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Part 12 of 16
A Cloud Of Witnesses
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What you are known for doesn't have to be what you're remembered for. Every single one of us goes through seasons where based on decisions we've made, things we've participated in, regret we've carried, or pain we've caused, we find ourselves known for negative things. That shame and regret can feel permanent, but your current reputation does not have to define what you're remembered for.
History is filled with individuals who had truly redemptive stories. Consider John Newton, a slave trader who became an abolitionist and wrote "Amazing Grace." Abraham Lincoln was known for melancholy and multiple leadership failures, yet became one of our nation's greatest leaders at a pivotal time. Chuck Colson was part of the Watergate scandal with the nickname "the Hatchet Man," but after encountering Jesus, he led decades of fruitful prison ministry. C.S. Lewis was an influential, outspoken atheist who gave his life to Christ. Even Walt Disney was initially criticized for lacking imagination before creating one of history's most creative companies. These patterns show us that what defines your beginning doesn't determine your ending.
This is the pattern we see in the life of Rahab: she goes from a house of shame to the hall of fame. What she was known for does not become what she is remembered for. There's something in this that can encourage all of us.
In Joshua 2, Joshua secretly sends two spies from Shittim to look over the land, especially Jericho. The spies entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. When the king of Jericho discovered Israelites had come to spy out the land, he sent word to Rahab demanding she bring out the men.
But Rahab had already hidden them. She told the king's messengers that the men had come to her but she didn't know where they were from. At dusk when the gate was closing, they left—and she didn't know which way they went. She urged them to pursue quickly. In reality, she had taken the spies up to the roof and hidden them under stalks of flax she had laid out there.
Before the spies lay down for the night, Rahab went up on the roof and said to them: "I know that the Lord has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us. All who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone's courage failed because of you. For the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below."
Rahab was a prostitute. This was a known profession, a disgraceful lifestyle wrapped in immorality and shame. Her reputation was all throughout the community, and it was very apparent she was boxed into her role.
It may seem uncomfortable to encounter a passage like this in Scripture, but we must remember: just because something is in the Bible does not mean it is endorsed by the Bible. Sometimes you encounter portions of text that seem X-rated or make you nervous. In those moments, you take a deep breath, open your hands, humble yourself before God and His word, and ask what truth He is trying to reveal in our lives.
Think of it this way: imagine your spouse is trying to help you become a better person—say, in your driving. They're constantly pointing things out, saving your life five times every trip. From their perspective, they've been watching the road, and suddenly they see brake lights. But from your perspective, you've been staring at the vehicle the entire time and have everything under control. From God's perspective, things are under control and moving forward according to His plan. When we encounter passages like this, it's a matter of perspective.
Have you considered what your reputation is? How would the people in your life describe you? Your co-workers? Your social media followers? How do people label, define, and explain your life?
While we should strive for a good name, it's naive to assume you have full control over your reputation. You can live with integrity, try your best to honor God, and still have people develop their own interpretations and opinions of you. Those views often spread by word of mouth, and you may discover a significant gap between your reputation and your reality.
John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, said this: > "Character is your true, permanent self. It's built on values and actions, whereas reputation is merely the fickle, often inaccurate perception others hold of you."
We go through life as Christians trying to maintain a good and credible name, but if you're trying to shift every audience's perspective of you every time you turn around, it becomes exhausting. You will encounter unfair and inaccurate criticism. Sometimes the criticism is actually accurate. But we often reinforce these labels in harmful ways.
Rahab was a prostitute—everyone thought she was a lost cause, too far gone, outside the reach of God's mercy. Yet God chose to use her. This raises a vital question: How many of you assume you are outside the reach of God's grace? That you're too far gone? Who in your life do you place in that category, convinced redemption could never take place? Rahab flies in the face of this assumption.
We tend to turn people into objects—we figure them out completely and assign them a label. Once they have a clear definition, they're manageable. We know what to do with them. It's settled in our minds.
But we should approach people as subjects—things we learn. When you study history as a subject, there's always more to learn. People are works in progress, navigating this broken, inconsistent life trying to figure things out. If you got to know their story, your opinion would likely change. Have you ever discovered it's difficult to hate someone up close? You have strong opinions and cast judgment from a distance, but the moment you sit down to coffee and hear their upbringing, their trauma, their abuse, their struggles—your heart softens.
Another crucial distinction: the difference between definitions and explanations.
We love to define things in neat, orderly ways. A definition draws a boundary. But an explanation is different—it builds a bridge. A definition gives you a label; an explanation offers you the logic. It explains why someone is the way they are and why they act as they do.
Most people in your life are scaffolding. God brings people into our lives in precious, providential ways to help build and shape us, but scaffolding comes down once the house is built.
Consider your life: Who was with you your entire story? Who knows about your elementary school days? Who walked the halls with you in middle school? Who journeyed with you as you figured out young adulthood and career? Who stood at the altar with you? Who was there when you first bowed your knee to Christ? Who was there when you welcomed children or faced illness?
Most people are not with you for your entire story. This creates unnecessary tension in relationships. When someone steps out of our lives, we often assume the worst about them or ourselves. But sometimes our lives run parallel for a season before God moves us in different directions.
When people only experience you in seasons, they develop snapshots. They view your story in scenes. And when someone has a limited perspective and only witnesses certain scenes, they reduce your entire life to a simple sentence by which they explain you. This is how reputations get shaped and narratives spread—someone has reduced your life to an inaccurate sentence.
When you accept the cast role someone has forced you into, you accept a life sentence. You live enslaved and in bondage to a label God does not desire for your life.
This is where Scripture constantly references the fear of the Lord. For those new to Scripture, this can be misinterpreted as endorsing constant trembling and suspicion of God, as if He's out to get you, carrying lightning bolts to throw at you every time you make a mistake.
That's not what it means. The fear of the Lord is the utmost reverence and respect for God. It is the fear of the Lord that serves as the remedy for the fear of man.
People will have their opinions and perspectives. For Rahab, she was a prostitute—most would have assumed she was a lost cause. But God had a different plan.
Which carries more weight in your life? God's opinion of you—what He proclaims over your life? Or the fickle, inconsistent, maybe unfair and inaccurate opinions others cast upon you?
Rahab had a reputation she had to overcome. Most of us will find that in this life, there are things in our reputation we must overcome.
What you are known for does not have to be what you are remembered for. Rahab was known as a prostitute, but she will be remembered as an instrumental hero.
God has passed the baton from Moses to Joshua. Joshua is charged with taking the Israelites into the promised land. They will cross the Jordan, and their first major obstacle is the mighty fortress of Jericho. In that era, a nation's walls established its might, power, security, and identity.
It is right from the start that God chooses to use someone you would not expect—a woman with an embarrassing past—to be a powerful hero in the story.
Whatever others say about you, turn up the volume on what God says. You are a child of God. You are a son, a daughter, an heir to the kingdom. You are loved, chosen, appointed. You have been anointed for a calling. God's destiny rests upon your life. You have an eternity that has been secured. You are deeply valued. You carry the thumbprint of heaven upon your life.
This woman has an aha moment—a revelation that changes everything. She begins in the singular perspective but then shifts to the plural: "Hey, we have all heard... But I know that your God has given you this land."
She lives in a pagan country with no exposure to God's things, raised in an idolatrous household surrounded by wickedness, yet God still reveals himself to her. In Joshua 2:9-11, she declares:
"I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We've heard how you've dried up the water of the Red Sea and how you came out of Egypt... When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone's courage failed because of you, for the Lord, your God, is God in heaven above and on earth below."
This is an amazing revelation. When was the last time God illuminated a truth in your life that struck a chord and cemented itself deep within your soul, leaving you forever changed?
Many people go through life with a cerebral, intellectual, logical understanding of God, but it never moves from information into true transformation. It never drops from the head to the heart where it actually transforms life from the inside out. God's desire is to have your heart and to reveal himself to you.
One pastor said that many people are going to miss heaven by 18 inches—the distance between the head and the heart. God is in the business of bringing revelations into our lives, and this woman experiences one. She is clearly part of the opposition, representing the enemy. The Israelites are coming to square off with Jericho, of which she belongs. Yet she says, "We, as your enemy, as your opposition, we've heard. We know what God has done in your life."
This makes us think: your opposition and your enemy has a better theology than you do. We sometimes wake up naive to the fact that God is still on the move working in and through our lives, but there are dark and evil forces constantly aware: "If these children of God wake up and discover all that he wants to do in and through their life, we are doomed."
Your enemy knows your story. Your enemy knows your testimony, and they know what God has already done in your life and what he seeks to do. It is terrifying to the opposition.
She is surrounded by people who have all heard the same things: "We've heard. We know. We were told." But she makes one personal ownership statement: "But I know." And that is what draws every single one of us into a personal relationship with God. It is not a group consensus. It is not something we take by popular vote.
It is a personal choice. It is not about whether it's popular or embraced by a multitude—it's about what you know. That's where she's at.
God is about to bring judgment upon Jericho. Every time God begins to shake something, he always seems to save someone. This woman has a personal predicament coming with challenges and a national predicament creating inconveniences. Yet God can still be good to you even though you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation that God is addressing.
Whenever God shakes something, he always saves someone. You can be positioned inside what God is judging and still be rescued by what God is doing.
People often raise questions about Rahab's lying when she hides the spies. This story reads very similar to Holocaust stories of individuals who risked their lives to hide Jewish people from authorities. But in no way is God endorsing deception or lying. What you have here is God's tender mercy on display.
He does not wait for perfect theology. He does not wait for flawless behavior. He meets her in the motion. She has a limited understanding, coming out of a pagan culture. She doesn't know any better at the moment. But just because you don't know any better doesn't mean you can't do any better.
God will meet you in the motion and does not expect you to get your life fully figured out before he says, "Okay, now you can be part of my group." Instead, he says:
Bring all your brokenness. Bring all your shame, bring all your shortcomings, bring all your pain, all your confusion, bring all the lies that have tripped you up throughout your life. When you bring the real you, you discover the real him. You can't encounter the real God of the Bible if you will not present the real you to himself.
That is what brings his authenticity into play in our life.
As you read through Joshua chapter 2, where is Rahab's house? It's in the walls—the very walls that establish stability, safety, security, national pride, self-control, and self-reliance. The walls are the main focal point of this battle. God will give one of the most bizarre military strategies: sending a marching band to walk around the walls, blowing horns until the walls tumble down.
Rahab lives in those walls, yet she decides to lay down her trust and confidence in the system and structure she's living in. She chooses to pursue this God with reckless abandon. She's saying, "I'm placing my trust in him, not in this fortitude that I'm living in."
When was the last time you looked at your confidence and considered: Where do I place most of my hope? Where do I feel the source of my safety, security, and well-being coming from? What truly guides and shapes and fortifies your life—a system or structure of this world, or the God of the universe?
You can either be humble or you can be humbled. You'll eventually discover the reality that there is no one like this God and nothing in this world can offer what he does.
Rahab ties a scarlet cord on her window to signal and identify her house for the spies. It was a way of tethering her house to God's promise. In James 2:25, we read:
Was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Here's the key question: In what ways are you visibly tethering your life to the promises of God? What ways are you visibly tethering your house and your family to the promises of God?
The scarlet cord marked the difference between destruction and deliverance. This woman lived in the same city about to witness the same judgment. She wasn't in a different location. What was different for her was her identification. She identified with this God and anchored herself to him. That distinguished and separated her experience. Where others experienced destruction, she experienced deliverance.
What are the visible signs that bridge the gap between your beliefs and your behaviors? The fact that you're here at church is a great start. Maybe it's joining a team. Maybe it's going on a missions trip. Maybe it's joining a life group for the first time. Maybe it's participating in a local outreach or tithing for the first time. What are the things that you are doing that says, 'Hey, I am tethering myself to the promises of God'?
We are looking at this cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 11, known as the Hall of Faith. God goes down the list: by faith, by faith, by faith—one hero after another. But there's an interesting deviation in the text. As it goes through the heroes chronologically, it suddenly shifts to doing so theologically.
Hebrews 11:29-31 reads:
By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell after the army that marched around them for 7 days. By faith, the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.
Which happened first—the walls falling or her meeting the spies? After. Everything up to this point is sequential and chronological. It should read: the Red Sea, Rahab, and Jericho. Instead, it reads: the Red Sea, Jericho, and Rahab. It goes from chronological to theological, and these things do not happen by chance in scripture. God is trying to get a message across.
This woman is the final hero whose story is elaborated on in the Hall of Faith. At the end of the Hall of Faith, you do not find God drawing attention to a king, a priest, or a prophet. No—the final exhibit is a prostitute. This is a powerful statement.
In great art galleries, the final piece often says the most. The final exhibit doesn't just close the show; it interprets everything that came before it. When an artist builds an exhibit, the last thing they want you to see is the culmination and explanation of what has been building to that final moment. That is what is happening here in the Hall of Faith.
God places in the final exhibit someone who was considered a lost cause, too far gone, with a very embarrassing reputation. But what you are known for does not have to be what you are remembered for.
As history advanced, the tax collector Matthew picked up his pen to write his gospel. Matthew was meticulous in his record-keeping, and in Matthew 1, he laid out the genealogy of God—the grandparents, uncles, aunties, and everyone who played a part in bringing Jesus Christ into the world.
You get five sentences into the Gospel of Matthew, verse 5. Whose name do you find in Jesus' family tree and genealogy? Rahab the prostitute.
What you're known for does not have to be what you are remembered for. Reputation is what people call you, but redemption is how God refers to you.
This woman went from labeled to listening to leaping to legacy. She finds herself in the family of God. And every single one of us, despite who you are, where you've been, and what you've done, can experience the same.
We all must endure things, but crank up the volume on the voice of God in your life. You are loved, chosen, and dearly valued by the creator of all things. God did not sidestep the mess or try to clean up Rahab's story to make it palatable. No, God came for the real us and meets us in our predicaments, in the midst of our brokenness, despite the stains and shame that we carry.
God sets us free and delivers us from the bondage of unproductive and sometimes inaccurate and unfair labels. When we entrust our lives into his tender care, we discover he truly is able to do the unthinkable. He can move people from a house of shame into the Hall of Faith.
