Joshua Enters The Promised Land: Pt. 4 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good Thursday morning.

Thursday’s an interesting day. We feel like we’re getting towards the weekend, but there’s still today and tomorrow to go. And as you head into today, I hope you’re heading into it with God on your heart and mind. God wants to be such a big part of your life, and He can only do that when you focus on Him and give Him the space in your heart and mind to occupy.

Well we do that by taking time with Him every day, reading His word, the Bible, inviting Him to speak to us through it, and then listening to what He says and putting it into our lives.

So we’re talking this week about some of the things from the very beginning of the book of Joshua in the Old Testament.

This book starts where the nation of Israel has been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, and now they’ve finally come to the promised land, and they’re on the brink of going into the promised land. But before them are these huge walled cities of people who do not like them at all, and yet God has said, I am going to give you this land.

The first huge city they come to is Jericho. Massive walls around the city of Jericho. It seems impregnable, and yet God has a plan. It starts off like this.

Chapter two of Joshua and Joshua, the son of Nun sent two men secretly as spies, saying, Go view the land, especially Jericho.

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And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there, and it was told to the king of Jericho. Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land. He knows that they are there to conquer the land.

The king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, Bring out the 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, and she said, True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I don’t know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.

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 those soldiers pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the Fords, and the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out.

Before the Jewish men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men.

I know that the Lord has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you, for we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.

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 your God, He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.

Well, God had gone before the people of Israel, and here He was already at work in the hearts and minds of the people fighting against them, bringing fear into their hearts and minds as they heard about all that God had already done for the people of Israel.

And here is this woman Rahab, a prostitute who is putting her faith in God rather than opposing God, she says.

The Lord your God, He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, and she asks them, if I help you, will your God let me live.

What we find in the story of Rahab is how God’s grace works. Here’s this woman. She’s got a lifestyle that is obviously not pleasing to God. She’s a prostitute and she’s a part of the opposing nation. And yet when she puts her faith in God and says God – Please accept me and forgive me.

There is that total acceptance and forgiveness. She ends up being welcomed into the nation of Israel as God gives them victory of the city of Jericho. She and her entire extended family, and she ends up being part of the lineage, one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, who would be born many generations later.

God will accept you no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter your lifestyle. He’s there with His forgiveness, ready to welcome you into his family just like he did Rahab.

I’m John North.

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