Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Image Really Everything? | The Life of Joshua | Joshua 2

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Are you consumed with controlling your image? Do you feel the weight of your sin? https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Keith) continues our series on The Life of Joshua as he uncovers three lessons we can learn about image, sin and forgiveness from the story of Rahab and the spies in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua%202&version=NIV (Joshua 2). Interested in more content like this? Check outhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-some-people-sin-more-than-others-my-favorite-verses/id1477778533?i=1000518814172 ( Do Some People Sin More Than Others?) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit ourhttps://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ ( website) and follow us onhttps://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks ( Facebook),https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ ( Instagram), andhttps://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast ( Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Social Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks ( https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks) Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ ( https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/) Twitter:https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast ( https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast) Passages https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua%202&version=NIV (Joshua 2) Related https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-some-people-sin-more-than-others-my-favorite-verses/id1477778533?i=1000518814172 ( Do Some People Sin More Than Others?) Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minut Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're going through the Book of Joshua. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. Right as I was graduating college, the camera company called Cannon launched a big advertising campaign. with Andre Agassi, who was one of the world's top, maybe the top tennis player at the time.

And the slogan of the ad campaign was, image is everything. Now, as a newish Christian, that commercial convicted me because I knew that image shouldn't be a big deal to me, but in reality, it was. That phrase, image is everything. It captured the feeling of that time. But I think it also captures the feeling of all times. it captures something about the human condition or the sinful human condition. People always have been and probably always will be consumed with their image.

Today we have more and more opportunities to work on our image and more and more tools at our disposal to help us present the kind of image that we want to put forward. We live in what I'd call a self-editing world, in which we are in control more than ever of what people know about us and therefore what they think about us. A few years ago, Brad Paisley had a song in which one of the lines he sang was, I'm so much cooler online. Isn't that the truth?

Or just think for a second, if you start in college A but flunked out and then went on later to graduate from college B, then college A, the one you flunked out of, that'll probably never show up on your resume. Am I right? Or think about the people, well-known people, accepting really important positions who lost those people. positions. They were fired because it became evident that they had doctored. They had lied. They had self-edited their resume. Now remember, this urge to self-edit, it's not new. In the ancient world, your genealogy was a little bit like your resume. What often mattered was your family, your clan, your pedigree, what people you came from. It was one of the ways you could

recommend yourself to the world. And so people airbrushed their resume. They airbrushed their genealogy. King Herod, the ruler in Jesus' day, he was consumed with his image. He believed image was everything. So he doctored his own genealogy, and he removed the names of the people who didn't fit the story that he was trying to tell. It was a story of his own greatness. Now, you could say that Matthew, when he put together the genealogy of Jesus in his gospel, that Matthew was guilty of the same thing. What I mean is that when we read the genealogy that Matthew presents, we're not reading every name of every person in the ancestry of Jesus between Abraham and Jesus's birth. What we're reading are those names that Matthew thought were important to include. We are reading those that Matthew thought revealed something important about who Jesus is and what he's about. So Herod, he self-edited his own genealogy to emphasize how great he was.

Matthew edited Jesus' genealogy to show how gracious he was. From the very beginning of the story, Matthew wants us to see that Jesus is a friend of sinners. In the genealogy, Matthew is driving home the point he makes more explicitly in Matthew 121. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. One of the most surprising names you see in Jesus' genealogy is that of Rehab. It's surprising because in that time and place, women weren't included in genealogies. But it's also surprising because of what kind of woman Rehab was. Joshua, too, tells part of her story.

Rehab was a prostitute or a sex worker in a Canaanite city called Jericho. As the story unfolds, we discover that Joshua sent two spies to check out Jericho, to scout it out, and then to report back to him. Well, Rahab comes across these spies when they're in the city, and she hides them at great risk to her own life. One night when the spies are staying at Rahab's house, she says this to them. I know that the Lord has given you this land,

and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. 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 Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amarites east of the Jordan whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone's courage failed because of you. For the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below. Rehab is pretty insightful, isn't she?

She tells the spies that she will protect them if they will protect her and her family when they returned with their armies to destroy Jericho. Rehab lives up to her end of the bargain. And later in the Book of Joshua, we find out that the spies live up to their end as well. Rehab and her family are spared when Jericho is destroyed. So that's a recap of the story. But what's the takeaway? Well, here's a couple.

The first one is, God has a heart for everyone. Here is Rehab. She is a foreigner. She is not an Israelite. and yet God has had mercy on her. She sees truths about him that many Israelites didn't see. And not only does she see these truth, but she believes them. She's willing to risk her life because she believes in the God,

who is God not only in heaven, but also on earth, a God of power and might and mercy and grace. God has a heart for everyone, even the foreigner. Here's the second point. you can be forgiven. Sometimes it's easier to believe that God forgives people in general than to really believe that God forgives you. But here God is forgiving the sins of Rahab the prostitute and inviting her into a relationship with him. Jesus did the same thing. Jesus invited sinners into a relationship. In Matthew 11, Jesus is talking about himself and he says,

the son of man came eating and drinking and they say, they are his opponents, they say here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Jesus loved being known as a friend of sinners. If you're a sinner, Jesus wants to be your friend. That leads us to the third truth. Those who are the most broken by sin are often the most open to the gospel. Those who feel the weight of their sin are most open to hearing about how Jesus has come to rescue us from our sin. Those who are righteous in their own eyes, good in their own eyes, strong in their own eyes,

well, they're not as excited about Jesus because they don't really sense their need for him. But Jesus said in Matthew 21, I tell you the truth. The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you, ahead of the Pharisees, ahead of those who think they are righteous and good and wise and strong and moral. They're not, but they think they are. And their self-deception, thinking they are something that they're not, keeps them from Jesus. But the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the sinners like you and me, well, we see our need. And so we run to Jesus.

Do you feel the weight of your sin? Do you feel broken by it? Well, maybe that's good news because maybe that shows that you are open to Jesus. Jesus, remember, is not a friend of the self-righteous. Jesus is not a friend of those who have it all together. Jesus is the friend of sinners. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating.

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