CaryCOG | Cary Church of God
Pastor Patrick Jensen brings us today's message: "The Scarlet Cord: God Reaching Us"
Joshua 2:18 NKJV
I. Introduction:
a. The book of Joshua describes the conquest of the land of Canaan under
the leadership of Joshua - literally, “Jehovah saves.”
b. Joshua can be thematically summed up in the following statement, “victory through faith,” found in Joshua 1:6-9.
c. This faith would be needed time and time again throughout the text as Israel faced challenge after challenge and stronghold after stronghold.
d. This leads us in our text to the first test of Israel, the battle of Jericho, where we find an unlikely character in the narrative of redemption, Rahab.
e. She is remembered by the scarlet cord she used as means of assisting the spies from Joshua escape.
II. The Scarlet Cord is a Symbol of One’s Fault to Faith (Joshua 2:1, 9-11)
a. We cannot avoid where the scarlet cord originated from – the house of a prostitute.
b. Rahab exercises a certain confidence in the God of Israel when she states, “I know…”
c. Rahab includes herself in the confession that “our hearts did melt.”
d. In one simple, yet profound confession, Rahab was moving from fault to faith.
III. The Scarlet Cord is a Symbol of One’s Faith to Salvation (Joshua 2:12-13, 18)
a. From a place of inevitable conquer, Rahab files a petition. She exercises great audacity with her request.
b. “Swear to me…” she says. In other words, in the Hebrew she employs, Shava, saying confirm an oath, pledge an allegiance and bind yourselves by a solemn promise.
c. Rahab’s petition is altogether a prophetic picture of God, who takes up the appeal and swears by His own holiness. Listen, Beloved, to our God, who cannot swear by anything other than Himself. For there is no one else higher to swear by.
Quote:
The workings of natural fear and the stirrings of an uneasy conscience soon subside; having no spiritual root, they endure not.
Arthur Pink
IV. The Scarlet Cord is a Symbol of One’s Salvation to Legacy (Joshua 2:18, Heb. 11:31)
a. Finally, we come back to where we started: Joshua 2:18. Rahab had pleaded with the spies, the spies acquiesced to her request that required a sign – the sign of the Scarlet Cord.
b. Now we come to what was mentioned before, a radical shift in Rahab’s family tree and future place in God’s story in the human story.
c. It should be noted that Rahab and her family began their rescue outside the Israelite camp because they were aliens, not of Israel, and no access within the camp (6:23)
d. We find much later in the cannon, indeed in Mathew’s gospel, the location of Rahab in Israel’s history.
e. This is not the only legacy Rahab left. Thousands of years later, people are still talking about what she did.
f. We also find her in James where he uses Rahab in order to illustrate the point that faith and works are necessary counterparts of one another:
Quote:
First, she perished not with them that believed not (Heb. 11:31). Second, she dwelt in Israel (Joshua 6:25): from being a citizen of heathen Jericho, she was given a place in the congregation of the Lord. Third, she became the honored wife of a prince in Judah, the mother of Boaz and one of the grandmothers of David (Matt. 1:5. Fourth, she was of the favored ancestresses of the Savior (Matt. 1). Thus, did God do for her exceedingly abundantly above all that she asked or thought: delivered from awful depths of sin and shame, elevated to heights of honor and dignity.
Arthur Pink