Joshua Part 3 - God’s Promises, Providence and Purposes

Gavin Wright continues the series on Joshua in chapter 2 v 1-24. This sermon is from Sunday 28th Sept 2025.

Transcript

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Father God, we do ask uh for your help this morning. As we read, as we meditate on, as we drink on your word this morning, please would it do good to us. Teach us of yourself, of your trustworthiness. Help us to more readily trust you and your promises. And I ask that you would help us with your word to keep going till the end to receive the full joy of everything that you promise your people. Amen. I'm gonna read in a second, but just first of all, we uh often fail to keep our promises, don't we? I promise to be there at this time. I promise to finish that job. I promise to get you this paperwork by the end of the week. I promise to play with you just as soon as I've done this. We fail to keep our promises. And our leaders too. They fail to keep their promises. I did a quick search on the BBC website, and genuinely, for every article about a promise being made, there was another article about a promise that had been broken. A care for veterans, affordable housing targets, a better deal for Wales, post-flood support, and the list goes on and on. Our leaders of every stripe are always letting us down. They're not coming through on what they said they would do. The book of Joshua that we've got open in front of us, it tells us that God is different. That he is not like us, he is not like our leaders. Every promise he makes, he keeps. And the story of Joshua, it is the story of God teaching his people that that is true. Especially the promise that he will bring his people home. And the book of Joshua is the story, too, of his people learning and sometimes failing to trust that promise. So I'm gonna read, I'm actually just gonna read the first verse. Well, we're gonna read it a little bit as we go through. But verse one, have a look at that. And Joshua, the son of Nun, sent two men secretly from Shetem's spies, saying, Go, view the land, especially Jericho. And they went and came into the house of a prostitute, whose name was Rahab, and lodged there. So, verse one. Now you may remember, sort of the last couple of weeks, God had promised Joshua to give him the land. God has said to him, Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given to you, just as I promised Moses. That was the promise of God. And four times in that first chapter, Joshua is told not to be scared. Three times by God and uh one more time uh by the people, be strong and courageous. God is giving you the land. We're with you, Joshua. Let's go. And Joshua seems to have taken the encouragement to heart, doesn't he? He seizes the bull by the horns in the rest of chapter one, and he's preparing for entering the land. He sends his commanders to prepare the people. He crew uh he calls the Reubenites, the Gadites, the half tribe of Manasseh, these two and a half tribes, to keep their promise and to help them in this conquest. And everything looked like it was full steam ahead. And Joshua told them all, okay, in three days' time, we're going in. And then, chapter two, we get what is this actually sort of a strange pause in the story. Instead of crossing the river Jordan and attacking Jericho straight away, we have this delay as Joshua sends these spies into Jericho to check out the defenses. And I sort of get why at this point some people might be wondering why doesn't Joshua just get on with it? He has the promises of God. He's been told to be strong and courageous. Get on with it, Joshua. Come on, what are you waiting for? But instead of going directly forward, he takes a breath and he sends some spies to check out the enemy. Is there a little bit of doubt? Is he trying to hedge his bets? Does he wonder if God really can be trusted to deliver on his promises? Well, for Joshua, I don't think so. But it sort of depends how you view what faith looks like, doesn't it? I don't think what we're seeing here is unbelief. Actually, I think this is what faith in the promises of God ordinarily looks like. Now, we know, don't we, because we know the story, that in chapter six, uh the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down. Not because of Joshua's military brilliance, but because of the miraculous power of God. We know that's going to happen, we know that. But Joshua doesn't. And actually, God hasn't even suggested the possibility to him that it's going to work that way. See, yes, God told him to take the land. He told him he would bless him and go with him and give him success, but he did not tell Joshua to suspend all reason or abandon all wisdom while he did it. He didn't tell him to act blindly or to march into Canaan, presuming there will be a miracle. Joshua is working on the basis that as God does with most of life, he's going to use normal means to accomplish his purposes, to fulfill his purposes, his promises. So faith, what does it do? It trusts God with what he says he will do. And then it acts using the ordinary means that God has given. So faith knows that God can do the extraordinary and it prays that God will work in sovereign power. But faith doesn't mean that you give up on the normal stuff of life, the normal stuff that God gives you in exchange for wanting a miracle. A few examples. If you are ill, God can do a miracle, and he sometimes does, but it is not a lack of belief in him to take medicine, to use the ordinary means which in his grace he has given you. If you want your unbelieving family to trust in Jesus, then we ought not to presume that we can just sit back and pray for a miracle. Actually, we should use the ordinary means that God has given us. That is, to speak, to tell them about Jesus. Or sometimes we want to leave a certain sin behind us that is bothering us that we're struggling with. And we just wish that God would make it vanish in an instant. And he can. But faith in God is not about presuming a miracle, but acting using the ordinary means that he's given us. Meditate on his word, pray for his help, get stuck into church where people will hold you accountable. The slow, hard work of sanctification is the normal way that God deals with us. And if you need to win a war that's ever on your list, all the ordinary means are spies and soldiers. If God wants to topple the walls of Jericho with just the trumpet blast and an army's shout, He will, he can do it. But Joshua is right to gather intelligence and work on his tactics for the conquest that lies ahead. That is faith acting on the promises of God. Trusting God doesn't mean that we give up responsibility for doing the next wise thing. That is what Joshua did. He acted on the promises of God. But then we go on to the next little section. I'm going to read from verse 2. Have a look down there in your Bibles. And it was told to the king of Jericho, Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land. Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land. But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I did not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them. But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords, and the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out. So Joshua acted on the promises of God, and now we see the spies saved by the providence of God. So the spies, what have they done now? They've entered the city. In verse 2, they've chosen to lodge at the house of Rahab the prostitute. It doesn't give us any info on whether this was a good idea or a bad idea. Perhaps it was a good idea. You hang out where it's normal to be a stranger. Perhaps it was a bad idea, a sinful idea, even. We just don't know. But whatever their reason for hiding there in particular, they don't actually do a great job of hiding. In verse 2, this presence of the two spies in the city, well, it comes to the attention of the king almost immediately, doesn't it? If you're sneaking around trying to figure out the lie of the land and the disposition of the troops and the scale of the enemy's defences, you're not really doing terribly well if sort of within half an hour of your arrival everyone knows that you're there, who you are, and what you're trying to do. So far, he's more Johnny English than Jason Bourne. So the king sends a couple of his own counterintelligence officers to pick them up. They knock on Rahab's door. Verse 3 bring out the men who've come to you, who entered your house, they tell Rahab, for they have come to search out all the lands. It is not looking good for the spies, is it, at this point? But then there are a few surprises. The first surprise, and children, I think you're looking out for a couple of surprises in your learning sheets. The first surprise is that Rahab doesn't turn them in. She hides them and she spins a tail, essentially saying, uh, they went that way. If you're quick, you'll catch them up. Now, that wasn't true. And a lot of ink over the centuries has been spilt over whether Rahab, what Rahab said, was sinful or not. Was she right to say what she said? For my tuppence worth, I think it's fine. The ninth commandment is not to bear false witness against your neighbour. And Rahab here is acting in a way that is profoundly pro-neighbor. We're to love the truth, aren't we? But truth in the Bible normally comes hand in hand with life. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And I take it, if Rahab gives incorrect information to a corrupt and an unjust government who is seeking to kill the innocent, then the way Rahab acts is on the side of truth. In a sense, it's all by the by, because in Joshua, it's not commented on whether she was right or wrong, merely that it happened. Though in Hebrews chapter 11, if you go there, Rahab is commended for her faith in the way that she dealt with the spies. So make of that what you will. Either way, she gives this story to the soldiers to protect the spies. When it probably would have been the easier route to give them up. That is the first surprise. The second surprise is that the Jericho secret police, what do they do? They buy her story, Hook, Line, and Sinker. It is amazing if you think about it. The king and his army know that the spies have come to Rahab's house, so why don't they search it? They take her word for it without a moment's hesitation. If you're in the Star Wars world, it's like that moment when Obi-Wan Kenobi says, These are not the droids you are looking for. And everything just moves right along without a second thought. No pushback, no interrogation, no attempts to catch her in a lie. They don't search the house. She says, they've gone that way. And they say, All right. They put their blue lights and their sirens on, they zip off down the road. I wonder how surprised Rahab and the spies were that they got away with it. Their hearts must have been racing. Rahab there, she just received a crash course in the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of the God of Israel, to whom alone belongs salvation. He can hide incompetent spies. He can blind the eyes of spy catchers even when they have the spies cornered and hiding right under their noses. He can use a pagan prostitute and stalks of flax to preserve and promote his holy design. He is in charge, you see. And you are not. He is in charge, and nothing is too difficult for him. Rahab was being taught, the Israelite spies were being reminded that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. You really can rest secure in the perfect will and design and the work of the one true God. They were saved by the providence of God. But then we come on to the last bit. I'm going to read from verse 8 to 24. We're not actually going to talk about all these verses, but I'm going to read the rest of the story. So look with me down from verse 8. Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has 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 to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death. And the men said to them, Our life are yours, even to death. If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the Lord gives us the land we will kindly uh we will deal kindly and faithfully with you. Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall, and she said to them, Go into the hills, or the pursuers will encounter you, and hide there three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterwards you may go your way. The men said to her, We will be guiltless with respect to this oath of yours that you have made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land you shall tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you led us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your father's household. Then if any one goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be guiltless. But if a hand is laid on any one who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head. But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be guiltless with respect to your oath that you have made us swear. And she said, According to your words, so be it. Then she sent them away, and they departed, and she tied the scarlet cord in the window. They departed and went into the hills, and remained there three days until the pursuers returned, and the pursuers searched all along the way and found nothing. Then the two men returned. They came down from the hills and passed over, and came to Joshua the son of Nun, and they told him all that had happened to them. And they said to Joshua, Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands, and also all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us. Lastly, we see the faith in the purposes of God this morning. The faith in the purposes of God. Where verse seven left us, it was a little bit ominous. You could almost hear the thud of the gate closing as the sun drops below the horizon. You can hear the sirens of the Jericho police fading into the distance as they chase down to the fords of the river Jordan. The Israelite spies are trapped in the city. It is a scary moment. How are they going to get out? How are they going to be able to report back to Joshua? But in this moment of uncertainty for them, Rahab steps forward and articulates this surprising, this amazing, this beautiful, this wonderful faith in their God, the God of Israel. If you were thinking of people in your mind who would be likely to become Christians, Rahab wouldn't be high up the list. She's a pagan living in a city full of the enemies of God. She's a prostitute, living a life decidedly against the way that God has designed it, living a deeply immoral life. She is in many respects the epitome of everything about the Canaanites that brought them under the coming judgment of God. But starting in verse 8, amazingly, wonderfully, Rahab professes faith in Israel's God. Now she obviously knows a great deal about God, doesn't she? She calls him the Lord, verse 10, 11, 14. That word you see is all in capitals in our Bibles. That indicates that's the covenant name of God. That's Yahweh, the name by which God was especially to be known among his chosen people. And she knows that this Yahweh has given the land of her birth to his people. She understands that God owns the land and is free to give it to whomever he wills. He isn't a local tribal God like the gods of the Canaanites that she grown up with. In fact, verse 11, Rahab grasps who God is really super clearly. Look at verse 11. She says, The Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now that is her conclusion about who God is. Their hearts melted because of this God. He is the God of everything. He is the real thing. He is the real, the only, the true, the living God. And what she says echoes the words of Moses, actually, back from him from Deuteronomy chapter 4. Moses called the Israelites to know therefore today and to lay it to your heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no other. Therefore, you shall keep his statutes and commandments which I command you today. That language, the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth beneath, is a statement of faith. It is actually an Israelite statement of faith. And here we find it on the lips of Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute. And saving faith, he doesn't simply add God to our list of idols. His saving faith says of God that He has exclusive rights over our hearts. He is the only one who has the rights to our love and our worship. He is the only true and living God. Then look at verse 10. And this is important because Rahab doesn't only know who God is, she knows what God has done. She knows about the Red Sea, verse 10, the Exodus from 40 years before, the great history-shaping act of salvation in the Old Testament when Israel was delivered from slavery to the Egyptians. She knows that God saves his people. And look at what she says about the destruction of Sihon and Og. This is language used in Joshua for when the enemies of the Lord are destroyed by Israel as the agents of divine judgment. She says they were devoted to destruction. So not only does she understand something of the saving work of God, she also gets the fact that what is coming is the righteous, just judgment of God against his enemies. She knows who God is, she knows what he's like, and she knows what he does. And she's not the only one that knows. The other language she uses, she says, We have heard, we heard, our hearts melted. Every person. The news of this Yahweh has traveled across the lands. But Rahab, she's marked out as different to all of her countrymen. Because she goes beyond simply knowing about the Lord. As saving faith always must, she casts herself upon this Lord for mercy. Look at verse 12. See how she uses the covenant name of God again. The Lord, as she calls on the spies to deal kindly with her and save her household. She uses God's covenant name, the Lord. And then she asks them to deal kindly with her. That deal kindly with her, that is uh a Hebrew word that takes us to the very heart of the gospel. It is the word Hesed. It is about showing faithful, loyal, covenant love to someone. And the Bible is used especially to describe how God deals with his people in his grace, saving them and keeping them. And Rahab intends to show this kindness to the spies, and she's risking everything to side with the gods of kind, faithful, covenant love. That is what she seeks from God. The kind of God who would save someone like Rahab. Saving faith, if you want to recognize it, it bows before the kingship of God. Saving faith believes in God's mighty acts of salvation. And Rahab she looked back to the Exodus that she might know and trust that God is a saving God. But we, even more wonderfully than Rahab, we look back at the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And saving faith doesn't just know about God's salvation, but it turns and it seeks for mercy. All the Canaanites actually knew the information about the Lord and his salvation, and they trembled, their hearts melted, we are told. But what set Rahab apart was her resolve to entrust herself to this God who was coming to judge. It may be for you in this room today that you know all the stories too. You've heard the outline of the Christian gospel many times. You know about Jesus' birth, his sinless life, his obedient death, his glorious resurrection. You know he died for sinners. You know he is coming to judge the living and the dead. You know all of these stories pretty clearly. You may even acknowledge them to be true. But that was true of the residents of Jericho. And they were not saved when the Lord came to town. The Bible calls us to follow in the footsteps of Rahab, to come to the Lord personally and seek his mercy. As Rahab deals with the spies, it is not a sort of uh, okay, I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine kind of deal. She saves them because she understands what is at stake. She knows that behind the armies of Israel stands the God of heaven and earth, and she resolves not to run from him, but to run to him and seek his mercy. What about you? What direction are you running in today? Running from him or running to him? This story about Rahab, it isn't actually in a way really needed in the story of Joshua in the narrative flow of this book. You could skip quite happily from chapter one to chapter three, and it would make perfect sense. But I think part of the point is that our God remains, even when he has promised to come in judgment, he remains ready to save all and any who will come to him. Even an unlikely convert like Rahab, the pagan prostitute. Her story teaches us, doesn't it, that no one is beyond the reach of his kindness. It teaches us that you are not too late for mercy, you are not too bad for forgiveness, you are not too lost for grace. There is room in the loving kindness of God even for you. So entrust yourself to him. Rahab did. Every Christian, every saved sinner has done. Our brother Melvin did. There is room in the loving kindness of God even for you. And well, as the story comes to an end, Rahab lets the spies down through the window. She displays the scarlet cord there and hunkers down to wait for Joshua to lead his armies across the river. And when the spies finally make it back to Joshua and report right at the end, you'll notice their conclusion. I guess maybe the big point of Joshua chapter 2, verse 24. Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands, and also all the inhabitants of the land melt away because of us. In other words, this this whole story, the melting hearts of the Canaanites, the intervention of the Lord to protect the spies, even the conversion of Rahab, all of it bears testimony to Joshua of the trustworthiness of God's promise. God had said he would give them the land. God had said he would bring them home. But here is a kind encouragement to the Lord from the Lord to reinforce the promise, to show them that his word is solid and true. Dale Ralph Davis writes that the problem is not that Yahweh's promises are not sure, but that we need to feel sure of them. His word should be sufficient to bolster us, but because of the weakness of our faith, he graciously stoops down and by a plethora of signs, evidences, and providences makes us feel assured of his already sure word. And that is what God is doing with Joshua. But there is this little episode with Rahab. And when the spies come back, reassuring his heart, you can bank your life on it, you can trust eternal. Eternity to this God whose promise will not fail. Of course, the greatest sign that God's word can be trusted, the greatest token of the security of his covenant love was still to come. Last night I was asking my children at bedtime. I asked, how do we know that God loves us? And there are lots of answers. But the best answer is that he sent his son Jesus to earth to die for us. And in God's amazing providence, in God's amazing providence, that day would only come because God saved Rahab. Rahab's rescue and her eventual inclusion into the people of God meant that she would one day become the ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see that at the beginning of Matthew's gospel, verse 5 of Matthew chapter 1. Without Rahab, without this pagan prostitute saved by the mercy of God, there would be no Jesus. So what was God really doing in directing the spies into Rahab's house that day in Jericho? What was he really doing in bringing this random Canaanite to saving faith? Well, you know what he was doing. He was making ready in the biggest and the best scheme of things for Jesus, so that not only Rahab, but me and you might come and find refuge under the shadow of his wings. The beauty of Rahab's story is that it points us to a better story. It points us to the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Savior of God's people, to the one who can save the least and the worst, the one in whom the loving kindness of God is available, even for you, friend. So will you do what Rahab did? Are you entrusting yourself to the God of covenant love? He alone is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath, and there is no other. And I'm going to pray for us. Our Father Gods, we thank you that you are the God of great power who works things to bring his promises to pass. And we thank you that you are the God of great mercy, in whom is found love and kindness, in whom is found grace and help for those in need. You are the God who rescues sinners and who promises, as they trust in you, to bring them home. Father, I ask that you would help us to know that to be true today, to remember what you're like, to entrust ourselves to you, and know the surety of your word that you will bring your people home one day. We ask this for your glory and for our good. Amen.