Kingdom Woman: Embracing Your Purpose, Power, and Possibilities (13 page)

God had instructed Moses that He had a big job for Moses to do. Moses was supposed to go tell Pharaoh that the judgment of God was about to come: “Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the
LORD
says: Israel is my firstborn son’ ” (Exodus 4:22). The firstborn son was the son of privilege and honor. God was making that point clear to Pharaoh in that He wanted His children, the Israelites, to be let go.

Yet because Pharaoh refused to let Israel go, God said, “But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son” (Exodus 4:23). It was a high price to pay for Pharaoh’s rebellion against God.

God had clearly told Moses that this was the message for him to relay. However, then Moses’ problem arose: “At a lodging place on the way, the
LORD
met Moses and was about to kill him” (verse 24).

This is the same Moses for whom God had earlier said He had great plans. This is the same Moses God had chosen to be His leader and His mouthpiece. And yet now God was seeking to put Moses to death. That is a great turn of events if ever there was one. We know why this great reversal occurred because of what Zipporah did next. “Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it” (verse 25).

She did what Moses had failed to do.

She found the courage to carry out what Moses could not.

When Moses was lacking as the spiritual leader in his home, Zipporah rose up in faith and stood in the gap. Moses had failed to bring his firstborn son into the covenant with God. So Zipporah took the matter into her own hands because she feared God.

Zipporah knew that God’s judgment was on her husband. So she did what many women have done over the ages. She interposed herself between God’s judgment and the person who was to be judged. Interposition is when you act in obedience in an attempt to deflect God’s judgment intended for someone else.

Many women have interposed themselves as an act of faith on behalf of someone else—perhaps a wayward child or even a spouse. They have diverted the judgment of God and in fact brought about blessing instead.

Zipporah’s act of faith didn’t come without some frustration. “But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. ‘Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,’ she said” (verse 25). She was
upset. It had come on her shoulders to take care of something of utmost spiritual importance, and she let Moses know how she felt about it. Because God’s wrath was against him, Moses could have ushered in destruction on his family. Zipporah’s faith was all that stood between that destruction and a future.

As a result of Zipporah’s strength in faith, “the
LORD
let him alone” (verse 26). Zipporah’s faith saved Moses’ life and his family.

Many lives have been saved because of a kingdom woman’s interposition where husbands and/or fathers have failed. I have seen it countless times. In various counseling scenarios, the man is clearly in the wrong spiritually, and yet God appears to be blessing the couple through one form or another because of the courage of the woman’s faith. That raises questions that I often hear in counseling: What do you do if your husband is not being the leader? What if he is not taking responsibility for the spiritual direction or leadership in the home? What does it mean to be submissive in the face of his own lack of submission to God? How do you follow a parked car? The man is clearly not leading spiritually, but then again he also doesn’t want you to lead. What then?

The life of Zipporah gives an answer. When it comes to a matter of obeying God—fulfilling the commandments of God—you act anyway. When it comes to a matter of principle—not preference—you submit to God. See, submission does not mean that you do nothing. Submission means that you surrender to God’s revealed will because your commitment to God is greater than your commitment to your husband. Men often think that “headship” is a blank check to command their wives to do or not do whatever they want. If a wife does not do it, her husband calls her “rebellious” or “unsubmissive.” But the validity of headship rests in the submission of that head, the man, underneath Jesus Christ. What men will frequently do is only quote half the verse, thereby missing out on the whole meaning. Yet Scripture outlines the definition of headship:

The order is clear: God, Christ, man, woman. To ask a woman to submit to a man who is out of alignment under God and Christ is to ask that woman to submit to something other than God, which she should never do. Men bear a responsibility to align themselves under God before they ever ask their wives to align under them.

Over my years of meeting with struggling couples, I have found this to be a primary point of contention in that a woman will often struggle between submission to a man who is clearly not living a spiritually mature life and the teachings that come from God on how she is to live her life. If there is a choice to be made over a specific spiritual principle, the choice has to be submission to God if the man is out of alignment with God’s principles.

That’s why the Bible limits the word
submission
. It is not an all-inclusive submission. Scripture clearly says a wife is to be submissive to her husband “as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). In other words, there is a higher commitment than to your husband, and that commitment is to God. So anyone who tries to tell you that submission means you are to do whatever your husband says whether or not God agrees, that person is using the term incorrectly. Unfortunately, it is one of the most misused and abused principles in Christian homes today, and often one of the major causes leading to a breakdown of home life.

Zipporah honored Moses by honoring God. As a result of her faith, her family was saved.

Rahab

Another woman who interposed herself on behalf of her home is Rahab. Judging by her name alone, Rahab did not come from a family who believed in the one true God. Rahab’s name starts with the word
Ra
. Ra is the name of a false god representing the sun, or creative powers. Rahab came from the people group known as Canaanites. Raised in a pagan environment, Rahab had grown up
to choose a lifestyle of indignity. Rahab was a harlot. Some people might have called her a prostitute or a whore. Some may have referred to her as a hussy, an escort, a hooker, or ho. However they referenced her, the titles all meant the same exact thing: Rahab made a living by servicing the sexual desires of men.

As is key in real estate, so it was key in Rahab’s business: Location was everything. She had secured the prime spot of the city wall. Both travelers passing through as well as countrymen heading out could easily stop in for a minute, or ten, with Rahab. We read, “for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the wall” (Joshua 2:15,
KJV
).

Maybe it was precisely because foreigners visited Rahab’s place so frequently that the spies whom Joshua had sent to scope out Jericho decided to stop in and hide out at Rahab’s home. Even though they tried to escape notice, the spies’ presence drew the attention of the king’s men. The king then sent emissaries to track them down.

Rahab then faced the decision of her lifetime. Would she risk sudden death for harboring spies—if the king’s emissaries were to find out—or would she risk the potential disaster that was looming from the Israelites’ God? You can tell an awful lot about people by what they do rather than by what they say. Rahab’s actions revealed where her faith really was—it was in the one true God. We know this because she sent the king’s emissaries off on a wild-Israelite chase while helping the spies sneak back to their waiting army.

Rahab backed up her actions with her words when she revealed why she did what she did:

Rahab’s faith controlled her feet. Her faith dictated her actions. Her faith determined what she did. She hid the spies and then told them why. She didn’t stop there, though. She also told the spies that she wanted to cut a deal with them. After all, she had just saved their lives, so saving hers and her family’s should be worth reciprocation:

Rahab cut a deal with God’s people. She asked for kindness and reminded them that she had just dealt
kindly
with them. Because of that, she wanted them to deal
kindl
y
with her and her family. She used the Hebrew word
chesed
, which has since been translated as “kindly.”
Chesed
didn’t just mean to be nice.
Chesed
specifically meant loyalty and faithfulness.
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Appearing more than two hundred times in the Old Testament,
chesed
specifically refers to the attitude toward an agreement or covenant. It is the word used more frequently than any other to define a covenant connection. Most of the time, it was used to describe God’s covenantal covering of the people of Israel despite their unfaithfulness.

Chesed
means kindness on steroids. It refers to a loyal love, whether or not the other party deserves it. Rahab knew that she had nothing in her background, history, or culture to appeal to the Israelites to have mercy on her. So she asked them to remember her one act of faith with a
chesed
covenant of kindness.

As a result, Rahab’s faith made a hooker holy. Not only did the spies honor her request and keep everyone safe who stayed put in her home, but Rahab also landed a spot in the Israelites’ highest place of honor. She made it into the Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith. Her faith put her in the same chapter as the patriarch Abraham. She stands shoulder to shoulder with other men and women of courageous faith.

An interesting aspect of Rahab’s story that often gets overlooked is how Rahab and her family survived. After all, Scripture tells us that Rahab’s home was on the wall. Yet Scripture also tells us that the Israelites walked around the city once a day for six days, and on the seventh day they walked around it seven times, blew their trumpets, and shouted, and the wall collapsed (Joshua 6). Jericho’s ground zero was a disaster zone.

Except for one spot. Rahab’s home.

While the wall crumbled all around Rahab’s family, her home remained intact. She and her family were safe. I’m sure people couldn’t understand it at the time, and many probably couldn’t even believe how everyone in her home made it out safely. But they did because of God’s covenantal
chesed
covering.

There is an interesting true story told about ground zero at the World Trade Center in New York City. After more than a month of searching and cleaning up among the rubble and destruction, the rescue crew who had been desperately scouring the grounds in search of any life or hope came across a lone Callery pear tree still alive. Somehow, buried beneath the mound of dust, debris, concrete, and twisted metal, this tree survived.

At the time that the workers pulled it from the wreckage, it had been badly charred and had only one branch remaining. This pear tree apparently wasn’t ready to go when everything around it fell down. The pear tree survived what no one thought any living organism could survive.

Fast-forward a little over a decade, and the Survivor Tree—as it has affectionately and respectfully been named along with five others from the wreckage—is now more than thirty feet high, replanted in the memorial gardens honoring the memories of those killed on 9/11.
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The Survivor Tree offers a reminder to us of the power of hope. It also points us to another tree that stood on a hill more than two thousand years ago in the shape of a cross. This tree and the life attached to it somehow survived the destruction surrounding it as the sins of the world came collapsing around it, sending the One who hung on it deep into the depths of the earth. Yet three days later, God raised Jesus from the dead, offering those who place their trust in Him a living hope and abundant life more powerful than anything they face.

Rahab knew the power of this hope. She knew the strength of faith. Her story is one of survival as well. After all, her house was in the wall. There were
two ways that people died that day in Jericho. Either they died as a result of the wall crumbling and collapsing upon them, or they died at the hands of the Israelite army.

The spies honored Rahab’s request not to harm her or her family as long as they stayed in their home on the wall. But the spies had no control over how that wall would collapse or if any portion of it would remain intact.

I would be curious to know what Rahab and her family were thinking as they felt the tremors when the Jericho wall began to shake. They had been told not to leave their home, and yet now their home threatened to bury them alive.

Some say that Rahab’s faith was in hiding the spies. Yet her greater faith may have been in staying inside as the walls around her crumbled.

Imagine the temptation to run outside as the tremors, shaking, and crumbling began. Yet Rahab stayed inside because of her faith in the words of the spies—and ultimately because of her faith in God, knowing that she had been instructed that her safety was within her home.