In this
issue:
i) The Scarlet
Cord - J. Carattini
ii) Leviticus, Chapter 19 (Part 4) - C.E.
Wigg
The Scarlet
Cord
Jill
Carattini
The rope dangled out
her window, still swaying from the men who had just used it to escape. Her name
was Rahab, a prostitute who lived in the outskirts of the city and the margins
of society. Standing at her open window, Rahab knew she had committed an act
that could get her killed. The men who climbed out her window were Israelites,
spies who had come to search out the city of Jericho. Rahab was the reason they
got away.
She had heard stories
about the people of Israel. News had traveled steadily across the Jordon; the
Israelites were led by a powerful God. Now this people and their God were just
around the corner, and invasion of Jericho was imminent. So when two men
appeared at her house, Rahab made a choice to surrender. With fear and
trembling, she believed in the God who sent them:
"I know that the
LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us,
so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have
heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out
of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east
of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts
melted and everyone's courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is
God in heaven above and on the earth below" (Joshua
2:9-11).
Thousands of
years later, Rahab's story is still told--how she hid the Israelite spies and
sent the king's messengers in the wrong direction, how she lowered a rope out
her window and helped the Israelites escape, how she was spared when the
Israelites returned because she had followed their instructions. Rahab is
mentioned three times in the New Testament--for her faith, her righteousness,
and her heritage. A prostitute rejected among her own people, she was far from
rejected by the LORD.
In the twinkling of an eye we, too, can change the
direction of everything to come. In the flash of a decision, we can be made into
something new. "Give ear and come to me," says the LORD. "Hear me, that your
soul may live. And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful
love promised to David" (Isaiah 55:3). Fourteen hundred years after Rahab helped
the Israelites, the Jewish Messiah was born from her lineage. God used this life
of little distinction in the bloodline of his own Son.
The worldview we
embrace routes our life in a certain direction. Choosing to align herself with
the God of Israel, Rahab was led to a place of safety during the battle of
Jericho. "Our lives for your lives," the spies had assured her, and they left
her with instructions for the coming invasion: Tie this scarlet cord in the
window and bring your family into your house. No one who is in the house with
you will be harmed. Rahab agreed. As they slipped down the rope, she tied
the scarlet cord in the window. And as promised, her life was spared.
Such is the certain outcome of a life that wills to follow the God of
Israel. We are given hope and a future, and placed on a sure path. He takes the
prostitute and provides her a robe of righteousness. He proclaims liberty to the
captive and release to those in darkness. He calls the guilty and the
brokenhearted and He sends them his own Son. The assurance of Jesus Christ is
that he is leading us to the house of the Father. Like a scarlet cord across our
lives, it is his blood that gets us home.
---
Jill Carattini is senior
associate writer of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta,
Georgia.
---
[Copyright(c) 2005 Ravi Zacharias
International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with
permission.]
Leviticus Chapter 19 (Part
4)
Charles E.
Wigg
From verses fourteen
to eighteen we are instructed as to what God requires of His people. In verse
fourteen we are told how we are to treat a person who is deaf or blind. God
desires that we should be both kind and patient towards those who may not have
the same faculties as ourselves. We are not to regard such as a nuisance,
because if the Lord Jesus loved a person enough to die for them, then it surely
means that such are very precious to him. When a person reads the scriptures,
but does not glean the same meaning from the very same book, then we are not to
be haughty, and to indicate that we know better than most others but we are to
be humble, and to agree to differ in matters that are not vital or essential.
This does not mean that we must conform to what they believe in every little
matter of doctrine, but rather if what we have arrived at is the truth, then let
us cling to it at all costs, but we must do so in the knowledge that because our
knowledge is imperfect, we could after all be wrong, thus it behoves us to be
humble.
In that same verse we
are told that we must never deliberately put a stumbling block in the way of a
blind person. The Lord Jesus goes further than this in His teaching in Matthew
chapter eighteen, and tells us that any person who misleads an unsuspecting
child, or places a fall trap in front of them, that it would be better if a
great millstone were hanged about their neck, and they be sunk in the depths of
the sea. This does not mean that such a person (if they are a true believer), is
to be sent to hell, and their souls to be lost eternally, but rather that they
be removed out of the way, so that they are not able to cause others to fall.
This brings to mind the case of a dear brother, (now with the Lord), who had
diminishing eyesight and was almost blind. He was waiting at some traffic lights
as he wished to cross the road. In our city the traffic lights also emit a sound
to tell visually impaired people when it is safe for them to cross the street.
While he was waiting for the lights to change, he was approached by an old lady
who asked him to show her across the street, because she was blind!!! This same
brother when in the meeting would often announce a hymn to be sung, and he would
ask if some brother would read the first verse aloud for all to hear. Needless
to say I admired that brother who in spite of his handicap would do what many a
sighted brother was not willing, or exercised to do.
In verse fifteen we
are instructed that we must never allow compassion for the poor, or fear of the
rich or the desire to cultivate their favour to distort our application of God’s
law, there must be absolute sincerity in our judgement, and our application of
God’s word. Let us never be like the Pharisees, who laid hold on the poor guilty
adulterous woman and dragged her into the Lord’s presence, and let the
adulterous man go free, and thereby condemned themselves as partial in the
application of the Law. (John 8:1-11)
Verses sixteen
and seventeen forbid the scandalising of each other. It is sad to have to admit
that I have found a spirit of envy and of jealousy even between those who claim
to be servants of the Lord. In fact I could fill a book with detailed accounts
of such envy and jealousy. We are not to hate our brothers or our sisters for
whom Christ has died. This does not mean that we are to turn a blind eye to
their faults and failings. But it does mean that we must have the courage to go
to the person concerned, and to confront them with their wrong doings, or their
wrong attitudes. We are to rebuke whatever is wrong, but we are to do it in a
spirit of meekness and of humility. If only we had the courage to go to the
person concerned, and in the spirit of meekness to confront them with their
wrong doing, most matters would be settled on the spot, and the contamination
would be kept in the smallest possible circle.
---
[Reproduced by
permission of the
author]