FBC Daily Devotional – December 21, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well a good Tuesday morning, this Tuesday of Christmas week, and as I mentioned yesterday,

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I'm getting off the routine of sharing some devotional thoughts from the daily

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Bible readings, and instead looking at the miracle women of Christmas, the names of the women recorded, or the women referred to in the genealogy of Jesus as it's recorded for us in Matthew chapter 1.

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So let me just remind you of those who are named here in chapter 1 of Matthew verse 1.

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It says the book of the genealogy of Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begot

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Isaac. Isaac begot Jacob. Jacob begot Judah and his brothers. Judah begot

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Perez and Zerah by Tamar. There's woman number one.

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Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram. Ram begot Amminadab.

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Amminadab begot Nashan, and Nashan begot Salmon, and Salmon begot

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Boaz by Rahab. There's woman number two. And Boaz begot

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Obed by Ruth, woman number three, who's named. And then in verse 16,

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Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, the fourth woman named. Of whom was born

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Jesus, who is called Christ. Now, by the way, I'm not overlooking the fact that there is a fifth woman mentioned in this genealogy, and that's

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Bathsheba, but she's not named. She's referred to in verse 6.

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It says Jesse begot David the king, and David the king begot Salmon by her of Uriah, her who had been the wife of Uriah.

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And of course, that's referring to Bathsheba. I'm focusing this week on the women who are actually named, whose names are given to us.

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And each of those women represents a different aspect of God's miraculous work in our lives, and in the lives of these people in this genealogy, these women in particularly.

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And yesterday we looked at Tamar, and she represented the miracle of God's mercy.

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She was a woman who had engaged in some terribly sinful behavior, as did everyone else in that whole story.

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And yet God chose to use her in this genealogy of Jesus, representing the fact that God deals with us in mercy.

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But the second woman named is the woman Rahab. And we learn of Rahab in Joshua chapter 2, and I would suggest

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Rahab represents to us the miracle of God's grace. And if you think of God's mercy as his not giving us what we do deserve, think of God's grace as those benefits that he gives to us, that the benefits that he gives to us that we don't deserve.

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So his mercy, he doesn't give us what we do deserve. His grace, he gives us what we don't deserve.

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And Rahab certainly represents that. Rahab was a woman who had truly a hopeless background.

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She was a pagan woman. She was a Canaanite from the land of Jericho. So, you know, she had no claim to being a part of God's people.

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There was no worship of God in the land, in the city of Jericho, in the land where she lived.

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She had no background in the truths of God. None whatsoever.

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She was a she was a pagan. She was just a pagan. And as an inhabitant of Jericho, she was condemned.

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Because if you remember the story, Jericho was the first city that the children of Israel would be going to conquer as they came into the land of Canaan, the

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Promised Land. This was the land that God gave them and he was giving them this land and they were going to conquer these people because the wickedness of the land of Canaan had become so heinous that it was time for God to give the land to his people.

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Jericho was going to be the first city on the list of cities to be conquered.

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And as a resident of the city of Jericho, Rahab stands condemned.

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She's condemned. And the third thing we can notice about her hopeless background is that she was a harlot.

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She was a harlot. She had a brothel, I guess.

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I mean, it's called, you know, like an inn that was an inn of harlotry. Most likely it was like a tavern kind of a place where wayfarers would stop, sojourners, travelers would stop and there was at this tavern the opportunity of hiring the services of a harlot.

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Rahab was a harlot. But even in her pagan, sinful, condemned background, she exercised faith in the

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Lord. This is evident in Joshua chapter 2. Verse 9 indicates in Joshua 2 that she believed in her total inability to do anything about her plight as a condemned inhabitant of Jericho.

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So verse 9 of Joshua chapter 2, she says to the spies that came into Jericho, remember this the

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Joshua sent some spies into the city to check it out, see, you know, where it was vulnerable and so forth.

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And as was the custom, any traveler would do this. They went to the tavern. They went to the inn, if you will, where Rahab would have plied her trade.

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Goes to Rahab's house and Rahab knows that they're spies from Israel and she says to them,

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I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you.

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You see her expression of total inability. We know we're doomed. We know,

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I know, that I can't do anything about this because your Lord, your God, has given this land into your hands.

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I know that. She also believed in God's righteous judgment. So not only does she acknowledge that Jericho has been given into, given to the hand of God, to the

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Israelites by the hand of God, for destruction. She says at the end of verse 11, the

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Lord your God, and she uses that name Yahweh. She says Yahweh your God, He is

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God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. Now, this is a profound statement of faith for a pagan who's been worshiping idols to say that Yahweh your

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God, He is the God in heaven and earth and she's acknowledging that God therefore, as the

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God of heaven and earth, He has the right to judge according to His righteous standards.

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So she believes in her total inability to save herself. She believes in God's righteous judgment that she deserves to be under.

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But she also believes in God's plan of salvation. And here was that plan.

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The residents of Jericho, the officials in Jericho, heard that there were spies that had come in and so they come to Rahab's house looking for these spies, sure that they must be there because that's where all travelers go.

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They get there and Rahab lies. She says they're not here. She's hidden them.

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And she sends them on their way, the officials who've come to arrest the spies.

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She sends them on their way, says they've left, they've gone, if you go, if you take off after you can catch them. So then after they've gone, she says,

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Rahab says to the spies, spare me, have mercy on me when you come back to conquer the land.

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And the spies say this, all right, we're gonna hang this red cord from your window and she lets them down by that cord to escape, but she says hang this red cord from your window, this scarlet cord.

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And when we come back to attack the city, if that scarlet cord is hanging down from your window, we'll know where you are and we will spare you.

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And verse 21, she says to them, according to your words, so be it.

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And she sent them away and they departed and she bound the scarlet cord in the window.

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So what she was expressing in tying that scarlet cord in the window was her faith in the plan of saving her and her household.

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She expressed faith in the Lord and God in his grace intervenes and he spares her from destruction.

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In chapter 6, Joshua chapter 6, when the Israelites come back and they attack Jericho, walls come tumbling down and so forth, they see that scarlet cord and in verses 22 and 23, listen to what it says,

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Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the country, go into the harlot's house and from there bring out the woman and all that she has as you swore to her.

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And the young men who had been spies went in and they brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers and all that she had.

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So they brought out all her relatives and left them outside the camp. Now, in a sense that was that was merit.

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They rescued her from the destruction on the basis of what she did for them because of what she did to save them, to spare them, they turned around and saved her.

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So you can say, well she was saved by merit. Okay, but here's where the grace comes in.

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Here's where the grace comes in. Remember, Rahab represents the miracle of God's grace in her inclusion in the genealogy.

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Here's where the grace comes in. She married an Israelite. That's something she didn't deserve.

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And not only an Israelite, an Israelite who was in the tribe of Judah, an

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Israelite who with her husband, her husband the

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Israelite, with her, with her husband, she would give birth to a son who would then end up perpetuating the line of Messiah.

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This, this is grace. This is grace. Aren't you grateful that our

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God is a God of mercy and of grace? And at this

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Christmas season, we reflect much on the the giving of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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But let's reflect on truth, on the truth that our

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God who sent his Son into this world sent him to be the Savior of people who would come to him by faith.

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And in his grace he sent that child. And his grace is seen all through the story of the genealogy.

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I'm grateful for a God of grace. And so our Father, we do thank you today for your wonderful, marvelous grace expressed in the life of Rahab and using her, graciously using her to carry on the line of Messiah.

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Thank you for your grace expressed to us, saving us solely by your grace.

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Thank you for that grace today. We pray now your blessing upon these thoughts and we ask it in Jesus name.

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Amen. All right. We'll have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday and trust