Rahab, the woman spoken of in this passage, was a harlot in the city of Jericho. As the Israelites came to possess the land, her city was destined for destruction — and she along with it. But she trusted in the true God, was delivered, and her life transformed. The sign of her new-found faith was that she tied a scarlet cord in her window.

This cord represented the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it pointed toward God’s bloody sacrifice that takes away the sin of the world. In fact, all of the Bible is about Jesus Christ and His blood redemption, and you will find this scarlet thread throughout the Word of God.

C.I. Scofield says in his notes on Joshua 2:21 says, "The scarlet line of Rahab speaks, by its color, of safety through sacrifice (Hebrews 9:19, 22)." That red cord pictures a scarlet thread that runs from one end of the Bible to the other.

Adrian Rogers said, “Cut the Bible anywhere, and it will bleed. The blood of Jesus stains every page.”

In his book What the Bible Teaches, R. A. Torrey estimates that there are over 333 references to the death of Christ in the Old Testament and more than 175 in the New. Did you get that? That’s a total of over 500 scriptures about the blood, the death, the cross, the crucifixion of our Savior.

W. A. Criswell, at that time the pastor of the largest Baptist congregation, First Baptist, Dallas, said his greatest preaching experience came when New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday night December 31, 1961. Dr. Criswell said some of his godly deacons came to him and said, “Pastor, you never have time to preach. You never finish your complete sermon. Now, at the end of this year we notice that our annual watch night service comes on a Sunday. Why do you not begin at our usual time at 7:30 o’clock and preach through until midnight? We’ll stay with you and in that way you can finish your message.” His surprise was the building was packed to overflowing at the beginning and they stayed that way to the end. That night, for four-and-a-half hours Dr. Criswell preached The Scarlet Thread through the Bible, and his transcribed message is published in a 91 page book. At midnight Criswell still did not have enough time to complete his message. He hoped God would give him a planet someday, somewhere, when he could preach to his heart’s content.

F. .J Huegel was so captivated by the message of the cross in the Bible that he wrote The Cross Through the Scriptures, a 51 chapter, 192-page study of the centrality of the cross from Genesis through Revelation.

If R.A. Torrey or W. A. Criswell or F. J. Huegel, could not complete the work of the cross, then it is certain that I will not get much said that needs to be said in forty minutes.

What does the cross mean to the Bible? The cross is to the Bible what….rocks are to mountains...water is to oceans...notes are to music...a foundation is to a building...the heart is to the body.

Turn to the front of your Bible. Think with me through the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament.

1. The Old Testament Pointed toward the Cross through Prophecy.

From the very beginning of human history, the dying of the innocent for the guilty is revealed. After Adam and Eve sinned, God shed innocent blood in order to make them clothes from animal skins,

Genesis 3:21. This is a picture of the covering of righteousness that we receive through the Lord Jesus Christ death for us.

In Genesis four we read that Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. They instinctively wanted to worship God. Cain sacrificed the fruit of the ground. Abel had already learned that God demanded blood, so he brought a lamb to be sacrificed. God accepted the blood of Abel’s lamb, but He did not accept Cain’s works-centered offering. Why? Because “without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin, “Hebrews 9:22.

In Genesis 22 God told Abraham to sacrifice his long-awaited son Isaac. Just before Abraham plunged the dagger into the quivering heart of his son, an angel stopped him. Abraham saw a ram caught in a thicket. Isaac was set free, but an innocent animal’s blood was shed instead.

Then, God determined to deliver His people from slavery in the land of Egypt. On a particular night that became known as the Passover, God instructed each house to slay a lamb and put the blood on their door. God said in Exodus 12:13, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” Blood was shed and blood was applied and blood was trusted. And 1 Corinthians 5:7 declares Jesus Christ as “our Passover.”

In the tabernacle and later in the temple, thousands upon thousands of sheep, oxen, and turtle doves were killed and their blood spilt as sacrifices for sin served as giant visuals of the cross. Added to these are:

• * - The Smitten Rock in Exodus 17, whom Paul says “is Christ,” 1 Corinthians 10
  
• * - The Brazen Serpent in Numbers 21:4-9, whom Jesus would be like Him, lifted up and saving all who look to Him. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up,” John 3:1
  
• * - The scarlet cord in Joshua 2. That cord was not brown, or green, or gray, or black, but “scarlet,” the color of blood. These people fell under the protection of God’s scarlet covering.
  
• * - 1,000 years before Jesus’ birth Psalm 22 presented an incredibly vivid picture of the sufferings of Messiah on the cross. There are 15 quotations or allusions to this Psalm in the New Testament, leading some to call it “the fifth gospel.” Look at all the “cross” words and truths from this Psalm. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, v. 1… “All they that see me laugh me to scorn, v. 7…“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like waxl it is melted in the midst of my bowels,” v. 14… “They pierced by hands and my feet,” v. 16… “I may tell (count) all my bones: they look and star upon me,” v. 17… “They art my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture,” v. 18… “Save me from the lion’s mouth,” v. 21a.
  
• * - F. J. Huegel calls Isaiah 53 “the Mt. Everest of Hope.” H. I. Hester says of this chapter that its prophecies are “so vivid in detail that one would almost think Isaiah as standing at the foot of the cross.”Isaiah’s prophecy of Jesus death was 700 years before Christ was born.
  
• * - Daniel 9:25-26 predicted Messiah would be “cut off,” pointing to Messiah’s death.
  
• * - Zechariah 12:10 says, “They shall look on me whom they have pierced.” 13:6 says he would be “wounded in the house of my friends” and verse 7 that He would be the “smitten shepherd.” Zechariah 13:1 “A fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness.”

WHAT THE CROSS MEANS TO THE BIBLE: REVELATION

The foretold blood and sacrifice and cross of our Savior is throughout all of the Old Testament.

Someone might ask, “Aren’t you stretching the truth to say that Christ’s death, His sacrifice, His cross are in the Old Testament?”

Allow me to point you to what Jesus Himself said. Turn to Luke 24:25-27. This was after Jesus death and resurrection to two of His disciples. “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”