Merciful and gracious - God and Rahab

As I work through some final edits of the sermon I, God willing, will preach this Sunday I am arrested by some of the details. I'll be preaching from the second chapter on Joshua which, if you remember, is primarily about the Canaanite harlot Rahab.

Rahab helps two spies that Joshua had sent into Jericho as the Israelites prepared to begin the conquest of Canaan. In light of her help in their mission-in fact, she saved their lives as well as their mission-Rahab requests that her and her family be shown mercy. Mercy is sympathy or compassion that motivates into helpful action. Rahab is looking for some sympathy and some saving.

Since chapter one of Joshua makes it clear that the conquest of the Promised Land was ultimately God's battle, her petition is ultimately directed to Yahweh; will God be merciful to Rahab and not destroy her.

Not killing Rahab would be merciful. But God, as is His practice with His enemies, goes beyond being merciful to Rahab and is utterly gracious to her. God's grace is His sovereign and unmerited favour. God, through the Israelites, goes beyond just not killing Rahab and her family; he adopts them into his own covenant people. In the sixth chapter of Joshua we learn that Rahab and her kin are incorporated into God's family. Stunning!

And sobering.

This is how God has acted towards us. He has shown us mercy which motivated his gracious action in saving us from destruction and adopting us into His family. And He did this in the work of Jesus Christ.

Praise the merciful and gracious Sovereign God!

But he did

I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.

(McCarthy, Cormac. No Country for Old Men. New York: Vintage International/Vintage, 2007. Print. 91)

Zephaniah 3:17: 

The Lord your God is in your midst,

a mighty one who will save;

he will rejoice over you with gladness;

he will quiet you by his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing.

No one who's guilty wants justice

The chasm between heaven and hell is illustrative of the chasm between God and us. He is glorious; we are not. He is holy; we are not. He is righteous; we are not. And this chasm between God's total perfection and our total depravity deserves the the chasm of stinking, smoldering Ghenna.


This is good information to know. It is true information, and it's always good to know the truth. But the problem with this information alone is that it is insufficient to keep us out of the chasm. If someone is heading over a cliff, for instance, it makes little sense to hand him a pictorial display of what will happen when he goes over and crashes onto the rocks below.


What I mean is that we can receive this information of God's severity, we can note it, as Paul tells us to do, and we can explore the biblical array of God's wrath, eternal conscious torment of hell, and how we all deserve both of them, but this information is not sufficient for us to praise God. Have you ever watched Court TV and seen the judge slam down the gavel and say, "I sentence you to die by lethal injection," and heard the convicted party go, "Yeah! I love you, Judge!" No, you haven't. We don't see that, because no one who's guilty wants justice; he wants mercy.

Chandler, Matt, and Jared C. Wilson. The Explicit Gospel. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012. Print. 48-9

Just call me Rahab

Yahweh did not choose the greatest nation on earth; he chose the fewest, Israel (Deut. 7:7). And when he is pleased to show his mercy to an inhabitant of Jericho, he does not choose the most virtuous or noble of the citizenry; he chooses Rahab, a harlot (cf. Josh 6:17, 22-23, 25). No one in Jericho deserves to live. None of them has honored Yahweh as God or given thanks to him (cf. Rom. 1:21). Yet Yahweh is pleased to show kindness, and as he declared to Moses that he would show mercy to whomever he pleased (Ex. 33:19), he chooses to show mercy to one whose unworthiness underscores the riches of his grace. Thus is the free, unconstrained mercy of God displayed in all its glory, and the burning of all Jericho makes the salvation of Rahab and her family more heavy with the weight of the glory of God.


(Hamilton, James M. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010. Print.150)

The story of the destruction of Jericho is surely one of the most famous stories of the Old Testament. Any child who attended Sunday school for any length of time knows about Joshua and Jericho. Marching. Trumpeting. Seven times. Walls come tumbling down.

Even now, as an adult, my desire is still to imagine myself as Joshua. I put myself in the sandals of the great warrior and leader of the children of God. I trust in God despite the seemingly silly request to march around the city. I'm a man of action, but I obey the command to walk instead of fight. And then victory.

As I contemplate this excerpt from Dr. Hamilton's biblical theology, it occurs to me that I should be associating with the harlot, not the hero. Isn't all of our stories more akin to Rahab's than to Joshua's. I know mine is. An unworthy sinner is called out from among the enemies of God and shown salvation in the midst of judgment all because of the grace and mercy of God.

I wasn't marching around the city when God moved in my life. I was in the city. I was an idol worshiper and a God-hater. I was Rahab the harlot not Joshua the hero. And yet, he saved me from the flames and the destruction. Not because I deserved, but because it was his pleasure.

I want to be a Joshua; my roots will always be with Rahab. Thank God for his mercy.

It's about God first, and Pharaoh second

In the story of the exodus of God's chosen people from the land of Egypt, one of the many startling aspects presented to us is the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and the use God makes of this for his own glory. Consider this passage from the book of Exodus:

    And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD.” And they did so. (Exodus 14:4 ESV)

Dr. Jim Hamilton comments on this in his book God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment:

But is what Yahweh does to Pharaoh just? From the perspective of the biblical authors, all human creatures owe their Creator thanks and praise (e.g., Rom. 1:21). No human creatures successfully give God the glory and thanks due him (3:23). Therefore all human creatures stand under God's condemnation. The severity of the judgment meted out matches the unspeakable evil of refusing to honor God as God and render him thanks. He does not owe mercy. The only thing he owes is justice, and the gravity of the heinousness of disregarding the infinite worth and beneficence of God calls for punishment that fits the crime. If God does not visit a just punishment, it shows that he has as little regard for himself as the creatures who have refused to honor him as God and give thanks to him. God shows his own great worth by visiting due justice against Egypt, and he shows his love by mercying Israel." (95)

What I found helpful in this excerpt was not only the reminder that God's justice is both warranted and necessary, but that this really isn't about Pharaoh. First and foremost, it is about God and only secondarily about Pharaoh. When our eyes and mind prioritize the wrong things in Scripture, we can be left with a skewed view of God and reality.

His justice exacting, his mercy surprising

In his biblical theology entitled God's Glory in Salvation Through Judgment, author Jim Hamilton touches upon a point that should cause great gratitude in our hearts. At the fall, in our races original sin, what could have happened and what one might argue should have happened didn't. A just and merciful God was sinned against, rebelled against. And death was the penalty. We know that this was a just judgment because the one making it was wholly just. Nevertheless, as Hamilton explains, death was not immediately enacted and, furthermore, the death of death itself was promised. This is astounding. In our great failure our great God provided for a great victory in his great Son. It causes me to repeat with Paul, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Romans 11:33 ESV). Who could have foreseen, let alone believed, the glorious remedy of redemption that would spring forth from God's magnificent mercy in the hour of our parents' sin.

This mercy, then, arises only from God. This is not something that humans deserve, not even in part. Of his own goodness, displaying his own intrinsic character, God announces that the woman will have seed-which means that the promised punishment of death will not be immediately enacted on the physical bodies of the human couple. Not only will their physical lives continue, but they will have seed: offspring. Not only will they have seed, but their seed will triumph over the snake. Salvation comes through judgment, and God makes known his character in justice and mercy. His justice is as exacting as his mercy is surprising. (Hamilton, James M. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010. Print. 78)

An ocean of mercy

And now, beloved, with this ocean of mercy rolling its swelling waves at your feet, each billow as it breaks murmuring in the sweetest cadence, "God is love," can you for a moment question the wise, gracious, tender conduct towards you, of that Father from whose heart this ocean flows? Look at the cross; behold His precious Gift transfixed to it, and that by His own hand, and for your sins; then look at your present circumstances, survey your needs, your trials, your chastisements, your bereavements, your heart-sickening, heart-breaking tribulations, and know that God still is love.- Octavius Winslow

Mercy

The blind man cried for mercy: And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38 ESV)

The lepers cried for mercy: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” (Luke 17:13 ESV)

But I'm not needy like those people, am I?

As a matter of fact, I'm not. My need for mercy is far greater than unclean skin and unseeing eyes. My sin gives me an unclean heart and blinds me to the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Jesus, have mercy on me.

Mercy in laughter, mercy in crying.
Mercy in living, mercy in dying.
Mercy at work, and mercy at play.
Merciful mercy all night and all day.
O Son of David, have mercy on me.
Merciful Savior, have mercy on me.

Cause for contemplating mercy

From John Calvin as it appears in Institutes of the Christian Religion:

... how richly does he supply us with the means of contemplating his mercy when, as frequently happens, he continues to visit miserable sinners with unwearied kindness, until he subdues their depravity, and woos them back with more than a parent’s fondness?

I was once nobody!

1 Peter 2:10 - Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

That used to be me; nobody.

I had no real past, certainly no future, and no real existence.

But then, God had mercy on me, calling me, regenerating me, saving me.

Now? Now I am one of God's; I have received mercy.