Joshua (3)—The Faith of Rahab - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2026

The LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Now therefore, I beg you, swear to me by the LORD, since I have shown you kindness, that you also will show kindness to my father’s house, and give me a true token, and spare my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death.
Joshua 2:11–13

Joshua (3)—The Faith of Rahab
The two spies Joshua had sent to spy out Jericho are also called messengers. To Jericho and its king they were spies who should be sought and killed. To Rahab the prostitute and her family they proved to be messengers of salvation. Believers today are a fragrant aroma of Christ to God. To the perishing who reject God’s message of salvation, we are a fragrance of death to death, while to those being saved we are a fragrance of life to life.

Rahab was a Canaanite, a sinful woman, dead in trespasses and sins in which she walked. By nature she was no better than any of the rest of her people. Yet she displayed true repentance by turning from her allegiance to her people to acknowledging Jehovah to be the true God, dealing kindly with His messengers, hiding them and saving their lives. In faith she cast herself upon the mercy of God, seeking His salvation from the sure death awaiting her people, not only for herself, but for all her family. She was not told to purify her life to make herself fit to be an Israelite. She must hang in her window the scarlet cord—reminiscent of the blood of Christ—by which she let the spies down the wall. Her family also must take shelter in her house behind this same cord.

Are we convinced that God’s judgment will soon fall upon this guilty world? Are we concerned about our own salvation and that of our loved ones? Are we ready to openly confess the Lord Jesus in this world where He is still despised and rejected of men?

Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.