Gooding, David: 10 - We Will Serve the Lord

Seated at the right hand of the Father, publicly announcing and letting it be known throughout the whole universe of heaven and earth, that he had for one of his ancestors Rahab, the harlot of ancient Jericho. It shows luster upon the words of the New Testament that he is not ashamed to call us brethren, for by his sacrifice he has cleansed our sins. We have been washed, we have been sanctified, we have been justified, and one day we shall be glorified with him, and he will not then be ashamed to associate with Rahab as part of the body of Christ, as part of his queen forever. But now let's turn and consider for a moment the nature of Rahab's sin. Hers was the oldest profession in the world. It offered pleasure without love, love without loyalty, pleasure and love without morality, and its result, as always, was the depersonalization of love and pleasure. If that is bad, then let us not just concentrate on Rahab, but consider the ethos of the Canaanite civilization itself. They were Gentiles who, in their dim and distant past, had once known the true God. They were, of course, Gentiles who, as Romans chapter one reminds us, had originally, in the dim and distant past, known the true God, but they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They wanted his gifts, they wanted all the enjoyment and the pleasures that come from him, and God certainly, uh, provides us with all things richly to enjoy. But they wanted his gifts without God himself. They resented having to be dependent upon God, having always to yield gratitude and thanks to him. So, discarding the idea of the supreme God, they made other gods that would allow them to pursue their own selfish ends. The goddess of love, the goddess of- the god of aggression. They were, in fact, mere deifications of their own urges. But it is not only Canaanites in the ancient world that were guilty of such perverse attitude. Later, Israel was rebuked by her prophets for taking God's gifts and the blessings of their land and deserting the true God. Spiritual adultery, says Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah. And then the Apostle James talks to us Christians, and he says likewise that friendship of the world is enmity with God, and calls those who engage in it adulteresses. When we take that attitude to the true God, that is, we want his gifts but not him, of course it does result in a depersonalization of the universe. Take a girl who is a brilliant musician, enjoying and displaying the wonderful artistic gods that, uh, gifts that God has given her, and yet she has no time for God himself. It means that she is saying that music is nothing more than music. Behind it, there is no personal God. The music is all there is. In that sense, the girl has depersonalized the wonderful gift of music. And when people desert the living God and give themselves, as Rahab did, to the prostitution of sex, what they manage to do is to dishonor their own bodies and to degrade their own bodies and to depersonalize sex itself, so it becomes little more than an animal exercise. This whole story then has its voice of criticism for our modern civilization, but let us now turn to the elements in Rahab's conversion. It was first the awakening awareness of the true and the living God. The report of God's judgment on Egypt, on the Pharaoh, and on his troops at the Red Sea had reached Jericho and had convinced Rahab that God was the God of the whole earth, and that was na- that now he was coming to take the land of Canaan, which after all was his land. It wasn't just a bunch of savages coming to steal somebody else's land. It was the true God, Lord of heaven and earth, coming to resume possession of his own land and to turn the Canaanites out of it. Rahab had also heard what God and his armies had done to the kings, uh, throughout the desert. And now, as she had watched the Ark of the Lord come about to station itself on the other side of Jordan, she had come to the conclusion that not Jordan itself, not nature's great flood barrier, could keep the living God from entering Jericho and the land. That led in the next place to the next great element in her conversion. She turned from idols to serve the living and true God and gave exhibition of the reality of her conversion, in that when the spies came to her house, she received them. Though told to receive them was to take a drastic step, to leave the side of her people in Jericho and to turn her loyalty to the people of God. A risky enough thing for Rahab to do. Had the king of Jericho discovered what she was doing, she would have been executed forthwith. Conversion for Rahab, however, meant nothing less than turning from the idolatries of her people and their idolatrous culture and giving her prime loyalty to God. That is still the condition of conversion. In our cultures, there may be much that is good and enjoyable. We are not called upon to abandon that, but what is sinful in our cultures must be abandoned. And when it comes to loyalty, even the most sacred loyalty of parent, mother, and father must not be allowed to stand against and conflict with our loyalty to our Creator. And conversion in this instance meant that she turned from her idols, turned from her people, and put loyalty to the true God first. Her plea, therefore, i- to the spies is understandable. She had shown them kindness. The Hebrew word means covenant loyalty. By sparing their lives, by taking their s- her side, by hiding them from the Jericho authorities. Now she was going to let them go. She had shown herself loyal to them. But the question that immediately rose in their minds, would would they be loyal to her? She had had many men in her house, and while they were there, they said all marvelous sorts of sweet nothings in her ear, and how they would be loyal to her when they went home and sent her presents and come back and see her. And when she said goodbye at the doorstep in the black of night, they disappeared, and she never heard from them again. Of course not. But this time, her very life was at stake. When the armies of the Lord came under Joshua to execute the wrath of God. Her own very life was at stake. Would she perish with the city? The men said, no, we will save you. But how could she trust them? And therefore, intuitively, she used the biggest thing she knew to guarantee their loyalty. Swear an oath, she said, and give me a token of truth. Swear an oath to me by the God, the real God, your God, that you will spare me. What a wonderful thing that is to watch as conversion in slow motion, and seeing this woman who had long since pandered to men, giving them love without loyalty, now in her desperate strait as she has turned to God and fears the judgment to come, she is asking herself, where can she find truth? Where can she find loyalty? How she can de- how can she depend on their word? And finds the ultimate loyalty. If God is true, if they will swear an oath in his name, and God will be loyal to her and make his servants fulfill their promise, she shall be safe. It's the only guarantee she has in this wild and troublesome world. Swear me an oath, she says. Here is a soul returning to its God and finding a God of love and what real love is. Real love is not a matter of emotion and temporary pleasant sensations. Real love is a God who will love you and be loyal to you to the very end of eternity. A God, as we know, so loyal to his creatures, sinners though they are, that he would go to the extent of giving his son that they might be saved. And all who trust him have the security of the loyalty of God's truth, who swears an oath saying, by myself have I sworn that in blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you, that we might have strong encouragement like a veritable anchor of the soul in the loyalty and love of God. Marvelous, the woman is discovering true love for the first time in all her adult life. That preaches its own message to us, doesn't it? And I needn't go further and rehearse it. We stand like Rahab stand. We have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. But as we look over our ramparts of our cities and our lives, we have God's warning that there is a coming wrath. As Rahab looked over her walls and saw the armies as they came eventually through the River Jordan, no barrier of nature could keep them out, and saw that the wrath was coming, and Joshua was leading that wrath. She could be calm as she looked out the battlements because she was expecting Cry- uh, Joshua to come, not to execute wrath. She was not ordained to wrath, but to the obtaining of salvation. She had turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God and to wait for his son from heaven. We would say in our modern language, Jesus, our deliverer from the coming wrath. What guarantee have we that when the Lord comes and executes God's wrath upon this world, what guarantee have we that we shall not perish? We have the same guarantee as Rahab. We have the word and the oath of God. Being justified by faith, we can argue that if we have been saved and reconciled to God by the death of his son, most surely we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. She let the warriors down through her window, and they made her their way. But there was one final instruction. They said, look, if you want to be saved, take the rope that you let us down with and bind it in your window, so that when we come in as the destroying armies, we may see which is your house. And save everybody alive that is in your house. You, your family, and any friends of yours, if they're in your house, they will be saved. If anybody's outside, they will be destroyed. What do you think she did when the spies had left? She got the cord forthwith. I think she pulled the curtains aside as wide as she could get them so nothing would be in the way, and she di- she tied this rope in her window. She wasn't going to have the soldiers miss it. They would see this when they came. Bother whether her neighbors knew what it was all about or not. She was determined to let the incoming armies see that this was Rahab's house, the woman that had turned to from idols to God to serve the living and true God, and was waiting for Joshua to come and save her. And we would be wise men too, wouldn't we, if we did the same thing. The Lord is coming. Wrath is coming. And if we have put our trust in him and have his oath that we shall not perish, yet nevertheless, gentlemen, let's tie the cord in the window of our lives so that all may see God himself as well. This is the house occupied by a man that has turned to God, believed in him, and is waiting for his deliverer from the coming wrath. The story is, of course, that when the armies of Joshua came in, Joshua commissioned the men in all the fury of the battle, as they were to go in through the broken walls. They were to go in in the house of Rahab the harlot, bring her out and all her friends and family, and save them alive. And so it was done. And casts a wonderful sun- sunshine over the storm clouds that gather around the beginning of this book. The severe judgments of God on a guilty, sin-risen, diseased, and corrupt and cruel civilization. And yet against that dark background, the glorious sunshine of the grace of God that saved, that loved and saved the harlot Rahab and taught her what true love was, the very love of God, and gave her love's oath that she should not perish. God be praised for such an exhibition of his gospel, and help us who have known that love of God ourselves to go out to this world where there are many Rahabs, both literal and spiritual, trying to feast themselves on a depersonalized love and finding it miserable. God make us ready messengers of the truth of God to take the real love of a personal God to men and women who perish for the lack of it and point them to the Savior, that they too might be reconciled with God and know peace and love and the certainty that God has not appointed them to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we shall live together with him. That small detail is as follows. Look with me, please, to this side of our chart, and you will remember that when we were talking about the spies and Rahab, we emphasized the fact that Rahab was saved from death. Her plea was that you will save me alive, save me from having to die, and that indeed is what happened to her. She was saved from death. But when you move on to the next story, the crossing of Jordan, that tells us the other side of the story of salvation. I fear at this point you may think I'm being very fanciful and allegorical, but, uh, in your compassion then, if you think like that, allow this old man his fancies. But by the consent of the church all down the ages, the crossing of Jordan speaks to us of salvation through death. The people went as the ark stood on the riverbed, and they went down between the waters and then up the other side. And so the believer is baptized into Christ's death and raised with him that he might walk in newness of life. If Jordan may remind us legitimately of that, then you see how these two stories are a pair. Rahab experienced saved from death, the crossing of the Jordan, Israel saved through death. A similar balance can be found now if you will look at the stories in section two, the destruction of Jericho and then the destruction of Ai and Achan. When it came to the destruction of Jericho, the Israelites, God insisted, must come with God and agree with him in his judgment on Jericho, and indeed be God's executives in executing that judgment on Jericho. They had to agree with God that that world of Jericho, its culture and civilization, was an evil thing. Agree with God, therefore, in his condemnation of the world. Yes, but the story of Ai tells us that Israel got involved and got placed under the same ban and curse as Jericho had been because of what Achan did in catching, taking the spoils of Jericho. And now this time, before Israel could take AI, they must come and agree with God against themselves. And they who with God had judged Jericho must now with God judge themselves and condemn themselves as worthy of death, seek the pardon of the Lord, and in God's name must judge themselves and judge that member of their nation, Achan, who had put himself and them under God's curse. The two stories then are a pair. In the one, Israel is judging Jericho, in the others they are judging themselves with the same kind of judgment that, uh, Jericho deserved. Now, in that context, let us finally listen to the words of the Apostle Paul in Galatians, that same epistle that has been speaking so much to us about our inheritance and its relationship to the law. Says Paul finally in chapter six: when it comes to deliverance from the world, it is not through the law that I find deliverance, nor through circumcision and its ritual. God forbid that I should put my confidence for deliverance from the world in anything but this. God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by means of which the world has been crucified to me. Ah yes, I agree with God that Jericho must be condemned. The cross by which the world is crucified to me, and then, and I unto the world. I agree with God that just as the world deserved his condemnation, judgment, and wrath, I too deserve that selfsame judgment and wrath and must have perished, except that the blessed cross of Christ was my deliverance from that world. The Lord write it on our hearts, that in us being truly delivered from the world, the righteous requirement of the law shall be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.