Unsung Heroes Pt 7 Caleb

God saves us, and promises us that we can have a life of victory and intense spiritual joy, but rather than claim what is rightfully ours - things like peace, joy, fellowship, power, and the glory of God, many Christians choose to live in a spiritual wilderness, defeated and depressed.

Many Christians window-shop as they browse God’s Word, but they never purchase anything to make it their own.

They just look!

Now nothing is wrong with window-shopping!

Women do it all the time.

Men normally don't like it.

One man said to his wife - "Why do you call it shopping? You never buy anything."

She replied - Well, why do you call it fishing? You never catch anything!"

As Christians, we need to do more than window-shop with God's promises, we need to appropriate them.

Today, I want us to see what enabled this 85-year-old man to possess that which God had promised him so many years before.

Caleb pictures the Christian who is willing to pay the price, fight the battles and win the victory that God has waiting for him.

In the verses we just read, we see how we too can claim our little part of Canaan and walk in victory day by day!

So let’s allow this unsung hero, Caleb, to speak to us today:

He is The Old Man With a Young Dream.

First, we have:

I. CALEB'S COMMITMENT

Now the first key to Caleb success was that God had all of Caleb that there was to have!

Note the repeated phrase Caleb, "Wholly followed the Lord."

This is said about him 6 times in the Old Testament.

Interestingly, “Wholly followed the Lord” is a phrase that means "To close the gap."

It is a phrase used by hunters to refer to their closing the gap between themselves and their prey.

It refers to the fact that Caleb was committed to keeping the distance between himself and the Lord as short as possible.

Every inch, every ounce, every nerve, every fiber of Caleb belonged to God.

Now you may think that because you are not a preacher or elder, or deacon or SS teacher, God doesn't expect to have all of you.

Wrong! God deserves your all!

If you are saved, you are all His anyway - “You are bought with a price,” wrote Paul, “therefore, glorify God in your body and in your life” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

ILLUS: “When Julius Caesar landed on the shores of Britain with his Roman legions, he took a bold and decisive step to ensure the success of his military venture.

Ordering his men to halt on the edge of the Cliffs of Dover, he commanded them to look down at the water below.

To their amazement, they saw every ship in which they had crossed the channel was engulfed in flames.

Caesar had deliberately cut off any possibility of retreat!

Now that his soldiers were unable to return to the continent, there was nothing left for them to do but to advance and conquer!

Too many Christians have left themselves an escape hatch back into the old life of sin.

NEWS FLASH: God has burned every bridge that leads back to the old life.

The Red Sea separating us from Egypt has closed through the waters of Baptism.

All that remains is to set our minds on the task of conquering our Canaan.

FACT: There is only one way to stand up against the devil and the hordes of hell and that's to be totally surrendered to Jesus.

The man who kneels before God can stand before anybody or anything.

If you, like Caleb, will close the gap between yourself and Him.

If you will pursue God with every fiber of your being, He will do the same toward you.

“Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world” (James 4:8).

So first we see Caleb's Commitment;

Next, we see:

II. CALEB'S CONFIDENCE

What was it that gave 85 year old Caleb the idea he could be a giant killer?

It was his confidence was in God's word.

In Deuteronomy 1 we find Moses addressing God’s people about their complaining. He says:

Deut.1:34-36, "And the Lord heard the sound of your words, and was angry, and took an oath, saying, 35 ‘Surely not one of these men of this evil generation shall see that good land of which I swore to give to your fathers, 36 except Caleb…he shall see it, and to him and his children I am giving the land on which he walked, because he wholly followed the Lord.’

Caleb had heard God “swear by His own name” that He would give Israel the Promised Land, and he made the promise his own.

As an 85 year old man he had seen the Promised Land, and for 45 years that vision had burned in his heart as he wandered through the wilderness!

TRUTH: His vision of what was coming sustained him through the difficulty of what was.

While others complained, Caleb focused on a mountain where milk and honey flowed and where the giant grapes grew.

He was able to see beyond his circumstances by fixing his focus on the promises of the Lord.

I can see Caleb now climbing that mountain with a sword in one hand and a Promise deed in the other while singing to the top of his lungs,

"I want that mountain! I want that mountain! Where the milk and honey flow, where the grapes of Eschol grow.

I want that mountain! I want that mountain!

The mountain that the Lord has given me!"

Caleb knew God had given it to him so he claimed it.

His actions show us what faith really is:

Faith is not positive thinking.

Faith is not mere optimism.

Faith is not looking on the bright side.

Faith is simply acting on what God says.

Faith is never a blind leap into the unknown; it is a deep settled conviction that God will do what He has promised!

So we have Caleb's Commitment and Caleb’s Confidence.

Next we see:

III. CALEB'S COURAGE

Commitment led to confidence - confidence gave birth to courage.

Caleb needed courage to overcome 3 GREAT OBSTACLES in his quest for his Canaan.

FIRST, He had to overcome NEGATIVE PEOPLE saying negative things:

Ten of the twelve spies sent by Moses to spy out the land came back with a negative report:

Num. 13:33 “There we saw the giants; and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

The result was catastrophic:

Joshua 2:11 “And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone…”

It wasn’t that there weren’t giants. There were.

What Caleb had to overcome was the message that God’s people couldn’t win.

For Caleb to claim what God had promised he had to courageously go against the majority.

In any venture of faith, the “Cants” and the “Can-nots” always show up.

There will always be someone saying that “it can't be done, it's never been done like that before, we can't afford it.”

Sometimes you will stand alone, but if you are standing on the Word of God in the will of God, then you were never in better company!

Secondly, He had to overcome the literal GIANTS.

But Caleb had an incredible perspective on the giants they faced:

Num. 14:8-9 “Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the giants of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.”

All of us have giants in our lives…

Giants of discouragement, finances, sickness, family, distress, doubt…and the truth is - we can't defeat them ourselves.

We have 2 options:

We can say look how small we are compared to those giants.

This is the OUTLOOK OF FEAR!

Or look how small those giants are compared to God!

This is the UPLOOK OF FAITH!

God told His people that “the Giants are your bread.”

Caleb overcame NEGATIVE PEOPLE, and he overcame LITERAL GIANTS.

And THIRDLY, he courageously overcame OLD AGE…

Caleb told Joshua:

Josh. 14:7;10-11 “I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought back word to him as it was in my heart.”

“…and now, here I am this day, eighty-five years old.”

“As yet I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me; just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in.”

“Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day;”

Caleb here is an old man with a young dream.

He has never allowed the burning dream God gave him to burn out in the face of life’s harsh realities.

As he stands before Joshua in his twilight years he still has overcoming, giant-killing, courageous faith!

FACT: Never count God, or yourself out.

If God says you can, you can; no matter the circumstances.

We’ve seen Caleb's Commitment, Caleb's Confidence, Caleb's Courage, and finally we see CALEB'S CONQUEST:

Caleb finally experiences what God had promised!

He climbed the mountain and defeated the giants - he claimed his possession.

The name of the place Caleb inherited was named Hebron, which means “fellowship.”

Caleb refused to quit until he had obtained all of his inheritance and dwelt in that special place of fellowship with God.

Caleb, the unsung hero of the Conquest of Canaan, teaches us the power of COMMITMENT, CONFIDENCE, COURAGE, AND CONQUEST.

Folks, that ought to be our battle cry today!

We ought to refuse to give up, back up, or shut up, or be held up, until we have…

…stood up, lined up, read up, prayed up, confessed up, stored up, spoke up, looked up, and filled up on everything the Lord wants to give His children!

We ought to settle for nothing less than that place of rich fellowship with the Lord our God in the Canaan Land of Spirit-filled living!

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