June 19, 2011
Background Scripture: Joshua  2
Devotional Reading: James 2:18-25

In my junior and senior years at the University of Pennsylvania, I lived in a dormitory facing a quiet, grassy quadrangle, in the middle of which was a large statue of George Whitfield. I asked lots of people who he was, but it took me some time to find that he was the principal figure in “The Great Awakening,” a series of revivals in British North America between 1720-50.

Whitfield, I learned, was a British Anglican priest who preached an evangelical message of repentance and rebirth that swept across the colonies, bringing thousands of people to Christ and spawning new Christian movements. (But I was never to learn what his statue was doing on Penn’s campus.)

The Great Awakening was resisted and resented by established churches where ritual, doctrine and attending “divine services” left little room for the personal experience and no room for emotion. Established churches also regarded many of the converts as “the wrong sort of people,” including the poor, social outcasts, obvious sinners and “the rabble” of Colonial society, many of whom were not welcome in “respectable” churches.

How ironic, then, that many of the congregations and denominations that grew out of The Great Awakening later themselves became growingly conscious of the undesirability of  “the wrong sort of people.” Religious revival is generally beneficial in helping the socially, economically and educationally “wrong sort” to experience God and rebirth, but also generally harmful when it produces among its numbers those who, having themselves been advanced, now look down upon others they regard as “the wrong sort.”

There is always the ever-present danger of forgetting Christ’s command: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matt. 7:1,2).

Whom God can use

Besides the very clear teaching of Christ on judgment, the Bible abounds in stories of how God used for His purpose people of “the wrong sort.” He used Moses, a convicted murderer, to rally the Israelites and bring them out of the oppression of Egypt. He used Paul, a vigorous oppressor of Christians, to be reborn as Christianity’s greatest evangelist and missionary.

Quite probably, the majority of people in Christ’s day thought Jesus was certainly “the wrong sort” of person to consider as Messiah.

But God also used people of  “the wrong sort” who unconsciously did His will. Professor Sizoo says: “In the execution of his purpose, God uses people of no estimation. It is still true that the wrath of men as well as the sin of men can be utilized to praise him. The forces of evil may contribute to the fulfillment of God’s purpose.”

I wanted to establish this before considering the story of Joshua’s two spies and Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho. The Israelites are camped on the edge of what was to be their Promised Land (See Numbers 25:1; 33:49).

Before beginning what will be a long and taxing campaign against the Canaanite petty city-states, Joshua wants some valuable reconnaissance and sends two spies to Jericho, the key citadel to the Jordan Valley. For the campaign to succeed, Jericho, the stronghold there, would have to be destroyed.

The House of Rahab

Upon reaching Jericho, why did the two spies take shelter in, of all things, the house of Rahab the prostitute? We can speculate that this house with a regular stream of strange men is a perfect den for the two strangers. It is built upon the outer wall of Jericho and Rahab probably suspects why they have come to Jericho.

So God can and did use Rahab to accomplish His will, even though she was of “the wrong sort.”

What about Rahab? Is she simply an opportunist, throwing in her lot with the enemy because things do not look good for the home team? Or is she is so favorably impressed with the God of Israel, that she seizes a chance not only to survive the battle, but also put her life in this God’s hands?

Fortunately, you and I do not have to answer those questions or judge her – that is God’s task and we can rejoice that it is not ours.

What is ours to contemplate is this question: As Christians, who are “the wrong sort” in our lives, and are we certain they are too “wrong” to be our spiritual kin?

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Rev. Althouse may write to him in care of this publication.