expectation that God is going to work in that person's life to remove the sin?
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My question to you is, what kind of stock does God have to work with? What kind of people does he have to work with?
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Does he have the righteous and the unrighteous? The really bad sinners? And then the people more like us?
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He has sinners to work with. People like prostitutes and liars and you and me.
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He has no other stock to work with. So when it comes to expressing faith, sometimes I can be praying for you and sinning in my prayers.
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Does that make sense? Have you experienced that kind of spiritual pride where you're both at the same time helping a homeless person and sinning because you think you're so good for helping that homeless person?
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Do you see how we can be sinning at the same time as expressing faith? That's the human condition.
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That's the state. Is this passage starting to make more sense to you? The way that this lie can be an act of faith and at the same time be condemnable, a bad thing?
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Because people are broken. We are broken through and through and through. Rahab is never commended for lying but she is commended for her loyalty and faith to Yahweh.
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God above all gods. God only saves sinners.
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He has no one else to save. That's all of us. The third thing
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I want to point out is the progress of her lie. Looking at verses four and five, notice she starts with the truth.
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She literally starts with the word true. True, the men came to me. So she starts off by saying something true.
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Yeah, they were here. I saw them. Okay, great. But then she leads to what's a fuzzy statement.
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The lie kind of begins to creep in in the second part. I didn't know where they were from.
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Probably true at first. Not by the time she's saying this to the guys but I didn't know where they were from when
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I first met them. When they first walked to the door, I didn't know where they were from. Do you see how a little half -truth gets in there?
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Which turns into a bald -faced lie. When the gate was shut, they went out and I don't know where they went except for the fact that I hit them under a pile of slacks up on my roof.
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Straight -up lie. Which culminates in a very specific misdirection of their actions, an urgent misdirection.
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She says, pursue them quickly so you can overtake them. And her urgency somehow wins the day with these soldiers.
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She's like, if you leave right now, you can catch them before they get to the forts. Okay, thanks. Off on a wild goose chase outside of the city.
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And the soldiers are going to pursue the spies all the way to the Jordan River five miles away.
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But the spies aren't there. We know that. The last thing we see about this lie,
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I'm sorry, not about the lie. The last thing we see about this proclamation of Rahab's faith is her actual verbal declaration of it.
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So here we have a pagan, idol -worshiping, trick -turning liar who is going to verbally convert to God.
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She goes to them before they fall asleep and expresses her faith in God in three different ways. First, in verse 9, we see she says,
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Yahweh has deeded our lands to you. Our land belongs to you and to your people.
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Whoa. And not only that, but she calls God by name. She has heard the name Yahweh. Not just a generic term for him, but his first name, so to speak.
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And she declares that. She somehow had encountered the name of God and the way she uses it here shows that she sees him as having control over all events.
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She recognizes something about his sovereignty. The second thing, at the end of verse 9 through the beginning of verse 11, she admits that the fear of Israel has fallen on all of her people, including herself, she says us, and that her people will melt like butter before any onslaught.
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She gives them hope. Now, she says, my people are aware of what happened years ago.
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Now remember, the crossing of the Red Sea was years, decades ago at this point of this text.
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And she says, we know what happened at the Red Sea that they walked through on dry ground. And more recently, we saw what
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Israel did to Sihon and Og, the Amorite kings, so that the might and power and authority of God has sapped the resolve of her people.
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But notice that she's not, that she alone of her people is the one that has come and is expressing faith about this.
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At the end of verse 11, we find the most explicit expression of Rahab's faith. She says this, for Yahweh, your
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God, at this point she's talking about their God, but now she's going to make it personal.
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He is God in the heavens and on the earth beneath.
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She says, your God, Yahweh, I recognize that He is the sovereign one.
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He is the ruler over everything that I can see. When I stand out under the stars and I look into the heavens, that word meant to them was everything out there, spiritual and material, everything out there,
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He is the Lord over that. And terra firma, everything that goes on here on earth, He is the ruler over that.
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A pretty amazing expression of faith from this woman, wouldn't you say? Does this seem like an unlikely place to find this level of faith from a prostitute who is in a culture of idol worship?
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Here this woman sits, so far removed from the grace of Yahweh, so far from the covenant community of Israel.
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Her people are about to be destroyed for generations of wickedness. And I would tell you, wickedness that she herself has promoted, wickedness that she herself has participated in, surely
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God can't be merciful to someone like this, right? Can He demonstrate mercy to her?
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If anyone is beyond grace and forgiveness, it is this lying idol -worshiping prostitute who is living in a condemned city.
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Do you agree with me? But is anybody beyond the grace of God? Now Rahab has expressed her faith, but we move on to her hope in verses 12 -20.
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Faith, the beginning, now we move on to hope. And it is not enough for Rahab to just admit that there is a
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God that is all -powerful and that He is the ruler over heaven and earth. How many of you know that that's very common in our culture?
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That can be very common in our churches, for people to think, because I acknowledge that there is a God who is all -powerful,
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I'm all good, I'm saved. But there is a little something that is necessary beyond that.
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You are going to hear me say this a lot, hopefully you can finish this sentence for me. In order to be saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, you have to acknowledge
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Him as Lord and Savior. My wife could answer it.
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Lord and Savior. Both elements. And we are going to see that here, she is going to have to take a further step.
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Not enough to just acknowledge that He is the ruler over all things, but now she is going to ask, ask to be saved.
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A request, a petition, a point in her life where she said, I need to be saved.
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And it is a point in her life. He is Lord, but is
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He going to be this prostitute Savior? In verse 12 -13 we find her request.
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And although it is directed to the spies, if you look at the text in verses 12 -13, she is addressing it to the spies and saying, would you save me?
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She is still asking for the promise to be ratified, for the promise to be guaranteed by Yahweh Himself.
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She is saying, swear to me by the Lord that I might know that it is
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His will that I would be saved and incorporated and included in the covenant community. She requests that they might save her family alive.
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Notice that the word, I just point this as a side note, that the word father appears a couple of times in our text here, on Father's Day.
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Ironically, I didn't set that up that way, but also the word mother appeared in our text on Mother's Day. I don't know what that is saying.
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But she is asking that her father's household would be saved with her. And I think it is ironic, well, not too ironic, but isn't it just like a liar to ask others to swear?
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When we lie, and if that is a sin that you have struggled with in your life, then you realize that you immediately turn to distrust everybody else around you.
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If you lie, then that is pretty natural for you to turn to distrust. And not only that, but she asks for a sure sign.
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Swear to me and then give me some kind of a sign that you are telling the truth. She is used to living as a liar among liars.
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And here the spies proclaim an oath that seals a future, a new future for Rahab and her family.
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I think we can miss this, because we don't really understand the nuances of the covenant. We don't understand all that Israel meant.
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It was the salvation community of the old covenant, and we don't really see it until we consider some of the elements of this oath that the spies offer to her, that she is ultimately here in our text being welcomed into the covenant community, under the protection of God, under the protection of his people, and she is going to become one of them.
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The oath that stated, when the Lord gives us a land, we will deal kindly and faithfully to you, is an indicator that she has now come under the protection of the covenant community of Israel.
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In essence, she has just been welcomed as a member of Israel. And this woman, this woman who lived her life as a prostitute in a pagan idol -worshipping land, in this city, and she spent her entire life there, we are going to see her on down in the lineage of Jesus Christ himself.
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Okay? This is like Jesus' great great great great great great great great great great great grandmother.
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And she is going to end up marrying, we are going to find out who her husband is, and she is going to end up marrying
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Amenadab's son, who is called a prince of Judah.
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This woman is going to become a princess in Israel. What does that do?
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Does that revolutionize your idea of how extensive God's grace is?
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That he can restore this woman to the place of high standing in his community.
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What an amazing God we serve. How gracious, how merciful. In the chronology of our text, verse 15 is off a bit.
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It is likely that the conversation of 16 through 21 happened before she let them down the window. I just find it hard to picture her shouting down to these spies that she just let down, and they are going to try to hide, but she is shouting at them.
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I don't think that is the case. I think 16 through 21 happens, but 15 gets a little ahead of itself. She lets them down from the window, but first she tells them to hide out in the hills northwest of the city, since the path eastward to the forge will be covered by the soldiers pursuing them.
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Don't head east, don't get to the forge. The interesting thing to note in all of this is that Rahab's survival is now completely tied to the survival of these spies.
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Think about how much she wants them to get back to the camp to say we have made this commitment and this pledge. Joshua knows nothing about this pledge or commitment to save her life or her family unless the spies get back and report.
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She has vested interest in their survival at this point. The men reiterate that she has some prerequisites to surviving the up -and -coming battle.
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Those are found in verses 17 through 20, and I will just list them as the four prereqs. She must identify her house with a scarlet cord, the very cord that she is going to let them down, the five to ten feet to the ground here in just a minute.
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That cord is going to be there to identify to the soldiers which house is hers. She must gather her entire family into her house.
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Can you imagine what that conversation was like? What was her trade again? She is going to go to her family and say, hey, why don't you guys come stay with me for a little while?
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I can't imagine that that was an easy conversation to have. And not only that, but the text is pretty explicit that she has a father.
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She has brothers. And could you kind of maybe, does it produce the question in your mind like it did mine while I was studying this?
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Where are they in her life? She has a father and brothers, and she is living as a prostitute?
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I think that demonstrates something of the denigration of this culture in the society where we saw back in the book of Genesis in the setup of how wicked this culture had become.
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God is judging Jericho. He is judging the people of Canaan for their lifestyle, for their behavior, for the wickedness that has enveloped them.
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And we see that they live in a culture where there is not even compassionate care and concern for a family member.
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There is not provision made for her, and she has to be out there working. Not only that, but there are indicators in the text that she is actually, her trade, her occupation is acceptable in her culture, that it is not an unacceptable thing to be a prostitute.
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It probably didn't even have the social stigma that it does here today. It was not even likely that it was illegal in that culture.
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The third thing that she has to do in order to be saved is when the battle begins, keep them in the house.
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If anybody strays outside of the house once the battle starts, they are fair game, and they are guilty of their own blood.
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Their own blood is on their own head. And the fourth thing, the final thing, is keep our little secret, our little deal with you a secret.
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If she blabs, if she goes out and says, hey, I signed a deal with the Israelites, that's really good.
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And then she is going to get killed, and they are not guilty for that because she is guilty for blabbing. Does that make sense?
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So those are the conditions that are listed there in 17 through 20. Rahab agrees to those immediately and wholeheartedly with an exclamation point, immediately started meeting the conditions by tying a scarlet rope to the window.
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And that's the rope which the men were likely lowered five to ten feet to the ground. The spies return to Joshua after hiding in the mountains west of Jericho.
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They escape. They got what they went in for, and their report is that without question, the
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Lord has deeded this land to us. The inhabitants will melt like butter before us.
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They are ours. They got that confirmation that God had caused fear among the people.
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So now this morning we've encountered a historical account. It's a historical account, kind of like a spy thriller, a little bit of intrigue and interest and close to getting caught and all that business.
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And at face value, it's an exciting story about spies, soldiers, and a turncoat prostitute.
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But it doesn't take digging much deeper to see a few observations that should lead us to worship God this morning, the reason why
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I wanted to preach first and then respond in worship. You see, Jericho is a city under the condemnation of God.
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Much like the mass of humanity, much like the state of all people, much like us.
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The difference is that Jericho is literally going to undergo a physical judgment, where there's going to be a battle. The walls are going to crumble, and they're going to be destroyed.
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Where all of humanity at large is under a spiritual judgment, a real spiritual judgment.
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So the question is, if they're all under judgment, is there hope? And we know the answer to that question.
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But think about this further. Was there hope for the people of Canaan? As Israel is literally getting the war machine together, and they're going to roll through this land.
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Was there hope? Rahab stands as a model and example of hope.
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That any who would have turned by faith to acknowledge God as the ruler over all and asked him for salvation, it would have been granted.
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We're going to see an entire people group. Again, a shady way that they do it, but another entire people group here in a couple chapters that is going to come under the protection of Israel and come under the covenant because they acknowledge
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God. Ironically, they also lie in the process of coming under that covenant.
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But God's hand is in that nonetheless. There is always hope that someone will turn to God, recognize him as Lord, and ask him to be their savior.
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As humans are tossed about in the sea of sin and depravity, we have a lifeline always ready, always ready for any who would humble themselves, acknowledge
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God, and ask him for salvation. Again, I can't state this too much.
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Even in prayer this morning, I was praying that if you guys walk away with anything from this morning, it is this, that it is not sufficient to say, there is a
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God. That is not sufficient for salvation. James tells us that you do well to believe in God.
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Even the demons believe that and shudder. It is not sufficient to just say, oh yeah,
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I believe there's a big man upstairs. And that's it. Salvation comes by a humility and a faith that says, and God, would you save me?
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I am making a mess of my life, and without you, there is no hope for me.
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And that's where the cross comes in. The cross comes in as our hope. And we ask that God, would you apply what
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Christ did on the cross to my life? Would you forgive me on the basis of what he has done?
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My second observation is the nature of faith. Rahab had a home nested between the two walls of Jericho, the two symbols of the power of that city.
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Everything around her that she saw, everything that her eyes could take in, everything her ears could hear from her home, everything appeared that her culture was going to continue on.
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But she had heard something, and she had been changed by what she heard. She had heard about this amazing
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God, and despite her lifestyle, despite her culture, despite everything tangible around her that pointed to the way that she had been raised to worship idols, something in her heart was awakened.
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And ultimately, that's the nature of faith, isn't it? To look around and say, it appears as though life is about money.
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How many of you would agree with that? From our vantage point here in America, how many of you would say that it is a kind of taking in, if your senses, if your eyes, if your ears, if your physical sense of touch, if all of that is everything, the sum total of life, is what you take in there, how many of you would say that money suddenly kind of starts to rise to the top of your value system?
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If that's all that there is, if we look around ourselves and all we do is take in what we see and what we hear, we're going to live according to some of the values of this world.
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But she heard something about God, and something was brought alive inside of her. How many of you experienced that before, where despite the things that you see,
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God speaks into your heart, probably through his word, speaks into your heart truth, and you go, that's really the way that it is.
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Living for money is not all that it's cracked up to be. But it takes faith to bring us past what we see, what we hear, and all of those things.
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My third observation concerns the condition of Rahab when she cries out for salvation, and I'm drawing to a close here.
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When she comes to a place of trust in God as her Lord and Savior, she is a liar.
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She is a prostitute and quite literally a mess. She is such a really bad sinner, and ultimately she is so much worse than us, right?
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It's utterly scandalous how gracious God is. He forgives those who find it hard to forgive themselves.
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Do you agree with that? He forgives those that most sensible and good upstanding people would dismiss as worthless.
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And I don't know which is cheesier, trying to tell another pastor's story, or literally putting up a video clip of another pastor preaching part of a sermon.
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So I'm going to err on the side of letting you hear the words of Matt Chandler, one of my favorite preachers.
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I listen to him on a regular basis. I'm going to ask Peter to put that up there and listen to what
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Matt Chandler has as he speaks about the love of God for broken people just like you and me. Before my passion for the gospel and my passion to see lost men and women saved started to rub against or collide with the church.
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And so it wasn't very long, and I can give you dozens and dozens of stories, but really one that kind of broke the camel's back where I decided if I was going to do this,
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I wasn't going to do it as a churchman because the church, more often than not, was an enemy of conversion and not its friend.
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I'll give you an example. This turn in me, this break in me happens that God has been just disciplining me on ever since.
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Occurred my freshman year of college when I randomly sat next to a,
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I'm a freshman in college, I'm sitting next to a 26 -year -old single mother who's coming back to school to try to get a degree, never been to church, didn't know much about Jesus, didn't know, and so we began this ongoing dialogue about the grace and mercy of Christ in the cross.
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And so me and some of my crew go over to her house and babysit her daughter. She's actually in an extramarital affair at the time with a married man, and so we've talked through that, the wisdom in that.
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This is the relationship we had, just kind of serving her and trying to explain to her spiritual things.
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A friend of mine was playing at a church in the area, and so I asked her to come. He was a musician, and so I said, hey, a good friend of mine's in a band.
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He's playing. Why don't you come hear him? And so she agreed.
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She thought it would be a concert. I knew better. It was shady. It was excellent. And she came with me, and we listened to Robbie play, and he was tremendous, this real anointed guy.
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And then the minister got up, and he said, today I want to talk to you about sex. And so I immediately go, uh -oh.
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This could be a problem. And he took a red rose, and he smelled it, and he showed how pretty it was, and then he threw it out into the crowd.
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He goes, everybody needs to smell this. There's about 1 ,000 of us there, almost all of us college and high school. Smell the rose.
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I want you to smell it. I want you to touch it. I want you to see the texture in it. Do it. Do it, and I'm going to teach. And then he began what honestly up until this day, and this might have to do with my heart.
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I'm still wrestling. It was one of the worst, most horrific handling of what sex is and what it isn't that I ever sat through.
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It was fear -mongering at its best. It was, you don't want syphilis, do you? And everybody's smiling and having a good time until there's herpes on your lip, right?
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And so I'm just thinking with Kim beside me, what are you doing? What are you doing? And then as it wraps up, he goes, where's my rose?
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Where is it? Where's my rose? And some kid came up. The rose was just completely jacked up. It's broken.
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The things are off. The petals are broken. And he lifts it up, and his big crescendo, I mean his point is to hold up that rose and go, now who would want this?
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Who would want this rose? And I remember feeling anger, like real, legitimate,
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I want to hurt him, anger. And it was all I could do not to scream out, Jesus wants the rose!
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That's the point of the gospel, that Jesus wants the rose. That he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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That while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You're not even teaching the basics of our faith!
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You see, I flipped the service to preach first because Rahab's story makes me want to praise
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God for the grace that he has showered upon me.
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He showered grace on me, a sinner, a person who is completely unworthy.
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And Rahab is just a reminder of that extensive grace that he extends to all of us sinners.
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You see, if I'm honest, I am Rahab. I prostituted myself to all kinds of lesser things.
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I've sold myself to pride, to materialism, to lust, to anger, to human approval.
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And yet God has proven himself willing to save the vilest of sinners, the worst offenders.
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There is no one that is beyond the grip of God's grace.
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I praise God for that. And so it's my desire at this time to have the band come up and just that we might lift up our voices in praise and in gratitude for the awesome grace that is extended to us through Jesus Christ our
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Lord. Come on, guys. While they're getting set up,
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I just want to say one final thing. If you're here and you have not asked God to save you, you've acknowledged he existed, you've gone that far, you've taken that time to say,
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I believe there's a God. Finally, maybe there's like a chink in your armor and you've kind of said, you know what? Okay.
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It's hard to argue against. God is there. But you have not yet come to the place where you have asked him to save you.
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I'd ask you during the communion time or at the end of the service even, there's going to be a little bit of time, we're not going to have a transition time, so we're going to have a little bit of time at the end where you have a little bit more time to mix and mingle.
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I encourage you to come and talk with me. Or maybe you're here and you have made a decision to follow Christ and you've asked him to be your
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Savior, but you haven't shared that with a soul. You haven't even told anyone about that. I'd love to hear that, and I'd love to give you some resources and have the opportunity to help you to grow further in your walk with God.