Absurd Obedience and a Treacherous Prostitute Text: Hebrews 11:30-31
Introduction: Faith with Mud on Its Boots
We have come in our survey of this great chapter to two examples of faith that are designed to offend the sensibilities of the respectable. Modern American evangelicalism has, in many quarters, domesticated the virtue of faith. We have turned it into a sentiment, an internal feeling of assurance, a quiet conviction that one holds in the privacy of one's own heart. It is tidy, it is polite, and it rarely causes any trouble. But the faith described here in Hebrews is something else entirely. This is not a faith that stays indoors. This is faith with dirt under its fingernails and mud on its boots. This is a faith that acts in the real world, a faith that does things, a faith that brings down walls and saves traitors.
The author of Hebrews gives us two snapshots back to back. The first is of the entire nation of Israel, God's covenant people, engaged in what any sane military strategist would call a lunatic's parade. The second is of a pagan prostitute in a doomed city, whose great act of faith, commended for all time, was to lie to her lawful authorities and betray her country. If your definition of faith is not robust enough to include both a ridiculous, seven day march and a treasonous lie, then your definition of faith is not biblical.
These two examples are set before us as a great encouragement, but also as a sharp rebuke. They rebuke a sterile faith that never does anything. They rebuke a cowardly faith that is more concerned with worldly respectability than with God's commendation. And they rebuke a self righteous faith that would look down its nose at a woman like Rahab, forgetting that the ground at the foot of the cross is level for all, and that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cleanse even the most notorious of sinners. God delights in choosing the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and the weak things to shame the strong. And here, He chooses a foolish march and a foreign harlot to teach us what true faith really looks like.
The Text
By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after welcoming the spies in peace.
(Hebrews 11:30-31 LSB)
Faith as Ludicrous Obedience (v. 30)
We begin with the first example, the faith of an entire nation.
"By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days." (Hebrews 11:30 LSB)
The first thing we must note is that faith is the instrument. It does not say that the trumpets or the shouting brought the walls down. It does not say that a fortuitous earthquake brought the walls down. It says, "By faith the walls of Jericho fell." The action of God was conditioned on the faith of His people. God had promised them the city, but the promise was to be received through the instrument of faith.
And what did this faith look like? It looked like obedience to a command that was, from a human perspective, utterly absurd. Imagine Joshua assembling his military council. He has just been given the battle plan from the Captain of the Lord's host. "Alright men, here is the strategy. For six days, we are going to march around the city once a day. No talking. Just walking. Then, on the seventh day, we will march around it seven times, the priests will blow some trumpets, and everyone will shout. Then the walls will fall down." Any seasoned commander would have questioned his sanity. This was not a military strategy; it was a liturgical procession.
This is a crucial point. Biblical faith is not believing in God in the abstract. It is believing what God has said, and acting upon it, no matter how foolish it appears to the world. The world operates on the principle of sight. "Seeing is believing." The kingdom of God operates on the principle of faith. "Believing is seeing." The Israelites had to believe the promise of God enough to obey the ridiculous command of God before they would see the salvation of God. Their faith was not a passive waiting; it was an active marching. For seven days, they put one foot in front of the other, with the taunts and jeers of Jericho's soldiers raining down on them, all on the basis of a divine promise.
This is what I mean when I speak of "obedient faith." Faith is not faith if it does not obey. James tells us that faith without works is dead. It is a corpse. The faith of Israel was alive, and it had legs. It marched. This is a direct challenge to us. When God gives us our marching orders in His Word, do we obey, even when they seem counterintuitive to our modern sensibilities? When God commands us to forgive our enemies, to speak the truth in love even when it is unpopular, to order our households according to His pattern, do we believe Him enough to do it? Or do we lean on our own understanding, concluding that God's battle plan for our lives is just a bit too foolish for the sophisticated age in which we live?
Faith as Treacherous Grace (v. 31)
If the first example challenges our intellect, the second is designed to challenge our piety.
"By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after welcoming the spies in peace." (Hebrews 11:31 LSB)
The author does not try to clean her up. He doesn't call her "Rahab, the former innkeeper." He identifies her by her sin: "Rahab the harlot." This is intentional. It is meant to magnify the grace of God. God's grace is not for the righteous, but for sinners. And here we have a Canaanite, a member of a people under God's curse, and a prostitute, a woman of deep moral disgrace. And she is held up as a hero of the faith, not just here, but also by James, and is found in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
What was her act of faith? She "welcomed the spies in peace." This was an act of high treason. The king of Jericho was her lawful sovereign. The men of Jericho were her countrymen. By siding with the spies, she was betraying her king, her city, and her people. Her faith required her to transfer her allegiance from an earthly kingdom to the kingdom of God. And let us be very clear about what this welcoming involved. When the king's men came to her door, she hid the spies and then she lied through her teeth. She sent the authorities on a wild goose chase. James, in his epistle, commends her for this very act (James 2:25). Her work, the evidence of her living faith, was a lie told to a pagan authority in order to protect the people of God.
This should cause all sorts of tidy, ethical systems to short circuit. The Bible is not a book of abstract principles that can be arranged neatly on a chart. It is a story of God's war against the kingdom of darkness, and in a war, things like deception and treason can be acts of righteousness, depending on which side you are on. Rahab heard what God had done to the Egyptians and the Amorites, and she believed. She said to the spies, "the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath" (Joshua 2:11). That confession of faith led her to act. She threw her lot in with the people of God, and in doing so, she was saved from the destruction that fell upon "those who were disobedient."
Notice that contrast. Rahab was saved by faith, while her countrymen perished because of disobedience. Their disobedience was their refusal to believe the report about Yahweh and to bow the knee. Rahab's faith was her belief that led to a radical, treacherous, and life saving obedience. Her faith was not a feeling she had; it was a rope she hung out her window. It was tangible. It was risky. It was real.
Conclusion: A Living, Acting Faith
So what are we to take from these two examples? We are to see that true, saving, biblical faith is never a mere intellectual agreement with a set of doctrines. It is a radical trust in the person and promises of God that results in concrete action in the real world.
Sometimes that action looks foolish, like marching around a city for a week. The world will mock it. Our own sophisticated doubts will question it. But faith obeys the plain command of God, trusting that He knows what He is doing. Obedience is ours; the results are God's. We are called to do the marching, and God is the one who handles the walls.
And sometimes that action looks scandalous, like a prostitute betraying her own people. Faith often requires us to make a choice. It forces us to declare our allegiance. Is our ultimate loyalty to our nation, our culture, our family, or to King Jesus? Rahab's story reminds us that God's grace reaches into the gutter and pulls out trophies of His grace. It tells us that no one is beyond the reach of redemption. And it demonstrates that when faith is real, it will act, even at great personal cost. It will choose the people of God over the city of destruction.
Therefore, let us examine our own faith. Is it a living faith that marches? Is it a saving faith that chooses Christ over the world? Or is it a dead faith, a polite sentiment that never does anything? The God of Joshua and the God of Rahab is our God. He still gives His people marching orders, and He still brings down the walls of opposition. And He still saves notorious sinners who turn to Him in faith. Let us therefore believe Him, and act like we do.