Rahab protects the spies and extracts a promise from them to
spare her family. We know that they keep
their word and she becomes one of the people of God, leaving behind her old
identity and taking up a new one, ethnically and otherwise. These spies come back with a true and
accurate report of the matter but I always wonder what Joshua thought when they
told him the source of their information.
Intelligence gathering requires different tactics depending on the
situation. Mossad would be proud of this
group and their ingenuity.
There is a certain similarity to the parable of the Prodigal
Son in this parable. The servant who
buried his gold in the ground seems to have the same attitude towards his
master that the elder son had towards the father in the other parable. The first two servants don't share his
estimate of the master and, in fact, the parable tells us otherwise about the
character of the master. The invitation
to join in the happiness of the master is to say that they will benefit from
their own resourcefulness in managing the master's assets in his absence. What we believe about God determines how we
relate to Him and our attitude towards life itself. Francis Chan has a short video about a balance beam that is my
favorite illustration of this principle.
Do we live in order to get safely to the end of life or do we live as an
adventure, trusting Him in all things, holding all things lightly, and with a willingness
to risk it all if He asks us to do so?
Fear of the Lord leads to knowledge of the Lord and knowledge of the
Lord leads to love of the Lord and fear of nothing else.
For Paul to write these things was surely painful. To say that God had not rejected the Jews,
His covenant is an everlasting covenant, but had instead offered the covenant
to the Gentiles was anathema to Jews.
They were His people simply because He loved them and had rejected the rest
of the nations. That He was moving forward
with those who, as Hosea wrote and as Peter notes, were not my people and not
loved, is incredible, not believable. Paul
says to the Gentile Christians that they are to remember that the Jews are the natural
root stock into which they are grafted and from which they are nourished. Paul never intended to throw over the past,
the new covenant is an extension of the franchise, not a negation of the old. The basis for covenant is faith, faith in God
and faith in His promises, always has been, always will be. Just as Abraham wasn't required to pass
through the pieces of the sacrificial animals and therefore the covenant was
dependent not on his faithfulness but of God's alone, so Jesus' death atones
for sin, completes that covenant begun with Abraham, and proves God's
willingness to go as far as necessary to ensure the covenant. His love is amazing and stretches to all who
come in faith like Rahab.
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