Josh 2:10+11, For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And when we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. 
	In this morning’s reading, we have the beginning of the conquest related in the story of Rahab and the spies. The Children of Israel were getting ready to cross the Jordan. Jericho was the first fortified city they would be conquering. Joshua wanted to get a sense of the layout and the strength of the city as well as the attitude of the inhabitants. Therefore, he sent in the spies to search out what was ahead of the Israelites. 
	Because they were discovered, the spies needed help, and that help came from Rahab, the pagan prostitute. She hid them on her roof and misled the men sent to capture them. The writer of Joshua spends an extended amount of time with her explanation and her conversion experience as it has been called. She made a very profound statement about God, one that even Christians today seem to overlook. She detailed how the people had heard of the Lord going before the Israelites for the past 40 years. It was known how God had released them from Egypt. The reports had come to them of how the Lord had dried up the Red Sea before this growing nation. For those 40 years, the fear of the impending doom of the invasion of their land had served to create intense terror and panic within the hearts of those Canaanites. There was intense dread spreading throughout the land of the Canaanites as they were in utter horror fueled by the trembling anticipation of the impending onslaught of the Israelites and their God. 
Rahab stated this sense of doom so emphatically. And when we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.
	Let us spend a few moments with Rahab in a description by Dr. Madvig in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, as he expounds upon the validity and the extraordinary event that took place in the heart of this prostitute of Jericho. It is something that we need to consider in the depths of our hearts as we are so often quick to judge others and place them before the throne of God’s wrath in our sense of their unworthiness. Thankfully God does not judge as we do, but rather shows forth His Omniscience in the heart of those who come before Him. 
Quote, Rahab’s bold act of hiding the Israelite spies is interpreted in the NT as evidence of saving faith (Heb 11:31, By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after she had welcomed the spies in peace; [also] James 2:25, And in the same way was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works, when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?). 
We may call this her conversion experience because she turned away from her pagan gods and from her people to identify with Israel and Israel’s God. There are a number of “negative” points about her conversion: She was a prostitute by profession; she lied to protect the spies; she was motivated by fear; and she struck a shrewd bargain with the spies. Nevertheless, the glorious outcome of it all is indicated by the inclusion of her name in the genealogy of Jesus (Matt 1:5, and to Salmon was born Boaz by Rahab; and to Boaz was born Obed by Ruth; and to Obed, Jesse;)…
	The spies violated God’s explicit command that none of the people living in the land were to be spared (Deut 7:1-6, "When the Lord your God shall bring you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and shall clear away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the Lord your God shall deliver them before you, and you shall defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and He will quickly destroy you. But thus you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire. "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth; [and] Deut 20:16-18, Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you, in order that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the Lord your God). 
	Rahab, however, turned to God and sought deliverance. Her experience is proof of the gracious saving purpose of God. His overarching decree is that “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32). This is one of the most dramatic examples of grace in the OT and is set in bold relief by the questionable aspects of Rahab’s profession and conversion. End of Dr. Madvig’s quote.
	With the fact of Rahab’s assertion that the fear of God and His people was demoralizing the inhabitants of Jericho, the testimony that God had set into motion came into fruition. The nations in Canaan were unsettled and afraid of what was going to happen to them. Their false gods and idols were impotent against the forces of the One True Lord God Almighty. Rahab recognized and accepted the truth that there was no hope for her and her family except with the Lord God of the Israelites. Thus, as explained to those spies, she gave voice to that which she had come to recognize and accept as truth…for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. 
	The rest of the citizens of Jericho, however, did not turn to the Lord for salvation. Rather they accepted the futility of their hardened heart in opposition to the Lord. As a result, they were subject to the mandate of the Lord against those people who were so wicked in their desperate defiance unto the God of Israel. 
This is so much like many of the people of this current age who have heard of God, yet have no desire to know Him. They may have been taught the story of Jesus, but they just set it into the classification of fable and nonsense. They have no interest to surrender the control of their lives to some obtuse deity in the sky because they would rather remain enslaved to the idols of their own reckoning and lusts. There is no interest or desire for the truth. They put their trust and their existence into the science of their own imaginations rather than believe upon the Lord and receive His freely offered salvation. They cling to their false hopes and find their own gods and idols more attractive, despite that inner knowledge that those idols and gods are completely worthless and ineffectual. That was the heart knowledge of the Caananites within the Promised Land as they waited for their impending doom. 
	One of the key elements in Rahab’s dialogue is the fact that she pointed out exactly how mankind, apart from the living relationship with the Lord, responds when fear so grips humanity as to melt the heart. As she stated it …And when we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you…. 
There is that dreadful, inner sense of complete hopelessness and absolute horror when we are faced with the powers that we do not understand. We utterly fall apart when situations and events and catastrophes so pummel us that we are robbed of any hope in anything whatsoever. As it is so indicative with our current pandemic, there is utter and abject desperation and chaos and disbelief that we could be so devastatingly and viciously and catastrophically failed by our scientific and technological prowess. Society is paralyzed with the fear and the terror of all that is taking place. Such were the inhabitants of the Promised Land about to be annihilated by the Hand of the Lord.
However, please remember it is was not just the Canaanites who were examples of this abject terror. The first generation of the Children of Israel suffered this intense and debilitating fear which melted their innermost hope and essence. As they were on the very banks of the Jordan, about to enter into their inheritance, that generation, 40 years earlier froze and refused to go forward because of their intense dread and angst about the forces arrayed against them in the land of their promise. This was recounted by Moses in Deut 1:26-28.
	Deut 1:26-28, "Yet you were not willing to go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God; and you grumbled in your tents and said, 'Because the Lord hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. 'Where can we go up? Our brethren have made our hearts melt, saying, "The people are bigger and taller than we; the cities are large and fortified to heaven. And besides, we saw the sons of the Anakim there."' 
    	Those defeatist reports by the spies that were sent into the land did, to that first generation, exactly what the reports of the working of God did in the hearts of the wicked inhabitants across the Jordan. That first generation of Israelites had no trust in the Hand of the Lord going before them. This was even after all the miracles that He had performed to gain their freedom from slavery. Accordingly, they were doomed to die in the wilderness.
	40 years later, as the next generation of Israelites were actively engaged in preparation to do what their parents refused to do, it was the vile inhabitants of the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses who were filled with that debilitating dread. They were petrified of the Lord and His people because of what God had done. 
God used those wandering years to spread throughout the Promised Land, the rumors and the reports of a people so strong and their God Who would dry up rivers before them. Those accounts of how the Lord delivered His people and kept them and multiplied them and defeated all the forces arrayed against them percolated throughout the land in those 40 years. 
They did not have the instant access to news as we do today. It took time for those accounts to spread into each city and town and village and home. It took those 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and dying off of the first generation for the hearts and the minds of the Canaanites to be so filled with dread and anguish. They became utterly despondent in anticipation of what was soon to befall them. Therefore their hearts were melting and they were without any hope to stop the onslaught of the Lord that was about to be unleashed upon them. 
However, unlike Rahab, they were not willing to turn to the Lord. Their hearts were hardened into bitter and utterly inflexible opposition against Him and His Chosen Nation, despite the mounting evidence of the Lord’s Omnipotent work. That is why they were under the dire command of utter destruction at the hand of the people of God.
	This melting of the heart is an absolute demoralization which causes paralysis. That was what the Lord did in the hearts of those Canaanites. Demoralization works into the deepest part of the human spirit to make everything seem impossible. It deals a death blow to the hope and the physical abilities of mankind. It was the means used by God for His people to conquer and to dispossess the nations arrayed against them.
	At the same time, we see how manifest this was and how important it was for God’s people to not be demoralized. That would mean that they were not counting on the Lord to go before them. Thus the call to be strong and courageous was reinforced over and over again. The people of God needed to live in accordance with their faith and their hope in Him throughout the OT. In evidence of this call to strength and courage in the Lord, the leaders were to go through the army, testing each man. They were to dismiss those who were afraid and could thus spread that cancer throughout the ranks. This is detailed in Deut 20:8.
	Deut 20:8, "Then the officers shall speak further to the people, and they shall say, 'Who is the man that is afraid and fainthearted? Let him depart and return to his house, so that he might not make his brothers' hearts melt like his heart.' 
The Lord did not want His people to fall victim to the same terror that was being set into the hearts of the armies that were to be defeated. God would not allow dissention and faithlessness and unbelief to sidetrack and to defeat His people as they were going into battle. That melting of the heart paralyzed by terror and demoralization was to be reserved for the enemies of the Lord. 
This demoralization of the enemy by The Lord was emphasized, as we read in Josh 5:1. The Lord dried up the Jordan river as the sign that He was marching forward through His people into the Land of Promise.
	Josh 5:1, Now it came about when all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard how the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the sons of Israel until they had crossed, that their hearts melted, and there was no spirit in them any longer, because of the sons of Israel. 
    	As well, when the Children of Israel turned away from the Lord in their sin, the Lord ceased going before them to cause their enemies to quake in fear and dread. Even one man’s disobedience to the commands of the Lord was sufficient to cause complete defeat in battle as we read in Josh 7:4+5. The battle should have been won except for the sin of Achan.
	Josh 7:4+5, So about three thousand men from the people went up there, but they fled from the men of Ai. And the men of Ai struck down about thirty-six of their men, and pursued them from the gate as far as Shebarim, and struck them down on the descent, so the hearts of the people melted and became as water. 
	Notice that when the presence of the Lord was withdrawn because of the sin of Achan, the Israelites were the ones whose hearts melted in fear. As strong as they had been in the other battles, as sure as had been their victories earlier, here they were demoralized and victims to the fear and dread that was to characterize all who fought against them. 
The presence of the Lord was the deciding factor. Disobedience caused them to lose the battle to forces that were weaker than they. It was not until Joshua had rooted out the sin against God that the people could once more move forward with their victorious conquest of the land.
	When the time came for the apportionment of the land, the other faithful spy, Caleb, in Josh 14:7+8, recounted how he and Joshua alone had stood for the Lord. The rest of the spies had caused the first generation to quake in fear of the inhabitants of the land who had been so severely routed by the Lord with this second generation. 
	Josh 14:7+8, I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought word back to him as it was in my heart. Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt with fear; but I followed the Lord my God fully. 
This is the testimony that is to characterize every one of God’s people. In Jesus Christ, we are all to follow the Lord Our God fully and completely. We are to abolish all sin and disobedience in our lives in order that the fear of the Lord will melt the heart of all those who oppose the Lord. We are to be strong and courageous, no matter what forces or viruses or terrors are surrounding us. We are to know that God is faithful and will never fail us or forsake us. Therefore we are to be faithful unto Him and never fail Him or forsake Him in our thoughts, our words, our deeds, and our hearts, no matter what!
	In Isa 13:6-9, the Prophet Isaiah makes a bold declaration as to what is going to happen in the hearts of those who are against the Lord on the great day of the Lord’s judgment. There will be a destruction that will melt the very hearts of all those people who are set in their vile hatred of the Only True and Living Lord God Almighty.
	Isa 13:6-9, Wail, for the day of the Lord is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Therefore all hands will fall limp, And every man's heart will melt. And they will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take hold of them; They will writhe like a woman in labor, They will look at one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it. 
    	This same reality is carried forward by John in Rev 6:15-17, as he described how those who are against the Lord will try to hide. They will even seek to have the mountains fall upon them in their abject futility to escape the judgment that is to come. 
Rev 6:15-17, And the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come; and who is able to stand?" 
    	Reiterating this morning’s passage, this was the heart of the people of the city of Jericho in which only Rahab and her family were saved. She, alone, turned to the Lord and sought His salvation in the midst of all the fear and chaos and futile efforts to escape the Lord’s righteous and holy judgment as meted out by His instruments of righteousness, His Chosen people. 
As the people of God, today, His Church on this earth, let it ever be said of us that we are embedded in the truth that …the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. That just like the faithful spies, Joshua and Caleb, we follow the Lord Our God fully. That we stand strong and courageous without any fear or melting heart at the vain and ineffectual threats of this age against God and against His people. So be it!
For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And when we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 69:13. But as for me, my prayer is to Thee, O Lord, at an acceptable time; O God, in the greatness of Thy lovingkindness, Answer me with Thy saving truth. Amen.