Choosing Faith Over Shame

I’ve always had a guilty conscience. That's the straight truth. I’ve always found myself feeling guilty about even the smallest of things. 

This sounds silly, but I even remember going to the bathroom when I was little, not washing my hands, and then feeling so bad about it that I tattle-tailed on myself to my mom to confess to her what I had done.

Fast forward to the fourth grade, I made a decision I really regretted. I was always the student who worked hard for my grades and never cheated… but I had a moment of weakness in the fourth grade. Our teacher had a pop quiz for us, and she wanted to see how much we knew. I remember her asking a math problem that I wrote down an answer to… but then I second-guessed myself, erased it, and put a new answer down. When it came time to collect the papers from my table, I saw that a classmate’s answer for that question was my original answer that I had erased. In a moment of weakness, I quickly changed my answer back to what it was. The assignment wasn’t even graded!! But in that moment I was willing to walk away from the truth to impress someone with something that didn’t even matter. 

We do that a lot, don’t we? Try to do things to impress people who don’t even matter. It’s hard though, because in the moment it seems like a big deal. It isn’t until we take a step back that we realize the lie we just lived. Then we can feel a lot of shame.

There was a woman in the Bible who also felt shame. We’re going to talk about her in this blog.

But before we talk about her, we gotta back it up. So the Israelites were a people in the Old Testament who fled from the Egyptians who had enslaved them. God parted the Red Sea as they were fleeing, and they were told by God that they would receive a Promised Land.

Jericho was a large city directly in the path of the Israelites. They needed to conquer Jericho in order to get to the Promised Land they had waited years and years for.

Now earlier in the story with the Israelites, they had sent out 12 spies to survey the land, and only 2 came back with good reports. The rest of them were freaked out. One of the spies who believed in the promise of God was Joshua, and Joshua later became the leader of the Israelites. 

Joshua decided to send out spies to check out Jericho and look over the land. But instead of sending 12 like they did earlier, they sent out 2. Joshua learned that he didn’t need all the approval from a bunch of different people. He didn’t need all the opinions. He wasn’t out to please everybody. He just needed two. In the same way, you don’t need a bunch of different people to approve of you. You don’t need all the opinions. Take it from Joshua.

So Joshua sends the two spies. Those two spies end up at the house of a prostitute named Rahab.

A prostitute. You talk about shame… Imagine the shame that Rahab felt being sold time and time again for her body. 

But yet God still uses her. A prostitute. An enemy of the Israelites. And a poor enemy at that. It says that Rahab lived in the part of the city wall; that’s where the poor, less-fortunate people lived. They lived on the edge of society.

But somebody must have seen the two spies go into Rahab’s house because word gets around to the King of Jericho that two Israelite spies are there. The King of Jericho then sends a message to Rahab to bring out the men, the spies.

Now we gotta pause here… because Rahab is a poor prostitute girl. But the King of Jericho, a prominent king, sends a message to her, someone who lives on the outskirts of Jericho. Rahab could have decided to try and impress the King. To make him happy. To bring him the spies. But Rahab had enough faith in God that she chose to keep these people of God safe. This is before she is promised anything from them.

Instead, Rahab tells them, “Yes, two men did come to me, but I didn’t know where they’d come from. At dark, when the gate was about to be shut, the men left. But I have no idea where they went. Hurry up! Chase them - you can still catch them!”

When in reality, Rahab had taken the two spies up to her roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax her roof was made out of. The men believed it and left, trying to chase down the two spies.

Rahab went up to the roof. She said, “I know that God has given you the land… We heard how God dried up the waters of the Red Sea before you when you left Egypt and what he did to the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan… we all had the wind knocked out of us. And all because of you, you and God, your God, God of the heavens above and God of the earth below.”

Then she says, “Now promise me by God. I showed you mercy, now show my family mercy.” And she asks for her family to be saved when the Israelites come to take over Jericho. They handed her a red rope and told her to hang it out of her window so they knew which house to spare when the Israelites came through.

Rahab lowered them down out of a window with a rope. She told them, “Run for the hills so your pursuers won’t find you. Hide out for three days and give your pursuers time to return. Then get on your way.”

The spies did what she said. They were not found. They returned safely to Joshua.

Rahab had a dirty past. She had shame. But then God came knocking… literally. Those two men came knocking on her doorstep. She could have either let them in or tell them to get lost. You have that same opportunity. No matter your shame. No matter your past mistakes. God will come knocking. But you have to have the faith to open the door.

Rahab had every reason not to trust God or these men. Time and time again men had hurt her. Time and time again she was told she was nothing but a prostitute. That’s what people said!!! “Rahab the prostitute.” But she had enough faith to think, “Maybe their God, who split the Red Sea, can make a way for me too.”

God saves her. She is the picture of grace.

And not only was she saved, God had a redemptive strategy for her life. You see, Rahab married a prince of Israel and became the great, great grandmother of King David. That inserted her into the lineage of Jesus, and you will find her name mentioned in Matthew in the genealogy of Jesus.

That means God birthed His son, the Messiah, in the bloodline of a prostitute. 

Not only that, Rahab is also mentioned in James 2:25 “In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?”

Rahab is called righteous!!! And then in Hebrews 11 - this is so good - it says:

“By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.

By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets…”

You mean this writer didn’t have time to talk about David, the greatest King of Israel??? But yet they have time to mention Rahab the prostitute?

Here’s why: God doesn’t look at people based on our standard of importance or significance. God saw that Rahab had faith and He used her. So often we think, “God can’t use me. I’m too messed up. I’m too broken. I deal with anxiety, depression, terrible thoughts. I’ve done things I regret.” But God didn’t change Rahab before He used her!!! She was still a prostitute!

God can use you in your brokenness, in your mistakes. Rahab had nothing to offer except a little bit of faith. Have faith and watch God save you!! Watch God save your family because of the faithfulness they see in you!!

Rahab probably had shame because of her past. You probably have some shame about things you’ve done or words you’ve said. But the beautiful thing about us today is that we don’t have to live in shame! It’s because Jesus suffered the shame of the cross for us. It’s a beautiful heart-wrenching thing that a man would go through so much suffering and be hung on a cross - next to two criminals - that He would carry the weight of all our shame up with Him on the cross so we don’t have to live with it.

So let go of the shame. Grab onto faith instead.