255: Frank Abel - Exhortation: Lessons from Rahab

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to good for selfie and talks. I’m Levi and I’m Chris and I’m Brian, thank you for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one taco week to help us get the Bible in our daily news feed. We post a new episode of the start of each week with a short intro before. Hand to kind of set the stage for the talk. You’re about to listen to and now let’s talk more about this week’s talk

2. 0:50

   this week. We’re listening to an excitation that was given by Brother Frank able back in 1998 at the Idyllwild. Bible school brother, Frank is from the Shelburne Ontario cliche. Canada and this excitation which was given right at the end of the Ottawa Bible school. He’s taking a look at the lessons from Rahab in the story of Joshua and what I really appreciate about this is it’s a really good reminder for us.

3. 1:13

   He starts by talking about some of the Ebbs and flows in faith that we can feel in our lives and takes lessons from Rahab and how that we can apply that. So that we can more whether those Ebbs and flows as we live our life, waiting for the return of Christ. I really appreciate.

4. 1:29

   He does away. Really great job at looking at the details of the story and pulls out, some really awesome nuggets that I’ll save for you to discover when you listen to it, to be able to kind of put yourself more in rehabs place and understand what was going on both for her for the spies and for everything else. It’s a this expectation to me is just a classic example of understanding.

5. 1:49

   What is really great about some of the Sunday school lessons that we’ve learned growing up and how many details sometimes we can lose when we’re? Otherwise just focused on the overall story that just makes them More powerful as you dig deeper and deeper into them. As always, thank you for listening and for sending in any suggestions, I hope that you enjoy this excitation and find it to be uplifting for your walk with that. I will turn it over to our brother, Frank able for his excitation entitled lessons from rehab, good morning, brothers and sisters and young people.

6. 2:21

   We At one final, time to open our Bibles and to open our minds. And to consider some things that will help us. We pray when we come down from this mountain, I suppose there’s not too many young people here. Have the tendency to wake up early especially at bible school, but some of the older people out of habit when they wake up in the morning, it’s it’s very difficult to get back to sleep and sometimes there’s real benefits in noticing that there is quite a time between the first rays of day and before you ever see the sun, When you think of it as a proportion of the day, it’s quite a period of time which in various parts of the world, of course varies. But in our part of the world would be about 60 to 90 minutes at this time of the year.

7. 3:18

   Now, God has told us that there are certain things to think of when we see things like that, you may not have thought of it this way. But in Joel chapter 3, In verse 1 and 2, he talks about the return of the Jewish people from captivity. And he does say in those days in that time when I bring again, the Captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat.

8. 4:00

   So there are certain things prophetically which are like the dawning of a day. The first rays of the sun means something, the full sun means something else. And it would seem to me that there were good reasons for our brothers and sisters, quite possibly a number of you here who can remember back to the joy and the excitement in our community in 1947 and in a 48. When finally Israel became a state And Joel chapter 3. Without any doubt, we were now seeing the return of the Captivity of Judah and Jerusalem. Obviously, there would be people who would have said, they could have seen those first rays of light in 1917 sometime before that.

9. 4:52

   But there was no question in 1948, that the first rays of light were there, Now, the characteristics of the first rays of light, till the actual appearance of the sun is that everything becomes brighter and brighter. You can see more. You might guess that there could be some link between that and what the Prophet Daniel said that in the latter days, knowledge would be increased.

10. 5:21

    That’s exactly what happens when the sun becomes Higher and Higher and almost comes to the Horizon. You can see things you couldn’t see at night. So the Brotherhood was looking very strongly for the time of the Gathering of all Nations because it tells us at that time I will also gather all nations. So for some time now, there’s been high expectations in the Brotherhood of the return of Christ. That yes, there may not be many more times that we will break bread together until he comes.

11. 5:58

    And that’s the joy of our community. That’s what so often binds us together when we leave the assembly that we are in this morning. That we may very well. The next time. See each other at the calling together of ourselves by the Lord. Now, what was interesting this year we had a difficult time with the strawberries in the spring because we had some very late, Frost’s.

12. 6:27

    And to deal with that, you have to get up early in the morning at the earliest, you can see the strawberries, get the hoses out and wash the frost off the actual berries. The frost doesn’t kill a plant but it does damage the fruit. You have a period of time to do. That is from the first light of day, when you can actually see what you’re doing, till the sun rises, when the sun’s actually on the horizon and provides heat to melt that ice itself, then it’s too late to do anything.

13. 6:56

    So it’s it’s a unique period and we had a lots of time to think about spiritual analogies this year because we had four nights in a row in the first week of June when we had quite heavy. Frost’s And I was thinking, I wonder how typical it is that we go through this roller coaster ride between the first rays of light and the actual Sun appearing that people’s expectations of the Lord Rises and then it falls and it rises in it falls. And you wonder, how many times you can go through that before you get a little weary of the process and you get a little bit callous to the even the suggestion that the law. Is coming or is coming is near because we’ve been through this scenario so many times.

14. 7:43

    It just seems to be another one of those times. So, in 1967, same people looked at what was happening in the Middle East Saw Jerusalem now becoming free, not totally, but becoming free of Gentile domination and began to Rejoice again. But nothing came of it and we had to wait until 1973 before something else significant happened in the Middle East and expectations rose again and then fell. And then in 1989 the events in Europe and the brotherhood’s expectations again a rose and fell and then the Gulf War and there may be a number of other times like even this week being together and being away from the influence of the world and talking about these things are our expectations and our feelings, about the coming of the Lord are probably high. But I wonder what they’ll be like tomorrow. And later on in the week, when we get back into those grooves, that we came out of so happily at the beginning of last week. We have to deal with this brothers and sisters this rising and falling of expectations.

15. 8:57

    There, can’t be any question that when you see the first rays of light, the sun will appear on the horizon being that way, ever since God created it, and he guarantees that we’ll continue that day and night will continue before him. So we don’t doubt that there will be an appearance of the sun. We don’t doubt that our Lord will come but we would sure like to have a little more comfort as to how to deal with the rise and the fall of the expectations.

16. 9:29

    Well, we need to go to the Bible to get that comfort. We were here yesterday in class and there’s one major example in the life of Rahab. We’d like to look at before we leave the subject in Hebrews chapter 6, you may remember the theme we were working on was revealed to us in verse 12 that you’d be not slothful or lazy or fall back into sort of the spiritual doldrums but followers of them who through faith.

17. 10:03

    And patience, inherit the promises. Now it’s those two characteristics we’re working on it’s not as if they were all. There was we know that there are only two of many seven, other fruits of the spirit, we need to develop. But there are at least two main things we need at this time, in our lives, faith and patience.

18. 10:27

    And we like to point it out in the life of this young lady Rahab. It’s there’s four things, I think in the life of that young woman that are remarkable, and if we can remember them around the four points, that will certainly help us later on. I’ve often wondered. When you consider Rahab mentioned in the New Testament, it almost seems a slam on her to find her mentioned as Rahab.

19. 10:57

    The Harlot, why would you ever mention where a person came from? When you talk about them years after their conversion, why would you mention that? That’s where she was initially found. So, for instance, in James in chapter two were, it’s a verse about commending, this young lady yet, it still says Likewise also was not Rahab the Harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers and had sent them out another way.

20. 11:31

    We can’t forget brothers and sisters, how the gospel in that extends out so far as to embrace people that maybe even we wouldn’t reach out to. But God as he reached out to the Apostle, Paul and he considered himself the chief sinner, because he had persecuted the Ecclesia. That’s the breath. That we must understand as well concerning this young lady. I don’t know for sure but you know you wonder sometimes why the record mentioned certain things and it doesn’t immediately tell us But it does say that when she took the spies up to the roof of her house, she covered them with flax of when stalks of flax.

21. 12:14

    Now, I don’t know too much about flax. I haven’t really worked with it, much on the farm, but we have had a little experience, and flax is the kind of of a crop that after you get the seed out of it, you’re pretty. We’ll have to burn it because the stock is so strong and so likely to entangle anything that that tries to rake it or bail it or some some water, otherwise deal with it that most often in our area. People growing flax will burn the stocks. We do know however that the stocks are used in the scriptures in another sense.

22. 12:50

    So that we go to Revelation chapter 19, It talks about people who were clothed were clothed in linen verse 8 to her. The bride was, granted that she should be arrayed in fine, linen clean and white for the fine. Linen is the righteousness of saints. So you see this flax in the initial stages of what could become fine linen.

23. 13:26

    Or righteousness. And it seems to me that that unfolds a little bit about the life of this lady of how in the later part of the scriptures the New Testament, it keeps on bringing back the idea of Rahab the Harlot, she covered the spies with stalks of flax unprocessed righteousness. But nevertheless The first stage of it and so many people we find in the scriptures when we first see them, they’re just in the first stage of being called out because God seen something in them that will mature into the bride of Christ.

24. 14:04

    So that that person can be clothed with the fine linen is the righteousness of the Saints. So we see Rahab initially deliberately lying to cover up the fact. She had hid these spice. We see her as a harlot coming out from the world. That’s where she was. That’s where many people that we preach to our found today.

25. 14:26

    But we don’t stop preaching to them. We don’t stop reaching out to them because that’s where they start. If in fact, God is drawing them, then they will respond to the gospel message and I believe that is the point. One about the life of this woman. She represents the Gentiles. They weren’t found in the way of righteousness, but there was something about them that Illustrated that given the opportunity, they would develop the final in the righteousness of the Saints. Saints.

26. 14:58

    Now, what is stated about this person is very brief. We have one chapter. We have a few comments on it later on but just really have the one chapter So as the scriptures come to our Aid. So often with just the minimum number of words but saying quite a lot. On those words we find her commended in verse 11 chapter 2 of Joshua She says to the spies that in terms of what she had heard because it does say that verse 10.

27. 15:33

    We heard how Yahweh dried up the water of the Red Sea for you. When you came out of Egypt, and what you did to, the two kings of the amorites, which were on the other side, Jordan sihon and OG whom you utterly destroyed. As soon as we had heard these things, our hearts didn’t melt neither, did the In any more courage in any, man because of you for Yahweh, your God, he is God in heaven above and in Earth beneath. now, it’s that Declaration of this young lady, which separated her, it would seem from everybody else in Jericho, There was it would seem 99% of the people all melted. Became useless.

28. 16:23

    There was no courage in them. But in this young woman what she had seen and heard, I should shouldn’t say seeing because I don’t believe she ever did see this? She only saw it in the eye of her mind. It was what she heard and what she made out of those details. That convinced her that Yahweh must be God.

29. 16:44

    So she says, for Yahweh your God, he is God. Now that’s the Declaration. God had tried to get out of the Jews. It go back to Deuteronomy in Chapter 4 and see what God specially did besides coming out of Egypt to try to get the Jewish people to come to the same conclusion. so, he says, Inverse. 31 Deuteronomy, chapter 4 at verse 31. Maybe will read verse 32, Port connection, when our and tribulation and all these things are come on. The even in the latter days if they’ll turn to Yahweh, thy God, and shall be obedient unto his voice for Yahweh. Thy God, he is a merciful god, he will not forsake thee, nor destroy thee, nor forget the Covenant of our fathers, which he sware unto them.

30. 17:37

    And he goes on to say, you ask in the days that are passed. Ask anywhere you like verse 33 was there ever people that ever people hear the voice of God which God had arranged for them. Speaking of the fire, as you have heard and Live Verse 34, had any other goddess Aid to take him a nation from the midst of another Nation by Temptations and signs and wonders and War and by a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm and B great Terrors. According to all that Yahweh, your god did for you in Egypt before your eyes.

31. 18:11

    Unto thee. It was showed that thou mightest know that Yahweh he is God, there is none else beside him. Now God had done this for Israel. They had the opportunity to walk through the Red Sea and see the walls. The water on either side and think about it as they went through. God did that for them so that they might come to that conclusion, that Yahweh, he is God.

32. 18:44

    But here Rahab without ever seeing it only hearing it believe the same thing, she came to the same conclusion. Now that can’t help but strike a note in you going right to the New Testament. You have a look at John chapter 20 verse 29. This was Thomas’s. Declaration. To of Jesus Christ, Thomas answered and said unto him, my Lord.

33. 19:15

    And my God after he had actually put his his fingers into the holes that were left in the body of Jesus Christ. Concerning the, the crucifixion based on that Thomas was to say, my Lord and my God and Jesus said unto him Thomas because you have seen me, you have believed blessed? Are they? That have not seen.

34. 19:39

    And yet have believed. Now Rahab was the type of those people. She was a person who could by just hearing perceived that this must be God, who could possibly do these great wonders and signs except he be God. That’s what we’re trying to still in ourselves brothers and sisters. That’s what we’re trying to instill in our children who can make that connection, that if God did those things, then he must be God.

35. 20:10

    And it was on the basis of that that this woman, then acted in the way of faith and she was accepted when 99% who knows. Maybe everybody else in Jericho was weak. Their hearts melted in them when they heard these things. Here’s a young lady who is filled with faith who identifies completely with that God and her life is so totally different because of it. Now, look at what she did.

36. 20:41

    That was point, two point. Three is look at what she did. Verse 13, 12, and 13. Again, we have to rely on the text of the scriptures to tell us the details. There’s nothing added, nothing to be added. Nothing to be taken away. Just look at what it says she said. Now, therefore, I pray you swear unto me by Yahweh since I have showed you kindness that you will also show kindness unto my father’s house and give me a true token that you will save a live, my father, my mother, my brethren, and my sisters. And all that they have and deliver our lives from death. And I thought, well, surely she would have said herself. Save me.

37. 21:34

    Do you notice that’s not in that record? She says, give me a true token that you will save my dad. My mom, my brothers and my sisters and all that they have And I think that’s a secret brothers and sisters of how to go about our life after we leave the mountain. if our life is consumed in trying to serve and save others, That very process is how we save ourselves. Like someone might say, well, first thing you do is save yourself and in the sense of Doctrine we’d have that admonition from the scriptures that we save ourselves first. So we can save others.

38. 22:18

    But when it comes to working it out, when it comes to the mental processes that drive us in our life, it was her desire, her burning desire to save her dad, and her mum to save her brothers, and her sisters, and quite possibly her little nieces and her little nephews. That was moving her to say these things. She wanted them saved knowing that as had been done to the two kings on the other side of the Jordan. So they would do to Jericho, they would kill everybody. Now, brothers and sisters, we’ve talked about this already this week.

39. 22:57

    But if we’re really interested in the life of our children, we got to set examples for them. We’ve got to show them the way instead of many times coming into the conflicts that we have in the Ecclesia with how to do things. Theoretically just to show people how to do it is the the more honorable The Higher Ground which were called to in Christ Jesus. So Point number three, like the Lord Jesus Christ, who was laying down his life that we might live. So Rahab was risking her life better family, might live. And in both cases, God honored them so that they lived as well. I mean, there’s wonderful principles, involved in what drives people, what motivates people to do the things they do in their life.

40. 23:49

    But I tend to think the fourth part of the life of Rahab is what’s most benefit to us this morning. Now you contemplate, this present sisters or what happened. The spies told her very specifically in verse 18 and 19. When we come into the land, find this line of scarlet thread in the window, when did she do it?

41. 24:16

    It seems to need that Rahab must have thought they were going to come back almost immediately. So it tells us just over in verse in verse 21, according to your word Soviet and she sent them away and they departed and she bound the Scarlet line in the window as far as Rahab was concerned.

42. 24:34

    There was not going to be any question about whether she carried out her obligations as soon as they left, it was bound in the window, ready for her salvation but they went on and said You’ve got to bring your father, your mother, your brother, and all your father’s household home to You Verse 18, verse 19. It shall be, that whosoever shall go out of the doors of your house into the street.

43. 25:00

    His blood shall be upon his head and we will be Guiltless whosoever shall be with the in the house. His blood shall be on our head if any man be a if any hand be upon him Further verse 20, if you alter this our business, then we will be quit of thine oath, which thou Hast made us to swear. So Rahab was bound, just like, it seems with the Scarlet thread to get it in the window as soon as possible to go to her father and her mother, which probably were not in her house and her brothers and her sisters and to bring them to that house on the wall.

44. 25:34

    And to tell them they had to stay there. They could not go out. And don’t tell anybody about what we’re doing. You just think about how she could have possibly carried this out. She had no idea of how long it would take you. Add up the days that are in the scriptures and you come up with at least two weeks, at least two weeks later before they came up in the walls, actually fell and she was saved.

45. 25:59

    It would seem to me by how quickly she put the Scarlet line in the window that she must have called her family together and told them right away. You can’t leave the house.

46. 26:10

    But not knowing it would take two weeks. I’ve often wondered, did she take enough food? Did you take enough water to last two weeks?

47. 26:24

    You must wonder what the excitement that they had when they first saw Israel. Coming towards the city and the Army may have been 40,000 of them that would came first before the ark and marched around. Totally silent, except for the blowing of those horns, by the priests who wouldn’t have any idea of what was going to happen. There was no suggestion that the two spies knew how that City would be taken.

48. 26:48

    It’s only revealed later on, So she wouldn’t have known what was going on, but she had been convinced. She had convinced her dad her mom her, brother’s her sisters to get into this house and stay there and don’t dare go out of that door. And with possibly the rations and the house running short possibly being on the wall, there would be other problems you think of the sanitation problems they would have in that house.

49. 27:15

    And they saw the army’s coming. And they walked around the house or what around the city and they went back to their camp and nothing happened. You see the expectations were raised. And they fell under difficult situations. Maybe not enough food enough water, cramped conditions, no one can leave the house. Boy, that lady must have had tremendous power over the rest of the family often thought about whether one of my daughter’s could ever come into our house and have such an influence on all of us. Like, it doesn’t mention faithful. Dad.

50. 27:53

    Or faithful, mom, or faithful, Brothers, our sisters. It only talks about her. So she’s calling the shots at influencing the family. So, the next day they come and everybody now is thinking, well, I guess they were just looking out over the city, the first I’m in wanted to see where the weaknesses were. So they all come around the city. Again, silent, except for these priests blowing, the horns. No one can figure out what’s going on. And again, they disappear, they disappear because imagine the questioning that may have went on in that house. The brothers and sister, you really think you know what’s going on here, and let’s just go through this story once once more, we’re not to leave the house, we’ve got to stay in here.

51. 28:34

    Nobody can say anything to anyone about what’s going on. Then the third day. Then the fourth day. Then the fifth day you would think it might have been a laughing stock at that stage where people were starting to mock her in the house. I doubt it myself but you can see that human nature being what it is.

52. 28:56

    Now, here’s the fifth time. These people are coming marching around that what is going on, but he stands and they don’t take the city. And then, finally, the seventh day I think God does put us through, trials, brothers, and sisters. It’s through faith and patience. We inherit the promises. It’s looking to people like Rahab that when our expectations rise and fall we remember what it must have been like in that house with the limited rations, with the sanitary conditions, that would have been there.

53. 29:30

    All those people in this house on the wall all that time. Yet, the Scarlet thread was in the window and she Faithfully held on not knowing how long it would be before the city walls would finally come down. I think it is a tremendous credit to the faith and patience of Rahab as it is attested to in both James and Hebrews that this woman was able to influence her household not to go out discipline.

54. 30:00

    It would seem did not break down They were all there when the walls fell and they came in to take her out of that City. Have a look at Joshua 6, verse 20.

55. 30:13

    So the people shouted when the priests blue with the trumpets and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet and the people shouted, with a great shout that the wall fell down flat. So the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city, and they utterly destroyed, all that was in the city, both men and women, young, and old ox, and sheep and ass with the edge of the sword. But Joshua had said unto the two men that had spite of the country.

56. 30:43

    Go. Do the harlots house and bring out fence the woman and all that she have as you swear unto her, and the young men that were spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father, and her mother, and her brother and and all that she had. And they brought out all her Kindred, all her family’s, the margin says, and left them without the camp of Israel. And they burnt the city with fire and all that was there in only the silver and the gold in the vessels of brass and iron. They put into the treasury.

57. 31:13

    Of the House of Yahweh and Joshua saved, Rahab the Harlot alive, and her father’s household and all that she had. And she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day because she hid The Messengers which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. When we leave this mountain brothers and sisters in your faith wavers. Just remember this case.

58. 31:40

    Of the rising and the falling of expectations of the faith. And the patience of this remarkable young woman who was able to influence all her family to be faithful unto the end for it, is through the faith and the patients that we develop that the Lord will surely come and find us waiting.

59. 32:18

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60. 32:34

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61. 33:14

    God, bless and talk to you next week.