The response of the spies was immediate and decisive to Rahab. “When the Lord gives us the land, that is, Jericho, we will keep our agreement. If you don’t report our mission we will protect you and your family or forfeit our own lives”.
As the spies prepared to leave the city they again confirmed the pact with Rahab by repeating and enlarging the conditions Rahab must abide by. First, her house must be marked by a scarlet cord hung from the window. Because of the position of the house on the city wall, the cord would be clearly seen by the Israelite soldiers again and again as they would march around the walls.
Her home would be clearly marked out and no soldier, however fierce and eager he might be in the work of destruction, would dare violate the oath and kill anyone in that house. Second, Rahab and her family were to remain in the house during the attack on Jericho. If anybody would wander out and was killed the guilt for his death would be his own, not the invaders’.
Finally, the spies again emphasized that they would be free of this oath of protection if Rahab exposed their mission. To these conditions Rahab agreed, and after the spies left she tied the scarlet cord in the window. She probably also hurried and told her family to gather in her house. The door of her house was a door to safety from the judgment soon to fall on Jericho.
Their mission completed, the spies and Rahab exchanged parting instructions concerning their escape. (FYI: Jericho at this time was surrounded by two walls about 15 feet apart. Planks of wood spanned the gap and then houses were built on this foundation. Probably due to the pressure of space in the small city, Rahab’s house was one of those built “on the wall.” In this way it was “part of the city wall”.)
2:22-24. The spies were carefully lowered by a rope through a window of Rahab’s house (v. 15). Their escape would have been more difficult, if not impossible, had it been necessary for them to go out the city gate. Scarcely a half-mile west of Jericho are limestone cliffs about 1,500 feet high, honeycombed with caves. Here the spies hid (in the hills) for three days (cf. 1:11) until the soldiers of Jericho gave up the hunt. Then under cover of darkness the spies swam back across the Jordan, made their way quickly to the camp at Shittim (cf. 2:1), and reported to Joshua about their strange and stirring adventure and the alarm and utter despondency of the Canaanites.
Their conclusion was, The Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands for all the people are melting in fear (cf. v. 9; Ex. 23:27; Deut. 2:25). How different from the report of the majority of the spies at Kadesh Barnea who said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are” (Numbers 13:31).
SO WHAT? (what will I do with what I have read today?)
If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus, however weak you are, however worldly or carnal you may be, however feeble your Christian faith is, let me tell you this foundational truth,; in the sight of God, you are on perfect, because of the blood of Christ. That is our position. We can not change that truth. We may at some point choose to reject Him, but He will never reject us. We will never lose our position in Christ.
But the question of how we spend our life, and on what level we live our Christian life, that is left for us to choose. I may enjoy the blessing of Canaan for a while. I may enter into the land of full blessing. I may go with the people of God over the Jordan, up out of the wilderness. I may share some of the victories that are mine in Jesus, but I may yet be caught by sin, trapped by worldliness, beaten by compromise, and ensnared by the Satan.
But, if a man is truly born again of the Spirit of God he will never be lost. As I have stated on numerous occasions, we believe here at COV in the eternal security of the believer. But at every moment I must back up that decision to follow Christ with the way I live.
It is not how a man begins his Christian life, but how he ends it, that counts. It is one thing to come forward at a meeting in answer to the appeal of an evangelist, with ten thousand people looking on, or to hold your hand up, and to sign a card. If it is real, God bless you! But the thing that really matters is whether, following that decision, you press into the land of blessing! DO you go on with God, do you persistently, patiently, and in the face of every opposition and every testing, go right through? And if you slip and fall down, do you pick yourself up again and go on, or do you go back into indulgence and sin?
In the course of the Christian life we suffer many wounds from Satan, and sometimes from friends and other followers of Christ. The determination and outcome of our life is how will we respond to those hurts and that pain? Will we give up? Will we throw in the towel?
All of this I say, because we have a choice - every day. We have a choice every moment of every day to how we will live and what we will do with our lives. The Israelites faced that same question. Forty years earlier they failed to go forward and move out and follow God. Fear and apathy stopped them dead in their tracks. The consequence of their poor choice was to spend 40 years wandering through the dessert. This time around, they chose chose to act and move out in faith and make the most of the one and only life they had been given.
How about you?
No comments:
Post a Comment