TEXT: Joshua 2:1-24
TWO men hurried fast through the big gate into the city of Jericho. Who were they? What were they going to do? They didn’t want anybody to see them.
These two men had been sent by Joshua. Joshua was the man who God said was to take the Israelites into the good place He wanted them to have for their own. Moses had helped them for a long, long time. Now Joshua would help the people go into the Promised Land.
The rest of the people were in a camp down near the Jordan River. They were going to be so happy to get where they could have a home all their own.
God told Joshua He would tell him just what to do. Joshua and the people wanted to go over into Jericho, but they first wanted to know what the city was like. They were waiting at the camp for the two men to come back and tell them what they had seen.
They couldn’t see the city like we can now. In that country there was always a high rock wall all around the city. The only way anyone could go into or come out of the city was through a big gate in that wall. That was why the men hurried so fast through the gate.
Inside the city the two men saw lots of houses. They didn’t look like your house. These houses had a real flat, flat roof. Some of the houses were even built on the rock wall around the city.
This city had a king, too. A king is the man who takes care of things for the whole city. He heard about these two men. Someone told him they were inside the city walls.
This king had heard about the people of God and how they had walked all the way there. He heard about how God had taken care of them. He was afraid of what these people of God would do.
When the two men came into the city they had to find some place to hide quick, before the king could find them. They did not want the king to find them and keep them from going back to tell Joshua about the city.
God always takes care of people who love Him. They came to the house of a woman who was kind and would help them. Her name was Rahab. She said she would hide them. Where do you suppose they hid? Rahab took the two men up to the flat top of her house. She covered them with some big, tall, heavy grasses called stalks. The men lay very, very still.
Here come the king’s men to look for them. They looked all over but they didn’t find those two men.
When the soldiers were gone the two men came out again and talked to this kind woman. They told her about God.
She said, “I know God is going to let His Israelite people come into this city.” She had heard how God had helped them and even made a big wind blow so they could walk across the sea on a dry path. Then she asked them to be kind to her mother and father and her family. She didn’t want them to be hurt.
The men couldn’t go out the gate now because soldiers were watching for them there. Rahab knew a good way to get them outside the city wall. Her house was on the wall. She let them down over the side of the wall by a red rope. The men climbed out her window and down the rope. They were safe from the soldiers. God had taken care of them.
The men told Rahab to hang that same red rope in the window of her house and she would be safe and all her family.
Rahab put the red rope in her window. When the Israelite people marched into the city later on they saw the red rope in the window of Rahab’s house. She nor anyone in her family was hurt.
It pays to be good and kind. God likes good people and takes care of them.
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