a determined woman

Josué chapter 2, it is quite a long text and therefore I am not going to read it all, but I want to talk about a woman, in honor of mothers; Raab, a determined woman. We can say a woman of courage, daring, of decision, not a pusillanimous woman as we sometimes want to paint her. Scripture paints us robust women, women filled with the Power of the Holy Spirit and Raab is one of them.

And you know the story that is given when the Hebrews are about to enter the Promised Land, Canaan, after forty years in the desert God has finally told them: Now you can enter Canaan and possess the land. But God did not simply give them the land just like that, God actually said to Joshua: "I have given you all the land that the soles of your feet can tread on" but He also told him "But look, I command you to strive and be brave" amen?

God has blessings for His people, God has blessings for us, God has given us the earth, God has given us the desires of our hearts, God has told us: you are going to live a successful life, you are going to have a blessed motherhood, your children are going to restore the ruined cities, you are going to be the father and mother of nations; powerful spiritual descendants will come out of you and your loins, but what happens? you have to work hard and be brave.

God has said to this Church: You have a special heritage, you have a special calling. I have called you to be the head and not the tail, I have called you to influence this city. And I believe that we are already pregnant, so to speak, with God's blessing in our lives, we are already carrying the embryo of God's blessing in this Church; We have seen it through the years, but God tells us: But look, I command you to strive and be brave.

The people of Israel upon entering the Promised Land, with all that promise of blessing they had, were going to have to fight, battle, plan, strategize, bleed, even kill. God had given them the title of success but they had to do the work with God's blessing on them, do you understand? And I see that this is how God works in life. God doesn't just give you things there as without; sometimes it can be, sometimes He opens the door for you and you just walk through it like a king. But sometimes God tells you: No, I want you to make an effort and be brave. I want you to develop character, I want you to develop faith, I want you to glorify me with your efforts, I want you in the sweat, and in the struggle, and the agony, like Ushi who, in his struggle, notice that God didn't just magically touch the baby and everything went well, etc. No? sometimes God tests us to build muscle.

If a baby does not have to make an effort and if the mother carries him all the time, and gives him food immediately, he screams, he does not develop psychologically or physically. There must be waiting times in which the mother waits for a while before giving her food, she trains it, and the baby learns through that struggle that it is no longer like when it was inside the mother's womb that it was fed directly through of the umbilical cord.

And God wants us to develop faith, patience, prayer, that we can comfort others with our own experience because we were blessed by her testimony, but if I had not had that experience I would not be able to testify. So God always wants to bless us.

And that is why these Jewish people who had to enter the Promised Land, one of the things they had to do was spy out the land. They had to send spies to enter the land of Canaan and observe what was happening. God had told them that the first city they had to pass through was a city that was highly fortified, a very large city, far greater in its ability to resist than the strength of these Jewish men who were not even tested in war. .

So they sent people to spy out the land. They sent two men, the Bible says here in chapter 2: "Joshua secretly sent two spies and said to them: Go and spy out the land." Verse 1, and to Jericho "And they went and entered the house of a harlot whose name was Raab, and they lodged there." Joshua sent them when they secretly entered the city there, what they found was a place that seems, Bible scholars think it was a small hotel, something similar to a hotel, an inn, like a house that served as lodging. , because if they were spies, they did not know the land, they entered secretly, they were not going to enter any house. This place seemed to be like a hostel, a shelter house.

The only thing there, the problem there is that there was also a harlot, you know what a harlot is, right? It's a fancy or old way of saying a prostitute, a disreputable woman, an immoral woman, lived off the sale of her body so to speak. She was not a woman from whom many noble and good things would be expected. Definitely not a woman one would expect in the Bible, right?

One of the things I like about the Bible is that it is a realistic book, it does not paint plaster saints, it paints flesh and blood men and women; wow, that even seems like a poem, it even rhymes. And it is like that, that is what convinces me that the Bible is the Word of God because it is not there as creating a story of people with makeup and a lot of deodorant first, no. There you have them exactly as they are, like you and me, right? that we are not necessarily a paragon of virtues, we all have our stories there and by the grace and mercy of God we are children of the Most High, and by the blood of Christ who has redeemed us.

And the Bible is interested in presenting people with all their struggles, their trials, difficulties, falls, tensions, defects, sins, but people who are raised in the hands of God and their destiny is completely changed. Praise God that Raab went from being a woman of dubious reputation to being a powerful woman in the Spirit and look at us here three thousand years later talking about this woman and celebrating her on Mother's Day. What a great blessing.

Something interesting is that the Bible is full of determined women like that, robust women as I say. Think of Deborah, think of Ruth and Naomi, think of the Shunammite woman. Those who do not know this story I encourage you to read your Bible to be filled with the inspiration contained in these examples of powerful women in the Spirit and powerful in works also in life, women of courage. I think of the Cyro-Phoenician woman who argued with Jesus there and said: Yes Lord, You say that the food is only for the children of the house and not for the little dogs, but even the little dogs deserve to eat something of what falls from the table, and that is why I ask you to heal my daughter and the Lord said: Wow, woman, great is your faith. See that your daughter is healed of that demon that is tormenting her. She argued, she didn't go there like a little flower all dizzy because the Lord insulted her a little to prove her faith, no. She got in again and argued with the Lord, right?

I think of Ana who could not have children and cried out before the Lord, and presented her cause to the Lord, and God blessed her with a son: the great Samuel, a prophet of God and after that she had five more children, glory to the Lord because he cried out to God and believed the Lord, and he entered the temple and there he fought with God, and poured out his soul before the Lord. He said to him: Father, give me a son, and God did not give him just any son. I believe that God had reserved Ana.

And sometimes the bigger the blessing is going to be, the bigger the wait is too, you know? Sometimes the bigger and stronger the baby is, sometimes the more struggle there is for it to be born, but glory to God, God wanted to provide such a glorious background for Hannah and Samuel. The great men and women of God sometimes have to provide a background that makes them shine even more; Samuel came out just like Jesus came out of a woman who was not married, like Isaac came out of Abraham and Sarah when they were old, like John the prophet came out of a couple who had not been able to have children and were already advanced in age. God loves to give life to sterile things and Ana was that kind of woman.

I think of the woman with the issue of blood who got into the crowd and touched Jesus' cloak, and she grabbed him. I was going to say: he stole power, because the Lord was surprised by the shock that occurred when this woman of faith touched the hem of His cloak and said: Who touched me? because power came out of Me. The Lord did not say: Let power go out because this woman has faith, no. The woman drew power from him because the faith of a man, of a woman, draws grace from the Lord. God respects people of faith, you know?

And I also think of Mary, the sister of Lazaro, or rather Marta, Marta above all. Marta was a determined, diligent, hard-working woman, we always see her up there, always getting into things and working for the Lord. When her brother dies she leaves the city to find Jesus and reproaches him in a sense: Lord, if you had been here on time my brother would not have died, but the Lord said: Don't worry Marta, your brother is going to live, because the Lord converses with us.

What I see here is that the Bible values women extremely. Women: feel valued and validated by the God who created you. Without you this would be a disaster. Imagine a world run only by men, hear me, my God. The streets would be full of garbage, the houses, the stockings hanging from the lamps in the house, listen to me. Thank God for the women who bless us with their spirit and their order, and their merciful mind, and their look that sees like 360 degrees; we men see as nothing more than 20 degrees ahead of us. The world without the female vision, the female heart hear me, it would be truly chaos and the Bible values women extremely, that's why I love these.

The first sermon that I formally preached in my life at the Central Baptist Church at that time, in the year 1900, I don't know what I know was about the Shunammite woman, and I still have it around; It was in 1983-84, I was about 3 years old then, a prodigy at that time (laughs). And that Shunammite woman remained engraved in my heart, it was not a coincidence because the women of God are so special, so filled with the Spirit, so powerful and the Bible portrays women like that. I have always come back, that Shunammite woman has been an example for my life as was my mother too.

We see that the first people to witness the resurrection and receive the announcement of the resurrection were women. While the men there were stuck in a little cave there, all fearful because their leader had been killed, the women were there looking for someone to open their graves to add and decorate the body of their master, they were also at the foot of the cross. Jesus came through a woman, men had nothing to do with it. God played the role in a manly sense, impregnating the womb of Mary and from that combination of divine and human that the woman embodied was born. And that was already predicted, from the very beginning of the Book of Genesis the Lord had already said: The one who is going to fix this is a woman, the fallen one, she is going to hit the serpent on the head through Christ Jesus, dealt a death blow to the devil and all evil through the fruit of a woman.

Jesus remembered His mother, while suffering the agonies of the cross He worried: May my mother not miss it, and said to John, the beloved disciple: take care of her. From today she is going to be your mother and you are going to be her son. The Lord cared for His mother at the last moment of His life, didn't He?

And Raab is one of those women, one of those types of determined, robust, exemplary women who are an example for any man, that the Bible shows us. But it is also interesting that he is a bit ambiguous, complex, nuanced, contradictory like all the great characters of Scripture, he is a very complex being, not easy to locate; it has shadows and light within it. She is a harlot, a prostitute, a woman of dubious conduct, of dubious reputation, a bad reputation if you will, but she is also a businesswoman because of course she did, she had a very interesting business.

But she is also a business woman because probably the place where she was was a lodging house, an inn as we would call it. It was an inn, a place where foreigners came and stayed, and in that sense she was a businesswoman. I think too, I don't know if I read it years ago while studying, but it's interesting that she hides these two spies. When the rulers and the soldiers of the city of Jericho realize that two spies have entered, somehow they knew that two strange men entered the city, they start looking for them because they know that they are Israelite spies and someone seems to tell them: I I saw them enter the house of Raab.

And when they go in there and she realizes that they are looking for them because they arrive at the door and say: take out the men who entered your house, take them out, because they are spies, she hides them and hides them where? He says that in a bundle of flax that he had. In other words, maybe they were some cloth and for you to hide two men in bundles, there had to be enough in a few rolls of linen, so I suspect that: or she had an obsession with buying like some sisters (laughs) and she had linen there else, or he also traded and traded linen and fabrics, and sold them, and that is why he had so much cloth there that he was able to hide them from these men in case they came looking for them.

That is to say that she was a diligent woman, she was a woman, and not only a harlot but also a complex being, and we see that character of a businessman in her cunning and the way she deals with these men. Despite her very dubious profession, Raab is a woman of spiritual discernment, remember that, spiritual discernment. She is determined, she is faithful to her family, we will see in a moment, she fears God, she is intelligent and cunning. That is why we cannot, brothers, despise people simply because they have problematic behavior. I have learned through experience and through reading, and through my dealings with my brothers, my sisters, and through my own life, we cannot reject people on the face of it simply because they are alcoholics, because they are homosexuals, because they have a criminal past or because they are tied up with alcoholism, or drugs, whatever.

Be careful rejecting people at first sight, my brothers, you know? We have to be people of mercy and eyes to see beyond what people are at the moment. You can see what that person can become in Christ Jesus. You have to be a person, we have to be a Church of mercy because sometimes God brings out treasures of coal, you know? out of coal he brings out diamonds, and the Lord loves to take people who don't seem to promise much and do great things through them. Look at you and look at me, through Christ Jesus.

And Raab is like that, she is a woman. Yeah, who knows what drove her to be a prostitute. Perhaps a man who betrayed her, became disappointed, and ended up that way. Perhaps out of necessity. How many women in our countries often end up, but when you treat them they are tender women, who want to be mothers, want to be wives, and if a man covered them with his love, they would be exemplary women, yes or no? I believe that many times the people who have suffered and who have been through difficult pasts are often the most loving people of God and the most grateful because the one who is forgiven much loves much, says the Bible.

And Raab was that kind of woman, complex and I love those characters like that, not from one dimension. They are characters that invite us to enter them and extract the juice, and all their teaching. Due to her profession and because at no time does she talk about her children or her husband, at least initially, we assume that she was not married at that time and that she did not have children because she mentions her parents, her siblings but does not mention my children, my husband; She was also a prostitute, right? at that time Raab was not a mother.

And I kind of said that in that idea, God told me: Don't go too fast from that idea, stop there for a moment. Because you know, God uses us in whatever state we are in, and then, when we worry about the Kingdom of God, all other things come in addition. Because Raab at some point later appears on the pages of the Bible as having a husband and giving birth to a man of excellence. Do you know that Raab is an ancestor of Jesus Christ? Wow, a prostitute in the lineage of the Son of God? that blows anyone's brains out, you know? but it's true.

Go to Matthew chapter 1 verse 5 and you will see something very interesting there, and that is that the Bible is fascinating because it says it like that quickly and it sort of passes by like it hasn't said anything, but those of us who know the story of this woman , how he protected those spies, for us it stops us, it almost takes our breath away.

Matthew 1:5 speaking of the lineage of Jesus Christ, right? of His offspring, it says here, let's go to verse 4: "Aaram begat Abinadab, Abinadab begat Naason, and Naason begat Salmon." I advise it. "Salmon begat of Raab" say "of Raab", of Raab begat Boaz. Does anyone remember these Bible scholars? Boaz, Boaz, Boaz, the brainiacs are working there, I see the little wheels. Boaz, the one who married Ruth and who was such an excellent man, such a beautiful person, Boaz, an exemplary man too.

And then it says that: "Boaz begat Obed from Ruth, and Obey Jesse, Jesse begat King David" imagine, this woman of dubious reputation and life became the ancestor of King David, and you know that King David, not Let's tell the whole story, he ended up being whose ancestor? of Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ came from the lineage of David, from the lineage of the tribe of Judah. Wow how interesting.

This woman who begins her biography in the Bible so badly now ends up being blessed, because at the opportune moment she did what she had to do, she cared for these two men who were servants of the most high God, she protected them, she protected their lives and God said : For that work I am going to bless you and I am going to change your destiny.

I assume, because later we are going to see that when the Israelite army enters to possess the city and destroy everything in it as God has commanded them, Joshua gives orders: remove Raab and his entire family, and all his dependency. Remove all his property first because when we go in there it will be with a flamethrower to burn and destroy everything there is because that is what the Lord told us to do, but we are going to preserve Raab.

And he says, look how interesting I am anticipating my text, but in chapter 6 of Joshua himself it says, verse 6:24: "They devoured the city and all that was in it with fire, they only put in the treasury of the House of Jehovah the silver and the gold, and the utensils of bronze and iron, but Joshua saved the life of Raab the harlot, and her father's house, and all that she had" and here is the interesting thing "and she dwelt among the Israelites until today because he hid the messengers that Joshua had sent to scout Jericho" glory to the name of the Lord, how beautiful.

I can imagine this woman, they take her out of the destruction site, they now include her in the chosen people of God. Now this woman in a sense becomes the adopted daughter of God's people. And I imagine that the fact that she had such a glorious, strategic intervention made her a celebrity now, ah! there goes Raab, that was the one who saved and hid the spies; oh no, yes, really, and God saved it from being destroyed and it's the only one left in all of Jericho. Raab converted, I think he became famous.

I guess that's what happens, right? When she saw her importance, her family at the moment already treated her differently, right? your reputation. Why what happened? when you value people many times people change. When you despise them they are more despicable, when you neglect them more they are more negligible, the more you criticize them they are more criticizable. When you value them, love them, recognize them, then people feel important and say: wow, I can't be behaving like just anyone over there.

I imagine that Raab's psychology changed because now she was a woman of weight, she was a woman of blessing. And I imagine that some man then, impacted by the change in her life and surely it was a woman who was attractive, whatever, but the fact is that this man said: you know what? I'm going to keep this one here, I'm going to redeem her, I'm going to bless her, I'm going to marry her. His life had already changed but it all started with a blessing and an act of faith. And then God gave her children and made her the progenitor of the Son of God because God loves to code those signs of His grace and His mercy.

In the lineage of His Son there was a sign that it is by grace and not by works, it is by love, it is by a generous God that we have that if we recognize it He covers all our debts and all our sins, and it is as if we never we would have committed, because there in Matthew 1:5 it is not indicated that she was who she was but Raab, mother of so-and-so and grandmother of Boaz. I mean, that's what counts and as I say brothers, Raab does those things before being a mom. If you are not a mother, I advise you my sister: do not see yourself as something incomplete, something that is deficient, God can use you exactly where you are, listen to me well, eh? because what matters to God is a heart and a life.

There are women who do not have children but are more mothers than others who are mothers and do not have children in their hearts and minds and in their spirit. And if you worry about the things of God, God will worry about your things later, whenever; meanwhile live life as full as you can. Enjoy the things that God puts in your hands, rejoice in what you have and be a mother in many different ways, in many. This world is in need of fathers and mothers, listen to me. Be a leader, live life the best you can, live a full life.

If you are married rejoice in the Lord and if not, live a life full of fruit and blessing as well. Take advantage of your freedom, travel, read, study, enter the house at the time you want, enjoy your freedom, be blessed as it is. God can use you, don't worry. Seek first the Kingdom of God and other things will come in addition. We cannot live too concerned with what we do not have. Look at everything you have and live the most fruitful and powerful life that you can, and leave the rest to the Lord, and in time God will do what he has to do. Do the good that you can at the moment, do what comes to hand and leave the rest to the Lord please. God will then take care of blessing your lineage and if it pleases Him, He will fertilize you, He will bless you, He will give you the desires of your heart.

Because we all have dreams. I have dreams of things that I want God to do in my life, but if I get obsessed with what God has not done then I lose the opportunity to enjoy what He has done and what He has given me. So while I have one eye on the future I have the other on what I have and I celebrate and thank God for what I have.

We all have flaws, we all have gaps, we all have deficiencies, there are many mothers who have children but wow, sometimes they wish they didn't even have them because they are difficult. Nobody is completely happy brother, each state has its blessing and also has its challenges, so enjoy what you have in your hand, God always asks us what do you have at hand? God gave Raab an opportunity to be a blessing then and there and later blessed her in other ways.

But closing all this a bit, leave me because I have mixed things up here. So Raab acts as the protector of these two spies who are doing their job while the people prepare to enter the city, and when they come looking for these two men she decides to hide them. I like that image there, thanks for posting it, I hope it can be seen well, it is a rope, a cord, a red rope, very important, the Bible speaks of a scarlet cord, it means that it is a red color, and it is interesting that he gives the detail twice, it was a red cord, a scarlet cord, and one wonders why the writer, of all the things he could say, insists on pointing out that it was a red cord that she gave him to the men to get down from their house, which was in fact very strategically located on the city wall, because all the city gates were closed.

Rather, there was only one entrance and exit door to control, like hotels that have only one entrance and when you enter what they have there right away is the desk. Why? to prevent people from entering and leaving the hotel without authorization. So there was only one large gate to the city and that gate was already under control, those men were not going to be able to leave the city without the soldiers being alerted. But for God's sake, her house was attached to the same wall, because the walls were thick in those days and there were houses sometimes attached to the walls or near the walls, and she was blessed that her house It was strategically located on the very edge of the city, and through that window they could escape, and that's what they did.

She told them: ok, let's make a deal, while they heard the door knocking and the men waiting there, and I imagine they were full of fear, ok, let's make a deal, what do you think? I know that God is with you, you are going to destroy my city, if you promise to save my family, my house, everything I have, I am going to protect you and I am going to get you out of the city. She was a businesswoman, you know? she knew the precise moment to make the sale, while the sword was around her neck they had no other alternative, and they entered into the deal, they made a pact.

Do you remember that I spoke about covenant people two weeks ago? covenant people, word people. They told him: give us your word. If you protect us, save us, get us out of here alive, when we return we will forgive your family and all your belongings, we will destroy everything, but we will forgive you and yours. And that cord, that rope that she used.

That is, what number one means is that, that we take advantage of the positions where we are. She had a strategic position, she had a business house, she was a woman who knew what was happening in the city because, imagine, all kinds of people entered there and gained intelligence. Over the years, prostitutes have been used by the armies to obtain intelligence from their clients who are sometimes soldiers, government people because they are all hypocrites many times, right? and they have taken advantage of these contacts so that women can obtain intelligence.

Raab knew what was happening. Due to his position, interestingly, he had access to a lot of information and also his house, due to the position where it was, served as an escape point. God uses the positions where we are. People think that only Pastor serves God, that is a lie from the devil, you can serve the Lord exactly where you are. Many people: oh, I want to be a Pastor, I want to be an evangelist, I tell them: look, stay where you are working, you are more useful there than behind a pulpit, because we have short eyes. We have seen people who are in strategic positions in the city who, when the time is right, bless us in many ways in our life as a Church. I tell them: I need you there, don't you dare leave that place, you know? use the position that you have, use the job that you have, use the profession, what God has given you and tell the Lord: Lord, how can I be useful to you in the position where I am, how can I bear fruit where I am? because Raab had that opportunity.

What was it that allowed Raab to win all those fights, all those obstacles that she had? Look, there are two things we can't lose. Go to Hebrews 11:31 that the Bible mentions her, and I'm going, I'm going to close this, Hebrews 11:31, in the pantheon of heroes of faith the writer of Hebrews speaks of Raab and says: "By faith , Raab the harlot, did not perish with the disobedient, having received the spies in peace." What saved Raab? your faith.

But look, it's interesting that Santiago also speaks and I don't know if he's conversing with that text because I don't know if Santiago had read it, I don't think so, but anyway, you know that Santiago emphasizes the works a lot, while many aspects of the Bible emphasize faith but not because there is a contradiction but because both are important. Then Santiago adds another nuance to Raab's life.