His Mother was Rahab

“...his mother was Rahab.” Matthew 1:5

We can see from the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of Matthew, that God is very patient, and He has intricately woven strands of different kinds of people into His story. The genealogy began with Abraham, the first to believe in God’s promises and ends with Mary, who saw God’s promise fulfilled. 

The long list includes only five women which is quite unusual in a Jewish genealogy. One of them is Rahab, found in the 2nd book of Joshua. She was a prostitute who protected the two men Joshua secretly sent from the Israelite camp to spy out the land they were going to invade. Even if she was part of an idolatrous people, the Amorites, God opened her eyes to see His plan. "I know the Lord has given you this land," she told the two spies. "The Lord Your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below." (Joshua 2:9-11) Rahab, the prostitute, married Salmon, one of the spies, and became the mother of Boaz, who married Ruth, another woman who made it into the genealogy of Jesus. Ruth also had some conviction that she should follow Naomi, her mother-in-law, and be part of Naomi's people. 

In Matthew 7:7, Jesus tells the crowd, "Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened." In the case of Rahab, she had obviously heard about God from the travelers she entertained in her house which was against the town wall. She knew He made a dry path through the Red Sea so the Jews could pass, how He helped the Jews conquer peoples and kings. As with Ruth, she knew about God through her marriage to Naomi's son. Both Rahab and Ruth decided they wanted to be part of the story God was weaving. 

We can see that even if we come from a dung heap like Rahab the harlot, or if we're an ordinary man or woman with every day challenges, we can decide to be part of His story. We can wait for God’s plan to unfold in our lives, and be a part of His pilgrim people who longs to one day see  His face.