Lessons From Rahab: Jesus and His Crazy Grandmas
The mission to send spies into Jericho was a rescue mission for Rahab. Yahweh didn’t need more information about the walls of Jericho to conquer the city. He wanted to show His passion to redeem the lost and bring them into His eternal family.
The story of Rahab is an extraordinary story of courage, faith, rescue, and the power of Yahweh. It’s not difficult to take away a few lessons from Rahab’s story. Later, she marries into one of the most powerful families of Israel. Rahab, the pagan prostitute, was now grafted deeply into God’s chosen people. Centuries later, Jesus was born into the lineage of Rahab.
God didn’t send His Son into a royal lineage of religious people. Jesus was born into a family of broken people in a broken family. This story of romance and intrigue brings glory to Yahweh. Our God finds great joy in redeeming lost and broken people to Himself.
- Rahab recognized the strength of the Lord.
- Rahab recognized the glory of the Lord.
- Rahab cried out for mercy from the Lord.
Resources
Joshua 2
Joshua and the Big Wall – Veggie Tales
Transcript – Lessons From Rahab
Hey everybody, welcome to the No Sanity Required podcast. I’m excited to bring this one to you. We’re going to talk about Veggie Tales, and the moral of the story is that Veggie Tales are great for entertainment, terrible to build your theological framework off of. So stay tuned.
Welcome to no Sanity Required from the ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible culture and stories from around the globe. So let me talk about when I first heard about VeggieTales. It was before I was a dad, before I had a kid, and I was working at another camp, and they were showing VeggieTales at this camp, like, during free time, during, like, in the. They had, like, a canteen area, and VeggieTales were playing. And I was real intrigued.
I was like, what in the world are we watching? And so started watching some of them. And they were very entertaining. This is early VeggieTales and the graphics have come a long way since then. But anyway, it wasn’t long after that we had our first child and when we got our first kid, I thought, this will be great.
It’s a good option. I hate and I know I’m gonna get a lot of hate off of this. I hate SpongeBob. I hate a lot of modern cartoons. They’re lame.
You gotta know, I grew up watching the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Show. I know that’s old school. I know I’m dating myself. Give me some Foghorn Leghorn. Give me some Bugs Bunny.
Give me some Roadrunner, Wiley Coyote, Yosemite Sam. What was the dude’s name? Elmer Fudd that would go hunting. He was dumb as a brick, but he would go hunting. And anyway, that was fun.
I grew up watching that. And then I grew up watching the Super Friends. Super Friends were like, it was like a cartoon about all different superheroes and called the Justice League. So anyway, and I’d never seen Christian cartoons. Remember, we’ve talked about this before, we call these Bible lesson episodes beyond the flannel graph and talked about what the flannel graph was in an earlier episode.
But when I was a kid, the closest thing I had to like any kind of, not even cartoon, there were good books that were illustrated good, illustrated, whoops, illustrated, about fell out of my chair, illustrated for kids, there were, I had like a picture Bible, but even the illustrations were not great. Usually the people were very white and Caucasian. None of them looked Arab, Palestinian, African, Middle Eastern. You know ethnically it was off. And then the other thing was that I saw Bible stories play out on the flannel graph, but I never saw cartoons or anything like that.
So I was excited that we were gonna have cartoons to show our kids. And to this day, I’m not a VeggieTales hater. In fact, I find it to be very entertaining. It’s wholesome entertainment. But there are definitely, I haven’t watched the newer stuff, but the early VeggieTales stuff was pretty weak theologically.
So at this point, if you’re wondering what VeggieTales is, VeggieTales is a cartoon series that uses talking vegetables to play out Bible stories. And then they give life lessons and things like that. And some of them aren’t straight up Bible stories. Some of them are more like moral life lessons. It’s good stuff.
It’s great for a kid. My oldest kid loved it when she was a little baby and a toddler. And so we had a bunch of them on DVD. In fact, going way back to when my firstborn came along, we had them on VHS, if you know what that is. And so we would watch VeggieTales.
Well, there was this one VeggieTales called Josh and the Big Wall. And some of you right now are going, oh, I remember that. I know that one. Joshua and the Big Wall was a story of Joshua and the Israelites and the Battle of Jericho. And the Battle of Jericho is recorded in the first few chapters of the Old Testament book of Joshua.
And what happens, I’m gonna give you the story, and then as we go beyond the flannel graph, as we go behind the childlike lessons that we’ve learned, I want to give you a deep theological moment in this story that I think has often been missed when this story is told. And so when we go into the story, like the story is set up with the nation of Israel wandering, they’re in the wilderness, they’ve come through this 40 years, these four decades of wandering in the wilderness, they’ve They’ve been seasoned in battle. In fact, they’ve just had their first major campaign in which they conquered a 10 city alliance. So, you’ve got the Israelite, the Israeli war machine that is tuned up and ready for battle. They’re about to enter into the conquest of a land that God has promised he was going to give them.
So, you’ve got the nation of Israel being led by a man named Joshua and they’re getting ready to conquer all of their pagan enemies who have inhabited the land land that rightfully belongs to them. And so as they’re poised on the edge of this initial assault, the first city they’re gonna go into is a city called Jericho. Now a little backstory on Jericho, and this is where we have to deviate from the VeggieTales version. If you saw that story on VeggieTales, the people of Jericho are portrayed as sort of the dominant, powerful, army, the powerful people, and the Israelites are like this little group of peons that don’t stand a chance. The people of Jericho are making fun of them.
They’re standing up on top of their wall, looking out across the, looking over the wall outside of their city, making fun of the Israelites. And it’s a very biblically inaccurate picture of what the story is as painted in the Bible. So here’s what you got to know. Jericho was, was probably inhabited by less than 4, 000 people. And this comes from, there have been three major archeological explorations of the ancient city of Jericho.
And what we know from those archeological explorations is that the city was built and torn down, built and torn down, built and torn down nine times. So there’s basically nine layers to the city. What that tells us is it was a key position that changed hands between like from one army to the next, from one people to the next. When one army would come in and conquer it, they would take over it, and then maybe for a generation or two or three or a few centuries, they would rule and have control of that city, and then another army would be raised up that would overwhelm and overcome them. You see this in the ancient world, like you have the Assyrians that ruled, then the Babylonians overthrew them, then the Persians overthrew them, then the Greeks overthrew them, then the Roman Empire came out of that, then the Byzantine Empire.
So you’ve got, that’s a pretty standard progression in history. So Jericho was like a microcosm of that. Many different peoples had ruled and conquered Jericho. So at the time of our story, I don’t know, more than a thousand years before the time of Christ, actually a good bit more than that, but quite a few centuries, dozen centuries or so before the time of Christ, something like that. You have to check my work on the dateline.
I don’t remember exactly what century it was in, but it was before the time of the kings, before David came into power, before Israel was established as a nation. This is between, they’ve come out of bondage to Egypt but they’re not yet like a solid strong nation. And so, in order to claim their land they’re going to have to go to battle against all these different pagan people and the first one of these people is Jericho. So, Jericho is this city that stands in the way of Israel reaching her destiny as a nation that Yahweh has promised, that God has promised. And so the Israelite army is like a few hundred thousand men.
I mean, when you go to the book of Numbers and you look at the numbers of the fighting men, each tribe had tens of thousands of fighting men. Okay, so let’s say each tribe only had 10,000 fighting men. Well, there’s 12 tribes, so that’s 120,000 fighting men. Well, we know it was much bigger than that. All you gotta do is read the book of Numbers.
So you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people coming up against this little city called Jericho and much is made of the wall that surrounded Jericho and the reason is not because that wall would have protected Jericho from Israel. Israel could have overwhelmed Jericho, they could have done something that’s called a siege, they could have laid siege to the city. To do that, you put your army in a circle around the city and you lock the city up where nobody can come or go and eventually the city runs out of resources and without a shot being fired, you either starve them to death or they surrender. So Israel could have done that, but that wasn’t God’s plan. God’s plan was to miraculously and supernaturally destroy Jericho.
And so what archeologists found is that Jericho, this wall that went around Jericho, what made it so impressive and imposing is that you had the upper center of the city and that was surrounded by a wall. And it was a really big wall. Like you couldn’t just climb over the wall. You would need big long ladders. And then it was a thick wall so there were actually homes and businesses built into the wall.
Then on the outside of that wall, you had a steep slope that went down and at the base of, so think of a steep, the side of a mountain, a really steep incline that it’d be hard to walk up and down without sliding. Like scooting along on your rear end or, you know, it’s just almost too steep to walk on. So you’ve got this wall around the upper part of the city. And then on the outside of that wall, a steep slope that goes down maybe 60 or 70 yards. I don’t remember the exact numbers.
Maybe a football field length, maybe shorter than that. But anyway, it’s a long slope down to another wall. And that wall is really thick and really tall. And then on the outside of that wall is another slope that goes down to flat ground. And all night, like every time this city got rebuilt, it just got rebuilt on top of itself.
So it’s a real tall mound that just kind of goes up from the earth. Not far from my house here, not far from Snowbird, from the Swope property is an old burial mound. And it’s like you’re riding along and all of a sudden out in the middle of this pasture is this big, huge, weird mound. And you see those, there’s one about an hour from here that’s even bigger. And they’re just these mounds that get built up over the course of different generations, whether it’s a burial mound that the natives used, or it could be from construction, or the moving of dirt to create pasture.
And so you’ve got this real tall mound out in the middle of this wilderness on the edge of the Jordan River. And so they built a second wall once they got up so high, they felt like this wall wasn’t good enough, so they built a second wall. So to get into Jericho and to get to the heart of the city, you would have to scale one wall, you’d have to go up a steep bank, steep embankment. At the top of that embankment, you have to scale a steep wall. Get over that wall, go down into the city, scale up the next wall on the outskirts of the city, get up over that wall into the upper part of the city.
I hope I’m painting a good visual for you. It was real hard to get into Jericho. It was real hard to get into the center of the city. But there’s only a few thousand people there, and the Israelites are a couple of million people. So they got to do a Siege this thing.
And so the story in Joshua 2 is very interesting because what happens is God has Joshua mobilize two spies and send these spies into the city. Well, why do you send spies into a city? You send them in there to gather intelligence so that you can form a good plan of assault, plan of attack. So if our army is going to attack this city, we send spies in to figure out what’s the best way to approach an assault on this city. But we know from the story God God wasn’t going to assault the city with the army.
He was going to assault it himself supernaturally. He was going to in fact collapse the walls of the city and bring destruction to the city without the Israelite army having to really even raise a hand in battle. Now after the walls fall in, and you can read about that in the book of Joshua, the army does assault the middle of the city but they literally, God collapses the walls and so when the day of battle comes, the Israelite army surrounds the city they blow their trumpets, the walls of the city collapse and what we found through archeology, when I say we, I mean modern humans, is that the walls fell inward and created a sort of ramp where the army from 360 degrees around the city could run straight up the ramp and assault the center of the city and wipe out any survivors that were left. So it was an easy assault in terms of God did all the work.
And then the army was basically doing cleanup. But what they found when they were digging this city is that there was a portion, one section of the wall that was still standing, you know, a couple thousand years later or, you know, yeah, 3000 years later, whatever, that was still standing. And it’s the section of the city wall that was facing the direction that the two spies escaped from. And if you know the story, what happens is the spies get into the city and they go to the house of a prostitute named Rahab. Rahab helps them and Rahab’s conversation with them is recorded in Joshua chapter 2.
It says this, She came up to them on the roof and said to them, I know that the Lord your God has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen on 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 the God in 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 her, Our life for yours, even to death, if you do not tell this business of ours. Then when the Lord gives us the land, we will deal kindly and faithfully with you. Then she let them down by a rope through the window. So the story’s spectacular.
These two spies they end up in the home of this prostitute. God leads them there. We have to believe in the context of the story, there was nothing shady going on there. He leads them there. She hides them from the king of the city who hears that they’re there.
And then she tells them, Hey, here’s what’s going on. This city is freaked out. They’re scared to death because they’ve heard that y’all conquered these 10 cities, this 10-king alliance led by Sihon and Og who apparently were two really like really intense ancient kings. And everyone has heard that you conquered them, you defeated them in battle. So everybody here is really afraid and our whole city is paralyzed with fear.
And then she begins to confess who God is. So the first thing you get in verse 10, this is Joshua chapter 2, we have heard how the Lord Yahweh dried up the water of the Red Sea. So she, she, like, reflects on and, and acknowledges the power and might and strength of Yahweh. She recognizes the strength of the Lord. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted.
The second thing she does is she recognizes the glory and Majesty of the Lord because it says 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, so. First thing she does, she recognizes the power and might of Yahweh. The second thing she does, that’s first, second thing is the glory and majesty of Yahweh and then the last thing she does is she asks for mercy. She cries out for mercy.
She throws herself at the mercy of Yahweh. So she ascribes to the Lord Yahweh his strength that is due him and honor that is due him and majesty and glory. You’ve got this pivotal, intense moment in Rahab’s life where this prostitute who lived in this this ancient city of barbarians, of depravity, of filth, I mean you’re talking about a deep, deep, deep, dark cultural existence and she’s a prostitute there and she cries out to God for salvation and these men promise her that she’ll receive it and in the end when God brings the walls of the city down and the army attacks Jericho, Rahab is brought out of that city alive, in fact her house that would have been in the exterior wall of the city, that’s where the poorer people and the lower class people would have lived. Her being a prostitute, that’s where she would have lived and God even keeps that portion of the wall upright and she’s able to be rescued. It’s an extraordinary story of rescue and daring and the power of Yahweh, it’s awesome.
So then she comes out of there and she marries the son of one of the most powerful men and one of the most powerful lineages in the most like powerful tribe in Israel, the tribe of Judah. So she marries into this family. These guys were named Aminadab and Nashon and then Salmon was the third in the line. And these three guys were like chieftains, they were warriors. And this guy Salmon, he marries Rahab, which is just awesome.
You’ve got one of the most prominent war fighters who’s also a statesman in Israel and he marries this prostitute and makes her his wife and she becomes fully included into the Jewish lifestyle and people. And here’s the kicker, here’s the awesomeness of it. She becomes one of the great great great great great great grandmothers of Jesus. Jesus comes through the family lineage of Salmon and Rahab. So a couple principles beyond the flannel graph here, beyond the VeggieTales.
Number one, I believe that the Scripture is teaching us that the mission to go into Jericho with those spies was a rescue mission for Rahab. God looked at this city of pagan people who had turned their backs on the revelation of God, who were worshiping idols and false gods and were living a depraved existence. And this prostitute who would have been at the center of that depravity receives forgiveness and Grace and mercy because she cries out. To the Lord. God pauses the assault.
He halts the assault on this city, sends these two men in there on what I believe is a rescue mission of this woman who cries out to God and he gives her salvation. The second cool thing from the story is that what you end up with is this woman in the lineage of Christ, in the lineage of Jesus. You don’t have perfect people. You don’t have religious people. You’ve got broken people who come from broken backgrounds.
And Rahab had the most broken background you can imagine. She was a prostitute in a culture that used and abused women worse than we can even imagine. And God saved her. And then he said, not only am I going to save you, I’m going to bring my son through your lineage. It’s a beautiful story.
It’s a powerful story of Adventure and romance and Intrigue. And I’ve always wondered. I’ve always wondered, was Salmon one of the spies that went in at the beginning of the story? I don’t know. We’re not told that.
Some people would argue, well, it would have said that if he was. I don’t know. I don’t know that it would have because the spies weren’t the point of the story. The salvation of Rahab is the point of the story. I called this message when I preached it, Rahab’s Hope.
You got the hope of Rahab is that Yahweh who was coming to bring destruction on the city, the same God who was going to tear down the walls and bring destruction to the city, would bring salvation to her and her family and he did just that. And through her family, he brought salvation to all the rest of us. It’s an exciting and wonderful message and I hope it’s very encouraging to you and I hope it gives you a lot of hope today and hope it’s a blessing. Thanks for joining and I’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required.
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