Gooding, David: Forming a Heavenly Princess

Want to read you a story of a woman tonight, who originally was not on God's side, the very opposite, and turned to God and came over to God's side and was converted to faith in God. The story is found in the first bit of the Bible in the Old Testament. So here we begin the story of Rahab. Joshua two verse one: And Joshua, the son of Nun, sent out to Shittim two men as spies secretly, saying, go view the land in Jericho. And they went and came into the house of an harlot, whose name was Rahab, and lay there. And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, behold, there came men in hither tonight of the children of Israel to search out the land. And the king of Jericho sent unto Rahab, saying, Bring forth the men that are come to thee, which are entered thine house, for they be come to search out all the land. And the woman took the two men and hid them, and she said, Yea, the men came unto me, but I wist not whence they were. And it came to pass about the time of the shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out. Whither the men went, I didn't know. Pursue after them quickly, for you will overtake them. But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order upon the roof. And the men pursued after them the way to Jordan and to the fords. And as soon as they which pursued after them were gone out, they shut the gate. And before they were laid down, she came up unto them upon the roof, and she said unto the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that your terror is 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 unto the two kings of the Amorites that were beyond Jordan, unto Sihon and to Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more spirit in any man because of you. For the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Now, therefore, I pray you, swear unto me by the Lord, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father's house and give me a true token, and that you will save alive my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters and all that they have, and will deliver our lives from death. And the men said unto her, our life for yours, if you utter not this our business. And it shall be when the Lord gives us the land that we will deal kindly and truly with thee. Then she let them down by a cord through the window, for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall. And she said unto them, Get you to the mountain, lest the pursuers light upon you, and hide yourself there three days, until the pursuers be returned. And afterward, may you go your way. And the men said unto her, We will be guiltless of this thine oath which thou hast made us to swear. Behold, when we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let us down by. And thou shalt gather unto thee into thine house thy father and thy mother and thy brethren and all thy father's household. And it shall be that whosoever shall go out of the doors of thine house into the street, his blood shall be upon his head, and we will be guiltless. Whosoever shall be with thee in the house, his blood shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him. But if thou utter this our business, then we will be guiltless of thine oaths which thou hast made us to swear. And she said, according unto your words, so be it. And she sent them away, and they departed, and she bound the scarlet flies in the window. God used this ancient story to talk to our hearts here this evening. My topic tonight, and with you friends, is the topic of conversion to God. In other words, what do you have to do to be on God's side, as our song put it. How do you turn from this world, from being an enemy of God, and come over to God and be on his side? Conversion is the big old English word for it, conversion to God. That is a marvelously classical statement of what conversion means in the New Testament, written by Paul, the great Apostle Paul, in one of his letters to some Christians who had been brought to God through his preaching. And describing what had happened to these people, he put it like this: You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his son from heaven, even Jesus Christ, our deliverer from the coming wrath. That's such a full and classical statement, isn't it? It's worth repeating, surely. What is conversion? It is this, you turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God, and to wait for his son from heaven, even Jesus who delivered us from the coming wrath. That is a statement of it, but tonight I want to tell you a story. It's a story of an actual case of conversion, a woman who got converted to God and what it meant for her. Her name was Rahab. Her profession was a prostitute. Interestingly enough, after her conversion, she became a very famous woman eventually because she was an ancestress of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And our blessed Lord Jesus is not ashamed for anybody to know. He doesn't mind your knowing it, ladies and gentlemen, tonight, what this woman was, his ancestress Rahab, before she got converted, you'll see, because conversion is a real thing, and conversion to God took that woman from her sorry occupation and took her from her idols and brought her to the living God, and she found the true and the living God, the real thing, as distinct from her idols, which were only shams. And she lived to serve the living and the true God. And I tell you this, that one day, if ever you get to God's heaven, you'll see this dear lady saved, glorified, and shining like a heavenly princess, ancestress of Jesus Christ. And she got converted, you'll see. Yes, even if you were an ancestress of Jesus Christ tonight, you'd you'd have to get converted, you know. Everybody has to get converted. Except you be converted, said the Lord Jesus, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. What then is conversion? Says Paul, you turn to God from idols. Dear old Rahab, she lived centuries ago, I suppose somewhere about three thousand years ago, and she lived in a society that was utterly idolatrous, fearfully so. And the Bible tells us how they came to worship these idols, you'll see. Men and women in the world at large, says the Bible, originally knew the true God, but they found it inconvenient. They didn't like to think of the true God. They didn't like to feel that they were always dependent on God, and God was there to tell them what to do, and God was watching them, and God would hold them to account. And they thought they were striking a blow for freedom to get rid of the idea of God, you see. And then you can do what you like, can't you? And so they proceeded to do that, you'll see, to get rid of the idea of God, and there's thousands of millions of men and women that have tried the same thing, haven't they? But of course they found, when they got rid of the idea of God, that they were in a bit of a fix, because obviously they didn't create the world, did they? And so they had to decide in their minds, you'll see, well, what is it that controls us human beings? Where do we come from? What powers are they that, uh, have brought us into this world? And what powers in the end will take us out of it? And having got rid of the true God, they then turn to idols. They deified the great forces of nature, the storm god, and the sun and moon up in the sky, you'll say. The, uh, physical powers of the universe. And then, of course, they didn't understand physiology, did they? And so they deified the processes of, uh, fertility, called them gods. And when a man felt this urge of aggression in his heart, he wanted to bash somebody on the nose pretty hard. He said that was a god too. He called that the god of war, do you see? And when people felt within them the sexual urge, they said that was a goddess as well. They called her Astarte or Aphrodite or whatever they cared in that ancient time. And you know, ladies and gentlemen, it had disastrous effects. You see, they came to feel, for instance, you take old Astarte, the goddess of love. If that urge, the sexual urge within us is a goddess, they said, you see, you mustn't resist a goddess, must you? So you do whatever the old goddess makes you do. You know, some of our modern folks have felt like that, haven't they, you see? You ask this sweet young thing here, she's a secretary to the boss, you see, and she's just, uh, seduced him and broken up his marriage and ruined his wife and home and family and everything else, and you say, why on earth did you do it? What do you think you're doing? Oh, but love made me do it, they say. As though saying love made me do it is sufficient reason. If you get the feeling of love, well, it doesn't matter what you do, that's enough, isn't it, to do it? They were old idolaters in Rahab's town, and she among them. And you see, ladies and gentlemen, we mustn't think that they were the only idolaters going. A lot of folks live like that nowadays, aren't they? They don't like to think about God. They get rid of God. But you ask your atheist friend, your humanist friend. All right, you don't believe in God, but do you control the universe? Well, of course not. Well, what controls you? What brought you here onto this planet? What will remove you from this planet? And you know your modern atheist will reply similarly to the ancient idolater, won't he? The ultimate powers in life? He'll say basic energy, and then the great powers, the weak atomic power, the strong atomic power, electromagnetism and gravity and things like that. These forces, they say, they are the forces that are responsible for human life. They brought us here. And then, of course, they have to add that one of these days they'll take us away, won't they? And while a pessimistic lot they are. Because, you know, I tell you about these great forces of nature, they haven't got twopenceately worth of sense in their heads, have they? They are impersonal forces. How should you think of it? They tell us that one day these great impersonal first forces are going to, uh, destroy our planet. They have several theories about which way it's going to be done. Perhaps the sun will explode and become a red giant, and in that moment, little Earth will evaporate. That'll be the end of humans as we have known them. It's not only that, but madam, if I may say so, if there's no God up in heaven, see what a sad situation we're in. One of these days, a little virus without tuppence hapenny worth of sense in its head will enter your body and begin to tear you to pieces. It will not only tear your body to pieces, it will tear your brain to pieces. You'll have the intelligence to see what it's doing. You won't have the intelligence to stop it, and you will have the fear- fearful experience of seeing this mindless bit of stuff shatter your very life and destroy you inch by inch. Your lovely per- personality, your beauty, your brain, your aesthetic sense, and all your love, and reduce you to a jelly. And the irony is that when it's done it, it won't even know it's done it. Tell me, do you regard that kind of thing as freedom? Is that freedom? That's what comes of getting rid of God, you know. Instead of setting you free, it puts you into a prison house. Like those old medieval prisons, you know. They put a prisoner in it, and through the dimness he began to realize after a week or two that two of the walls were beginning to come in, inch by inch by inch by inch. And then in his frantic fear, he would measure it with his feet, how, how wide the distance was each day, and find that the walls, yes, these two walls were coming gradually nearer. And then he could begin to work out that one of these days they would meet in the middle and squash him to nothing. If there's no God, yes, if there's no God, you're in a prison like that, aren't you? Mindless forces will one day destroy you. Oh friend, that isn't the truth, of course. The truth is there is a God, and he made you in your, in his image. You're not a prisoner of a mindless universe. And in your heart of hearts, you know it, don't you? My little brain is very small, of course. But my little brain is far more important than the sun up in the sky, isn't it? The sun is a mighty great thing. But the sun doesn't know I'm here. I know the sun is there. And I know how the sun works, you know. Sun doesn't know I work, how I work. My brain is self-evidently more important than the sun up in the sky, and so is yours. In fact, in God's estimation, the little baby is far more valued than the whole universe put together. That's God's estimate. There is a true and a living God, and he made you in his image, and he loves you. And though we have all wandered from him, there's a way back to God, and we can be converted to God, and we can find God, come back and stand on God's side with God. What brought this woman to the point of turning to God? What brought her to conversion? Well, she told the Israelite spies exactly what it was. She had heard of God's judgments on the land of Egypt. There had been a fearful tyrant in Egypt, like Hitler of Germany he was, and he had persecuted the Jews just like Hitler did. He had tried to destroy the nation like Hitler did in his gas chambers, and God had called upon the man to repent, and he wouldn't repent, and he wouldn't repent, and he wouldn't repent, and in the end God destroyed him. And Rahab had heard about this, and she had heard the news that the great armies of Israel in the name of God were coming and coming and coming and getting ev- ever near her land, and now from the battlements on which her house was of the, of the town of Jericho, she could see the great armies of Israel in the distance, and she knew what they were coming for. Just as God had destroyed Pharaoh, now he was going to use those armies to destroy the evil civilization of Canaan, and started to make her think. Some people don't like that, you know. They say, that's horrible, all that talk of judgment. They don't believe in a God who would judge anybody. God, surely, if there is one, is the God of love. He wouldn't punish anybody, and all this talk of coming judgment, that's, surely that can't be right. There's a lot of people can't believe, you know, that God sent the armies of Israel to destroy the land of Canaan. They say it must have been that the Israelites were a lot of bloodthirsty savages, that's what they were, and coming up out of the desert, they didn't recognize the beauty of the Canaanite civilization, and they destroyed it, like the Huns and Goths destroyed the civilization of Rome. We can't believe, they say, in a God that would command the destruction of a nation. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you find that difficult to believe that God would judge the nation of Canaan. Just let me remind you of one or two things. As far as the Bible goes, God's judgment on Canaan was but what the Bible calls a physical judgment. God took away their physical lives. What happened to the innocent men, women, and children that died then, the Bible doesn't tell us, and we often to suppose we know. But more to the point, that story of the judgment of God on Canaan reminds us of a far more serious judgment, doesn't it? There's coming an eternal judgment. And our blessed Lord Jesus, who told us more about the love of God than anyone, told us of the eternal judgment that awaits every unconverted man and woman. He spoke in solemn terms of a hell where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched. You don't like that? But then you see, what would you have God do? Here are the Jews being, uh, destroyed by Pharaoh. Here are six million Jews being gassed by Hitler. And they're crying out for justice. We want justice. We've a right to justice. What would you tell them? No, there's never going to be any justice. You're going to be gassed next week. There's nothing anybody can do about it. And that's that, you see. And after death, well, that's the end of everything, so you didn't get justice in this life, and you won't get justice in the next life either. Really? You think that's good news? That multi-millions of men and women on this earth have been massacred, gassed, done away with, and you'll have me believe, would you, that the right attitude of the God of heaven is to say, it doesn't matter, we'll never have any judgment about it. Of course not, ladies and gentlemen. As sure as God is a God of love and loves men and women, God will never say that sin against men and women doesn't matter. If I sin against you and injure you, then God will have it against me, and if I don't repent, God will have it against me for all eternity, precisely because, sir, madam, he loves you. And a God that would say that when people sin against you, it doesn't matter, wouldn't be a God who loved you, would it? Precisely because God is a God of love, there will be a judgment. We better be careful, surely. When we complain that in Joshua's day, a lot of little babies were killed in those wars. Because you see, in that awful heathen country, men and women used to sacrifice their little babies to their gods, the goddess of love and the god Molech and various others, take the little infants and kill them as a sacrifice to their gods. We don't do that nowadays, do we? But in this last twenty years, ladies and gentlemen, multi-millions of babies have been deliberately killed a few weeks before being born, haven't they? And the God who loved those little children in Canaan's day and brought down his judgments on those cities because of what they did to little babies. That God, you may be certain, loves little babies still, and his judgments will fall on our corrupt Western civilization. They had got converted. One of the first things that led to her conversion was becoming aware that if a God at all, there must be a God of judgment. Here were the armies of God coming to execute judgment on her evil city of Jericho, and the time for decision came. She repented. She turned to God. And she came to the men of Israel, and she said, look, I've come to realize this, that your God is the real God. He's the God of heaven above, he's the God of earth beneath, he's the real God. And it was beginning to dawn on her that now she must begin to face the reality of God. And if God was coming to judge sinners, well, of course, she didn't need any telling. She didn't need a preacher to tell her. And she was among the sinners. And in that knowledge, she turned to God. And she came to the, uh, to the spies, and she said, look here, gentlemen, I've been kind and loyal to you, and I saved your life. I've made my decision. I've decided to leave the world and its filth. I've decided to take my stand with your God and with his people. I've turned side. I've come to your side, and I've been loyal to you, and I, I, I, I've shown my loyalty by, by protecting you, gentlemen. Now she said, uh, show me a token of truth. Come to change sides. She turned to God from idols. And we need to learn that lesson too, don't we? We too sometimes have idols, and they're not things merely that we love instead of loving God. They are things that we trust, aren't they? Instead of trusting God. Some of the Old Testament writers poke fun at idolatry, don't they, of the ancient sort. They say, here's a chap, no, he decides he's going to make a god, you see, so he cuts down a tree and a big strong tree, and he makes it sure it's a tree that doesn't rot, because it's bad to have a god who goes rotten, isn't it? So you cut down, uh, you cut down a tree that won't rot, you see, and then he cuts the branches off and he shapes it, and he gets his plane out and his compasses, and he, he makes the figure of some beautiful person or other. He says he's making a god, if you see, you have to be very artistic to make a god, don't you? And he made a god, you see, and then he thought, well, it won't do to have this god just wobbling. I better put him on a pedestal and chain him down, see, so he's secure, you see. What use would a God be that wobbled all about, you'll see. So you put him on his pedestal and you chained him down, you'll see, and uh, oh, and there were all these bits left over. So he put them on the fire and cooked his breakfast with them, and then bowed down and worshipped the old uh idol. Stupid man, says the prophet. What is he doing? He's putting his trust in the work of his own hands. That's what he's doing. He made it, and now he cries to the idol to save him. He is trusting the work of his own hands. What stupidity that is, isn't it? But ladies and gentlemen, it's ingrained in human beings when it comes to this all important matter of salvation, of getting right with God, you'll a- you'll find if you ask your friends how many of them are still trusting the work of their own hands. Ask them if they're ready to meet God. Ask them if they're sure of going to heaven. Ask them if they're sure that they're going to be delivered from the coming wrath. They will reply very often, but I'm doing the best I can. They've so got it into their heads and hearts that the way to be saved is to do the best you can, but that can't be, ladies and gentlemen. Doing the best I can, that's the work of my own hands. Putting my trust in the work of my own hands for salvation is sheer, says God. That's sheer idolatry. You cannot save yourself, says God. It's not by works. And oh, what a wonderful gospel message this is, and how it delivers us, doesn't it, and sets us free when we hear God explain that, uh, salvation is not by our works. It's not what I do. It's not my merit. It's not my striving. By grace are you saved, says the Bible, through faith, and that is the gift of God, even eternal life. Look to me, says God, and be saved, not to yourself, not to your works, not to your merit. Look to me, I'm the living God, and I have made you, and I can save you. Like Rahab did, we must turn from our idols, our good works, all the things that we've done that we think contribute to our, our salvation. We must turn from. We must say, I have no hope in those things. I face the judgment of God, and nothing that I could do could possibly save me. I turn from my idols. Then when can I turn, who can I turn to? For the salvation I need. The Bible says they turn to God from idols. They turn to God. Listen to the woman. She said to the spies, I've come over to your side, you know, and I've come to believe in your God, and I want to serve your God, for he's the true and the living God, she said. But now, gentlemen, very soon I'm going to let you down through this window, you see, and you're going back to your camp. And you say you'll be kind to me, and when you return, you'll save me. But look here, gentlemen, he said, how can I be sure? How can I be utterly sure? You'll see, I tell you something about Rahab. She'd had hundreds of men in her house, hadn't she? And her job in life was to offer people pleasure without love, and love without loyalty. Isn't that a sorry thing? The world's idea of love, mere pleasure, mere sensation without loyalty. She'd had many a man in that room, and you know, when they'd been in there with her, they spoke all sorts of sweet nothings in her ear and told her she was the wonderful, most wonderful woman on earth. And when she let them out of the front door, she never saw the likes of them again anymore, you'll see, not a feather and a bone of them. What did they care for her? They just used her. That's not love, ladies and gentlemen. But now she stands, and the men will soon be going, and they said that when they come with the armies, they'll spare her, but how could she know for sure? How could she know that they wouldn't come back and slit her throat like the rest of them? And in that moment, she thought of something. It's the only thing she could think about. She said, now look here, gentlemen, will you swear an oath to me by the living God? When you come back, you'll preserve me alive. Oh, what a dramatic moment that was in the woman's life. Will God be loyal to me? If I make these men swear an oath in the name of God, will God keep the oath? Can I trust God? Will he be faithful to me? It you'll know it's a conversion going on in front of your eyes, isn't it? What a marvelous thing to discover the true and the living God, that he loves you. And because he loves you, his love means that he will be loyal to you. Put your trust in him, and he'll be loyal to you to the uttermost of eternity and never let you go. That's love. God commends his love towards us. Oh, listen to the story. God commends his love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were enemies of God, we can be reconciled to God by the death of his son. And not only that, friend. If tonight you turn to God, the true and the living God, and stretch out your hand to him and say, oh God, I've no other hope. My idols have let me down. I face your just judgment, but oh God, I trust you. I believe your son. He is my savior, my only savior. God, will you save me? God will not only save you, he'll do what these people did. He'll swear an oath to you, to guarantee to you his utter faithfulness, and therefore all eternity. The Bible puts it like this, that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, his word is one unchangeable thing, and his word confirmed by an oath is the second unchangeable thing. Oh, how God loves to convince us that he really loves us, in spite of the fact that we're sinners, and if we come and trust his son and receive him as savior, God guarantees that he will be loyal to us for all eternity. God was loyal to that once-time Harlatunel, when she was converted and came over to God's side and sought his mercy and abandoned her idols and put her trust solely in God and in his holy word. God saw to it that when the armies of his wrath came and destroyed Canaan, they first came and delivered Rahab and all that were in her house. That is God's promise to us too. That there's going to be a judgment. God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man he has ordained, whereof he's given assurance to all men that he's raised him from the dead. There's coming a judgment, you know. Jesus Christ is coming again. God isn't going to wait forever. There's going to be a judgment. But as we wait for him to come, God wants you to know that all who in true repentance and faith come to the Savior and receive him, they shall be saved. Says the Bible, God has not appointed you to rot, you who believe on Jesus Christ, but to obtain salvation by him who died and rose again for you. What a lovely thing that is. Facing the coming judgments of God, a believer can be absolutely serene and calm, knowing he has the word and oath of God that he will never perish. None shall pluck him out of the hand of the Savior. We are not appointed to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. We stand therefore like Rahab did. She was waiting for the armies of God to come and execute wrath, but before that she was waiting for Joshua, her Savior, to come and deliver her from wrath. That's a lovely picture, isn't it, of everyone who trusts the Savior. We know the Lord Jesus is coming to execute wrath upon this world, but we who have trusted him wait in utter confidence for the Savior, our deliverer from the coming wrath. That's how we get converted. That's how we come over to God's side. Let me repeat the verse in your ear. They turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God, to wait for his son from heaven, even Jesus, our deliverer from the coming wrath. That's one little final point. Now, just before the men left Rahab's house, they said, now look here, my dear. I want you to take this bit of red cord, and they handed her a bit of red cord. I want you to put that in your window, because when we come back with the armies of God to execute God's judgment, we want to know which house is yours, of course, so that we can spare you and you will be saved. How will we know which house is yours? How will the army know which house is yours? They said, look, put this bit of red cord in your window, and we shall see the red cord, and we shall know which house is which. So they went off. And what do you suppose Rahab did? She said, well, I will think about that, perhaps one of these days, perhaps this time next year, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I think about doing something about it. No, of course she didn't, ladies and gentlemen. They hadn't gone five minutes out of the house, not five minutes, not 1 minute, but she got hold of that cord and she put the w- the curtains aside so that it wouldn't obscure it. She found it in the window. You'll have seen it for miles. But her very life depended on it, didn't it? There was no time to be lost. Now, tonight, she said, I must make it clear to everybody that I stand with Israel. I'm on their side. I'm waiting for the Savior to come. Ladies and gentlemen, we've heard tonight what it means to be converted to God. You ready? You know the Lord Jesus is coming, don't you? You know judgment is coming. And you want to be saved. And you know that the only way of salvation is by receiving Jesus Christ personally as your savior, turning to the living God. No good just leaving it in words, is it? And saying, well, someday or other I'll do something about that. Oh friend, you haven't the time to lose. You're ready. You better take that step right now, haven't you? And open the window of your heart to God and to anybody else that likes to look, and bind your decision in your window, hey, so that all can see that you've taken sides with God, you've come over to God, you've received Jesus Christ as your savior. You want God to know it, and you want your fellow men and women to know it, exactly where you stand. Oh, friend, tonight's the night to do it, and to do it right now. To confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior before heaven, earth, and hell. That's conversion. May it be that tonight all of us will have sat here before God and heard his word shall take that step, if never before, then this evening. If you have still not understood what it exactly is you've got to do, then there'll be a friend sitting somewhere near you, or the elders and friends in this church, if we were to have the courage to talk to them, and they will explain to you exactly what it is you need to do this very night to change sides, come over to God's side, to trust his son and receive the assurance of eternal salvation. And may God bless you one and all, richly and real good.