A sermon on Joshua 2 by Rev Richard Keith on Sunday, 15 February 2026
Our message today is the third in a series looking at women in the Bible. These women are not just great examples of faith. They are also surprising people through whom God chose to act. And none more surprising than the woman we are looking at today, Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho.
In our message last Sunday, we stood beside the Nile River in Exodus chapter 2. We watched God at work through three women, Jochebed, Miriam, and Pharaoh’s daughter, to save baby Moses.
Today, as we turn to Joshua chapter 2, we have moved forward a generation. The people of Israel are no longer in slavery. Through Moses, God brought them out of Egypt, led them across the Red Sea, and carried them through the wilderness. And now, under the leadership of Joshua, Moses’ successor, the Israelites stand camped on the east bank of the Jordan River, on the border of the promised land of Canaan. And once again, the story focuses on one unlikely person.
Her name was Rahab. She lived inside the city of Jericho, the fortified city on the west bank of the Jordan that stood opposed to Israel and to Israel’s God. Joshua sent two spies to cross the Jordan. So the men went and arrived at the house of Rahab in Jericho.
When we meet Rahab, everything seems to be against her. She was the wrong nationality, a Canaanite. And she had the wrong profession, a prostitute, making money from selling sexual favours. By every measure of religious privilege and moral respectability, she should be excluded from God’s saving purposes. And she was living in a city gripped by terror. From her house in the wall, she could see the Israelite camp across the river. She had heard the stories of the plagues against Egypt and of the parting of the Red Sea. Like everyone in Jericho, her heart had melted with fear.
But to the spies sent by Joshua, Rahab was simply a convenience. They hoped not to arouse suspicion by staying in a house that was part of the city walls and that strange men visited regularly. But their plan came unstuck when an informer reported them to the king of Jericho.
This king was a local warlord, holding power over a town of about one thousand people. But that was enough to pose a deadly threat to the spies in Rahab’s house. He sent a message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you because they have come to spy out the whole land.” This was not just a warning. This was a death sentence waiting to happen. If those spies were discovered in her house, Rahab would not survive the morning.
But she had already made her choice. She had hidden them under straw on the roof of her house and sent the messengers off in the wrong direction. “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At sunset, when it was time to close the city gate, the men left. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.” The two spies might not have blinked if Rahab got into trouble after they left. But she went out of her way, risking her life to save theirs.
Because God delights in using people the world overlooks. Your past does not disqualify you. Your mistakes do not define you. God is looking for people who will act in faith when the moment comes, regardless of their background. The question is not, “Are you qualified?” but, “Will you be faithful?”
Rahab showed amazing grace to the Israelite spies. We do not know what they would have done for her if their roles were reversed, but we do know that she risked her life for them. If they wondered why, they did not have to wait long to find out. For before they went down to her from their hiding place, she went up to them and poured out her heart. And what she said explains everything she had done.
Rahab said, “I know that the Lord has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us. 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 to the Amorites who live east of the Jordan. When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.”
She spoke of fear, of hearts melting, of courage failing. Fear of Israel and fear of the Lord because of his judgment on Egypt, who had kept Israel as slaves, and on the Amorites who had attacked Israel unjustly in the wilderness. Everyone in Jericho had heard these things. Everyone in Jericho had experienced this fear. But there are two kinds of fear.
There is the fear that hardens you, that makes you lock your gates, trust your walls, and hope somehow you can resist what you know you cannot defeat. That is the fear the king of Jericho had. That is the fear the city had.
And then there is the fear that humbles you, that makes you recognise you cannot save yourself, that only the true God has true power, that your only hope is to align yourself with him. That is what Rahab had. The same terror, but leading to two completely different responses.
Listen to how Rahab put it into words. “The Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.” This is a confession of faith. Not just, “Your God is powerful,” but, “Your God is the God.” The sovereign Lord over all creation. God in heaven. God on earth. The only true and living God. This is the fear of the Lord, which the book of Proverbs says is the beginning of wisdom. Rahab proved to be the wisest person in Jericho. Her wisdom began with fear, but it was fear that led to worship, not resistance.
There is a line in the hymn Amazing Grace that we are singing after this message: “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.” That was Rahab’s experience. Grace taught her heart to fear. She heard God’s judgments and trembled. But grace also relieved her fears by showing her where to place her trust. The fear of the Lord led her to salvation, not destruction.
And notice what this fear of the Lord produced in her life. It led her to hide the spies, aligning herself with God’s people rather than her own city. It led her to risk everything, because she recognised that the side opposed to God had no future. And it led her to cry out for salvation: “Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you.”
The fear of the Lord did not paralyse her. It activated her. It moved her from terror to trust, from hiding behind walls to hiding God’s servants, from passive despair to active faith. This is what genuine faith looks like. It begins with hearing. It continues with the fear of the Lord, that humble recognition that God is God and you are not. And it results in decisive action.
Faith begins with hearing. And Rahab reminds us firstly that hearing about God always leads to a response. No one in Jericho was ignorant. Everyone had heard the same stories. Everyone felt the same fear. But they did not all respond the same way.
And the same is true today. People hear the gospel, the message of Christmas and Easter. They hear of Jesus, born in Bethlehem, who died on a cross for sinners and rose from the dead.
And yet some respond by hardening themselves, trusting their own goodness, their own morality, their own religious efforts to make themselves acceptable to God. They build walls against the truth behind which they hide.
Others respond like Rahab. They recognise they cannot save themselves, that they need a Saviour, and they turn toward Christ in trust. So the question for us is not, “Have I heard the gospel?” Most of us have. We celebrate Christmas every year. We know the Easter story. The question is, “What have I done with what I have heard?” Have you heard about Christ and simply acknowledged it as a nice story? Or have you heard and confessed, like Rahab, that Jesus is Lord?
Rahab reminds us secondly that faith leads to action. Rahab did not simply believe something in her mind. Her faith changed her loyalties, from Jericho to Israel, from opposing God to aligning with him. The king of Jericho was not her lord. The Lord, the God of Israel, was. And so her faith changed her decisions. She risked everything for God’s people. Her faith changed her future. She became part of God’s family.
And genuine faith in Christ still does that today. Faith is not just agreeing that Jesus was born in Bethlehem or that he rose from the tomb. Faith is confessing him as Lord and trusting him enough to switch your allegiance from the kingdom of darkness to his kingdom of light, even when it costs you something. It means identifying with Christ’s people even when it is costly, trusting his promises when we are frightened, and leaving behind what once defined you for your new identity in Jesus. Because faith does not just believe. It always leads to action.
The Apostle James understood this. He wrote specifically about Rahab: “Was not Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” James is not saying we are saved by works. He is saying that real faith, saving faith, always produces works. Rahab’s works did not earn her salvation. They proved her faith was real. Faith without action is like a body without breath—dead. Because faith in Jesus always leads us to trust him, to live for him, and to obey him.
Because genuine faith risks everything. That is what Rahab did. Her confession was finished. She had declared her faith. She had asked for mercy. Then came the moment from which there was no turning back. Because the spies were still in her house. The king’s soldiers were still searching, and Jericho was still locked down. But Rahab knew something no one else in her city believed yet. If Jericho kept up its defiance against Israel and the Lord, it was going to fall. So she made her choice.
Joshua chapter 2 tells us that Rahab lived in a house built into the city walls. And from that wall she lowered the spies down by a rope. If anyone saw them escape, Rahab was finished. But Rahab did not just help them escape. She hid them. She gave them directions. She told them where to go. She told them how long to stay hidden. She was now fully aligned with God’s people. Her allegiance had changed. In her heart, she no longer belonged to Jericho. Because faith is more than just believing something is true. Faith is trusting God enough to stand with him, even when it puts everything else at risk.
In return, the spies made her a promise. They swore an oath. When Israel returned, Rahab and her family would be spared. But there was a condition. She must tie a scarlet cord in her window. And she must gather her family inside her house. That cord would be a visible sign of where she had placed her trust. It would be her declaration that she was trusting the mercy of Israel’s God.
So think about the position Rahab was now in. She was still inside Jericho. She woke up every day inside a city heading toward its own destruction. She had a promise. But she did not yet have rescue. She had hope. But she did not yet have safety. She must simply trust that God would do what he had said. And yet she believed and acted on that belief. Not later when she saw Jericho surrounded, but as soon as the spies left, she tied the scarlet cord, red as blood, in the window. Because genuine faith does not wait for proof. It trusts God’s word enough to act on it. It risks reputation. It risks security. It risks the future.
But Rahab also teaches us something else. Her rescue was never earned by what she did. She was saved because she trusted the promise given to her. She was saved by faith. The city of Jericho maintained its defiance against Israel and against God. The Israelites crossed the Jordan River and marched around the city for seven days. At the sound of trumpets, the city’s walls fell. But Rahab and her family, all who took shelter in her home, protected by the scarlet cord, escaped alive. Not because she was respectable. Not because she was powerful. But because she trusted the promise of mercy and took refuge under the sign that marked her house.
It is a picture of how God still saves people today. The scarlet cord hanging from Rahab’s window points us forward to the saving work of Jesus. Just as Rahab trusted a promise of rescue she could not yet see, we are called to trust the promise of salvation through Christ. Just as Rahab sheltered under the sign that marked her for mercy, we shelter under the blood of Christ shed on the cross. Just as Rahab remained inside Jericho, we live in a world that is still broken and still under judgment, waiting for the day when Christ returns. And just as Rahab’s rescue was entirely undeserved, so is ours.
Salvation is never about how respectable you are, how religious you are, or how clean your past looks. Salvation has always been and will always be by grace through faith. God delights in saving unlikely people. People with messy histories. People with regrets. People who feel disqualified. Rahab shows us that no one is beyond the reach of God’s mercy.
And Rahab was not only rescued. She was welcomed. She joined the people of Israel. She became part of God’s family. And generations later, her name appears again in the family line of Jesus. The outsider became part of the story through which the Saviour entered the world. Because that is what grace does. It does not just spare us. It brings us home.
So what saves a person? Not ethnicity—Rahab was a Canaanite. Not morality—she was a prostitute. Not works—because they flowed from faith. What saved Rahab? Her faith. Faith that heard and believed. Faith that confessed and worshipped. Faith that risked everything. Faith that trusted God’s promises.
It is the same faith that saves us today—faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone. That is what Rahab teaches us. That is the gospel, then and now. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Will you call on him today?