Rahab - Week 4: The Scarlet Cord

Erin Davis: Well, pop in your ear buds or turn up the volume in your car or wherever you’re listening, and pull up a chair. I invite you back into the conversation we’re having here on the Women of the Bible Podcast about Rahab.

We’re walking through a study together—Rahab: Tracing the Thread of Redemption. I hope you’re not hearing us for the first time. I hope you’re walking through this study with us. But just in case, I want to introduce you to some favorite friends of mine. We’re studying the life of Rahab together in Joshua 2. I’ll let you introduce yourselves, actually, and I want to know your favorite color. Go ahead.

Paulina Torres: Well, my name is Paulina. It depends if it’s for clothes or jewelry, but I like black.

Erin: You do?

Paulina: I do.

Erin: That’s okay. It’s good for clothes.

Paulina: It is!

Erin: And everybody looks good in it.

Paulina: And it makes you look thinner!

Erin: Yes, it does! (laughter)

All right. Paulina, where are you from?

Paulina: I’m from Mexico.

Erin: And so English is not your first language.

Paulina: Yes. So please be patient.

Erin: You’re doing so well—amazing. I don’t know that I would even know that from listening to you.

Paulina: Well, thank you.

Erin: But you had to track down an English Bible.

Paulina: Yes. I had two in my house, and I needed to know which one to use.

Erin: How many Spanish Bibles do you think you have in your house?

Paulina: A lot—different colors, different translations.

Erin: So, you’re listening to me; you’re translating what I say, then you’re thinking your thought, and then you’re translating what you’re going to say.

Paulina: A little bit. Not as much.

Erin: You’re doing great!

Paulina: Thank you.

Erin: And your favorite color is black.

All right, I’m going to throw it to you.

Lisa Whittle: My name is Lisa. I’m from North Carolina. My favorite color . . . I’m going to go completely opposite. Mine is white. I love white. I think everyone looks good in white.

Erin: Um . . . no, I don’t.

Lisa: You don’t?

Erin: I have a very specific family photo where we were all on the beach and all in white, and it was terrible.

Lisa: I love the color white. All of my walls in my house are white. I just think it’s a really nice canvas to do other things to. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

Erin: Well, okay. We have black, and we have white. I like yellow. That’s my favorite color. So, I’m Erin, and my favorite color is yellow. Although, if you were in my home, you wouldn’t see one stitch of yellow, and I never wear yellow.

Paulina: Maybe it’s not really your favorite color.

Lisa: You like the idea of yellow.

Erin: I like the idea of yellow. I want to be seen as a happy person. I took some assessment somewhere that told me yellow was my color.

Paulina: Okay, there’s some psychology to it.

Erin: Well, I really do love yellow.

Well, we’re not here to talk about us. We’re not here to talk about our favorite color. We’re here to talk about Rahab, but we’re going to talk about color a lot in this session because there’s a very specific color in this story that means a lot to what we’re trying to talk about. In fact, we all decided to wear that color and to showcase it. I have the red scarlet thread we’re getting ready to talk about.

So we all wore red. Lisa wore a red shirt.

Lisa: Yes. I normally wear red.

Erin: I just wear a little pop. I had to go to Kohl’s. I had to buy a little red jewelry, because I don’t normally wear red. I own no red clothing whatsoever. And you’ve got lots of red.

Paulina: It’s a beautiful color to wear.

Erin: It is a beautiful color to wear.

So we’re wearing red. We’ve got a red theme going on in this season of the podcast, and that’s because of what we’re going to talk about today.

We’ve been walking through the story of Rahab, which is found in Joshua chapter 2. So let’s review what we’ve talked about in the first couple of episodes. You guys are scanning your notes, like, “What did we talk about?” Just from your minds, from your hearts, what has happened in Rahab’s story so far?

First of all, what do we know about her? Where does she live? What’s happening?

Paulina: She lives in Jericho, and she is a prostitute.

Erin: Yes.

Lisa: And she’s a pagan.

Erin: She’s a pagan. She’s a Canaanite. They don’t worship the one true God. So we know a lot about Rahab just from those few details. But what’s happening in the bigger picture?

Zoom out of Rahab’s life. What’s happening in a bigger picture with the people of God?

Paulina: She has heard stories—stories that have changed her.

Erin: The same stories that we’ve heard about God. Isn’t that amazing? We’ve heard Him parting the Red Sea, and she’s heard of Him parting the Red Sea. And, yes, they’ve changed her.

In the last episode, we talked about Rahab made what we would call a profession of faith. She said, “I believe that You are God of heaven and earth.”

Paulina: Because everybody heard the stories, but she believed.

Erin: She believed. And she wanted to give her life to Him, live her life for Him.

So Rahab’s not the only person we’ve been talking about. There’s a couple of guys in the mix. Lisa, can you tell us about the two spies?

Lisa: Well, they were Israelites, and they’d gone over to scout it out. Right?

Erin: Yes.

Lisa: They encounter Rahab, and then we see this whole story unfold.

Erin: So the king of Jericho comes to Rahab and says, “Give them to me. Turn over the men. They’re here to scope out the land.” And she kind of plays dumb and says, “Well, yes, they were here, but they’re gone.”

She lies. She hides the men, and we’re going to pick up our story there.

We keep talking about redemption. The subtitle of the study is Tracing the Thread of Redemption. We’re going to talk about it. This episode has a thread of redemption—it’s woven all throughout Scripture. But I think we might take a moment to talk about: What is redemption?

It can be a bit of a churchy word. What does it mean for someone to be redeemed?

Paulina: I think it is a churchy word. I mean, if you tell somebody, “Yes, I have been redeemed.” What does that mean? But, pretty much, it’s what we believe is the gospel. We were dead, no love for God. There is no way our hearts could actually want more of Him or need Him. He does an amazing thing in our hearts when He saves us.

Erin: Which that is another churchy word.

Paulina: Yes. He saves us. He saves our soul because it’s, like, “Hey! You’re alive. You’re not dead.” Our spirit is dead, and our hearts are incapable of loving God. But when He saves us, He redeems us. The punishment that we deserve for our sin, He placed it on His Son Jesus Christ. He takes our place on that cross that we all deserve, and He saves us.

I guess that’s a simple way and a powerful way of saying it as well. He took our place on that cross. We were dead in our sins spiritually with no love of God. And now He gives us a heart that can actually love Him and obey Him.

Erin: So you’re saying that redemption is moving from death to life?

Paulina: Yes.

Erin: That’s one way to think about redemption. Lisa, what about you? When we say someone has been redeemed, what does that mean?

Lisa: Things that come to my mind are: made new, transformed, life change. It’s sort of a metamorphosis, but in the sense that it’s supernatural. Only God can take that which seems irrevocable or non-redeemable and makes it redeemable.

So I’m using the word redemption here, but it’s something that seems like it can’t ever be made into something. It can’t ever be made precious or made usable, or whatever. And God takes that and makes it into something that becomes a testimony or becomes a powerful word for Him in this world. It’s something that we would throw away but that God would use.

Erin: Maybe I think simply, but I can think of a meal I’ve cooked. I can think, “Oh, this is irredeemable. It’s burned. It’s nasty. It’s beyond being able to be used. I can’t turn this into a delicious dinner. It’s irredeemable.”

God wouldn’t supernaturally turn my pot roast into something delicious, but then, something that is trash becomes something usable, that’s redemption. Or something that’s hopeless becomes hope-filled. That’s redemption. There is some movement from death to life, from hopeless to hopeful, from unusable to useful. That is redemption.

We’re going to talk about the gospel here together, and the gospel is our redemption—the redemption of us from sin.

We’re talking about Rahab and redemption. Those are the kinds of things I want us to keep in mind.

Lisa: I also think about if you’re redeeming a coupon. I know that sounds like a silly example, but you’re turning something in. There’s been a transaction.

Erin: There’s an exchange.

Lisa: Yes.

Paulina: And what was that exchange in us? It was Jesus’ blood. Like, “Here’s My blood, and I have paid for you.”

Erin: Right. He purchased our redemption with His sacrifice on the cross.

Lisa: Right. It cost somebody something. The redemption that we’re talking about here is only possible through this supernatural transaction by Jesus Christ, by the gospel that we’re going to talk about.

Erin: Right. I think of why a woman picks up a Bible study. Why did she pick up this Bible study? Why does she join a Bible study? I think a lot of times she’s looking for practical help from a circumstance. “I want my marriage to experience redemption. I want my parenting to experience redemption. I want my past to experience redemption.”

And all of that is true. Maybe you picked Rahab up off the shelf because you saw that thread of redemption, and you thought of something really specific. But none of those areas of your life can be redeemed without the ultimate redemption we’re going to talk here together which comes through the gospel and the redeeming of our souls. So let’s keep all of those high-level thoughts about redemption in our hearts as we revisit Rahab’s story.

I’m going to take us to Joshua 2:12–21:

“Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.”

That’s redemption language right there. Paulina, that’s what you spoke about.

Paulina: Yes.

Erin: Move us from death to life!

And the men said to her, “Our life for yours even to death! [That’s redemption language, too.] If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the Lord gives us the land we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.”

Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was built into the city wall, so that she lived in the wall. And she said to them, “Go into the hills, or the pursuers will encounter you, and hide there three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterward you may go your way.” The men said to her, “We will be guiltless with respect to this oath of yours that you have made us swear. Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie this scarlet cord . . .”

If you’re listening to us with your Bible open, I would love for you to circle “scarlet cord.”

Lisa, are you a write-in-your-Bible kind of gal?

Lisa: Oh, yes, yes!

Erin: Paulina?

Paulina: I’m circling it in red.

Erin: Yes! I love that! I’m a write-in-my-Bible kind of gal. And circling “scarlet cord” in red, I love that.

“. . . scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and your mother, your brothers, and all your father's household. Then if anyone goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, [which, again, lots of redemption language] and we shall be guiltless.

“But if a hand is laid on anyone who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head. But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be guiltless with respect to your oath that you have made us swear.”And she said, “According to your words, so be it.” Then she sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in her window.

Circle “scarlet cord” there again.

The color of the cord was really specific. It wasn’t just that she tied something in her window. She tied a scarlet cord. This story just came to mind as I was reading this:

When I was a little girl, our neighbor across the street fled an abusive marriage. My mom was a single mom. I didn’t know it for many years later, but they had an arrangement that if the neighbor ever hung a red bandana on the curtain so that my mom could see it, then my mom knew to call the police.

Now, I don’t think they were making a Rahab kit. I don’t think they thought it through. It just needed to be something that my mom could see and respond to.

And we could think, Oh, they just chose red here because it would be visible. But I don’t think that’s what was happening, as we’re going to see. The color of this cord is really specific. It was a symbol for Rahab’s sin, for her shame, for her guilt. So what sins were in Rahab’s life that we know of?

Lisa: Well, her occupation tells us.

Erin: Yes. She was a prostitute. There’s sexual sin there. What else do we know about her that we could speak to about her sin? Paulina? Can you think of anything else?

Paulina: Well, the first one that I think is the root of all sins is her rejection of God.

Erin: Yes. She was part of a culture where she worshipped other gods. We read early on in Genesis where it said, “Have nothing to do with them or their other gods or their practices.”

Paulina: I think all sins are just symptoms of what’s in our hearts and what we believe in. If you worship somebody else or something else that is not God, it reflects in your life. So the prostitute thing is just a little bit of like the reaction of that sin in your heart.

Erin: We also know that she lied . . . and who hasn’t? But that doesn’t make it any less of a sin. So we know that she had sexual sin. We know that she at points in her life rejected God. We know that she was a liar.

That’s what we know from a few verses, just a small piece of the Bible. We also know, because we are humans, that there’s a long list of sins in Rahab’s life that aren’t spelled out in Scripture—a much longer list, and perhaps a much darker list of sins that we don’t know.

There was really no time for Rahab to clean all of that up before she put that scarlet cord out the window. She didn’t, like, search for a new job. She didn’t take a vow that she wasn’t going to lie for thirty days. She didn’t extract herself from the pagan culture before she could insert herself with the children of God. There was no time for that.

I wonder, in your own life, or in the lives of women you know, have you ever felt like you had to clean up the mess, that you had to stop sinning before you could come to God? Or have you ever felt like in your own life you had to stop sinning before you could come to God? Lisa?

Lisa: Yes. I think we want to hide our stuff from God, even though we know it’s not possible. That’s the struggle for all of us because we’re embarrassed, because it’s gross, because we know in our heart that it’s not who He made us to be. We know we’re living below potential, and all those kinds of things.

It’s hard to face a holy, perfect God. And yet, we know perfection is not possible. But even cleaned up, that’s His business and His job of helping to transform us.

Paulina: Yes. We have an enemy that wants to prevent us from truth.

Before God saved me, I remember one day I was in my bed—I was actually living with my boyfriend at the time. I remember I had a Bible in my drawer. I saw it, and I opened the drawer, and I actually grabbed my Bible. The enemy said, “What are you doing? You’re going to read your Bible, and you’re living with your boyfriend?”

For me it was like, “Yes, that’s right.” And I put it away.

Erin: For how long? How long did you put it away for?

Paulina: For maybe about two, three years more. After a year I wasn’t living with my boyfriend, but I was doing other things. But it was the enemy saying, “You have to clean up your act in order to go to this holy God.” It’s such a lie! You can go to God, like Rahab, right there how God found her.

Erin: I find part of being broken humans is we always have that tendency to want to hide. You all have been walking with the Lord for many years now, and it’s been my experience that the longer I walk with Him, the less I hide, the quicker I want to get that sin to Him. When it’s exposed, I don’t want to hide it from Him. I need to get it to Him because it’s the only way that He can clean me up, that He can remove sin from my life.

So part of that is walking with the Lord and realizing, first of all, you can’t ever get clean enough to be in the presence of a holy God.

But second of all, when you come to Him with your sin, the tenderness and care with which He heals and changes and transforms you . . . I love that you shared your story. I think about the woman whose Bible is in her nightstand now or that’s not going to church or she’s waiting. I hate that you waited at all, for a year you closed your Bible.

Paulina: I know. I didn’t know its truth. This is so dangerous, because if we don’t know the truth . . . There is the Bible. There is the truth. When you know the truth, you know Who to go to. You go to God. Why? Because He has forgiven you. You bring the gospel. This is who I am now. But if you don’t know the truth, you’re going to stay believing all these lies.

Lisa: Yes.

Erin: I think about the women in Scripture that we hold up as these really wise women—Anna and maybe Ruth. We wouldn’t pick Rahab, but she shows a lot of wisdom. She declares who God is. That takes God-given wisdom.

But she also shows some wisdom in the fact that she knows there’s not time for her to clean her act up. If she had tried that first, she would have been destroyed with the rest of Canaan. But she knows, “No, I’ve just got to get to the people of God. I’ve got to acknowledge what I do know.” And so, actually, she really was wise.

Paulina: And she actually put her life on that.

Erin: She did—and her family!

Paulina: “If this is the God of heaven and earth, then okay . . .”

Erin: We don’t know if she had children or not. She talks about her family a lot. She mentioned them to be saved alongside of her.

But, “I’m willing to stake things on Jesus, for me.” But am I willing to stake things on Jesus for my children? For my parents? For the rest of my household?”

She goes all in on this belief. So there’s real wisdom there.

I want to take us back to the red thread because it’s so important and so fascinating. Who did I give Isaiah 1:18 to?

Paulina: I have it.

Erin: Okay, Paulina, could you read us Isaiah 1:18?

Paulina: Okay. It’s going to talk about your white, Lisa. (laughter)

Come now, let us discuss this, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they will be like wool.

Erin: Okay. We get a color assigned to sin here, and what’s the color?

Paulina: Scarlet.

Erin: Scarlet—red. Something I didn’t know for a long time has really transformed my love for the Bible. It’s that all of the Old Testament is pointing forward to Jesus, and all of the New Testament is pointing backward to Jesus.

So here we see this red thread in Rahab, and if we don’t know that, it might be disconnected, or we might gloss over it. But, no, it’s pointing us forward to Jesus. And Isaiah’s prophecy here, he’s talking about how your sin is like scarlet, but it’s going to be white as snow. He’s pointing forward to Jesus.

The scarlet represents sin. Why? Is that God’s favorite color? Did He just pick red? It’s because Christ’s blood is the answer to our sin problem, and it’s the color of blood. Even that’s not a mistake. God could have made our blood any color He wanted to make it.

Lisa: Well, I think it’s even interesting in secular culture, which isn’t trying to pull in threads from the Bible, and yet there’s always God making His presence known through this earth. I think that color in society is known as a power color. Right? People think of red as a power color.

You talk about this bandana, “I’m going to put red in the window.” They weren’t thinking Rahab, scarlet, “Let’s put the thread of the Bible in it.” But the point is it’s this color that we all are drawn to because it’s powerful. There’s a vibrancy to it like no other color on the whole entire wheel.

I just feel like God is saying, “I’m making Myself known throughout all of creation in ways that are subtle, that society may not notice Me, and may not love Me, but I’m here.”

Erin: I’m singing, “Power in the Blood” in my head right now.

Lisa: Sing it!

Erin: I don’t want to sing out loud. “There’s power in the blood . . .” (laughter) That’s all you get.

I want to take us back to Exodus 12 because I think this is an important piece. We won’t read all of it, but Exodus 12 is the story of the Passover.

I’ll give us the 10,000-foot view: God’s people were enslaved in Egypt. (This is very much going to connect with what’s happening in Jericho.) They call out for a deliverer. Moses is that deliverer.

There’s plagues, but this moment happens when they’re going to be delivered. God gives them some mysterious instructions about how that’s about to happen. He tells them to take a spotless male lamb—which those of us who know the gospel story know that that spotless male lamb represents Jesus, the Lamb slain for us.

But there’s this part here in Exodus 12:7. Lisa, can you read us Exodus 12:7?

Lisa: Yes.

They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in where they eat them.

Erin: So that word “lintel” stopped me in my tracks recently as I was studying it.

Lisa: Not the bean—those green lintels.

Erin: Right, although those are good for your health.

Lisa: Lintel . . . l-i-n-t-e-l.

Erin: So I looked it up. What’s a lintel? (I’d never heard that word other than the bean.) The lintel is the load-bearing beam of the doorway. So it carries the weight of that part of the infrastructure. 

So the instructions are: Put the blood of the spotless lamb on the load-bearing beam of your homes. And when the angel passes over, he sees the blood on that load-bearing beam, and he passes over, and they don’t die.

Does someone have Romans 5:9?

Lisa: The outside of the doorframe matters because we know in that story what happens when the Passover comes and the angel passes them over.

Erin: That’s why it’s called the Passover. So let me take us to Romans 5:9.

Paulina: I have Romans 5:9.

Much more then, since we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from wrath.

Erin: It’s the blood of Christ that saves us or redeems us, that spares us from wrath, that moves us from death to life, from hopelessness to hopefulness.

So what is it that covers our sin allowing us to be spared from death? The same thing that allowed the Israelites here to be spared from death—it’s the blood of Christ. And it’s the blood of Christ here that bears the load.

The blood was on that load-bearing beam on their doorpost, and it’s the blood of Christ that bears the weight of our sin, of our shame. So, in the Passover, it was the lamb’s blood, and that pointed to Christ, whose blood was shed for us. And in Rahab, it’s that red cord that points forward to this redemption.

Paulina: And they actually celebrated Passover right before going to Jericho.

Erin: They did?

Paulina: They did.

Erin: I love that! I didn’t know that.

Paulina: They had just celebrated the Passover.

Erin: So the Lord’s work . . .

Paulina: It could have been in their minds.

Erin: It probably was in their mind. They still celebrate the Passover. They remember what God did there.

This is mind blowing to me: Rahab played a part in declaring the gospel way back here in Joshua 2, before we have that word gospel, before we have been introduced to Jesus, before we know what we know about the cross and the blood of Jesus.

When I teach the Bible, I’m committed that the women who listen to me teach and who open the Bible with me, that they’ll be able to articulate the gospel. I think it’s possible for us to be in church a long time and have believed the gospel, and when someone looks at us and says, “What’s the gospel?” We go, “Uh . . .”

It’s hard to articulate, but I want the women listening to know what we mean when we say the gospel. So, Paulina, when I say, “What is the gospel?” what is your answer?

Paulina: I guess it’s a little bit of what I mentioned earlier of how we were dead, living for our own desires, living for our own pleasures, and everything is about me. “I am the queen on the throne.”

The gospel first acknowledges what Jesus did for me in dying on the cross for me. I’m saying, “Now You be the King on the throne. I don’t want to be sitting on the throne of my life anymore because it’s a disaster, and I’m toxic to myself. I want You on the throne.”

Then God starts to guide your life through His Word and through His Spirit, and it’s a new life. So the gospel is being dead and being alive in spirit now.

So, to be repeating a little bit of what I mentioned before.

Erin: Well, let’s repeat it all day, every day. Right?

Lisa, how would you define the gospel?

Lisa: The gospel to me is the best news ever! The good news of Jesus Christ, and it is John 3:16, which is (if we know it, or if we don’t know it), “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever would believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

That’s it.

Erin: We still need John 3:16.

Lisa: We need it, and a lot of us have forgotten it or don’t know it. It’s remarkable.

So that’s the good news. I can’t say it better than the Word of God. That’s the gospel.

Erin: There’s a place in Scripture where Paul is talking, and he starts to go down this path, and then he says, “Not that there are other gospels.” Like, there really is only one, but sometimes we use the gospel plus behavior modification, or it’s the gospel plus church attendance, or it’s the gospel plus activity. I hear Paul course correct, “Oh, but not that, there is one.”

Those aren’t really the gospel. Because we’re still sinful people who the Lord is sanctifying . . . Unfortunately, we don’t shed our sin nature until we’re with Him. We tend to either add to or distort or misunderstand or forget, and we can’t say the gospel too often. We can’t read John 3:16 too many times.

Lisa: No.

Erin: It’s so important, and it is the scarlet cord that runs throughout the entire Bible.

The Bible started to come alive for me when I started looking for the thread of redemption in it instead of looking for my identity in it. My identity is the gospel. The gospel transforms my identity.

The Lord is kind. All of the time I spent time reading my Bible, He bore fruit in it. But I think that for so many years I was opening my Bible trying to be a better me. I would have been, like, “Now, how does Rahab’s story help me be a better me?” When really, now when I look at it through the gospel lens, it’s the gospel that is what transforms me, not me changing.

So that’s the scarlet thread that runs throughout all of the Bible—and I mean all of the Bible. How do we see the gospel and the thread of redemption in Genesis, for example? Paulina?

Paulina: Well, a lot of people think that the gospel starts in Matthew when they start telling us about Jesus.

Erin: When we start calling them the gospels.

Paulina: Yes. But, actually, if we go to Genesis 3:15, that is the first time we can hear about the gospel. It’s just when Adam and Eve have sinned. It is so loving from our gracious God that just as they have sinned (and sin separates us from God), and immediately God gives the solution. God gives the answer. God gives, “What I’m going to do.”

Erin: For redemption.

Paulina: Exactly. In Genesis 3:15, He tells us that He is going to send a Savior (the serpent crusher) that is going to crush the enemy. So right there He starts telling us about this Messiah that they’re going to tell about in the Old Testament.

All throughout the Bible we see, “Where is that serpent crusher?” And we read book after book, and, like you said, we’re not going to read it to see how I can be better. It’s, “Where is that serpent crusher?”

Erin: We’re tracing the thread.

Paulina: Yes. So when we get to Matthew, then we have that gospel, it’s, like, “Yes! The serpent crusher is here!” It gives us the genealogy, and then boom! He’s here. He comes to save us.

But that’s not the end. We have all the way to Revelation, we still see Him because the Bible is all about Jesus. We see how He redeems His people. You see in the Old Testament, we (I say “we” because it’s us) rebel. We see God’s gracious pardon. They see how He is good to them, and they rebel. They just say, “No, thank You, God. We don’t want to deal with You.”

And then God comes and forgives again and tells them, “This is the way you have to be.” He gives them the law to see how they can be close to Him.

Erin: Yes. We can trace it all the way to Revelation where we see redemption in its fullest form when Jesus returns for His Bride, and the serpent is finally dealt with once and for all. The Son of God is with man, and we have no need for a sun or lights because He Himself is our light. It is redemption in its fullest. And that’s the story.

That’s the story of the Bible. It’s the story of my life. It’s the story of your life. And it’s the story of humanity. It’s the story of God. So redemption, the gospel, is our desperate need and God’s amazing grace. That’s it. That’s redemption. It’s Rahab’s story, and it’s the story of all things.

My favorite definition for the gospel is by the songwriter who wrote “Amazing Grace.” I’m a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior. That’s the gospel. It’s really the story that Rahab is telling us through the scarlet cord.

That may be a good place for us to land. I’m a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior.

Lisa: Amen to that.