The Un-Series: Week 5 Day 4

To understand today’s verses, we need to do a quick summary of Joshua chapters two, four, and five:

Under Joshua’s leadership, Israel was readying itself for their first conquest into the Promised Land, Jericho. Spies were sent into the city, and they were detected, but hidden from the king by a Gentile (non-Jewish) prostitute named Rahab. Rahab feared God and made a deal with the spies: for saving the spies’ lives, when Israel defeated Jericho, they would save Rahab and her family. The spies agreed, telling her to hang a scarlet cord out her window so they could identify her.

Fast-forward to chapters four and five: 

The nation of Israel spiritually prepared itself to move forward toward Jericho. God parted the Jordan River, and the people walked across on dry ground (just like a generation before in Exodus 14). They moved forward to the edge of Jericho, renewing their covenant with God, and eating their first meal from produce in the Promised Land (correspondingly, that stopped the flow of manna that had sustained them up to this point).

Joshua met an angel (the Commander of the Army of the Lord) who told Joshua to take off his sandals because where he was standing was holy ground (God owned it). God’s game plan (beginning of Joshua chapter 6) was that the army of Israel would march around Jericho once a day for six days, being led by seven priests blowing on rams’ horns in front of the ark while everyone else remained silent. After marching, they would head back to their camp. On the seventh day they did the same thing, but something different happened:

Joshua 6:15-26

15 On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. 16 The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! 17 The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. 18 But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. 19 All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury.” 20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

22 Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the prostitute’s house and bring her out and all who belong to her, in accordance with your oath to her.” 23 So the young men who had done the spying went in and brought out Rahab, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters and all who belonged to her. They brought out her entire family and put them in a place outside the camp of Israel. 24 Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord’s house. 25 But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day.

26 At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath: “Cursed before the Lord is the one who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho: “At the cost of his firstborn son he will lay its foundations; at the cost of his youngest he will set up its gates.”

Have you ever felt like an outsider looking in? Have you ever wanted to do the right thing but felt immense pressure to do otherwise? Put both together in equal parts, and you have Rahab! She was an outsider inside her own city! Overwhelmingly in chapters two and six, Rahab was identified by what she had done or by the words “the prostitute.” Rahab was an outsider to Israel because she was a Gentile (non-Jewish). This outsider, however, went against her city, her heritage, the religion she had grown up with, and her king because she recognized the one true

God and chose to serve Him. Her willingness not to be held back by her past and move forward to her future with God reminds me of what the apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13-14:

13 Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 

Is there anything in your past, or in your life now, that is keeping you from living in the fullness of God? Drop it before God and move forward in the power of the Holy Spirit!