WWUTT 2510 Q&A The Promised Land Show, Did Rahab Lie, Mentoring Younger Pastors, Action Figure Jesus

WWUTT Introduction and the Week Away From the Show

Did Rahab lie to protect the spies who came to Jericho? How can an older pastor help to mentor a younger pastor? And are action figures of Jesus a violation of the second commandment? The answers to these questions when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, a daily Bible commentary in the word of God that we may grow together in Christ, longing for the day of his return. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome.

Psalm 103, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. Welcome to the Friday edition of when we understand the text. Sorry that we've been away for a little while.

Yeah.

Took a week away.

Yeah.

It's a, you know, life.

And it's kind of goes with every other time we've missed a week, just a busy season.

It just happens.

Lots of things going on. We did some renovations at the church. Some of you may have been following some of that when I put pictures on X. We removed a wall.

Yes.

So that we could seat more people in our church. We lost that Sunday school space.

We did.

But we gained some more people.

I mean, it used to be the overflow room, but now does it seat more people now that it's open?

Oh, yes. Oh, great. Because we not only gained that room, but we gained the closet to the north.

True.

And the hallway.

Yeah.

That was also separating that room from the sanctuary.

True.

So we gained some room, gained some people. Now they're not just shoved off in an overflow room, but we can see their smiling faces.

Or in the entry or the office.

Yeah, that's right.

Or the other crevices of the building.

It's still not enough chairs. Compared to the Sunday that we had the most number of people come in, we still don't have enough chairs.

Right.

For that particular Sunday. But nonetheless, people are sitting more comfortably. The room feels more open.

Yeah.

It doesn't feel as cramped as it was before. This is a temporary solution.

Very temporary.

Because we're looking for something more long-term with more room. That we can continue to grow, but God is blessing our church.

Oh, amen.

And it's been a wonderful thing. We did a baptism last Sunday.

Yes. So exciting.

And then this week, there's been a bunch of other things too that have kind of kept me off the air. My dad has been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.

Yeah.

And this was a few weeks ago that he was diagnosed with dementia, but they narrowed it down on Monday specifically to Lewy body. And I had a conversation with him on the phone that was just very unusual.

And it did not sound like my dad.

Yeah.

And he's declining rapidly.

So fast.

Very fast. And if you've heard me share my testimony about my parents before, I'm a Christian because of my dad. Nobody's been more influential in my life, in my Christian faith than my mom and dad. Like I'm a Christian because of my parents, but my dad taught me the Bible, walked me through the Bible, taught me how to use scripture to interpret scripture.

I was learning those expository skills even before I became an expository preacher. He didn't have a vision for me to become a pastor. That's just the way the Lord and his providence work things out. You have probably been, you've probably been more influential.

He's over here putting the finger at me.

You've had more to do with me becoming a pastor than I think my parents did.

Maybe.

But my dad just equipped me with the skills before we got there. So it's hard. It's hard listening to his decline. And I'm trying to make preparation right now to be able to go see my dad. And it may be the very last time that I'm able to have a face-to-face conversation with him in which he knows who I am.

So be in prayer for my mom and dad. Yeah, this side of heaven, right. But be in prayer for my mom and my dad. You know, with the conversation that I had with him on Tuesday, that was very unusual. I've given you the specifics of how strange that conversation was.

But there was still a part of that in which I was able to remind him of the gospel. And he had not forgotten it, but still being able to share with him. Jesus died for us. Our sins are forgiven. We're promised everlasting life.

We have that to look forward to, dad. And then when I prayed with him, I prayed that God would remind him of that. That no matter where his mind ends up slipping to, he won't forget the gospel that he's loved for so many years and has taught so many people through the Christian radio stations he's planted and everything else.

I know my dad soon, it's probably gonna be soon, but we'll walk through heaven's gates to hear his savior say, well done, good and faithful servant. I wrote a song about that, thinking of my dad over a decade ago.

Yeah.

And even when after having that conversation with my dad, I sat down at the piano at the church and played through that song again. So anyway, just to share with you just kind of things we got going on and they're keeping us busy.

This is Friday and we're going out as a family together. So we're gone today while you're listening to this episode. But being the Friday edition, we do wanna get to some questions from some listeners and I don't want it to back up too far.

Right.

So let's get to them. You can send a question to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com or send us a voicemail by going to wwutt .com and click on the voicemail tab. The website's about to change again, but it will still be the tabs across the top.

Or should we do the applause button?

Yeah, I won't mess with it this time. I always pick the wrong one. Voicemail messages, we got three today if I can get to them all. Let's come back to this comment from Ed. If you'll remember back to two weeks ago now, Ed had reached out with a question about the YouTube show called Promised Land.

It is the kind of, yeah, it's a co-creation with The Chosen.

Oh, right.

In a certain way because the director, the writer and director of the show was like the first assistant director to Dallas Jenkins in creating The Chosen. So when you watch it, you can definitely see The Chosen influence.

Ed had made a comment about how he thought the show was even more blasphemous than The Chosen, but his voicemail got cut off and we weren't able to hear his explanation of why he thought it was even more blasphemous than The Chosen.

So here is Ed to now enlighten us as to his thoughts regarding that show.

Here we go.

Hey, Pastor Gabe, this is Ed Ellis calling from North Carolina again. I'm so sorry I went too long and now we have this vibe of an old Dukes of Hazzard episode with the General Lee hanging in midair and you have to wait till next week to find out what happens.

So the review of the Promised Land show said that the humor in the show was not actually mocking God at all, but just poking fun at the situations that Moses and the children of Israel would have found themselves engrossed in.

What I believe that actually does though by implication is to mock God for everything that he instructs and decrees and is especially damaging to those who don't understand Old Testament theology and how it all points to the gospel.

As you mentioned last week, everything in the Old Testament scripture is actually about God, not the characters that are presented. So likewise, I feel like this show is ultimately mocking the character of God, not merely the characters in the show.

Gabe, I really appreciate you already giving some great insight into this question. I'm so thankful, brother, for your life and for your ministry and I pray that God continues to bless you and your family for his glory.

Thank you so much, Ed. Very kind of you. That is so sweet. And so yeah, now I understand a little bit more about what you meant by the show being even more blasphemous because yeah, you've got a book of the Bible that is centered on God.

I mean, it's all, the whole story is surrounding Christ anyway, but God is the main voice in the book of Exodus. And yet it is kind of poking fun of the situation. Oh, so I made this comment last week about, well, two weeks ago now, about the promised land.

I said that I was midway through episode two and that was probably as far as I was gonna go. I just, I mean, the show wasn't even really all that funny or entertaining to me anyway, let alone how problematic it was and moving elements of the story around.

Well, I went ahead and went back. I figured. Yeah, of course.

I figured that's where this was going.

You knew where this was going.

I finished the rest of that episode.

And it got better.

No.

Was it episode two or episode three? I can't remember now. I think I said I watched one and a half or two and a half episodes. I don't know. I have no idea. Whatever episode I was on, I finally went back and finished it.

I did not realize that at the end of that episode was the golden calf incident.

Oh my.

And I had already made the comment, like, what are they going to do when it gets to people getting killed because they sinned against God?

Yeah.

And now the punishment is they're being put to death. That's not funny.

No.

So how do you make that funny and still be able to maintain the punch of what is being conveyed there in the Exodus narrative? They worship false gods. What you deserve for that is die. Nobody died.

That's what I figured.

Nobody died.

So what happened was they got a plague, which that's part of the narrative too, but people died from the plague.

Right.

So they got a plague. Moses like crushed the golden calf into the water. And oh, and by the way, like the characters that they had who were worshiping the golden calf included Moses' wife and also Caleb, who would eventually be one of the two men that would help to lead the people into the promised land along with Joshua.

Okay.

Like they took righteous men from the story.

That's what I was thinking.

That Exodus doesn't tell us, it does not say that every single person in Israel was worshiping the golden calf.

Right.

That was not the case. But that's the way they convey it in the show. So Moses is up there on the mountain. He comes down and there's his wife worshiping the golden calf. And he just kind of has this heartbrokenness about it.

I'm just, you know, people let me down. And the real impact of what that costs a person is never conveyed. The wages of sin is death. The worshiping of false gods.

I'm not sure that people putting this together understand that either.

No, probably not. No, they're just trying to make a funny office style show about the promised land. And so at the end of the episode, all the people that worship the golden calf now have a plague but the plague is not something that looking at the person you would know that they have it.

They're just a little itchy.

Oh my.

I'm not even kidding. It's just people walking around itching. There's even one of the characters where he says, see, I knew better than I would not have worshiped the golden calf. And then like the camera kind of catches him behind a tent.

He's kind of scratching himself. So the joke is supposed to be, oh, okay. He really did get it. And he's trying to show himself as being holier than thou.

Right.

Oh my goodness.

Itchy.

Yeah, just itchy.

That's a plague.

That's the extent of the plague. You just scratch a little bit. That's when we lived in East Texas and we spent five minutes outside with mosquitoes.

No joke. It wasn't even that long.

Yes.

Then you come back in itching. That's what that was.

Oh my goodness.

I mean, that's a result of the fall as well, but that's not the curse. That's not the curse God placed on Israel because they had worshiped a golden calf. So it got worse. Yes, it did get worse.

Okay, so when the show continues on and they're.

They're going to the promised land. So it's going to get beyond Exodus. Right now it's in Exodus, or at least the episodes that I've seen. But I'm guessing going all the way to the promised land, we still have numbers, well, Leviticus is that.

Leviticus numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua. That's probably, you know, we still have that much Bible left to go.

I don't know. I just don't see them doing this very.

Well?

Yes.

No, of course not.

That's one way to put it.

So as a result of the golden calf, 3000 people fell and then a plague afflicts the rest of the camp.

Right.

And you know, they're not going to convey that. They even make the plague out to be funny.

Yeah, that's okay.

So the serious consequence of our sin is never really conveyed. And this is what I, you know, this was a point that I made two weeks ago too, that everything is so downplayed. So what is it that people who are watching this learn from this exactly?

I don't know if they're teaching them anything.

Right.

Or if it's just pure entertainment.

It's just for entertainment?

Yeah.

That's what I was thinking.

Just for entertainment. Oh, incidentally on

If it's just for entertainment, why can't they just pick their own story?

Yeah.

Why do they have to base it off the Bible?

Or even like

Do they find the Bible is a joke?

Well, yeah, probably. Like the only way to teach the Bible to people that will get people to watch it and follow it is to be funny, to make it a comedy. You know, it's like the preachers in churches who feel like they have to be standup comedians.

Fair.

I can't be preaching sermons that will offend people or make them feel convicted because then they may not come back.

I've got to fly in and have all of this glitter coming out.

It's happening in our churches, so therefore it happens in the TV shows. The Bible isn't even really being preached with the oomph and the impact that it needs to have because the preachers are usually not exegetical.

True.

They're not expositional. So they're not taking you through the Bible and showing you what it really says. It's just enough to keep the crowds

Entertained.

Feeling like they've checked their religious box for the week. Yeah. And I didn't get anything too bad at church on Sunday.

Yeah.

I feel pretty good. So anyway, but yeah, I appreciate your comment about that, Ed. And yeah, beware everybody about the promised land.

Yeah.

Not as good as you think. Not as good as

They made it out to be.

That's something. It's just not good.

It's just not good.

Don't even have to dress it up beyond that. Okay, this question comes from Jeff. Babe, you're gonna like this one, okay?

Here we go.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not.

Pastor Gabe and Miss Becky, hello from Park Place Baptist Church in Mississippi. I am the teacher, or one of the teachers, in a fifth and sixth grade Sunday school class. We're actually sitting in Sunday school right now with the boys and girls.

Oh, fun.

Aw.

And a question came up this morning that we wanted to see if you would maybe address it on the podcast. We're talking about Rahab and the spies, and the question came up, is Rahab or was Rahab sinning and lying about the spies being on her roof?

We talked on the one hand about maybe Rahab displaying faith in God and trusting that God would protect the men, even if she did tell the truth. And then we talked on the other hand, on the Ten Commandments, says, thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Rahab clearly did bear false witness, but it wasn't against her neighbor. It wasn't against the spies. So we're talking about, was it wrong for her to lie to the king's men? And we'd love to know what you have to say.

And if you're able to address it, we'll listen to it in Sunday school. So thanks so much for your ministry.

Thank you, Jeff.

Oh, that is awesome.

And hi, kids.

Hi.

Thanks so much. Hang on, let me see if I can get their hi back in there again.

Right now with the boys and girls.

Hi.

And a question.

There we go.

I love it.

That's awesome. All right, so the story of Rahab hiding the spies. This is a very common question.

It is.

I had this one.

Was Rahab lying?

And I still have this one. Like I still mull through it like a lot. And anyway, because what would I do in that situation? I would feel very obligated to tell the truth, but at the same time, the truth is dangerous.

So.

It would get those men killed.

It would.

So how do we understand this? Let's go to Joshua 2. Let's read it. And then I'll try to help you understand what's happening here. And whether or not Rahab was being honest or dishonest and whether that pleased the Lord.

So Joshua 2. And Joshua, the son of Nun, sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, go view the land, especially Jericho. And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there.

And it was told to the king of Jericho, behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land. Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab saying, bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.

But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, true, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. 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. But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued after them on the way to the 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, I know that 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.

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 Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sion 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 for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me that by the 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 mother, my brothers and sisters and all who belong to them and deliver our lives from death.

And the men said to her, our life for yours, even to death. If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the 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.

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. Then afterward, 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 a swear.

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.

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. 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 a swear. 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.

So there we go. That's not quite all of chapter two, but pretty close. There's the narrative concerning Rahab and the spies. So how about this? God, of course, honored Rahab and her family. When Joshua and the children of Israel came against Jericho, they marched around it, they blew the trumpets, the walls came a tumbling down as the Sunday school song goes, her house and her family were spared.

It was the one part of the wall that had not come down was where Rahab and her family lived. And that scarlet cord had been tied in the window. So God obviously honored her and spared her life. There's another narrative in the Old Testament that often gets paired with this one and that's concerning the Hebrew midwives in Exodus chapter one.

Oh, yeah.

So they didn't kill the babies like Pharaoh had told them to. And they said, you know, when they

We don't know what happened.

Yeah, right, exactly. When Pharaoh questioned them, they said, well, the Hebrew women are strong and they just give birth before we can do anything.

Right there.

Yeah, right.

And it says there that God blessed them. So in that particular instance, you even have the words explicitly said that God blessed them and here God blesses Rahab by sparing her life. So was it therefore wrong?

Was it a lie for her to have said what she said in order to divert those soldiers away from the spies so that the spies would not be apprehended and killed? Let me present this to you this way. Let me come back to verse three where the men first speak to Rahab.

Okay.

Where the soldiers who are coming to apprehend the spies when they speak to Rahab. The King of Jericho sent to Rahab saying, bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house for they have come to search out all the land.

But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them and said, true, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I don't know where the men went.

So pursue them quickly for you will overtake them. She's obviously diverting their attention away and she tells them something that isn't factual. So that's not a fact. The men did not go through the gate to run away.

Correct.

Would we call it a lie though? I want you to hear the question and the answer rather like this. These soldiers come to Rahab's house and they say, are there any men in your house for us to kill? And her answer to them is no.

And that's the truth. So this is like when an army comes against another army in battle. And you'll see this happen later on in Joshua. So the Israelites come against one army and they have already hidden part of their army over here.

And part of this strategy involves when we come against that army, I think it's AI. I think it's when they were fighting against AI, not artificial intelligence.

I was gonna say that sounds so funny nowadays.

It is spelled AI, but yeah, AI is the name of the city. When they were fighting against them and they're running away from AI, AI pursues them thinking that they're fleeing, but it's a strategy. They're tricking them.

They're fooling them. Would you call that a lie though?

It's a war strategy.

It's a war strategy. And then here comes the other part of the army over the hill or comes in behind them and then takes them that way. So it was deceptive. They were being deceived into thinking that they were winning the battle so that they would be drawn out, their city would be conquered and they would be destroyed.

This is the same sort of thing right here. It's like a wartime strategy. These soldiers have come to kill these men. And so Rahab shrewdly will not give them up, but rather say to them an answer that is as if to say, no, there are not any men here for you to kill.

And the Lord honors this, that she protected their lives and diverted the soldiers elsewhere. Remember that the commandment is specifically, the ninth commandment is, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Right.

So in this particular case, she actually upheld the lives of her neighbors, the ones who were good, whom it would have been unjust to kill. These were the lives that she preserved and diverted the soldier's attention elsewhere.

That's very true.

When it comes to talking about this regarding Rahab, because like I said, this question comes up a lot. I'd like to also mention Doeg the Edomite. So Doeg in 1 Samuel chapter 22, he was in the tabernacle when David came and asked Ahimelech the priest, if he had any food and Ahimelech fed him.

Doeg goes and reports back to Saul that Ahimelech had fed David, had provided for David. At that time, Saul sees David as an enemy. He's trying to pursue David and kill him. David is fleeing from Saul.

And so Saul questions Ahimelech and Ahimelech is basically like, I mean, what's the problem? I helped your son-in-law. Ahimelech doesn't think that he's done anything illegal that Saul doesn't like, but Saul is incensed by this.

And he says that Ahimelech needs to be killed. Now, nobody will do it. But Doeg the Edomite, he says, I'm gonna do it. So he ends up hacking Ahimelech and then the others who were along with him as well.

And Ahimelech was killed as a result of this. Now what Doeg said to Saul was the truth.

Right.

Doeg reported to Saul the truth. He didn't lie to Saul. He didn't make up something about Ahimelech. Ahimelech helped David when Saul would have seen that as an act of treason. Now, when David wrote a Psalm about this in Psalm 52, David says this.

Now here's the heading to this Psalm. It says to the choir master, a mascal of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul, David has come into the house of Ahimelech, which again is true. That really did happen.

Yeah.

And so here's what David wrote. Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? The steadfast love of God endures all the day. Your tongue plots destruction like a sharp razor, you worker of deceit. You love evil more than good and lying more than speaking what is right, say law.

You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue. Did Doeg lie?

No.

As far as presenting factual information is concerned, Doeg gave Saul the facts. So why does David call what Doeg did a lie? Because it was for the purpose of destroying Ahimelech that he himself would be exalted in the presence of Saul.

So even though he gave factual information, it's still regarded in Psalm 52 that Doeg lied. He was a worker of deceit and judgment. The judgment of God would come down upon him because of that. Whereas Rahab gives information to the soldiers that may not have been factual.

It diverted them away, but it was still true in the sense that she was upholding the lives of the spies inside and saying, there are not men in here for you to kill. Does that help?

Yeah, it makes sense.

All right.

Because I mean, you kind of think about it like, if you're witnessing a bully situation for the children.

Yeah, right, okay.

This scenario.

A bully beating up another kid.

Yeah, or just tearing them down with words. You can join in with facts about that child who's being bullied, but would that be the righteous thing to do?

Right, like making fun of his appearance or something. And you're saying something about his appearance that might actually be factual.