Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to this edition of PowerPoint with Jack Graham. A
little later in the program, we'll tell you how you
can get a copy of doctor Graham's book Ask, But first,
here's the message. Hope for the Hopeless.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Began finding Joshua. Chapter two. Rayhab was a woman that
had been used and abused by men, and yet God
saw her need and God knew her desire to know him,
And out of all the people in a pagan city
called Jericho so long ago, he chose this woman, of
(00:43):
all people. It's a strange place to experience amazing grace.
It's the story of Rayhab. We need hope, don't we.
Our world needs hope. We need hope personally. Someone said
that hope is the oxygen of the soul. We cannot
(01:06):
live without hope. It is hope, in particular, God's hope,
the hope that Jesus gives us that keeps us going,
that when we are knocked down, it calls us to
get up again and keep going. This is hope is
described in the Bible as a blessed hope. And ultimately
our hope is when Christ returns and we will see
(01:30):
him face to face.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And hope is the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
and the Bible is God's love letter to us, and.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
The love is expressed and felt in this hope that
we have in Him. In our series are just beginning series.
In Joshua, we've seen that the children of Israel are
poison been prepared now to cross over into the land
that God had given them, the Promised land. They've been
(02:08):
wandering in the wilderness for forty years. An entire generation
has died out, and now a new generation is ready
to take what God had given them, go and take it.
So they are ready. Why do we have the Old Testament?
Why do we have this in our Bible as New
(02:28):
Testament believers and followers of Jesus, Because according to Romans
chapter fourteen, for whatever was written in former days, the
olden days, was written for our instruction that through endurance
and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have
(02:49):
what hope. And then in that same Romans chapter thirteen fifteen,
rather verse thirteen, one of my favorite verse, may the
God of Hope fill you with all hope in believing
that by the power of the Holy Spirit, that you
would overflow with hope. We live and breathe in this
(03:14):
hope that we have in Christ, and this story that
we have in front of us today is a story
of hope. In the New Testament, you hear the word grace.
Grace is God's unmerited, unmitigated favor towards us, undeserved favor,
the gift of God. That's grace, and is primarily a
(03:37):
New Testament word, though a form of it shows up
in the Old Testament. The primary Old Testament word is mercy.
And in Jesus, we now have both grace, that is,
God gives us what we don't deserve, and mercy He
does not give us what we do deserve. And in
(04:00):
the mercy of God, because of the grace of God,
we find this hope every day. His mercies are new
every single morning. But you do see it again and
again and again in the scriptures, and in particularly the
Old Testament, this theme of mercy. So after forty days
of wandering and waiting for the fulfillment of the promise,
(04:22):
the children of Israel are ready to cross over into Canaan,
the Promised Land. And remember for us, Canaan, the Promised Land,
our Canaan. They're We're to conquer every day in Jesus' name,
because he has won the victory. Our Canaan is the
victorious Christian life. We are living in this victory, and
(04:43):
God has given us a promise. So the promised land
for you and me is the promised life. We live
a promised life. But there's one problem for the children
of Israel, and that is Jericho. Jericho was a walled
city in the ancient world. In fact, you can visit Jericho,
as I have on numerous occasions this very day, and
(05:08):
you can see the remains of ancient Jericho. And the
archaeologists have dug deep there in this ancient city. And
indeed they have found the mighty walls of Jericho, and
about well two walls really circling the city, about fifteen
feet thick each one, so thirty feet thick walls, each
(05:30):
one of them, in effect saying this wall is saying
keep out. This was a forty five city. And as
the children of Israel are waiting and wanting to go in,
God leads General Joshua to send two spies into enemy
(05:52):
territory to gather intelligence. That's what a good general does.
A good army gets good intelligence. And so two men spies,
and these two spies go into the city of Jericho.
Let's pick up the reading in chapter two, verse one,
and Joshua, the son of Nun, sent two men secretly
(06:13):
from Shitham as spies, saying, go view the land, especially Jericho.
And they went and came into the house of a
prostitute whose name was Rayhab, and lodge there. And it
was told to the King of Jericho, the whole men
of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.
Someone spied the spies, and then the king of Jericho
(06:37):
sent to Rayhab, saying, bring out these men who have
come to you, who entered your house, for they have
come to search out all the land. But the woman
had taken the two men and hidden them verse five. Well,
let's go to verse four. But the woman had taken
the two men and hidden them, and said, true, the
men came to me, but I did not know where
(06:58):
they were from. Now, some people want to get all
worked up about Rahab telling a lie. Here, don't get
all worked up three thousand years later about whether she
should have lied or not. So she didn't tell the truth.
She said, well, I don't know what you're talking about.
She said. In fact, they left, and when the gate
(07:20):
was about to be closed at dark verse five, the
men went out, and I don't know where the men went.
Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them. Go now,
all the time, these two spies are hidden out at
her house. But she had brought them up to the
roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that
she had laid in order on the roof. So the
men pursued after them on the way to the george
as far as the fords, and the gate was shut
(07:42):
as soon as the pursuers had gone out. Now, before
we go any further in this story about Rayhab, I
want to say a word about these two unlikely, unsung,
unnamed heroes. We don't have the names of these two men.
They're anonymous. They don't even get a small appearance tag.
(08:06):
Just two spies, two brave men who went into the
city of Jericho, and they found this house where apparently
you would imagine men were coming and going. I mean,
I mean, I asked myself when I read this the
first time, where these men go into the house of
a prostitute for sex. No, they were going to spy
(08:31):
and one of the ways that they could hide was
in a place where many people knew and a lot
of men were coming in and out. I don't know
how or why, but in the providence of God, they
came to this house of the prostitute Rahab. I love
the stories of unsung, unheralded, unnamed heroes, people you may
(08:51):
not know about. I think about these spies, these men
who went in behind enemy lines, and I'm reminded that
this is what God has called us to do, is
to go and take risks by faith and do what
is necessary in order to advance the Kingdom of God
in our generation. And it doesn't take great talent or skill,
(09:16):
but it does take humility, and it does take availability
and expendability. Someone said, it's not scholarship, but relationship with
God that God uses. So God wants us today in
our generation and our culture and our canaan, if you
will to get behind those enemy lives and bravely do
(09:37):
whatever it takes, at even personal risks, to do the
will of God. And that happens because you have brave souls.
You probably don't know their names, but these brave souls
who are in effect in a culture going against the
grain and doing what is necessary to obey God to
(09:59):
do what God wants them to do. So I love
the story of these two men and all who do
whatever it takes to accomplish the purposes of God and
the providences of God. And that's what's happening here. So
the spies sneak into the house of Rahab again amazing
(10:22):
grace in an unlikely place, a house of prostitution. Here
they meet Rayhab.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and the message
Hope for the Hopeless in his powerful book Ask. Doctor
Graham helps you unlock the power of prayer in your
life using Jesus' teaching to ask, seek, and knock. As
you follow these three simple commands, you'll completely transform how
you pray. We want to help you discover a deeper,
(10:52):
more meaningful, and more powerful prayer life by sending you
a copy of Ask as our thanks for your gift
of ten dollars or more. Call now to request your
copy of this powerful resource. Call one eight hundred seven
ninety five four six two seven. That's one eight hundred
seven ninety five four six two seven. You can also
(11:13):
text the word ask to five nine seven eight nine
don't let stress rob you of peace. It is possible
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That's what doctor Graham helps you do in his booklet
Breaking Free from Stress. We'll send you a digital download
of Breaking Free from Stress when you sign up for
(11:34):
email updates from PowerPoint Today. Just go to PowerPoint dot
org slash stress and sign up today. Now let's get
back to today's message. Hope for the hopeless.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Rehab is mentioned five times in the Bible, six times
when you add the genealogy of Jesus and Matthew one.
But the five times she has mentioned in both Old
Testament and New Testament. It always comes with the tag,
ray have the harlot, I mean the Bible doesn't clean
(12:07):
it up.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Not ray, have the escort, Not ray have the shady lady, but.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
A strong word for prostitution. Now, Canaan was a very
wicked place, and Jericho was a wicked place. I've been
to the land of Canaan in Israel and seeing the
remains of platforms of worship where babies were sacrificed killed.
(12:42):
It was very immoral. The people were idolators. It was
a wicked place, and they refuse the grace of God.
When you read these Old Testament stories, sometimes you wonder
why so so much war? Why did God tell the
children of Israel to take these people out? Well, you
read in the earlier that God gave Canaan and the
(13:05):
people in Canan, the Canaanite cities, four hundred years to repent.
Four hundred years. They had an opportunity to repent, but
they just went deeper and deeper and deeper into their
sin and rebellion and into idolatry. And even when the
children of Israel are persed and ready to attack, they
could have repented. Even when those children of Israel were
(13:27):
walking around those walls and waiting to blow those trumpets
and take the city, they could have all repented and
been saved. But no, And yet in the midst of
this wickedness there is a prostitute in this vile and
wicked place who herself, no doubt, was a part of
a false religion and idolatry and all that came with it. Prostitution,
(13:54):
sexualized culture sounds pretty familiar. You know, has said that
prostitution is the world's oldest profession. It's been around for
thousands of years. Of course, as immorality has, sexual trafficking
(14:15):
is a terrible, terrible thing, and as his prostitution, because
it uses and abuses, this woman is selling her body.
She never intended, I'm sure, as a little girl, to
end up a prostitute, her life wasted and wanted, and
yet here she is. Sexual sin is enslavy, pornography also
(14:39):
a form of prostitution. Billions and billions of dollars spent. Now.
God made sex as a sacred gift to his creation,
but Satan twists and perverts it. Sex is not should
not be cheap, or casual or corrupt. God has given
(15:03):
us this gift of intimacy and the mark of a Christian.
Once your life is transformed by Jesus Christ, once you
experienced the grace and the mercy of God in your life,
one of your number one desires is purity holiness. To
pursue holiness in the fear of God. So sexual sin
(15:27):
and fornication and horring and horrormongering and all the rest
that's never to be a part of the Christian's life.
Rehab's testimony is that by faith she believed she had heard.
I wish I had a little more time to tell
you this story. But she had heard of the mighty
(15:49):
miracles of God that had taken place at the Red Sea.
She had heard something she knew a little bit about
the Israelites. The word had passed. And can I tell
you the greatest evidence for the Christian faith is for
you and me, who have experienced the miracle power of
Jesus Christ, his cross, his resurrection. When people hear of us,
(16:12):
pagan people, ungodly, unchurched, unsaved, when they hear of our faith,
when they hear of our God, who has done miracles
in our lives, just like rehab It heard what had
happened in the lives of those Israelis. She knew that
there was a God in Israel, and she wanted to
get on God's side. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
(16:36):
by the word of God. So though her faith was
infantile in many ways, it was so small, and yet
she believed that it was accounted unto her as righteousness.
And so listen to her testimony in Joshua chapter two.
Joshua chapter two and verse eight. She said to the
(16:58):
men that the Lord has given you the land, and
the fear of you has fallen upon us. She begins
with the fear of the Lord. She knew that she
along with her citizenship, where they were all doomed and
damned by the judgment of God. And yes, there is
a judgment coming. God is not mocked. She had heard.
(17:19):
She said in verse ten, We've heard how the Lord
dried up the water of the Red Sea before you,
and when you came out of Egypt, and what you
did to the two kings of the Amorites who were
beyond Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.
I mean, that was a wipeout in itself. And as
soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there
was no spirit left in any man because of you.
For the Lord, she uses the holy name of God,
(17:41):
the Lord, your God. He is God in the heavens
above and on the earth beneath. Now, then please swear
to me by the Lord, that as I have dealt
kindly with you, that you will also deal kindly with
my father's house. These two spies were courageous, but they
were also kind, and she was kind towards them, and
(18:04):
therefore they were kind towards her, and said, give me
a sure sign that you will save alive my father
and my mother, and my brothers and sisters and all
who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.
And then when you read on in the scriptures, you
discover in verses eleven through fifteen that the soldiers, or
(18:26):
brother the spies, as they were soldiers spies, told her
to take a rope, a red rope, a scarlet thread,
a crimson cord, and to hang it in the window
of her house. Her house apparently was on the wall
(18:48):
itself to hang it out the window. Probably was the
same rope by which these men escaped into the night.
But he said, when you hang this red rope there,
when we come and take the city, and in the
fury and the fire of the war that's about to
take place, we'll see the red rope and we will
(19:09):
spare everyone in this house, you and your family. Wow,
a red rope of hope. And you know what that
scarlet thread should remind us all about. It is the
red rope of hope that runs throughout all of Scripture.
(19:32):
It's representative of the scarlet thread in the Bible, the
blood redemption and remission of sin. That is the story
of the Bible. I've said many times, cut the Bible
any place and it will bleed. It is a bloody
book filled with blood. And all that blood started in
the garden of Eden when men sinned against God. The
(19:53):
man and the woman rebelled against God, and they killed
an animal to cover their sin and their shamee and
the blood began to flow because of sin, and a
promise was given of one who would come and redeem
them with his blood. Blood began to flow in the earth,
and Cain killed Abel and Adam and Eve began to
(20:15):
realize the consequences of sin, which is death. And then
came the story of the children of Israel in Egypt.
How did they go out of Egypt by putting the
blood of the Lamb on the doorpost of their house.
They went out under the blood. It's the story of
the redemption and salvation of all who come under the blood.
(20:39):
And you get to the book of Leviticus and you
read through all of that, and you're wondering, what is
all this blood about, all this sacrifice and all this
killing of the animals. You see, God was conditioning the
world to this truth recording in Hebrews nine twenty two
that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission
of sin. And so the blood blood again kept flowing
(21:01):
through the Bible. You find in Isaiah, the Lamb of
God who took on himself our death and our hell
in judgment. The blood flows to the banks of Jordan.
When John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God
that takes away the sin of the world. The blood
flowed to Calvary when Jesus laid down his life on
the cross, and the blood of redemption flowed, and Jesus
(21:24):
died for you and me. It flowed on through into
the Book of Revelation and even into Heaven, as the
people are saying, worthy is the Lamb, for we are
redeemed by his blood. It is this scarlet thread of
redemption in a little chord, a rope of hope that
was hung in Rahab, the Harlot's window that speaks to
(21:47):
us this very day. That's the scarlet thread of the
Bible that all through the Bible. It's the story of redemption,
the story of salvation, the scarlet thread of redemption, mission
and forgiveness. And this woman she found favor, grace in
the eyes of the Lord Mercy. She found freedom, She
(22:08):
was set through free from the power of her sins.
She ends up getting married, and tradition tells us that
she married one of the spies. She got married and
they had a son, and then she had a grandson,
and then she had a great great grandson whose name
(22:30):
was David, King of Israel. Amen. The son of David
is Jesus, our Lord can So God gave this prostitute,
this shady lady, this wicked woman like you and me,
favor and freedom transformed her life and forgiveness and a
(22:54):
future and a hope. And we have a future and
a hope in Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. And so that's
why when rehab shows up in the genealogy of Jesus,
Matthew one, you know what God can do in your life.
You say, well, I'm not a prostitute, I'm not even immoral.
I'm really kind of a moral person. I'm a good person.
(23:15):
Jesus told the unsaved Pharisees. He said, the prostitutes and
the tax collectors are going to go to heaven before
you will ever get there, because if you know that
you've sinned as we've all sinned and broken God's commandment.
Then you fall on the mercy and the grace of God.
You come to the blood. There's no redemption, there's no
(23:36):
salvation apart from the scarlet thread. Men's blood stains everything,
but God's blood, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son,
bleaches everything. No, your sins be as scarlet. They shall
be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson,
they shall be white as snow. They shall be as war.
(24:01):
Is rahab story and it can be your story. Regardless
of your morality or immorality. Your life can be changed.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and the message
Hope for the Hopeless. Nothing lights a fire in your
faith like experiencing the power of prayer firsthand. As you
begin to see God as a personal, loving father who
desires to hear and answer your prayers, it transforms your life.
And thanks to friends like you, more people all around
(24:34):
the world are hearing about their loving God and his
son Jesus through the TV, radio and online outreach of PowerPoint.
That's why your support of this ministry is so vital.
We'll say thanks for your gift of ten dollars or
more by sending you a copy of doctor Graham's book Ask.
This is a great resource to help you strengthen your
own prayer life and teach you to approach God with
(24:56):
boldness and confidence. So call now to request copy. When
you give call one eight hundred seven ninety five four
six two seven. That's one eight hundred seven ninety five
four six two seven. You can also text the word
ASK to five nine seven eight nine. And don't forget
to visit Jack Graham dot org where you can shop
(25:18):
our eastore, give a gift online, or sign up for
doctor Graham's free daily email devotional. Our website again is
Jack Graham dot org, and also be sure to sign
up for doctor Graham's podcast Bible in a Year. Here's
Pastor Graham with today's PowerPoint.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Rayhab was far from pure in a human sense. There
was nothing holly about her. She was a pagan, profligate, prostitutes.
And yet the message of this story is that by faith,
and you see her showing up in Hebrews chapter eleven.
(25:59):
If you know your way around your Bible in the
New Testament, there's a book called Hebrews. And in Hebrews
chapter eleven. It's the story of the people of faith
by faith, by faith, by faith, How these believe God?
And you have great people in there. You've got Abraham
in there, and you've got King David, and you've got Moses,
and you've got all these great names and personalities. And
(26:21):
right in the middle of it eleven thirty two comes
this woman by faith, Ray have the harlot, because you see,
God loves everyone, and his mercy and love extends to
all of us. There was nothing good about this woman,
(26:42):
And hey, are you listening to me? There's nothing good
about you. There's none that doeth good. The Book of Romes,
chapter one says, not one, none, No one does good.
Even our goodness is badness in the face of a
holy God. Filthy rags. Self righteousness is also a great sin.
There's hope because God gives love and mercy to guilty sinners,
(27:07):
grace to guilty sinners. And where sin abounds, grace much
more abounds. Grace that is greater than all our sin.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
And that is today's power point. Remember when you give
a gift of ten dollars or more to PowerPoint, we'll
send you doctor Graham's book. Ask as our thanks call
one eight hundred seven ninety five four six two seven.
That's one eight hundred seven ninety five four six two seven.
You can also text the word ask to five nine
(27:38):
seven eight nine and join us again next time as
Doctor Graham brings a message about how God can make
a way even when there seems to be no way.
That's next time on PowerPoint with Jack Graham. PowerPoint with
Jack Graham is sponsored by PowerPoint Ministries.
Welcome to this edition of PowerPoint with Jack Graham. A
little later in the program, we'll tell you how you
can get a copy of doctor Graham's book Ask, But first,
here's the message. Hope for the Hopeless.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Began finding Joshua. Chapter two. Rayhab was a woman that
had been used and abused by men, and yet God
saw her need and God knew her desire to know him,
And out of all the people in a pagan city
called Jericho so long ago, he chose this woman, of
(00:43):
all people. It's a strange place to experience amazing grace.
It's the story of Rayhab. We need hope, don't we.
Our world needs hope. We need hope personally. Someone said
that hope is the oxygen of the soul. We cannot
(01:06):
live without hope. It is hope, in particular, God's hope,
the hope that Jesus gives us that keeps us going,
that when we are knocked down, it calls us to
get up again and keep going. This is hope is
described in the Bible as a blessed hope. And ultimately
our hope is when Christ returns and we will see
(01:30):
him face to face.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And hope is the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
and the Bible is God's love letter to us, and.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
The love is expressed and felt in this hope that
we have in Him. In our series are just beginning series.
In Joshua, we've seen that the children of Israel are
poison been prepared now to cross over into the land
that God had given them, the Promised land. They've been
(02:08):
wandering in the wilderness for forty years. An entire generation
has died out, and now a new generation is ready
to take what God had given them, go and take it.
So they are ready. Why do we have the Old Testament?
Why do we have this in our Bible as New
(02:28):
Testament believers and followers of Jesus, Because according to Romans
chapter fourteen, for whatever was written in former days, the
olden days, was written for our instruction that through endurance
and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have
(02:49):
what hope. And then in that same Romans chapter thirteen fifteen,
rather verse thirteen, one of my favorite verse, may the
God of Hope fill you with all hope in believing
that by the power of the Holy Spirit, that you
would overflow with hope. We live and breathe in this
(03:14):
hope that we have in Christ, and this story that
we have in front of us today is a story
of hope. In the New Testament, you hear the word grace.
Grace is God's unmerited, unmitigated favor towards us, undeserved favor,
the gift of God. That's grace, and is primarily a
(03:37):
New Testament word, though a form of it shows up
in the Old Testament. The primary Old Testament word is mercy.
And in Jesus, we now have both grace, that is,
God gives us what we don't deserve, and mercy He
does not give us what we do deserve. And in
(04:00):
the mercy of God, because of the grace of God,
we find this hope every day. His mercies are new
every single morning. But you do see it again and
again and again in the scriptures, and in particularly the
Old Testament, this theme of mercy. So after forty days
of wandering and waiting for the fulfillment of the promise,
(04:22):
the children of Israel are ready to cross over into Canaan,
the Promised Land. And remember for us, Canaan, the Promised Land,
our Canaan. They're We're to conquer every day in Jesus' name,
because he has won the victory. Our Canaan is the
victorious Christian life. We are living in this victory, and
(04:43):
God has given us a promise. So the promised land
for you and me is the promised life. We live
a promised life. But there's one problem for the children
of Israel, and that is Jericho. Jericho was a walled
city in the ancient world. In fact, you can visit Jericho,
as I have on numerous occasions this very day, and
(05:08):
you can see the remains of ancient Jericho. And the
archaeologists have dug deep there in this ancient city. And
indeed they have found the mighty walls of Jericho, and
about well two walls really circling the city, about fifteen
feet thick each one, so thirty feet thick walls, each
(05:30):
one of them, in effect saying this wall is saying
keep out. This was a forty five city. And as
the children of Israel are waiting and wanting to go in,
God leads General Joshua to send two spies into enemy
(05:52):
territory to gather intelligence. That's what a good general does.
A good army gets good intelligence. And so two men spies,
and these two spies go into the city of Jericho.
Let's pick up the reading in chapter two, verse one,
and Joshua, the son of Nun, sent two men secretly
(06:13):
from Shitham as spies, saying, go view the land, especially Jericho.
And they went and came into the house of a
prostitute whose name was Rayhab, and lodge there. And it
was told to the King of Jericho, the whole men
of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.
Someone spied the spies, and then the king of Jericho
(06:37):
sent to Rayhab, saying, bring out these men who have
come to you, who entered your house, for they have
come to search out all the land. But the woman
had taken the two men and hidden them verse five. Well,
let's go to verse four. But the woman had taken
the two men and hidden them, and said, true, the
men came to me, but I did not know where
(06:58):
they were from. Now, some people want to get all
worked up about Rahab telling a lie. Here, don't get
all worked up three thousand years later about whether she
should have lied or not. So she didn't tell the truth.
She said, well, I don't know what you're talking about.
She said. In fact, they left, and when the gate
(07:20):
was about to be closed at dark verse five, the
men went out, and I don't know where the men went.
Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them. Go now,
all the time, these two spies are hidden out at
her house. But she had brought them up to the
roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that
she had laid in order on the roof. So the
men pursued after them on the way to the george
as far as the fords, and the gate was shut
(07:42):
as soon as the pursuers had gone out. Now, before
we go any further in this story about Rayhab, I
want to say a word about these two unlikely, unsung,
unnamed heroes. We don't have the names of these two men.
They're anonymous. They don't even get a small appearance tag.
(08:06):
Just two spies, two brave men who went into the
city of Jericho, and they found this house where apparently
you would imagine men were coming and going. I mean,
I mean, I asked myself when I read this the
first time, where these men go into the house of
a prostitute for sex. No, they were going to spy
(08:31):
and one of the ways that they could hide was
in a place where many people knew and a lot
of men were coming in and out. I don't know
how or why, but in the providence of God, they
came to this house of the prostitute Rahab. I love
the stories of unsung, unheralded, unnamed heroes, people you may
(08:51):
not know about. I think about these spies, these men
who went in behind enemy lines, and I'm reminded that
this is what God has called us to do, is
to go and take risks by faith and do what
is necessary in order to advance the Kingdom of God
in our generation. And it doesn't take great talent or skill,
(09:16):
but it does take humility, and it does take availability
and expendability. Someone said, it's not scholarship, but relationship with
God that God uses. So God wants us today in
our generation and our culture and our canaan, if you
will to get behind those enemy lives and bravely do
(09:37):
whatever it takes, at even personal risks, to do the
will of God. And that happens because you have brave souls.
You probably don't know their names, but these brave souls
who are in effect in a culture going against the
grain and doing what is necessary to obey God to
(09:59):
do what God wants them to do. So I love
the story of these two men and all who do
whatever it takes to accomplish the purposes of God and
the providences of God. And that's what's happening here. So
the spies sneak into the house of Rahab again amazing
(10:22):
grace in an unlikely place, a house of prostitution. Here
they meet Rayhab.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and the message
Hope for the Hopeless in his powerful book Ask. Doctor
Graham helps you unlock the power of prayer in your
life using Jesus' teaching to ask, seek, and knock. As
you follow these three simple commands, you'll completely transform how
you pray. We want to help you discover a deeper,
(10:52):
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(11:13):
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(11:34):
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back to today's message. Hope for the hopeless.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Rehab is mentioned five times in the Bible, six times
when you add the genealogy of Jesus and Matthew one.
But the five times she has mentioned in both Old
Testament and New Testament. It always comes with the tag,
ray have the harlot, I mean the Bible doesn't clean
(12:07):
it up.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Not ray, have the escort, Not ray have the shady lady, but.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
A strong word for prostitution. Now, Canaan was a very
wicked place, and Jericho was a wicked place. I've been
to the land of Canaan in Israel and seeing the
remains of platforms of worship where babies were sacrificed killed.
(12:42):
It was very immoral. The people were idolators. It was
a wicked place, and they refuse the grace of God.
When you read these Old Testament stories, sometimes you wonder
why so so much war? Why did God tell the
children of Israel to take these people out? Well, you
read in the earlier that God gave Canaan and the
(13:05):
people in Canan, the Canaanite cities, four hundred years to repent.
Four hundred years. They had an opportunity to repent, but
they just went deeper and deeper and deeper into their
sin and rebellion and into idolatry. And even when the
children of Israel are persed and ready to attack, they
could have repented. Even when those children of Israel were
(13:27):
walking around those walls and waiting to blow those trumpets
and take the city, they could have all repented and
been saved. But no, And yet in the midst of
this wickedness there is a prostitute in this vile and
wicked place who herself, no doubt, was a part of
a false religion and idolatry and all that came with it. Prostitution,
(13:54):
sexualized culture sounds pretty familiar. You know, has said that
prostitution is the world's oldest profession. It's been around for
thousands of years. Of course, as immorality has, sexual trafficking
(14:15):
is a terrible, terrible thing, and as his prostitution, because
it uses and abuses, this woman is selling her body.
She never intended, I'm sure, as a little girl, to
end up a prostitute, her life wasted and wanted, and
yet here she is. Sexual sin is enslavy, pornography also
(14:39):
a form of prostitution. Billions and billions of dollars spent. Now.
God made sex as a sacred gift to his creation,
but Satan twists and perverts it. Sex is not should
not be cheap, or casual or corrupt. God has given
(15:03):
us this gift of intimacy and the mark of a Christian.
Once your life is transformed by Jesus Christ, once you
experienced the grace and the mercy of God in your life,
one of your number one desires is purity holiness. To
pursue holiness in the fear of God. So sexual sin
(15:27):
and fornication and horring and horrormongering and all the rest
that's never to be a part of the Christian's life.
Rehab's testimony is that by faith she believed she had heard.
I wish I had a little more time to tell
you this story. But she had heard of the mighty
(15:49):
miracles of God that had taken place at the Red Sea.
She had heard something she knew a little bit about
the Israelites. The word had passed. And can I tell
you the greatest evidence for the Christian faith is for
you and me, who have experienced the miracle power of
Jesus Christ, his cross, his resurrection. When people hear of us,
(16:12):
pagan people, ungodly, unchurched, unsaved, when they hear of our faith,
when they hear of our God, who has done miracles
in our lives, just like rehab It heard what had
happened in the lives of those Israelis. She knew that
there was a God in Israel, and she wanted to
get on God's side. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
(16:36):
by the word of God. So though her faith was
infantile in many ways, it was so small, and yet
she believed that it was accounted unto her as righteousness.
And so listen to her testimony in Joshua chapter two.
Joshua chapter two and verse eight. She said to the
(16:58):
men that the Lord has given you the land, and
the fear of you has fallen upon us. She begins
with the fear of the Lord. She knew that she
along with her citizenship, where they were all doomed and
damned by the judgment of God. And yes, there is
a judgment coming. God is not mocked. She had heard.
(17:19):
She said in verse ten, We've heard how the Lord
dried up the water of the Red Sea before you,
and when you came out of Egypt, and what you
did to the two kings of the Amorites who were
beyond Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.
I mean, that was a wipeout in itself. And as
soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there
was no spirit left in any man because of you.
For the Lord, she uses the holy name of God,
(17:41):
the Lord, your God. He is God in the heavens
above and on the earth beneath. Now, then please swear
to me by the Lord, that as I have dealt
kindly with you, that you will also deal kindly with
my father's house. These two spies were courageous, but they
were also kind, and she was kind towards them, and
(18:04):
therefore they were kind towards her, and said, give me
a sure sign that you will save alive my father
and my mother, and my brothers and sisters and all
who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.
And then when you read on in the scriptures, you
discover in verses eleven through fifteen that the soldiers, or
(18:26):
brother the spies, as they were soldiers spies, told her
to take a rope, a red rope, a scarlet thread,
a crimson cord, and to hang it in the window
of her house. Her house apparently was on the wall
(18:48):
itself to hang it out the window. Probably was the
same rope by which these men escaped into the night.
But he said, when you hang this red rope there,
when we come and take the city, and in the
fury and the fire of the war that's about to
take place, we'll see the red rope and we will
(19:09):
spare everyone in this house, you and your family. Wow,
a red rope of hope. And you know what that
scarlet thread should remind us all about. It is the
red rope of hope that runs throughout all of Scripture.
(19:32):
It's representative of the scarlet thread in the Bible, the
blood redemption and remission of sin. That is the story
of the Bible. I've said many times, cut the Bible
any place and it will bleed. It is a bloody
book filled with blood. And all that blood started in
the garden of Eden when men sinned against God. The
(19:53):
man and the woman rebelled against God, and they killed
an animal to cover their sin and their shamee and
the blood began to flow because of sin, and a
promise was given of one who would come and redeem
them with his blood. Blood began to flow in the earth,
and Cain killed Abel and Adam and Eve began to
(20:15):
realize the consequences of sin, which is death. And then
came the story of the children of Israel in Egypt.
How did they go out of Egypt by putting the
blood of the Lamb on the doorpost of their house.
They went out under the blood. It's the story of
the redemption and salvation of all who come under the blood.
(20:39):
And you get to the book of Leviticus and you
read through all of that, and you're wondering, what is
all this blood about, all this sacrifice and all this
killing of the animals. You see, God was conditioning the
world to this truth recording in Hebrews nine twenty two
that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission
of sin. And so the blood blood again kept flowing
(21:01):
through the Bible. You find in Isaiah, the Lamb of
God who took on himself our death and our hell
in judgment. The blood flows to the banks of Jordan.
When John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God
that takes away the sin of the world. The blood
flowed to Calvary when Jesus laid down his life on
the cross, and the blood of redemption flowed, and Jesus
(21:24):
died for you and me. It flowed on through into
the Book of Revelation and even into Heaven, as the
people are saying, worthy is the Lamb, for we are
redeemed by his blood. It is this scarlet thread of
redemption in a little chord, a rope of hope that
was hung in Rahab, the Harlot's window that speaks to
(21:47):
us this very day. That's the scarlet thread of the
Bible that all through the Bible. It's the story of redemption,
the story of salvation, the scarlet thread of redemption, mission
and forgiveness. And this woman she found favor, grace in
the eyes of the Lord Mercy. She found freedom, She
(22:08):
was set through free from the power of her sins.
She ends up getting married, and tradition tells us that
she married one of the spies. She got married and
they had a son, and then she had a grandson,
and then she had a great great grandson whose name
(22:30):
was David, King of Israel. Amen. The son of David
is Jesus, our Lord can So God gave this prostitute,
this shady lady, this wicked woman like you and me,
favor and freedom transformed her life and forgiveness and a
(22:54):
future and a hope. And we have a future and
a hope in Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. And so that's
why when rehab shows up in the genealogy of Jesus,
Matthew one, you know what God can do in your life.
You say, well, I'm not a prostitute, I'm not even immoral.
I'm really kind of a moral person. I'm a good person.
(23:15):
Jesus told the unsaved Pharisees. He said, the prostitutes and
the tax collectors are going to go to heaven before
you will ever get there, because if you know that
you've sinned as we've all sinned and broken God's commandment.
Then you fall on the mercy and the grace of God.
You come to the blood. There's no redemption, there's no
(23:36):
salvation apart from the scarlet thread. Men's blood stains everything,
but God's blood, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son,
bleaches everything. No, your sins be as scarlet. They shall
be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson,
they shall be white as snow. They shall be as war.
(24:01):
Is rahab story and it can be your story. Regardless
of your morality or immorality. Your life can be changed.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and the message
Hope for the Hopeless. Nothing lights a fire in your
faith like experiencing the power of prayer firsthand. As you
begin to see God as a personal, loving father who
desires to hear and answer your prayers, it transforms your life.
And thanks to friends like you, more people all around
(24:34):
the world are hearing about their loving God and his
son Jesus through the TV, radio and online outreach of PowerPoint.
That's why your support of this ministry is so vital.
We'll say thanks for your gift of ten dollars or
more by sending you a copy of doctor Graham's book Ask.
This is a great resource to help you strengthen your
own prayer life and teach you to approach God with
(24:56):
boldness and confidence. So call now to request copy. When
you give call one eight hundred seven ninety five four
six two seven. That's one eight hundred seven ninety five
four six two seven. You can also text the word
ASK to five nine seven eight nine. And don't forget
to visit Jack Graham dot org where you can shop
(25:18):
our eastore, give a gift online, or sign up for
doctor Graham's free daily email devotional. Our website again is
Jack Graham dot org, and also be sure to sign
up for doctor Graham's podcast Bible in a Year. Here's
Pastor Graham with today's PowerPoint.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Rayhab was far from pure in a human sense. There
was nothing holly about her. She was a pagan, profligate, prostitutes.
And yet the message of this story is that by faith,
and you see her showing up in Hebrews chapter eleven.
(25:59):
If you know your way around your Bible in the
New Testament, there's a book called Hebrews. And in Hebrews
chapter eleven. It's the story of the people of faith
by faith, by faith, by faith, How these believe God?
And you have great people in there. You've got Abraham
in there, and you've got King David, and you've got Moses,
and you've got all these great names and personalities. And
(26:21):
right in the middle of it eleven thirty two comes
this woman by faith, Ray have the harlot, because you see,
God loves everyone, and his mercy and love extends to
all of us. There was nothing good about this woman,
(26:42):
And hey, are you listening to me? There's nothing good
about you. There's none that doeth good. The Book of Romes,
chapter one says, not one, none, No one does good.
Even our goodness is badness in the face of a
holy God. Filthy rags. Self righteousness is also a great sin.
There's hope because God gives love and mercy to guilty sinners,
(27:07):
grace to guilty sinners. And where sin abounds, grace much
more abounds. Grace that is greater than all our sin.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
And that is today's power point. Remember when you give
a gift of ten dollars or more to PowerPoint, we'll
send you doctor Graham's book. Ask as our thanks call
one eight hundred seven ninety five four six two seven.
That's one eight hundred seven ninety five four six two seven.
You can also text the word ask to five nine
(27:38):
seven eight nine and join us again next time as
Doctor Graham brings a message about how God can make
a way even when there seems to be no way.
That's next time on PowerPoint with Jack Graham. PowerPoint with
Jack Graham is sponsored by PowerPoint Ministries.
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