God's Promises Encourage Greater Faith
Joshua 2:12-24
This morning I want to begin with a little review and pull a couple loose ends together. You may remember that I said a few weeks ago that there are three basic sections to the chapter we just read. In this passage we see Rahab concealing, confessing, and covenanting. She concealed the spies. She confessed her faith. And in our passage today, she’s making a formal covenant with God and the people of Israel. The men swear and oath and give her a promise to deliver her when the time comes.
You may also remember that we outlined a chiasm as another way to structure this passage. The first few verses talk about Rahab’s truthfulness. And that’s complemented by the truthfulness of the spies. They show their faithfulness by making this covenant with her.
Now, this morning, I want to talk about this covenant. And I want to do so because this covenant is ultimately a covenant of grace. Even though the spies are the ones who are talking, God is the one at work. God is making a pledge to save. It is ultimately the Lord’s covenant mercy that that is being displayed.
I’ve mentioned before that Rahab’s faith is pretty spectacular. She’s displayed a faith where she has risked her life and confessed the Lord in a beautiful way. And the NT holds her up as a star when it comes to her faith.
But no matter how spectacular her faith is, it is still a faith in need. Rahab’s faith was still human faith. So it is faith that is about as good as yours and mine. In sum, it still needs a lot of support.
That’s why this passage is so great. It puts on display how gracious God is. It shows you a God who delivers. It shows you that our God is a Saving God; one in whom you can put your faith.
We don’t want to just major on Rahab’s faith. It’s important that we zero in and highlight the beauty of God’s promise to deliver an utter wretches like you and me.
And so we’re going to look at God’s promise to save. And in doing so, I hope that your faith is given the same kind of support. I hope that by looking at God’s gracious promise that you’re faith in God’s promises will be given a greater assurance.
We’re going to consider three things about God’s promise of salvation. The first is his declaration of this promise. Then we’ll think about the scope of this promise. And we’ll conclude by talking about the sign God gives to validate his promise.
Let’s begin by talking about the declaration.
I. The declaration of this promise
I want you to look at verses 12 and 14. And I want you to notice the repetition of a particular word in these verses. In the ESV it is translated “deal kindly.” You may have it translated as shown kindness or something like that. Rahab says, “Swear to me that as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal kindly with me.” Then the spies reply in verse 14 that they will “deal kindly” with her.
That word “deal kindly” is the Hebrew word Hesed. This word has a special connotation in in the Hebrew language. As a matter of fact, a lot of people say it is difficult to translate into English because of its unique meaning.
The word Hesed has this idea of covenant loyalty. We can translated it deal kindly, but that may not give the whole sense of the term. It’s good. The idea is that you’re going to show kindness. But it is a special kind of kindness. It is a kindness that is undeserved. So it can also mean mercy and grace. Sometimes it is translated steadfast love. And it could mean faithfulness.
Rahab has shown these spies mercy. She had been faithful to them in that she did not give them up to the soldiers. And now she wants mercy from them. She wants them to be faithful to her.
But the best way to think of it is as covenant loyalty. Rahab has shown loyalty to the spies. Now she wants these spies to make a covenant with her and be loyal to that covenant.
Now perhaps you see the parallel that we were making in the first sermon that we had on Rahab. We talked about how Rahab had told a lie. She deceived the Jericho Gestapo when she said that they were not there. But even though she did not speak the truth when it came to the bare facts of the case. She spoke the truth because it was covenant loyalty. It was a form of faithfulness to God. Truth, as we said, should be understood in relation to God’s covenant.
And that’s what you are really seeing here. These spies are declaring truth to Rahab because they are promising to be faithful to her and deal kindly with her.
And that is the sum and substance of God’s saving promise. I want you to understand that salvation is God’s promising to be faithful and loyal to us. He pledges to deal kindly with us and give us that which we do not deserve. His promise is truth because it is related to his loyalty to the covenant that he makes with us, to be gracious to us and deliver us from his wrath.
This word, “hesed” is a word that should have a lot of meaning to you. It should be a word that you cling to and gives you encouragement. It is a word that should assures you that God will not deal with you according to your sins. But he will deal with you on the basis of his grace. He’ll deal with you on the basis of a covenant to which he will be loyal. God makes a promise that he will be merciful to you. So you can be assured that He will deal kindly with you. He is hesed towards you in that he is loyal and faithful to his promise of salvation.
So there is no need to fear. There is no need to doubt. We may have all those anxieties about judgment and death washed away because God is hesed towards us.
This is what we find reflected in Jesus when he says, “he who comes to me, I will by no means cast out.” What’s he saying there? He doesn’t use the word hesed, but he’s using the idea. He’s pledging covenant loyalty. He promises that he will not cast you out. He promises that he will deal faithfully with you. He will be merciful to you. He is pledging his loyalty to you.
Those words of Jesus are reflective of these words that were spoken to Rahab. And they all are words that God declares unto us. And they encourage us to trust him for our redemption.
There’s a second thing I want you to note from this passage. Along with the declaration of the promise, we should note the recipients of this promise.
II. The scope of God’s promise
And I want to simply say here that what I’m going to say in this point is going to be very Presbyterian. I know that some of my Baptist brethren may disagree with this point. And this is an area where we can have some fun talks. This is one of those areas where we will have some diversity of opinion. But I want you to at least consider the fact that God’s covenant promise has a corporate dimension to it.
There is not just covenantal language that God uses, I want to suggest that there is also covenantal action on the part of God. God speaks his covenantal loyalty in the word hesed, but it is interesting to whom he pledges this loyalty not just to Rahab, but to her whole family.
Look at verse 12. Rahab pleads that the men will deal kindly, not just with her, but with her father’s house. And in verse 13 she spells it out even further as to what that means. She asks that the Lord will save alive “her father and mother, brothers and sisters,” and not just them, “but all that belong to them.” In other words, their children and perhaps maybe some slaves that they may have.
And you see that the spies affirm exactly what she wants in verses 18-20. They tell her to make sure that her father’s household be gathered into the house. If anyone isn’t in the house, they say, “We can’t be held responsible for what happens to them.” But for everyone who is inside, you can be assured that they will not be harmed when the siege is laid to the city.
So the promise has a pretty wide audience. That’s why I say we have to understand this in a covenantal way.
Now this is a very different way of looking at how God operates. We as Americans are very individualistic in our thinking. We believe that if I walk down the aisle and receive Jesus then that has ramifications for me and me alone.
But while individual salvation is a very good and proper thing, we have to understand that God typically operates on a much larger level. God’s normal way of working is through families and by means of a covenant with the entirety of those families.
You remember that this is how God initially dealt with Noah. God shed his favor with Noah and his whole family. Noah was the believer, but his entire family entered into the Ark. All eight persons (Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives) all were delivered from the flood that came over the earth.
When God entered into a covenant with Abraham, it wasn’t just with Abraham, it was with his whole household (his children and even his servants).
We see this in the life of David too. You remember that he had a child with Bathsheba who died. And David took God’s covenant to heart and was comforted by it. And he said, “he will not come to me, but I will go to him.” He was trusting that God’s promises were going to be fulfilled in his son.
And I personally believe that you find this happening in the New Testament. On the day of Pentecost Peter says, “the promise is to you and to your children.” And then later in the book of Acts we read about whole households being saved. Acts 16 talks about how Lydia believed and was saved and her whole household. And we read about the Philippian Jailor and how salvation came to his whole household.
All these are ways of acknowledging the fact that there is typically a corporate dimension to God’s covenant.
Now, does this mean that all who are born to a Christian home are saved? OF course not. We know that one of Noah’s sons ended up being an unbeliever. The same is true for Ismael, and Esau. There are certainly some covenant children who stray from the faith and break covenant with the Lord.
But though there maybe exceptions to the rule, we should understand that God’s normal way of working is through a covenant with whole households. And that should do two things for us, it should make us as believers earnest to point our families towards the Lord and encourage them to be faithful to Him.
But it should also give us hope and encourage us to know that God deals mercifully with us and the rest of those who may be living under our roof. This certainly shows us the real bounty of God’s mercy, that his mercy is overflowing and is displayed in such liberal proportions.
Now again, I recognize that may be a foreign concept to you. It may be something that strikes you as odd and it may need some more reflection. That’s great. It may be something that a number of you do not fully agree with. But it is at least something to ponder. And it is, I believe something to marvel at and does deserve some good reflection.
But I want to leave you with something we can all certainly agree upon. I want us to think about the sign of God’s saving promise.
III. The sign of God’s promise
Look again at Rehab’s request in verse 12. She says swear to me that you will deal kindly with me and give me a sure sign. She wanted a tangible token that would further assure her that the promises made to her would not be broken. She wanted something visible—something that she could grasp hold of physically, which would be a guarantee to her that the Lord would be gracious to her and deliver her from the coming destruction.
So what sign did the men give her? Now, it is probably obvious that they didn’t have anything on themselves. They probably were traveling light and had to come up with something there on the spot. So they chose the thing that was readily available to them: the rope with which they were climbing down the wall.
This is a good choice for a couple of reasons. First, this rope was part of their deliverance. They were escaping Jericho undetected by being let down through the window with this rope. So it’s already got some redemptive significance to it.
But there’s this added idea of its being red. These guys would have been familiar with the story of the Passover. Their parents would have told them how the angel of the Lord came sweeping through Egypt one night. They would have known the story of how the Israelites had to take a lamb and put its blood above their doorposts. That would be the sign that the Lord should not bring death and destruction to that household.
This is essentially what we see happening right here in Jericho. These Hebrew spies basically tell Rahab to reenact the Passover story.
But this is the point: Rahab has something that confirms her faith and her hope. She has a sign of the promise God has made.
Imagine how that next week would have been for her. Imagine what would be running through her mind and how that cord would have had a calming influence upon her. These guys run out her window and as soon as they do, imagine what has got to be going on in her head? She’s got to be questioning whether or not these guys are going to live up to their word. She’s a Canaanite after all. She’s a prostitute. How can she be sure that the Lord would be gracious to her? How can she be sure that these Hebrews wouldn’t come and kill her and her family off with all the other pagan Canaanites?
Do you understand how nervous she’s got to be? There’s got to be all kinds of doubts and questions running through her mind. The whole town is quaking with fear. Who’s to say that Rahab’s heart doesn’t tremble at the fear of being slaughtered when the Lord comes sweeping through?
But every time hear heart starts to palpitate—every time she starts to doubt the promise, every time she would look out her window to see if the armies of Israel were coming, she would see that scarlet cord. And it would remind her of the promises. She would be reassured that God’s given her His word. That rope would preach to her and comfort her heart. It was a reminder that God has promised to save her and her.
Imagine how soothing that would be to her. What a comfort that cord was. It wasn’t just a signal to the Israelites what room she was in. It was a sign of God’s covenant promises to her and her household.
And my friends, this reminds us of what we have in our sacraments. God has given you visible, tangible signs of his everlasting favor as well. Your baptism and the Lord’s Supper operate in much the same manner. They were instituted by our Lord to confirm in you the reality of God’s promise to save you.
That’s why we have the Lord’s Supper so often here at our church. It’s to be like you’re looking out that window in Rahab’s house. Each week you get to lay your eyes on the fact that Christ was crucified on your behalf. You get to pick up that piece of bread and that cup to remember how the wrath of God has been fully satisfied and when the Lord comes to judge the earth, you will not be touched. You’ll be delivered because the penalty has been paid on your behalf in the body of Jesus.
The same holds true for your baptism. This one may be a little harder to wrap your mind around. We can’t see our baptism right here at this moment. It was something that was done in the past. But it’s power is still very much alive. It’s still a useful tool to help you are tempted to doubt. God’s put his mark upon you. If you are doubting if God will be gracious to you and overcome by the fact that you are a pagan sinner just like those Canaanites, you can remember your baptism. You can say, “God has made a promise to me. He’s covered me with the Blood of His Son, just as those waters have covered me.”
That baptism of yours was sign of his covenant with you. That and the Lord’s Supper are to be signs that constantly comfort you and reassure you that that God will fulfill the promises he has made to you: to save you and to deliver you from the wrath to come.
And as we come to the table of our Lord again this morning, I pray that you will find the encouragement that he offers there. I pray that the gospel will be preached to your eyes and to your tongue and to your fingertips as you take them into your hands. I pray that you will be confirmed in the reality of his grace and know for certain that Jesus Christ has made a perfect satisfaction for all your sins.
You may also remember that we outlined a chiasm as another way to structure this passage. The first few verses talk about Rahab’s truthfulness. And that’s complemented by the truthfulness of the spies. They show their faithfulness by making this covenant with her.
Now, this morning, I want to talk about this covenant. And I want to do so because this covenant is ultimately a covenant of grace. Even though the spies are the ones who are talking, God is the one at work. God is making a pledge to save. It is ultimately the Lord’s covenant mercy that that is being displayed.
I’ve mentioned before that Rahab’s faith is pretty spectacular. She’s displayed a faith where she has risked her life and confessed the Lord in a beautiful way. And the NT holds her up as a star when it comes to her faith.
But no matter how spectacular her faith is, it is still a faith in need. Rahab’s faith was still human faith. So it is faith that is about as good as yours and mine. In sum, it still needs a lot of support.
That’s why this passage is so great. It puts on display how gracious God is. It shows you a God who delivers. It shows you that our God is a Saving God; one in whom you can put your faith.
We don’t want to just major on Rahab’s faith. It’s important that we zero in and highlight the beauty of God’s promise to deliver an utter wretches like you and me.
And so we’re going to look at God’s promise to save. And in doing so, I hope that your faith is given the same kind of support. I hope that by looking at God’s gracious promise that you’re faith in God’s promises will be given a greater assurance.
We’re going to consider three things about God’s promise of salvation. The first is his declaration of this promise. Then we’ll think about the scope of this promise. And we’ll conclude by talking about the sign God gives to validate his promise.
Let’s begin by talking about the declaration.
I. The declaration of this promise
I want you to look at verses 12 and 14. And I want you to notice the repetition of a particular word in these verses. In the ESV it is translated “deal kindly.” You may have it translated as shown kindness or something like that. Rahab says, “Swear to me that as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal kindly with me.” Then the spies reply in verse 14 that they will “deal kindly” with her.
That word “deal kindly” is the Hebrew word Hesed. This word has a special connotation in in the Hebrew language. As a matter of fact, a lot of people say it is difficult to translate into English because of its unique meaning.
The word Hesed has this idea of covenant loyalty. We can translated it deal kindly, but that may not give the whole sense of the term. It’s good. The idea is that you’re going to show kindness. But it is a special kind of kindness. It is a kindness that is undeserved. So it can also mean mercy and grace. Sometimes it is translated steadfast love. And it could mean faithfulness.
Rahab has shown these spies mercy. She had been faithful to them in that she did not give them up to the soldiers. And now she wants mercy from them. She wants them to be faithful to her.
But the best way to think of it is as covenant loyalty. Rahab has shown loyalty to the spies. Now she wants these spies to make a covenant with her and be loyal to that covenant.
Now perhaps you see the parallel that we were making in the first sermon that we had on Rahab. We talked about how Rahab had told a lie. She deceived the Jericho Gestapo when she said that they were not there. But even though she did not speak the truth when it came to the bare facts of the case. She spoke the truth because it was covenant loyalty. It was a form of faithfulness to God. Truth, as we said, should be understood in relation to God’s covenant.
And that’s what you are really seeing here. These spies are declaring truth to Rahab because they are promising to be faithful to her and deal kindly with her.
And that is the sum and substance of God’s saving promise. I want you to understand that salvation is God’s promising to be faithful and loyal to us. He pledges to deal kindly with us and give us that which we do not deserve. His promise is truth because it is related to his loyalty to the covenant that he makes with us, to be gracious to us and deliver us from his wrath.
This word, “hesed” is a word that should have a lot of meaning to you. It should be a word that you cling to and gives you encouragement. It is a word that should assures you that God will not deal with you according to your sins. But he will deal with you on the basis of his grace. He’ll deal with you on the basis of a covenant to which he will be loyal. God makes a promise that he will be merciful to you. So you can be assured that He will deal kindly with you. He is hesed towards you in that he is loyal and faithful to his promise of salvation.
So there is no need to fear. There is no need to doubt. We may have all those anxieties about judgment and death washed away because God is hesed towards us.
This is what we find reflected in Jesus when he says, “he who comes to me, I will by no means cast out.” What’s he saying there? He doesn’t use the word hesed, but he’s using the idea. He’s pledging covenant loyalty. He promises that he will not cast you out. He promises that he will deal faithfully with you. He will be merciful to you. He is pledging his loyalty to you.
Those words of Jesus are reflective of these words that were spoken to Rahab. And they all are words that God declares unto us. And they encourage us to trust him for our redemption.
There’s a second thing I want you to note from this passage. Along with the declaration of the promise, we should note the recipients of this promise.
II. The scope of God’s promise
And I want to simply say here that what I’m going to say in this point is going to be very Presbyterian. I know that some of my Baptist brethren may disagree with this point. And this is an area where we can have some fun talks. This is one of those areas where we will have some diversity of opinion. But I want you to at least consider the fact that God’s covenant promise has a corporate dimension to it.
There is not just covenantal language that God uses, I want to suggest that there is also covenantal action on the part of God. God speaks his covenantal loyalty in the word hesed, but it is interesting to whom he pledges this loyalty not just to Rahab, but to her whole family.
Look at verse 12. Rahab pleads that the men will deal kindly, not just with her, but with her father’s house. And in verse 13 she spells it out even further as to what that means. She asks that the Lord will save alive “her father and mother, brothers and sisters,” and not just them, “but all that belong to them.” In other words, their children and perhaps maybe some slaves that they may have.
And you see that the spies affirm exactly what she wants in verses 18-20. They tell her to make sure that her father’s household be gathered into the house. If anyone isn’t in the house, they say, “We can’t be held responsible for what happens to them.” But for everyone who is inside, you can be assured that they will not be harmed when the siege is laid to the city.
So the promise has a pretty wide audience. That’s why I say we have to understand this in a covenantal way.
Now this is a very different way of looking at how God operates. We as Americans are very individualistic in our thinking. We believe that if I walk down the aisle and receive Jesus then that has ramifications for me and me alone.
But while individual salvation is a very good and proper thing, we have to understand that God typically operates on a much larger level. God’s normal way of working is through families and by means of a covenant with the entirety of those families.
You remember that this is how God initially dealt with Noah. God shed his favor with Noah and his whole family. Noah was the believer, but his entire family entered into the Ark. All eight persons (Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives) all were delivered from the flood that came over the earth.
When God entered into a covenant with Abraham, it wasn’t just with Abraham, it was with his whole household (his children and even his servants).
We see this in the life of David too. You remember that he had a child with Bathsheba who died. And David took God’s covenant to heart and was comforted by it. And he said, “he will not come to me, but I will go to him.” He was trusting that God’s promises were going to be fulfilled in his son.
And I personally believe that you find this happening in the New Testament. On the day of Pentecost Peter says, “the promise is to you and to your children.” And then later in the book of Acts we read about whole households being saved. Acts 16 talks about how Lydia believed and was saved and her whole household. And we read about the Philippian Jailor and how salvation came to his whole household.
All these are ways of acknowledging the fact that there is typically a corporate dimension to God’s covenant.
Now, does this mean that all who are born to a Christian home are saved? OF course not. We know that one of Noah’s sons ended up being an unbeliever. The same is true for Ismael, and Esau. There are certainly some covenant children who stray from the faith and break covenant with the Lord.
But though there maybe exceptions to the rule, we should understand that God’s normal way of working is through a covenant with whole households. And that should do two things for us, it should make us as believers earnest to point our families towards the Lord and encourage them to be faithful to Him.
But it should also give us hope and encourage us to know that God deals mercifully with us and the rest of those who may be living under our roof. This certainly shows us the real bounty of God’s mercy, that his mercy is overflowing and is displayed in such liberal proportions.
Now again, I recognize that may be a foreign concept to you. It may be something that strikes you as odd and it may need some more reflection. That’s great. It may be something that a number of you do not fully agree with. But it is at least something to ponder. And it is, I believe something to marvel at and does deserve some good reflection.
But I want to leave you with something we can all certainly agree upon. I want us to think about the sign of God’s saving promise.
III. The sign of God’s promise
Look again at Rehab’s request in verse 12. She says swear to me that you will deal kindly with me and give me a sure sign. She wanted a tangible token that would further assure her that the promises made to her would not be broken. She wanted something visible—something that she could grasp hold of physically, which would be a guarantee to her that the Lord would be gracious to her and deliver her from the coming destruction.
So what sign did the men give her? Now, it is probably obvious that they didn’t have anything on themselves. They probably were traveling light and had to come up with something there on the spot. So they chose the thing that was readily available to them: the rope with which they were climbing down the wall.
This is a good choice for a couple of reasons. First, this rope was part of their deliverance. They were escaping Jericho undetected by being let down through the window with this rope. So it’s already got some redemptive significance to it.
But there’s this added idea of its being red. These guys would have been familiar with the story of the Passover. Their parents would have told them how the angel of the Lord came sweeping through Egypt one night. They would have known the story of how the Israelites had to take a lamb and put its blood above their doorposts. That would be the sign that the Lord should not bring death and destruction to that household.
This is essentially what we see happening right here in Jericho. These Hebrew spies basically tell Rahab to reenact the Passover story.
But this is the point: Rahab has something that confirms her faith and her hope. She has a sign of the promise God has made.
Imagine how that next week would have been for her. Imagine what would be running through her mind and how that cord would have had a calming influence upon her. These guys run out her window and as soon as they do, imagine what has got to be going on in her head? She’s got to be questioning whether or not these guys are going to live up to their word. She’s a Canaanite after all. She’s a prostitute. How can she be sure that the Lord would be gracious to her? How can she be sure that these Hebrews wouldn’t come and kill her and her family off with all the other pagan Canaanites?
Do you understand how nervous she’s got to be? There’s got to be all kinds of doubts and questions running through her mind. The whole town is quaking with fear. Who’s to say that Rahab’s heart doesn’t tremble at the fear of being slaughtered when the Lord comes sweeping through?
But every time hear heart starts to palpitate—every time she starts to doubt the promise, every time she would look out her window to see if the armies of Israel were coming, she would see that scarlet cord. And it would remind her of the promises. She would be reassured that God’s given her His word. That rope would preach to her and comfort her heart. It was a reminder that God has promised to save her and her.
Imagine how soothing that would be to her. What a comfort that cord was. It wasn’t just a signal to the Israelites what room she was in. It was a sign of God’s covenant promises to her and her household.
And my friends, this reminds us of what we have in our sacraments. God has given you visible, tangible signs of his everlasting favor as well. Your baptism and the Lord’s Supper operate in much the same manner. They were instituted by our Lord to confirm in you the reality of God’s promise to save you.
That’s why we have the Lord’s Supper so often here at our church. It’s to be like you’re looking out that window in Rahab’s house. Each week you get to lay your eyes on the fact that Christ was crucified on your behalf. You get to pick up that piece of bread and that cup to remember how the wrath of God has been fully satisfied and when the Lord comes to judge the earth, you will not be touched. You’ll be delivered because the penalty has been paid on your behalf in the body of Jesus.
The same holds true for your baptism. This one may be a little harder to wrap your mind around. We can’t see our baptism right here at this moment. It was something that was done in the past. But it’s power is still very much alive. It’s still a useful tool to help you are tempted to doubt. God’s put his mark upon you. If you are doubting if God will be gracious to you and overcome by the fact that you are a pagan sinner just like those Canaanites, you can remember your baptism. You can say, “God has made a promise to me. He’s covered me with the Blood of His Son, just as those waters have covered me.”
That baptism of yours was sign of his covenant with you. That and the Lord’s Supper are to be signs that constantly comfort you and reassure you that that God will fulfill the promises he has made to you: to save you and to deliver you from the wrath to come.
And as we come to the table of our Lord again this morning, I pray that you will find the encouragement that he offers there. I pray that the gospel will be preached to your eyes and to your tongue and to your fingertips as you take them into your hands. I pray that you will be confirmed in the reality of his grace and know for certain that Jesus Christ has made a perfect satisfaction for all your sins.