In his sermon, 'The Fear That Controlled Rahab', Jason Dohm explores Rahab's faith and the fear of God displayed in her life. The fear of God is a master fear that brings every other fear into subjection. Rahab's simple faith in God's promises led her to believe that God would fulfill them, and she bet her life on it. Her faith is later confirmed in the New Testament as a saving faith. Through her, God fulfilled his promises and used her mightily, eventually making her part of Jesus' genealogy. Charles Spurgeon's quote emphasizes the need for humility and the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation, regardless of one's background. The fear of God is essential in freeing a person from other fears and drawing them closer to Christ.

God, I thank you for the women of faith and scripture that are given to us for our instruction. And Men benefit from these histories and women benefit. All your people have been given these things to instruct us and help us. So I pray that we would be instructed and helped today. Oh, let your spirit be working here teaching us, I pray in Jesus name, Amen.

Well, the title of my message this morning is, The Fear of Rahab. We're talking about Rahab. You might want to go ahead and turn to Joshua 2. This is what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 10 verse 28. Do not fear those who kill the body but who cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.

Jesus is calling us to fear God and not to fear people who can even kill the body. He's teaching that the fear of God is a master fear. It brings every other fear into subjection. In other words, it takes the strength away from every other fear. People who fear God are emptied of the other fears because God is supreme in the help that He can give you and in the opposition that He can be to you.

So when you fear God, so many of our other fears melt away. And this is Definitely true. This is absolutely on display in the life of Rahab, so I'd like to begin by reading Joshua chapter 2 Verses 1 through 11 the people of God were just on the other side of the Jordan from the Promised land and here's what we read in Joshua 2 verses 1 through 11. Now Joshua the son of Nun sent out two men from Acasio Grove to spy secretly saying go view the land especially Jericho. So they went and came to the house of a harlot named Rahab and lodged there.

And it was told the king of Jericho saying behold men have come here tonight from the children of Israel to search out the country. So the king of Jericho sent to Rahab saying, bring out the men who have come to you, who have entered your house, for they have come to search out all the country. Then the woman took the two men and hid them. So she said, yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from, and it happened as the gate was being shut when it was dark that the men went out. Where the men went I do not know.

Pursue them quickly for you may overtake them. But she had brought them up to the roof and hidden them with the stalks of flax, which she had laid in order on the roof. Then the men pursued them by the road to the Jordan to the Fords. And as soon as those who pursued them had gone, they shut the gate. Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the man, I know that the Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are faint-hearted because of you.

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt and went and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan Sihon and Og whom you utterly destroyed And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted. Neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God. He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. And then she makes an agreement with these men that she'll help them to escape safely if they will protect her and her family when the city falls to the Israelites. And we see this story actually ending close to the end of chapter 6.

This is after the people have crossed the Jordan, have circled the city the seven times as God commanded and the walls fall down and they rush in and they're exterminating the inhabitants of Jericho but the men are true to their word and her and her family are spared and we read this in chapter 6 verse 25 and Joshua spared Rahab the harlot her father's household and all that she had So she dwells in Israel to this day because she hid the messengers whom Joshua the spy sent out to Jericho. So just returning again to chapter 2 And then looking at what I think is the key verse is 9, where she says to the man, Rahab says to the man, I know that the Lord has given you the land. And then at the end of verse 11, she says, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. So Rahab has a very primitive faith. There's not a complex scheme of doctrinal teaching.

There's nothing about the Messiah here. She has a simple faith. It's as simple as she knows God has promised the land to the people and and she believes that God, their God really is the God of heaven and that He'll keep His promises. It's as simple as that in her mind. God is real.

God really did part the sea for these people 40 years ago. God really did give Og and Sihon, these kings, into their hand in recent history. And he will keep his promise. He said he's going to give these people our land and he's going to give the people our land. So it is a primitive faith without a lot of complexity.

It's a simple faith. She just believes that God will keep his promise and it's a saving faith. We're gonna find that out in the New Testament. All we know from the Old Testament and the end of the account is what I read in chapter 6 verse 25 is that her and her family were saved and that she was absorbed into the people of Israel but we don't learn more about her until Matthew chapter 1 in the genealogy of Jesus. I'm just going to read the one verse that deals with Rahab, Matthew chapter 1 verses 5 and 6.

It's right in the middle of the genealogy, Salman begot Boaz by Rahab. So Rahab was the mother of Boaz, who then married Ruth. I'll just continue reading. Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king. So we learn from the genealogy that there was a man of the people of God, a man of Israel named Salman, who married this former pagan harlot.

He was convinced that she was changed. She was now the Lord's and he married her. And she gave birth and was the mother to Boaz. And so Ruth, when Ruth, this Moabite needed a husband, there was the perfect son to be the husband for her. That's a very precious thing.

And so Rahab, this former pagan harlot, becomes the great, great grandmother of King David. And then the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, comes out of this family line. We see her next. We see Rahab next in the chapter. Of faith in Hebrews 11.

Where the author of Hebrews talks about great heroes of the faith. Rahab is actually mentioned as a great hero of the faith. Let me read what Hebrews 11 says about her in Hebrews 11, verses 30 and 31. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. By faith, the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe.

When she had received the spies with peace. What did so she believed and was saved, everyone else didn't believe and perished. What didn't they believe that she believed that that God had given the land over to his people and that he would keep his promise to give them that land. They resisted that and fought against Israel, But she believed that that was a fool's errand, that because God was with these people, that her only hope was to yield to this God and to take their God as her God and his people as her people. And that's what she did.

She yielded to their God and she became a part of his people. She believed when they didn't believe and she was saved. The final place that we see Rahab in the New Testament is James chapter two. This is the faith without works is dead chapter. And as James develops this doctrine of works working together with faith and being the proof of genuine faith, he begins to talk about Abraham and how Abraham's willingness to offer up to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Of course, God provided a ram, but Abraham was willing, he believed God and was willing to offer up his son. And that was the proof that he had a living faith, a real faith, not a dead faith. And then we read this at the very end of James chapter 2. Likewise, like Abraham, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." James isn't teaching that if you read the whole chapter, it's so clear he's not teaching that works save.

He's teaching that works prove faith to be genuine and alive, not the dead pretend fake faith, but our works prove that we really have a genuine faith. And so her receiving the spies and helping them to escape was proof that her belief in God wasn't just all talk. It was actual real saving faith. So that is that's Rahab in the Bible. I want to draw out three points from that.

First point is this, Rahab believed that God would fulfill his promises. So she bet her life on it. We didn't really talk about that in Joshua chapter two, but it's really clear that she's committing treason against the kingdom that she's a part of there. If she gets caught harboring the spies of the Israelites, she's committed treason and clearly she will forfeit her life. So you have a woman who's betting her life.

She was willing to bet her life because she believed that There was no way this city could resist because God had promised to give their land to his people. And so, and he would make good. It is impossible that he could lie. And so, her belief that God would fulfill his promises required her to make a stand one way or the other and she bet her life. Let me ask you, Do you think of your faith in those terms?

Daughters. Do you think of your faith in the terms that you're betting your life, you know you are, you're betting your life. It might feel less dramatic than it reads in Joshua chapter 2, but it really isn't less dramatic than that. You think, well, I don't have this scandalous sin of being a harlot in my past, And so my salvation story isn't dramatic. No, there are only dramatic salvation stories There are only a dead man who are raised to life There are only dead women who are raised to life you You bet your life that the great and precious promises that are found in scripture, that God is it's impossible that he could lie and that he'll fulfill every one of him.

And you bet your life on that. It really is true, and we really must grasp that and live that way. Number two, God used Rahab mightily. He used Rahab mightily to bring his people into his promised land and honored himself in her life and through her life. Do you believe that God is able to do that?

God desires to use you mightily and to honor himself, to bring honor to himself in the world, in your life and through your life. These things really are written for our instruction. It is to teach us that God wants to work in in mighty ways. I'm not going to make it onto the pages of scripture, But he desires to work in my life in mighty ways to exalt himself in the world. Daughters, did you believe that that God desires to work in you in mighty ways and to honor himself in the world and in your life and through your life.

We want you to believe that you need to believe that it really is true. And thirdly, and finally, you need to You need the fear of God and the work of Jesus every bit as much as Rahab did. So she needed the fear of God in her life, if she didn't have the fear of God in her life, she would have done what everybody else in. Jericho did, which was not to believe that God would fulfill his promises to his people, but just a hole up behind the wall and hope for the best. That's what everybody else in Jericho did.

OK, so the fear of God is what saved her. The work of Jesus, though Jesus wouldn't come for thousands of years later, the work of Jesus is what saved her. And you need the fear of God and you need the work of Jesus just as much as Rahab did. Maybe you feel disconnected because thousands of years have passed and you didn't have any of the scandalous sin of being a harlot in your life. I want to read a portion of what Charles Spurgeon says on this matter.

Charles Spurgeon says this, a person comes into church one morning. He is one of the most reputable men in London. He has never committed any outward vice. He has never been dishonest. He is known as a staunch upright tradesman.

Now to his astonishment, he is informed that he is a condemned lost sinner and just as surely lost as the thief who died for his crimes upon the cross. Do you think that man will believe it? Suppose however that he does believe it simply because he reads it in the Bible. Do you think he will ever be made to feel it? I know you say impossible.

Some of you even now perhaps are saying well I never would. Can you imagine that honorable upright businessman saying, God be merciful to me a sinner while he stands side by side with the harlot and the swearer. Can you imagine him feeling in his own heart as if he was as guilty as they, and using the same prayer and saying, Lord, save or I perish. You cannot conceive it, can you? It is contrary to nature that a man who has been so good as he should put himself down among the chief of sinners, but that will be done before he is saved.

He must feel that guilty before he can enter heaven. Now I ask who can bring him to such a leveling experience as that except the Spirit of God? You know very well that his proud nature will not stoop to it. We are all aristocrats in our own righteousness. We do not like to bend down and come among common sinners.

If we are brought there, it must be the Spirit of God who casts us to the ground. Why, I know that if anyone had told me that I would ever cry to God for mercy and confess that I had been the vilest of the vile, I would have laughed in his face. I would have said, why I've not done anything particularly wrong. I've not hurt anybody. And yet I know this very day that I can take my place on the lowest form, and if I can get inside heaven, I will feel happy to sit among the chief of sinners and praise the almighty love that has saved even me from my sins.

Now what works this humiliation of heart? Grace. It is contrary to nature for an honest and an upright man in the eyes of the world to consider himself to be a lost sinner. It must be the Holy Spirit's work or else it never will be done. It's a blessing to grow up in a Christian home.

I praise God for the young women here, the young ladies here who have grown up in a Christian home. But one of the risks, one of the hazards of growing up in a Christian home is that you're not given the freedom to do the inclinations of your heart. And so, because you've not been set at liberty to just do what you're inclined to, you might think that you're a good person. And you need very little from the Lord. And that's just not true.

It's just not true. You need the fear of God. It is a mastering fear. The thing that will make you fearless is to fear God. It will set you free from those other fears.

Know who you really are. We pray for the work of the Spirit of God in your life to let you know who you really are. So that you'll be convinced that you know the fear of God, you need the fear of God in your life, and you need the work of Jesus in your life just as much as a pagan harlot. But that once God gets a hold of that heart, that He desires to work mightily in your life to honor Himself in the world. Let's pray.

God, we do feel ourselves beset by many fears. We do desire to be set free from fear. I pray, God, that you would give us, but especially our daughters, this master fear of you who can destroy both body and soul in hell. That we would have this fear that captures us and subjugates every other fear, brings into subjection every other fear, masters every other fear, and that this would send us fleeing to Christ as our only hope to Jesus as our one way to be set free, That You would be our God and Your people would be our people. And that would be our great hope in this life.

I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.