Welcome to The Edge Church blog. It’s starting to feel a little bit like summer. I am super excited about that. I'm so thankful right now today for the internet because we can gather online. I'm not superstitious, but I'm probably not going to say that again because I've noticed so many times when I've said things like, “Hey, this was a hard year, or this was a difficult experience.” I've noticed that it's almost as if I'm asking for harder things to come. From my lips to God's ears, I just want to say, “Lord, I'm not asking for more struggles.” I bet you most of you aren't either. I'm just making a thankful observation. Here's another observation that I have is that the fear that we have tends to bring about more fear. And that's no judgment. If you're sitting in a place where you're kind of nervous about life today, things that are going on around you or the news, it's not any judgment.
It's just something that I've noticed about the human condition. Just like our current grief reminds us of past grief that we've experienced. Fear seems to feed on other fears. So if Coronavirus has sort of brought up fear in you over these last couple of months don't be surprised if some of your unresolved fears that you've had in life have started to sort of come at you again in waves. So in light of that, I'm excited that we're continuing in this series called Faith Over Fear as we look at stories from the Bible that look at the real lives and the real struggles of people in the Bible and it shows what their struggles look like and they weren't perfect in their struggles. So we don't have to be perfect either. It really just shows how their faith in God was applied in the midst of scary circumstances.
To me, what's particularly significant is how in my reading of scripture, there are no superheroes in the Bible. And that's really good news for me because I'm so far from a superhero and my guess is most of you guys feel that same way about yourselves, but it's about the story. It's full of stories of real people that deal with real struggles, the real human condition, struggling with the effects of sin in their lives, struggling with the effects of sin that other people have committed against us all looking to God to do what only God can do, which is to rescue us. The good news is He is a God who loves us. He's the God who saves. He's a God who is more than enough for all of those things.
In this series, a couple of weeks ago, Brandi shared the story of the 10 men struggling with leprosy. It was a condition that made them outcasts in their time and all of them were healed by Jesus, but only one of them pressed through his discomfort, his problem, and probably his fear to go back to Jesus and give thanks. He actually showed that he believed in Jesus and in that moment he moved from death to real life. So not everyone who was healed in that story moved from death to real life. It shows that we need to press through to that next level to get all that Jesus houses for us.
Last week, Steve spoke to fears over sickness and death and how Jesus could even overcome those. These are stories that apply to us today and I'm hopeful that through this story today we'll do the same thing for you. They all look at real action meeting real fear, and real faith taking hold in people's lives.
Today, we're going to look at a story that shows what it looks like to have Faith Over Fear when The Odds Are Stacked Against You. I don't know what you're going through today, but we're going to start and pray and just ask God to meet all of us right where we are. If you have some overwhelming odds in your life, I just pray that this story meets you where you are and God shows you that he is ready to supply the need that you have today. So let's pray.
Father. This story that we're going to go into today, is a story of just how you meet us in situations where there are overwhelming odds. So many of us today have situations in our lives where we just feel lost. We feel like we don't know where you are. We don't know how it's going to turn out. So God, I pray by the power of your Holy spirit today that you would meet every single person right where they are, whether they're in Aurora or somewhere else in the suburbs, somewhere else in Illinois, somewhere else in the country or in the world. Father, you are big enough to meet everybody right where they are. So Lord, come and speak to us. Come and free us today in Jesus’s name. Amen.
So we're going to look at the book of Joshua, chapter 2, starting with verse 1. It says,
1 Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.
2 The king of Jericho was told, “Look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” 3 So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”
4 But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. 5 At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.” 6 (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.) 7 So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.
8 Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof 9 and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. 10 We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea[a] for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.[b] 11 When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.
12 “Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign 13 that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them—and that you will save us from death.”
14 “Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the Lord gives us the land.”
15 So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. 16 She said to them, “Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.”
17 Now the men had said to her, “This oath you made us swear will not be binding on us 18 unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you have brought your father and mother, your brothers and all your family into your house. 19 If any of them go outside your house into the street, their blood will be on their own heads; we will not be responsible. As for those who are in the house with you, their blood will be on our head if a hand is laid on them. 20 But if you tell what we are doing, we will be released from the oath you made us swear.”
21 “Agreed,” she replied. “Let it be as you say.”
So she sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window.
22 When they left, they went into the hills and stayed there three days, until the pursuers had searched all along the road and returned without finding them. 23 Then the two men started back. They went down out of the hills, forded the river and came to Joshua son of Nun and told him everything that had happened to them. 24 They said to Joshua, “The Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands; all the people are melting in fear because of us.”
This is a crazy story. All sorts of action, right? The odds already look so bad. First of all, Joshua, by the inspiration of God, sends just two spies into this land of the Canaanites. It's a territory, the sworn enemies of Israel. They're going in. So two people are going into this land to spy it out. And to make it worse, can we just be real for a second? It starts by telling us that the two spies, the very first place they go, they go to the house of a prostitute. Listen, we don't have to sanitize this and we don't have to over explain it, but this sounds like a recipe for both moral failure and also military defeat. But God, right? So many of us can say that about our lives, that if God had not interceded, if God had not intervened in our circumstances, then we would have been defeated.
So God is always at work behind the scenes, even as we make our decisions both good and bad. Let's take a deep breath here, let that breath out because God is always at work and he is not dependent on how good we are or the bad things that we've done. That's really good news for all of us. I want to take a really high look at this story, a really high view because it's very easy for us to get bogged down into the details and miss the forest for the trees. I see several themes in this story that I am certain that God wants us to grab a hold of and internalize today. Here's the first one. God is at work in our circumstances before we perceive it. God is at work in our circumstances before we perceive it. The reality is that we are just humans.
Some of us are smart or maybe not as smart, that's okay to say, right? Some of us are short or tall, some of us are bigger or skinnier. Some of us are more on the creative side. Some are on the more logical side. Some are really fast runners and some couldn't run if they were being chased by a lion. But no matter how much of a, no matter what stands out about our characteristics, we are still limited. The fastest person is still limited. The smartest person is still limited. We're limited both physically and mentally. We're limited emotionally and financially and with certainty. I can say that we are limited and our spiritual view of what is happening behind the scenes, particularly when we're in the midst of all of the trees, we can, we can really lose track of what is happening around us.
To me, there's this great mystery in the story that's never fully explained and it has to do. When Rahab went up to see the men after she sent the leaders on a wild goose chase, she went up to the roof where she'd hid them in and had a conversation with them. And the conversation to me is never fully explained. It starts in verse eight, it says,
Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you.
And she goes on to explain why she knew this, that she’d heard about what their God had done in the past. What does this mean for us? Well, I want to say this. Be very encouraged that you might not see what God is doing or you might just hear about what God has done in someone else's life, but know this, that God is always busy spreading his fame. He is always busy working behind the scenes. God doesn't have to use missionaries to reach the world. He chooses to partner with us and do this great work, but he doesn't need any of us. So know that he is always up to things that we can't see for the benefit of his glory and for the people that he loves so much. Don't we all need to know that and whatever circumstance that we're facing today, God is actually doing something behind the scenes. I'll never forget in 2011, my wife, Brandi, needed to have a surgery and our insurance company said that actually it was not a medical necessity.
Now, all the doctors said that it was, but the insurance company said it wasn't a medical necessity. And really, if, you know what insurance companies do when you hear that something's not a medical necessity, just know that they do not plan to pay for it. We challenged them and we said, so what do we do with this? Is there any recourse? And they said, well, you know, you can bring details to us that we don't have yet. And they sort of gave us this long list of things that we could possibly do. And then they gave us an ominous warning. They said, only 1% of cases like this will get overturned. We almost didn't do anything. But then we started talking about it and we prayed and we researched what we could do.
Brandi's grandma, Judy, her encouragement pushed us. She's always been a great encouragement in our lives. We decided that with God 1% was really good odds. And guess what? He made it happen against all odds. God stepped into that circumstance and he worked with the details and he made it happen. So how did Rahab know all these things about this foreign God? She'd heard some things about God at a distance, but God clearly had come close to her to reveal that what she'd heard was true. She had a firm conviction that this was true for her as well. 1% was really good odds when you're with God, isn't it? I love the message that we see in 1 Peter 5:6-7, let this apply to your life today. It says,
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
Now, if you're going through anxious times, and most of us have some anxiousness going on in our hearts, and that comes out in all sorts of ways, right? Sometimes we don't sleep as well as we did or, or maybe we're sleeping more. A lot of times that's because of anxiety. But just know this, humble yourselves and just believe that God is working on your behalf. In due time when you're submitted to him, he will lift you up. Cast your anxiety on him because he cares for you. What an incredible amount of encouragement that is. For me, when I read that, that passage was written for the Rahabs of this world, the people who feel like they're not good enough, the ones who wonder if they've done one too many things to put them outside of the grace of God. Trust in God, and he will rescue you at just the right times as he continues working behind the scenes of your life.
Here's our second takeaway from the passage, and this is a particularly powerful one to me. God's family is a family by faith, not by birth, not by behavior, and not by privilege. I'm going to say that one more time. God's family is a family by faith, not by birth, not by behavior, and not by privilege. If you've been a Christian for a while, you know, to say that you would never tell anybody that you think that they're outside of the grace of God. But also there's a chance that if you've been a Christian for a while, you've got a little bit of a sense of entitlement about what it means to be a Christian. You might not say it because you're kind of too domesticated as a Christian to say this, but how is your heart with that reality? How is your heart knowing that you are part of God's family just for faith, not because you were born into a Christian family, not because you have had relatively good external behaviors for a while or because of some sort of a privilege that you have.
One of the things that I love the most about this story is, is just how raw it is. And to me the grittiness and how raw it is shows that it was written by the inspiration of God's spirit and not just by human hands. You might be wondering why I'm confident about that. Well, here's why. When you think about your own family, when you think about things that have happened in your family, maybe things that you've done or your kids have done or your parents did or your grandparents did, or you've just heard this story that's gone around your family. Unless you're a chronic oversharer, you're not too likely to share the dirtiest laundry of everyone in your families. And that could be for different reasons. You could be desiring to protect that family member, or maybe you're just too embarrassed to be associated with the behavior that your family member did or that you did.
But God in his wisdom puts all of that out there and he still claims them as his favorites. To me, that's incredibly humbling and it blesses me tremendously because it tells me this, God is willing to use anyone. When I really slow down and I try to apply that to myself, what it means is in the worst moments and the worst, most horrible decisions I've ever made in my life, God is still for me. So no matter what you've done, no matter what it is, when you hear me say that, whatever it is, that whatever memory triggers for you, when you hear me say in my worst decision, in the worst sin of my life, God was still for me. It means that he is still for you too. He will proudly take us and save us and he will use us and he will love us.
So no matter how messed up you are or I am, he will still love us through that. He will always make space for us in this world. And that's an incredible thing. That's an incredible God that we have that's willing to do that.
I think that it's amazing the story of Rahab is found in the old Testament, but her fame extends all the way into the new Testament, and then into today. Rahab is a powerful story because she is known as Rahab the prostitute in the old Testament, but in the new Testament, she is known as an ancestor of Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 1. That is powerful to me that God is not ashamed to be identified with people that we look at as the worst of the worst. And at Hebrews chapter 11 she's identified as a champion of what faith looks like.
She was once lost and then she was found. God is not ashamed of Rahab and he's not impressed by your best deeds. He's moved by hearts to have faith in him and what faith means in this context is just belief and being willing to act even when you're scared in the midst of your fear, our belief, our faith is not about what we've done or what we haven't done. It's about belief and the one who makes all things new. Here's our final thought today, Rahab's story is the good news of Jesus Christ. Rahab's story is the picture of the good news of Jesus Christ. I shared a couple of weeks ago that the point of every miracle that we read about in the new Testament is to point us to Jesus. I want to add this. Every single character study that we do in the old Testament and everything that we read in the new Testament is also meant to point us to Jesus.
If you're just reading it for literature, you're going to learn some crazy things about some people who made bad choices and you can say, well, I've done those kinds of things too, but the point of them all is to point you to the one who has the power to save and the love to do it with a smile on his face. I hope you're sensing echoes of other stories in the old Testament that point you to Jesus like in Exodus 12, when the Jews were awaiting God's deliverance and God gave them instructions. God gave the Jews instructions through Moses and Aaron as he was about to bring judgment on the Egyptians for keeping his people in slavery for so long. He gave them instructions to take each household to take up a perfect, spotless lamb and to kill it and then to take the blood of the lamb and to paint their doorways with it so that when God went through and his judgment that evening, he would pass over their homes and just bring judgment on the others.
Do you hear how this is so similar to Rahab's story except replace the blood over the door with the red cord that the soldiers would see when they pass through and execute judgment on the people in Jericho, they would pass over Rahab and all of her family because of this scarlet cord. Maybe today this story is giving you hope that for the odds that you're facing in your life right now, you're facing really bad odds, filled with courage that comes from knowing Jesus and maybe like me. You hear this story and you're really humbled inside because you know that God can save anyone and he's willing to use anyone and that's his business and we're just the messengers. We're just the ambassadors with the story. If you are a follower of Jesus, listen closely to this. You've been saved by the eternal scarlet cord of salvation that was offered for anyone who would receive it by the sacrifice that Jesus made.
The author of the book of Hebrews says it like this and chapter 10 verses 15 through 18 it says,
The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
“This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”[a]
Then he adds:
“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.”[b]
And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.
May we all today give thanks to God for what He has chosen to forget about us. Can we do that? Can we just be thankful for what he’s chosen? The worst thing that you’ve ever done that came to your mind...He forgave you. He forgave you for that and he’s offered you a new way.
Maybe you feel like you're the Rahab type. Her story tells you this, that you are no more an outsider from Christ, from what God wants to do in you then the spies that God himself sent to scout out Jericho because of this, there are no outsiders. There's no us and them and God's kingdom or in his economy only those who have not said yes to the red cord that he offers us all, and if you would like to do that today, here is the way to do it.
Acts 2:38 it says,
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Listen, we are only Christians by faith. It's not about our behaviors. It's not about our birth order. It's not because you were born into a Christian family. There is nothing that you can do to earn his favor and there's nothing that you can do to make him cast you away. All you have to do is say, God, I want to turn to you today and just a moment you're going to see a page pop up, a screen pop up that has three questions and the questions are designed for deeper reflection on today's points in this message about rehab. When you have faith, when there are moments that the odds are stacked against you. And I just pray that those are an encouragement to you during this week as you sort of wrestle with areas of your life that you might feel a little bit down and out where the odds are stacked against you.
But I'm going to pray and then we're going to move into the last part of our gathering today.
Father, thank you so much for your word. Thank you so much that you don’t give us sanitized stories that we can't relate to. You give us stories that if we're being honest with ourselves and with others, we can relate to more than we'd like to admit. Lord, we thank you that you are willing to take us where we are and give us your character in place of ours. So Lord, thank you that you are a God who stands against odds all day long. They are good odds to you. So we thank you that you have overcome the struggles of life. You've overcome sin and death, and one day we'll be with you forever face to face. God, we give thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.