The story of Rahab is strange to many. It presents many moral challenges and difficulties. It’s really hard to imagine Rahab with her moral life and her life of religious paganism belonging in God’s Hall of Faith. Commentators have tried to explain away the blot of prostitution from Christ’s lineage insisting that in those days a harlot was actually an innkeeper. But the truth cannot be ignored, Rahab was a harlot.
Now the Lord’s ways are past finding out. We are told in Isaiah 55:9, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
In Matthew 1:5 we find that Rahab is right there in the Messianic lineage.
I believe this is a perfect picture of God’s grace, showing us that salvation is not dependent on human goodness but on God’s grace.
A beggar stopped a lawyer on the street in a large southern city and asked him for a quarter. Taking a long, hard look into the man’s unshaven face, the attorney asked, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” “You should,” came the reply. “I’m your former classmate. Remember, second floor, old Main Hall?” “Why Sam, of course I know you!” Without further question the lawyer wrote a check for $100. “Here, take this and get a new start. I don’t care what’s happened in the past, it’s the future that counts.” And with that he hurried on.
Tears welled up in the man’s eyes as he walked to a bank nearby. Stopping at the door, he saw through the glass well-dressed tellers and the spotlessly clean interior. Then he looked at his filthy rags. “They won’t take this from me. They’ll swear that I forged it,” he muttered as he turned away.
The next day the two men met again. “Why Sam, what did you do with my check? Gamble it away? Drink it up?” “No,” said the beggar as he pulled it out of his dirty shirt pocket and told why he hadn’t cashed it. “Listen, friend,” said the lawyer. “What makes that check good is not your clothes or appearance, but my signature. Go on, cash it!”
The Bible says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That promise is a “negotiable note” of infinite value. And as sinners, all we need to do is “exchange” it by faith for eternal life. Don’t let the “tattered clothes” of your past keep you from cashing God’s “check” of salvation.
What to do:
✞ Accept Christ as your Savior today!
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