As we prepare for Sunday’s worship, let us be praying hard that the weather gets better.  After 2 weeks of snow, I’m more than ready to be worshipping in-person again.  As we get closer to Sunday, keep a watchful eye out for any updates from us about how we will be worshipping this Sunday.  If we do meet in-person, I’m excited to have the children that normally head to Children’s Church during the sermon with us for the whole service.  We have activity bags full of fun things ready to go and a secondary room (Choir room 1 across from the bathrooms) with the sermon feed piped in for parents that need the extra space.  Hopefully, this will be a great experience for all our families as we worship together and listen to the Word preached.

But enough about what may or may not happen.  Part of why we do these weekly thoughts is to prepare our hearts and minds to hear the Word preached on Sunday.  This week, we’re in Joshua 2.  If you remember, we heard Dr. Silvernail preach on this passage back in September as a part of our Most Misused Stories sermon series.  I encourage you to go back to that sermon and listen to it again.  I’ll be doing my best to focus on the big picture themes of the story itself, and so I’ll be skipping over a number of common questions and details that Dr. Dave addressed.

Those big picture themes center around God’s sovereignty and His grace.  When we think about Rahab’s story, we often miss the tension.  We know that the spies don’t get caught.  It kind of drains all the drama out of the story.  But for the spies, that tension raised huge questions about God’s sovereignty and His faithfulness.  Was God actually going to deliver on His promise to give them the land?  How was He going to do that when everything was going wrong?  What was going to happen next?  It is in the midst of that uncertainty and fear that God answered emphatically.  And interestingly, He didn’t do so with a show of His omnipotent power, but through His grace to Rahab.  And so it is for us as well.  The Gospel comes to us in the midst of uncertainty, fear, and no-win scenarios to remind us that the Lord is both in control and for us.  That twin hope that we have in God’s sovereignty and His grace is exactly what we need in the midst of the hard times that we find ourselves in.  Come Sunday ready to look for and rest in God’s sovereignty and grace.  See you Sunday!