Joshua Chapter 2 Verses 10 – 13

• Wow! Contrast that with Alexander the Great! The respected leader of the Greeks…the ultimate warrior! The one whom society lauds and folks looked to for leadership and authority. And yet his entire family decimated less than 15 years after his own selfish death. Mother, father, wife, children, brothers, sisters…all dead. And yet here…this broken, sinful, societal reject…and she pleads for her family…and ultimately saves them. Wow.
• See here’s the thing. She’s a mess. Her life and her self esteem and her reputation…deplorable. In the eyes of society and even in her own accounting of herself…she is very poor. She doesn’t say here that she has a good relationship with her family…I mean imagine her father…what she does express here is how her heart aches with need for them…a love that cries out to protect them and to secure them and to cherish them…
• This society we live in…even our fleshly nature will tell us…self esteem man…that’s where it’s at…believe in yourself…Whitney Houston sang, “Learning to love yourself…that’s the greatest love of all…I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone’s shadow…if I fail, if I succeed, at least I lived as I believed…” What utter satanic non-sense…Alexander the Great loved himself and that made him take everything and everyone around him for granted….
• He regarded himself, not others. He placed his own pleasure and comfort and wants and life in front of others and as he slaughtered the nations conquering them for Greece, at the same time, he slaughtered those who depended upon him and looked to him for protection, security and cherishing…He thought himself quite rich, quite high, quite better and for that reason he was a snob…keeping company with only those who flattered him, only those who he could gain something from to add to his psychological and monarchical riches and disregarding those who needed him…
• Not Rehab. She disregarded herself…and because of that, she yearned to add to the life of others…especially those of her own household…now, the kicker…who is more righteous? Who is more rich in “goodness” in the eyes of God? Rehab or Alexander? Well how about this comparison. Rehab or Paul the Apostle? Rehab or Billy Graham? The accurate answer…NEITHER! All of our righteousness is like filthy rags in the sight of God, Isaiah 64 says and so the truth of it all…Rehab has a good grasp on reality…
• She knows she is utterly wretched, in need of grace and mercy and love…and therefore her heart towards others…grace and mercy and love…amazing. How about you? Where do you fall? Closer to Alexander…picking and choosing whom you will assign importance to in your life based upon if they “rub you right.” Or are you closer to Rehab? Ascribing importance maybe even to someone that despises her, like her father…to the point that when it comes down, when the chips fall, your heart is for them…This is a major question regarding your spiritual maturity…why?
• Jesus regarded others, not Himself…He regarded His Father, not Himself…and so He was kind…serving others…folks felt super important to Him all the time…He took the time with the broken…His business was lifting up the lesser…all of them were lesser to Him and yet His desire was to serve them…As we learn of Him, spend time with Him, follow Him…as we walk in true religion man…we become more like Him…loving, serving, having a heart for even those who despise us…not more like us man, complaining and avoiding and writing folks off and praying they will change and be more like us…we’ll pray for ourselves man and ask to be more like Jesus!
• Back to the text. Rehab is so desperate and concerned for them that she begs the two men of Israel for a promise and even a token of that promise which tells us she longed for assurance man…and shows us how frantically determined she is to leave behind her sinful life, her sinful past and her sinful culture and come with God’s people!!!

Joshua Chapter 2 Verses 14 – 20

• The scarlet color of the cord speaks of the blood of Jesus and binding it in the window may have even made the shape of a cross with the window frame and construction…So the city is about to be completely obliterated…sacked and crushed…absolute terror in the streets and yet inside the house, (protected by the scarlet cord, a type of the blood of Jesus), they will all be safe…Outside of Christ, open prey…in Christ, safety, no matter what’s going on outside…
• Courson suggested something really cool here too…when the two men came to Rehab, verse 6 says that she hid them with stalks of flax. Now what is flax? Not something we see Roll Back nowadays at Walmart! Well flax is material for garments…and at that time, in that culture, material for ropes and cords. So what who cares…hold on there…Zechariah speaks of (in Chapter 3 Verses 1 – 4) the redeemed being clothed in fine linen and the redeemed being represented by the high priest Joshua!
• Joshua the son of Nun? The servant of Moses? Nope. Different Joshua. Now there was a Joshua who was a high priest, Joshua the son of Jehozadak (Haggai 1:1) but this Joshua in Zech, man this is Jesus! THE high priest, same as we learn in the Book of Hebrews and so the fine linen, the flax, the cord they all speak of salvation. The flax saved the two spies, the cord saved Rehab and her family and the punch line, the point…same thing saves both!
• Two spies, the people of God…Jewish history would say they are Caleb and Eleazer, totally righteous dudes…good folks…from the right side of the tracks…then Rehab…HOOKER! Both saved exactly the same way with exactly the same stuff…the righteousness of the High Priest Jesus! You see, doesn’t matter how good or how bad you have been, we are all saved by the grace of God in the same portion man…

Joshua Chapter 2 Verses 21 – 24

• Did the spies really help the armies of Israel at all? The answer really is no. Other than encouraging Joshua a little bit, the reconnaissance really accomplished nothing militarily. So why go through all this? Because Rehab was to be saved. A person that society had thrown away, many of us would readily throw away, man even she had written herself off…but God doesn’t, hadn’t and wouldn’t. Rehab is mentioned three times in the New Testament and each time she is a hero.

• Hebrews (hall of faith – only 2 women!), James (example of blast-off type faith) and in the lineage of Jesus. What? She was a prostitute, a liar! That’s true for sure, no denying…but God does something that man does not…yet as we grow in Him it is something we will surely do…Jeremiah 15:19, He separates the pure from the vile. God knows the sin, the shame, the vile…and yet He commands, “remove those filthy rags and clothe her in My righteousness.”

• We will do the same…as we grow in the Lord…everyone is a mess…sinful, hurtful, offensive, and yet in everyone, especially among the brethren, there is beauty and a child, a child of God in need…dependent and frantically desperate…searching to be loved, needing to be secured and hoping to be accepted.
• We will choose to see what is good especially as we walk in reality of who we are apart from God’s grace…and so Rehab, saved
• …the same way as the two good little boys…Didn’t matter what she did, God still wanted her…and get this…her answering His call even saved her whole family…