(A) Introduction

We cannot deal with all the heroes of faith the writer to the Hebrews mentions but Rahab is an intriguing example. By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. I am glad Rahab is in the list. She is unique to it - the only woman and the only Gentile. I think it is worth studying her example if only to encourage those more disreputable members of the Christian church of whom I am one.

(B) Although Rahab wasn't respectable she was highly intelligent and perceptive.

Rahab was a young Canaanite prostitute and as such not a very likely candidate for heroine of the faith. She was sharp. Rahab identified the spies for what they were and had hidden them before the King of Jericho's agents arrived. She had a plausible story ready with which to deceive the King's agent. It is a clever story. Rahab didn't deny that she had entertained the men. She says that they left at dusk when it would be difficult for anyone to be sure of clearly seeing anything. The agents daren't risk stopping to search Rahab's house. It is possible that if they did the spies would get clean away. Finally the youthful, Canaanite, prostitute gives the two Israelites excellent advice. She tells them to hide in the hills for three days before attempting the fords of the Jordan. I think the spies needed her advice. They were thoroughly incompetent. Their cover was blown within a few hours of arriving in Jericho. Joshua2v2to7and16

It is not always the most respectable or the well thought of who have the keenest insights. Winston Churchill was alive to the Nazi menace and an advocate of rearmament during his years in the political wilderness. We must be careful how we judge. People may have more about them than we suspect. We should never underestimate a person's potential. This morning, Friday March1st, I read the obituary of Anita Goulden in the Daily Telegraph. It was the best thing I read in the paper all week. It brought tears to my eyes. Anita Goulden went to Peru on holiday and stayed for the next 43 years to look after abandoned and handicapped children. She was about to return home to Manchester when she saw some children with meningitis and tuberculosis, lying neglected amid pools of blood in the street. Nobody showed any interest or concern for these children. So she decided to stop for two years in the coastal town of Piura, at the foot of the Andes, to help them. She ended up stopping for 43. The work was not easy. She was opposed by politicians, civil servants, bishops and bandits. By the time she died she ran a hostel and a free school with 200 pupils. I wonder whether even Anita herself, when she ran her two haberdashery shops in Manchester, realised what she was capable of.

God can use amateurs. Gideon was hardly a seasoned soldier but he led his people to a great victory. Jesus was an untrained and unqualified teacher. There is a tendency for Christians to put great store by the religious professional. Christian's trust a qualified leader - who looks the part. The amateur is treated with a degree of suspicion and lacks authority. We should be careful. Jesus our living head was an amateur. Probably the only training he received was in carpentry.

(C) Spiritually Rahab was at a huge disadvantage but she used what opportunities she had

Rahab was not well placed to come to belief in the one true God, the God of Israel. She was a Canaanite, a citizen of a wicked city that was under God's condemnation. Rahab was part of a corrupt, depraved, pagan culture. She had not benefited from the Godly leadership of Moses or Joshua.

Rahab had one asset - she mixed a lot with men. They talked to her and so she learned that the Israelites were to be feared. She heard the stories of their escape from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the wanderings in the wilderness, and their recent victory over the Amorites. She learned enough to reach the correct, saving, conclusion: "for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on he earth below". Ch2v11.

Everybody in the western world has the opportunity to learn about Jesus. The church is in decline in England but there can be very few folk who do not live within ten miles of an evangelical cause. The Bible is available to all. Christian literature abounds. There are numerous sites on the Internet that will provide reliable information on Jesus of Nazareth. Every Englishman and woman has a better opportunity than Rahab the harlot of finding out about the one true God. There is no excuse.

There is one very real difference between the vast majority of my fellow countrymen and Rahab the harlot. She realised that she was in danger. Most of the people I know do not believe that they are in any danger at all. They are like the rich fool in Jesus' parable: Then he said, "This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."
But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?"

None of us knows what will happen tomorrow. A news item caught my eye this week: A 51-year-old man bled to death after tripping and falling with a mug of coffee when he stepped out of his front door in Seaford, Long Island. The mug broke and a four-inch shard went through Joseph Stoyer's carotid artery. We are all in danger of God calling, "Time", on our lives and being held to account before we are ready.

(D) Rahab got her priorities right when faced with an awkward moral dilemma.

Some commentators criticise Rahab on two counts:

(a) For telling a lie. There are those who take the view that the commandments are inviolate and under no circumstances should they be broken. This is not true. Jesus taught that there were exceptional circumstances when it was permissible to work on the Sabbath day. Healing was permissible on the Sabbath. Even the Pharisees, those strictest of Sabbatarians, accepted that it was quite all right to rescue a donkey from a pit on the day of rest.

It is instructive to recall the wording of the ninth commandment: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour. Ex20v16 Rahab did not do that. The lie she told did not bring grief to anyone. How on earth could Rahab have saved the Jewish spies without deceiving the King's agents. I think it is much easier for us to accept that Rahab acted correctly than it was for the older commentators on this passage. We know that it was necessary for people like the ten Booms to deceive the Germans if they were to save Jews from the gas chambers. If I was sheltering Jews in an occupied country during the last war and it was necessary to lie to the Gestapo to keep them hidden there would be no doubt in my mind what was the right thing to do.

(b) For betraying her people. This is much, much, harder for an Englishman to accept in the light of our recent history. Rahab was siding with the enemy. She was being disloyal to her own countrymen. She facilitated the escape of two men whose report raised the morale of the waiting Israelites, the enemy outside the walls. We, in this country, did not take kindly to Britons who worked for Germany during the last World War.

There is no doubt that Jesus taught that a man's first loyalty was to HIM - even if this meant rejecting his own family. Mt10v37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother, son or daughter, more than me is not worthy of me". Our commitment to Jesus supersedes all other including our allegiance to country. It is a measure of Rahab's faith that she did put her allegiance to the one true God and his people before that to her own - the Canaanites. It is by faith that she was adopted into the family of God and became an ancestor of both King David and King David's greater son.

(E) Rahab showed great resolution, resourcefulness and courage in the cause of her new allegiance.

Rahab wasn't half-hearted, hesitant, or fearful of taking risks - she dared all. She had just one chance of salvation and she took it come what may.

Jesus said in Luke14v25to26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate even his own life he cannot be my disciple". This is the sort of uncompromising saying of Jesus that we shy away from. I have never heard a message based on this saying of the master - not one in fifty years. I know what Jesus is saying. He is making it clear that following him is our chief priority - it is even more important than staying alive. Following Jesus is not a matter of life and death - but of eternal life and everlasting destruction. Many, many, valiant Christians through the centuries have shown that this teaching of Jesus is for them a reality - as their blood has mingled with the blood of the martyrs.

(F) In the end Rahab acknowledged her dependence upon Grace.

Rahab did plenty. She certainly showed her faith by her works. It remains true that Rahab would never have been saved without tying a scarlet cord in the window.v21 Her works, her faith alone would not have saved her. She was reliant for her salvation upon the goodwill and forbearance of Joshua - the commander of the LORD'S army. He said to the people encircling the city, "Shout! For the LORD has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be destroyed. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared." Rahab acknowledged her dependence upon grace by hanging that scarlet cord in her window. The Canaanites were under judgement but by that red cord she would be saved.

We know, if we are Christians, just how much we depend upon the red thread, the shed blood of the perfect sacrificial lamb. We know that salvation is the gift of God. It is by grace that we are saved through faith. We need to keep the red cord in our window - always in view - to reminding us how much we owe the captain of our salvation.

(G) Conclusion

Many years ago when I was little more than a boy I listened to a sermon from a much-loved preacher amongst the Grace Baptists in Suffolk - Pastor George Bird of Bethesda Ipswich. My father was a little jealous of George Bird's popularity and used to dismiss him as a teller of anecdotes. Now I have to say that I did not agree with my father then and I do not agree with him now. Anecdotes are what bring a message to life. Anecdotes are the means by which the preacher demonstrates that he has proved the truth of Scripture in his own life. There is not much point speaking about God's answer to prayer unless you can give some instances of God answering your own prayers. Too many sermons are academic. Anyway that is an aside! George Bird told us one of his stories and I can remember it to this day. He knew a successful shopkeeper who kept a rusty nail in his till. I rather doubted this but no matter. When George asked him why he kept a nail in his till the shopkeeper replied, "To remind me just how much I owe." George Bird concluded his story, as only he could, by asking in his deep, fruity, and sonorous voice, "Do you keep a rusty nail in your till?" It was just another way of asking, "Do you keep a red cord in your window?"