Monday, September 10, 2007

By Faith... Or Not? Israel's Exodus and Conquest, Part 18 of 41

TEXT: "Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king" (Matthew 1:5-6).

IDEA: God’s choices demonstrate His grace and not our merit.

PURPOSE: To help listeners see that God displays His grace to all of us in the incident of bringing Rahab to Himself.

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “If that person could become a Christian, they would make a great contribution to Christ’s kingdom”?

If you have said that, what kind of person might you have in mind?

I. Rahab makes a strange candidate to be included among God’s people.

The character of God makes her a strange choice.

The Bible insistently depicts God as a holy God. What does that mean?

What would your natural assumption be, then, when you think of the people that God is most drawn to?

Rahab’s character and background make her a strange choice.

In all but one of the biblical references to her, she is singled out as a prostitute. From what you know of the Old Testament law, what would you expect God’s attitude to be toward her? In John 8, a woman is taken in the act of adultery; the religious leaders of her time thought she deserved to be stoned to death.

Rahab is an outsider, a pagan, a Canaanite or Amorite. She belonged to a people who had put themselves in opposition to God.

II. The holy God of Israel accepted Rahab and made her part of His people.

She was actually included in God’s family.

She married Salmon, the father of Boaz.

She became the great-great grandmother of David, Israel’s greatest king. And she was an ancestor of Jesus, the Lord of Glory.

III. What do you learn, then, from God’s strange choice of this strange woman?