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Joshua 2:3-5  So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”  But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them.  She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from.  At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don’t know which way they went.  Go after them quickly.  You may catch up with them.”

I have just been reading the comments of Tim & Kathy Kelller on Proverbs 14:5,25; 24:28 in their devotional book, “The Way of Wisdom”.  Under the heading ‘Not Deceiving’, they write: “Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Don’t exaggerate and spin.  Don’t leave out crucial parts of the truth that might make you look bad.  ‘Speak truthfully to your neighbour’ (Ephesians 4:25), looking to the one whose very reason for coming was to testify to the truth (John 18:37)”.

The Kellers go on to talk about the common use of deception in political speech, advertising and marketing, and how wrong this is according to Proverbs.  I totally agreed with the point they make, and was happy to pray honestly the prayer they suggest at the end, which includes the words, “Help me remember that you will judge me for every idle word.  Make me a person of truth.  Amen.”

But I couldn’t help thinking of Corrie Ten Boom and all the Christians like her, who told bare-faced lies to protect the Jewish people in Nazi Germany!  As I pondered on this, my M’Cheyne Bible Reading program presented me, inter alia, with Joshua 2 and the story of Rahab, the prostitute, and the vital contribution her courage made to the outworking of the Sovereign LORD’s Plan of Salvation, not only in the fall of Jericho as part of Israel’s occupation of the Promised Land, but in Rahab’s later becoming the great-great-grandmother of King David, and an ancestor of the Messiah!

I was thankful for this serendipity in my regular devotional reading, and it was a good reminder of the wisdom of Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is alive and active.  Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”  I will seek earnestly to live by the clear teaching of Proverbs on truth-telling, but the ‘alive and active’ nature of God’s Word requires me to take into account its over-arching requirement to assess particular instances in the light of other clear Biblical principles – like striving for justice and the protection of the vulnerable in our sin-ridden world.

All this is a good reinforcement of the message of Psalm 1 about the ‘blessedness’ [‘happiness’] of the man “whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night.”

– Bruce Christian