The Story of Rahab

Your future, it can seem mysterious and frightening. But there's good news. God has a promised land for you to move into, courageously and fearlessly. And the book of Joshua shows you how it can happen. How to live your promised land life. Is that for the video or for me? I can't tell. I'll take it. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Adrian, one of the pastors here. And you might know me from my work during the announcements, usually. But as you'll see, I can talk longer than that. So I got some more stuff to say.

Well, I'm very excited to be here to share with you God's word this morning. And excited on this new series, Promised Land Living, René kicked us off last week. And we are looking at the book of Joshua. And we're looking at the story of Israel moving from the wilderness to the promised land, Canaan. And so this week, we move into Joshua 2. Take out your notes that look like this. If you want to follow along, it's also in the Twin Lakes Church app. If you're watching online, you can click the little paper button there to download the notes. And if you want to take out your Bible, you can turn it to Joshua 2. We're going to be in Joshua 2 for the most of today.

And today, we're looking at the story of Rahab. And she's a hero of the Bible, which makes me think of something. There are probably some of you in here that are new to Twin Lakes Church, but maybe new to church, and the Bible, and Jesus, and everything. And we say, like Rahab, you don't know who that is. Or you'll hear us talk about different people in different places. And you feel a little inadequate because you think everybody else knows, and you don't know. But rest assured, there are a lot of people who don't know. A lot of people are like, did he misspell Rahab? No, it is Rahab.

And the reason I care is because when I remember, when I was a young church—I just went to start going to church. I wasn't even a Christian yet. And I was at a Bible study with some friends. And the pastor said, in passing, oh, and everybody knows Joseph. And I stopped, and I said, no, who's Joseph? And everybody turned and looked at me like I was an alien. And I'm like, what? And then the pastor says out loud to me, you don't know who Joseph is? And I'm like, jeez, no, what am I supposed to know? I had never read the Bible. I had never been to church. I didn't go to Sunday school. And some of you, maybe you know him because of that Broadway play, Joseph and some whatever. But my parents are immigrants. I don't know what Broadway is. I've never heard of anything. And so I just felt embarrassed. And so I don't want you to feel embarrassed. You're welcome. You're safe here.

And I thought, you know what? To help you out, we're in the—I should have looked this up. I said this last service. The sixth book, I think? Yeah, sixth book. Joshua's the sixth book. And the history of Israel has gone through the beginning of the Old Testament. And I thought I would sort of recap it for you, from the middle of Genesis now to Joshua. And I thought I'd try to do that in 60 seconds. All right? Here we go. Abraham was the father of all Israel. He had kids who had kids. They became Israel. There were a lot of them, 12 of them specifically. And then God said, move here. And he went to Canaan. And his family grew. And because of a huge drought, they went to Egypt. And they lived there. And they grew and grew and became a million people.

But then Egypt said, no, we've got to make these people slaves. So they became slaves. Moses was born and said, I've got to get my people out of here. He went to Pharaoh. He said, let my people go. He said, no. He said, fine. They rained frogs and locusts and water turns into blood. Watch the movie. It was crazy. And so Moses says, let my people go. He says, fine. Get out of here. I'm tired of all this. Leave. They get to the Red Sea. God opens it up. They walk across. They get to Mount Sinai. The Ten Commandments get given. And then they're there for a little bit. Then they get to the Jordan River. That's two years after Egypt. They're standing there. Moses says, let's send 12 spies in, because who knows what's in there?

So they send the 12 spies in. Ten come back and say, no way. We cannot go in there. They're giants. They have weapons. They have computers. It's like craziness. That was a joke. And then two came back and said, no. We're supposed to go in there, because God has given us this land. Let's go. Everybody listens to the Ten and says, no. We don't want to go. God says, fine. You don't want to go. Get out of here. And you're stuck in the desert for 38 years, walking in circles until you're all dead. So they all die. Moses dies. Joshua becomes a leader. They're back at the Jordan River. Last week we saw Joshua 1. God said, this is your land. Be bold and courageous. Move on. And now we're at Joshua 2.

OK. How's it—oh. Let's pray. I'm leaving. I'm done. Amen. That's a good—I should have left on that one. Anyways, Joshua 2. So now you're all caught up, all right? If any of that was intelligible. Joshua 2 is such an interesting chapter of this book. What you have to understand is the book of Joshua is this epic historical book of Israel moving into the promised land, splitting up the land. It's kind of like Google Maps. Everybody's seen Google Maps, right? If you haven't seen Google Maps, I don't know what to say. So Google Maps is—I'm not going to explain it. Google Maps.

So when you go to Google Maps and you type in Santa Cruz, the first thing they do is show you this zoomed out version, bird's eye view. And you can see the west side, the coast, all the way down to Watsonville. And you see a bird's eye view. That's Joshua. It's his bird's eye view of Israel moving into Canaan. But Joshua 2 is like if you push Street View or take that little yellow guy and put him somewhere, you could zoom all the way down and you can see windows. Has anybody ever done this to your house? You googled your own house? No? Are you crazy? Go Google your house. It's fun because you can see in your window. And we've all done it. So you zoom down. Joshua 2 is the Street View. You zoom down and on the screen, you see a story.

In this huge book of history, you see a story of God showing love to a girl who no one else showed love to. To a girl who probably didn't love herself and didn't think anybody could love her. Because Joshua 2, if you want to fill this in your notes, is a human story inside a nation's story. In my prayers, as we see the story of this girl who probably feels unloved and unlovable, that maybe you're sitting in here like I have before and you felt that way. Unloved. Unlovable. My prayer is that you would be encouraged and you'd be challenged by her story. So let's dive in.

Now Joshua 2 begins and ends with that national story. It zooms in and then it zooms out. So we'll start there. Joshua 2:1 says, "Then Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp at Acacia Grove. He instructed them, scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan River, especially around Jericho." Well, if you remember my 60-second thing, this sounds very similar to what Moses did, who sent in spies. But there are two really big differences. Number one, he said, so Moses sends 12 spies. Joshua sends how many spies? Two. Now, the Bible doesn't tell us exactly why Joshua does this, but I'm going to take a guess.

Because 38 years before, 12 spies went in, 10 came back with the wrong report, and two came back with the right report. One of them was named Caleb. The other was named Joshua. Joshua's like, you only need two spies. And so he sends in two. And the second thing that's very different, he sends them secretly. If you remember, Moses had those spies come back, 10 of them came back and freaked everybody out. Right? And so Joshua knows, I mean, this is the thing, Joshua knows he's going into this land, where Moses was not sure. God told him, be bold and courageous. And 38 years later, he tried to convince everybody, please, let's go. And he was stuck in the desert for 38 years. He's like, I'm not doing that again.

So you come, you tell me, secretly, and not freak everybody out. And the amazing intel that they bring back, this amazing information he gets from these scouts, verses 23 through 24. Then the two spies came down from the hill country, crossed the Jordan River and reported to Joshua all that had happened to them. "The Lord has given us the whole land," they said, "for all the people in the land are terrified of us." So the information they bring back, we should move in. Joshua was like, I know. They didn't bring back anything that would change his mind. I mean, he's just sending people in, these spies in, to just make sure they're taking the right path and going the right way. But he knows they're going in. 'Cause God's already told him to be bold and courageous.

So what that tells me is that the point of chapter two isn't the information these spies get. It isn't even about these spies. It isn't about Israel moving into Canaan. Today, we dive into why I think this chapter is here. If you haven't already, turn your notes to page two. We're going to look at the human story. The human story inside of this nation's story. Joshua 2:1, the last half says, "So the two men set out and came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there that night." So the two spies go to Rahab's house. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to read some key verses. I'm going to fill in the blanks. We're going to tell the story of Rahab. And then we're going to see what I believe God has for us today, what lessons we can learn.

So the two spies go to Rahab's house. Now they're spies, so they have to go to this land undercover so nobody knows who they are. And one place they could go where probably other guys were covering their faces and cloaking, being under cloaks is a brothel, a place where a prostitute would be. So they go to this place secretly. But this is the interesting thing. You find out immediately in verse two that there are terrible spies. 'Cause in verse two, the king of Jericho is like, finding out, somebody's like, "Hey, there's these two spies at Rahab's house." And he's like, "Right after." So they're not really good at sneaking around. So the king of Jericho sends men to get these spies, sends them to Rahab's house.

Rahab decides to save their lives, hides them on her roof, and then answers the door, tells the spies, "Oh yeah, they were here, but they took off and they got out of the gates before it closed. And if you leave now, you can catch them." So she sends them on this wild goose chase, and then they're gone. And then she goes up to the roof, and she has a heart to heart with these spies. Verses nine through 11. "I know the Lord has given you this land," she told them. "We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror for we have heard how the Lord made a dry path for you through the Red Sea and when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River, whose people you completely destroyed. No wonder our hearts have melted in fear. No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. But watch this. "For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below."

One thing I have to understand is Rahab is a Canaanite living in Jericho, and they do not believe in the God of Israel, the God we believe in. And so she's making this incredible profession of faith. I mean, she tells the spies, "We've heard of you, this huge group of people marching towards us and defeating these armies, and everybody is scared." And they're scared because you're beating up people and you're conquering, but she says something different. She says, "But I believe your God is the true God, the God of heaven and the earth." She professes this faith. She's heard about Israel, but she has realized that their God is the one true God. So then she goes on to ask for salvation. Verses 12 through 13, "Now swear to me by the Lord that you will be kind to me and my family since I have helped you. Give me some guarantee that when Jericho is conquered, you will let me live along with my father and mother, my brothers and sisters and all their families."

So after her profession of faith in God, she asked for salvation. 'Cause she knows Israel's coming to conquer Jericho. And she says, "Can you please spare my life?" The spies go on to tell her how she can be saved. In verse 18, "When we come into the land, you must leave the scarlet rope hanging from the window through which you let us down. And all your family members, your father, mother, brothers, and all your relatives must be here inside the house." So now she has a way to be saved. And we see Rahab's reaction, her faith in action. Verse 21, "I accept your terms," she replied. And she sent them on their way, leaving the scarlet rope hanging from the window.

So she says she believes in God, but here, she shows that she actually believes that her faith is real and genuine, and she acts upon it. And so she lets down these spies to escape, and she immediately puts this bright red rope outside of her window for all to see, risking her life as a traitor to her own people, proving that she believes that this God is the true God. We already know how the chapter ends. The spies go back and tell Joshua all that they heard, and it ends. And we don't know what happens to Rahab. Let me spoil that for you. Chapter six, four chapters later, she lives. Verse 25, "So Joshua spared Rahab, the prostitute, and her relatives who were with her in the house because she had hidden the spies Joshua sent to Jericho, and she lives among the Israelites to this day."

So you see, a human story, chapter two, is just this story about this one person in this book about a nation. So why does this big epic get interrupted to tell this woman's story? Well, we're going to dive into that. Page three of your notes, lessons from Rahab's story. Number one, "Salvation is by Grace Alone." Salvation is by Grace Alone. You've heard that here before, and it's a theme you see running through the Bible, and I think God is putting this story here to remind us that salvation is by Grace Alone, because listen, Rahab is no innocent girl, right? Not only is she a Canaanite, and they worship these other gods and do crazy things, but she is a prostitute. And in that culture, in Old Testament Israel, she is not somebody who is worth saving.

Not only is she an enemy, but she's a prostitute. Why are we saving this person? And the point is, we're seeing the story to see that she is saved in spite of her occupation, 'cause there's nothing she could do to deserve salvation. And you know what? Lots of us in this room have felt that way. That's how I felt. Like I don't deserve your death on the cross. I'm way too far off. You don't know all the things that I've done. But Rahab is a reminder that God's grace is for everyone, for all of us. It doesn't matter what you've done. It doesn't depend on how good you are. It's all because of what Jesus did.

As I was preparing this message Friday, I was getting my stuff together, and I get a text from Trent, our worship pastor. This is what the text looks like. Any text, hey, I know you're studying, and I'm reading this book, "Making Sense of God" by Tim Keller, and some really good passages. Here are some pictures of it underlined, if you need anything else. And in my head, I'm like, I don't need it. It's Friday, of course I have every single thing. Ready to go, I'm perfectly prepared. Give me a break, Trent. Then I read it and I'm like, I gotta use this. So good. "Making Sense of God" by Tim Keller. He's not paying me for this. I'm gonna buy that book, all right? Let me read it to you.

This passage. "A salvation earned by good works and moral effort would favor the more able, competent, accomplished, and privileged. But salvation by sheer grace favors the failed, the outsiders, the weak, because it goes only to those who know salvation must be by sheer grace. Thus the Bible does not show a story after story of heroes of the faith who go from strength to strength. Instead, we get a series of narratives containing figures who are usually not the people the world would expect to be spiritual paragons and leaders." Seriously, that's really good. Tim Keller, man. No, sure. Tim, thank you, wherever you are. I'm sure you're watching this, Tim. Thank you.

And that's good because listen, what Tim Keller is saying there is that Rahab's story is a story to show us that grace isn't for the people who look the part. That grace is for all of us. 'Cause you can't earn his love and grace. It's not what you bring to the table. It's free. My favorite verse, I think. There's so many, one of them. Ephesians 2:8. God saved you by his grace when you believe and you can't take credit for this. It is a gift from God. Rahab's story is a story of grace. And her story also shows us, number two, that your history doesn't determine your destiny. Your history doesn't determine your destiny. Doesn't that sound good? Your history doesn't rhyme like preachy. I wish I made that up. I stole this also. Dr. Tony Evans, thank you.

I had a title. It said, God looks past your past. It's all right, but it doesn't preach like this one. So anyways, that's just what's going on in my head. Your history doesn't determine your destiny. Rahab's past doesn't ruin her life. The Bible tells us that Rahab was saved, but then lives in Israel. The verse that lives to Israel, among the Israelites to this day, to the readers of Joshua. She was brought into the fold, 'cause they could have saved her and they could have said, get outta here. Yeah, thank you for helping our spies. Now go find someplace else to live. You can't live with us. You're with your dirty occupation? But no, she gets brought into the family.

'Cause you gotta remember, Israel is just a big family. She gets brought in, and when I say brought into the family, I really mean brought into the family, 'cause check this out. Not only she's saved, she gets brought in. A man marries her, a man of some stature. And they go on to have kids, who then have kids and kids. And listen, you get to find out her family tree. In the first page of the New Testament, Matthew 1:5, watch this. Salomon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was who? Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed was the father of Jesse. I'm not gonna read it all, but Jesse is the father of David, who's the father of Solomon. On and on and on it goes to who's the father of this person and this person who's the father of Joseph, who is the father of Jesus.

God takes this Canaanite prostitute, redeems her, and now she's a part of our story of salvation. She's the great, great, great, great, I don't know how many, great grandma of Jesus. A great example of this, this week I saw this video of a kid, his name is Ezra Fretch. And he's 11 now, and we're gonna see a video when he was 10, but he was born with some disadvantages physically. But he didn't let that stop him from doing what he wanted. Watch him here give a motivational speech to some guys you probably recognize. Let's check it out.

I wanna introduce Ezra. Ezra is an athlete, he's a track star, and he's a motivational speaker. Ezra, it's all yours. - Thanks. Thank you guys so much for having me. I live and breathe basketball, and I'm really excited and honored to be here. I was born with one finger on my left hand and a lower left leg that was curved in. I had surgery when I was two and a half years old. Ever since a little baby, I've always been crazy for sports. And basketball is my favorite sport. My goal is to be the first amputee in the NBA where you guys are right now. When I got to get in with some of the shooting drills, that was awesome. I was like, dang, these guys are good. People underestimate me a lot. They say, oh, he can't do that, or, oh, he can't do this. And it just makes me work harder to prove them wrong. If they take an ET on me during a basketball game, I score 30 points on them. I want to show them that I can do anything other kids can do.

You guys inspire me with your teamwork and your positive attitude towards winning and losing, and the great people you are and your extremely amazing work ethic. I know you guys will finish you all, ending with a better record from 1996 Chicago Bulls and yet another NBA championship. Thank you guys for letting me hang with you. Thank you. Anything you set your mind to you can accomplish if you work hard. We were born this way, and like I said before, we can't change it. We just gotta make the best out of our lives. Pretty cool message and pretty impressive for a 10-year-old kid. His motto is "Finish well." It's a great message for our team. We've had a phenomenal season. We gotta finish well. As we get in here, everybody get their hands in. All right, Steph, you got it. Just us on three, one, two, three.

What a cool story that your past doesn't determine your future. Well, just like Ezra shows us, your history doesn't determine your destiny. And when it comes to living a Promised Land life, your past doesn't prevent you from being used by God. 'Cause listen, you might be in this room and you say, "Yeah, I believe in God, and I believe in His grace and His mercy, His death on the cross, His resurrection. I've received that grace, but being used by God, there's too much baggage in my past." Church, I want you to know this. God is in the business of redemption and transformation. That leads me to point number three. Your mess can be a part of your message. Your mess can be a part of your message.

I mean, Rahab is mentioned a couple more times in the New Testament, after Matthew. Once in James and then once in Hebrews, one of my favorite places. In Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11 is what we call the Hall of Fame of Faith. It's a list of these spiritual giants and paragons, like Tim Keller said, these heroes of the Bible. Abraham is there, Moses is there, King David is there, and guess who? Hebrews 11:31. It was by faith that Rahab the prostitute was not destroyed with the people in her city who refused to obey God, for she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. There she is again, Rahab, but not just Rahab, Rahab the prostitute, which kind of like when you read it, you think, I mean, give her a break, right? That was a long time ago. She's not doing that anymore, you know? Like she stopped, she saved, she stopped, she's married, she has kids, Jesus, grandma, okay?

Something intriguing I found while I was studying this, there have been some who tried to change her occupation in the Bible. In the first century, there was a Jewish historian, Josephus, and he thought, man, we can't have this prostitute in the line of King David. And so he goes to the Old Testament, he looks at the word, and the word has some of the same letters as another word, a verb, to serve food, and he's like, ah, I got it. She had a restaurant. Or a hotel, she's an innkeeper. And if you look at your new international version, on the bottom, it'll say, or innkeeper. But we see that the writers of the New Testament, James and the writer of Hebrews, make sure to use the word for prostitute. Why do they list her past? Well, I think it's because your, my, her stories are a crucial part of our ministry.

Your story is crucial to your message and your ministry. I mean, that's why when we know somebody who's going through something, maybe somebody, or when you are going through something, something tragic, or somebody who's going through an addiction to pornography or drugs, you try to find somebody who's gone through the same thing and is on the other side to encourage them, right? If you've been around for a while, I've gone through this journey of health and I've lost a lot of weight, and through that journey, I wanted to talk and hear from people who had gone through what I had gone through. I ate up every YouTube video of stories of transformation. Because I wanted somebody who could sympathize and empathize with me. Your mess becomes a part of your message.

Rahab is such a cool story in this book of history, a story of God's grace, but this is the question today. How do I respond to this story? A lot of times I go to church and you hear an Old Testament story of this hero and it's kind of like bedtime. You're like, "Oh, okay, great, let's go home and go to sleep, that's nice." But I think God wants you to act and to do something today. So how do we respond? Number one is to receive grace. Receive grace, 'cause if you're here and you say, "Adrian, you don't know my past, though. You don't know all that I've done and where I come from, I'm just coming to church just to try to make up for all that stuff. I put money in the offering, I try to be as nice as I can just so I can sneak into heaven." Rahab, let me tell you, is just one of many stories.

Like Tim Keller said, these heroes of the Bible don't look like the heroes that you might expect a biblical hero to be. King David was an adulterer and a murderer and the Apostle Peter denies Jesus in public. And the Apostle Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, he persecuted and killed Christians. You are never too far from God's grace. Receive it tonight, today. Receive it this morning. Like Ephesians says, it's a free gift. There's nothing you can bring to the table, there's nothing you can do to earn God's grace and his love because salvation is only about what Jesus did 'cause Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived a perfect life on earth. And then he went up on that cross, innocently, and he died for your and my sins. And God rose him from the dead, raised him from the dead, so that we could have new life. And the Bible says that if you believe in that, you'll be saved. Receive his grace this morning. Amen.

The other action step is this, extend grace. And this message is to my brothers and sisters in Christ, you've received the incredible love and grace of God, but may we never forget that without Jesus, we're all the same, that we're all products of grace, all sinners who need a savior. Again, maybe your past doesn't look like rehabs. Maybe it isn't as messy, your road to the cross isn't as bumpy. But her story is a reminder that every single person on this planet, the person you see on Pacific Avenue, the person you see at work, the person in your neighborhood, the person who walks into this church, who doesn't look the part, that we're all in need of the same amount of grace, which is all of it. No matter where they've come from, no matter what they look like, no matter what they sound like, they are loved by God and we are called to love them.

1 John, the book of love, 3:16, "We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us, receive grace. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters, extend grace." I wanna end with a story. I heard the story from the Karlstroms and if you were here World Outreach weekend, you met the Karlstroms. They are our ministry partners in Madagascar. And René interviewed them, we saw a little video about them. They're doing some great work there. They have a women's center and Neil, the husband, he is working at a place called the Eden Projects. The Eden Projects is reforesting Madagascar. Their forests have been ravaged for lumber and lots of different reasons and so they're planting trees, they're saving the environment, they're adding oxygen back to the planet, they're saving endangered species and they're hiring local people 'cause they're on a lot of jobs there and people are in poverty.

So they hire local Madagascar people from these villages and now they make money, they're able to house their families, to feed their families, to send their kids to school and so the Eden Projects is changing not only the landscape of Madagascar but the lives of Madagascar. And so generations are being transformed and destinies are being changed. And the really cool thing is that people are becoming Christians and coming to know Jesus. There's no requirement to be a Christian to work at Eden Projects for these locals but they're gonna be working with Christians and sooner or later it just sorta rubs off and you get to hear and see and live with people whose lives were changed by the grace of God and so Christians are coming out of this ministry and there is opposition in Madagascar.

There's this interesting thing I found out and they told me about. If you wanna travel to Madagascar, it looks like a very beautiful place, you Google traveling to Madagascar, what should I know? One of the first things they'll tell you about are these taboos. In each village of Madagascar, they have different taboos. So in one village it'll be chicken and pork or in one village it'll be tattoos and whatever, jeans, who knows? Just lots of different taboos and in some places there's a taboo on Jesus and the Bible and Christianity. And what you find out are these taboos are put in place and kept there by certain people in the villages and they take advantage of them. They use these taboos to sort of enslave the people and profit off of them.

Well with that being in mind, the cross room told me the story of a man named Dina and Dina is the man on the left in the tank top, yellow tank top up there. And Dina goes to work for Eden Projects and he moves up and becomes one of the managers there. He's a very good worker and he's very well respected in his village, so much so that they make him the president of their village. And he becomes a Christian, one of the first at Eden Projects. But the problem is the village he lives in has is taboo Jesus, taboo Bible, taboo Christianity. And so there's opposition, Dina, being the leader and now being a Christian, there are people in that village who are not happy about that. There was a man who used these taboos for his prophet, decided to secretly poison and kill Dina's family.

He conspires with his wife to poison them and he wants to do it secretly because he thinks, if they die and everybody sees that and they don't know why they died, they're gonna think because he became a Christian and he broke the taboo and the taboos are real and they're powerful. So his wife goes, poisons the family. Dina survives but his nephew dies and his wife barely survives. She struggles for a year from complications due to the poison. The village finds out that of this secret conspiracy because the man who conspired, he gets sick from the poison. But before they can catch him, he flees and he leaves his wife, Anita, and their child behind. And now Anita is left in this village and she is shunned and outcast because she's a murderer and a conspirer.

So now Dina sees this lady who tried to kill his family, suffering, no money, no help, nowhere to go, struggling to survive. And Dina begins to think about the grace God has given to him and how that same grace is for her. He's compelled, he's convicted to forgive and love her. So he takes her in and he gives her a job. Working at his family, they had a store so she starts working there. What's really interesting is he gives her another job as a cook. She's a cook for visiting Christian leaders and missionary partners and work teams from out of the country and them. As I was talking with Neil, I was emailing Neil Karlsham this week to get the facts right. I'm like, remind me about his story. He wrote this, he said, "The hands that were involved in poisoning food and persecuting Christians were now the very hands preparing meals for Christians, leaders, ministry, and work teams."

Dina shows her grace and then it transforms the village 'cause people in that village look at this man who forgives the woman that kills his nephew, almost kills his wife and shows her love. And they start asking, who is this Jesus? Many have come to know the Lord and now there's a thriving church in this village. Dina extended grace because he had received grace. So friends, this morning, receive his grace and then extend his grace 'cause this is the truth. We are all Rahab. We are all just people in need of a savior. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your love and for your grace and for your mercy. It is amazing that you would love us 'cause we bring nothing to the table. All we bring is our mess and our past and our mistakes. But God, we thank you, Lord, that you are in the business of redemption and transformation. With everyone's eyes closed, listen, if you're here today and you do say, you say, Adrian, I've never accepted the Lord. I feel like I've been too far off. I've done too much. My message for you today is receive his grace. The Bible says that if you believe that Jesus, the Son of God, died on the cross for your sins, rose from the dead, that you will be saved. All you have to do is believe. And in your heart right now, you can just pray a simple prayer. God, I believe in your death and your resurrection and the new life you give me. Receive his grace this morning.

And God, for those of us that have enjoyed the great joy of knowing your love and experiencing your grace and your mercy, help us, help us to remember to love those around us, to extend grace, especially to those who look like they don't deserve it. Would you convict our hearts and help us, Lord, as you command us to love one another? We thank you, in Jesus' name, amen.