Lots of preachers out there telling it like it is without speaking to anyone present. Paul’s call to Timothy to preach the word in-season and out is a word to remind the gospel proclaimers that the gospel is always relevant to the life of men and women, to sinners of all stripes, and we can’t live in a world where the Church is full of the white lie. We must do all things in spirit and in truth.

Howdy,
With all the talk here recently about truth it seems like a good time of the year to think about where we are as a country, and as a church. Many of y’all have heard me tell the story that my parents had me convinced until I was about five years old that all the rigamoral and fireworks was being held in honor of my birthday. We’d go down to the waterfront in Charleston, West Virginia and hear the state symphony blast out the 1812 Overture while the national guard thundered their cannons and I’d start to thank people for coming once it was over. Most folks played along and thought is was cute, others just kind of stood there shocked and confused. I was probably a little bit of both when I finally realized it was the Fourth of July for America, not necessarily for me alone. Some people might say my mom and dad were lying to me. However, I think more about how cool it was, and what kind of honor it is to share a birthday with the greatest nation ever made in God’s blessed providence.
A little fun every now and then never hurt anyone.
These so-called white lies are defined by the google machine as untruths that don’t intend to harm. In other words it means that there is no malice involved. That brings up the question as what makes a difference between a fib that brings fun and a rib that brings pain. It’s probably one of those things that former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart would say that he knows it when he sees it. Most of the time though it probably has a lot more to do with the person saying it and the person receiving it. We can joke and josh with a friend, or at least guys can. In today’s prayer and worship help we are going to think through a little bit about what the Bible has to say about the question, and moreso why it is the truth matters a whole more when we mean it.
I had a fellow I used to visit with in Mississippi say to me that he told one story so that he could tell me another one. At about the same age I was when my parents were telling me about the real reason for 1776 my dad was involved in some meetings related to the merger that took place in the early 1980s between the PCUS (the old Southern church) and the UPCUSA (the old Northern church), which is now the PCUSA. The three of us and my youngest sister at the time had grown up PCUS in the Greenbrier Presbytery, and still were at the time. I can remember my dad coming home from these merger meetings frustrated and mad. Now, that’s not too surprising for a Glaser, we have a tendency to 1) Be involved in meetings, and 2) Be frustrated with them. It’s part of the reason why we make such good Presbyterians.
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God is not a killjoy but the source of all joy who has an eternally cascading waterfall of pleasures at his right hand (Ps. 16:11). He is the fountain of everything good, beautiful, and true (cf. Jas. 1:17), and he “richly provides us with all things to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17 CSB). This means even when God issues a prohibitive “no”—as all good fathers must do from time to time—it is because God has something more glorious in store for those whom he loves. 

G.K. Chesterton once said that “[Pagans] could make an alternative to Christmas,” but “they could not . . . make a substitute for Thanksgiving Day. For half of them are pessimists who say they have nothing to be thankful for; and the other half are atheists who have nobody to thank.”1 Hence sentimental secularists have no difficulty producing “holiday songs” (despite their disbelief in holy-days). Meanwhile, many of the same folks struggle mightily to actually give thanks on a day set aside for just such a purpose. This is because gratitude is essentially Christian, and there are two reasons for this.
Gratitude Assumes a Creator to Thank
The logic of giving thanks implicitly requires someone to whom we are thankful. To say the same thing another way, gratitude entails being thankful to someone and not merely grateful for something.2 Yet thanking the immediate persons in front of you won’t do: for no one is the sole product of his own making. And if you trace the line of persons to whom we should be grateful back far enough, you will bump into the Creator.
Honest agnostics have acknowledged as much. Consider, for example, the reflections of noted philosopher Karl Popper: “When I look at what I call the gift of life, I feel a gratitude which is in tune with some religious ideas of God. . . . I don’t know whether God exists or not . . . [but] I would be glad if God were to exist, to be able to concentrate my feeling of gratitude on some sort of person to whom one would be grateful.”3
The Christian knows that such an inclination makes sense in a creature made by God. It is the unconscious echo of eternity set in the heart of man (Eccl. 3:11). It is man’s disposition to give thanks without knowing the name of the One who is deserving of grateful praise. Even when they do not name him, therefore, the grateful person tacitly assumes the existence of the Creator.
Gratitude Requires the Reality of Grace
The second reason that gratitude has an essentially Christian character is found in what makes gratitude gratitude (and not some other virtue, such as humility or kindness). In technical terms, gratitude is the acknowledgment that a welcome benefactor has conferred on you a desirable gift with benevolent volition.4 In other words, an essential ingredient necessary for experiencing and expressing gratitude is the recognition that we have done nothing to deserve a gift that was freely given—and that requires the kind of grace that only the Christian God bestows.
In fact, a number of studies show that if a benefit is expected, the recipient tends not to respond with much gratitude, if any.5 In other words, the more entitled or “deserving” a person feels, the less grateful he will be.
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When we read the story of Rahab in Joshua 2, we are meant to understand that story in light of the exodus backdrop. The scarlet thread recalls the blood of the unblemished lamb. The window in Rahab’s house recalls the doorposts and lintel of an Israelite home. Impending divine judgment was true for both Exodus 12 and Joshua 2. And in both stories, the designated sign meant deliverance for those inside.

Early in the book of Joshua, a Canaanite named Rahab confessed her faith in the God of Israel to some Israelite spies (Josh. 2:8-11). She then asked that she and her household be spared the coming judgment of the conquest (2:12-13).
The spies told her, “Behold, when we come into the land, you shall tie this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and you shall gather into your house your father and mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household” (Josh. 2:18).
So Rahab did. After the men left, she tied the scarlet cord in the window (Josh. 2:21), trusting and waiting.
This scarlet cord was consistently interpreted in the early centuries of Christian interpretation as signifying the cross of the Lord Jesus (see the writings of Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine, Jerome, Clement, Irenaeus, and Ambrose).
Such an interpretation has caused no small amount of controversy for modern readers. First of all, there’s no clear prophecy in Joshua 2 to the future redemptive work of Jesus. Second, the color-connection of a “scarlet” cord and the red blood of Jesus is not a substantive correspondence. Third, no New Testament author connects the scarlet cord to the cross.
Those three points are valid but not decisive. I’m going to offer a cumulative case that argues for the scarlet cord of Rahab to be a type of Christ’s cross-work. Let’s notice how the episode with Rahab is meant to evoke the event of the exodus.
First, Rahab tells the spies, “For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt…” (Josh. 2:10).
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