Joshua 2:1-24 - Rahab & the Spies

Introduction: The God of Redemption

Good evening, church family. It is great to be here with you tonight. My name is Josh, and I serve as our Midweek and Fig Garden campus pastor. I’m excited to be able to open up God’s Word to you tonight. We’re going to be in Joshua chapter two. If you’re kind of new to the Bible, that’s the sixth book in the Old Testament.

I’ve got a question for you: How many of you have ever just messed up horribly in life? Like, at least once? Okay, about half of us. That’s great. Well, I am one of those people. I have messed up horribly. Have you ever messed up where you thought it couldn’t get any worse, you couldn’t go any lower, and then you did? Maybe it was a situation where you felt as if you weren’t going to be able to recover. Maybe there’s no hope for redemption in your situation.

Well, the good news is we serve a God who can bring redemption to any and every person. We’re going to see that tonight in Joshua chapter two.

As you’re turning there, let’s look at some of the things we’ve covered so far. In Genesis, God made a promise to Abraham to redeem all of humanity. He promised him descendants, a land, and that he would bless the entire world. We know that blessing came through Jesus. But over time, the Israelites became slaves in Egypt for four hundred years. God raised up Moses to deliver them, but once they were on the cusp of the Promised Land, they lost their faith. They grumbled and turned to idols, so they wandered in the desert for forty years.

In Joshua chapter one, we saw that Moses has died. Joshua, who was Moses’ right-hand man, has been raised up to lead. There is no job harder in the world than following in the shadow of a man named Moses. So God told Joshua three times, “Be strong and courageous.” Last week, Mike showed us how Joshua began to lead by calling the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh to keep their word and join the fight. That brings us to chapter two.

Wisdom from Evaluated Experience

As Joshua looks westward, across the Jordan River, sits the city of Jericho. It’s a fortress city. It’s the key to the passageway to the central highlands of the Promised Land. Naturally, he wants some intelligence. He needs information, so he sends two spies.

Joshua 2:1 (NASB)

Then Joshua the son of Nun sent two men as spies secretly from Shittim, saying, ‘Go, view the land, especially Jericho.’ So they went and came into the house of a harlot whose name was Rahab, and lodged there.

Now, this alludes back to Numbers thirteen and fourteen. Forty years before this moment, Moses had sent twelve spies into the land—one from each tribe. Joshua was one of those guys. When they came back, ten of them were filled with fear. They saw giants and said, “There’s no way we can beat these guys.” But Joshua and his friend Caleb stood up and said, “No, we can do it. God has promised this to us.”

Numbers 13:1-33 (NASB)

Then the LORD spoke to Moses saying, ‘Send out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel; you shall send a man from each of their fathers’ tribes, every one a leader among them.’ So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command of the LORD, all of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel. These then [were] their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur; from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori; from the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh; from the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph; from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Nun; from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu; from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi; from the tribe of Joseph, from the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi; from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli; from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael; from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi; from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi. These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land; but Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua. When Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, he said to them, ’Go up there into the Negev; then go up into the hill country. ’See what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong [or] weak, whether they are few or many. ’How is the land in which they live, is it good or bad? And how are the cities in which they live, are [they] like [open] camps or with fortifications? ‘How is the land, is it fat or lean? Are there trees in it or not? Make an effort then to get some of the fruit of the land.’ Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes. So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, at Lebo-hamath. When they had gone up into the Negev, they came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) Then they came to the valley of Eshcol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes; and they carried it on a pole between two [men], with some of the pomegranates and the figs. That place was called the valley of Eshcol, because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut down from there. When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days, they proceeded to come to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; and they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Thus they told him, and said, ’We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. ’Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified [and] very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. ‘Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.’ Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, ‘We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.’ But the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.’ So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, ’The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of [great] size. ‘There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.’

Back then, the people were so filled with fear that they actually picked up stones to kill Joshua and Caleb just for saying, “Let’s be faithful to our faithful God.” Because of that lack of faith, God disciplined the Israelites, and they wandered for forty years until that whole generation died off—except for Joshua and Caleb.

So here Joshua is, now in charge of sending the spies. He does it a little differently. He only sends two. You know, it could be that Joshua was thinking, “Man, if the first time it had just been me and Caleb, right now we’d be celebrating the fortieth birthday of the nation, not mustering up for battle at sixty years old.” Oof, right? He also sends them secretly. See, if these guys came back with a bad report, Joshua wasn’t going to have a crowd waiting to hear it. He was going to make sure that if those boys came back with a bad report, the only one they told was him.

We’ve heard that wisdom comes with experience, but I would say it’s better said that wisdom comes with evaluated experience. That’s what we see Joshua demonstrating here. These two unnamed spies risk their lives, swimming the Jordan River during high tide and sneaking into Jericho to gather information.

An Unexpected Refuge

They end up in the house of a woman named Rahab. We are told she is a harlot, a prostitute. Yet God, in His providence, led the two spies to her house.

God had a bigger plan for Rahab’s life. He had a greater vision for her than she realized. God had a plan of redemption for Israel, and He also had a redemptive plan for Rahab. As you consider your own life, I wonder if you believe that’s true of you. Do you believe God has a greater vision for your life? Every person we lock eyes with, including the person in the mirror, is someone created in the image of God. God has a redemptive plan for each and every one of us, for His purposes and His glory.

However, the spies weren’t as undercover as they thought. Their cover is blown quickly.

Joshua 2:2-3 (NASB)

It was told the king of Jericho, saying, ‘Behold, men from the sons of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.’ And the king of Jericho sent [word] to Rahab, saying, ‘Bring out the men who have come to you, who have entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.’

The king of Jericho assumes Rahab will be loyal to him. He thinks this is all going to work out, but he doesn’t realize that Rahab is actually a lot smarter and shrewder than he thinks. She chooses to save the lives of these two spies by hiding them under stalks of flax on her flat roof.

Joshua 2:4-7 (NASB)

But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them, and she said, ’Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. ‘It came about when [it was time] to shut the gate at dark, that the men went out; I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.’ But she had brought them up to the roof and hidden them in the stalks of flax which she had laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued them on the road to the Jordan to the fords; and as soon as those who were pursuing them had gone out, they shut the gate.

She tells the king’s soldiers, “Yeah, they were here, but I didn’t know where they were from. They left at dark—if you hurry, you can catch them!” She sends them on a wild goose chase while the spies are still sitting on her roof.

Now, you might be wondering, “Is Rahab lying?” There’s no way to water it down: Yes, she is. Over the centuries, some commentators have condemned her for this, while others have commended her for choosing the greater good of saving lives during a time of war. The New Testament doesn’t focus on her methods, but it clearly sets her apart as an example of faith for saving those messengers.

James 2:25 (NASB)

In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?

The Climax: A Declaration of Faith

In verse eight, we see her motive. What motivated Rahab to turn against her own people?

Joshua 2:8-11 (NASB)

Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, and said to the men, ’I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted 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 utterly destroyed. ’When we heard [it], our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.

This is the climax of chapter two: Rahab’s declaration of faith. She is claiming that she believes in the God of Israel. She believes God is fulfilling His promises to Abraham. She speaks about the absolute fear the Canaanites have because word has reached the streets: You don’t want to mess with the God of the Hebrews.

People would travel the trade routes and see Egypt decimated—the greatest empire in the world swallowed up in the Red Sea. They’d see two million people wandering in the desert and think, “What is going on?” Then they heard about the Amorite kings, Sihon and Og. These were giant kings—men who made Shaq look like a shrimp. When they opposed Israel, God defended His people and gave them the land.

Word reached Jericho: The most powerful empire was defeated. The most powerful kings were defeated. No one who stands against the Hebrews can stand. Notice the response this stirs in Rahab. She declares that God is “God in heaven above and on earth beneath.” Her language reflects the very words Moses used.

Deuteronomy 4:39 (NASB)

’Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.

Rahab responds to the light she has been given. In Jericho, there were two ways to respond to this melting fear. You can harden your heart and double down in rebellion, which is what Pharaoh and the other kings did. Or, you can let your heart soften. You can realize that while God is all-powerful and terrifying, He is also good and faithful. You can align with Him and trust Him. This is the choice Rahab made.

A Choice of the Heart

Friends, this is the choice we still have today. I think back to my own life. I was raised with a Christian worldview, but by my early teens, I had walked away. I was living as a prodigal son, getting wasted every weekend, living in the muck and the mire. At nineteen, I knew I needed a change. I thought, “Maybe when I’m twenty-three I’ll get right with God. Let me live it up in college first.”

But then my car got wrecked. My relationships got wrecked. I looked in the mirror and realized I despised the narcissistic, pleasure-seeking darkness of my life. Instead of hardening my heart, I was led to soften it. At nineteen, I truly surrendered my life to Jesus. It wasn’t easy, but it was beautiful. I experienced the life-transforming power of the Spirit and a new purpose.

We face these battles every day on a smaller scale. Do I speak kindly to my wife, or do I put another brick in the wall between us? Do I take another drink, or not? Do I pray for this person, or gossip about them? We can double down, or we can soften before the Holy Spirit.

How have you responded to God? Which direction is your heart headed today? As Tim Keller famously put it: “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

The Covenant of Hesed

Rahab then asks for protection for her family.

Joshua 2:12-14 (NASB)

‘Now therefore, please swear to me by the LORD, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father’s household, and give me a pledge of truth, and spare my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters, with all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.’ So the men said to her, ‘Our life for yours if you do not tell this business of ours; and it shall come about when the LORD gives us the land that we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.’

She uses a significant word here: hesed. It’s a “mashup” word that means loyal, steadfast, faithful love based on a covenant. It speaks to keeping promises. It is a word frequently applied to God’s character. Rahab is essentially saying, “As God is faithful, would you be faithful to me?”

Maybe we need a reminder of this. Some of us have a lackadaisical approach to God, treating Him like a genie or a buddy. We need a little more reverential fear of His holiness. Others see God as cold and distant, and you need to be reminded of His kindness. Jesus said He numbers the hairs on your head. His kindness leads us to repentance.

Rahab then lets the spies down through a window in the city wall.

Joshua 2:15 (NASB)

Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the city wall, so that she was living on the wall.

Architecturally, Jericho likely had a double wall, and the houses of the poor were often built between those walls. This reinforces that God was “stacking the deck” against Himself—two walls had to come down for the city to fall. Before the spies leave, they give her a condition for her safety.

Joshua 2:16-21 (NASB)

She said to them, ‘Go to the hill country, so that the pursuers will not happen upon you, and hide yourselves there for three days until the pursuers return. Then afterward you may go on your way.’ The men said to her, ’We [shall be] free from this oath to you which you have made us swear, unless, when we come into the land, you tie this cord of scarlet thread in the window through which you let us down, and gather to yourself into the house your father and your mother and your brothers and all your father’s household. ’It shall come about that anyone who goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood [shall be] on his own head, and we [shall be] free; but anyone who is with you in the house, his blood [shall be] on our head if a hand is [laid] on him. ‘But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be free from the oath which you have made us swear.’ She said, ‘According to your words, so be it.’ So she sent them away, and they departed; and she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

Rahab must tie a scarlet cord in her window and gather her family inside. This scarlet cord has deep significance. Many see it as a connection to the Passover in Exodus.

Exodus 12:1-13 (NASB)

Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ’This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you. ’Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household. ’Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons [in them]; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb. ’Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. ’You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. ’Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ’They shall eat the flesh that [same] night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. ’Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, [both] its head and its legs along with its entrails. ’And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire. ’Now you shall eat it in this manner: [with] your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste– it is the LORD’S Passover. ’For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments– I am the LORD. ’The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy [you] when I strike the land of Egypt.

In Egypt, the blood of a lamb on the doorpost meant the angel of death would pass over. Here, anyone under the scarlet cord would be protected. Ultimately, the Passover pointed to Jesus, the true Lamb of God. In the same way, this scarlet cord is a symbol of the blood of Christ. As Justin Martyr said in the second century: “The scarlet thread also manifested the symbol of the blood of Christ by which those who were at one time harlots and unrighteous persons out of all nations are saved.”

The Report of Victory

After hiding in the limestone caves for three days, the spies return to Joshua.

Joshua 2:22-24 (NASB)

They departed and came to the hill country, and remained there for three days until the pursuers returned. Now the pursuers had sought [them] all along the road, but had not found [them]. Then the two men returned and came down from the hill country and crossed over and came to Joshua the son of Nun, and they related to him all that had happened to them. They said to Joshua, ‘Surely the LORD has given all the land into our hands; moreover, all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before us.’

Their conclusion? “Joshua, it’s time to go. God has given us the land.” Can you imagine Joshua’s face? He must have been grinning from ear to ear. He’s looking at these two young spies and thinking, “Chips off the old block! Joshua and Caleb Junior!” He’s experiencing a moment of redemption, remembering when he and Caleb were the only ones who believed. Forty years later, he sees that same faith in the next generation.

Has God ever shown you that you were faithful during a difficult season? Maybe you felt alone at the time, but later He redeemed it. Joshua waited forty years for this moment. Can you trust God while you wait?

Why This Matters Today

Why is this story here for us thirty-five hundred years later? It’s here because God is a faithful God who is all about the redemption of His people. I want to leave you with two thoughts.

First, God’s redemption often comes to unexpected people in unexpected places. If we were guessing who God was already working on in Jericho, a prostitute wouldn’t be our first choice. Yet, that’s exactly where His plan was unfolding. Where have you seen God bring redemption in unexpected ways? Some of us are saying, “That’s me. I can’t believe God would redeem someone like me.” Thank God for those moments. You will face situations where it’s hard to believe God can work, and you’ll need to remember Rahab.

Second, God’s redemption always leads to transformation. At The Well, we say: “Come as you are, but don’t stay there.” We want to be authentic. We are broken, messy, and struggling. If you’re looking for perfect people, don’t come here. But we don’t want to stay where we are. We want to be restorative. We want to experience freedom from addictions and healing for broken marriages.

Rahab went from a prostitute to a pillar of faith. Thirty-five hundred years later, we still know her name. She is one of only two women mentioned in the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews.

Hebrews 11:31 (NASB)

By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after she had welcomed the spies in peace.

She is even included in the genealogy of Jesus. In His human ancestry, the Savior of the world claims Rahab as an ancestor.

Friends, we are all Rahab. We have all been unrighteous before God. But we can all come to an all-powerful God and experience redemption through Christ. Jesus went to the cross to pay for your sins. He was buried and raised to life. To believe in Jesus is to embrace Him and say, “You are Lord. I surrender.”

I don’t know all of you, but I know there is a God who loves you. Before you were born, He envisioned your life with purpose. He is here tonight, and He will joyfully forgive every regret and every secret if you just turn to Him.

Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word and for the story of Rahab, which shines as an example of redemption. I pray for each person here, that we would allow our hearts to be softened and embrace Your hope and goodness. Lead us to take whatever courageous step of faith is next. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.