Well do keep your Bibles in hand and turn in them with me now please to the book of Joshua, chapter 14; page 189 in the church Bibles. Last week we began a new section of the book of Joshua. Chapters 1 through 4, remember, are about crossing the Jordan. Chapters 5 through 12 are about conquering Canaan. And now this section, beginning in chapter 13 and running all the way through chapter 21, are about claiming the inheritance. Claiming the inheritance. After reminding us that there is still very much land to possess, chapter 13, which begins this whole new section of the book, started out actually by surveying the land that had already been divided up as an inheritance for the two and a half tribes who had settled on the eastern shore of the Jordan. This was the land, remember, of the Amorite kings, Sihon and Og, that the Israelites had conquered even before they crossed the Jordan and entered into the land of Canaan proper.
And now here today in chapter 14, the assignment of new land as an inheritance for the other nine and a half tribes, finally begins in earnest. If you’ll look at the passage with me for a moment you’ll see the first five verses form a sort of brief, introductory summary of the material that will follow in the rest of this whole section of Joshua. And then in the remainder of the chapter, the narrator zooms in on one single individual. He focuses on Caleb and on the inheritance that Caleb claims. You will remember something of the story of Caleb, I’m sure. He was, along with Joshua himself, one of only two of the whole group of spies that Moses had sent across the Jordan into Canaan forty-five years earlier to investigate the land who came back with a positive report and urged Israel to invade and take possession of Canaan. The rest of the spies were afraid of the Anakim, those mighty warriors who dwelt in the land. And in the event the Israelites listened to the fearful spies and not to Joshua and Caleb, they disobeyed the Lord, refused to cross the Jordan, and spend the next forty years wandering in the wilderness.
And so now here we are, forty-five years later, Joshua and Caleb are the only two who believe God’s promise, the only ones left from that original generation to have survived the wilderness wanderings. Here is old Caleb. He tells us he is eighty-five years of age at this point and he is determined to inherit the land that had been promised to him. Before anyone else receives their allotment, before a single plot of land is assigned to any of the tribes west of the Jordan, the narrator pauses to focus in on Caleb because Caleb is being offered to us here as an example of faith taking hold of the promised inheritance. Here is an example of faith taking hold of the promises of God. Caleb has a lot to teach us. We are going to consider the material in Joshua 14 in six, I promise you six, very short sections. As you know, I am afflicted with a tragic compulsion to alliterate and so as I give you these headings, please forgive my ridiculous, pathological need to make the morphology match.
Okay, so first, in the opening five verses, we need to notice what I am going to call dreary devotion. Dreary devotion. It’s not an exciting beginning but it does emphasize the basic pattern of everyday, careful obedience expected of the people of God. Dreary devotion. Then in the main body of the chapter, we’ll look first of all at Caleb’s feisty faith. He stands four-square on the words of Moses and claims what was promised to him. Feisty faith. And then verses 8 and 9 and again in verse 14, Caleb’s complete commitment. It’s not just that Caleb follows the Lord. He says he wholly follows the Lord. Complete commitment. Then fourthly, Caleb’s sustained strength, or rather he tells us he is eighty-five years old and the Lord has sustained him through all these years so he is still as determined as ever to fight the Lord’s battles. Sustained strength. Then fifthly, verse 12, we need to take some notice of Caleb’s eager expectation. Eager expectation. He thinks about the prospect of driving out the Anakim with a great deal of relish and eagerness. Eager expectation. And then finally, verses 13 through 15, we’ll notice God’s great gift of renovating rest. The reward for Caleb’s faith and obedience is the blessing of a renamed and restful land. Renovating rest. So there’s the outline. Have you got it? Dreary devotion. Feisty faith. Complete commitment. Sustained strength. Eager expectation. And renovating rest.
Before we read the passage, let’s bow our heads first of all and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us pray.
O Lord, Your Word says great peace of those who love Your Law, nothing can make them stumble. We pray that You would work by Your Law and awaken in us that love and give to us what You have promised, that great peace. Open our eyes, we pray, that we may indeed behold marvelous things in Your Word. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Joshua 14, beginning at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“These are the inheritances that the people of Israel received in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun and the heads of the fathers’ houses of the tribes of the people of Israel gave them to inherit. Their inheritance was by lot, just as the Lord had commanded by the hand of Moses for the nine and one-half tribes. For Moses had given an inheritance to the two and one-half tribes beyond the Jordan, but to the Levites he gave no inheritance among them. For the people of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim. And no portion was given to the Levites in the land, but only cities to dwell in, with their pasturelands for their livestock and their substance. The people of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses; they allotted the land.
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 word again 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.”
Amen.
Dreary Devotion
Well let’s look together at verses 1 through 5, shall we, and think about dreary devotion first of all. Dreary devotion. This is a very prosaic introduction to the division of the land of Canaan through Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun and the heads of the various tribes of Israel. They cast lots, we are told, to determine who gets what. But twice – did you notice it – once in verse 2 and again in verse 5, we are told the whole process was carried out “as the Lord commanded.” Sometimes obedience is heroic. Sometimes it is costly. Sometimes it is exemplary. But most of the time, most of the time it is boring and ordinary and humdrum and dreary. And that’s what this is. There are no thrills in verses 1 through 5. There are no surprises, no strange twists of fate. They divided up the land, they cast lots, this is what God said they should do, that’s what they did.
Now maybe you don’t think that’s worth pointing out, but I find it very helpful to take note of the dreary devotion on display in these opening five verses mainly because verses 6 through 15 are so deeply impressive. There are record of the heroism and the boldness and the faith and the courage and the obedience of Caleb. By anyone’s measure, Caleb is a remarkable man, an unusual man. He has a great deal to teach us as I hope to show you in a minute. But before we get to Caleb, we are forced to sit in the lawyer’s office for a while with Eleazer and Joshua going through the paperwork, you know, figuring out who gets what in the land. It is dull, uninspiring work, but this is what the Lord commanded through Moses and so here they are, you know, burning the midnight oil at city hall, filing title deeds for each parcel of the land.
And isn’t that the measure of real faithfulness after all? It’s not whether we will obey the commands of God when the spotlight falls upon us and our service is dramatic and impactful and impressive. It is whether, when no one notices, when doing the next thing that God says to do is what we determine to do, even if it’s run of the mill and there’s no glamor and no payoff and no outward glory in it. Certainly sometimes, sometimes God calls us to a public role to bear witness in front of TV cameras or before the Supreme Court. Sometimes He calls us to trust Him in the terrifying drama of major surgery or asks us to lead a mission trip to a difficult place. But most of the time He calls us to do a hard day’s work, to come home and wash the dishes, and take out the trash and put food on the table, and change the diapers and balance the checkbook and pay our taxes. He calls us today to the same tasks He’ll call us to again tomorrow, the same tasks He called us to do yesterday. That is the regular course of Christian obedience. Sometimes it is extraordinary. We’ve seen a lot of extraordinary in the book of Joshua; we’ll see more. Sometimes it’s scary, it’s challenging, it’s outside our comfort zones, but mostly Christian obedience is ordinary and every day and we give ourselves to it because that’s what God says we should do. That’s faithfulness and it’s a vital lesson we all must learn. The sacred glory of dreary devotion. The sacred glory of dreary devotion.
Feisty Faith
Alright now with that necessary emphasis firmly in place, we are ready to consider Caleb’s testimony which you’ll find beginning in verse 6. And the next thing that I want to highlight is Caleb’s feisty faith. Dreary devotion first, then feisty faith. Look at the text. The people of Judah show up at city hall in Gilgal to receive their allotment and Caleb steps forward first. He is there to press his claim. Do you see that in verse 6? He says to Joshua, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me.” He goes on to tell us exactly what Moses said, or what the Lord said to Moses in verse 9. “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.’” And then in verse 10, Caleb highlights how the Lord kept His promises to him and spoke these promises about Caleb’s inheritance to Moses. This isn’t just Moses’ promise. This is God’s Word.
And having reminded Joshua of his claim in verse 12, Caleb, rather bluntly, presses the point. Do you see this in verse 12? “So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day.” Here’s faith at work. Think about it. It has been forty-five years since God made promises through Moses to Caleb to give him the land. Everybody Caleb grew up with, Joshua excepted, is dead. He’s eight-five years old and he is not done standing on the promises of God. He will not quit standing on those promises until God fulfills what He said. “Give me this hill country which the Lord spoke on that day.”
In 1970, an Arizonan lawyer named Russell T. Tansie, filed a lawsuit on behalf of his secretary, Betty Penrose, seeking $100,000 in damages. What was unusual about that particular lawsuit was its target. Penrose was suing God. She blamed God for His alleged negligence in allowing a lightning bolt to strike her house. And in the end when God “failed to show up in court” Penrose actually won the case by default. Frankly, that’s silly, isn’t it, and more than a little blasphemous. And yet, there is a little kernel of something important in Mr. Tansie’s lawsuit that I think old Caleb understood as he presses his claim on the courthouse steps at Gilgal. He is suing for the fulfillment of the promise God had made to him. “Now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day.” It is feisty faith that stands on the promise of God and says, “Lord, You said You would give me this land. You promised. Now keep Your Word.”
Do you talk like that to God? “You promised. Keep Your Word!” “You may sue God of His bond written and sealed,” said the puritan, John Preston, “He cannot deny it. Take no denial, though the Lord may defer long yet, He will do it, for it is part of His covenant.” Feisty faith like that is what we need in these days, surely. It’s not enough to wait for God to keep His promise, wondering if and when He might follow through on His Word. We need to press our claim and sue Him for it. Do you pray like that? Wed your petitions to God’s promises and then press Him to keep His Word. You find examples of it throughout the Scriptures of our great heroes of the faith pressing on God the fulfillment of His promises. This is feisty faith and I think it’s something we badly need to recover.
Complete Commitment
Dreary devotion. Feisty faith. Thirdly, notice Caleb’s complete commitment. His complete commitment. It’s not just that Caleb believes that God is good for His Word. It is that believing that God is good for His Word, he is prepared to devote himself entirely to life on God’s terms. Here is a life given up, abandoned to following the precepts of the Lord. Notice in verses 7 and 8 Caleb remembers going as a spy into the Promised Land all those years before. And then he says, “But my brothers who went with me made the hearts of this people melt, yet I wholly followed the Lord my God.” And that language about Caleb “wholly following the Lord” is repeated twice more in the chapter. Do you see that in verse 10 and again in verse 14? So this is a point the passage is emphasizing, something we are meant to notice. Caleb is being set up for us as an example of faith that leads to action. God has promised to give them the land, Caleb took God at His word, and lived in the light of that promise acting accordingly. Feisty faith that pleads God’s promises follows through with complete commitment. It follows through with complete commitment. It doesn’t ask for God to act while refusing to obey.
Have you sometimes wondered why the Lord has not answered your prayers? Well could it be that you have been looking to Him to keep His promises to you while you have been refusing to fulfill your duty to Him? You’ve simply been refusing. There’s a wholeheartedness that I find deeply challenging in Caleb’s testimony here. Don’t you? He’s not claiming to be sinlessly perfect, for sure, but he is saying that he is completely committed to living on the basis of the utter reliability of the Word and promise of God. And so we need to be asking ourselves, “What about me? Am I a Christian provisionally with exceptions, with caveats and qualifications and footnotes?” Is there any small print in your commitment to God? You’ll follow Jesus most of the way but not all of the way. “If you love Me,” Jesus said – you will do what? “You will keep My commandments.” Caleb was all-in, and the Lord is saying to us here, “I want you to be all-in too.”
Sustained Strength
Dreary devotion. Feisty faith. Complete commitment. Fourthly, sustained strength. Look at verses 10 and 11. “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.” Caleb is eight-five. Senior saints take note – there is no retirement in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. There is no retirement in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The Lord calls you to serve Him till you cross the finish line and you may not stop till that day. Caleb is eight-five and he presses on. And granted now, Caleb is giving testimony to the supernatural strength of God, equipping him so that he is as ready to march into battle at eight-five as he was when he was forty.
This is a unique thing in the history of salvation, but we do need to notice there are many promises of sustained strength that are spoken to you and to me. Promises like Isaiah 40 verse 31 where, “Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” Or promises like Psalm 84, verses 5 and 7, “Blessed are those whose strength is in You. They go from strength to strength.” God loves to keep that promise, you know. First Timothy 1:12, Paul thanks God who has “given me strength.” First Peter 4:11, Peter calls those who serve to “serve in the strength that God supplies.” God supplies strength. So Paul prays in Ephesians 3:16 that God might “strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our inner being.” Strength – do you see – strength is a gift of grace for every day Christians, not just for Caleb but for us – to sustain us under trials, to uphold us in the long, slow path of faithfulness till we do cross the finish line. Persevering grace. Strength to press on. So you feel weak? You’re struggling? You wonder if you can keep going. Life gets hard and you are weary and worn out. Well listen, there are supplies of strength; there are. But they are not to be found in some deep, untapped reservoir within yourself. Do not look there. You will not find them there. You must fetch them from God alone who promises to give them to His children.
And just a word of warning about how that is going to go in the interest of establishing reasonable expectations. Fresh supplies of strength will not likely come to you in times of weariness and need, in some dramatic infusion of power like Bruce Banner turning into the Incredible Hulk all of a sudden. You know, you were puny and now suddenly you are mighty. That’s not how it will be. No, here’s how it will likely go. One day you will find yourself on the far side of some terrible season of trial, some deep, dark, sore, sad thing that often drove you to your knees and threatened to break you. And one day you will find yourself on the far side of it wondering, “Now how did I ever get here? How did I make it through?” And it’s then that you’ll realize actually you made it through. You didn’t see it at the time, but looking back you realize you made it through because God sustained you with strength, with grace. He preserved you and kept you so that you kept on plodding and you did the next hard thing and you persevered. And you’ll say with wonder and gratitude with the apostle Paul, “Now I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound in any and every circumstance. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger and abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” How did I make it? I didn’t feel strong. I wasn’t strong. But Jesus Christ is my strength and my shield, my rock and my deliverer. He led me through and His strength is made perfect in my weakness. His sufficiency is more than a match for my need. His sufficiency is more than a match for your need. There’s strength for you in Him.
Eager Expectation
Dreary devotion. Feisty faith. Complete commitment. Sustained strength. And then finally, would you look down at verse 12 please and notice Caleb’s eager expectation, or excuse me, not finally, fifthly – there’s one more after this. We’re at five. There are six altogether. Steady on! You thought you were getting out early – not that early! Verse 12 – eager expectation. “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.” Don’t you love verse 12? I love verse 12! Eight-five year old Caleb, spoiling for a fight with as much zeal and eagerness as he had when he was forty-five years old or forty when he came back from his scouting mission across the Jordan. He brings up the Anakim, these big bruisers that the Israelites were so scared of back in the day and he says, “Who knows, maybe I’ll be the one the Lord will use to deal with them in this part of Canaan. Let’s find out!”
By the way, when he says, “it may be that the Lord will be with me and I will drive them out,” he’s not saying, “I’m not sure if God will keep His Word.” He’s saying, “I’m not sure I will be the instrument by which God will keep His Word.” There is eager expectation. “God is going to do it one way or another, with me or without me, but I sure would like to see which way it will be. I am a willing instrument in His hands, eager to trust Him and take Him at His Word.”
Now those of you who know me will understand that I have a reputation for being sunny and optimistic – come on! Alright, I guess I’m a bit of a pessimist sometimes, a “can’t be done” kind of guy, and I’ve spent enough time with all of you, you who are quick to judge, to know some of my Scottish DNA thrives in your hearts also, though it’s tempered by your Mississippi optimism at times! But Caleb, I think Caleb here rebukes our pessimism a little bit. Doesn’t he? Or at least this passage disciplines and directs that pessimism in actually a godly way. I think Caleb is essentially saying, “I’m skeptical about myself. Pessimistic about myself. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to defeat the Anakim.” But he’s remarkably optimistic when it comes to the promise of God, to the advancement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, to God’s fulfillment of what He said He would do.
Take a look at yourself, properly understood in the light of Scripture before the glare of a holy God. You ought to be dreadfully pessimistic about yourself with your wicked deceitful heart, prone to wander and leave the God it loves. But look at Jesus Christ who obeyed and bled and died and rose and reigns and is returning. Look at the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Lamb who was slain, who comes to the One who is seated on heaven’s throne and takes the scroll and opens its seals. He can bring the purposes of God to pass. His kingdom shall rule from shore to shore till moons shall wax and wane no more. And then, there, you have abundant reasons for confidence and optimism, not about everything in life, certainly, but about the fulfillment of the plan and purposes of God, for sure.
I think Caleb would have understood William Carey’s sentiments perfectly when Carey said, “Expect great things from God and attempt great things for God. Expect great things from God and attempt great things for God.” That’s the atmosphere of verse 12. Eager expectation. Pessimism about himself. “I’m not at all sure that I’ll drive out the Anakim. What am I, after all? A mere man and a sinner.” But optimism. Expectation in fact, about the promises of God. Remember that “He who calls you is faithful, and He will surely do it.”
Renovating Rest
Dreary devotion. Feisty faith. Complete commitment. Sustained strength. Eager expectation. Alright now, sixthly, verses 13 through 15 – renovating rest. The promise of God – renovating rest. I say renovating rest because of verse 15. Do you see verse 15? Caleb receives Hebron as part of his inheritance and the verse says, “Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba. (Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim.) And the land had rest from war.” There is a victory implied there in the change of name. Caleb’s humble and yet venturesome risk-taking faith that expected great things from God and so attempted great things for God, actually in the issue does become the instrument that God uses to drive out the Anakim. Arba, the greatest of the Canaanite goons, among the Anakim, is toppled from power and the city named for him gets a new name. Kiriath-arba becomes Hebron. And that actually becomes a pattern in God’s dealings with us. Whenever His kingdom breaks in, there is a new name.
Listen, for example, to Isaiah 62:1-4:
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,” God says, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.”
Revelation 2:17 picks up on the language of a new name and it individualizes it to the one who conquers. “I will give a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” A new name. It points to a new self, a new you. Renovation. God makes you new when He breaks into your heart and into your life. That is what the kingdom of Jesus Christ brings.
And it’s result, verse 15 tells us, is rest. It’s rest. “The land had rest from war.” Jesus promises us rest too, doesn’t He? That’s what the Gospel gives you. “Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Renovating rest is what Caleb brought to Hebron. Renovating rest is what Jesus died to bring to your heart. Restless, weary, heavy-laden. That’s you. That’s me. Right? There’s a new name, a new self, a new you that brings rest. All in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, in the end, Joshua 14 points us not supremely to Caleb’s example. It points us to the Lord Jesus, the giver of rest, who makes all things new. Whatever lessons Caleb can teach us about the life of faith we never can hope to learn them apart from the new life that Jesus must give and the rest it provides.
So get yourself first to Jesus Christ. Rest in Him. Rest on His obedience, His blood. And then let Joshua 14 teach you about what it means to live the life of faith following the Lord Jesus in dreary devotion and in feisty faith and in complete commitment and sustained strength with eager expectation. And may the Lord bless you indeed and give you rest. Let us pray.
Our Father, how we need the rebukes and encouragements and reminders of Your Word. Please save us from being sermon-tasters, hearers of the Word only and not doers also. Take Your Word and etch it into our consciences. Drive it like a seed well planted in fertile soil into all our hearts that it may bear much fruit. Bring us, we pray, to Christ, that we might rest upon Him, and resting in Him and on Him help us to live the life of faith that our father Caleb displays to us that all glory in the end might be Yours. For Jesus’ sake, amen.