Radical Faith; Redeeming Grace (Joshua 2:1-24)
May 4, 2025

Two Main Ideas:

I want us to be Motivated to have

Rahab’s Actions (2:1-7)
1. A Faith that saves is a faith that Obeys
a) By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.(Hebrews 11:31)
b) You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.(James 2:24-26)

B. Rahab’s Confession (2:8-11)

C. Rahab’s Desperation (2:12-14)

I want us to be Moved by Gods

A. God’s Kindness

  1. See Verses 12-14:
    a) She even uses a very special technical word, חֶסֶד (ḥesed, “mercy”), often reserved for covenant discussions, to couch her request. The weight of this single word alone may suggest she has more in mind than simple self-preservation (Mark Zeise)
    b) Hesed=”Loyalty to Covenant Obligations.”
    a. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands,[a] forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”(Exodus 34:6-7)

B. God’s Redemption

  1. Verses 15-21
  2. Rope of Hope
    a) Perhaps some of these questions are solved when this interpretative image is adjusted. A fresh start begins with the realization that a traditional reading of the text offers an odd twist of meaning for tiqwath. Understanding this word as “cord” or “rope” is without parallel in more than thirty occurrences of the word in the text of the Old Testament. In every other case, without exception, tiqwath is translated as “hope,” or as one source puts it, the “expectations associated with the duration and quality of human life.”

  1. Examples:
    a) Tamar (Genesis 38)
    b) Passover (Exodus 12)
  2. Matthew’s Geneaology!