Would You Welcome Spies?

Pat Steeves · Tidal Church Moncton · August 16, 2026 · Heroes of the Faith series

Pat Steeves explores Rahab's story in Joshua 2, showing how faith needs a picture, a step forward, and the Word of God. Fear is only a shadow, and God is with us. Faith changes our future, and Jesus meets us where we are.

More from Pat Steeves · The Heroes of the Faith series

Topics: Faith, Grace, Fear & Anxiety

Transcript

[0:00] When I went to school, there was two types of students. There was the overachievers, there was the honour students, and then there was the rest of us. Right? It was the overachievers that it used to be so annoying. Okay? If you're an overachiever, sorry, okay? But you guys would make a 98, and then you would argue with the teacher why you should get those two missing marks. So frustrating, because the rest of us, we would get together, we would huddle up, there would be three or four of us with a calculator, and we would try and figure out what exactly do I have to make just to pass the grade. Is anybody with me this morning?

[0:49] Thank you. Yes. I can resonate with you, all right? I've learned through some counseling to be able to forgive the overachievers. But I will say, as we launched this series, it kind of brought back some of those same feelings where I was like, "Okay, we're going to spend the summer talking about the heroes of the faith, the honor roll type people in the Bible." And I'm like, sometimes, I'm still back at like, "God, I'm disappointed in You." And I kind of felt like this is kind of out of my league. But then as I began listening to the messages of Pastor Sam and Pastor Jim, and as I was preparing for this message, I began to shift my mindset where it's not about these people who did these great things that we spend many Sundays talking about, all the great achievements, but rather I've learned to understand that these people overcome some big obstacles, some disappointments, some doubts, and some fears. Can anybody relate with those? Yeah. And so I'm like, "Oh, I can get on board with that." And so I began to look at this series in a different light and saying, "God, use this series to increase my faith, to stir my faith." You see, we have two options when it comes to this.

[2:17] We can look at the situations that we're going through, and we can say, "These are happening to us," and cause us to question and cause us to doubt. Or we can shift our mindset and say, "This is happening for me." And the difference is I can take the same situation and be like, "What can I learn from it? God, what are You showing me? What are You teaching me?" And I think it comes as a maturity as individuals where we can feel bad for ourselves and say, "God, this isn't fair," or we can say, "God, teach me a lesson from it." And so from today's message, I pray that the latter happens, that your faith is increased and God speaks to you for where you're at right now. Because the reality is, life is hard.

[3:15] And I know we don't like to necessarily talk about what's actually going on in our lives, but the reality is we're struggling with... It could be a health situation. It could be finances. It could be your marriage, raising your children. Life is hard. But I believe that as Christians, we can be overcomers, and by putting our faith in God, is somebody with me, we can see our situations change. Do you believe that this morning? Do you believe that this morning? Yes. That's better. Those of you that are joining us online, I want to welcome you guys. We are in a series called Heroes of Faith.

[4:01] And I think that you guys are overachievers this morning because we're going to cover a lot of ground, and I believe you guys can keep up with me. But we're actually going to backtrack three weeks ago to Pastor Sam. He talked about Abraham, and he talked about Abraham's faith. Well, I guess I got to introduce the character, Jeremy, of who we're talking about today. Today, we're going to be talking about Rahab. And in Hebrews 11, it actually introduced Rahab as a prostitute. Now, I don't know why Sam got Abraham, and then he got Isaac, and Pastor Jim got to speak on Moses, and they're like, "We're going to give Pat Rahab, the prostitute." All right? Not sure how I got that. But we're going to backtrack because I believe this story is actually going to make more sense when we start back with Abraham. So here we go.

[4:57] Abraham, as many of you may know, was married to a woman named Sarah. The challenge for them was they couldn't have children. Like many of you, some of you may, if you've been in a situation, that's where they found themselves in. Very challenging. And so Abraham's crying out to God, and this isn't fair, and, "God, help us," and all this stuff. And God actually throws him a curve ball where He's like, "Abraham, I need to talk to you." And He's like, "I am going to make you, Abraham..." He called us a great nation. He's like, "You're going to have so many descendants. I'm going to use you and Sarah to start something big."

[5:46] And Abraham's like, "God, we can't even have children. This doesn't make sense." And what I love about this verse of Scripture that we're going to pull up here in... You guys will pull it up for me. In Genesis, God wakes Abraham up in the middle of the night, and He says, "Abraham, come out of the tent." And He says, "I want you to look up at the stars, and I want you to count them." And He says, "See all those stars? That's going to be the number of your descendants." Why does this matter? Because I think that one of the biggest principles, the first principle when it comes to our faith, is faith requires a picture.

[6:36] Faith requires a picture. And God, in that moment, gave Abraham a picture, gave him a vision, something that he could hold onto. And I want to encourage you that I believe God gives each and every one of us a picture. Maybe it's a picture of our future, of our career, of our family, of our children, and maybe things that they'll be doing. But I believe that God can and does give pictures so that we hold on to those, and we put our faith into that. Because when situations become difficult, and disappointment, and all the things that hit, I believe that having a clear picture of what God has for you helps us put our faith into something that will get us through those challenges. I'm a big fan of vision boards. If you are not aware of what vision boards are, it's crazy and helpful how easy AI can actually create a vision board of the things that are important to you and what you see in your future, and put that on your fridge.

[7:43] And we use those as a family, and it's become a picture of what we feel like God is leading and guiding us to. Number one, faith requires a picture. And so, as we fast track this story, we're going to move from Abraham. Yes, they had a child named Isaac, and over the next several decades, they began to have children, and it began to grow, and all these descendants, and turned into the Israelite nation of what God had promised. Okay. And if you've grown up around church, God didn't just say, "Abraham, I'm going to give you and make you a great nation, but I'm going to give you a place for these people to call home." And it was called the Promised Land in the Bible, but they had to get there.

[8:36] And so, throughout the course of time, this group of Israelites actually become enslaved to the Egyptians. And so the Israelites are crying out to God, saying, "God, help us. Save us." And so He raises up a leader. And last week, if you guys were here, do you guys know who the leader was that God chose to lead the Israelites out of slavery? Was anyone here for that one? Who was it? Moses. And so God raises up Moses. You guys are overachievers, aren't you? You guys are listening well. And so God raises up Moses. And if you went to Sunday school, you would know that Moses comes on the scene, and he convinces Pharaoh to release the slaves from Egypt and take them, and they're headed on this journey towards the Promised Land.

[9:39] And as these massive, I think there's like a million people moving from Egypt, they come to the Jordan River. They come to a river, and actually, Pharaoh changes his mind, and he's like, "I want all of you guys to come back because we need you to work for us." And so they start chasing them. And so if you can paint this picture in your mind, you've got this river of water facing them, and you've got an army coming behind them, and they're scared. They're like, "What do we do?" And I actually like here in Exodus what happens. And so Moses is the leader, fearless leader, and he's like, "God, what do we do?"

[10:29] And God says this: "Why are you crying out to Me?" I love hearing that because, for me, it speaks to me. Because sometimes we can kind of feel bad for ourself. We can feel pity. We can be like, "God, what is going on?" And God's like, "Stop crying." I don't know who needs to hear that. Maybe it's just me. But sometimes we can just... And the next words that He said, "It's time to move." And Pastor Jim said it, "It's time to move." I like to say it's time to step out. Faith requires us to step out.

[11:16] Now, this reminds me, as a dad of four kids, I'm always looking for adventures to take my kids on because we just want to be good dads and whatever, see our kids have fun. So one of the things they wanted to do was to go to the St. John Aquatic Center. I don't know if anybody's ever been there. If you're into swimming, all those kinds of things. Seems pretty safe. At the St. John Aquatic Center, they have diving boards, and they have different level diving boards, right? They got the spring ones or whatever, and then they've got the medium one. And then they have this platform one that doesn't bounce or anything. It's just this platform, and it's 33 feet in the air.

[12:04] And I'm not sure why, but my kids seem to think that that's the one they want to go on. And I'm like, "We're just here for a family time. Let's just swim. Let's play tag." Like, "No, let's go up on that. Dad, let's go." I'm like, "Okay. It doesn't look that high." Well, I start climbing, and I'm out of breath. And what I realize is, as I get up there, I haven't experienced this feeling in a long time, but I don't know if you can picture it. It's a bit of a walk, and the funny thing is, it was not funny, but as I'm walking, I'm getting lower to the ground for some reason, and my knees are shaking, and I honestly, I don't know what stopped me. It was the pride, I think.

[12:54] I was almost on all fours as I tried to make... And Weston, he looks at me, he's like, "Dad, what are you doing?" I'm like, "Oh, well, I'm just getting a good look at this. There's a lot of stuff up here to look at, Weston." And fear gripped me, and I'm like, "I don't think I can step out." And then one of my other kids are like, "Dad, just jump." And my wife's looking down, she's waving. God and I had a conversation. And so Weston, he jumps off. One of the boys clarified this for me between two services. But he does a front flip off of it and dives in.

[13:41] I'm just trying to jump straight down like pencil. You know what I mean? And so sure enough, the pride got the best of me, and I was like, "I'm going for this." But here's the deal, and here's the lesson, is in life, fear will try to paralyze us. Fear will try to stop us from stepping out. And what I always remember, I remember this acronym of fear. Here's what fear is. Fear is false evidence appearing real. Fear has a way of becoming very real to us.

[14:28] But I believe that the lies, the things we tell ourselves, they're appearing real, but we have to believe the truth of the word of God, and that's where we choose to put our faith over our fear. Are you guys with me? Yeah. Are you guys with me? There we go. So, I have a question for you. Some of you are thinking, "Okay, you're telling me to step out, but what if I don't know what that next step is?" That's a really good question. Because sometimes we'll tell ourself, "Oh, I would step out, I just don't know what I need to do."

[15:16] And sometimes we can overcomplicate that, but I want to also just share, when you're trying to figure out what is that next step, God has given us intelligence. He's given us people around us. He's given us resources, and He's given us the ability to make a plan. And I want to pick the story back up where Moses and them, they get across the Red Sea. God delivered them from that. Okay? They're moving on. But things got complicated, and because of disobedience, Moses is no longer the guy, and it's clear that he is not going to take them to the Promised Land. And so there's another leader named Joshua.

[16:04] And this is going to get us closer to the story of Rahab here. God raises up Joshua as the next leader. And to paint a picture of the story, you've got the children of Israel, they know where they need to go, but what stands between them and the Promised Land is this fortified city that has a military, that has an army, and it's called Jericho. So you've got God's people over here, you've got Jericho in the middle, and you've got the Promised Land, the place that God is leading them to. And you've got a new leader, and it's so interesting as you read in Joshua, God's continually telling him to be courageous, to be fearless, to step out, to lead. And so here's what he does.

[16:53] He's like, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to make a plan. We're going to send two guys, two spies, into Jericho, scout out the land. They're going to come back, report to us. We're going to make a plan." And so we're going to pick the story up in Joshua 2:1, which says, "Then Joshua secretly sent two spies." He says, "Go look over the land, and especially in Jericho." So they went out, they entered the prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. All right. The Bible doesn't give us a lot of details on this, but I'm thinking, okay, this is kind of weird.

[17:48] How did you end up at a prostitute's house? This doesn't make sense. I have no idea. But I'm like, okay, well, maybe she's known in the community for her occupation, and it's like there's a lot of people coming in and out, and they're thinking, okay, we can slide in and out, and it's just going to seem normal. No one's going to know, right? I don't know. Maybe it's kind of like detective work, Jeremy, and it's like that's kind of what you do. I'm not sure. But here's what also caught my attention, a part of the next verse: "Before the spies laid down for the night, she went up on the roof and said to them."

[18:38] I'm just going to kind of pause in the message just to speak to the men in the room right now. And so wives, you can give them a little nudge and make sure we're dialed in right now. But I'm picturing this story. You've got a couple Military guys, they're away, they're on a work, they're on a business trip, they're in the house of a prostitute. She comes up onto the roof to come and talk to them. They're in a very vulnerable situation, men. And I just want to remind us that we live in a culture that it's very easy to compromise. We live in a culture where character isn't really celebrated.

[19:33] And as men, sometimes we can justify a lot of things. And I just want to encourage and challenge and slightly nudge you that if you want to be a man of character and integrity, you can't do it alone. And I don't know if it was strategic why they went in pairs, but just a few years ago, I realized that I can't be a man of character and figure out marriage and raising kids and be in business and all this, and do this well with character and integrity on my own. And so I've made a commitment to have what I call an accountability partner that I meet with every Friday, just to be able to talk through things, and somebody that can challenge me and say, "You can do better," and, "You need to watch yourself in that." And so I just want to have a heart-to-heart with some of the men and just say, you know what? We live in a culture, in a society where men need to be men, and you can't do it alone. Can all the women in the room say amen? Amen.

[20:42] So we're going to pick up this story. So Rahab goes up on the top of the roof and she meets these two spies. And it's kind of interesting how she begins to talk to them. She says, "I know that the Lord has given you this land." So remember, they're in Jericho, okay? Jericho, at the time, they worshiped idols. They're just into a lot of wild and weird things. The Israelites are followers of God and putting Him first, okay? So she says, "I know that the Lord has given you this land, 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."

[21:40] She goes on to say this: "We have heard." Can you say, "Heard"? Heard. I'm going to come back to this. "How the Lord has dried up..." Remember the Red Sea, all that stuff? Defeated armies, all those things. Then in the next verse, it says, "We have heard of it." Can everybody say, "Heard"? Heard. "Our hearts melted in fear and everyone's courage failed because of you. For the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below." And the last part of this in verse 12 says, "So now, please swear to me," so she's making a deal with these spies, "that the Lord will show kindness to my family because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign that you will spare the lives of my father, my mother, my brothers, and my sisters, and all who belong to them, and that you will save us from death." As I read that verse of Scripture, I kept seeing that word, "I have heard."

[22:57] We've heard what's been happening with the Israelites. We've heard that God has been protecting them. God has been saving them. It reminded me of this verse of Scripture, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of God." In order to have faith, we have to have trust in the word of God. You cannot have strong faith without the word of God. Here's the key to the word of God, though. As you spend time in the Bible, you develop a hearing.

[23:45] And if you know, you know. As you spend time in the Bible, faith comes by hearing, but it's the hearing that comes by the word of God. In our world today, we have lots of voices that are speaking to us, don't we? Culture's speaking a voice to us. Our coworkers are speaking a voice to us. Social media is speaking to us. In order for us to be people of faith, we have to have the word of God, and the word of God will become alive, that it will create a voice, and you will begin hearing the word of God for yourself. Are you with me this morning? Faith comes by hearing.

[24:31] And that's what I feel, or what I got from that Scripture, is Rahab heard something in the stories. I believe she began to put her faith and her trust in this God that was saving them. And she makes a deal with them, and she's like, "I will protect and keep you if you will protect and keep me." So if you go on and read some of the rest of the chapter, you'll hear the story of they put together a plan, and they're like, "All right, we'll allow you to escape through a window," through this rope or this scarlet ribbon or something, whatever it was. You guys have read the Bible stories. But they let the spies down through this, and then the Jericho army comes knocking at her door, and they're like, "We heard there was two spies here. Where are they?" "Oh, they're gone.

[25:21] They left." And she lies to the military, which essentially could mean the end of her life if she gets caught. Not only the end of her life, but her family. There's a lot on the line. And for some of us, we can relate when we make decisions, sometimes we put ourselves out there, we step out in faith, and then what happens? Fear comes in. Doubt comes in. Did I make the right decision? Should I have done that? Can I trust God? All these different things start playing in our mind. And I want to share this verse of Scripture that comes so real to me through this. It's found in Psalms. It says, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

[26:17] And this Scripture came to me this week, and I'm thinking about it, and I'm like, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." And it made me realize that fear is just a shadow. How many have ever been hurt by a shadow? I'm talking a big shadow. No, right? It's not going to hurt you. But it's so interesting how in our mind, we make up things, and we see situations, and fear enters our mind, and it's easy for us to begin doubting God. And I want to tell somebody and remind somebody today that fear is only a shadow.

[27:04] The second part of that verse is, He says, "For I am with you." And I want to encourage, stir, for some of you, all of us, we are facing things that seem so real. Fear enters our mind, doubt, disappointment, and some of it wants us to just give up altogether on our faith and just like, "Forget this. This does not make sense. If God really loved me, He wouldn't allow me to go through this." And I can't guarantee you exactly how your situation will play out, but I can promise you this, that God promises to be with you.

[28:07] Whatever you're going through today, God promises, and I've lived this out, and I've experienced it enough. And I've had some heart-to-hearts with God, and I'm like, "God, this doesn't make sense." And I've had to get to a place where I say, "God, I surrender to You." Almost like up on that diving board, where I had to say, "You know what? I surrender," and I jumped. And we all have to get to a place in our faith where we say, "God, I'm not the provider. I am not the source. I don't know how this is going to end, but God, I surrender the situation to You.

[28:53] God, I surrender this loved person, this family member," whatever it is. And what's amazing is God comes in and takes some of that anxiety, and that stress, and that pressure, and all of that. "For I am with you." We're going to end with this, that faith gives us a future. Faith gives us a future. And as you read the story, we all know that Jericho was defeated by the Israelites, and Rahab and her family were all saved. And they actually joined the tribe of the Israelites.

[29:42] Her whole family, her whole future changed. This prostitute woman that was probably pretty low on the social status, but she was brought into this new family. It's amazing how faith can change our future. And as we flip to the New Testament, we actually see Rahab reappear in the New Testament in the most wildest place you would never think of. But we see in the family tree of Jesus, where she re-emerges in Matthew, and she is actually part of Jesus is born, but you go back.

[30:35] And there's Rahab. They're part of the same family. Jesus connects His story, the Savior of the world, to this prostitute woman. If we could just wrap our mind around that as Christians, that Christianity isn't about being good and not making mistakes, but Jesus meets us right where we're at. Yeah, our past tells a story, but I believe that God can change our future. So I just want to pray with you. I'm just going to ask that you would just bow your head, close your eyes. And my heart's prayer desire is that the words that were spoken today, the word of God today, would come alive in you, that would stir your faith.

[31:36] Maybe you're on a mountaintop, and God just came through big for you. Then celebrate that and keep going. Maybe you're struggling to just be like, "God, man, I am doubting You." You're two steps back from walking out the door. I pray that God would meet you in that moment, and if all you got this morning is that He is with you in this. I pray that He would give you the strength right now as we pray. God, speak to us, challenge our hearts. Recall these principles of faith, God.

[32:21] Give us a clear picture. Allow us this courage to step out. Bring the people around us to help us plan what that next step could look like. God, because we know that with You, all things are possible. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.