Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning. I'm Evan. I'm the other senior pastor. It's great to be with you on this fallback Sunday.
[00:00:12] All right. We are in our last week of our series looking at these Old Testament stories that maybe if you grew up in church, you learned about in Sunday school.
[00:00:22] And today we're going to talk about the battle of Jericho. And if you remember this in your Bible lessons or your Sunday school class, as Joshua and the battle of Jericho, it makes a lot of sense. Joshua was the commander of the army and the leader of the Israelites who conquered the city of Jericho. But today, I want to focus on what is a supporting character in the narrative, but I think actually is the piece that reveals Jesus in this story, which is the character of Rahab. Now, if you've been with us these last weeks, we've been talking about how we look for Jesus in the story of the Old Testament, not because we think that's a good idea just out of nowhere, but because in John, chapter five, Jesus is talking to the religious leaders and the experts in scripture, and he says, you read scripture, but you miss the whole point. The whole point is that it points to me.
[00:01:10] And so we have a job as followers of Jesus when we read the Old Testament to look for where Jesus shows up. And today we're gonna talk about this story which is representing the conquest of. Of Canaan, the holy land. And whenever we get to these stories, especially in the book of Joshua or Kings, and these stories where the Israelites are sweeping into a land and conquering and destroying cities, there is sometimes tension. How do you reconcile these stories of violence and conquest with Jesus of the Gospels? If God is the same God yesterday, today, and forever, how do we square these stories of conquest with. With Jesus of the Gospels who comes and says, you know, you've heard it said, hate your enemies. But I say, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
[00:02:02] How do we. How do we settle this tension? And if you don't feel any tension, I'm a little worried that you're like, conquest, baby, let's go. You know, holy war. Where is it? I'm worried for you. And we need to talk about this, okay? Because we are actually not called into the kind of conquest mindset that the children of Israel had in the Old Testament.
[00:02:23] Why? Because it was the Old Covenant, the old Agreement, the Old Testament. And now in Jesus, we are under a new covenant, a new agreement, a New arrangement for Israel in the Old Testament or the Old Covenant. There was this agreement, this arrangement that was passed through Abraham to his people, that his descendants, his family, would become a great nation. And this great nation would be given a land, a home, a physical space.
[00:02:53] And so as they move into this space in Canaan, they're enacting what God has given to them through this arrangement. Now the danger is if we here in 2025, primarily Gentile believers in Jesus read the stories of the Old Testament and we say, hey, that's my agreement, that's my covenant, that anybody that stands in my way deserves death and destruction. It will create in us the kind of worst Christians out there, right, that think it's okay to baptize their hatred and their tribalism under the name of God so that they can get what they want.
[00:03:34] We are not under the Old Covenant. And if we don't understand this, we will run the risk of having this mix mash thing where we try to take pieces of the old and the new, when really what we are called to do through Jesus is to look for where Jesus shows up in the stories of the old as it points.
[00:03:53] Are you following me? Okay, no, but. Okay, here we go.
[00:03:59] We have a new covenant. And so as we read this, I want us to find where Jesus shows up in this narrative.
[00:04:08] In Matthew, chapter one, the gospel writer, Matthew mentions Rahab right at the beginning of the Gospel story. He's telling us about the family line, Jesus, the family tree from where Jesus came. And he says in Matthew 1, this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David. And he goes on, he lists all these names, and he gets to verse five, he says, salmon, the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.
[00:04:34] And so in the family line of Jesus, we have this woman named Rahab. Now, why would Matthew bring up Rahab as a mother in what is largely a list of fathers?
[00:04:46] Well, what Matthew is doing is he is counting on his readers, largely Jewish audience, to know this Old Testament story that we're about to get to, where Rahab shows up, because he knows that Rahab carries a label with her, that when you say Rahab to Matthew's audience, they know that there's a label attached to her. It's not just Rahab, it's Rahab the prostitute.
[00:05:11] In the story of Jericho, Rahab is a prostitute. And right from the beginning of the Gospel, Matthew goes out of his way to mention that in the line of Jesus, the great Great Great Grandmother, 28th Great Grandmother of Jesus, the Messiah is A prostitute named Rahab. And I think what he's doing is he is saying, listen, if you have a problem with that, you're really going to have a problem with Jesus the Messiah, because he is so comfortable interacting with and ministering to and getting close to the untouchables and the outcasts and the immoral and those that are labeled unqualified for the kingdom. That's who Jesus loves hanging out with.
[00:05:56] So right from the beginning, Matthew, who himself is a tax collector who would have been despised by his countrymen, is saying, this is the kind of Messiah we have in Jesus. We have one who is not afraid to have Rahab the prostitute grafted in to his family line.
[00:06:12] So here's the story. Joshua, chapter two.
[00:06:16] Moses has led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. They fled into the wilderness and they've gone to the edge of the promised land on the Jordan River. And Moses sent spies into the land, 12 spies. And they looked around, they came back and they said, moses, you're crazy to want to go in there. We're like grasshoppers compared to these people.
[00:06:36] It's a wonderful land, but they are terrifying and we shouldn't go. And because of the lack of faith, Moses turns them back around and they spend 40 years and a whole generation wandering in the wilderness.
[00:06:47] Moses dies, leadership of the nation is passed on to Joshua. And Joshua leads the people back to the edge of the Jordan river and he sends two spies, this time into Jericho. We pick up the story Joshua 2.
[00:06:59] Then Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp at Acacia Grove. He instructed them scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan river, especially around Jericho. So the two men set out and came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there that night.
[00:07:13] But someone told the king of Jericho, some Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land. So the king of Jericho sent orders to Rahab, bring up the men who have come to your house, for they have come here to spy up the whole land. And Rahab had hidden the two men. But she replied, yes, yes, the men were here earlier, but I didn't know where they were from. They left the town at dusk as the gates were about to close. I don't know where they went. If you hurry, you can probably catch up with them. So she's lying to cover for where these men are hiding. Verse 6. Actually, she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them beneath the bundles of flax that she had laid out. So the king's men went looking for the spies along the road leading the shallow crossing of the Jordan River. And as soon as the king's men had left, the gates of Jericho were shut. So why would Rahab, not knowing these men, would she vouch for them? Why would she hide them? Why would she stick up for them? Well, we find out in verse eight. Before the spies went to sleep that night, Rahab went up to the roof to talk with them. Listen, I know the Lord has given you this land, she said. We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror. For we have heard how the Lord made a dry path for you through the Red Sea when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan river, whose people you completely destroyed. No wonder our hearts have melted in fear. No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below. So she expresses fear and also faith in the God they worship.
[00:08:36] Now swear to me by the Lord that you will be kind to me and my family since I've helped you. Give me some guarantee that when Jericho is conquered, you will let me live along with my father and mother, brothers and sisters and all their families. We offer our own lives as a guarantee for your safety. The minicreed. If you don't betray us, we will keep our promise and be kind to you when the Lord gives us this land. So she cuts a deal with these spies of this foreign army.
[00:08:59] And the story goes on, the spies instruct her, if you want to be saved, you need to put a red cable, a red cord out of your window so that we know where the house of Rahab is, so that you're not destroyed. When the city is conquered, Joshua hears from God and is given these instructions to march around the city for six days and to do it in silence. And so for six days, the armies of Israel march around the city. And on the seventh day, they march around it seven times. And then they shout at the walls, which is not usually a very effective strategy in war.
[00:09:34] What are the walls going to do? Well, miraculously, the walls fall down and the city is conquered. All except for the house of Rahab, which is left standing.
[00:09:43] And so, in this mysterious tale of faith, a woman who is by every metric, unacceptable to God and to the Israelites. She is a pagan Canaanite woman who is also a prostitute.
[00:10:00] What right would she have to be welcomed in to that community? What right would she have to experience salvation. Well, all it takes is faith.
[00:10:12] All it takes is faith and she is saved. Verse chapter 6, verse 25. So Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute and her relatives who were with her in the house, because she had hidden the spies that Joshua had sent to Jericho. And she lives among Israelites to this day. Not only was she saved and then sent off, but she was welcomed in to a community. And by the way, in all these conversations, I don't hear the spies or anybody else saying, hey, before we agree to save you, can we talk about your profession?
[00:10:44] Okay, we have some rules on the other side of the Jordan. And one of them is, like, probably don't be a prostitute if you want to be. Like in the lineage of the Messiah, Right? That's just kind of.
[00:10:56] But here, what is required for salvation for Rahab is simply an act of faith in the God that they worship.
[00:11:04] And I think so oftentimes what we come to believe, whether it's explicit or implicit, we have this feeling that for people to accept and be accepted into the community of faith, that for God to really, like, wrap his arms around them with his grace, that it really takes proof that you're serious, proof that you're willing to make the kind of changes to become acceptable to a holy God.
[00:11:34] And that intuition flies in the face of what Jesus came to preach, which is that grace makes the first move towards sinners.
[00:11:43] And when grace encounters you, transformation happens. And I want to dispel this myth that nothing matters, right? The behavior doesn't matter at all.
[00:11:54] Grace has a transformative work that if it's genuine and working in my life, it's gonna change how I think, it's gonna change how I speak, it's gonna change how I act.
[00:12:04] But to say that my behavior has to change so that God will accept me or so that the community can welcome me in, is to push back against the whole point of the gospel of Jesus, which is that before we loved him, he first loved us.
[00:12:21] That when we were the enemies of God. Romans says, when we are his enemies, Christ died for us. And so this is an expression centuries before Jesus would show up of what God is all about.
[00:12:36] Is God about conquest and conquering for the Israelites in ancient times? Yes, he was, because he had a promise to fulfill about the land under this new covenant and under Jesus.
[00:12:48] The promise is that those who are far away and unqualified and disqualified to be in the in club of God's holiness are now welcomed in because of the sacrifice of Jesus.
[00:13:00] This is the whole point and so what does that mean for us? It means for us that even if we feel like we're in, we're believers, we're saved by grace, that sometimes we also carry labels, just like Rahab did. Sometimes we'll still carry labels. And we do our best to project that we're not that thing that we used to be, or we're not that thing that a parent once told us we were, that has weighed on us all these years. We're not that thing that we went through, or we're not that thing that we used to struggle with, or we're not that thing that we're addicted to today.
[00:13:33] And we struggle with these labels. Can I tell you that the promise of the transformative work of the gospel is, is that whatever labels we carry that weigh us down, Jesus offers to take that burden from our shoulders.
[00:13:44] And those who, you know, like Rahab, Rahab the prostitute, all of a sudden became Rahab the Mother of Kings.
[00:13:54] What would God do to your labels? What could God do with his transformative grace if we come to him today and say, listen, God, I've been burdened by the labels that I've carried, but today I want to make myself available to your grace by faith.
[00:14:10] This is the work of the Gospel. And this is where Jesus shows up in the story of Jericho.
[00:14:17] It was centuries later that Jesus himself would be walking along this very same road up to the city of Jericho.
[00:14:27] And both the Gospels of Mark and Luke talk about his entry into Jericho as he's on his way to Jerusalem, where he'll be betrayed and turned over to be crucified.
[00:14:38] And so he stops on his way into Jerusalem. Outside the city gate, there's a blind man named Bartimaeus. Mark tells us.
[00:14:45] And Bartimaeus is calling out and crying out because he's heard that this Jewish rabbi, this guy Jesus, is in town.
[00:14:56] And maybe this Jesus is a healer. And so he's crying out for mercy.
[00:15:01] And Mark tells us that. He starts saying, jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
[00:15:06] He says it again and again until finally the disciples and those around Jesus are like, stop it, you're annoying.
[00:15:15] Don't you understand how busy Jesus is? Don't you get how important he is?
[00:15:20] He's taking us to Jerusalem for a festival. I think it's going to be a great time.
[00:15:26] They don't know what's happening.
[00:15:28] But Bartimaeus, you need to make way for this important person. You are a blind beggar. And Jesus is like a vip.
[00:15:37] Jesus hears this commotion, and he hears Bartimaeus refusing to shut up again and again. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus, the Messiah turns and blind Bartimaeus gets the full attention of the Son of God.
[00:15:58] And in that moment, Jesus encounters and stops and engages with a man who desperately needs a touch from God and a change of his labels.
[00:16:09] So Jesus touches him and he heals him and he opens his eyes. In that moment, this guy goes from Bartimaeus, the blind beggar at the gate, to the one that encountered a miraculous healing from Jesus.
[00:16:23] Everything changes in a moment because Jesus stopped when Bartimaeus calls. Jesus walks into the city. And it's a small city, Jericho, its original form. Archaeologists tell us it's about 700 yards around. So it's a small, small town. And so Jesus, you can imagine the crowds are following him. And so he's packed in to the city street as he's trying to make his way through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem.
[00:16:49] And Luke tells us that as he walks through, there's a tax collector. Yuck. There's a tax collector.
[00:16:55] And the tax collector, much like Bartimaeus, has heard rumors about this guy Jesus, and that he's in town and that he's something like they've never seen. And so this short, short tax collector who can't see through the crowds and cannot see Jesus says, I have to see him.
[00:17:13] And so, famously, Zacchaeus climbs up into this sycamore tree where it goes over the processional line across the street. And he looks so he can have an eye line to Jesus. And to his great shock, as Jesus is walking through, Jesus catches Zacchaeus eye and he calls out to him, and he does one of the most bold things that anyone could ever do. He looks up at Zacchaeus and he says, zacchaeus, come down and get dinner ready. Cause I'm coming to your house.
[00:17:42] Doesn't ask for permission, doesn't drop a subtle hint.
[00:17:46] Just says, you're gonna feed me, bro. And this is good. You should do this after your service. Just pick a random person. Just pick a stranger.
[00:17:54] Hey, what's your name? I'm getting in your car and you're gonna feed me.
[00:17:58] Jesus made it okay, right?
[00:18:01] He comes to Zacchaeus house. And Zacchaeus as a tax collector, he's working for the other team. He's working for the Roman Empire.
[00:18:10] He's squeezing money out of his countrymen and taking money, money on the side.
[00:18:14] Fraudulently. He is seen as the lowest of the low. He's seen as A traitor and as a crook.
[00:18:21] And all those labels cannot compete with Jesus.
[00:18:26] All those labels can't compete. Because now, from this moment on, as the transformative work of grace gets ahold of Zacchaeus heart and he commits to give everything back that he's ever stolen. He, from that moment on until this day, stole. Thousands of years later, he's known as Zacchaeus, the one who Jesus saw and ate with at his house. And I'll tell you what, when Jesus encounters us, no label has a chance to stand in the way of his grace. This is the view I want to have of my own life, that whatever labels I hold onto and say, well, I'm disqualified because I've made these mistakes so that we would let those fall to a greater and a grander vision and view of the power of the grace of God. I think oftentimes we. We have such a small view of what God's grace can do in our lives.
[00:19:13] And it screams to us from the Gospels that when Jesus comes to town, nothing can stand in the way. No label can stand up against the power of his grace at work in our lives. Nothing. Nothing.
[00:19:25] And so that brings us to today.
[00:19:29] If the power of God and his salvation can break through to prostitutes and beggars, crooks, I'm not too far from the reach of God's mercy.
[00:19:43] My mistakes and my failings and my inadequacies have not disqualified me, and they've not disqualified you from Jesus transforming us and grafting us into the story that he's writing.
[00:19:58] Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5. He says, Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone and a new life has begun.
[00:20:08] My invitation to all of us, myself included, is to take these labels that we've been wearing, some for a short time, some all of our lives, and to hold those up before Jesus today and to invite his grace to do what his grace does best, to replace and remove those heavy burdens and, and those labels that we've worn and allow His Holy Spirit to write us into his story. Amen.
[00:20:35] Whatever labels that you came in here carrying today, and even after the last two services, I've just been really touched by those who have come up afterwards and said, this is my label. This is what I felt like I was known for. This was my reputation, this is what I felt was my identity.
[00:20:54] But today that they're experiencing a transformative work of grace, that's for you too, in this room that you would experience a removal of labels that are not suiting you. They are not serving you well.
[00:21:08] The mercy and the grace of Jesus is here to do what he does best to give you a new name. That you are beloved, you are known, you are seen.
[00:21:18] He comes close to you today with his acceptance and his mercy. And so, Lord Jesus, I pray for anyone wearing labels that need to go.
[00:21:27] Let this be true of them, because they belong to you, Jesus. That today they become a new person with the old gone and the new life beginning. In Jesus name, Lord, we pray for second chances, third chances, fourth chances.
[00:21:42] We pray that as we lift up whatever faith we have, whatever crimson cord hanging out of the window that we can muster today, as we do that, that you would meet us with your overwhelming merc.
[00:21:55] In Jesus name. In Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
