Famous bible characters

FAMOUS BIBLE CHARACTERS
By Pastor Glenn Pease
CONTENTS
1. GOD IN MAN’S IMAGE Based on Gen. 3:8f
2. ABRAHAM THE INTERCESSOR Based on Gen. 18:16-33
3. REBEKAH-A DEDICATED DAUGHTER Based on Gen. 24:42-66
4. JOSEPH-DREAMS CAN COME TRUE Based on Gen. 37:2-20
5. JACOB AND JOSEPH Based on Gen. 42:1-20
6. JOSEPH THE ACTOR Based on Gen. 42:1-22
7. MOSES MEETS GOD Based on Ex. 3:1-15
8. RAHAB THE HARLOT Based on Josh. 2:1-21
9. DEBORAH THE WISE Based on Judges 4
10. DEBORAH THE DELIGHTFUL Based on Judges 4
11. JAEL THE ASSASSIN Based on Judges 4 and 5
12. SAMSON THE SUPER FOOL Based on Judges 16
13. RUTH THE RISK TAKER Based on Ruth 3:1-13
14. QUEEN OF SHEBA Based on I Kings 10:1-13
15. ELIJAH THE PROPHET OF FIRE Based on I Kings 18:20-40
1. GOD IN MAN'S IMAGE Based on Gen. 3:8f
A young boy afraid of the dark called for his mother to
come upstairs to his bedroom to be with him. She came and
sought to comfort him by telling him God was there with
him, and so he didn't have to be afraid. He was all right for
a while, but then he called her again. When she came up he
offered this proposition: "Why don't you stay up here with
God while I go down stairs with daddy?" The child was
simply expressing the natural desire for a tangible
companion. The philosopher may feel at home with some
abstract concept, but most people are like the child, and
their desire is for something concrete.

Philosophy is concerned about God's nature and will,
but it has never had much appeal to the vast majority of
people. It is abstract and talks about God as the Ground of
being and the Fundamental Force of the Universe. Most
people need a concept of God that can be embodied in some
kind of a mental image. This is why the Bible is filled with
what is called anthropomorphism. That is a big word that
simply means the picturing of God in the form of a man, and
with characteristics of a man. God became a man in Christ,
and Jesus said that when we see him we see the Father, and
so our image of God is very manlike. Our highest revelation
of God is in the man Christ Jesus. In Jesus God is a man.
Even before man knew of God the Son the Father was
described in terms of human characteristics. The reason for
this is obvious, for there is no alternative if man is going to
have any intelligent concept of the nature of God. If
anthropomorphic terms were not used to describe God He
would be so abstract as to be almost meaningless, and He
would certainly not be thought of in a way that would be of
much comfort. God is infinite spirit, and all His attributes
are so infinitely superior to ours that we cannot conceive of
God at all in His essence. Our knowledge of God has to be
on the level of the finite. This means we must be aware that
even our highest concepts of God are fall short of what He
really is. God has had to descend to the level of our finite
minds in order to be known by us at all.
If you want to communicate with a dog you do so with
meat and bones and scratching behind the ears. These are

hardly the highest expressions of man's nature, or of his love,
but these kinds of things alone can be understood by the
dogs intelligence. You would get nowhere in communicating
with a dog by mathematics, art, or a lecture on biology.
These are above the dog's capacity, and so rather than get
no response at all you stoop to the dog's level and speak his
language. This is what God has done with man. He has
revealed himself in man-like ways, and with man-like
characteristics. The result is that many young people form
the concept in their minds of God as an old man of great
wisdom with a long white beard. Mature believer know this
is not so, but as C. S. Lewis has said, it is better that God be
seen this way than as a mere abstraction, which is even more
false to reality. He wrote, "What soul ever perished for
believing that God the Father really has a beard?"
It is essential to think of God in human terms, and it is
harmless as long as recognize them as necessary symbols to
represent God, but not necessarily what He actually is. The
Greeks fell into this danger and had their gods on the same
level with men, and this included all of their limitations and
immoralities as well. Most pagan peoples have done this,
and so they have a very poor concept of God. Any god who
is too man-like is a partaker in man's evils. God rebuked
this in Ps. 50:21, "You thought that I was one like yourself.
But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you." We
must use the benefits of anthropomorphism, for the Bible
uses them, but we must also avoid its dangers lest we make
God in man's image. God made man in His image, and so it
is reasonable to assume that God is man-like in many ways.

But we need to avoid any idea that God is like man in his
fallen nature.
God has always been in heaven speaking the words that
formed all or reality, but then we come to Gen. 3:8 and all of
a sudden we see God walking on earth in the garden. He is
now clearly in the image of man. Our very first concept of
God, which we can visualize is of a man walking in the
garden and talking with Adam and Eve. We cannot
conceive of what He was before creation, but here we see
Him as a man. What is of interest is that this is not just
anthropomorphic, but is a literal description of what God
actually did. He made himself in the form of a man and
dwelt with man. Only the literal interpretation fits the total
unity of the Bible. The ultimate goal is that God will again
dwell with man.
It is not stated as such but it could very well be that this
one walking in the garden could have been the second
person of the Godhead. Jesus became a literal man in the
incarnation, but here we see him taking on the form of a
man. In the ultimate paradise that we see in the book of
Revelation we know it will be Jesus who will walk with us in
white, and we shall be like Him when we see Him as He is.
Anthropomorphism is justified because God began his
relationship with man as a man. He chose to reveal himself
in the form of a man at the beginning, and actually became a
man in history.
It is implied that God had walked in the garden before

this, for how could they have known the sound of Him
walking if they had not heard it before? They did not see
Him but heard Him coming, and if they had never seen God
before in the form of a man walking, how could they ever
suspect it would be God making the sounds they heard? The
text implies that God actually dwelt on earth with Adam and
Eve. This means that earth was once the dwelling place of
God, and God had actually been on our world in the form of
man before Christ. It could have been the pre-incarnate
Christ who was here in the form of man. He did not come
into flesh through birth, but merely took on the form of a
man as we see He did on other occasions in the Old
Testament.
We see that the Old Testament works away from an
incarnation of God, which was lost toward and incarnation
of God, which gave hope. It is no wonder that the Old
Testament concept of the ultimate kingdom was earth
centered, for this was the setting of the ideal in the
beginning. Even in the New Testament where the eternal
kingdom is pictured as heavenly, there is still the new earth
as a part of it, and it appears that this small planet will be
forever a place where God will dwell with His people, and
walk in the beauty of paradise.
The picture of God walking in the garden was like Jesus
centuries later walking in Palestine, for He was the only man
on earth who was perfect. Adam and Eve had fallen and so
they felt naked before God and they hid themselves. We see
two frightened shameful people who do not want to be seen

in their nakedness. God's first question to fallen man was,
"Where are you?" God was the great seeker of man, and
Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.
Everything about this first picture of God reminds us of
Jesus. God finds them, hears their confusion, judges them,
and then provides them with coverings and the hope of
redemption. This whole account pictures God as Christ-like.
We see God in man's image as the God-Man.
2. ABRAHAM THE INTERCESSOR Based on Gen.
18:16-33
What comes down from the heavens has a big effect on the
values of real estate. Take what happened in Stillwater in
1852 for example. Jacob Fisher, who was a surveyor, had
found a small stream called Brown's Creek in back of the
town. He dammed it up and made a lake, and he ran the
water down the hill to power a saw mill. John McKusick
bought the whole operation and had a great business. But
then came May of 1852. It had been raining for many days
and people were just sick of it. It would not stop, and the
soil on the bluffs over looking the town could not absorb
anymore. On May 14 the people heard a rumbling and a
roar as a great chuck of the hill came crashing down. It
covered trees and buildings. It buried barns and shops and
everything along the water front.
Fortunately the hill came down where the land was low,

boggy, and worthless. John McKusick would have sold it for
a $1.25 and acre. Now he felt he was ruined, for his mill was
covered along with the 5 acres that the avalanche buried.
For several days he lamented the disaster of almost 20 feet of
mud that entombed his mill. But when it dried up he found
that he owned 5 acres of new land by the rivers edge. It was
excellent land for business purposes. The land slide
converted his swamp into usable land, and he began selling it
for five hundred dollars an acre. Much of the present
business area of Stillwater is now located on this land that
was created by rain from heaven.
The flip side of this is Sodom and Gomorrah where the
heavens rained down burning sulfur, and real estate values
fell to zero. The land became so totally worthless that it
became the symbol of God's worst judgment for the rest of
history. To be like Sodom and Gomorrah was to be hell
bound. They were so completely devastated that to this day
nobody knows for sure where this real estate is. What the
heavens rain down can do wondrous things to the real estate
of this world, and to the people who live on that real estate.
That is why any influence we can have on the God who
controls what falls from the sky can make a big difference in
this world.
Abraham was just such a man, for he could move the
God who moved the forces of nature. Abraham was the
great intercessor of the Bible. This prayer of his for Sodom
is the first intercessory prayer of the Bible, and it is one of
the most remarkable prayers in all the Bible. An intercessor

is one who pleads with God on behalf of others. Much
prayer is seeking God's gifts and guidance for your own life,
but the intercessor seeks them for the life of others. In the
case we are looking at the others are people who deserve
judgment. They are so godless they would laugh Abraham
to scorn if they knew he was pleading for them. But we still
see Abraham pleading on their behalf, and we can learn
some important truths about interceding from Abraham.
The first is-
I. THE INTERCESSOR IMPRESSES GOD.
It is impressive to see just how impressed God was with
the fact that Abraham cared enough about these godless
people to plead for them. God is very impressed with people
who care about other people enough to pray for them.
There are many people in the world who never get a chance
to experience the mercy of God and get a second chance. It
is because there is no person who intercedes on their behalf.
The Bible reveals that if nobody cares about people who are
going to be judged, they are judged. But if someone cares
enough to intercede for them, God is impressed with that
love and compassion, and He will be open to compromise.
This sounds like heresy doesn't it? God compromising!
Yet, that is precisely what we see God doing because of
Abraham's intercession. Abraham is bargaining with God.
He starts with the plea that if there are 50 righteous people
in Sodom that God spare the city for those 50. God agrees
that this is fair enough. Abraham is immediately aware that

he may have been too optimistic. Sodom was a hell hole and
how could he expect there to be 50 people unspotted by such
corruption? He became a rapid realist and knew he had to
convinced God to come down from this original agreement.
Abraham is very clever and he uses the argument of
triviality to get God to lower the number required to spare
the city. "What is 5 people less than 50? Certainly you
would not condemn the city for the lack of a mere 5 people.
So what if there are only 45 righteous-will you spare it for
that many?" God agrees and Abraham keeps on lowering
the number until he gets to 10. He was too optimistic even at
that level, but honors this man of intercession, for God is
willing to compromise where he sees true concern.
God makes it clear that where there is no concern, and
where there is no intercessor, it makes a big difference in His
actions. Listen to these words of God in Ezek. 22:30-31. "I
looked for a man among them who would build up the wall
and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I
would not have to destroy it, but I found none. So I will
pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my
fierce anger..." God could not find an intercessor. There
was no Abraham who cared enough to plead for mercy for
these sinners, and the result is that God's judgment fell on
them. Had there been an intercessor there could have been a
compromise and a second chance given.
Is God really that impressed with the intercessor? Yes
He is, and that is why the ministry of intercession is one of

the most important there is, for it moves God to compromise
and make deals for the sparing of those who deserve
judgment. Some Christians think it is really being a
spiritual giant to take a strong stand and never make
concessions. If the law has been broken, then let the violator
be judged with the maximum penalty. God, on the other
hand, is looking for a way to show mercy. If He can find
someone who cares enough to intercede for the guilty, He
will be open for a deal. Abraham said, "Shall not the God of
all the earth do right?" That is precisely the way God is. He
will always do the right thing, and the right thing is to find a
way to beat evil and overcome it. When God has to judge
and let His wrath fall, then evil has won a victory. God is
ever looking a way to prevent that. He has no pleasure in
judgment and the death of the wicked.
The sending of His Son to die for the sins of the world
gives every sinner in history a second chance to escape
judgment and be saved. Jesus ever lives to intercede for us
that we might again and again escape the judgment we
deserve, and instead experience the marvelous mercy of God.
It is true that the Old Testament is full of the wrath of God,
and at times you wonder if God delights in it because of its
frequency. But the fact is, God hates judgement and loves
mercy. That is why He is so impressed with the intercessor.
The intercessor gives God the basis for mercy. It gives Him
a just reason to hold back His wrath and patiently wait to
see if judgment can be avoided. God can never care less
than any other person, and so if there is an intercessor, God
will listen.

The ministry of intercession makes such an impression
on God that it is one of the primary forces of history. That is
why Paul wrote in I Tim. 2:1-4, "I urge, then, first of all,
that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be
made for everyone-for kings and all those in authority, that
we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and
holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior who
wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the
truth." God wants intercessors because He is pleased with
those who care, and they play a major role in who is spared
and saved. In the light of importance of the intercessor it is
tragic to think that there are people who have no one who
cares enough about them to intercede for them. There are
people everyday who suffer the judgment of God because
they had no intercessor.
They deserve their judgment just as Sodom did, but they
might have been spared if someone had cared. God is
willing to make a deal. He is flexible and not locked in like a
computer to destroy on command at a certain point. The
program can be altered by the presence of an intercessor.
God is willing to listen to any angle and try to save rather
than judge. Even when the cup of wickedness is running
over God is willing to seek some way of escape. This side of
God is a side we need to see, for it motivates us to be
intercessors. Who knows what may be accomplished if we
care enough to pray? In a fallen world compromise is a
necessity. Even God does not say it is all or nothing. Give
me 10 righteous people and I will let the evil of the rest be
spared. Just give me a fraction of hope that the future can

be changed and I will tolerate the present evil. That is the
compromise God is willing to make, and that is why it pays
to plead with God.
I know this is suppose to be a negative thing to do, and it
is one of the stages of death and dying when people with
terminal diseases try to make a deal with God. It is the fox
hole prayer that says, "God get me out of this alive and I'll
go to church and tithe and be the best neighbor in town." I
know there is a lot of nonsense committed with this concept
of making deals with God, but lets not throw the baby out
with the bath water. Abraham is not praying for his own
hide. He is interceding on behalf of others. There is a lot of
difference. It is okay and necessary to pray for yourself, and
Christians need to do plenty of this, but in this area of
prayer it is easy to get self-centered and operate on the
childish level of gimme, gimme, gimme. This is not what we
see in Abraham here. He is interceding for others. He is
making a deal for the sake of others and not his own skin.
God is willing to compromise when He knows someone
else cares enough to seek away to spare the wicked from
judgment. Compromise has its evil side, but we ought not to
neglect its positive side. Compromise says I will be willing to
change my plan for another if there is hope that good can
come of it. God was willing to spare a lot of wicked people
who would go on being wicked if there was some sign that a
hand full of righteous people could survive in that
environment and have hope of changing it. God believes
that where there is a few righteous there is a way to change

things. Give Him 10 righteous people in a mass of the
unrighteous and He will hold back judgment to see what the
10 can do to modify the evil. God is an optimist, and if there
is a ghost of a chance of good making a difference, He will go
for that chance.
That is why God is amazed when there is a lack of
intercessors. When they can make all the difference in the
world it does not make sense that they do not exist. Isa.
59:15-16 says, "The Lord looked and was displeased that
there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, He was
appalled that there was no one to intercede."" In a world
where often the only hope is intercession God is appalled
that there is no one who cares enough to intercede. But He
is so impressed when He finds an intercessor, especially for
the very wicked, as was the case in Sodom, that He is willing
to bend to the limit to find a way for mercy.
In the light of this fact one of the greatest roles in the
kingdom of God is the role of the intercessor. To be an
Abraham type person is to care enough for a lost world to
intercede for it, and possibly give a specific sinner in it to be
saved from certain judgment. This is possible because the
intercessor impresses God.
Intercession leads to a lot of believe it or not stories. One of
the greatest generals of World War II was Erwin Rommel.
He almost took Africa for Hitler. He was right at the gates
of Cairo and victory was in his grasp, but then the whole
plan unraveled. In the book Rees Howells, Intercessor by
Norman Grubb we are told that Rees had a group of people

who were interceding for Africa at that very moment. They
were praying that Rommel would be defeated. It seemed
like a futile prayer for the battle was already lost. But God
is impressed with intercessors, and when God is impressed
strange things happen.
The British had just set up an 8 inch water line for fresh
water. On that day they were testing it for 3 hours with salt
water. Fresh water was too precious to use for testing. It
was during that three hour period that the Germans
attacked. They shot the line full of holes and began to gulp
down the salt water because they did not realize what it was.
In the hot desert sun of 120 in the shade they were
immediately immobilized. With black tongues hanging out
they gasped for air and life. They threw down their weapons
and surrendered, and the Bible lands were saved.
The stronger was defeated by the weaker because of the
power of the intercessor. Had the Germans attacked a
couple of hours earlier or later they would have taken the
land, but thanks to God's providence in history they were
defeated by their timing.
Intercession does not manipulate God, but it does
impress Him, and He responds to it. It is not a matter of
certainty, however. Abraham saw Sodom go up in smoke in
spite of the effectiveness of his intercession, and many who
see miracles and wonders happen through intercession also
see many unanswered prayers. There is no formula by
which we can control God, but intercession is a means by

which we can impress God and possibly get a hearing that
can lead to His acting in our favor. Erwin Prange in A Time
For Intercession tells of interceding for a pilot who had a
broken ear drum and he was healed, but of 4 others he
interceded for who were not healed. He prayed for one man
who wanted to quit smoking and he became nauseous at the
smell of tobacco right away and never smoked again. But
many others had no such experience. The point is that
intercession does not give you the power to control God and
guarantee results. It is just the key means by which we get
God's attention, and a possible answer that may never be if
we do not intercede. The second thins we see is,
II. THE INTERCESSOR IMPACTS MAN
This does not seem to be supported by the facts, for
Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly destroyed and wiped
from the face of the earth. It would appear that all the
interceding of Abraham was much ado about nothing. It was
a much answered prayer that in the end was an unanswered
prayer. He got God down to ten, but he just as well had left
it at 50, for it was a hopeless cause he was pleading. This is
the most successful prayer never answered, and you might
ask, what is the point of it all when it didn't change
anything?
But that is just the point, it did, and the prayer was
actually fully answered to the extent that God could do so
consistent with the facts. Abraham pleaded that the
righteous not be destroyed with the wicked, and that prayer

was fully answered. It was not a lot but Lot and his two
daughters were saved, and it was a direct result of
Abraham's intercession. In Gen. 19:29 we read, "So when
God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered
Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that
over threw the cities where Lot had lived." God
remembered Abraham. That is, He listened to his
intercession and the result was that Lot and his girls were
spared. Lot became the father of the Moabites, of whom
Ruth was one, and she became the great grandmother of
David, and she is in the genealogy that led to Jesus the
Messiah. The whole future of God's plan of salvation was
impacted by this prayer of intercession. It even touched
those who were judged and destroyed, for it had an impact
on history all the way to Jesus.
Jesus will be the ultimate judge of all men, and He says
in Matt. 11:23-24, "And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted
to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. If the
miracles that were performed in you had been performed in
Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you
that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of
judgment than for you." The compassion of Abraham for
those wicked people lives on in the heart and mind of the
Messiah, and in the end they will still be dealt with in mercy.
The point is that intercessors cannot ultimately fail.
First of all they please God by being intercessors, and there
is no higher success than that. It pleases God that you care,

and even if God cannot spare those you intercede for
because they will not cooperate and respond to His grace, it
is still a successful ministry. God loved Abraham in a special
way because he cared about people. He gave him the
greatest promise in the Bible when He promised that
through His seed He would bless all the people of the world.
The whole plan of salvation is a fulfillment of this promise to
Abraham. Every sinner on earth can be saved through Jesus
who is the seed of Abraham. Abraham is in the center of the
whole plan because he cared about lost people and was an
intercessor.
To be an Abraham means that you become a person
who cares about others and it will to intercede on their
behalf. It is to stand in the gap and link these people to the
merciful heart of God. Caring might not change them, for it
did not change the people of Sodom, and it did not change
the people of Jerusalem that Jesus wept over. Intercession is
not fool-proof, but it is always successful just because it
pleases God and makes you more like Christ. The rich
young ruler walked away and Jesus failed to win him, but
Jesus wept because He never failed to care. That is the
success of the intercessor. They never fail to care. They
impress God and impact man in ways that may never be
known in this life.
Abraham did his best and when the cities he pleaded for
were wiped out he did not say, "That is the last time I waste
my breath pleading with God." He just moved on to the
next stage of life and made the best of it. He did not say that

prayer does not work. He recognized the limitations of what
can be done by prayer. God as limits too. He could not say,
"Okay Abraham, just ask me to spare Sodom if there is one
righteous man," for he knew Lot was there, and so the whole
evil population could be spared for this one man. Many
wonder why Abraham didn't keep going. He was on a role,
and so why not go all the way to one? If God would spare it
for 10, why is the lack of a mere 9 people the cause for their
destruction? Just 9 more people could have spared them all.
There comes a point where that logic has to stop. If Lot
had lived in Sodom all that time and had not won another
person into the kingdom of God, then it was obvious there
was no soil fit to receive the seed. It there had been 10, it
would show signs of growth, and the possibility of that 10
becoming 20, or many more. Where God can see the seed
planted and growing there is always hope. But where there
is no growth it makes more sense to take the righteous out
and destroy the wicked, and that is what God did.
This reveals the importance of growth. If Christians can
just touch a few lives, it holds back the judgment of God.
God will patiently wait as long as He sees any progress.
That is why intercession is not enough. It is not God's will
that all be like Abraham. There has to be people like
Barnabas who befriended people and Andrew who won
people, and Timothy who trained people in order to have
total success. But the Abrahams are vital to the whole plan
of God. May God help us all to improve in the area of the

ministry of intercession.
3. REBEKAH-A DEDICATED DAUGHTER Based on
Gen. 24:42-66
Bach never wrote an opera, but the closest thing to it was
his Coffee Cantata. He became quit an expert on coffee
because in his day coffee drinking was the popular vice
much like drugs have become in our day. There were laws
against it and spies roamed the city sniffing the air to catch
people in the act of roasting coffee beans. Frederick the
Great was disgusted with the increase of coffee drinking
among his subjects. He was brought up on beer, and many
of the great battles had been won by soldiers nourished on
beer. The king felt that coffee drinking soldiers would not be
strong in their warfare against his enemies.
The cantata of Bach is about a father who was greatly
disturbed about his daughter was hook on coffee. If she does
not get it three times a day she says, "I'm no better than a
piece of dried up goat meat." Papa tries everything-he
argues, he threatens, but nothing works until he promises to
find her a husband if she will kick the habit. She agrees, but
in the closing trio she confides that she will only marry a
man who will let her drink all the coffee she wants. This is
Bach's idea of a prodigal daughter. It is a rather mild
rebellion in comparison to the Prodigal Son. We know that

daughters can be equally rebellious and as foolish as sons,
but the Bible seldom reveals a bad daughter. There are sons
galore who bring grief to their parents, but very few
daughters.
The Bible is much more son oriented than daughter
oriented. But there is more about daughters then we realize.
Believe it or not, there are about 500 references to daughters
in the Bible, and about 90 of them are in Genesis, which
makes it the most daughter oriented book in the Bible. Most
of Genesis is about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his 12 sons.
But here in Genesis 24 we see entire long chapter of this
male dominated book revolving around the young daughter
Rebekah who would become the grandmother of the 12 sons
of Jacob.
Rebekah got in on God's plan for history because
Abraham did not like the girls he saw in Canaan. They were
idolaters and corrupted by their culture. He did not want
his son Isaac to marry one of these girls, and so he sent his
servant Eliezer back to his native Mesopotamia to find a
daughter among his brother's family. This was probably the
longest journey in the Bible to find a wife. It was a 6 weeks
trip across the desert. In our culture we don't send servants
out to shop for a wife. We prefer to see the merchandise for
ourselves and make our own choice. Isaac is 40 years old,
and yet he does not go along to have some input. He just
took the one the servant selected, and they had a long and
fruitful marriage. They had their fights, but they overcame
them and became the grandparents of the 12 tribes of Israel.

For some reason the Patriarchs had a hard time having
daughters. Abraham had just 2 sons-Ishmael and Isaac.
Then Isaac had his 2 boys-Jacob and Esau. Then Jacob had
the 12 sons from his 4 wives, but then Leah finally came
through with one daughter named Dinah. She is the only
daughter we know of for 3 generations in that family tree.
Because of this lack of daughters the line of Abraham had to
go back to the family of Nahor his brother to find their
wives, for girls were abundant in his line. It gave us
Rebekah, Rachel and Leah. It is a strange reality, but it is
still true today that some families tend to have all boys and
others have all girls, But the majority get a mixture of the
two. Such was the case with the family of Rebekah. She
had a brother named Laban.
The thing that surprised me in studying the families of
Genesis is that many of them just had 2 children. I guess I
assumed that most families were large in the Bible, but if you
read with the intent to count, you discover that families with
from 1 to 5 are the majority, and 2 or 3 are very common.
Part of the problem in counting is that daughters are often
not listed, for the family tree followed the sons. That is why
it is rare to have a passage like the one we are looking at
where a daughter plays the leading role on the stage of
history. She was not forced to play it either, but chose to
play it by her own will. It was a male dominated world, but
we see that the males who dominated Rebekah's life
respected her right to determine her own destiny. We read
in verse 57-8, "Then they said, let's call the girl and ask her
about it. So they called Rebekah and asked her, "will you

go with this man?" "I will go," she said."
She did not hesitate to make the choice of leaving her
family to go to a far land to be married to a total stranger. It
was an awesome decision, but she choose to go. She was the
female equivalent of Abraham leaving his family to go to
Canaan. Good parenting and good relationships of all kinds
demand that we respect the rights of people to have a say in
the direction they go. They should be consulted and given
the right, and not have their destiny determined by someone
else.
It is one of the hard parts of parenting to give guidance
with trying to impose your will on your child. A mother was
listening to her little daughter say her prayers one night.
She was really into blessing with God bless daddy and
mommy, grandma and grandpa, uncle Bill and aunt
Dorothy, and the mailman and Mickey mouse and, the
mother seeing no end to the list said "Amen." But the little
girl said, "Don't listen to her God. She doesn't know when I
am done."
It is hard to let children be children and have their own
feelings because they often do not fit our adult agenda. One
of the major problems in our culture is the refusal of parents
to let their children be children. The parents are captives of
the culture, and they feel the pressure to impose an adult life
style on their kids. Childhood is a non-productive period of
life, and so the goal is to get over it as quickly as possible.
Such is the thinking of many. It is a waste of time to be

children in their minds, but this is in direct contradiction to
the Bible.
John Drescher in What Parents Should Expect writes,
"Because we do not see childhood as a legitimate phase of
life itself, and because we as parents feel the need to find our
success in our children, we do many ridiculous things. At 3
months we buy toys parents like to play with. And electric
train is purchased and set by parents whose child still wants
to stack blocks. A tricycle stands riderless with the driver
still in diapers. We dress 5-year-olds in caps and gowns for
kindergarten graduation. A little fellow recently said, 'I
think it is bad I graduated because I can't even read.'" He
goes on giving numerous illustrations of how parents refuse
to let their children be children.
We live in a childhood denying culture. Animals do not
have much a childhood. There born and very quickly are on
their own. God made people different from the animal
kingdom. He made them to need a long period of childhood
before becoming adults. We don't like God's plan. The
animal kingdom is what we want, and so we deny that man
is different and go along with the evolution philosophy that
man is just another animal. And so we reject childhood as a
waste and want our children to become adults as quickly as
possible. This has led to children having breakdowns
increasing numbers, and at younger ages. The drive to be
grown up leads to inferiority feelings. This has become the
number one emotional problem of teens. Almost all of them
feel inferior because they cannot be mature adults, and so

they turn to alcohol, drugs, and suicide to escape a world
where they don't fit in.
Jesus said adults are to become like children, and we
have reversed that to say that children must become adults.
The result is a culture where families are breaking down at
record pace. You cannot contradict God's plan for life and
not pay a price. There needs to be more of verse 57 in family
life. It says, "Let's all the girl and ask her about it." Let
your children share their feelings and dreams. Let them
have choices about their destiny. Don't impose your dreams,
or those of your culture on them. Let them be who they are
as God has designed them.
Florence Nightingale changed the history of nursing in
hospitals, but few realized how her choice to do so was
fought by her family. She and her sisters were educated at
home by their father. As a teen she fell in love with the idea
of studying nursing. Her mother had other dreams for her.
She was pretty and witty, and she smart and talented. Her
mother did everything she could to frustrate her dream of
becoming a nurse. It was not a respectable profession in
those days. Her mother and sister actually felt it was
immoral to be a nurse, and her sister refused to talk about
the degrading topic.
Florence felt called of God to be a nurse, but her family's
resistance led her to depression so deep that she wanted to
take her own life. At age 30 she finally escaped the clutches
of her family and got some training with the deaconesses in

Munich, Germany. But when she came back home she was
sentenced to be her sister's slave for 6 months, and she was
forbidden to mention nursing. She was deeply depressed
again and realized she had to follow her own will regardless
of her family's wishes. She left home and went back to
Munich. She wrote to her mother pleading for her support,
but her mother would not respond. Her family resented her
and felt she had disgraced the family name. She was treated
like a criminal for becoming a nurse.
You can understand why Florence wrote in July of 1851,
"The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what
they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for-its
own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them
but as the something which it has arranged that they shall
be." Her family interfered and got her fired from her first
job at age 32, but she fought back and got reinstated. It was
not until she became famous that the family stopped fighting
her. It was too late then, however, and even though Florence
nursed her own mother the last 7 years of her life, they were
never close because she was a parent who never had the
wisdom to say, "Let's call the girl and ask her about it."
Let your daughters and your sons tell you how they feel.
Let them express their own dreams, for God could have put
in them, as he did in Florence, the ambition and ability that
you have no understanding of and not interest in, but which
are a part of His plan for their lives. The Bible is mainly
about men who leave their land and people to go into an
unfamiliar world to do the will of God, but here in Gen. 24

we have a daughter doing so. As history developed more
and more daughters have become called of God to make
such commitments. Today there are more women on the
mission field fulfilling the great commission than there are
men.
Rebekah's life reveals that commitment like hers can
change all of history, but it is not necessarily glamorous. We
take famous people like Florence Nightingale and pick out
the honors she received and the great events of parties with
the Queen, and we think such a life would be so glamorous.
But the fact is, she had a hard life, and it was full of
loneliness and sorrow with very little glamour. She saved
many thousands of lives by her influence and commitment,
but it was mostly just blood, sweat, and tears, and not a lot
of enjoying ambrosia-the nectar of the gods.
As we follow Rebekah back to Canaan to be the wife of
Isaac we see it was a commitment that changed history, but
there was not a lot of glamour. Isaac was a rather generic
sort of husband. He was not a very exciting personality. He
like to hunt and so he favored Esau the hunter. But she
favored Jacob, and so there was conflict in the family. She
sent Jacob back to her brother and never saw him again,
and Esau was a great disappointment to her, for he married
pagan girls. The point is, she played a major role in God's
plan, but her life was not full of the spectacular. There was
disappointment, boredom, loss, and just the typical life of
most wives and mothers. But she remained committed, and
that is why she was God's choice for this role.

She was given a choice and she remained committed to
that choice, and that is what God is looking for in daughters
and sons. Rebekah was pretty we are told, but she never
became famous for anything. She just had a family of two
boys and did her best to raise them. Nobody is clamoring to
get the movie rights to her life story. It was a rather
commonplace life she lived, but she had the key ingredient
that makes any daughter and asset to the kingdom of God,
for she had commitment. If you teach your child to be a
committed person, you will prepare them to be used of God.
Lack of commitment has always been a major weakness
in people. Adam and Eve were not committed to obey God's
will whatever the cost, and they lost paradise. Lack of
commitment has been the major problem of man ever since.
The bottom line cause of every problem every church faces is
the lack of commitment. If all believers were committed
people, there would be no problem in getting people to do
the work of the church, or to fund missions, or to achieve
any of the realistic goals that are aimed for.
A missionary society wrote to the famous David
Livingstone in Africa, "Have you found a good road to
where you are? If so, we want to send other men to join
you." Livingstone replied, "If you have men who will come
only if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I
want men who will come if there is no road at all." We are a
soft people. We have so many options of enjoyment that it is
painful to do anything that is hard and costly. Commitment
involves pain, and we just do not like the idea. There was

pain involved for Rebekah to leave her family and travel for
weeks over the desert to marry a stranger. It was hard, and
called for commitment.
An old Swedish hymn has this line, "There is nothing
that is not won by the love which suffers." This is so true of
God's love which gave His Son to die on the cross to achieve
the reconciliation of God and man. But it is true in every
realm of life. Commitment is love for anyone or any goal that
will be pursued, even if it means suffering. John Audubon
became the famous naturalist and the name to be ever
associated with bird lovers because he was committed to
learn about birds. He would go out at midnight and crouch
in the swamps just to learn more about the nighthawk. He
would stand in water that was stagnant up to his neck while
poisonous water moccasins swam past his face in order to get
a picture of a New Orleans water bird. He risked his life for
what seemed so trivial because he was committed to his goal.
Shun Fujimoto of Japan, in the 1976 summer Olympics,
broke his right knee in a floor exercise. He refused to give
up, and he competed in his strongest event, which was the
rings. His routine was excellent, and when he dismounted
with a triple summersault twist the pain shot through his
whole system like a knife. Tears ran down his cheeks, but
the tears were soon gone, for by his commitment he won the
gold medal.
The stories are endless of people who are so committed to
a goal that they will suffer greatly to achieve it. We need to

have goals that we know are God's will that we are pursuing
with diligence no matter what suffering may be involved. It
does not have to be a commitment to be great or famous.
God does not put that kind of pressure on us like parents
often do. He just wants us to be like Rebekah, and be
committed to what He has called us to be. She was called to
be a wife and mother, and that is a worthy calling. Today
daughters are called to be just about everything that sons
are called to be. We need to encourage them to follow their
dreams and be committed to do all that they do for the glory
of God.
The thing that impresses me about God's call to people in
the Bible is that all He really asks for is commitment. He
does not ask them to be great. He does not ask them to do
spectacular things. He just asks them to go where He wants
them to go and be committed to the goal. Abraham was not
told he had to go to Canaan and be a hero of any kind, or
become famous in the land. He was just called to go there,
and that is what he did. Rebekah was just asked to go to
Canaan and be a wife, and she went and was committed to
it. She did not have to become great or famous. All she had
to do is be what she was called to be-a wife and mother. God
does not put pressure on His children to be something they
are not called to be, or gifted to be. He just wants us to be
the best of what we are called to be, and that is what
Rebekah was as a dedicated daughter.

4. JOSEPH-DREAMS CAN COME TRUE Based on
Gen. 37:2-20
Vanna White, the glamorous star who shows the letters
on Wheel of Fortune, was a leader in her church youth
group in North Myrtle Beach, North Carolina. Her pastor
wrote about how he asked her, when she was a senior, what
she was going to do after graduation. She responded that
her dream was to become a model, and so she was going to
modeling school in Atlanta.
This is how the pastor reacted: "Vanna, no!" I said.
"Don't do that! Those schools will do nothing but take your
money. Nobody ever gets a job at one of those places. You
have brains! Ability! You could be more than a model!"
She thanked me politely and said, "But I have this dream
of going to Hollywood and becoming an actress." "From
North Myrtle Beach?" I asked. "Vanna, that only happens
in movies. This is crazy!" He goes on to say he is not
surprised that her autobiography does not mention his
ministerial influence. He points out that Vanna makes more
in one week than he makes in a whole year of giving good
advice to aspiring teenagers. His point in telling this story is
to call attention to the fact that it is not wise to try and
interfere with other people's dreams.
A dream can be an escape from reality, but it can also be
an alternative to a present inadequate reality. A dream can
provide an ideal toward which we strive and thereby change

reality for the better. In his book, Finding The Goal Posts,
Lawrence Howe tells of such a dream in the life of Cecil
Rhodes. He was 22 years old when he conceived the idea of
an international scholarship fund. A plan that would bring
the keenest minds from around the world to study together,
and grow in their appreciation of the culture and learning of
other lands. Such a project would, of course, take millions of
dollars, but with no money and a dream, Cecil Rhodes made
out his will bequeathing millions of dollars to this noble
cause. Then he signed his name to his dream and went out
into the world to back it up.
He struggled against adversity; sometimes succeeding;
sometimes failing, but before long he came into possession of
the great Kimberly Diamond Mines in South Africa, and he
became world famous for his fabulous wealth. He was
comparatively young yet when her fell prey to tuberculosis
and he knew the end was near. He called for his will to have
it read. He did not need to add anything to it except a
paragraph of instructions to his lawyers advising them how
to make his wealth available to fulfill his dream. He did not
even need to sign it, for he had done that years before. As
Howe said, "He literally signed his name beneath his ideals.
He built great castles in the air, and then went out by hard
work to put foundations beneath them..." Here was a
dreamer who built his castle from the top down.
His dream was not an escape from the real, but an ideal
he sought to make a part of the real. This kind of dream
ought to be standard equipment in the mind of every

Christian, young and old alike. As Christians we are bound
to be realistic, but we are not bound by reality, for our ideals
are always to be far superior to the reality of what is, and
they are to drive us on to change the real till it conforms to
the ideal.
In an article titled "Dreams: Pathway to Potential," Kent
Hutcheson writes:
“A person who has dreams is filled with
expectation, and no obstacle seems insurmountable.
He had a positive attitude, is excited and is never bored.”
This means that dreams are practically the same thing as
faith. Listen to Heb.11:1, "What is faith? It is the confident
assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the
certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us...." Faith
and dreams are one. It is a weak faith indeed that has no
dreams of being more of what God wants you to be in the
days ahead. Someone printed on a piece of stationary, "The
poorest of all men is not the man without a cent but the man
without a dream."
In the Congressional Library over one of the entrances
leading to the archives are these words: "They build to low
who build beneath the stars." Thank God we have ideal that
soars far beyond the furthest star into the very presence of
God where Jesus sits at His right hand. There is our ideal,
and our dream, if it is divine, is to be conformed to His image.
This morning I want you to consider with me a dreamer in

the Old Testament whose life conformed to that of Christ in
many ways. Joseph is one of the most widely known and loved
characters of the Bible. He is one of the few great heroes of
the Bible whose life is not blotted by a fall. Like Jesus, he was
tempted, but remained faithful. Like Jesus, his own received
him not, and he was unjustly persecuted, but like Jesus, he
forgave and became the savior of the very ones who hated
him. We want to consider his life from the point of view of
the three results that can come into the life of the dreamer.
I. DREAMS CAN CAUSE TENSION.
Have you ever wondered as you watch your children fight
like animals, what good can possibly ever come of them?
Jacob must have wondered this often as he watched his 12
boys growing up. There would be tension enough without
creating special sore points as Jacob did. He showed such a
special favoritism to Joseph that he made the other boys
jealous to the point of hating him. Joseph was the child of his
first love Rachel, and he was born to him when he was 91
years old. Jacob made no attempt to hide the fact that Joseph
was special. He broadcast it by making him a long robe of
many colors. This was the garment of an overseer-one who is
superior.
It was perfectly natural that Joseph was not popular with
his brothers. This was not his fault, but it was the fault of
Jacob showing favoritism. I read of a father who heard a
knock on his bedroom door and he said, "Is that you pet?"
"No it isn't pet, its only me." replied a little voice

quivering with sorrow. The father's eyes were opened and
that was the end of pet in that family. Jacob did not see his
error, however, and so tension remained in his family.
Then came the straw that broke the camels back. Joseph
had a dream that only added fuel to the flame of hate already
raging in his brothers hearts. He had a dream, and he shared
it, that all his brother and even his mother and father would
bow before him. It was a God given dream, of course, but the
family just considered him an arrogant brat. Even his father
rebuked him for such a dream.
A somewhat similar relationship existed between Isaac
Watts, the great hymn writer and his father. As a boy Watts
had such a talent for poetry that he made his general
conversation rhyme. His father tried to discourage it and one
day he became so exasperated by Isaac's constant rhyme, he
threatened to punish him in a very un-poetic manner if he
did it again. Being so much a part of him, he unconsciously
did it again and his father picked up the rod. Isaac fell to his
knees and pleaded-dear
father on me mercy take,
and I will no more verses make.
His father was disarmed and recognized his son was born
to be a poet. He recognized his sons dream was God given,
and so the tension was eased. But this was not the case with
Joseph's family. Things went from bad to worse and so we
see, not only can dreams cause tension, but-

II. DREAMS CAN COST TRIAL.
Jacob sent Joseph to see if all was well with his brothers.
When they saw him coming they plotted to get rid of this
arrogant dreamer. They said we will kill him and then see
what becomes of his dreams.
The majority can never tolerate the dreams of the one who
seems inferior to them. The man who dares to be different
and put his dreams into practice must be prepared to face
trials. When George Stephenson planned to draw a train of
cars by steam at the rate of 14 miles per hour, he was
regarded as a fit candidate for the madhouse, but he had a
dream and he went for it. When Fulton proposed to use steam
to navigate the Hudson river, men of science ridiculed him
and called it the silliest idea to ever enter a silly mind. Most
scientific dreamers face the same
criticism, but without these dreamers their is no progress.
In the realm of social reform nothing would change
without dreamers. Why do we have a Martin Luther King Jr.
holiday? It is because he was a man who said, "I have a
dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true
meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal." The dream cost him his life,
but it was a dream that changed our nation more than most
of us can imagine.
When William Carey shared his great dream of bringing
the Gospel to India, he was criticized by theologians and

politicians. His plan was publicly denounced in the House of
Commons as the "mission of a lunatic." Even after his dream
began to become reality, Christians expected the wrath of
God to fall on him for this interference with God's business.
Sidney Smith, a brilliant man of his day called the early
missionaries, "a little detachment of maniacs." Today we
know Carey as the Father of Modern Missions, and one of the
great heroes of Christian history. But he
had to pay a price to fulfill his God-given dream. Dreams are
not free if you are determined to follow them.
“The man is called a fool or knave,
Or bigot plotting crime,
Who for the advancement of his race
Is wiser than his time.
For him the hemlock shall distil.
For him the ax be bared,
For him the scaffold shall be built,
For him the stake prepared.
Him shall the scorn and wrath of men
Persue with deadly aim,
And malice, envy, spite and lies
Shall desecrate his name.”
Author Unknown
Joseph's dream cost him 13 years of trial. He was 17 when
his brothers sold him into slavery and he was 30 before his
dream was fulfilled. During those 17 years his faith in his
dream was tried to the utmost by the pit, Potipher's wife, and
prison. Yet in perseverance, patience and purity he held fast

to his dream and God honored him. We tend to think it is
harder to stand for our ideals in our day, but nobody ever
faced greater odds against him than Joseph. He stood alone
with the majority always against him. It always seems to be
that way for dreamers.
Luther came to the point where he stood before his
superiors and had to choose for safety and conformity, or for
his God given convictions. He did not have an army behind
him. He stood alone and his decision changed the course of
history. He said, "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help
me."
“The fighting heart may some day win.
The quitter never can.
There's many a battle turns
Upon the spirit of a man.”
No young person has ever faced more pressure to be
immoral than Joseph. Potipher's wife tried to seduce him.
You can talk about all the pressure of modern times to entice
you to forsake your Christian convictions, but they could
never be harder to overcome than what faced Joseph. It was
go to bed with her or go to prison. He refused to dash his
dream to pieces with the hammer of lust and chose prison.
That is an awful price to pay for holding to a dream, but he
paid it.
In prison he got along well, but thanks to a forgetful and
ungrateful butler, whose dream he interpreted, he had to

remain in prison for 2 extra years. It was all so unjust and
unfair, and he could have easily said phooey on the dream,
but the fact is that is what was enabling him to hang in there.
In all his trials we do not hear him complaining and rebelling
and doubting. How could he do it? The answer is in the poem
of Edgar Allen Poe,
“That holy dream-that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam,
A lonely spirit guiding.”
It was a lonely road to travel, but Joseph traveled
unyieldingly faithful to his dream and the God who inspired
it. We have seen that dreams can cause tension and that
dreams can cost trial, but the good news is our final point,
III. DREAMS CAN COME TRUE.
The brothers said, let us cast him into the pit and we will
see what will become of his dreams- and they did, for they
saw the dream come true. Joseph never wavered through all
his trials and even when the real was in utter contrast to the
ideal he remained faithful until he finally came to be the
prime minister of Egypt with the power of life and death. He
used that power to save his family and thereby prepare the
way for the great plan of God for the children of Israel.
It is marvelous to see Joseph's attitude when he was in
power. What character he had. He was faithful in prosperity

as well as in adversity. He never forsook his ideals. No
wonder the story of Joseph is one of the most popular in the
world. God entrusted His great plan in history to a 17 year
old shepherd boy. God could not have given a more clear
demonstration of His faith in teenagers. Give God a teenager
who wants to build above the stars; a teenager who dreams of
a life in God's will; a teenager whose ambition is to be like
Christ and to be guided by Christ, and I'll show you a
teenager that God is willing to use to change the course of
history. God wants teenagers, and pre-teenagers, and post-teenagers
who dream inspired dreams, and who live their
lives according.
Anyone can sit down and list reasons why a thing cannot
be done, but the dedicated dreamer will go ahead and do it.
The task of the church in winning the world is humanly
impossible. But God calls us to dream gloriously and then
live for the glory of that dream.
Are you laid low by dilemmas,
Or are you lifted by dreams?
Dream your own dreams. Don't try to fit your life into
somebody else's dream. The glass slipper would fit only
Cinderella because that was her dream and nobody else's.
Everybody wants to be somebody, but too often they want to
be somebody else. Do not dream of being somebody else, but
dream of what God can do through you, for you have the
same capacity to dream as anyone else. Why do you think
Lincoln was president when our nation went through the

Civil War? It was because Lincoln had a dream of a country
where all the people were free. He never gave up that dream
even though he had to endure great opposition. He was
willing to pay the price for his dream, and God saw to it that
the slipper of victory fit his foot, and he became the man who
set the slaves free, and saw his dream come true. God uses
dreamers of every age. Edwin Markham wrote,
“Ah, great it is to believe the dream,
As we stand in youth by the starry stream;
But a greater thing is to fight life through,
And say at the end, the dream is true.”
Victor Frankl has become one of the great authors and
speakers of the 20 th century. He survived Hitler's
concentration camp, and he tells us why. "Others gave up
hope. I dreamed. I dreamed that someday I would be here,
telling you how I...survived the Nazi concentration
camps.......in my dreams I have stood before you and said
these words a thousand times." His dreams kept him going
when the non-dreamers died in despair.
Dreams will never come true if we go on sleeping. Paul
says in Rom. 13:11, now it is high time to awaken out of sleep.
We must wake up and get into action to make our dreams
come true. It may take days, months, even years, but if we
have a dream that is consistent with God's will, we will see
some, much or all of it come true, and any part of a dream
coming true is far better than having no dream to aim for and
achieve. Someone wrote,

“Hold fast your dream within your heart,
Whatever might befall;
Let others laugh, if laugh they will,
But keep your dream through all.”
Jammie Buchingham tells of a young woman he visited in
prison. She had been a part of the Charles Manson gang, and
had been convicted on 7 counts of murder. She was sentenced
to die in the California gas chamber, but just before she was
executed her sentence was changed to life in prison.
Somebody sent her a Bible in the mail, and she just tossed it
to one side and never looked at it once. Unknown to her there
were people who had the audacity to dream that such an
awful person as her could become a child of God. They
prayed and sent her letters telling her
of God's love. She finally picked up the dusty Bible and
began to read. She had only known hate all her life. When
she read the life of Jesus, and saw His love for and tenderness
toward the fallen, she realized that is what she had dreamed
of all her life-to be loved and accepted.
The Bible told her she could be forgiven and accepted if
she opened her heart to Jesus. She slipped off of her cot in
that lonely cell and asked Jesus to come into her life and be
her Savior. Susan Atkins is still in prison, but she is a free
woman in Christ. She has led a number of other women to
Christ in the prison, and God has made her greatest dream
come true, for she is loved and she is loving-the two greatest
dreams anybody can have. It looked as if her life would end
as a nightmare, but the Gospel made her dare to dream again,

and she discovered what God wants all people to discover; if
we will dream the dreams God dreams for us, we will see our
dreams come true.
We have just started a new year, a new century, a new
millennium and the one thing we know will be true of the
future is that God will use dreamers to make a difference in
time and eternity. Tony Compolo said, "Without personal
dreams about the future, we are all dead." One of his goals in
life is helping people dream bigger dreams. The future for us
as a church will depend upon its dreamers, and it is never too
late to start dreaming. What can you do for this church?
What can you do for this community? What can you do for
your family, friends and neighbors? What can you do for
yourself? What can you do for the kingdom of God? What is
your Dream?
5. JACOB AND JOSEPH Based on Gen. 42:1-20
If the strong-willed child is the greatest challenge for
parents, the strong-willed adult is the greatest challenge for
God. The greatest obstacle to God's will being done on earth
as it is in heaven is the strong stubborn self-will of man. All of
the judgments of God through the Bible and through history
are due to man's stubborn will. Over and over the story is
repeated of Jesus in sorrow saying, "I would but you would
not."

Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let God's people go, and
the result was that Egypt suffered great judgement. Then the
people of God stubbornly refused to take the land God
provided for them, and they were condemned to wonder in
the wilderness until all the stubborn people died. One of the
Proverbs most often illustrated in the Bible and history is
Proverbs 29:1. "A man who remains stiff-necked after many
rebukes will suddenly be destroyed without remedy."
The stubbornness of men is the primary cause of the
judgment of war. Stubborn dictators have forced us into
many costly wars, but Christians have their share of guilt as
well. DeWitt Talmage, one of the great preachers in
American history during the Civil War, tells of how Christian
leaders came up with a plan to avoid that tragic war. The
plan was for the North to pay for the slaves and set them free.
This way the South would not suffer the economic loss and
slavery could be ended without great instability in the
economy. The leaders of the North laughed and said they
would not pay, and the leaders of the South said they would
not sell. The result of their stubborn refusal to except this
Christian compromise was the worst war in our history. The
North ended up paying not only all it would have taken to
buy the slaves, but it paid in the blood of half a million of its
men. The South paid even more in blood and money, and the
end result was far greater instability. Everybody lost because
of stubbornness, and many of these leaders were Christians.
There are wars that are necessary, but this worst one was
total folly due to the stubborn refusal of men to listen to

Christian advisers. Their plan could have prevented it all,
and made both sides winners without a war. In our text we
are focusing on one of the most stubborn men in the Bible,
but one whom God used greatly. He illustrates that godly
people can still be obstacles to the will of God. Good and
godly people are often part of the problem. It is good to see
this so we do not pretend that it could not be us who are
hindering the will of God. We have the biographical accounts
in the Bible to challenge us to look at ourselves in the light of
their lives, and learn to avoid their mistakes. Jacob's life is
loaded with lessons, for he made so many mistakes.
Jacob had lost his favorite son Joseph and thought he was
dead. This loss had an impact on his emotions, and it was still
affecting him 21 years later. It made him over protective of
his younger young Benjamin. He is not little Benji any more.
He is a grown man with a good size family of his own, but he
is the only son left which was born to him by his first love
Rachel. Jacob will not let Benjamin out of his sight. He sent
his other 10 sons off to Egypt to face the dangers of thieves,
war, and the unknown, but not his baby Benjamin.
The older boys have apparently adjusted to their father's
favoritism by now. They hated Joseph for being his favorite,
and they got rid of him by selling him into slavery. But there
is no hint that they had any hostility toward Benjamin. He is
still alive and well and being treated royally. Dad says that
the rest of you guys can go and risk being lost or killed, but
not my boy Benjamin. If you are a child of Rachel, you are
exempt from risk from this family.

As the story unfolds the brothers go to Egypt and
encounter their long lost brother Joseph, but they do not
recognize him. Joseph, however, knows them, but he does not
know what has happened over the last two decades. He does
not know if they have found a way to eliminate his brother
Benjamin as they did him, or if he really is safe at home.
Joseph has to find out if his brother is alive before he reveals
himself, and so he demands that they bring their youngest
brother to Egypt to prove they are not spies. Simeon is kept in
prison until they return with Benjamin.
When the boys get home and report this to Jacob he
builds his own private wailing wall. He laments that life is
rotten and everything is against him. The chapter ends with
Jacob saying in his stubborn determination, "My son will not
go down there with you. His brother is dead and he is the
only one left. I'll die in agony if anything happens to
Benjamin." Everyone knows it is inevitable that Benjamin
will have to go, for the whole family will die of starvation if he
doesn't. Jacob is trapped, but he will not give in. He is
obstinate old man and will resist reality as long as he possibly
can. With bulldog tenacity he holds on to his self-will saying,
"No way-never." Like Peter saying to Jesus, "You will never
wash my feet," in his pig-headed stubbornness he has no idea
that going to Egypt is the will of God for the salvation of his
whole family.
He is blind to all but his own agenda. He does not
consider the possibility of God providently controlling the
events of his life. This is the life of fear rather than the life of

faith. Faith says, "Who knows-maybe God is leading this
way for my good." Fear says, "I don't like it, and I'm not
going to cooperate with what seems inevitable." It is easy to
understand why Jacob's ten boys are not great men of faith
with the example he gave them. He created so much friction
for his family by his radical favoritism. He said that
Benjamin is the only one left. Ten boys stand there as his
sons, but Benjamin is all he has left. You can see why there is
no chapter on Jacob about how to win friends and influence
people. He didn't even have the courtesy to pretend that his
kids were all equally loved.
God loves them all, however, and has a plan by which all
the tribes of Israel can be saved from the famine. Jacob has
to be dragged kicking and screaming into this plan of God.
He hated it and resisted it. He, no doubt, prayed that God
would help him get his way. He did not know it, but his
prayer was saying, "Not thy will but mine be done." He
could not conceive that God's will was for him to cooperate
with this unknown authority down in Egypt, who was, in fact,
the so he so much loved and missed.
God is trying to save Jacob and his family, and Jacob is
trying to fight it every step of the way. In this case his
ignorance was not bliss, but the basis for his blindness. We
have to be somewhat sympathetic with Jacob. We can see the
whole picture of God's providence at work, but all he could
see is that he was losing control of his life and family. He is
being a stubborn neurotic, but he is doing it because he
cannot stand the pain of even thinking about losing his only

son left from his first love. We have to feel some of the pain
he is feeling and recognize it is understandable that he is
being so mulish on this issue. Most of us are in the same boat
when life does not go as we plan, and we feel forced to go a
way we don't want to go.
The problem is that we tend to see life from the
perspective of fear rather than faith. This is what makes the
difference between the pessimist and the optimist. The
pessimist says, "Look at all the things that can go wrong."
He lives in fear and tends to pull into his shell. He refuses to
stick his neck out and take a risk. This was Jacob, for he
feared to let Benjamin go to Egypt because there were two
many negative possibilities. He never dreamed of the positive
possibilities, but was guided by a pessimistic attitude toward
the future. The optimist knows life is risky too, but he refuses
to live in a shell. You have to give God a chance to use your
life for good and greater things, and so you take a chance and
walk into the unknown future in faith believing that He will
guide you.
Faith goes beyond what is seen and trusts in the unseen
hand of God working in history. Poor Jacob did not know it
was his son Joseph down in Egypt that was putting him
through such a dilemma. If he had known there would be no
need for faith. Someone said, "Faith is a willingness to trust
God when questions cannot be answered by the knowledge
that is available to us." Nobody in the family but Joseph
knew what was going on, and how God had made the
salvation of Jacob's family possible by the position God had

lead him to possess. Joseph did not need faith at this point,
for he had knowledge, but Jacob needed faith, and that is
where he was weak.
All of us live by fear or faith in everyday life. Which one
dominates us determines whether we are optimists or
pessimists. When we walk by faith we believe that even if
things are going wrong from our point of view God has a plan
for the future and we can press on in hope.
Faith is more than just a word,
It is a feeling, deep and true
That with every passing hour
Hope is born anew.
Faith means having courage
To know as days go by
That just as long as faith lives on,
Then hope can never die. Author Unknown
Faith is not believing a creed. Faith is trusting God and
believing that we don't have to fear the future just because it
looks so scary and so contrary to our own plan. We can go
with the flow of events and accept the inevitable that we can't
change or control, and believe that God is working in it for
our good. That is exactly what God was doing in Jacob's life,
but in fear he fought it and missed the joy and peace of
walking forward in faith.
What we need to learn from Jacob's loss of joy in his

journey with God is that even virtues can be vices when they
hinder our faith in God's providence. Jacob had a lot of
tough times in life. He had to leave home young and never see
his mother again because his brother Esau wanted to kill him.
He got ripped off by his uncle Laban who gave him Leah on
his wedding night rather than Rachel. He also robbed him of
his just wages. He had plenty of tension with the four
mothers of his 12 sons. There was jealously, envy, sibling
rivalry, and rivalry between Rachel and Leah. Joseph is
taken away and presumed dead. One by one his wives all die
before him, and by the time of our text he is a widower with a
large family of children and grandchildren.
It can actually be seen as a virtue that he wants to
preserve the special son of his special wife. He has had so
many problems in life, and so why not work like crazy to keep
one of the good things he had keep going for him? You can
call it selfish, but it seem like a justified selfishness. He at
least feels justified, and even feels noble that he is so
protective of his son Benjamin. It seems like a virtue to him,
and if we didn't know the will of God, it might seem like a
virtue to us as well. That is the problem with virtues-they can
be so extreme, or so persistent, that they become a hindrance
rather than a help to our walk with God.
I think of the testimony of the great American
mathematician Ernst Straus who worked with Einstein. One
day when they finished a document they had written together
they looked for a paper clip to hold the paper together. They
found one, but it was twisted, and so they then looked for a

tool to straighten it. In their search they found a whole box of
good paper clips. Einstein took a good one and began to use
it to straighten out the twisted one. When Straus pointed out
that it was no longer necessary to do this, Einstein replied
that once he set his mind to a certain goal nothing could
deflect him.
It is a noble attitude to press on to your goals, and this was
a virtue in Einstein, but when you press on even when the
goal is meaningless you have let a virtue become a handicap
and a nuisance. This is what Jacob did, and his love for
Benjamin became a hindrance to pressing on to experience
the joy of God's guidance in his life. From God's point of
view everything was going just right. Joseph was now in
position to save the whole family. All that had to be done now
was to get Jacob to stop being such a stubborn pessimist.
It only he had the faith of Paul who could say, "If God is
for me, who can be against me?" But instead he cries out in
verse 36, "Everything is against me." Jacob is the father of
the whole history of Jewish pessimism. Abraham Ibn Ezra in
the 17th century lamented,
My labor's vain,
No wealth I gain.
My fate since birth
Is gloom on earth.
If I sold shrouds
No one would die.
If I sold lamps,

Then in sky,
The sun for spite
Would shine by night.
This is the spirit that was gripping Jacob. Everything is
against me he is saying, when the fact is, everything was
working for his good. He is crying that his son Joseph is
dead, but the fact is, his son Joseph was the Prime Minister of
Egypt with the power to save his whole family. He is
lamenting that Simeon is gone, and in fact he is under the
protection of the most powerful man in Egypt, which
happened to be his brother. He fears Benjamin may be
harmed when the fact is, he is the key to all their happiness.
His sky was bright with stars of hope, but he saw none of
them, for he covered them all with a dark cloud of gloom
because he stubbornly refused to believe that life can be going
God's way even if it is not going the way that seemed best
from his perspective.
Jacob is one of the great Bible examples of how godly
people can live lives of non-faith. Jacob spent years of his life
and much of his emotional energy grieving and worrying
about things that never happened. Studies show that the vast
majority of things people worry about never happen. It is
wise to be cautious and not take unnecessary risks, but to fret
and worry and be an emotional cripple over potential dangers
is folly. Jacob lived on the negative side of life and wasted so
much of the joy of life. Everything turned out better than he
could have ever dreamed. He lived in peace and prosperity
with his entire family in the best part of Egypt. He had the

best of everything, and he died in luxury with the love of his
large family surrounding him. The same of it is, he wasted so
much of his God guided life because he refused to believe that
God was guiding.
Joseph lived in great contrast to Jacob. He never said,
"Woe is me, for everything is against me." No one had more
right to see life through pessimistic eyes, for he really had a lot
of awful things to endure. He was rejected by his own
brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused and unjustly sent
to prison. Yet, with all of these negative events, Joseph was a
man of faith who believed that God would guide and use his
life to make dreams come true.
Here is a father and son with two different ideas about
God. Jacob could only believe God was in his life when their
were good times. He had a sunshine concept of God. It is the
concept that God loves me because I never get sick, my car
always starts on the coldest mornings, and I can always find a
good parking place. This is a popular concept of God, but
the problem with it, in a fallen world where Murphy's Law is
as persistent as gravity, is that it leads to a lot of pessimism.
Where is your God when things do go wrong, and everything
seems to be against you? Jacob feels God forsaken,
pessimistic, and in despair.
In contrast, Joseph has an all season God. He is a God you
can trust even when life is not easy, but one trial after another
with no apparent meaningful purpose. Joseph does not have
a theology that says, if clouds darken your sunshine and life

gets hard, and you suffer injustice, then you are forsaken by
God. Joseph lives a faith life that says, God will work in
everything for good for those who love Him. When I can't
see it I trust Him and press on. Meanwhile I will do my best
to enjoy the detour and use my gifts to serve others.
Now keep in mind that both Jacob and Joseph are God's
men. The contrast here is not between the believer and the
unbeliever. It is between two different kinds of believers.
Christians tend to fall into these two categories. The Jacobs
who are fear conditioned and the Josephs who are faith
conditioned. The Jacobs are the pessimists and the Josephs
are the optimists. This duel perspective will never change
until we all become like Jesus. Some Christians will take the
low road and some the high road. The good news is that both
Jacob and Joseph fulfilled the will of God. God can and does
use even the pessimist to accomplish His purpose. But the
Jacobs cannot enjoy the journey of life as much as the
Josephs. They cannot in everything give thanks because they
do not believe God is at work even when it seems meaningless.
Since Jesus had the Joseph spirit, and we are to become
like Jesus, it follows that God's goal is for us to develop the
Joseph spirit and overcome the tendencies to be like Jacob.
Instead of, "Everything is against me," it should always be,
"If God is for me who can be against me?"
6. JOSEPH THE ACTOR Based on Gen. 42:1-22

The old joke is the question, who was the greatest actor in
the Bible? The answer is Samson, because he brought down
the house. The surprising thing is that there really are actors
in the Bible and Joseph is the first. He put on a performance
that would have won him an Academy Award. He portrayed
himself as a tough guy when his heart was so tender that he
was fighting back tears constantly. In verse 24 we see Joseph
overcome by his emotions, and he had to turn away and let
some tears flow to release the pressure. But then he turns
back and acts like a cruel tyrant by having his brother
Simeon thrown in the slammer.
Joseph not only has to fool his brothers by this act, he has
to fool his own emotions, for they are ready to explode in
compassion. He cannot let his identity be known until he
knows his brother Benjamin is alive and well. So he not only
has to deceive his brothers, but his own heart as well, which
longs to rip off the mask and embrace these ten brothers of
his. Joseph is wearing a mask and playing a role that is not
his real self, and that is what an actor does. It is interesting
that the first acting we see in the Bible takes place in Egypt.
Scholars who study the history of theatre tell us that the art of
drama was first developed in Egypt.
In the thousand page book A History Of The Theatre by
George Freedley and John Reeves, the first chapter is on
dramas for trade on the pyramids of Egypt going back to
3200 B. C. The priests were the first actors. It is interesting
to note that Joseph married Asenath the daughter of one of
these priests. Joseph, no doubt, saw the portrayal of the

many religious dramas of that time. He knew about acting,
for it was a part of his culture just as it is a part of ours.
Joseph is so convincing in this drama of the Stranger And
His Brothers that go back to Jacob thoroughly persuaded that
this harsh and ruthless taskmaster means business. They had
no intention of crossing him, and so Joseph was really quite
good as an amateur actor. Ordinarily the rulers of nations
brought in actors to entertain them, but here we have the
ruler himself putting on the show for his own benefit to
achieve a goal he could not achieve in any other way. It was a
controversial choice, and not all commentators are pleased
with his deception. John Calvin found the deception
offensive, and some Jewish scholars feel Joseph should have
avoided this whole scene by contacting Jacob and letting him
know that he was alive before this event even happened.
It is easy for modern men to try and second guess Joseph
and pretend they have a better plan. But let's face reality.
God had led Joseph to this point where he could be the savior
of his people. The plan of God is working perfect, and what
Joseph does accomplishes the goal. I agree with Robert
Candlish who says in his classic commentary on Genesis,
"...we must regard him as all along acting by inspiration."
This conclusion not only fits the context here with Joseph, but
a study of acting in the Bible confirms it. Acting is a
legitimate means of conveying truth, or for dealing with
situations where the truth needs to be hidden from those who
can use it for harm.

David was quite a dramatic actor, and it saved his life on
one occasion. David was afraid of the king of Gath, for he
could have easily had him killed. We read in I Sam. 21:13-15,
"So he feigned insanity in their presence; and while he was in
their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the
doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard." It
was so real that the king said to his servants, "Look at the
man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of
madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on
like this in front of me?" David's act got him out of that
mess, and they were glad to let him escape. Here was a
mini-comedy that David, no doubt, repeated around many a
fire for a good laugh. His acting career saved his life.
Acting also played a major role in moving David to
actions that others wanted him to take. Nathan the prophet
came to him putting on an act about a rich man who stole a
poor man's only lamb. This made David very angry, and then
Nathan let him know that the story was really about him with
his 8 wives taking the one wife of Uriah. David saw that he
was the man that made him so angry, and he repented.
Acting moved him to repent when nothing else could. Sure it
was a trick and a form of deception, but it was God's prophet
who did it for the good of David, for he had to be moved to
repent in order to be forgiven. Acting saved him again.
Acting also saved his son Absolom from his own anger.
In II Sam. 14 we have the account of the greatest actress
in the Bible. She is not named, but just called the woman of
Tekoa. She was instructed to pretend to be a widow in

mourning, and to dress in mourning clothes and not wear any
makeup. She was to go to David with a sob story about her
two sons getting into a fight and one killing the other, and
leaving her with only one son. Her surviving son was going to
be killed for his crime, which would leave her destitute with
no family left in the world. David is moved by the
performance, and he issues an order that her son was not to
be touched.
She then takes off her mask and asks David why he is not
being as compassionate to his own son whom he has banished.
David saw the point, and he issued an order allowing
Absolom his son to come back and live in Jerusalem. The
point is, acting and pretending to be someone but who you
really are was a powerful force in moving people in the
ancient world, and it still is today.
Jesus even used this tool of acting to accomplish His
purpose. On the road to Emmaus after His resurrection He
met and walked with two of His disciples. He did not reveal
who He was but acted like a stranger. He acted like He did
not know what had happened and why they were so sad.
They explained the whole story of the crucifixion and the
women's experience at the tomb that morning. Jesus then
gave them a lesson on Old Testament prophecy, and then it
says in Luke 24:28, "Jesus acted as if He was going further..."
It was only pretense, for he wanted to stay with them. They
urged Him to come into their home and He did. It was there
that their eyes were opened in the breaking of the bread.
Jesus pretended to be somebody else. He had on a mask an

played the role of a stranger before those who knew Him well.
Jesus was sinless, and so it follows that acting is no sin, for
Jesus did it, and the church picked up on the power of acting
to convey truth.
When Rome fell the theater was lost for centuries. But it
was the church that revived it. It all started with reenacting
the great events of Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter.
For hundreds of years all drama was in the church with
actors and elaborate costumes. The church was to the Middle
Ages what TV is to us today. It was the place of
entertainment, but it was also for the purpose of teaching
religious truth. The oldest and most numerous of plays that
exist are of the 3 Mary's going to the tomb on Easter. Over
400 have been discovered. By 1536 there were elaborate plays
like the Acts Of The Apostles with 300 actors playing 494
roles. Today there are passion plays all over the world, and
Christian plays by the thousands. The greatest story ever told
is told again and again through the medium of drama.
One of the greatest examples of a Christian play is Joan
Winmill Brown's Corrie The Lives She Touched. Corrie Ten
Boom had some elaborate deceptions by which to save Jewish
babies. When she got the message that the orphanage in
Amsterdam was going to be raided and the babies killed, she
contacted 30 teenage boys in the underground and asked for
their help. They had German uniforms from soldiers who
had defected. These young men put on the uniforms and
drove up to the orphanage in trucks and demanded that the
babies be turned over to them. The orphanage workers

believed they were authentic and wept as they handed over
their Jewish babies. They had no idea that what seemed like
tragedy was really the salvation of those babies. They were
put in many homes and their lives were spared all by means of
good costumes and good acting.
I do not know if Jesus meant, when He said we must be
like children, that He was saying we must learn to live in a
fantasy world of imagination, and learn to pretend more.
There is, however, no escape from the facts of the Bible and
history. God has used pretending or acting in some
marvelous ways. Let's not be superficial, however, and
assume because acting can be a legitimate tool of God that it
is free of all danger. That is not the case. Acting is equally a
tool of the devil, and a lot of harm has been done by acting
and pretending.
The drama from hell began in the garden when Satan put
on the serpent outfit and pretended to be a friend of Eve. He
deceived her into disobeying God. He tried the same trick in
tempting Jesus. He acted like a friend who was helping him
to get the fame and power he rightly deserved. Jesus saw
behind the mask, however, and was not deceived by this
clever actor. Jesus had to be on His guard constantly against
actors out to deceive Him. In Luke 20:20 we read, "Keeping
a close watch on Him they sent spies, who pretended to be
honest. They hoped to catch Jesus in something He said that
they might hand Him over to the power and authority of the
governor." People pretending to understand Jesus were
always asking Him which seemed sincere questions, but they

were hypocrites really seeking to trap Him in some violation
of the law.
We could study the word hypocrite, for it means to be an
actor, and this is why we tend to have a negative view of the
actors, because they use deception. We think it is all one
sided and evil, but the point of this message on Joseph's
acting and other actors of the Bible, including our Lord, is to
point out that there is also a good and positive side to it. Just
because Satan corrupts everything and uses it for evil does
not mean the Christian has to give it up. It is to be used for
good, and for doing God's will, and that is why drama is so
popular in the church again today.
There is a danger of us rejecting it because it seems like
conformity to the world. The world is fanatical about drama
and acting. The heroes of our culture are actors, and there is
a movie madness in our land. To go along with this and add
plays to the church seems like just going along with the
crowd. There is a real risk that this will happen and so we
need wisdom. But we cannot escape the facts. Acting can be
used for good as well as evil.
Look again at the story of Joseph. The very Hebrew
word for Joseph's pretense, which is NAKAR is the word
used in Gen. 37 when these ten brothers now before him came
home to their father Jacob with the bloody coat of Joseph.
They were pretending that he had been killed by a wild beast.
They put on a play of great sorrow at such a tragedy. Poor
Jacob was fooled by it. Jacob had a whole family of hams,

and that is bad news for a Jewish father. But these same ten
actors are now being deceived by Joseph the very way they
deceived Jacob. They are getting a taste of their own
medicine.
We need to see that the very tools that are used for doing
evil need to be redeemed and used for good. The deceivers
need to be deceived and brought to a point of repentance, and
this is what Joseph is doing by his acting. I would not be
surprised that Satan, the great deceiver, was being deceived
himself by the crucifixion. Satan had to think that he was
succeeding by getting Judas to betray Jesus, and by getting
the leaders of the Jews to crucify Him. It looked like he was a
clear winner, but he was deceived, for by entering death Jesus
was able to release the captives of Satan, and destroy his
greatest weapon over man. Jesus did to Satan what Satan did
to Adam and Eve. He led him to believe that he was gaining a
total victory when in reality the cross meant his total defeat.
This is what is going on in this story of Joseph. He is now
in a position to reverse the awful story of their evil. He can
turn this whole account into a comedy with a happy ending,
but he needed to use his gift of acting to make it happen. Just
as the devil should not have all the best songs, so he should
not have all the best actors. Evil needs to be fought with its
own best weapons. Many plays downgrade the Christian
faith, and it is only right that Christians write quality plays
that exalt the Christian faith.
Joseph could put on his act with no rehearsal because he

spoke to these brothers in the language of the Egyptians.
They could not tell if he should the wrong emotion and under
the stress of the situation forget his lines. Verse 23 tells us
that Joseph spoke through an interpreter. The brothers
assumed he could not understand their language, and so they
talked in his presence not knowing that he could understand
them perfectly. He had them at a real disadvantage. He
knew all that was being said, and they were in the dark about
who he was and what he was up to. This made it easy to
deceive them, but on the other hand, it made it so hard for
Joseph to control his emotions.
When he heard his oldest brother Reuben tell the others
that they were now paying for their sin against their brother
Joseph, he was so deeply moved that he had to turn away and
weep. He had not known through all these years that his
oldest brother had loved him and tried to save him. Hearing
that brought a lump to his throat and tears to his eyes.
Joseph was a very emotional man. He cried more than most
men, and he was not acting when he wept. It took enormous
energy to play his tough guy role because of his emotions. It
was a difficult battle to keep the act going and not blow his
cover.
In 43:30-31 we see two decades of suppressed emotions
held back even though they are pushing with flood force
against his heart. The ten have returned to Egypt with
Benjamin, and we read, "Deeply moved at the sight of his
brother, Joseph hurried out and looked for a place to weep.
He went into his private room and wept there. After he had

washed his face, he came out and, controlling himself, said,
serve the food." He has temporary control, but as the play
goes on Judah gives a moving speech about the love of Jacob
for Benjamin, and the fact that he will die if he is not brought
back.
This causes Joseph to lose it. He is a strong man, but he is
overwhelmed by the flood of emotion, and we read this in the
first two verses of chapter 45: "Then Joseph could no longer
control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out,
'Have everyone leave my presence!' So there was no one with
Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. And he
wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh's
household heard about it."
Then we read in verses 14 and 15, "Then he threw his
arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin
embraced him weeping, and he kissed all his brothers and
wept over them." The act was over, but not the tears. When
Joseph's old father Jacob was finally brought down to Egypt
it was flood time again, and in 46:29 we read, "As soon as
Jacob appeared before him, he threw his arms around his
father and wept for a long time." Two more times Joseph
wept, but I think we have seen enough tears to know that he
was one of the most emotional men of the Bible. Real men do
cry, for Joseph was a man's man, yet he wept frequently.
All of this has relevance to acting, for the emotions of
Joseph were a real handicap to him, but in spite of them he
was able to act his role out and accomplish his purpose.

There are fears in tears, and all sorts of emotions that have to
be overcome to be a good actor, but they can be controlled,
for we see it in the experience of Joseph. God's will was
served by his acting, and it continues to be served today by
those who portray the good news of Christ through acting.
7. MOSES MEETS GOD Based on Ex. 3:1-15
J. B. Phillips in his book Your God Is Too Small tells of how
he asked a group of young people to give a snap answer to the
question, "Do you think God understands radar?" They all
said no, and then they roared with laughter as they
considered how foolish their answer was. It showed that in
the back of their minds they thought of God as an old man
who lived in the past and was rather bewildered by modern
progress. Nothing is more pathetic than a mature person
with an immature concept of God. Such an adult is seldom a
dedicated Christian, or an active servant of God. More than
likely they reject God completely. They mature in all other
areas of life, but in their concept of God they remain childish.
To make things worse, they think the rest of us are
worshipping the God of their immature conception. They
think we are quite simple and unacquainted with the hard
facts of life.
These people have not rejected God, for they don't even
know Him. They have only rejected a god who doesn't exist
anyway except in their own mind. What these people need is

a true biblical concept of God. This is what we all need, for
our conception of God controls our attitudes and actions, and
it determines the measure of our devotion to Him and His
will. Is your God just a spare time God you call upon only in
emergencies? You answer that by your commitment to Him.
The person who gives his God only one hour a week of his life
has a very small God and not the God of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.
One cannot stand in the pulpit and hand over to you an
experience of the greatness of God any more than one can
measure the horizon with a ruler. This can only come when a
person says with Moses, "I will turn aside and see this great
sight." A man has to be willing to forsake his old concepts if
he would grow in the knowledge of God as He really is. When
Martin Niemoller was in Hitler's prison he had time to think,
and he turned his thought toward God. He had to give up his
old opinions about God. He wrote, "It took me a long time to
learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies. He is not
even the enemy of His enemies." He had to give up the God
He had created in his own image, and he came to see that God
is love.
Moses needed to grow in his knowledge of God as well.
God had prepared him to lead the children of Israel out of
Egypt. The first 40 years of his life he gained the best
education possible in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but this
knowledge was not enough for the task God had for him. He
needed some good practical experience, and so God in His
providence saw that he got it, and for the next 40 years he was

a shepherd in Midian where he learned the ways of desert life.
He learned about the plants and animals, and about water
sources and hardships. Now the second 40 year training
period was over, and all Moses needed now was to meet God,
and this he did at the burning bush, which is the Damascus
Road experience of the Old Testament. We want to look at
this experience and draw from it 3 things which God does
that enlarge our concept of Him.
I. HE DEMANDS REVERENCE. v. 4-5
You will notice that God appealed to the curiosity of
Moses. Some people feel that faith and curiosity are
contradictory, but this is not so. The impulse to inquire and
learn is essential to a growing faith. God says, "Come now let
us reason together," and all of nature is a stimulus to
investigation. Curiosity is what made Watts ask why the lid
on a boiling kettle bobbed up and down? His search for an
answer led to the first workable steam engine. Curiosity is
what made Sir Alexander Fleming investigate a mold, which
led to the discovery of penicillin. Curiosity is what led
Zaccheaus climb a tree to see Jesus, which led to his
conversion. It may have killed the cat but curiosity saved him
and many others.
God wants people to investigate, but we see that when
Moses came near He stopped him and tells him to take off his
shoes. This was a sign of reverence and God demands that.
If one is going gain from his search he must come in reverence
and humility, for neither God nor His creation will reveal its

secrets to the proud and irreverent. "Moses was led through
the gates of curiosity into the sanctuary of reverence. Those
who come to God or nature in pride to force the truth from
them are courting disaster. You can count on it that those
working with atomic energy are reverent before its power,
and they are not careless and proud as if they needed no
caution in its presence. To do so would be as foolish as for a
Jewish person of old to stumble into the holy of holies.
The great men of science such as Copernicus, Newton,
Kepler, and Edison have been men of reverence in their
inquiry. Edison said, "I sit down before the law. I try to find
out how the law operates. I try to bring my mind and
mechanisms into harmony with the way things are, and the
more I obey the law, the more the law obeys me and serves my
purpose." Success in science comes through obedience just as
success in the Christian life does. This is the only way to
know God and His will. You must adjust to reality and not
try to twist reality to your proud and preconceived notions.
A proud self-sufficient tourist went through one of
Europe's famous art galleries looking at many great
masterpieces. As he was leaving he said to the custodian, "I
don't see anything so great about these paintings." The
custodian replied, "Sir, these pictures are not on trial, those
who view them are." So it is with Scripture, God and His
Word are not on trial, but you are. You must come in
reverence seeking to know God if you expect to grow. The
poet wrote,

Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush aflame with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
II. HE PROMISES HIS PRESENCE. v. 11-12
Moses said, "Who am I?" Forty years before Moses felt
he could handle things and he killed an Egyptian, but now he
is more mature and humble. He wondered how a shepherd
like him could walk into the palace of Pharaoh and persuade
him to let hundreds of thousands of slaves go free. It can't be
done was his thinking, and he was right if he thought the
success of the plan depended on his eloquence and ability to
charm Pharaoh. Without the promise of God, "Certainly I
will be with you," Moses could not have succeeded. This is
the case with the Apostles as well. Without the promise of
Christ to be with them they could not have succeeded. Nor
can we, or anyone else, for we all need God's presence to be
successful. With His presence comes all the other promises.
If God wills it then it can be done. The poet has written,
Never say it can't be done,
It simply isn't true.
What you mean my son
Is it can be done,
But can't be done by you.
One of the greatest fallacies in the world is that one does
not count. All of history proves it to be a lie, and yet we

believe it. What can I do? Problems are to big for any one
person to make a difference, and so I ignore the problem and
become a part of the problem. It is true that you cannot do
anymore than Moses could on his own, but could we believe
and claim the promise of God to be present with us, then we
could say with Paul, "I can do all thing through Christ who
strengthens me." When David Livingston returned to
Scotland after 16 years in Africa where he suffered 27 attacks
of African fever, had one arm rendered useless by the bite of a
lion, lived among a people whose language he did not know,
and whose attitude toward him was often hostile, he said,
"Shall I tell you what supported me through all these years of
exile? It was this, 'Lo I am with you always, even unto the
end of the world.'"
There has never been a power that has been able to
conquer a people who live and believe in the presence of God.
When Julian the Apostate was Emperor of the Roman
Empire he did all he could to destroy churches and erect idols.
Libanus, one of his friends, asked a Christian one day, "What
is your Carpenter of Nazareth doing now?" The Christian
responded, "He is making a coffin." And soon Julian was in
it and all the idols were swept away. In his dying breath
Julian cried out, "O Galilean! Thou hast conquered!" The
early church believed that there has always been success
where there has been one or more persons who believe that
God is with them, and that through them God can accomplish
His will. Moses said, "Who am I?" But that is beside the
point said God. It is not who you are but who is behind you
and with you that counts.

III. HE REVEALS HIS ESSENCE v. 13-15
To try and define God is to confine Him. Our minds
cannot fully grasp His nature. This should not surprise us,
for we cannot fully understand anything. The Psalmist cried
out, "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou
understandeth my thought afar off." But when he reverses
the process and considers God he says, "Such knowledge is
too wonderful for me, it is high, I cannot attain unto it." This
does not mean we must join those who think of God as a
vague blur. We cannot find out by searching, but we can
know who God is if he speaks to us, and that he has done.
Paul constantly urges us to grow in the knowledge of God,
and we can only do so by searching His revelation. Someone
said, "We can never attain a maximum love of God with only
a minimum knowledge of God."
A virtuous godly man may be ignorant of many things,
but his ignorance is not one of his virtues, nor is it the cause
of his godliness. It would be strange if God could be loved
better by being known less. What I am saying is that theology
is not just for the theologian, but it is for all believers.
Imagine telling a man who is going to drive across a field and
over a hill that he better watch out for the tree just over the
hill, and he says, "Don't talk to me about trees. I'm a
motorist and not a botanist." This is carrying specialization
too far, for that tree is not only a fact of botany, but a fact of
life. Likewise, God is not just a fact of theology, but He is the
greatest fact of life.

The first and most basic fact that God reveals here to
Moses is that He is a Person and a God of persons. Those
who know God only as He is revealed in nature come to think
of Him as a power rather than a Person. They call Him the
first cause, the unmoved mover, the cosmic organism, or the
stream of tendency. It is easy to see how they arrive at this
conclusion, for power is what nature reveals. A prominent
physicist tells us that if we had to pay for the light bill from
the sun at one penny per kilowatt, one-hundredth millionth
part of a second would cost us more than World War II.
Thank God he doesn't charge for His power. The Bible tells
us that this power has its source in a Person, and it goes
further yet and even says He can be known as a Father.
God is not a power that is unconcerned for us, but He is
a Person whom we can know by faith in Jesus Christ. The
Christian attitude to the wonders of the universe is in the
words of the hymn, "This is my Father's world." All of
reality should take on new meaning to one who knows God.
A mother rushed up the stairs as a thunderstorm broke loose
thinking her little boy would be frantic with fear, but she
found him at the window with his eyes bright with
excitement. He was shouting loudly with every clap of
thunder, "Bang it again God! Band it again!" He had no
fear of the power because he knew the Person behind the
power.
The second thing God reveals about Himself is that He is
the Eternal Present One. God never began, but always is. If
He began then whatever caused His beginning would be

greater than God. When the skeptic asks when did God
begin, he is contradicting himself and does not realize it
because of his false concept of God. He is asking when did
that which had no beginning begin? God by very definition is
without beginning. How far down is a bottomless pit?
Bottomless by very definition eliminates the possibility of
giving any meaning to the question how far down? How long
is eternity? This is asking when does that end which by
definition has no end. If you ask where was God before
creation, you are asking where was God when there wasn't
anywhere, and where was God when there wasn't any when.
You might say that you don't get it, and you are not alone, for
eternity is just not part of our experience. About all we can
say about it is that it is not time, and we cannot think a part
from time.
Eternity is ever present, but in contrast time is never
present. You might say that it is right now, but that is not so
for even in saying the word now you see the constant flow of
time. By the time you say the w the end is already past, and
when you finish the word the time you referred to is already
gone. The present is so short, and so all of life is either in the
past or the future, whereas in eternity all is present. The
present is just the hole in the needle through which the thread
of time passes for us, but for God it is where He dwells
beyond any of the limitations of time.
What God says to Moses implies many things about the
nature of God. The important thing is that we begin to see
that the God of Scripture is greater than any concept that

man has. The gods that many atheists reject are puny
concepts that have nothing to do with the God of Scripture.
We do not believe in the gods most people reject either. They
are often the product of man's imagination and not God's
revelation. On the other hand, we do not believe in the many
gods that others create in their own image. The god of the
alcoholic is liquor and they are deeply devoted to their god.
They love neither father nor mother more than it, and they
will go to any length for it. There are many such gods that
people are devoted to, but they are not the God revealed in
Scripture through Jesus. He alone is worthy of our worship
and devotion.
God taught Moses that He demands reverence, promises
His presence and reveals His essence to those who seek Him
and obey Him. Your God is not big enough if He is not this
God who revealed Himself to Moses and more completely
through His Son Jesus Christ.
8. RAHAB THE HARLOT Based on Josh. 2:1-21
Women do not have fight to play a major role in war. The
gentle schemes of women are often able to do what bombs and
bullets cannot do. Mary Murray is a great example from the
Revolutionary War. George Washington and two of his
generals had escaped from the British in New York, but
General Putnam was still evacuating lower Manhatten. What

they did not know was that they were marching right into the
path of the British General Howe, who had just come to the
colonies with 8,000 fresh troops. It would have been a terrible
defeat for the colonies.
Mary Murray, the wife of a wealthy New York merchant,
learned of this impending disaster, and she went into action.
She invited the British General to stop for a cooling drink in
the spacious parlor of her mansion. This pulled him off the
road, and she sent one of her servants upstairs to watch the
cloud of dust so they could know when the American troops
had passed by. Fortunately, it was a hot day that September
15, 1776. General Howe accepted the invitation, and when he
prepared to leave she insisted he stay for a mid-day lunch.
General Howe hesitated because his men had to stand in the
hot sun. She solved that by having tables set out in back
under trees. The whole British army was kept cool and
entertained until the Americans were safely past.
The British never knew that a great victory slipped
through their hands because of a kind hospitality of a woman.
On Park Ave. of New York City there is a tablet honoring
Mary Murray for her heroic hospitality that made it possible
for the American army to escape. She helped win the
Revolutionary War with the weapon of kindness. It is a very
effective weapon, and we want to focus on a biblical woman
who became one of the most famous women in history
because she was kind to the Israelite spies, and helped them
escape from what appeared to be a hopeless situation.

This one act of kindness led Rahab to become a part of
Israel's history, and to even become a link in the chain that
led to the Messiah. She is part of the genealogy of Jesus
Christ. She is referred to by James as a great example of the
power of works, and in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, she
is one of the two women named in that great faith chapter as
a great example of faith. In spite of all her fame, and all the
coverage she gets in God's Word, her name never became a
popular name, which is usually the case with women who do
good and great things in the Bible. The reason for her name
never becoming widely used is due to the first aspect of her
life that we want to consider.
I. HER PAST PROFESSION.
Rahab was a harlot, or better known in our culture as a
prostitute. Here is a paradox, for she was a heathen harlot
who became a messianic mother, her name never escaped the
taint of her past, even though she did fully escape that past,
and will be singing in eternity the song of the redeemed. The
study of Rahab forces us to look at the subject of prostitution,
for this profession is always linked with her name except for
one time in the genealogy of Matt. 1. Even when she is held
up as a great example of faith and works she is called Rahab
the harlot.
The question that comes to our minds is why? Why is
prostitution so persistently prevalent all through history? It
is known as the oldest profession, and it is a profession that
has played a major role in history. You cannot study the role

of women in history, and not study this aspect of it. The Bible
recognizes it as a major subject. Harlot is used 40 times in the
Old Testament, and 8 times in the New Testament. Whore,
whoredom, and whoring, are used 83 times in the Old
Testament and 9 times in the New Testament. These
represent just a partial list of the biblical material on
prostitution, but they represent 140 verses of God's Word on
this issue. There is more on prostitution in the Bible than on
many other subjects, and it is because God knows the heart of
man better than we do.
Prostitution is, and always has been, a major economic
issue. Women have turned to it all through history for
survival. Men have always been tempted to cash in on the
willingness of other men to pay for sex. God knew the Jews
would be no different, and so He warns in Lev. 19:29, "Do not
degrade your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the
land will turn to prostitution and be filled with wickedness."
God knows that prostitution is the door to every other form of
evil, and once you open that door, the nation is on a downhill
slide. With it comes drugs, gambling, and crime of every sort.
It gives the underworld a major in road to society.
The point I want to focus on out of many we could
consider is that the degrading of women by means of
prostitution is primarily the responsibility of men, and when
men treat women this way, they destroy their own values, and
their own ideals. Men cannot treat women in a lowly manner
and expect to rise themselves. Men rise or sink depending on
how they treat women. Keep in mind that for every

prostitute there are many men who keep this profession alive.
This means that women are only a fraction of the problem.
The main problem is the lust of men.
The reason prostitution can never be eliminated by men is
because men are the power behind it. I have never studied a
subject that was more frustrating. Millions and millions of
women are enslaved, and almost nobody cares because the
power structure of our world demands these slaves. The
economic system of many nations depends upon prostitution.
Tourism and prostitution go hand in hand around the world.
Business is a key supporter of prostitution, and men are
rewarded for a good job by being given a night with a
prostitute. Governments and businesses entertain customers
and diplomats with prostitutes.
This is not a new thing in our day at all. It has been a part
of history. So basic is prostitution to the way of life of sinful
man that the great leaders of the church were not in favor of
abolishing it. St. Augustine, one of the most influential men
in the history of the church, said, "Remove prostitutes from
human affairs, and you will unsettle everything because of
lust." Centuries later the great theologian St. Thomas
Aquinas said, "Prostitution in the cities is like the sewage
system in the palace. Do away with it, and the palace will
turn into a place of filth and stink." Church councils have
supported prostitution as a way to control men's lust so that it
does not lead to rape, adultery, and the contamination of the
marriage bond.

My point in all this is that the prostitutes of history have
been some of the most pathetic people because they have been
slaves that no one is interested in setting free. Even
Christians have not really tried to eliminate this blight,
because they see beneficial fringe benefits. The vast majority
of prostitutes hate what they have to do, but they have to no
way of escape. Poverty forces most of them into it, and
economic necessity keeps them there. You can, in
self-righteous pride, say I would starve first, but you do not
understand what life does to so many women.
In Indonesia, for example, the extreme poverty forces up to
60% of the women into prostitution. In Jakarta back in 1979
there were 600 Christian prostitutes who joined together to
care for their children. They had Bible studies and prayed
together, but there was no other way to survive, and that is
why they were prostitutes. Studying the history of this tragic
reality of life has helped me understand why the Bible
conveys such a message of sympathy for the prostitute. I can
better understand why Jesus let a prostitute wipe His feet
with her hair. I can better understand why He was willing to
accept the woman at the well in spite of her shabby past. I
can better grasp how Jesus could let the woman taken in
adultery go free and unpunished. What I can better see is
that God understands that women are victims of system that
forces them into immorality that they would not choose if they
were free to make a choice.
I am not blind to the many wicked women in history who
love evil, and who love to enslave other women, as well as

men. That is a part of history as well, but the fact is, the
majority need compassion for they are slaves and victims. By
the providence of God Rahab got the chance to be free of her
past, and she grabbed it and became a godly woman. If the
prostitutes of the world were given a chance to be free and
have the ability to make a decent living, most would make
that choice. Jesus said to the Pharisee that the harlots and
Publicans would enter the kingdom before them. The
implication is that they would respond to the Gospel and
become godly people.
What we need to see is that the ministry to prostitutes is a
valid ministry of compassion. Economic inequality has
always been the main cause for prostitution. The more poor
women you have in this world, the more prostitutes you have.
There are those, of course, who are rich and high class, but
the majority in the world are pathetically poor. Only women
themselves can stop the exploitation of their sex. The power
structure of men will never stop it. Abortion is so hard to
fight for the same reason. Any effort to halt the free
expression of man's lust will face enormous opposition.
Unless women organize to change the way things are the best
we can hope for is that, like Rahab, one by one there will be
those who escape this oldest profession to live a life of dignity
and respect. The second thing we want to focus on is-
II. HER PRESENT POSSESSION.
As we confront her in our text she is a woman of faith, and
not a woman of filth. She is intelligent and not immoral. She

is an impressive person who is decisive, and she makes a
choice to save her family at the risk of her own life. So much
is noble about Rahab that it is easy to see why one of the spies
fell for her. According to Jewish tradition one of these two
spies later married her, and she became a part of Israel, and a
mother in the blood line to Christ. Her son Boaz grew up to
marry Ruth the Moabite, who was another Gentile. With a
mother like her he had no fear of marrying a Gentile woman,
for he knew they could be marvelous. God did also, for both
of these Gentile women became a part of the blood line to the
Messiah.
Rahab possessed a keen intelligent mind. She kept up on
current events, and she knew what the God of Israel had
been doing. She listened to the news, and paid attention to
the changing times. She was ready to change to fit the new
circumstances that history was bringing. She could see her
people were doomed, and that the future was with Israel. She
was prepared to act on her faith in that future. It was not a
self-centered choice. She loved her family. She may have
been the black sheep of the family, and may have been
rejected for her decision to be a prostitute, but she did not
reject them. Her deal with the spies included her whole
family.
It is not true that a prostitute is incapable of love. Rahab
was one of the most loving daughters we have any record of in
the Bible. We do not know what her parents and siblings
thought of her, but we know how she felt about them. In
spite of her degrading profession she still possessed a deep

love for her whole family. People caught up in the most
degrading aspects of human life can still be very likeable and
loving people. Rahab still possessed the capacity, in spite of
all the lust and abuse she had seen, to see the beauty of what
God intended in the male-female relationship. I have read
stories and seen movies of prostitutes who fell in love and
made good wives. This is not fiction, but fact. Many
prostitutes have married and made wonderful respectable
wives. It takes a unique man to make it work, however, and
many men could not handle it. It was certainly providential
that one of the spies was just such a man.
What we see in Rahab is the other side of the depravity of
man. We see the dignity of man. We see that even in the
fallen state men and women still possess the shattered and
tattered image of God. Rahab had a lot of good qualities even
as a heathen harlot. That is why it is important for Christians
to approach all people from the point of view of respect. Even
the harlot has the capacity to respond to what is good, noble,
and righteous. The harlot has the same capacity to chose to
follow the light as anyone else. The result is we have a story
in the Bible of Jewish spies entering into an agreement with a
pagan prostitute. They made a treaty with her, and they
promised her deliverance because of her faith in the God of
Israel, and her action to preserve their lives.
Don't write people off because of who they are, or what
their past is. God providentially led the spies to Rahab for
her sake, and for a lesson to His people for all time. The
lesson is not that everybody will turn out good if given a

chance, for this is not so. The lesson is that people in every
category must be offered a chance, for no matter how
depraved they are, they can chose to trust God and rise to a
level of dignity and usefulness in the plan of God.
Jesus was virgin born, but lest anyone gets the idea that
God will not use anyone who is less than perfect, there are
women like Rahab in Christ's genealogy. The majority of the
human race is closer to Rahab than to Mary, and Jesus came
to seek and to save the fallen and the lost. The plan of
redemption cannot be fully seen by looking at Mary. We
need to see Rahab as well before the picture is complete.
Then, and only then, can we see the glory of God's amazing
grace. Had God consulted the Pharisees He would have been
told it was in bad taste to include a harlot in His Son's
genealogy. But God is not concerned about what people
were. He is concerned about whether or not they possess
faith. If they do, then that present possession can wipe away
the bolt of their past profession.
By faith Rahab saved her future husband by helping him
to escape. By faith she saved her whole family. By faith she
saved herself, and by faith she has saved many others because
God used her example in His Word so that many others
through history could see the good news of her deliverance,
and put their trust in the same God to deliver them. Like the
woman at the well, this Old Testament woman of ill repute
gained the reputation of being one of God's best tools for
evangelism. The last aspect of her life we want to focus on is-

III. HER FUTURE POSITION.
We are looking at what she became in history long after
she was gone from the stage of history. No one could ever
dream that a woman like Rahab could gain a position in
Israel, and in God's plan, that would make her a great
example. She was a Gentile, and a woman, and a prostitute.
The only possible way she could have sunk any lower would
have been to add to this list the term leper. She was, for all
practical purposes, the least likely person to ever become an
example for anyone, let alone the people of God. She
illustrates that a Gentile can become a Jew by faith and by
marriage, but more important, she illustrates a person in
darkness can become a great light by the grace of God.
It is important that we see that the Bible gives us great
examples of women who are redeemed so that we never think
they are secondary in God's plan. Lydia was the first
Christian convert in Europe, and Rahab was the first pagan
convert to Judaism in Canaan. All through history we see
that women are often the first to respond to the grace of God,
and they open the way for men to follow. Women are often
spiritual pioneers who blaze new trails that become highways
for millions.
There are other prostitutes who have become famous, but
none as famous as Rahab. As a youth, when I stood by her
grave on the hill outside Deadwood, South Dakota, I thought
that Calamity Jane was a great woman. I later learned that
she was one of the worst women who ever lived. She was a

foul mouthed, crude, and very unfeminine prostitute. But her
story illustrates two points I am trying to convey in this
message on Rahab. She was forced into prostitution by
society. Her parents with 6 children were pioneers, and
shortly after her mother died on the trail, her father died
when they reached Salt Lake City. The younger children
were taken by the state and put up for adoption. Jane was
15, and so she was left on her own. She became a prostitute
for survival. This is the way millions have become prostitutes
through history. A study in Paris in the year 1828 showed
that there were 1255 prostitutes in that profession because
they lost their parents, or were abandoned.
The more you read about the causes of prostitution, the
more compassion you have for those women who are in the
worst of all types of slavery. I cannot admire Calamity Jane
as I did in my youth, but neither can I despise her because of
what I have learned about her background. Jesus had such
compassion on sinners because He knew why people lived on
such a low level of immorality. It often takes us along time to
understand the reasons why people are what they are.
Calamity Jane also illustrates the fact that the worst have
something of the image of God in them yet. In 1878 when
smallpox swept through Deadwood, and people were dying
like flies, she worked day and night nursing the sick and
dying. The paper referred to her then as an angel of mercy.
She was a dark angel, to be sure, but she set an example.
Rahab's example is the greatest, however, for she

abandoned all other loyalties, and put her faith in God. She
risked everything, and even became a traitor to her state. She
rejected her pagan gods, and put her trust in the God of
Israel. This was a daring thing to do, but she did it and
became one of the only two women in Heb. 11 as great
examples of faith. Sarah is the other woman, and Sarah
means princess. So we have the princess and the prostitute,
the high and the low, but both are examples of great faith,
and they make it clear that faith is an open choice for all. No
one need miss God's best because of their past, however vile
and out of God's will. A present faith in Christ can lead
anyone to have a future position in God's eternal kingdom.
The story of Rahab gives hope to all the sinners of the world
that they too can become children of God by faith in the
Christ who will cast none out who come to Him in faith.
9. DEBORAH THE WISE Based on Judges 4
Everyone has heard of Paul Revere, but very few would
recognize the name of Sybil Ludington. Her father was a
colonel in the Revolutionary Army in Connecticut. One night
a messenger came banging on the door of their home. Sybil
let him in and went to get her father. She listened as her
father received the report that 200 British troops had over
run Danburg, Conn.
The British had taken advantage of the fact that the
American troops had gone home to their farms to plant their

fields. The British easily stormed past the guards, and they
began to loot and burn the town. Colonel Ludington realized
the messenger has to go out to the militia immediately, but the
messenger was too exhausted. Sybil volunteered, but her
father refused to let a 16 year old girl go riding into such a
dark and dangerous night. But Sybil insisted, for she knew
the country and there was no one else to go, and time was
running out.
Sybil got her horse prepared and off she rode. Through
the night she rode to every farm house and shouted the
message, "The British are burning Danburg. Meet at Colonel
Ludington's mill." She fought back many tears in the lonely
night and her voice gave out. Her horse was also exhausted,
but she achieved the goal, and the British were driven back to
their ships. Sybil became known as the female Paul Revere.
In 1975 a stamp was issued in her memory, and a statue of
her stands in Memorial Hall in Washington, D. C.
All through history women have played a major role in
war, and in the defense of their people. Women warriors who
actually led troops in battle are more frequent in history than
most of us would ever think likely. Probably the most famous
of all is Joan of Arc who lived from 1412 to 1431. This 19
year old girl led France to victory in a war they had been
losing to England for 75 years. Joan had no schooling, and
never learned to read, but she heard the call of God to save
France. She persuaded the French Commander to give her
the chance. They had nothing to lose, for it looked hopeless,
but this young girl rallied the French Army and won victory

after victory. She united a divided nation and reestablished
France as a major world power.
We want to focus our attention on Judges 4 where we see
the Joan of Arc of the Old Testament. Deborah also rallied
the forces of the nation of Israel, and she won for her people
freedom from what seemed hopeless odds. For 20 years Israel
had suffered oppression from Jabin the king of Canaan. He
had 900 chariots of iron, and Israel had a grand total of zero.
You talk about an uneven balance of power. This was like
trying to fight tanks with bows and arrows. In our world
today one of the key issues is balance of power, and who has
the most and fastest strike capability weapons. Israel was
certainly not the leader in that day.
When Israel did evil and developed life styles out of God's
will, the pagan nations around her won all the wars, and they
were slaves. When they repented and called upon God for
deliverance God would raise up a leader who would set them
free even though their weapons were inferior. Weapons were
never the key factor in the wars of the Bible. The key was
always the relationship of people to God. Unless God has
changed His ways of dealing with nations, the future for Israel
and America is more a matter of worship than of weapons.
When people turn to God, and call upon Him for His
guidance and help, then he raises up leaders to accomplish
His will in history. That is what the book of Judges is all
about. One of these judges that God raised up was this
female judge by the name of Deborah.

Why God raised up a woman to do what is generally
considered a man's task,
I do not know. But its in the Book, and we have to face up to
the fact that God is an equal opportunity employer when it
comes to using the sexes to do His will in history. Every so
often God uses a woman to do what he usually does by means
of a man. This forces us to keep our minds open to God's
leading, and not be limited by custom or tradition. If God
gives a woman the gifts to lead men for their good and God's
glory, then let her lead. The legalistic Christian says, "We
never did it this way before." The biblical Christian says,
"God is always doing things like He never did before. If He
empowers a woman with superior gifts, then we need to
submit to God and follow her leadership."
This is precisely what we see the people of Israel doing
with Deborah. God was on and exaltation of womanhood
campaign in this period. He not only raised up Deborah to
lead His people as a prophet, a patriot, and poet, but He
made sure that no man got the glory for killing the cruel
oppressor Sisera. By His providence this job was done by the
hand of the woman named Jael. God wanted women to be
the heroines of this period of history. It ought to keep the
greatest of men humble to see that they have done nothing
that God could not have done as well through a woman if that
was His choice.
Sexual pride has no support from the Bible. The Bible has
no interest in the issue of which is superior, the male or
female. The Bible is very clear on this issue, for it says that

the godly male or female is superior to the ungodly male or
female. Sexuality is not the issue, but spirituality is, and that
is why Paul stresses that in Christ there is no male or female.
The only status that really matters to God is not, are you a
Jew or Gentile, are you male or female, are you in bonds or
free, but what matters is, are you in Christ, or out of Christ?
Deborah was used of God, not because she was a woman,
but because she was a woman of faith who committed all of
her abilities to be used by God. Like the other judges of
Israel, she came to power by the sheer force of her marvelous
gifts. She had no royal blood, but was just an amazing and
brilliant woman. Men came to her for guidance because she
was so wise. We want to look at the three areas where her
wisdom was revealed. First she was wise as-
I. A PROPHETESS.
A prophetess is not the wife of a prophet-she is a prophet
-a female prophet. Her husband Lappidoth was likely a godly
man, but nothing is known about him. He is an obscure
husband married to a famous and gifted woman. She is
superior to him because God chose to give her gifts that He
did not give to Him. The result was the people of Israel did
not come to him, but to her for leadership. We have no
reason to doubt they had a wonderful marriage in spite of this
role reversal. It is exceptional, but the point is, the
exceptional is real, and the Bible deals with it. In the New
Testament we have another illustration in husband and wife
team of Pricilla and Aquilla. She was superior to him, and

became the leader of that team.
What the Bible demands is just common sense. If the wife
is gifted in some area or all areas, then wisdom demands that
she be the leader where she is strong. Paul recognized this
with Pricilla. He puts her name first whenever he refers to
them. Does this destroy what Paul says about wives being
submissive to their husbands? Not at all. It just destroys the
legalistic application of the principle, which is the only thing
any woman could object to about that principle. Submission
is simple an acknowledgement of another's gifts, wisdom, and
authority. Paul demands that it be mutual between mates, for
sometimes the wife has superior gifts. Both the Old
Testament and New Testament illustrate this, and Deborah is
the prime example.
The times were chaotic and pressures were tremendous,
and yet we see the people of Israel turning to a woman for
wisdom. Women are not supposed to be as emotionally stable
in a crisis, but this was long before any of those studies were
published, and so Deborah just went on giving her wise
judgments. Deborah means, "A bee," and just like the
bumble bee who never read the reports that it is not built
right to fly, goes on flying, so she went on doing what women
are not supposed to do well. She kept cool, and gave forth the
Word of God for personal and national guidance.
She is the one who sent for Barak, and gave him the Word
of God that he was to be the general of Israel's army to fight
Sisera the general of Jabin's army. She is the one who gave

him the prophecy that he would win the battle. God gave a
woman the gift of prophecy, and this exalted that sex to the
level of being the very mouthpiece of God along side of men
like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. I have not heard
many women preachers myself, but regardless of how I, or
anyone else, might feel about them, in the light of Deborah I
would not have the audacity to ever say it is not biblical for
women to proclaim the Word of God. This is a hot issue for
many, but it certainly wasn't in the day of Deborah.
The thing that impresses me about this whole account of
Deborah is its naturalness. It is just recorded as fact.
Deborah was wise, and she was a prophetess that everybody
accepted as God's choice for leadership. There is no big
hassle made about changing history to herstory, or boycott to
girlcott, and all of the nonsense we have in our day about
trying to change sexes language. The Christian is to simply
accept the providence of God as did Israel. If God gives a
woman gifts, then let them be used, and praise God for them.
The male or female that is God's choice will be a blessing to
both sexes.
If God raises up a gifted woman, men need not fear to
follow her, for her leadership will only exalt the male role.
Deborah is the one who got Barak exalted to a place in Heb.
11 where she never made it herself. The male role and status
are not threatened by her leadership. By this we can discern
between women who are truly sent of God, and those who
desire to use their gifts to defeat and dominate men for their
own glory. Deborah's concern was for the glory of God and

the good of His people. A great and godly woman will always
be one who lifts men to a nobler level. Deborah did just that,
and made her mark in the public arena of political leadership
with God and the people's full approval.
As a prophetess Deborah was able to discern the mind of
God, and to declare it to men, and, thereby, see God's will
accomplished. Thank God for men who know when to listen
to women. Had Pilate listened to his wife he may have treated
Jesus differently. Had Nabal listened to his wise wife Abigail
and let her handle his public relations, he would not have
gone down in history as a blundering fool. The point is, the
Bible supports the truth that most of us have to learn the
hard way, and that is that your wife may be right, and you
need to listen to her. She may, in fact, be your best advisor,
just as Deborah was the best for Israel.
The opposite is also true, for Ahab never should have
listened to Jezebel, and Herod never should have listened to
his wife. Solomon undermined most of his wisdom by
listening to his foreign wives. The female is equal in folly as
well as in faith, and so we are not trying to superficially exalt
the female as a paragon of virtue. We are simply recognizing
that the female has all the same potential for good or evil as
the male. Therefore, she is to be treated, and related to, in
ways that acknowledge that equality.
That prince of expositors G. Campbell Morgan writes,
"The one great message of the story seems to be that it warns
us to take heed that we do not imagine ourselves to be wiser

than God. When He calls and equips a woman to high
service, let us beware less we dishonor Him by refusing to
recognize her, or cooperate with her." In other words, the
Christian attitude is to let women rise to the level of their gifts
and abilities. Listening to, and following, a wise and godly
woman can be the key to God's best in life. God can do what
He wills without a woman or a man, for that matter, but that
is what makes it so wonderful, for He chooses to change
history by using men and women who will cooperate with
Him. Next let us consider Deborah as-
II. A PATRIOT.
A patriot is one who loves his or her country, and
zealously supports its interests. The people of Israel were sick
and tired of the 20 years of slavery to Jabin, and they crying
out to God for help. The way God spells relief is DEBORAH.
She was God's answer to their prayers. A godly woman can
be the best weapon a nation can have. We know that Eve was
God's answer to Adam's prayer, and that females have been
the answer to the prayers of men all through history. Deborah
is an example of the fact that God may also answer national
prayers by raising up a woman.
Deborah was the real source of inspiration and leadership,
and this is acknowledged by Barak the general in verse 8
where he says to Deborah, "If you will go with me I will go:
But if you will not go with me, I will not go." Barak was a
man of faith, but he was not going after 700 iron chariots
without the presence of Deborah. She was obviously a

charismatic personality that gave confidence and assurance to
all who were with her. He needed someone special, for he was
taking on a well drilled army with the best and newest
fighting machines. He was fighting with men out of training,
and with nothing but homemade weapons. He needed her to
motivate his men.
Deborah was no Cleopatra, eager to reign over men and
dominate them. She was eager to inspire them to do the will
of God, and gain freedom from their enemies that they might
more effectively live for God and His purposes. She aroused
her nation from its lethargy and despair. She awakened in
them a determination to be free from their bondage. Without
her the victory would never have been attempted. Deborah is
proof that a woman may be the best national advisor. For a
woman to be on the supreme court of our land, or to be in the
president's cabinet is no problem for those who see how God
has worked in the history of His people. History and the
Bible make it clear that patriotic women are a vital part of
any nation that is blessed by God.
Deborah went from settling personal disputes among
God's people to settling international disputes. All through
history God has used women, not just in the home and the
church, but in the public arena of politics. It is not for all, or
even most women, but the point is, when God calls women to
get involved in major political ways, they have a tremendous
impact. Never underestimate the power of women to change
the course of history. Deborah's leadership reversed the
history of Israel, and instead of living as slaves, they had 40

years of peace and freedom because of her.
In our own land we enjoy enormous blessings because of
patriotic women. I think of just one group that God has used
so uniquely in our land. The Quaker women have always
been treated as equals. They receive the same good
education, and the same freedom to use their gifts. The
results are that this small group of women have had a
profound influence on all Americans. They were a major
force in fighting slavery, and in building institutions for care
and education. They provided the first battlefield nurses.
Lucretia Mott became one of the greatest women leaders of
the 19th century. She and other Quaker women, like the
Grimke sisters were the first Americans women to speak out
in public and win for women the right to express themselves
in public. Then came Susan B. Anthony whose labors led
women to gain the right to vote. Quaker women were the
first to do many things in our land to benefit the whole
nation. Their theology allowed them to enter into the
freedoms of our nation, and they expanded those freedoms for
all. The third area of Deborah's wisdom is that she was-
III. A POETESS.
Judges chapter 5 is considered one of the first pieces of
literature ever written, and Deborah was its author. One of
its famous lines is, "The stars in their courses fought against
Sisera." It is a poetic way of saying that the universe is
behind what is good, and that nature itself will fight the forces
of evil. Women did write parts of the Bible. It was mostly

songs like those of Miriam and Deborah in the Old
Testament, and Mary and Elizabeth in the New. A number of
scholars are convinced also that Pricilla is the author of the
book of Hebrews. That may never be determined, but what is
determined is that God has, and does, inspire women as well
as men.
Deborah was something of a female Solomon. She was
wise in discerning what was right, and people respected her
judgments. She also had his creative gift of writing songs.
This is patriotic song of Israel, which records and rejoices in
the Lord's guidance to bring victory to them. It is of interest
that women have always enjoyed equality with men in the
area of writing poetry and songs. History is filled with women
who have excelled in this area of creativity. Some of our most
patriotic songs were written by women. America the
Beautiful was written by Katherine Lee Bates, and the Battle
Hymn of the Republic was written by Julia Ward Howe.
Many of the songs we sing to praise God, and to express
our faith, are songs that God has given to us through the
minds and pens of women. This is a vast field of study on its
own. As Deborah's gifts were used to bless God's people in
her day, so the gifts of women have blessed the whole family
of God all through history, and will continue to do so until
history ends. The point of all this is not that women should
go away singing, "Anything you can do I can do better," but
that they rejoice with men in the God who loves and uses both
sexes to bless His people, and through them the people of the
world.

10. DEBORAH THE DELIGHTFUL Based on Judges 4
I have enjoyed war stories and war heroes since I was a
small boy watching the news on the movies screen in the local
theater. I never realized, however, that not all of the heroes
were men. I heard of Joan of Arc when I got into the upper
grades of school, but I never had the concept of the heroin in
my mind until recently as a retired pastor. The history of the
women warriors on the battlefield has not been available until
recent years when female historians have brought them to
light. Even those in the Bible have not been known because
they are overshadowed by the great male warriors of the
Bible. It has been my delight to discover that women have
played a major role in defending the freedom and value
system of America and of the people of God through history.
One of the most outstanding is Deborah.
Here we have a woman who rose to the top in a day when
all the world around here was filled with masculine brutality.
Her story takes place between the years 1209 and 1169 B.C.
Life was one war after another, and every man did that which
was right in his own eyes. Moral standard were so low that
even the godly people did things that would be a disgrace in
our day. Almost nothing was unacceptable. The masses of
people were following pagan practices and were not different
from the pagan people around them. But in the midst of this
awful period of history we suddenly come to chapter 4 of
Judges, and to our surprise a woman is in charge. No woman

had been a judge of Israel before and none came after her.
She was a one of a kind female, and she was able by her
God-given gifts to rise to the point of being the leader of
God's people. Israel had been oppressed by the cruel
Canaanites for twenty years. They were devastated and were
crying out to God for help. This is when we begin to get the
story of this delightful leader named Deborah. In Judges
4:4-10 we get some basic facts about her.
She was a prophetess.
She was a wife.
She was a leader of Israel.
She was a literal judge who decided disputes.
She was a messenger of God's word to men.
She was a partner with the male commander of Israel's army.
In Chapter 5 we see also that
She was a poetess and a singer.
She was a mother-5:7.
What this marvelous women illustrates is that a woman
can do it all. She can be a wife and a mother, and still be a
leader and public servant. She can have both a private world

and a public world where she can be successful. God delighted
in this unusual woman and used her in a unique way to bless
his people. Lets look at the ways she was used of God by some
of the roles she played.
1. AS PROPHETESS.
This means God used her as a spokesperson to
communicate his message to others. You do not choose this,
for it is God's choice as to who is going to give his word to
others. God does not discriminate against women and use
only male instruments to communicate. The role of prophetess
is found in both the Old and the New Testament. Miriam the
sister of Moses was a prophetess as we read in Ex. 15:20. It is
of interest to note that Miriam was also a poetess and singer
like Deborah. It makes me feel that women who are closest to
God will be channels of joy and song for others. Much, if not
most of the poetry and song by which believers have praised
God all through history has come to us through gifted women.
Others called prophetesses are Huldah in 2 Kings 22:14,
Noadiah in Nehemiah 6:14, Anna in Luke 2:36, and the four
daughters of Philip in Acts 21:9.
These women received direct revelation from God, and this
enabled them to announce what God was going to do. They
were the only people who could know the future and tell
others what was going to be. They were extremely valuable
when it came to knowing how a battle was going to turn out.
Anyone can be brave in facing a battle if they know ahead of
time that they are going to win. Deborah knew that the forces

of Israel could now overcome the enemies of Israel, and so she
was a pure delight to Barak the commander of the army of
Israel. So much so that he says in v.8 that he will not go to
war unless she comes with him. Here is a male warrior who
refuses to enter the battlefield without this female by his side.
Because she knew the future she was a picture of faith and
confidence, and he and his men needed that. She was to the
army of Israel what Joan of Arc was to the forces of France.
She gave them motivation and confidence to fight with
assurance of victory.
We see God's sense of humor in this whole setting, for
Sisera the enemy commander has 900 iron chariots at his side,
and Barak has Deborah at his side.
The name Deborah means honey bee, and this was the
weapon that gave him courage. He was going head on against
900 iron chariots with a honey bee at his side. It was the bee
verses the iron beast, but here was a bee with a sting for her
foes and honey for her friends. Those who messed with this
bee were stung into defeat, and those who followed this bee
were blest with the sweet honey of peace for the next 40 years.
She is called a mother in Israel, and a mother is one who
nourishes and encourages her children. This is what Deborah
did, and that is why all the people delighted in her.
2. AS JUDGE.
Most prophetesses were not the leaders of the land. They

Famous bible characters

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to Famous bible characters

More from GLENN PEASE

Recently uploaded

Famous bible characters