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Hello again!
For many Christians, tomorrow begins the season of Lent: forty days (excluding Sundays) from my favorite holiday, Easter Sunday (April 20). Some faith traditions observe lent by fasting, Scripture study, and/or prayers to refocus busy lives on the events leading up to Jesus’s death and resurrection. In Jesus’s name, I ask that this Lenten season be a time of rebirth: that we who were dead in our sins and trespasses may be raised to life again, bursting forth from tombs of our past into the light of your everlasting love. Use this study for Your glory, Lord. Help us grow stronger in the faith, hope, and love that enables us to share your light with others. Amen.
Last Week’s Work
MY PRAYER
This time, I’m adapting a previous study prayer as follows:
Father God, thank you for the guidance of Your Holy Spirit as I study Joshua 2 again. Open my eyes, ears, and heart. Help me observe this Scripture, understand the lesson You have for me in this season, and put it to good use in my life so that others are blessed by it and give You the glory. I pray this in Jesus’s name. Amen.
HUH? and WOW! MOMENTS
Next, I read Joshua 2 and focused on my reactions. Here’s what I noted:
HUH?s
- Verse 1 indicates the men were supposed to secretly… go, view the land, especially Jericho. So, who told the king they had arrived? (vv1-2) And how did Rahab know so much about them? (vv9-10)?
- Would Israelite men spending the night in a prostitute’s house (v1) be a violation of Jewish law?
- Why would a prostitute have stalks of flax on her roof (v6)?
- What did Rahab mean when she talked about melted hearts (v11) [similar language also in vv9, 24]?
WOW!s
- Israelite spies going to a prostitute’s house seems out of character; on the other hand, it wouldn’t appear strange to the neighbors that men she didn’t know would come and go from her home.
- Feels like it would take a lot of nerve for a prostitute to lie to the king’s guard (vv4-5). And a lot of nerve (or desperation) to offer a deal to strangers whom she’d heard bad things about (vv9-13).
- Putting the men on the roof (v6) would have given them a good view of the surrounding area and possibly Rahab’s exchange with the guard (vv3-5). V15 indicates she lived in the city wall, so maybe her roof was attached to the wall as well.
- Pretty cool of the spies to agree to Rahab’s deal (v14).
- After the agreement was struck, she helped them escape (through a window in the wall) and told them how to avoid the pursuers (v16).
- Rahab was instructed to tie a red cord in her window to ensure the safety of all inside (v18), which she did (v21) [this reminds me of the blood on Israelite doorposts in Egypt during the Passover (Exodus 12:7)!].
I’ll be in prayer this week to determine what I should focus on for this study. Once that decision is made, I’ll start mining treasure from Joshua 2 as indicated below. I hope you’ll keep checking back with me to see how it goes!
Dig-In Challenges
If you’re studying this passage, too, listen to the Spirit this week, and choose a personal Huh? or Wow! to dig more deeply into. Going forward, I’ll refer to this as your personal treasure from Joshua 2. It can be something you noticed in your study, one of the items I’ve listed above, or anything else the Holy Spirit has laid upon your heart as you think about this passage. Write this treasure in your study journal and note the verse(s) most relevant to it. As we study, we’ll consider everything in the chapter, but we’ll gradually narrow the focus to the relevant verse(s).
Then:
- PRAY.
- MINE: Dig into the facts recorded in Joshua 2. This week, we’ll focus specifically on the setting (who’s involved, and where and when the action took place). Note anything the Spirit emphasizes.
I hope you’ll join me again soon!