Joshua 2-6 (Rahab's True Fight

The Cowardice of Draft Dodging and the Church at War

When the draft existed in this country, one of the worst things that a person could ever do or could ever be called was a draft dodger. A draft dodger is someone who, it's a derogatory term, who purposely tries to get out of serving their country.

It's to purposely avoid military conflict because I guess you have better things to do or you're scared or maybe you just didn't want to go. So, draft dodging though, it has been and it always has been in the history of the world been viewed as a kind of treason and a kind of extreme cowardice.

It's to look at your countrymen that are across from you and to say you're not worth fighting for. This land is not worth saving. It's to say that your safety, your comfort, your security is more important than someone else's and it is to appear selfish, feckless, and cowardly.

In the history of the world, there's a great book by C .S. Lewis called The Abolition of Man and he traces different societies all across human history and one of the conclusions that he comes to is that cowardice is never considered virtuous in any society, at any time, and in any place.

Different societies have differed on lots of things and had different opinions on things but one of the unifying things that everyone has agreed upon is that cowardice is not virtuous. It seems as though as human beings that we instinctively know that when times are tough that we need to band together, care for one another, and be called to a higher standard in those moments to serve.

We're so thankful for our two military men that are here today but I can't help but thinking about the hypocrisy in the modern American church in this particular regard. For far too long, the church, I'm not talking about shepherds, I'm talking about the big C church has forgotten that we're in a war.

We've forgotten that there's a battle and for far too long, the church has acted like a band of cowards and I don't say that to be mean, I say that just as an observation. Again, I'm not talking about you or I but I'm talking about a church culture that we've inherited who's been scared of the world, scared of the flesh, scared of the devil, and has been a church in hiding.

It's been a generation that we've inherited of draft-dodging Christians, too petrified to gird up their loins for battle because they're too willing to look too palatable to the world. We've been too afraid to don the breastplate of righteousness, too scared to live a life of holiness that's dedicated to Christ.

We don't want to look like a Susie Duguid or a Holly holier than thou so we've instead tried to fit in with culture and blend in. We've not shod the shoes of the gospel and been ready to leap into the world, ready to share the good news of the hope that we have in Jesus Christ because we're too afraid of what someone might think or who we might offend.

We've allowed the shield of faith to become rusty in our closets. We've allowed the sword of the spirit to gather dust in our bedstands or nightstands. There's no army in the history of the world that has ever behaved this way in their country continued to stand.

We know that Christ has sent us out into the world to extend his kingdom, to knock down the strongholds of Satan, to go into all the world and declaring the gospel, the gospel that says that Jesus Christ reigns and Satan has been defeated.

That is a wartime statement. Until the entire earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, until every tribe, tongue, and nation has heard that glorious gospel, we're at war. And far too many have either contributed nothing to the battle or have went away running from the battle.

We need to realize that we're in a spiritual battle. We need to realize that. We must realize that God intends this war to be fought. We must realize that God intends to equip us for service. And we must realize that cowardice and Christianity are antithetical to one another, that we've been called to fight.

As obedient slaves, we must be willing to go wherever our king has told us to go from now until the moment that he returns. So, with that, I want us to look today at the book of Joshua. And I want us to examine the background of this woman named Rahab.

And I want us to look at what happens when God calls Israel to war against the Canaanites. And I want us to see every little step along the way in that. We're going to cover a couple chapters, which is, you know, normal for this series, but abnormal for this church.

And then we're going to look at how this applies to the gospel. So, my hope today is we would see in both Testaments what it means when God calls his people to war and what that means for us today. So let's pray.

Joshua, Rahab, and the Background to Israel’s War

Lord Jesus, thank you so much for the truths that you have communicated in your Word. Thank you that all of the Bible points to you, Jesus. Everything either explicitly points to you or implicitly points to you through typology or through illusion or through the hope of the passage.

Every word, every jot, every tittle, every grammatical punctuation mark in this Bible points to you, dear Jesus. You are the center of human history, you are the commander of the Lord's armies. And Lord, and with all of our hearts, we want to please you.

Lord, let us hear what your Word has to say this morning. And Lord, if there's areas of our life that need to be reoriented, I pray that we would repent. Lord, whether that's through a lack of activity or sinful activity in the opposite direction.

Lord, I pray that we would hear your Word and rejoice. And Lord, I pray that you would write it upon our hearts this morning. In Christ's name, amen. Now, let's begin with who was Rahab. Rahab was a Canaanite woman who lived in the city of Jericho.

And the text tells us that she was a harlot, which is a prostitute at the time. But before we even get to Rahab, we talked last week about Moses. So how do we get from Moses to Rahab? We have Moses who grows up, eventually leads the people of Israel out of Egypt.

He takes them through the Red Sea, where it miraculously parts for them to cross. He takes them to Mount Sinai, where God makes a covenant between them and him, where they get feasts and laws and everything that they need.

They get a tabernacle where they're going to be able to worship the Lord. And then from that tabernacle moment, where the tabernacle was built, they set off. They set off towards the land of Israel, to the border.

And their goal was to enter into the promised land, to conquer the Canaanite people, and to do what Adam was supposed to do by casting out the serpent. They were to cast out the people who worshiped the serpent, and they were to form a land where the knowledge of God redounded to the ends of the earth.

That was their goal. But yet we see in the passage in the Old Testament that that's not what happened. Every time human beings in their own human strength try to do anything, they fall flat on their face.

And this is exactly what happened time and time again. They fell on their face all the way to the border of Canaan, and they fell on their face as they entered the land of Canaan. If you remember, Moses sent out 12 spies.

And the 12 spies were supposed to go survey the land and to come bring back a report. But knowing God and knowing how powerful He is and how He just parted the Red Sea, He just turned the bitter water into drinkable water.

He just rained bread from heaven and quail from heaven when they complained about that. And they saw the 10 plagues of Egypt. The Canaanites had no chance, and yet they came back with a poor report. They convinced the people to be afraid.

The people, in their fear, said, we're not going to enter into the land. And God punished that entire generation for thinking too little of Him. And they were forced to wonder for 40 years. Wonder. Sorry, I'm from North Carolina.

We say wonder and wonder the same way. Every person that was under 20 years old was allowed to live. Every person over 20 years old died in the wilderness because they thought too little of their God.

Moses even died in the wilderness, which meant that a leader, a successor, was going to have to be appointed for him, which was Joshua. Now Joshua's mission was to take this new generation of Israelites into the land of Canaan and conquer it.

And I find it so fascinating that God does similar things with Joshua to establish him as the leader. For instance, the first thing that really happens is that they cross over into the land and the water of the Jordan River parts.

That was to show the Israelites that God was with Joshua in the same way that God was with Moses so that they would trust him, follow him, and so that it would establish him as the true leader of Israel.

But unlike the cowardly generation that preceded them, they were supposed to go into the land with courage, conviction, and confidence in God, knowing that the kingdom of God was going to advance. Jericho was their very first target in that war, and they sent out two spies to survey the land.

The Bible doesn't say this, but I think that Joshua realized that when they sent out 12 spies, the opportunity for a poisoned report to come back and the people to be poisoned by the negativity was so high with 12, so he sent two, which modeled the original two spies that actually were faithful in the original generation.

And they were to go into the land, and they were to survey it, and they were to see and bring back a report. And they end up interacting with and meeting with this woman named Rahab. So that gets us to Joshua 2, where we interact with Rahab and we meet with Rahab.

I'm going to read large portions of Scripture in this passage in a couple chapters because the context is so important. So we're going to read all of chapter 2 right now, we're going to dive in, and then we're going to examine what it says.

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

It was told the king of Jericho, saying, Behold, men from the sons of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land. And the king of Jericho sent word 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 men and hidden them, and she said, Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. It came about when it was time to shut the gate at dark that all 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 hidden them in the stalks of flax which she had laid on the roof. So the men pursued them on the road to the Jordan, to the fords, and as soon as those who were pursuing them had gone out, they shut the gate.

Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof and she said to them, I know that the Lord has given you the land and that the terror of you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted 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 Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.

When we heard it, our hearts melted. No courage remained in any man any longer because of you. For the Lord your God, he is God of in the heaven above and on earth beneath. Now therefore, please swear to me by the Lord, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father's household and give me a pledge of truth and spare my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters with all who belong to them and deliver our lives from death.

So the men said to her, our lives for yours, if you do not tell the business of ours and the Lord gives us the land that we will deal kindly and faithfully with you. Then she let down a rope through her window for her house was on the city wall so that she was living on the wall.

And she said to them, go to the hill country so that the pursuers will not happen upon you and hide yourself there for three days until the pursuers return. Then afterward, you may go on your way. The men said to her, we shall be free from this oath to you, which you have made us swear unless when we come into the land, you tie this cord of scarlet thread in the window through which you let us down and gather to yourself into the house, your father and your mother and your brothers and all of your father's household.

It shall come about that anyone who goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head and we shall be free. But anyone who is with you in this house, his blood shall be on our head if a hand is laid on him.

But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be free from the oath which you have made us swear. She said, according to your words, so be it. So she sent them away and departed, and she tied a scarlet cord in the window.

And they departed and came to the hill country and remained there for three days until the pursuers returned. Now the pursuers had sought them all along the road but had not found them. Then the two men returned and came down from the hill country and crossed over and came to Joshua the son of Nun.

And they related to him all that happened. They said to Joshua, surely the Lord has given all the land into our hands. Moreover, all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before us. This leads us to our point.

God’s Providential Provision in the Midst of Fear

When God calls us to war, there are several things that happen. The first thing that happens when God calls his people to war is he's going to provide for them. That's the first thing that happens. The spies end up in the town and all of a sudden the king finds out that they're there and they immediately become a threat.

When you back an animal into a corner, especially like an animal with rabies or something like that, it's ready to strike you at a moment's notice. This city has been backed into a corner. They're ready to strike and these two people have been found out.

Now, in those days, kings were like mayors. We think about kings today ruling over nations. In those days, it was city-state empires. So the king had less jurisdiction, which means he had less places to look.

He had power over the entire city, but he was ready at a moment's notice to strike these men down. What I find so fascinating about this is the humor of God's providence. God calls them to do this and then he lets them get found.

How many times have we felt like God has called us to do something and then some situation, some circumstance, something happens and we're like, God, why did you do that? And yet it's here that we realize that he allows them to be found on purpose.

It's not an accident. He's not up in heaven saying, why weren't you guys more careful? Did you have to walk around so, you know, like just stomping around the city? Did you have to talk so loud up on Rahab's roof?

He wasn't doing any of that. God allowed them to be discovered. He allowed them to go through the fear of wondering if they were going to be found. He allowed them to wonder if this woman who they just met was going to betray them.

He allowed them to go through all of that because he wanted to make them trust him. God does this kind of thing all the time in our lives. He calls us to do something and not long after we finally muster up the courage to do it, we get some unexpected thing that happens in our life that causes us to think, I can't do this anymore.

Like for instance, when the Lord called Shannon and I to ministry, we sold all of the stuff that we could sell. We packed up our truck. We moved to Massachusetts and we thought we had plans for everything, but not long after we got here, we were five months behind on rent and I was asking myself, God, how are we going to do this?

You're the one who called me up here. You're the one who called my family up here. How are we going to actually make it? And it wasn't long before the Lord totally covered all of our bills and everything was paid up, but it was a moment where God was teaching me not to rely on my ingenuity, not to rely on my wit, not to rely on my resourcefulness, but to rely on him.

He took me to the place of fear so that he could show me that he's the only one I should ever trust and I think that's exactly what he did here with these two spies. He took them to the place that their self-reliance or their self-dependence could not get them any further and then he shows them that he alone can be trusted.

The second thing that he did, the reason that he did this is because I think God wants to get the glory in every situation and not us. He doesn't want the spies running around the town thinking, we're so sneaky, we're so great, we're so secret spy-ish that, that's maybe what they would have said, that they never found us.

We're the wise ones. We're the crafty ones. No. God wants to get the glory in every single situation and he will get the glory in every single situation. That's why he allows them to be discovered. The third thing is that God allows these truths to become tangible through pain.

Humans, unfortunately for us, learn through pain. We don't learn through blessings very easily. So they go into this town, they're found out, and then they get to see God's deliverance. They knew God was a deliverer.

Moses had told them. Joshua had told them. They knew that, but now they got to experience it. How often in our lives do we know that a fact is true in the Bible and yet it takes some situation in life kicking us in the teeth before we realize, oh yeah, that's true.

For instance, God is trustworthy. We've read that in the Word. That's true. But until you've actually had to walk through a situation where you have to trust him and where he's the only way that you're going to get through it, you don't know it to the level that you know it after having walked through that.

What about God is righteous? We know God is righteous in the Word, but what about when his righteousness finally infringes upon our will and we realize that we have to repent, that we have to say we're sorry for that remark that we made, or we have to apologize to someone that we've broken?

It's in the ebb and flow of life that God makes his truth real through struggle and through heartache and through pain, and that's what he's doing here. The point we need to understand is that when God calls his people to war, he is going to provide for them.

He's not going to leave them abandoned. He's not going to forsake them. When he calls them to something, he will be with them even when it comes through the most unexpected means. Here it comes through a Canaanite prostitute they could have never imagined.

When God calls his people to war, he is going to provide for them. The second point we would see is that when God calls his people to war, the nations will cry out in fear. The nations will cry out in fear.

Verses 8 through 11, Rahab testifies to this fact when she says, Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to them, I know that the Lord has given you the land, and the terror of you has fallen on us.

And she's not being hyperbolic. And that all of the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the 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 Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.

When we heard it, our hearts melted, and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you. When God calls his people to war, he will send terror upon the nations. Perhaps the nations look unbeatable to us, but if God is with us, nothing can stand against us.

We find out a little bit later in Joshua when they try to do this in their own human strength, the smallest little town ends up chasing them away, and they look like fools. But that's in our human strength.

When we rely on the strength and the power of God, the nations are terrified. And they're not terrified because of us. They're not terrified because of our strength or because we're so menacing. They're terrified because God and his holiness is that frightening to sinners.

I think the reason that the nations become prideful, the reason that nations try to overreach in their power is because the church has failed to demonstrate and to showcase the glory of a holy and awesome God.

Many in the church today act like the wilderness generation who was just trying to make it for 40 years so that they can finally enter the promised land while doing nothing and serving the Lord. Too afraid to do what God has said.

Many in the church have looked at the world and assumed that they are the dominant power on earth. That's not true. The world is not dominant. It would be an interesting exercise for us to even ask ourselves, who do we think is in control of the world?

Maybe you would say the Pope, or maybe the President, or maybe you would say some secret family behind some cloak somewhere in Switzerland who's pulling all of the strings. Or maybe you would say some tech nerd in Silicon Valley.

I don't know who you would say. But they're not in power, Jesus is. In Matthew 28, he says, all authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me. That means that all authority on earth belongs to him, and any authority that anyone has on this planet is borrowed.

We are called to remember that God is in control, and that when the nations see that, they can do nothing but fear. We need to stop, as the church, letting culture, celebrities, politicians, and the media push us around and make us afraid.

We need to stop whimpering and cowering because we are the people of God. We are the people of God. The gates of hell have to fall down when we advance. That's what Jesus says. The nations will cry out in fear.

Joshua confirms this a little bit later in chapter 4, verses 23 through 24, when he says this, for the Lord your God, he's talking to the people of Israel, dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as the Lord your God had done to the Red Sea.

He's saying he's with you. Don't make the past nostalgic. He's with you right now, which he dried up before us until we crossed, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, so that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

However, the point Joshua is making is when God moves, the nations are terrified because he is mighty, and he is powerful, and he is infinite in his holiness. We think about dictators today like President Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Kim Jong-un, North Korea, even over-ambitious politicians in the American West, exerting all kinds of displays of power.

They are the true enemies of the state because the global state, the earth that we live in belongs to God. If they wield their power in righteous ways, like Romans 13 says, they will be blessed. Nations will be blessed.

If they wield their power in evil and wicked ways, they will be an enemy of God, and there will come a day where they crumble like Jericho. I say all this because I do not want you, the people of God, to be afraid.

I don't want you to fear anything other than God itself because he is the one who's in control of this world. The nations will soon remember, and they will tremble. My prayer for America, because that's where we live, is that America would fall down on its face and worship the risen Christ before it crumbles, and it will if it doesn't.

This is exactly what Joshua says in chapter 5, verse 1 about his country or the country that he's going to be fighting. Now, it came when all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan in the West and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea heard how the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the sons of Israel until they crossed.

Their hearts melted, and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the sons of Israel. They were melted and dried up. That's an interesting phrase. When you're melted, it seems like you'd be more liquidy, but they're melted and dried up.

They're that afraid. Whatever bravado or machismo they formerly had now looks like the dry plains of the Antarctic Valley. Zero percent humidity, zero inches of rain per year. I didn't know Antarctica was a desert.

It's the world's worst desert. This is how these people are. God does the unexpected per usual, and He commands them to do unexpected things. Now, they're getting ready to enter the land. They're getting ready to go in one of the most important battles that they've ever fought, and you're thinking about things that they're probably going to be doing.

They're going to be sharpening their swords. They're going to be preparing their shields. They're going to be doing wartime games. They're going to be practicing. They're going to be making sure that their helmets fit right, their boots are laced up tight.

Make sure they have an extra pair of socks in their pack. You're thinking all of this stuff that they're going to be doing, and God tells them to do none of that. God tells them to do none of that. The three things that God tells them to do is the exact opposite things that you would do if you were going to war, which is, again, God's normal means.

He calls us to do things that are completely out of the ordinary so that we will trust in him, so that we won't trust in our strength and our might. The first thing that he tells his people to do is to be consecrated.

It says in Joshua 5, 2 through 8, at that time, when they had a profound military advantage, those are my words, the Lord said to Joshua, make for yourself flint knives, okay, that So Joshua made himself flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gilbereth Har-Relot.

Not everything in the Bible gets a geography name, but this was so traumatizing to the people, they marked it, enough said. This is the reason why Joshua circumcised them. All the people who came out to Egypt were all males.

All the men of war died in the wilderness along the way after they came out of Egypt. For all the people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised.

For the sons of Israel walked 40 years in the wilderness until all the nation, that is, the men of war who came out of Egypt, perished because they did not listen to the voice of the Lord, to whom the Lord had sworn that he would not let them see the land, which the Lord had sworn to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Their children whom he raised up in their place, Joshua circumcised, for they were uncircumcised because they had not circumcised them along the way. Now when they had finished circumcising all the nation, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed.".

This is not normal battle strategy. Like, if you think about it, this is like the exact opposite thing that a commander would want to tell his troops, humanly speaking, to do. They're in earshot of the city and they're going to take weapons that are sharpened, that could be used against the enemy, and they're going to use it on themselves.

They're going to maim themselves so that they're incapable of fighting for at least a week or two. Like, I don't know, maybe 10. I don't know how long that takes. There's nothing stopping the people of Jericho from running out into the plain and abolishing them, completely and utterly destroying them.

And again, we look at the humor of God's providence. He calls them to be weak so that they can see him being strong. He calls them to be low so that they can see how high and exalted he is. They are utterly vulnerable in the middle of this plain after having done this, and they did it because they trusted God.

Now you think about it. God could have asked them to do this at any point. They had had journeys. These men were like not, they weren't kids. They were old. They could have done this when they were 10 years old.

Their parents could have done this, the unfaithful generation that died in the wilderness. They could have done this. No one did this. So God waits until they're at the edge of the border in order to tell them to consecrate themselves by circumcising themselves.

I find that hilarious, that that's the moment that God would choose to do that, and yet isn't that how he often does in our life? He lets us walk to the border of something, the edge of something, and then he tells us that there's a piece of our flesh that needs to be cut away.

There's something that we need to repent of. There's something that's going to cause us to be vulnerable that's not going to allow us to move forward. He does this all the time. Again, God's purpose in all of this is to, so they will not trust in their military power and their strength, but they'll trust in his.

They won't trust in their weapons. They'll trust in him. That's the first way that they're consecrated, consecrated through circumcision. The second way that they're consecrated is through Passover. It says in Joshua 5 .10, when the sons of Israel camped at Gilgal, this is after they had healed from their wounds, they observed the Passover on the evening of the 14th day of the month on the desert plains of Jericho.

So you can imagine if you're there and you're a military guy, you're a warrior, and you're like, okay, God, we followed you in this, but can we please do the celebration after we win the battle? And he's like, no, you have to take another week off.

You just took a couple of weeks off to heal. Now you're going to take another week off. You're going to sit and you're going to celebrate and you're going to feast. And you think that these men would have been like, oh, okay, we could quietly hide the fact that we were suffering through circumcision here, but you want us to sing songs.

You want us to feast. You want us to drink wine and celebrate your goodness out loud in earshot of the city. They maybe could have pretended like they were strong and tough to the Jericho people who were looking out their windows.

And after they'd been circumcised, they're like, no, I'm good. Like, you know, just trying to make them think that they were strong, but they can't do that. Now they're sitting down and they're worshiping.

What is stopping Jericho from gathering up all of the little Canaanite towns and coming out and decimating them? What's stopping them is God. And He calls them to do this so that they will trust in Him and not them.

Again, He's doing these things on purpose. He doesn't tell them to do military things. He tells them to do holy things. He tells them to worship because that is the way that we prepare for battle. That's the way God prepares His people for battle.

The final thing that He does is He consecrates His leader through worship, Joshua. And this is a fascinating passage. It says in chapter 5, verse 13 through 15, Now it came about, just after the circumcision and after the Passover, Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and he looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with a sword drawn in his hand.

And Joshua went to him and said, Are you for us or are you adversaries? It's a pretty reasonable question. He said, No. Rather, I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth.

And he bowed down and he said to him, What has my Lord to say to his servant? The captain, the Lord of hosts, said to Joshua, Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.

And Joshua did so. Now I wish that we had more time here to go into just this passage because it is fascinating. But a couple things I want us to see. God's treating Joshua just like Moses, so Joshua will have confidence in God.

He allows the waters of the Jordan to part just like Moses. He has this encounter with God just like Moses did where God says to Moses, Take off your sandals because the ground that you're standing on is holy.

And here Joshua has the same encounter. But what I want us to notice is that Joshua is actually interacting with God in the flesh here. Because there's never a time in the Bible where you bow down and worship an angel where the angel doesn't rebuke you and say, Get up.

I'm just an angel. Don't worship me. Joshua bows down and worships and this man accepts it. He accepts worship because he's Christ. Scholars believe that this is what we call a Christophany. A Christophany is an Old Testament appearance of Jesus before he came in the flesh in Bethlehem.

And there's many examples of these that we've looked at. We looked at one a couple weeks ago where the delegation that came to Abraham, the three men, the one who was in the middle, the one who was the leader, was Jesus coming to Abraham to talk to him about the promises of God that were getting ready to happen.

He's guarded by these two angels ready for war who were going to make war with Sodom and Gomorrah. We see the judge in Eden who is walking and Adam and Eve go and hide and he says, Why did you hide from me?

He's talking to them. He's walking in the garden. This is physical appearance of God in the flesh. That's Christ. We see the comforter of Hagar who he finds her out in the wilderness and he makes beautiful promises to her.