Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

(Moms, Portraits of God Video - 2:20)

By a show of hands, how many of us have ever had a mother?

That looks like it is fairly common experience among us, so a day that we honor motherhood would be something that applies to all of us to one degree or another, but some of us have been honored to be Mothers.

If you are a mother and here with us this morning would just stand right where you are.

No matter what stage of motherhood you are in, Expectant Mother, Single Mom, Grandmother, etc. Let’s just give them a round of applause.

They have been given such an awesome responsibility and privelage to bring life in to this world and to refect something of the nature of God to their Children.

Thank you mom’s, you can go ahead now and be seated.

Happy Mother’s Day!

By a show of hands, how many of us have ever had a mother?

That looks like it is fairly common experience among us, so a day that we honor motherhood would be something that applies to all of us to one degree or another, but some of us have been honored to be Mothers.

I am not going to ask you to stand today, but I just want every one of the mothers with us to day to know that you are blessed in that God has entrusted you with the life of one of His precious little ones.

This is just as true in every stage of motherhood.

Whether you are a mother who is expecting in just heart and mind or already in your body, God has honored you

Whether you are a single mother of one or a grandmother of many, God has honored you

Whether you are a single mom, or you are parenting together with the father

Whether you were able to physically gave birth to your children, or you welcomed them in by adoption, God has honored you.

Whether all your children were born into this world, or some of them were born directly into heaven, God has honored you

Whether you have one child or a football team.

Even if you child was born into heaven like my oldest son James.

You are blessed to have cared for that little one in the way to short of a time that you had with him or her.

Mother’s Day can bring out all kinds of emotions and feelings.

Everything form great joy, thankfulness, and exuberance to unexpected pain in loss or regrets can be uncovered in a day like today.

But what I want us all to remember is that it was God who designed this whole motherhood thing, and no matter what we have experienced of it, God made it to be an honorable and worthy reflections of His character.

Because of that, we honor the many forms of motherhood that we have with us today .

Tension

So since we are talking about honoring mothers today, let me ask you how many mothers can you remember by name from the Bible?

If you are like me, you have to stop and think about it don’t you.

Well there is Jesus’s mother Mary that comes to mind quickly, but after that you pretty much have to go Old Testament.

Which is where we have been for the last 9 months so we should be able to name some.

Let’s see...

Starting at the beginning we can come up with Eve pretty quickly, we know she had kids or we wouldn’t be here

Sarah, Isaac’s Mom

Jesus’ mom Mary

Isaac’s Mom Sarah

Rebecca, Jacob’s Mom

Rachel and Leah, who were moms of the 12 tribes of Israel

Who else…hmmm

Oh, yeah I know one that we all know, Rahab the mother…

but...that is not the role that we typically remember her by is it.

We typically remember Rahab in the way that we are introduced to her.

Instead of it being “Rahab the honored Mother” she is known as “Rahab the pagan prostitute”.

I am not sure that we are being very fair to Rahab when we remember her in only those terms.

The truth is that, while her story does begin as a Gentile owner of an ancient house or ill repute, God brings her to an entirely new place.

In fact, I would argue that as far as mothers go, Rahab may be one of the most honored mothers in the entire Bible.

So open your Bibles with me to the beginning of her story found in our next book, the book of Joshua chapter 2 (p.

178) and as you are going there let me just give you a bit of road map for the next few weeks.

We have only a three weeks left in our Gospel Project initiative for this year.

Next week, Jesse Taubert, one of the Overseers here will be sharing the message as my family and I will be on vacation and then when I get back we will wrap it all up with one final message on where we have been so far.

Then we will tackling the book of Philippians for the Summer, and I am really exited for that.

We have only a couple weeks left in the Gospel Project for this year.

My family and I will be on vacation this coming week so next Sunday one of our Overseers, Jesse Taubert, will be sharing the message.

You won’t want to miss that.

And then we will have one last week in the Gospel Gospel prpeaking, as we are going to take a break from it for the summer and look at the book of Philippians, and for our last three weeks we are going to briefly look at the book of Joshua and it is in Chapter 2 of the book of Joshua that we are introduced to this honored mother named Rahab.

I’ll pray and we will dive into our Mother’s day message.

We have only three weeks left in the Gospel Project for this year, as we are going to take a break from it for the summer and look at the book of Philippians, and for our last three weeks we are going to briefly look at the book of Joshua and it is in Chapter 2 of the book of Joshua that we are introduced to this honored mother named Rahab.

So open your Bibles with me to the book of Joshua chapter 2 (p.

178) I’ll pray and we will dive into our Mother’s day message.

So with your Bibles open to , will pray for us and we will dive into our Mothers Day message through the story of the honored mother Rahab.

Truth

So last week we finished up our study on the Torah with a look at the book of Deuteronomy and it ended with a very significant leadership transition.

The legendary servant of the LORD Moses has passed away and God commissioned Joshua to lead His people into the promised land.

Before they enter, however, Joshua sends in spies to gather information on the land.

He is especially interested in knowing about a stronghold of a city called Jericho.

This should make us a little nervous.

Remember last time they sent spies into the land it did not go so well.

That was that whole “10 were bad and 2 were good” thing.

10 of the spies came back with a conflicted report where the land was good but there was no way that we could beat the people who are there.

Well God was so angry that they refused to take the next step with Him that those 10 immediately lost their lives and the rest of the people spent the next 40 years dying off in the wilderness so that only their children remain.

The only exception was the 2 were good guys (thumbs up).

They have survived to lead the children of the children of Israel into the promised land.

This is Joshua, the new leader, and Caleb.

report are back here standing on the border of the promised land again.

They were Joshua, the leader who has took Moses’ place and Caleb.

This time Joshua only sends in 2 spies.

We are not exactly sure why but maybe he figures that is a better number because only two got it right last time.

Or maybe he has learned, as many of us have, that when it comes to leadership there can be “too many cooks in the kitchen”.

Or it could have just been a strategic move, as it is certainly easier for a team of two men to sneak into a city like Jericho then it would be for a large team.

But whatever his reason, it is on this mission that we are first introduced to this woman Rahab who would become a most honored mother.

Even with only two men, the spies have been discovered.

The mission has been compromised.

What will they do?

How will the escape?

Who can they turn to in this foreign land?

God raises up for them a very unexpected ally...

Joshua 2:3-

Rahab chooses to protect these foreign spies.

Why would she do this?

Why would she hide these spies?

She was not an Israelite, She was a Canaanite woman.

She was not even a moral person, she was a “prostitute”, which means she was a woman who sold the use of her body.

Considering who Rahab becomes, some people have tried to hide, ignore or explain away the idea that Rahab was in such a morally corrupt line of work.

They would prefer to think of her as just an Inn Keeper who rented out a room, not the madam of a brothel.

That does make for a cleaner story, but not a truthful one.

Some scholars have been able to cast some shadow on the Hebrew word used in Joshua, but Rehab's story echoes loudly into the New Testament where there is little room for any argument that she was anything but a woman of the night.

So we have to accept this truth about Rahab, and more than that it seems that it is this very truth about Rahab that gives her story the power that it has.

Rahab did indeed have a dark past, but that did not keep God from having a wonderful plan for her future.