Meanwhile, Back at the Batcave — God's Been Working Where You Can't See

Central Image

"Meanwhile, back at the Batcave" — the parallel scene from the old Batman show that the characters on screen have no access to; Toby used it to frame 40 years of God working on Rahab's heart in Canaan while Israel was still camped on the wrong side of the Jordan.

The Turn

The assumption: the conquest depends on Israel's courage, their intelligence work, and what they can scout and secure. What Joshua 2 reveals: the most important thing that happened wasn't in the spies' report — it was a pagan woman's 40-year conversion that God had been building while nobody in Israel suspected it was possible.

Outline

The meanwhile setup

Toby opened with the Batman rerun framing — the meanwhile happening in a scene you're not in, where things are already going in a direction the main characters don't know about. He named the theme directly: God has a meanwhile, and this text is it. Joshua 2 is a flashback — logically it had to happen before chapter 1 closes, but the book tells it second because it wanted the hype first.

Geography and why Jericho

Israel is camped at Shittim, eight and a half miles across the Jordan from Jericho. Joshua sends two men in secret — nobody else knows. The reason for Jericho first isn't just that it's the closest city. Jericho controlled a major water source, and you can't move a nation and an army without water. This is logistics before tactics. The men can pass locally because the languages in the region were mutually intelligible — close enough to navigate. They lodge at Rahab's house, which was a normal combination of inn and prostitution in the Bronze Age; nothing about it was remarkable.

Rahab had already decided

When the king's men come knocking, a first-time reader might expect her to hand the spies over. What the text reveals is that she already had them on the roof under the drying flax before anyone knocked — she'd made her call before the knock. She sends the king's men on a false trail toward the Jordan. Toby stopped to address the commentary tradition that frets over Rahab's lie: it's wrong-headed, and the two spies who spent the last week impersonating locals and deceiving everyone they met never get a footnote about it.

What God was doing for 40 years

While Israel spent 40 years afraid to cross the river, God was on the other side doing something nobody saw. All 31 kings in Canaan had been vassal kings under Pharaoh. Pharaoh is gone, Egypt went dark, the red phone doesn't answer. For 40 years those kings have been watching and wondering. Rahab names it all with precision: the Red Sea, Sihon and Og, the herem — the specific Hebrew term for the ban that Israel uses when they devote someone to death. She knows the divine name. She says it the way Moses said it: Yahweh, your God, is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. She didn't come to faith when the spies showed up. She'd been getting there for four decades while Israel was wandering and no one in Israel had any idea.

The genealogy no one saw coming

The two young men had no idea where they'd been led. Rahab was rescued, became part of Israel, and married a Jewish man named Salmon. Salmon and Rahab had Boaz. Boaz had Obed. Obed had Jesse. Jesse had David. David's line ran forward through centuries to Joseph and Jesus. Rahab is the twentieth great-grandmother of the Messiah. God wasn't just preparing her to save two spies. He was building a lineage. The characters in the show only ever see their own scene — they can't see what's running meanwhile in the other one.

The call to step into the meantime

Toby called the congregation to take one concrete step into God's meanwhile: blesseveryhome.com, or a handwritten list of six to twelve neighbors with a daily phone reminder to pray for a few of them. Not to have a script ready, not to get trained up. Just to pray for the people around them by name and trust that God opens the doors he wants walked through. He told the story of the neighbor lady who brought a folding chair and watched Rich and Peggy unload their moving truck — should have brought lemonade. Being a little weird is fine if it's warm. The point is to be available to a scene God is already running, not to start one yourself.

The Landing

The houses around you may already have Rahabs in them — people God has been working on for years that nobody in the church would guess. The ask is to pray for your neighbors by name and stay available to whatever door God opens.

1. Toby opened with the Batman "meanwhile" — the idea that something's happening in another scene you're not in, going a direction you don't know about. Has there been a moment in your own life where you found out later that God had been doing something on the other side while you had no clue?
2. Rahab tells the spies the Red Sea, Sihon and Og, the herem — the right word, the right name. She even calls him Yahweh. Where did all of that come from, and what does the text tell us about how long that had been building in her?
3. The spies go in looking for troop counts and wall heights. What they come back reporting is essentially what Rahab said to them. What does that tell you about what the mission actually turned out to be?
4. Israel spent 40 years afraid to cross the river, and God spent those same 40 years at work on the other side. Where in your own life are you camped on the east bank right now — circling something you haven't crossed yet?
5. Toby said there are probably people around us we've already quietly given up on. Is there someone specific who comes to mind — someone you've written off?
6. Rahab came to that confession in total isolation — no community, no teacher, nobody walking alongside her, just 40 years of hearing and watching and working it out alone. What does that say about who can actually come to faith, and what are we assuming has to be in place first?
7. Toby pulled up a map of houses around us and asked where Rahab's house is — because he couldn't tell, but he was sure it was there. What would it take for us as a church to actually operate like we believe that?
8. Before you go to sleep tonight, write down six to twelve neighbors by name, set a daily phone reminder, and start praying for three or four of them every day this week — that's the specific ask Toby made.