Finishing Well

Finishing Well

Joshua 14:6–15

Bottom Line: People who finish well wholly follow the Lord, no matter what.

Introduction

Several years ago in ministry, I really felt that I was reaching a point of burnout. It had just been a difficult time. As you recall, COVID was not easy. I had some personal health problems during that same time. And in the two years of 2020 and 2021, I officiated 52 funerals. Ninety-nine percent of those people were people I knew and loved — members of my church and several family members. It was just a difficult time.

And I had a pastor friend pull me aside — because I was in a cohort of pastors that would meet once a month for encouragement, for accountability — and he said, “Ricky, I know you know this. I’ve heard you say it, but I’m going to preach to the preacher. The Christian life is a marathon. It is not a sprint.”

It was his way of reminding me that we can only go all out for a certain period of time before we burn out. But God has us in this for the long haul. Ministry is a marathon. Living for Christ is a marathon. It is not a sprint. In a sprint, you can have a burst of energy and begin well. But if you don’t manage your health and your time, you won’t finish well. And ours is the gospel not only of a good beginning, but of a good finish.

And I needed to hear that. I needed to be reminded of that. Because as a pastor, I want to finish well. Whatever that looks like, whatever that means for the Lord — I want to live for him, sold out to him, and one day hear him say, “Well done.” But I know many pastor friends who have not finished well. Either they’ve burned out and gotten out of the ministry, or they’ve gone through church hurt — which, as you all know, church hurt is a real thing. And it can lead you to the point where you say, “I just give up. I don’t give up on God. I just give up on being a part of that.” And I have pastor friends who have not finished well morally.

And I appreciated my friend saying, “You need to learn to finish well. You’ve got to stay focused now so you can finish well.”

And it’s not just ministers, is it? It’s all of us. We can begin things well. We begin our New Year’s resolutions well. We start things well. We can start a new job well. We can move into a new community and things go well. We can become a part of the church and we’re on fire for the Lord in the beginning. But if we’re not careful, life takes over and we lose our passion. We lose our focus and there are competing agendas for our time and our energy and our money and our affections. And before we know it, we’re no longer living fully for the Lord. We’ve been sidelined.

I don’t want that for me. I don’t want that for you. I want us to live our lives in such a way that we all hear Jesus say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the joys of your Lord. You’ve been faithful over these little things, but I’m going to bless you with even more.” I want that for me. I want that for you. I want that for our church.

I see churches that began well. They began on fire for the Lord. They had a clear mission: we’re going to reach the lost, share the gospel, disciple believers. But then they become more sold out to their preferences than to the Lord. And they would rather die than change. They started well, but they’re not finishing well.

I love it here in the book of Joshua chapter 14 that we meet a man named Caleb. He’s an old man at this point, a friend of Joshua, and he’s finishing well. And there are three lessons we can learn from him about people who finish well. I want to point those out to you today.

So let’s begin by reading Joshua 14:6–15 from the English Standard Version, and then we’ll come back and walk through these verses together.

“Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, ‘You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me. 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 him back word as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the LORD my God. And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the LORD my God.’ And now, behold, the LORD has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the LORD spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which the LORD spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the LORD will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the LORD said.’ Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he wholly followed the LORD, the God of Israel. Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba. Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim. And the land had rest from war.” (Joshua 14:6–15)

So you get the scene. The children of Israel have basically conquered the Promised Land. There are still battles to be won, still territory to be controlled, but basically the war has been won. God has given the people of Israel the Promised Land, as he had prophesied some four hundred years earlier to father Abraham. And it’s time now for Joshua, the leader of the Hebrew people, to begin allocating the land to the twelve tribes of Israel.

And so we’ve got Caleb, who is of the tribe of Judah, coming to Joshua and saying, “Let’s remember what God promised through Moses four decades ago — for me and for my descendants.” And so he begins to rehearse in his conversation with Joshua how forty-five years earlier, when they had come to the edge of the Promised Land for the first time, Moses sent twelve spies into the land. One man from each tribe. Caleb was one of those spies. Joshua was one of those spies.

And he said, “We went into the land and it was like God had promised. It was a fertile and bountiful land, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as God had promised. We can live here and we can prosper here.”

But when the committee came back — they must have been Baptist, because it’s like a committee coming back to bring their report — ten of the twelve said, “Yeah, it’s definitely fertile ground, but there are fortified cities. We’re going to be up against cities prepared for a siege that we are not prepared to fight. And there are giants in the land. A group of people named the Anakim. Evidently a larger, warlike people. They’ll later become known as the Philistines — remember Goliath? He’s from this group. And they’re saying, ‘We’re like grasshoppers compared to the Anakim. We cannot do this.’”

So ten of the twelve give a negative report. Can’t happen. But Joshua and Caleb give the minority report: “All of that is true, but our God is bigger. Let us not lose faith in God. We can do this.” And the more Joshua and Caleb tried to convince the people to trust God, the more angry the people became. The ten had sowed seeds of fear into the hearts of the Hebrew people to the point that they were ready, according to Numbers 14, to stone Joshua and Caleb to death. That’s how angry they were that these two men were saying, “Let’s follow the Lord.”

Moses becomes angry. The Lord is angry. The Lord says that unbelieving generation will die in the wilderness. They will not go into the Promised Land — except Joshua and Caleb. A new generation will rise up, and then God will take his people into the Promised Land.

And God said through Moses, “But you, Caleb of the tribe of Judah — all that land that your foot trod upon, I’m going to give that to you and to your family and your descendants. The very land where the giants lived, I’m going to give that to you. The hill country, I’m going to give that to you. Where some of those fortified cities are, I’m going to give that to you — because you have wholly followed me, the Lord your God.”

And so now, forty-five years later — forty years wandering in the wilderness, and then a five-year battle campaign to take the land — now that they’ve conquered it by and large, Caleb has come to collect. He says, “It is now time for me to receive what God promised.”

Let me give you three truths about those who finish well, like this 85-year-old man named Caleb.

Point One: People Who Finish Well Stay Loyal to God, Even When It Costs Them

Joshua 14:7–9

Caleb certainly had sold out his heart to the Lord forty-five years earlier. That’s why he had faith that God could give them this land. But he lived in the midst of a people of unbelief. And because of their unbelief, Caleb had to suffer alongside of them.

He’s suffering alongside people who were not strangers to him. He had known these people all of his life. Many of them were friends, fellow leaders in Israel. But now he’s watched them turn on him only because he’s trying to live for the Lord with all of his heart. They’re trying to kill this man. That’s what it’s costing him — friendships. It could even cost him his life. But he will not retreat, because he has wholly followed the Lord.

In the Hebrew, that is a word picture. To wholly follow, to completely follow — it is a picture of a cup that is filled to the brim. There’s no more room for any more wine to be poured into that cup. It will just overflow. It is fully devoted to what is inside of it. And that is what it means for Caleb to be wholly following the Lord. There are no rivals in his life for the Lord. There’s no more room in his life for anything or anyone but the Lord. He’s living for the Lord.

I wonder if anybody in this room would say, like me, “I struggle daily to be wholly devoted to the Lord.” Now, some moments I’ve got it down. I’ve preached a sermon and then Monday rolls around, right? Have you ever been there? You know what I mean. Just living for the Lord and then you get to work and your faith is tested. And in that moment you have to decide — will I follow the Lord even if it costs me something, or will I compromise and go along with the crowd?

Will I be the one at the water cooler who refuses to laugh at that racist joke because it’s demeaning to another group of people created in the image of God? Will I be the one in the boardroom saying we cannot sign this deal — it is unethical? Will you be the one at school saying, “I will not cheat just to get a good grade. I know everybody else is doing it, but I’m not going to.” Will you be that one on the date who puts up boundaries of what you will and will not do as a follower of Jesus — sexually until marriage? Well, that’s countercultural in our day.

Sometimes living for the Lord is going to cost you something.

Caleb had to suffer for forty-plus years, but he kept his eyes on the Lord the whole time. He’s now 85 years old. Now, maybe you’re thinking, “Well, I don’t really need this sermon. I’m still young, and when I get older, I’ll get serious about my faith in Jesus.” But don’t you get it? Caleb wasn’t always old, and you won’t always be young. Caleb made this decision decades earlier — when he was a young man — to sell out his soul to the Lord. That became the direction of his life.

Are you making excuses for why you’re not wholly following the Lord? “Well, as soon as I get out of high school and go to college, I’ll live for the Lord.” Good luck with that if you haven’t made up your mind by then. Or, “When I’m graduating from college and starting my career, man, I’m really going to get serious about the Lord. I’ll get back in church.” But then you’ll say, “Well, once I’m married, me and my spouse will get serious about the Lord. But until then, I’m just going to live life.” And then you get married and start having children. “Well, we’re busy. When we get these kids grown, we’ll live for the Lord. When they move out, man, we’re going to get really serious about Jesus.” “Well, I really need to wait until I’m retired. Then I’ll live for the Lord.” Do you see a pattern?

What was the answer Jesus gave when he was asked in Matthew’s gospel, “What’s the greatest commandment in the Old Testament?” The Pharisees tried to trap Jesus in a trick question, get him involved in a heated theological debate. They asked him this to test him. What’s the greatest commandment in the Old Testament? They hoped that whatever he would say would be controversial. They don’t realize he’s the one who wrote the textbook. So he quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” In other words — wholly follow the Lord. Love him with all you’ve got. Love him supremely. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19:18.

So Jesus is saying, there can be no rivals in your life for loyalty to God. But when you live for him, it’s going to cost you something. That is why Jesus said — and this is not only an invitation from Jesus, this is a warning from Jesus — in Luke chapter 9: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

Jesus says, “You want to be my disciple? You can’t be a disciple of mine and stay loyal to yourself or someone else. You’ve got to sell out to me. Die to yourself. Die to your plan. Die to your pleasure. Die to your priorities and come alive to mine. For in dying, you find life.” And you’ve got to do it daily. It’s a daily decision. And Caleb, all of his life, had been devoted to the Lord — not because it was a one-and-done deal, but because every day he had to make that commitment: I’m going to be wholly dedicated to the Lord.

That’s Point One. People who finish well stay loyal to God, even when it costs them.

Point Two: People Who Finish Well Stand on God’s Promises

Joshua 14:9–12

Go back to Joshua chapter 14. Look at verse 9. Caleb is reminding Joshua that forty-five years earlier, Moses swore on that day — in other words, the day that Caleb brought a good report — “Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.” In other words, God made a promise and I’m standing on that promise.

Caleb says, “And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive just as he said — these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses.” And he goes on in verses 10 and 11 and again in verse 12: “So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day.” Five times from verses 6 to 12, Caleb is reminding Joshua of what the Lord said, of what the Lord promised — the Lord said to Moses, the Lord spoke this word, of which the Lord spoke, just as the Lord said.

If Caleb had a Baptist hymnal, he’d be singing right about now, “Standing on the Promises of Christ my King.” Because that’s exactly what he’s doing. He is claiming the word of God. He has based his life on the promise of God. The foundation of his faith is that God is a promise-keeping God. Circumstances change, public opinion changes, culture changes, what people say is right and wrong changes. But God’s word never does. And he is living by the promise.

Now, I’m going to give you a little key that will make you a better Bible student. Sometimes we want to read the Bible and just name it and claim it. We want to take a promise out of its context and make it our own when it’s not really ours. There’s a danger in that. You’ve probably heard the phrase — name it and claim it, or as one preacher said, blab it and grab it. But you can’t treat Scripture like that. You can’t take verses out of their historical, grammatical, literary, and theological context. Context is king.

Whenever you’re reading a verse of Scripture, some of our health-and-wealth prosperity preachers want to take promises that God made to Israel under the theocracy in the land of Israel — the Promised Land — and apply those same promises to you so that you’ll give them a little more money and they’ll promise you riches. And they’re taking Scripture out of context. And if we’re not careful, we’ll try to take Caleb’s promise and claim it for ourselves. But you can’t get on a plane and fly to Israel and claim this mountain. The government of Israel will have a problem with that.

You cannot claim Caleb’s land, but you can claim his Lord. You can’t claim his ground, but you can claim his God — because he’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. He’s still a promise-keeping God. He’s made promises to you in the word of God that you need to know, trust, and live by. Even if it’s decades and you don’t see the promise fulfilled, you need to claim them.

So, one of the things you can do when you’re reading Scripture is ask yourself some questions. Who is speaking this promise and to whom is it being spoken? Some of the promises are to Moses or to David or to Solomon, and it’s to a certain group of people in a specific context. Or is this a promise that all believers can claim as their own? Psalm 23 — “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” That’s a promise I can claim. That’s a promise you can claim because it’s not only issued in the Old Testament — it’s reiterated in the New Testament.

What kind of promise is this? Is it tied to a specific historical event or coming event? Or is it rooted in the character of God that we can all then claim? And does the New Testament apply that Old Testament promise to believers in the New Testament? That’s your strongest indication it’s a promise for you to claim.

There are some promises that are dear to my heart in God’s word.

Promises about God’s presence: Hebrews 13:5 — “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

God’s provision in my life: Philippians 4:19 — “And my God shall supply your every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Not my greeds — my needs.

God’s strength: Philippians 4:13 — “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Or Philippians 4:7 — that when I bring everything to God in prayer without worry, the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard my heart and mind through Christ Jesus our Lord.

And one I love — 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Aren’t you grateful for that one?

And the promise of God’s love in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world.” The promise in Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The promise of Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live — yet not I, but the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Friend, why do you think you need to know God’s word? So that you can claim these promises during the times that are difficult. You can know that he is a promise-keeping God. Now, I won’t tell you that’ll always be easy. But like Caleb, every day just get up and say, “Today, I want to wholly follow the Lord.”

That’s Point Two. People who finish well stand on God’s promises.

Point Three: People Who Finish Well Still Want the Hard Assignment

Joshua 14:12–15

People who finish well still want the hard assignment. They don’t start coasting. They don’t retire from living for Jesus. They may retire from their vocation, but they don’t retire from living for Jesus. They don’t let their foot off the accelerator of faith. They don’t believe their best days are behind them. They still claim the hard task. They want to see God work in a big way, in a mighty way.

And that’s what Caleb does. Back to chapter 14, verse 12. Caleb is 85 years old. He would be excused if he said, “I’m 85. Give me that flat country right over there. No stairs, no steps, no hills.” When Donna and I moved here, we found a house — it was a little smaller than what we wanted, but it was all we could afford. Thank you very much. Housing was expensive up here. But what we loved about it — no stairs in or out, front or back. I said, “We can get old here, honey. We can get old here.”

Nobody would have blamed Caleb for saying, “Give me that easy area that’s already conquered, where there are no enemies, no giants, no fortified cities.” But that’s not what he asked for. This 85-year-old said, “Give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke on that day. I want what God said would be mine. Even though it’s not going to be easy, I still want it.” He says, “For you heard on that day how the Anakim were there. Give me that mountain with great fortified cities. Give me that mountain.” And then in his humility and dependence on the Lord, he says, “It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”

The Anakim — those massive, mighty warriors that sent ten spies running back in fear of their lives forty-five years earlier. That city. Those giants. That mountain. I want it.

Caleb — Joshua must have been amazed at Caleb’s faith. Because verse 13 says, “Then Joshua blessed him and gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance.”

What would make an 85-year-old man want the hardest assignment available? Only faith in his God — that the Lord will keep his promise. He says, “I’m old. I’m 85. But I’m still as strong as I was when I was young.” Now, you may read that and say, “Yeah, I’ve been around those kind of old guys. Okay, Pops. We hear you.” But Caleb was serious. He had a supernatural strength that went beyond the usual 85-year-old.

Now, we all know getting older takes its toll. I used to watch my dad — and my mom — reading stuff like this. And now I’m doing it. I’m thinking they don’t make menus large enough in restaurants anymore. I don’t know why the lights are so dim. So I’m out with my phone trying to read the menu. I’m just getting older. That’s all that is. I’m not saying — and the Bible’s not saying — that if you’re experiencing frailty, you must not be living for the Lord. No, no, no. That’s not the point here. God gave Caleb the strength Caleb needed for the battles God had for him. And God will give you the strength you need for the battles he has for you.

Pastor Dayton Cannon was the founding pastor of Gateway Baptist Church in Valdosta, Georgia — the second church I had the privilege of serving as pastor. Got to know him later in his life. He was also dying of cancer. His wife had already passed — I had done her funeral. He was once in the Lake City V.A. hospital. So I drove to see him. I made the special trip because I’d been given word from a mutual friend that his body, racked with cancer, was so brittle that his leg broke just as they were moving him in his bed. That’s how fragile his bones were. And he was in excruciating pain.

So I went to his hospital room, and I remember opening the door. There was another patient there who showed me things I didn’t need to see. So I prayed for him — didn’t lay hands on him (LOL)— and went to Dr. Cannon on the other side of the curtain. He was in a lot of pain. His leg was broken. But the first thing Dr. Cannon said was, “Pastor, I hope you brought the church prayer list. I don’t have anything else to do but pray. And I want to pray for our church family.” I’m thinking, I don’t know if I’d have been thinking about that if I’d been in his place. But that man had the strength he needed for the task God had for him. He may not have been able to do all the things he used to do, but he knew at this point in his life he was strong in faith, hope, and love — and he could pray. He wanted the hard assignment. He wanted the hard assignment.

And Caleb wanted the hard assignment.

And so Joshua says, “It’s yours.” He gave it to him. And I almost didn’t read this, but look at verse 15 again: “Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba. Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim.” And you go, “Okay, who cares? Just keep moving. Why do we need to know this detail?”

Because Hebron — the city Caleb wanted, the city that Joshua gave him because God promised it to him — was the city known by everybody as the namesake of the greatest giant the Anakim ever produced. It’d be like saying, “And that city used to be named Muhammad Ali.” “Well, give me that one. I’ll take that one.” And Caleb goes and takes that hill — and the land had rest from war.

And the rest of the book of Joshua is about the rest of the people of God in the Promised Land of God — all because an 85-year-old man said, “Give me the hard assignment.”

Now here’s what I’m going to say. Senior adults — we need you. We need your faith, your hope, your love. You may not be able to do all the things you used to do, but God is not finished with you. As long as there is breath in your body — you may only be able to lay in a hospital bed and intercede on behalf of the people of God and your own family and the lost and our missionaries — but there is more power on your knees than most people have on their two feet. Thank you for inspiring us.

At our vacation Bible school, we had two guys in their nineties counting the money every night — all the pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters. It looked like a bad poker game going on in the corner. But aren’t you grateful for a church where men say, “I want to be involved”? Ninety-some-year-olds working in our kitchen. Senior adults being team leaders and crew leaders for our kids in vacation Bible school. You are an inspiration to us. The way you finish well inspires us.

But I’m going to say something to the younger ones in this room. I’ll let you define the word “younger.” Caleb did not wait until he was an old man to wholly devote his life to the Lord. He made it early. And he made it daily. And I’m going to challenge you. I don’t know what your past is. I don’t know if you have regrets — like I have — of not serving the Lord in more ways than I could have. But today you can say, “I’m coming back to the Lord. I want to wholly follow the Lord.”

And then you need to confess that you cannot do it in your own strength. The only way we can ever follow the Lord is in the strength that he gives us. As New Testament believers, we have the indwelling person of the Holy Spirit. The third person of the Trinity lives in you. The resurrection life of Jesus lives in you. And every day, we don’t have to get up in our own strength and just muscle our way through. No. We get up every day and just yield. Holy Spirit, I give up. Live through me. Love through me. Work through me. I cannot do this. Fill me with your Spirit. Fill me to the brim. And because I leak, you’re going to have to do it again and again and again. But I want to be yielded to you wholly.

People who finish well wholly follow the Lord, no matter what.

Gospel Invitation

I don’t ever want to leave a message like this with us thinking about ourselves and making Caleb the supreme example. No. Pastor Dayton Cannon. No. There’s only one that we should leave this place with our eyes on — and his name is Jesus.

You want to point to one who stayed loyal to God no matter what? You want to point to one who stood on the promises of God, went to a bloody cross and a tomb, knowing that his Father had promised, “You will not let me see corruption”? (Psalm 16:10) And you want to see one like Caleb who said, “Give me the hard assignment — I will die on a bloody cross for the world”? The supreme example is Jesus.

Keep your eyes on him. And just let him — and his faith in his Father — be yours. There’s an old song I haven’t heard in years. I think Jimmy Swaggart used to sing it. “Jesus, Be Jesus in Me.” That’s not a bad prayer.

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for this reminder through Caleb of what it looks like to wholly follow the Lord. We know that he wasn’t perfect. None of us are perfect. But the direction, the dedication of his heart was to wake up every day and follow you, to trust you no matter what. To stand on your promises no matter when. And to take the hard assignments, knowing that it was your strength that had sustained him, and it would be your strength that would lead him through.

And Father, we thank you for Jesus our Savior, who gives us the supreme, perfect example of what it means to wholly follow God. For those of us who have trusted Christ as Savior, let him live his life through us. Like Paul said in Galatians 2:20 — “I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live — yet not I. The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Jesus, we want to leave here today living by faith in you. This life which we now live in the flesh, we dedicate wholly to you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving yourself up on the cross for us. Thank you for your Holy Spirit, the presence of God who lives in us. Jesus, be Jesus in me.

Father, if there’s someone in this room who has never received Christ as Savior, may this be the day that they turn from their sin and believe in him and experience his promise. The thief — the devil — has come to steal, to kill, and to destroy. But I have come that you may have life, and life more abundantly. Father, I pray that someone here today, by the power of your Holy Spirit, would be driven to their knees in faith in Jesus. The devil’s taken enough from me — I want the life, the abundant life that Jesus promises.

And thank you that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. In his name we pray. Amen.