Unshakeable: Not capable of being toppled or swayed, not given to trembling or falling down, not fit for wavering. Every day I see more and more evidence around me that while this life can shake us up, we can rest unshaken in the arms of Jesus.
One of the women in the Bible that I have studied the least is Rahab, but the more I study her, the more I see a woman just like me, just like us. I guess I would prefer to be Esther, a princess, or maybe Ruth, a kindhearted woman who gives it all up to help another grieving woman and spends her time gleaning in the fields to meet her kinsman redeemer. Those stories, even with their hard times, sound like the woman I want to be or become. Their stories, though tough are ‘prettier’.
But Rahab…we all know her occupation, her past, her story. Pretty sure I have never said I want to see myself in Rahab, but I was wrong. Her past may not have been pretty, but her faith in a very shaken place stood strong.
We all know the story. God was bringing His people into their promise. He had brought them to the Jordan River directly across from the city of Jericho. Those who lived in Jericho knew that God had done miracles for His people in the past, He was the God Who had parted the Red Sea, and now this miracle working God was coming their way. It shook them so deep, the Word says their hearts were melting with fear. Jericho was…shaken.
Rahab lived in Jericho and she heard the same report. She also heard that this miracle working God had parted the sea for His people before. She also knew that God was going to give His people the Promised Land, but when she heard the report, she did not let it shake her up. God’s faithfulness to His people moved her to action. Rahab welcomed the spies in her house, her one act of unshakeable faith, and made an agreement with them.
We find out in Joshua 2:15 that Rahab’s house was actually part of the wall that surrounded Jericho. Rahab’s house was in the wall. Before the spies left Rahab’s house to go back to the camp, they promised her that if she were to hang a scarlet cord out of the window of her house in the wall, it would be a marker to where the woman of faith stood and she and all who were in her house would be saved. Rahab’s whole family came into her house in the wall, knowing that the spies would keep their word and upon seeing the scarlet cord, a picture of the blood of Christ, they would be saved.
In Joshua 6 we see the shaking begin. God’s people start marching around Jericho. I am sure six days of an army marching around their walls left Jericho very shaken. They had no idea how God was going to move here, how He had planned to take their city. On the seventh day, God steps into the impossible for His people and shakes the walls of the city in a way they were not expecting. The walls of Jericho fell to the ground allowing His people to take the first city in the land of their promise.
Joshua instructs the spies to go get the prostitute and her family out of her house like they promised.
‘Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the prostitute’s house and bring her out and all who belong to her, in accordance with your oath to her.”’ Joshua 6:22
But remember Rahab’s house was in the wall. Rahab’s house was part of the wall. The wall had already fallen down. You cannot go into a house that has fallen. That means that in the shaking, Rahab’s house did not fall.
Rahab’s house had been shaken but Rahab’s house stood. The place where she lived was experiencing a shaking she had not experienced before. It could have left her shaken, it could have made her open the door and run out of the shaking house, away from the shaking, but the scarlet cord marked where she was to stand. She was to stand in the shaking, even when it was all crumbling around her.
At the right time the door was opened and Rahab and her family, those nearest and dearest to her, walked out of the shaking to be welcomed into the people of God. We know that generations later, Rahab would be found in the lineage of Christ Himself. She was a woman who had gone through a shaking, but stood unshaken trusting in her unshakeable God.
We all have times when our house is shaken, when it feels like the walls are falling down around us, when we find ourselves in a place we have never been before that threatens to take us down. We find ourselves in situations that require us to remember the faithfulness of the One Who has called us, the only One Who can part waters and keep shaken walls standing. The One Who parted the Red Sea has a plan to part the Jordan. The One Who is unshakeable can bring the shaking to its knees, tear down walls and bring us through.
God kept a woman of unshakeable faith standing in the greatest shaking of her life.
That is who I want to be. I want to be the woman that when everything around me is crumbling, I will stand unshaken, trusting in the blood of Jesus to see me through…and not just me, but me and my whole household. And I know you do, too.
We want to be that woman, and we can be that woman when our eyes are on our Unshakeable God.
Funny thing, in times of shaking, I guess I want to be more like Rahab after all.
Psalm 16:8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.