Sermons from Past Years

Joshua 2 "All the Wrong Places" Scott Hoezee

One of the most well-known stories of the Bible is the one about "Jacob's Ladder." Having swindled his brother, Esau, out of his rightful blessing, Jacob is on the lam, fleeing his brother's fury. He walks as far as his legs will carry him that first day of his exile from home, finally collapsing in an exhausted heap--so tired that he doesn't even mind having a stone for a pillow. But then he has that remarkable dream of a staircase extending from heaven to earth upon which Jacob sees angels ascending and descending constantly. When he wakes up, Jacob feels a cold shiver go down his spine as he utters the now-famous words, "Surely God was in this place and I knew it not!" So he sets up a little monument, names the place "Bethel" or "the House of God," and then goes on his way.

Of course, Jacob missed the main point of that revelation. Because the truth is that the whole world is Bethel, the whole world and every spot on it is connected to the realm of God. When Jacob got up the next morning and hoofed it from Bethel to his Uncle Laban's ranch, he had actually not left Bethel at all--God is everywhere, every point on the map can become an intersection of heaven and earth.

That's why throughout the Bible you can again and again find people uttering some version of Jacob's exclamation: Surely God was in this place and I didn't even realize it! But nowhere is that truth seen in so queer and startling a way as in the story before us this evening. Since it is such a ripping good story told with all the narrative skill this author could muster, let's spend a little time just pondering what's going on here. For the ultimate truth we should learn from Joshua 2 emerges nicely from the story itself.

Last week we saw how God bolstered Joshua's confidence by making some grand and sweeping promises always and ever to be with Joshua. Having taken this divine confidence to heart, Joshua wastes no time in getting the Israelites ready to begin the conquest of the Promised Land. This evening we see that Joshua is still on the move, this time authorizing a reconnaissance spy mission. Two spies, who are called simply "young men" in the original Hebrew text, are asked to scout out the land, checking its strengths and defenses. In particular Joshua singles out one of Canaan's stronger fortified cities: Jericho.

Now you have to remember that these two young men had spent their entire lives out in the desert. So this was their first trip to the big city, and like so many other wide-eyed young men before them and ever since, the enticements of the big city prove to be pretty overwhelming. It doesn't take them too long to find their way to Jericho's red light district and to a brothel run by Madam Rahab. Notice that verse 2 tells us they went to Rahab's place not after they had been found out and so were looking for a place to hide. No, this is the very first place they visit, according to the text.

Not surprisingly, a good many commentators over the centuries have been embarrassed by this. So rather than admit the fairly obvious possibility that these boys went to a brothel for the usual reason, a few counter-ideas have been advanced. Some commentators think that these spies went to a brothel simply because they knew it would be a good place to hide--after all, an establishment like Rahab's was the kind of place where you could find a lot of out-of-town folks. So perhaps they went there just to blend in with a few of Jericho's other visitors that day. Still other commentators speculate that perhaps Rahab's house was near the city gate, and so the spies went there because it would be a convenient and strategic place from which to observe the city and all those who passed through its gates.

Maybe--but I doubt it. Because the language and imagery of this chapter are saturated with sexuality. So, squeamish though we may be about this, it looks like these boys went to Madam Rahab's for all the reasons you might suspect. But then things go terribly wrong as someone rats on them to the king of the city. The next thing Rahab knows the FBI is at her door inquiring about a couple of out-of-town customers of her's. "They're spies, Rahab," the agents inform her.

"Really," Rahab replies. "Well, they were here earlier but we concluded our business just a little while ago. I thought they were just a couple of traveling salesmen--I had no idea who they were. But if you hurry, I'd wager you could catch them!" So the agents scurry off.

But it was all a ruse on Rahab's part--she knew full well who they were and what their presence in Jericho portended. So she had already taken the prudent step of hiding them under the shingles up on her roof. Once she dispatches with the authorities, Rahab then returns to the roof to have a little chat with these young men. But before Rahab gets to the roof, notice the detail at the end of verse 7: the city gate is shut. The men are now trapped.

But here's where things get really interesting. Because Rahab now makes a speech which is both shocking and highly clever. The shock comes when the name of Yahweh passes Rahab's lips in verse 9. "I know that Yahweh has given you this land." Rahab then proceeds to give an abridged version of salvation history. Here is a twist neither the reader nor these young men could have anticipated: suddenly this foreign hooker becomes a prophet of the one true God! Suddenly a madam who traffics in a rather unholy business demonstrates that she knows Israel's God by Name, that she is familiar with some of this God's recent doings, and that she has even come to believe in the truth of God's covenant.

These boys went to Rahab's for sex and end up with a sermon! But it is a sermon with a clever application section: Rahab is looking for salvation. Starting in verse 12 she reveals the method behind the madness of defying her own king: she wants to use her kindness to these spies as a bargaining chip with which to purchase the rescue of her own family when the attack on Jericho begins. The reader has to give Rahab credit--she's got these guys over a barrel. The authorities are scouring the countryside for them, the city gate has now been locked shut, and it is by no means too late for Rahab to blow the whistle on them. How easy it would be for Rahab to call the police back and say something like, "I thought they had gone, but look here: they were hiding on my roof all along. Take them away!" Rahab has not only protected the spies, she has trapped them!

It is, therefore, no surprise to hear the two spies granting her wish. "Hey, you got it, lady! If you keep your mouth shut about all this, we promise that you and yours will be rescued when we come to sack the city." Rahab then takes a scarlet rope--which many commentators think was some piece of feminine finery that may itself have been a typical article of clothing worn by prostitutes--and she lowers the men out the window.

In the end the spies return to Joshua but with a militarily poor reconnaissance report. Where was the map of Canaan? They hadn't had time to make one before going to Rahab's. Where was the schematic drawing of Jericho, replete with the location of key ramparts and the structure of the gate? Well, that wasn't the part of the city they had investigated. Where was the data on the number of troops in Jericho's standing army? They didn't know. All they can do instead is tell Joshua the one thing they did learn from Rahab. "Good news, commander Joshua! The people are scared silly of us, and we read this as a sign that God is already preparing the way for us to waltz right in and be successful." It was not a typical spy report, but then their spy mission had taken a rather wrong turn.

But perhaps it is just here that we can begin to see some of the larger ramifications of this story. Yes, these boys had done something that was morally wrong. Yes, these boys had not behaved the way spies should. Yet it all turns out remarkably well. The prostitute whose sexual services they sought turns out to be a spokesperson for Yahweh! And what Rahab reveals in her oracle proves to be just the piece of news the Israelites needed to hear.

Forty years earlier Joshua had been one of the original twelve spies to scout out the Promised Land for Moses. As you may recall, back then most of the spies talked only about the physical and military lay of the land--so much so that they scared the Israelites silly with their report of giants living in cities of stone. Those spies gave a typical military reconnaissance report, and it caused a crisis of faith so grave that God punished the people by postponing the conquest of Canaan for four decades.

Ironically, these two new spies give a report that focuses not on military matters but on divine matters and this has the opposite effect: this time the Israelites get energized for their mission! This time the focus is where it should have been forty years earlier: namely on God and on his mighty work on Israel's behalf. And the queer thing is that this radical change of situation happened because two guys heard Yahweh speaking through a prostitute!

Although the text does not record their saying it, you can well imagine that upon leaving Rahab's brothel, these two spies recalled the words of old father Jacob: Surely God was in that place and we didn't know it! Indeed, God was the last person they wanted to meet in a brothel--it's like running into your minister at Rite Aid at the very moment you decide to give that Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue a look-see after all! Bumping into God at a brothel was neither expected nor even much desired.

In the past you have at times heard me say that when it comes to dispensing grace, God can at times be downright promiscuous. But to see God distribute grace in a brothel brings the promiscuity of God's mercy to a new level. But that's the way it goes with God: things are seldom as you would expect.

The whole point of this intriguing story was to remind Israel that her true strength was of a different sort. It will be the awesome power of God, and not typical military maneuvers, that will win the day. The same God whose creative providence managed to turn a prostitute into a prophet will use that same surprisingly clever providence to deliver Jericho and the rest of Canaan right into Israel's lap.

All in all, therefore, Joshua 2 presents a story of promiscuous grace and outrageous providence. The whole tale reminds us that when it comes to the accomplishment of salvation, God takes care of everything in a way that defies conventional wisdom, that short-circuits religion-as-usual, and that does an end-run on all our human efforts to save ourselves. Salvation is going to be the surprising work of God and before he is done with it, God will employ a very strange cast of characters and will be found active in not a few startling events and places, the last and strangest of which will be a cross on a place called Skull Hill. Our God is endlessly creative and surprising in his workings.

That's more than a little encouraging for all of us. But before it encourages us, perhaps it first unsettles us. After all, Joshua 2 is one of many biblical reminders that a good many of our efforts neatly to mark off the sacred from the secular just are not going to work. Too often these days, in the black-and-white rhetoric of America's culture wars, we find ourselves pointing to areas of life where we believe we just know God is absent. We too often think that we already know who is who when it comes to distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys, the holy folks from the godless secular humanists among us. But if Rahab the prostitute could turn out to be a servant of Yahweh whose words deliver a decisive revelation at a key juncture in salvation history, then I think we are all reminded that we could use a little holy agnosticism as to precisely what God is up to at any given moment.

We need to expect the unexpected, to look for God in odd places, to recognize that often God is lurking in the hearts of unlikely people. We need to look for God, his grace, and his work in strange places so that, if we should happen to spy God on the move, we can then cooperate with His Spirit, we can then go with God's flow, and so in the end--as happened for Rahab and her family--we can just maybe help to save someone after all. In other words, perhaps if we would open our eyes and ask the Spirit for illumination, maybe we would see that there are a lot of places in this world where scarlet cords are draped out people's windows if only we will take the time to notice and then lend a loving hand.

In the long run, Rahab is rescued, is saved, and becomes a prominent member in the household of Israel. She becomes so prominent, in fact, that one day Rahab's great, great, great, great, great grandson would be born in Bethlehem and given the name Jesus. Indeed, Matthew goes out of his way in the opening chapter of his gospel to remind us that one of Jesus' ancestors in the line of David was a former prostitute by the name of Rahab. As Frederick Buechner once wrote, maybe that explains the soft spot that Jesus so clearly had in his heart for all those ladies of evening he met in places like Samaria, Capernaum, and Jerusalem. Maybe remembering great-grandma Rahab reminded Jesus that God can be at work in all kinds of people--sometimes God is even busier in their lives than in the lives of the more obviously religious!

At the outset of Joshua 2, we might agree with the words of that country-western song that those boys were "looking for love in all the wrong places." By the time the chapter is finished, however, they had found their God in that wrong place and in that funny fact is an unnerving reminder that those of us who think we have God cased and nailed down are as often as not wrong about that.

But like these two spies--and eventually the rest of Israel along with them--perhaps we can take this facet of our great God and turn it into a point of holy celebration and great encouragement. As with the Israelites, so with us, seeing God's amazing work in such unlikely places ought to be enough to help all of us move forward into the world with great confidence and holy hope.