The sight of God transforms the soul. But how exactly do we behold God's glory? What do we actually see, and what practical impact does it have on us? God provides us with guidance through the life of Rahab. She serves as one of the most striking examples in the Bible of the spiritual transformation that flows from truly knowing God. The details of her experience astonish us, but they speak into our own lives and circumstances more than we might imagine.

Well there is no better way to begin a day than to gather together with the aim of catching a sight of the glory of God and the majesty of God and that's why we're gathered this morning is to behold Him and in beholding Him to to adore him. I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me this morning to Joshua chapter 2. We'll read together from verses 8 to 13. Joshua chapter 2 verses 8 to 13. And this is the Word of God.

You will recall that the two spies have come into Jericho and they have taken refuge in Rahab's house and we read here about what she says to them. Verse 8, and before they were laid down she came up unto them upon the roof and she said unto the men I know that the Lord hath given you the land and that your terror is fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land faint 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 what you did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sion, and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt. Neither did there remain any more courage in any man because of you.

For the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and in earth beneath. Therefore I pray you swear unto me by the Lord, since I have showed you kindness, that ye will also show kindness unto my Father's house and give me a true token and that ye will save alive my father and my mother and my brethren and my sisters and all that they have and deliver our lives from death. Why don't we stand and have a brief word of prayer. Let's look to the Lord in prayer. O Lord our God in heaven, who is like unto thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders.

We confess, O Lord, that there is none in heaven beside thee and none in the earth that we would desire other than thee. Oh Lord, help us to be still and to know that thou art God and exalted in the earth. Give us, we pray, a sight of the divine glory, especially as it is seen in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, he who is the chief among ten thousand, he who is the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, the one fairer than all the sons of men. Draw out our hearts, lift up our eyes, enable us to set our minds on things above where Christ is, to seek those things which are above, deliver us from all of the diversions, all of the distractions that would pull our gaze downward to the things of this earth and enable us, O Lord, to set our eyes upward that we might behold the divine glory and the beholding might be led to a door and to worship and to serve thee with all of our hearts we pray for Jesus sake amen. We live in an age both within the church as well as within the world in which man seems big and God seems very small.

We live in a time where man is big, God is small, and there are several consequences that always flow from this when we find such a condition. The first is that there will be an overemphasis on the body rather than on the soul. Secondly, there will be an over emphasis on time rather than on eternity, and there will be an over emphasis on self rather than on the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, our image, how we're portrayed, how we're perceived, rather than the magnifying of Jesus Christ, how he's portrayed and how he is seen. But this is not new, this is not unique to our particular age.

Four decades prior to Joshua chapter 2, four decades prior, 12 spies had been sent to search out the land. You'll remember 10 of them came back with a report. And what did they say? They said, the land is inhabited by giants. And that in comparison, we, the Israelites, seem like little grasshoppers.

They said that the the land is filled with great fortresses, that in the words of Deuteronomy 1, the cities are walled up to heaven. In other words, these ten spies saw man as very big and God is very small. It was only two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, that viewed things in the reverse, that saw that God was overwhelmingly glorious and that the inhabitants of the land were infinitesimally small and they said let us go the Lord has given to us the land and so this is not peculiar to our own age. Now you fast forward from that period where the twelve spies had returned, you fast forward and you come to Joshua 6. And there in Joshua 6, the people of God have crossed over the Jordan River, and they come to the first of these great cities, the city of Jericho.

And at God's command for six days, they go out. And the Ark of the Lord, which was a picture of God's presence which was the throne of God in the midst of his people that ark along with the priests and the valiant men encircled the city one time each day for six days and Then on the seventh day as you undoubtedly remember having spent the first six days in silence, they weren't allowed to speak any word, so The only sound that would have been heard would have been the crunch of the dirt and gravel under their sandals and the sound of the seven trumpets that the priests were blowing. But on the seventh day, they encircled the city seven times, blowing the trumpets. And then at Joshua's direction, all at once at the end of that, the people as a whole shout, we're told, with a great shout. And in that instant, at that shout that rung out from the the mouths of God's people we're told that the walls of this fortress came crashing flat to the ground and it's it's hard for us to imagine the cacophony of noise would have been deafening to see the walls of the whole city brought to rubble.

The whole ground would have shook like an earthquake when those walls came down. Enormous dust and debris would have risen into the air, but when that dust settled amid all of the rubble one small section of that wall would have still been standing and from a window you would have seen a scarlet thread hanging down and inside the chambers of the home on that wall was a woman called Rahab and her family. Joshua sends two spies to go and to escort all that was were within her home outward to the people of Israel and the rest of the city every man every woman all the children all of the beasts were slain with the sword. Utter annihilation. So here we have this one family that is brought out and what lies behind this peculiar event is the account of a woman that had been transformed by the sight of God's glory.

A woman transformed by the sight of God's glory. And so we're going to consider with the Lord's help this morning three things regarding Rahab's sight of God's glory, three questions that we will seek from Scripture to answer, but before we turn to that let me remind you that the purpose of all of these biblical examples, the ones we're hearing this morning, the ones that you've heard throughout the course of this conference, the purpose of all of these biblical examples is not your entertainment. We can sit and listen and be wowed and stirred and affected in a sense by the accounts that we're hearing and then we can kind of wipe our mouth and straighten ourselves up and walk out and carry on as usual. But the truths that are being proclaimed bring demands to our soul. They bring implications to us.

We are not left free to hear the word of the Lord and to pass under it unimproved. We're not given that luxury but rather it brings demands upon us. We're accountable for what we hear and therefore in all of the accounts that we're hearing these things require change of us, require change in us. And you know where that change begins? That change begins first and foremost in being led to adore the God of glory, Being led to open our mouths in praise, the first, the highest, the best application of these addresses is worship.

To fall down and worship the God of majesty. So we're gonna ask three questions this morning. The first question is where. Where was Rahab when she saw God's glory? Where was Rahab when she saw God's glory?

The answer is that she caught a sight of the glory of God from within the walls of a city that had been marked out by God himself for utter destruction. She was within the walls of a city that had been marked out by God for utter destruction and the scene is rather dismal when we're taking it in. If you go back to the days of Abraham when God had brought Abraham into the land of promise, he told him in Genesis 15 that 400 years were going to pass before his seed would actually inherit the land. And he tells him that that's the case because, he says, because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. In other words, there was an escalation in their wickedness which was still to come over those 400 years, after which the Lord would bring judgment and destroy them.

And so when you come to Joshua chapter 2, the nations inhabiting the land have reached a feverish pitch in terms of gross and heinous wickedness at this point. They're given to wholesale idolatry of the most perverse forms imaginable to us. You remember after all, we become, all of us, everyone becomes like what they worship. Right? We sing of this in Psalm 115 where it says that the idols have eyes but they see not, they have ears but they hear not, they have mouths but they speak not, and those who make them are like unto them.

We become like what we worship. And so here as a society, the city of Jericho, here is a society that is filled with all of these dehumanizing influences. Life is cheap, immorality is abounding, and yet within that exceedingly wicked city was a particularly notorious sinner. This woman Rahab, everywhere that she's mentioned, throughout the accounts here in Joshua and elsewhere in Joshua, elsewhere in the Old Testament, even in the New Testament in Hebrews 11 and in James 2, everywhere she's mentioned, she's always referred to as Rahab the harlot. Rahab the harlot.

And really it is impossible, it is impossible for us to somehow sterilize her circumstances. In many ways it is incalculable for us, you know, to be able to take on board all of the vulnerability, all of the abuse, all of the shame, all of the devastation that would have characterized her world as a woman of the night. And yet we learn that she's an idolater. We learn that she's a harlot and it is precisely here that we begin to disconnect. We begin to isolate ourselves.

We begin in reading of this account, we begin to create space, comfortable space between us and and her. We think well you know she was worlds apart from us and everything that we know. And because there's that temptation, we have to nip it in the bud. We have to resist that. We have to actually close the gap under the lens of God's own word.

Because after all, my friends, we inhabit a time and place that has been marked out for destruction by God himself. God's final judgment of the world will actually dwarf everything that we read about the outcome of Jericho. That's us. We and our world lie in the crosshairs of the Almighty, left to ourselves. You think of, you know, our modern idolatry is no less perverse and no less dehumanizing than the ancient forms.

And we have the dehumanizing addiction to technology in our day and age. You have the ubiquitous proliferation of porn which turns people into impersonal objects for a person's own self gratification. We have the reducing of the concept of value to what is measured by dollars and cents. Remember Paul's words, covetousness, which is idolatry. And so we're not that dissimilar, and in fact we can go further because within the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, within the the visible professing church, so much of what is found is a man-centered rather than a God-centered religion.

We have a consumer-based distortion of worship that is designed to please the flesh rather than to please God according to his own divine prescription. We see it in many other ways, perhaps to bring it even a little closer to home. Within the modern church, one of the great evils, I believe, one of the great evils has been the tendency to view God as the means to our own personal end. Now some of us are tempted to automatically, you know, think to ourselves, well yes, we have the health and wealth and prosperity gospel and this is terrible and so on and we can kind of put that at arm's length. You know, none of us perhaps have, you know, fallen prey to that, but not so fast because the temptation to use God as a means to our own personal end comes far closer to home.

For many, they come to biblical religion, conservative religion, maybe reformed religion, and they're attracted to it because here we discover how to have a godly marriage. And so it's useful to have biblical Christianity because then we get all the perks of a godly marriage or a godly family. And, you know, we can follow certain principles and the outcome for our children will be better and our family will be stronger. For others it's, well, the Christian religion provides a robust Christian worldview that enables us to make sense of things and there's, you know, something intellectually satisfying and having answers to difficult questions and we can multiply examples as we go, but ultimately it comes down to knowing God meets our needs. And that's what it's all about.

The knowledge of God meets our needs. We can use God as a means to our own personal end. You see it even in prayer. I mean prayer becomes all about us, our grocery list. You look at the Lord's Prayer and we have six petitions and the first three, the first half, and their first not second.

The first priority is hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God is given the preeminence. Prayer is first and foremost about the Lord, adoring him, worshipping him, talking to God about God, extolling him for all of the glory that belongs to him, bringing ourselves under his own hand, and so on. And yet, for many modern people, prayer is fantastic because prayer is a way in which we can steer God's attention to our agenda. We can bend omnipotence to serve our own purposes.

There is something pernicious, there is something exceedingly perverse in what lies underneath that. As you peel back the layers, what lies underneath that? Well what about the harlotry, pastor? You know, harlotry. Now we're talking something super gross, spiritually gross.

Isn't it interesting that when God comes to speak to his church in the Old Testament about her spiritual waywardness, He describes it in terms of harlotry. In fact, it's one of the most common things in the prophets. He describes it as spiritual whoredom. The Lord's speaking to us. He's speaking to the church.

He's speaking to his own people. He's speaking, in other words, into our world. And he's saying, all of those temptations to turn from me to the things of the world, from eternity to the things of time, from the things of God's kingdom to your own little fiefdom and trying to build your own little enterprise. All of that is spiritual whoredom. It's harlotry.

And I mean, you go to places like Ezekiel 16, it's all through the Old Testament. You go to places like Ezekiel 16 and it is difficult to read. He says, there you were, you were a little infant thrown, cast, abandoned in a field, left in your blood, covered in grime. And I passed by and I saw you and I took you and I washed you and I cleansed you and I fed you with the choicest morsels. I clothed you with the finest of garments.

I raised you up." And then he says, I married you, and I took you and brought you to myself, and I bestowed upon you every privilege, and I, I made you beautiful. You were made beautiful with my glory, which was given to you. What did you do? You took my stuff, all of the things that I had given you, and you turned and you employed it for yourself. You turned to idols, to Baal and Ashtaroth and so on.

You prostituted yourself. He goes so far to say, as you're worse than a whore. A whore takes money for her services. You paid your lovers. You were found in every place giving yourself to others, right?

The Lord is exposing his people for their harlotry. Let's say you turn to the New Testament, things haven't changed. There's continuity there. Go for example to James chapter 4 and he says, friendship with the world is defined as spiritual adultery. Same message, right?

He's pulling that whole imagery and language out of what's familiar to us from the Old Testament. He's saying it's spiritual adultery. Every inclination that you have to turn your heart from the Lord as number one, to loving Him with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, serving Him, seeking first His kingdom, His righteousness, worshiping Him, adoring Him. He says every inclination to turn from that to yourself, to others, to other things is to leave your first love and to go after other lovers. So the Lord's stopping us in our tracks this morning, isn't he?

That temptation that we have to see Rahab as worlds apart from us and to somehow create cushion and breathing room and space, that's not there. We're not afforded that. The Lord is placing us as it were in circumstances not dissimilar to her own. And all of this creates context for our desperation for a sight of God's glory. And it is into this dismal context that God sends a message of good news.

Right here in Joshua chapter 2, God chooses to save the most vile of sinners and an exceedingly sinful city. Rahab plucked as a brand from the fire out of the city of Jericho. She's transformed. She is brought to love the Lord. She's brought in full devotion to the Lord.

You know as we turn in our Bibles, we turn the pages to the New Testament, It should not surprise us. It should not surprise us to see the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man, Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us, to see him coming into this world and proclaiming, I did not come to save the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. And as you read those words and you read what Jesus preaches in the Gospels, what do you see? What you see is publicans and prostitutes and sinners being drawn to him.

A magnetic attraction to the Lord Jesus Christ. And it doesn't stop there because as the gospel continues to be proclaimed throughout the the the Gentile world later, we find the same thing. So in 1 Corinthians chapter six, for example, Paul's writing to them in verse nine. And he says, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God, be not deceived, neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. Listen.

And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. And you have sometimes these advertisements where there's a before and after picture, right? They say take this, you know, go on this diet. Here's what person looked like before they went on the diet. Here's what they looked like after they went on the on the diet.

I mean, this is this is what we're getting under this first point. Where was she when she saw the sight of God's glory? She's where every natural man finds themselves, every believer before they're brought to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is where she was. This is a picture before her transformation.

And it is true, It's true of all of us. But then that brings us secondly to the question, what did Rahab see? What did she see of God's glory? And she saw more than you might think. She saw a good bit more than you might think.

The source of this sight of God's glory, the source of it was the revelation of God's works and word which had reached her, which had come even into the land of Canaan, which had come to the city of Jericho. The word about the works of God. Notice in verse 9, she said unto the men, I know. And then again in verse 10, we have heard. She knew that God had given Israel the land and she knew already what God had done in Egypt.

She knew what the Lord had done to the two kings Sion and Og. She had heard this revelation of the glory of God. And you notice her profession in verse 11. She says in verse 11, He, that is the one she's just called Jehovah. In your Bible, it's probably capital L-O-R-D.

The one she's named Jehovah, He is God in heaven above and in the earth beneath. And so she's seen. He's the creator of the heavens and the earth. She's seen that he is the one who is sovereign. Children, the word sovereign answers the question, who is in control?

Who is it that's in control? We say, as the Bible teaches us to say God is in control, that means God is the one that's sovereign. She could see that that God who rules from the heavens is the one orchestrating all of the details and circumstances down to the least detail in this world. That he is the one orchestrating all events at all times among all people. She saw that the world was in his hand, in the palm of his hand.

So we read elsewhere that even the kings of this earth, right, that the Lord has, The Lord directs the heart of the king as a watercourse. She could see that having all things in his hand, that therefore Jericho was in his hand. That she and her family and the citizens of her city were in God's hand. That's actually where you find yourself this morning. We gather under the word of God to catch a glimpse of the glory of God.

And where do you find yourself? You find yourself sitting there in your seats in the palm of the God of glory, the Sovereign, who's orchestrating all the details of your life and of mine, she sees that this Sovereign is omnipotent, that he is the one vested with limitless power. I mean, she could say as we hear elsewhere, his arm is not shortened, that it cannot save, that there is nothing that is too difficult for him, that he is strong in might, indeed that he is Almighty God. She could see that he's omnipotent. She says it.

The Lord's given this city unto Israel. It's as good as done. It's as if the story's been written and it's over. It's already been told. The Lord is invincible in might.

He's gonna lay bare the the strength of his own right arm. After all, she says, look at the evidence. He dried up the Red Sea. Here is the one who came from heaven to the superpower of superpowers in the ancient world, to Pharaoh and all of his military machinery, all of the prowess, all of the limitless resources that he had at his disposal. And here the God of heaven divided the sea, made dry the ground, brought his people across, delivering them out from under the hand of Egypt, and then cause the waters to come crashing down upon Pharaoh and his armies and to completely obliterate them.

She says, this is the God, this is Jehovah. He is one who is vested with omnipotence, who himself is omnipotent. He's the one who, as the text says, utterly destroyed Sion and Og and their people. He's a one who is righteous and holy, who has indignation against sin. He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.

He is unlike us, Rahab could have thought to herself. Right? We consider sin as a trifle, as a small thing, as insignificant, as normal, as mistakes and oversights and blemishes and foibles but not the Lord he's a purer eyes than to behold iniquity he is one who cannot stand sin he is the antithesis his His being is an antithesis to all that sin is. He is a God who will, who must punish sin, all sin, every sin, wherever that sin is found. And every sin will be punished either in ourselves or in his son but his justice will be exacted in all of its perfection And you notice the result of this glimpse.

What happens? In verse 9 we're told that for Jericho there is a collective terror. A collective terror. The passage says their hearts melted. Children think of it.

You take a stick of butter out of the fridge, it's firm. You set it in the Sun, what happens? It goes soft. You leave it in the Sun and it turns to liquid. That's the picture that God gives us.

These men, some of whom perhaps were giants, we're told, right? Giants were inhabiting the land. These are robust warriors. These are men of physical stature and strength. We're told that their hearts melted, that all of the courage drained out of the feet of every man.

They were left limp. They were left collapsing as it were under their fears. But you notice all of Jericho fears, but none of Jericho other than Rahab has faith. They all fear but are without faith. My friends, that is true of the natural man.

The natural man has a torment in his natural conscience. You know within your hearts, all of us know, we're accountable. All of us know we have lurking in the background that there is a judgment that is coming. But terror, even fear of hell is not being converted. You can have the fear of hell without actually running to the judge for salvation, without turning to him, without coming to him.

And this is a point at which some stumble. There are those who think, well, yes, I know that there is a God. I know that he's sovereign. I know that he's a creator. I know that he's a judge.

I know all those things. I know that my sin is wrong, " and dupe themselves into thinking that therefore all is well with their soul. Jesus tells us we can be near the kingdom without actually being in the kingdom. We can dwell about the doors and gates of the palace without ever seeking an audience with the King himself. Here is Rahab.

In the case of Rahab, she hears that God is coming. She hears that Israel is coming, and she doesn't cave to the temptation to turn from them to somehow just content herself with bracing herself, with somehow defending herself as the rest of her her friends and colleagues in the city did, she turns to them. She turns toward them and in turning to them she is turning toward the Lord himself. It's interesting that the repeated testimony of Rahab in Joshua, not just in chapter 2, chapter 6 and elsewhere, and the only testimony given in the New Testament, for example in Hebrews 11 and in James 2, in all of these cases it repeats that she received the spies. She received the spies with peace.

In other words, the Lord is underlining, He's highlighting for us. Here is a woman who is turning to the Lord, she's turning toward them, she's receiving. In fact, in Hebrews 11, you know, by faith she received the spies. You know, she did not, like the others who were unbelieving, perish because she received the spies. Faith is receiving, right?

That's the nature of faith. Faith is to receive and rest in the Lord Jesus Christ as he is offered to us in the gospel. That's the language lifted out of the shorter catechism. And so faith is receiving. That's what we see here.

Now the question is this, why? Young people think about this. Why? What is it that made the difference between Rahab and everybody else around her, all of her neighbors, the king and the other people in the city? What made the difference?

And the answer is that she saw more than what we have described thus far. She saw more. She saw the goodness and the mercy of God in redemption. She saw it in the fact that God had already redeemed his own people. They had been in bondage.

They had been under affliction for 400 years in Egypt and the Lord had delivered them. You know, she even heard that in the case of Sion, who ended up being destroyed, that when when the Lord came, when Israel came, Sion was actually offered peace. He was offered peace in exchange for safe passage through his country. He refused, of course, and so he was obliterated by the Lord, but it began with an offer of peace. Now here's Jericho, and there in line to be destroyed.

She sees in that there is a possibility of peace, and if you look at the language there in verses 12 and 13, notice what she says, Now therefore I pray you, swear unto me by the Lord." She sees something here. She sees that God is able and willing to spare her And therefore she seeks it and obtains it. Now there's something here that's important. She sees God's ability to deliver her. That's one thing.

But she also sees God's willingness to deliver her. There may be one of you here this morning and you're thinking to yourself, I've gone further, Pastor, than you described earlier. I know he's a creator. I know he's a sovereign. I know he's all powerful.

I know he's the judge. I also know that he's the Savior of sinners. I know that he is able to save to the uttermost. But here's where I stumble, Pastor. I'm not certain he's willing.

I know he's able. I'm not certain he's willing. Where do we discover God's willingness? We discover it in the same place that Rahab did. We have something fuller.

We discover it in the Word, in the revelation of God, and in the evidence that's given in his works. The warrant to believe the gospel is not found in the secret things of God, whether I'm elect or not, that's a true doctrine, but that's the secret things. We're not given a revelation of who is elect and who's not. The warrant to believe is not found even in something within me that would I can somehow uncover and discover that shows me that it's okay I'm in a condition to lay hold of Christ as he's offered in the gospel. The warrant to believe is found in the promise.

It's found in the revelation of God's Word in his promise, come unto me all who come I will by no means cast doubt. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world and so on. I can venture out and lay hold of Christ on the grounds of his promise. Here is a woman who saw that he was able and willing.

Notice her petition in those verses in verses 12 to 13, swear by the Lord. This is the word Jehovah. This is the covenant name of God, capital L-O-R-D, the covenant name of God. Swear by the Lord. What does she say?

Her petition is, show kindness to me. Save alive me and my household. Deliver us from death. Do you see what's happening here? Kindness, salvation, deliverance.

She sees that all these things are found in the Lord. All these things are found in the Lord. As a consequence of her faith, she has true fear of God. She has a filial fear of God, not a slavish fear like the rest of Jericho. She ends up truly fearing God and you'll see the implications for this.

The fear of God delivers her from the fear of man. We read elsewhere that the fear of man bringeth a snare. The fear of God delivers her from the fear of man. If you look, for example, at verse 3, she's delivered from the fear of the king. The king of Jericho comes, knocking on her door, and she aligns herself in loyalty to God's people and over against the king.

She doesn't fear the king. She doesn't cave or capitulate to the king. It's similar to what we see with regards to Moses. Hebrews 11 verse 27, by faith he forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the king. For he had respect under the recompense of the reward.

It's the same with Rahab. God is now looming large in her mind. And the king is seen as infinitesimally small. You know, one of the accounts given of the puritan, English puritan, Hooker was that when he went into the pulpit to preach a little man in stature himself that he grew in proportion and they said that under the preaching of God's Word, preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit, it was as if he could have picked up a king and stuck him in his pocket. You think, for example, of the way in which this plays out in that famous minister, Robert Bruce, who was a minister in Scotland at the end of 17th century, early part of the 17th century, well-known, powerful preacher, I encourage you to read his biography and the books that he's written.

He too, right, was one of these figures where when the king, he was preaching at one point, and the king is in the audience there in Edinburgh in St. Giles congregation, and he sees the king whispering to someone that's next to him. He stops in the middle of his sermon and he says, when the lion roars in the forest, all the beasts are to be silent. When the King of Heaven is speaking, let the kings of the earth be quiet. Rebukes the king.

You think of his colleague, Scottish Presbyterian minister, Melville, Andrew Melville, who confronts that same King and who says there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. One is the kingdom of King James, the second is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ of which King James is only a member and a vassal, is subservient to the king, to King Jesus. So here we have the fear, the fear of God eliminates the fear of man. She's able to defy the king and her devotion to him. You see this coming out, for example, in Isaiah 40.

In Isaiah 40, well-known chapter, beautiful chapter, rousing chapter. Notice the use of the word behold. There are two beholds. In verse 9, we're told, Behold your God. Verse 9, behold your God.

But then in verse 15, it says, Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the balance. All nations before him are as nothing and they are counted to him less than nothing and vanity. Those two beholds are connected. Behold your God and in beholding him see the nations less than dust in the balance counted as nothing less than nothing what is less than nothing that's nations, empires, great and grand people. They're seen by the people of God as insignificant and small against the backdrop of the glory of God.

Here she saw divine majesty, The divine majesty of Jehovah as a sovereign, as omnipotent, as righteous and as one who in mercy could save and deliver her. But then that brings us thirdly to our third question and the third question is how? How did she see God's glory? How did she see God's glory? In a word, by faith.

Hebrews 11 verse 31, By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace. Faith includes spiritual sight. It is by faith that she beheld and caught a glimpse of the glory of God. Those who were without faith are spiritually dead and being dead they're spiritually blind and ignorant. They're unable to see, unable to hear, unable to respond to the truth.

But she saw the glory of God and like Ruth who was similar, she was not a Canaanite but a Moabitess, right? Many years later, like Ruth, Rahab took refuge under the shadow of God's wings. And in this she aligned herself with Joshua and Caleb over against the ten spies. If you go back to to to Numbers 13 verses 30 and 31, in those two verses you have a contrast. Caleb and Joshua say we are able.

To take the land and the 10 spies say we are not able. Back to back, we are able, we are not able. She puts herself in the position of Joshua and Caleb and she says God is able. Faith lays hold on God. Really this is, you know, when you think of the promises, The promises of God's Word are windows.

They are windows through which we look to behold the promiser. The promises reveal to us the Promiser Himself, who God is in His faithfulness and power and so on. We lay hold of Him by faith and shows she is led to turn her back on everything she knows, everything that's familiar to her. She she throws away everything in her life in order to flee to the Lord. For refuge, my friends, there is never any loss in coming to the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is all gain. She is given a place and numbered among the people of God from that time forward. You know, faith brought her. What did it do? Faith brought her to be a worshiper of Jehovah.

As I said at the beginning, that is the number one application of everything in this conference. To be brought to be a worshiper of Jehovah. The Lord looks from heaven and He searches from one end of the earth to the other to seek those who worship Him. Jesus says in John 4, the Father is seeking those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. She is brought to be a worshipper of God and the sight of God by faith sustains her.

She's able to say to turn her back on the city of destruction and to set her face toward the city, the celestial city of the Lord's promise and blessing. And you'll notice that like Lydia in the New Testament, she brought blessing to her whole household. Because she comes by faith to the Lord, blessing is brought to her whole household. Her sight of God's glory had influence and impact on her extended family. This is important for those of you who are parents here.

Why? Because your personal sight of the glory of God is the most effective impact and influence on your children. Beware, beware, beware of thinking that you can have a list, that you can be given a list, that you can utilize a list of practical tips. What to of practical tips. What to do and what to say in order to impact our children.

Beware of that. Why? What your children need most. It's parents who are walking in communion with God, relishing fellowship with the Lord, meditating, soaking, saturating in the Word of God, delighting in the Lord Himself, spending time in prayer, and truly finding Him as the one who is our source of joy. When that's the case, my friends, it'll be bubbling up, and guess what?

You can't contain that. In fact, you can't contain it. It's contagious. It will spread, and that will influence your children. Spiritual mindedness produces spiritual conversation.

We think about what we love, and we speak about what we think about. What our children need is parents that are in love with the Lord. And not just some formal, practical, external list of things that we're supposed to do in a formulaic way to produce good kids. Chuck it in the bin. What we need is parents who know the Lord, who have a sight of his glory, and who've been transformed by it.

If you put the practical before the theological, you'll get neither. We need to turn right side up, but we have too often flung upside down. The knowledge of God is an end in itself. It is not a stepping stone to something else. Knowing God is its own joy.

In fact, it is the greatest joy. That's why Moses says, I beseech thee show me thy glory. That's why David teaches us to sing in Psalm 27, One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after. To behold the beauty of the Lord. That's why Paul says that he counts everything but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ.

That's why the Lord Jesus Christ teaches us, himself in John 17, that this is life eternal, that they might know thee and the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. This knowledge of God is seen by faith. 1st Peter 1 verse 8, when having not, whom having not seen ye love, in whom though now you see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. But my friends, this sight of God by faith is only the beginning. The best is yet to come.

If I were to ask you, what is the sum and substance of heaven? What is it that makes heaven so heavenly? I have news for you. It is not what most everybody in the 21st century says it is. Heaven is not a celestial playground, my friends, where you get to do in heaven everything you couldn't do and more in earth.

Heaven isn't about drinking coffee and playing golf and doing all of these other things that people speak about. For the true Christian, that would be a gross disappointment. That would be far too paltry for us. It's intolerable. The joy of heaven is beholding the glory of God for all of eternity.

That's what Jesus prays for in John 17 verse 24. Father, grant this, that they'll be with me where I am to behold my glory. That's what we are taught to sing at the end of Psalm 17 in verse 15. This is where our satisfaction will be in beholding the glory of God. And this joy, this joy is unimaginable.

Why? You're finite. You're limited. You're restricted. He's infinite without boundary, without limitation.

What does that mean? That means that in heaven, that there is an ever increasing, ever expanding, ever growing disclosure of the glory of God. That as we go on into eternity, there are greater and greater depths to see and know of the glory of God that are without end. And this is it. With the expansion of that sight of the glory of God will be the increase of the intensity of our joy so that our joy will actually expand and increase throughout eternity.

You will need a resurrected body to survive it. You'll need a resurrected body to survive it. If this resonates with anything in your heart, It's because you've already caught even here a sight of that glory by faith, though having not seen, we love. And with that sight of faith, we have unspeakable joy. In 1 John 3 verse 2, we're reminded that when we see Him, we will be made like him.

The believers greatest transformation will take place at the last day when we have the greatest sight of his glory. Let's stand together for prayer. Let's stand together for prayer. O gracious and eternal God in heaven, we do pray with Moses. We beseech thee, O Lord, show us thy glory.

Grant that we would see even now by faith more and more of these disclosures of all of the majesty that we are given, revealed to us in the scriptures, enable us to behold thy glory in the face of Jesus Christ and to be transformed into his likeness. Oh Lord, deliver us we pray from the city of destruction and bring us to that celestial city when we will be presented before thy presence to behold thy glory for we ask it in Jesus name