The Fear of God makes you make the right decisions!

I’m really thankful for TFC, the leaders, Pastors for inviting me and allowing me to share the word of God to all of you. And of course I’m humbled that the Lord is using me to be His messenger in this day and age.

I can say that if not by God’s grace, I won’t be here and if not for COVID, I cant be there!! Hahaha!! Mahal po ang pamasahe e!!

So now a days, all we hear is about COVID, and it drastically changed our way of living. Literally everybody in the entire world were caught off guard and the next thing you know, food are gone in all the isles of every grocery store.

A week prior to the announcement that the spreading of the virus is already a pandemic, Chet Boongaling messaged me and she was asking if Jersey City still have rice!!! ((Hahahaha, we Filipinos love rice) Because apparently, in Brooklyn where she lives, the asian stores are out of stock of rice. And she showed me pictures of empty shelves in the grocery. She also mentioned that while her husband was about to enter another grocery store, a truck, whose suppose to unload bags of rice from their delivery truck , was met by Chinese people right outside the store, all lined up, so the pallets of bags of rice did not even left the parking lot, all gone!! Ang sabi ko pa nga, mukhang may alam itong mga Instsik na di natin alam a!! And so it happened, after that, news broke out, virus now is officially a pandemic.

What’s happening now is not just a scenario, not just a drill, it happened, still happening and will continue to happen. In New Jersey alone, news says that come Fall, the virus will activate again, its now part of the many family of virus.

Listen: [Notes: CDC.gov - "2019-2020 U.S. Flu Season: Preliminary Burden Estimates"]

CDC - in an Average Year in the US –there will be 39 Million cases of FLU -&- 30,000-60,000 will die

But for some reason The "Powers that Be" have Chosen to Shut Down America over COVID 19 - with only 700,000 Cases & 35,000 Deaths (Apr 19th)

So there’s something going on in there.

So with what’s happening around the world, as a child of God, where do we stand? Are we even thinking about our faith? Have you ever thought about that ,the way the gospel is being preached, via the internet is an answer to what the Bible says in

Matthew 24:14 NLT

14 And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come.

Whether we believe of not, I’m telling you right now, the landscape is changing and all of us have to change our mindset, because the the Global harvest has just begun, and its you and I who will bring the gospel to those people who are ready to accept Jesus.

Share Eldie and relate it to the group of people - DV Salud.

So let’s go straight to our study today, there was this person, regardless how people looked at her, how people think of her, she was caught in a middle of making a profound decision that will ultimately change her life and that decision will trickle down throughout her generation not knowing that by changing her mindset, by fearlessly making a decision that literally could end up her life at that moment, became a decision that would set the stage for the coming of the One and only Deliverer - Jesus.

The title of our study today is -

The Fear of God makes you make the right decisions

Please join me in prayer for a moment.

Im reading from the New Living Translation, I’ll be reading verse 1 so everyone can get the big picture but as we go on, I’ll point out the other verses.

Joshua 2:1 NLT

1 Then Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp at Acacia Grove. He instructed them, “Scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan River, especially around Jericho.” So the two men set out and came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there that night.

So, Rahab…who is she?

Prostitute

Joshua sends spies to cross the river and scout ahead. The first fortified city on the western side of the river is Jericho. This is where the spies go first. Jericho is the home of Rahab.

so from the get go, the word prostitute immediately pops out and when we hear this word, our understanding about the person instantly connects to sex trading, they earn their living by “selling” their bodies.

I made a research and I ended up finding this website and article written by Rabbi Mendel Dubov is the director of Chabad in Sussex County, NJ, wrote

The spies came to the city and went to the home of a certain “Rahab the zonah.” The commentaries differ as to the meaning of this word, which usually means “a prostitute.” Rashi, following Targum, sees this word as rooted in the Hebrew word mezonot, meaning “sustenance” or “food.” According to this approach, Rahab had an eatery that people would frequent. The Talmud,3 however, understands this word in its more usual sense. The spies specifically visited her house because she was frequented by the aristocracy of the land, which made her an important source of intelligence.

Even if the word prostitute catches our attention at at first, needles to say, her way of living became useful for the spies, she became their Intelligence. The spies was sent in to do reconnaissance mission, they were not to enjoy a night with a woman, so it’s understandable that they need someone who can give them a picture of the layout of the land and its people. It is by Rahab’s testimonial that the spies gather vital intel on the enemy. By Rahab’s words, they learn that even though Jericho is a well-fortified city, the people who live there are completely terrified of the oncoming Israelite invasion.

Joshua 2:8–11 NLT

8 Before the spies went to sleep that night, Rahab went up on the roof to talk with them. 9 “I know the Lord has given you this land,” she told them. “We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror. 10 For we have heard how the Lord made a dry path for you through the Red Sea when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River, whose people you completely destroyed. 11 No wonder our hearts have melted in fear! No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below.

So, she’s a prostitute and she fears God!!

Fears God

It sounds ridiculous!! A prostitute and yet fears God? When we see, read or hear things like this, our “holier than though” mentality immediately kicks in!!

Christian ba yan, e bakit d matigil tigil ang pagiging tsismosa nyan?

Have you heard about ...

Justification, Sanctification....I’ll leave this topic for the Cell group leaders to discuss it with their respective groups.

My point here, literally God is not finished with us yet! No one is perfect. But I also want you to realize here is that Rahab’s understanding about who God is, is the beginning of her fear of God.

So, she knew even before the spies boys (you heard me right) came! Not only her, the entire land of Jericho knows all about the God of Israel! And it sowed fear in their hearts! (check our vs 9)

Joshua 2:9 NLT

9 “I know the Lord has given you this land,” she told them. “We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror.

And in verse 11, the declaration came out of her mouth… “For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below”

This turned everything around.

Proverbs 9:10 NLT

10 Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment.

This is exactly what happened to Rahab! What she heard about who God resulted in helping out the spies, it was a good judgement call. She did not fear even the King’s men when they came around her place.

Joshua 2:2–3 NLT

2 But someone told the king of Jericho, “Some Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” 3 So the king of Jericho sent orders to Rahab: “Bring out the men who have come into your house, for they have come here to spy out the whole land.”

What would you do if you heard someone knocking at your door and demanded you to bring out the person who’s with you and you understand that they might get killed?

But listen, technically, Rahab does not know this spies personally , she just met them. Why would she help them?

I believe, Rahab, is in her right mind, why do I say that, because she just made a good judgment call, to help out the spies. And in the spur of the moment, Rahab was presented with a choice, either to rat them out, to inform the guys from the King and just be done with it, like, “why do I care, if they kill them” But there was a choice. How do I know that?

Look at

Joshua 2:12–13 NLT

12 “Now swear to me by the Lord that you will be kind to me and my family since I have helped you. Give me some guarantee that 13 when Jericho is conquered, you will let me live, along with my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all their families.”

So there you go, the choice were either to expose the spies and turn them over to the guys the King sent or, to use it as a bargaining chip and in turn save her and her entire family.

The common belief in Canaan is that there are many gods to be worshipped.

They worshipped Baal and Ashura the fertility gods of the harvest.

There was also Yam the god of the sea.

There was a god for the day. There was a god for the night.

There was a god for the sky.

There was a god for the land.

There were gods for everything.

And within this famous Canaanite gods, Rahab makes an amazing announcement. All of the Canaanite gods put together is still NO MATCH for the ONE God of the Israelites.

Rahab refers to the LORD of Israel as the Supreme God of both heaven and earth.

The Israelites are coming to wage a war with Jericho and it has nothing at all to do with armies or weapons or fortifications or strongholds. There is only one thing that matters in the coming battle; that the LORD of Israel is the God above all gods. Rahab sees this.

So when it comes to making a choice and when the opportunity arises, Rahab decided to turn her back on her own people and on her own city, and to take a step, to trust towards this unknown God who comes along with the Israelite people.

This trust to this unknown God was explained by the writer of Hebrews and this brings us to our last point of who is Rahab

Hebrews 11:31 NLT

31 It was by faith that Rahab the prostitute was not destroyed with the people in her city who refused to obey God. For she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.

Rahab have a Tremendous Faith

Yes, Rahab is a prostitute. By society’s standards, she was at the bottom of the social ladder, man used her, most likely a lot of people mocked her and labeled her because of her way of living. But guess what, from the writing of Joshua and up until the writing of Hebrews, hundreds of years later, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews still called her “Rahab the prostitute.” So no, she didn’t lose her label. But she did gain entrance into what we now call, “The Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11.

Rahab’s faith was just the beginning...

Listen, Rahab’s choice led to the conquering of Jericho. Which led to Israel’s rise as a nation. Rahab’s choice also led her to marry Salmon, which led to the birth of Boaz. Boaz married Ruth, one of only two women to have books of the Bible named after them. Rahab, Ruth and others created the generational line leading to the mighty King David. And King David led to . . . Jesus.

One choice, she had to choose only one, but both choices are influenced by fear, the fear for the King of her country and the fear for the Lord. And she chose the latter.

That moment of choosing, speaks volume that’s why it’s inspiring. Imagine, Jericho is her homeland, she grew up in it, lived there for all her life, saw and experienced the provisions of the government the leadership of the King and YET, because of what she heard and learned about the God of Israel, that understanding became a fear and that fear became a choice and that choice was a leap of faith.

Wherever we are at right now in our lives, if you messed up, if you think you’re not good enough, or whatever is keeping you from coming to the Lord, you can’t deal that on your own, don’t use that as an excuse to come to the Lord, now is the time, either to accept him as your Lord and Savior or just simply to re-commit your lives to Him.

If you haven’t have the slightest idea yet, the world around us is changing. The Pandemic will not just be a thing of the past, it is here and it will stay. The “powers that be” were sure enough to instill fears among the people of the world but that kind of fear produces manipulation, they want to control us, while the fear of the Lord is the beginning of our understanding of who God is.

Oswald Chambers said:

The remarkable thing about God is, when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.

It took Rahab just a few seconds to realize the truth about what she heard long time ago about the God of the Israelites, it didn’t take her days, months, to realize the accuracy of that news, because the spies are right in front of her, the story is really happening, it’s unfolding, Jericho will not stand against a powerful God! Her fear of the Lord was immediately changed, and it made her to put her trust in the Lord by faith.

Stop playing church, times are changing, we WERE part of the harvest, NOW A GREATER HARVEST IS AT HAND, THEY CALL IT THE GLOBAL HARVEST, THE GREAT QUARANTINE REVIVAL, thousands upon thousands are turning to Christ!!! So I urge you, strengthen your walk with Christ, believe and hold on to the truth on what you, already have learned again and again, and with faith, let’s move forward, double time, because there are a lot of people just right outside your doorstep who need to hear about the Supreme God of both heaven and earth.

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