Let me tell you something about God from a couple of old songs: “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” (Ps 121:1-2)  “The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord; he is their refuge in the time of trouble.  The Lord helps them and rescues them; he rescues them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him.”  (Ps 37:39-40)  “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken.” (Ps 37:25a)

I have been young, and now am old.  I wonder how we feel about aging.  Getting older doesn’t get a lot of positive play in our world, does it?  “What a drag it is getting old,” goes another (non-Biblical) song, to which I usually reply, “It beats the alternative, though.”  How do we look at aging in our faith?  Hear the words again, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken.”  If you are an elder in Christ, you are not shunted aside.  If you are younger in Christ, we do not shunt our elders aside.  There is a great significance in a life lived in whole-hearted trust and devotion to God – whether we are living that reality; whether we are looking forward to that reality.  Holding on.  Holding fast as Jesus holds on to us.

What an example 85-year-old Caleb is to us.  We’ve heard that people in God’s story aren’t always there just to be moral examples.  We’ve talked about people like Jacob and the Gibeonite nation here in Joshua with their deception.  Then we come across someone like Caleb - 85 years old.  A life lived in the promise of God and ready to claim the promise of God.  Initiative.  Obedience.  Rest.  Let us take a look at today’s story and hear what God has to say to our hearts.

When we last left the Israelites, they had been tricked into making a treaty.  The nearby Gibeonites pretended to have come from a far country so that the Israelites would make a treaty with them.  We remember that the Gibeonites take on a central role in the worship of God.  In chapters 10-12, we read about Joshua’s military conquests.  At the same time, the land that remains to be conquered is listed.  It is at this point that the second part of the book of Joshua begins – the division of the land from chapter 13 to 22.

We’ve been looking at what it means to live in the promises of God as we go by a way that we have not gone before – question marks and the unknown before us.  We have been praying that God would keep us faithful to him; faithful to what he would have us do as a congregation and as individuals; faithful to who God would have us be, the Holy Spirit forming us and reminding us and helping us.  To get an idea of what this looks like, we have Caleb.  He is introduced as the son of Jeppuneh the Kenizzite – the son of a foreigner.  As such, he joins a list of people we encounter in the Promised Land who show a zeal for God and a faithfulness that we might not have expected.  Even his name is no big indicator of great things – it means “dog.”  Caleb has appeared before this.  We first encounter Caleb in Numbers 13, where we have a list of the spies who are sent to scout Canaan out.  Two of the spies are Joshua and Caleb.  When the spies come back, 10 of them say that the nation is faced with an impossible task.  All of them except for Joshua and Caleb.  Caleb tells the people, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”  When the people of Israel complain about the giants that they’re going to encounter and are about to choose a new leader to take them back to Egypt, Moses and Aaron fall down on their faces before the crowd, Joshua and Caleb tear their clothes and say, “The land that we went through as spies is an exceedingly good land… do not fear the people of the land, for they are no more than bread for us; their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us…”  This is the same message we’ve been hearing from the beginning of the book of Joshua, isn’t it?  The Lord is with us.  God is with us.  Emmanuel- God with us, is with us!

For Caleb, this meant a promise.  The failure of the Israelites to trust God back then meant that none of the generation who were delivered from Egypt would live to enter the promised land.  Except for Joshua and Caleb.  The promise came from God in Numbers 14:24: “But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me wholeheartedly, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.”

Here we have this great scene 45 years latter where 85 year old Caleb strides toward Joshua and says in v 6 “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 an honest report… 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 wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God.’”

We’ve called these weeks in Joshua “The Land of Promise”.  We’ve been talking about what it means to cling to God’s promises.  Promises of accompaniment.  Promises of forgiveness.  Promises of victory.  Here we see Caleb, and he’s been clinging to this promise for many years.  It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?  How can we be so sure about God’s faithfulness; the assurance we have that when God makes a promise God keeps that promise?  Caleb presents himself as living proof in v. 10, “And now, as you see, the Lord has kept me alive, as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel was journeying through the wilderness; and here I am today, eighty-five years old.”  How many of us have been following Christ for 85 years?   How about 45?  Isn’t it wonderful that our very lives can show that God is faithful to his promises?   Let me speak to those of us for whom this is true for a few moments.  How has God been faithful to his promises throughout your life?  How is it that we can sing a hymn like “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” and know in our hearts that this is true because we’ve experienced it in your own life?  How can we say, along with Caleb, “…and now, as you can see…” because you are living proof that God is faithful, that when God makes a promise, God keeps it?   We need to tell these stories.  We need to share these stories.  Share these stories with those who’ve been following Christ for maybe less than 85 or 45 years.  Share them with people who aren’t sure, with people who don’t know him, or don’t yet know that they’re his beloved children.  Young people, ask the question.  What has God meant in your life?  How have you seen God being faithful to his promises in your life?

We need to share these stories.  I think that’s partly why we’ve been handed so much of God’s word in story form.  We’re not meant to do this Christ-following on our own.  Our following of Christ finds its fullest expression in a community of faith.  Part of being in a community of faith is sharing what God is doing in our lives and pointing out to others what we see God doing in their lives.  Sharing our stories.  Sharing what God has done in our lives.  How God has shaped us.  How God has transformed us.  Sharing without fear of condemnation or judgement.

Sometimes the gap between a promise and the fulfillment of a promise is long.  For Caleb, it was 45 years.   Forty years of wilderness wandering and five more after the people of Israel crossed the Jordan River.  We see that God is the one who sustains.  “I am still as strong today as I was on the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war, and for going and coming.”  I read this line, and I think of what we read in Deuteronomy 28:6 about being blessed – “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.”  The Psalmist writes something similar – “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.” (Psalm 121:8)  For Caleb, it seems that physical strength was a factor for him.  There is war to be made on a quite literal level, after all.  It’s not always about physical strength, though.  Physical strength is not always with us.  Hearing God’s words to be strong and courageous does not mean to rely on our own strength, but to trust in and depend on God. “I’m as strong now as I ever was,” Caleb is saying.  “For my going and coming” – in other words, for all that is involved in life, including the losses that we will face as we go through our lives.  Presenting ourselves daily as living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God.   What does this mean?   We see it lived out in Caleb.  Having the strength and the courage to remain faithful no matter what our circumstances.  Having the strength and the courage to be thankful for all things, in all things, to make our prayers and supplications known to God because he is near, because he has promised to be with us, just as he was with Joshua.  Just as he was with Caleb.  “I am still as strong today as I was on the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war, and for going and coming.”  For anything this life holds.  We need to read these stories as if we were in the middle of them.  It’s hard, as we know how they turn out.  When we read these stories, we must always remember that the characters are living in them – just as we live in our own stories.  What happens next is as unknown to them as what happens next is unknown to us.  They face the vicissitudes of life just as we do.  In Caleb, we see someone who is acknowledging that he’s still alive because of God.  That his trust in God’s faithfulness continues unabated no matter what life brings.  That his desire to know God and to seek God is as strong as it ever was.

All of this causes Caleb to take initiative.  Look at what he asks for.  “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, as the Lord said.”  The Anakim were the people who had scared the other 10 spies back in the day.  They were big, and their cities were fortified.  We don’t stand a chance!  Caleb says, “Give me that section!”  Not that Caleb’s humble about it.  “It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out, as the Lord said.”  Caleb is living in the middle of the story, and he doesn’t know how it’s going to turn out.  He’s willing to step out in faith and trust God, who has shown himself to be trustworthy.  I love that line.  It may be that the Lord will be with us.  Perhaps God has placed me in this place for such a time as this.  “Who knows?” as another OT elder once said to his niece Esther.  “Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for such a time as this.”  …

Who knows?  God knows.  Can we trust him?  Has he proven himself trustworthy to us?   How may God be asking us to step out in trust?  God has done that before here.  When the Out of the Cold ministry started in the 90s, who knew what happen the first night as we waited for guests to arrive. Wondering if anyone would show up. God was with us.  When we heard God call us to summer camp ministry for children in Lawrence Heights and said, Let us go up there, who knew how it would turn out?  Would we get the help we needed?  Would any kids come?  How many lives have been touched, how many people blessed and changed as a result?  The Lord will be with us.  How might God be asking us to step out into the unknown?

Caleb trusted.  Caleb stepped out.  Caleb was obedient.  May we be like Caleb.  The root of the word for obedient in Hebrew and Greek means to listen.  To listen for God’s voice in God’s word.  In silence.  In song.  In conversation and prayer with one another.  Hearing those words, “This is my son, the Beloved, listen to him.”  How’s our listening?  I know it can be difficult.  Finding the time is difficult.  There is so much to distract us.  Here’s the thing, though.  When we’re talking about living in the land of promises and claiming God’s promises in our own lives, the extent of their fulfillment will occur only as far as the extent of our response.  Look at the promise here – “Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God.”  The foot has to tread.  What’s our part here?  Obedience.  Listening for our Father’s voice.  We’ve talked about some of the promises – God’s presence.  Come to me, all you who labour, and I will give you rest.  My peace I give you.   If we desire to live in the land of promise and make these promises our own, they will be fulfilled to the extent that we are open to listening to our Father’s voice.

Caleb did this.  He took the initiative.  He stepped out in faith.  He was obedient.  He listened.  What was the result?  “And the land had rest from war.”   The promised rest.  We’re not there yet.  We get a foretaste of it, though, don’t we?  We need it, don’t we?  The promise of rest.  Of peace.  It’s not just me is it?  There are lasting consequences to being like Caleb, too.  In the next chapter we read about Caleb’s daughter being given to Othniel in marriage.  We read about Othniel in the book of Judges.  He becomes Israel’s first judge.  The land will have rest for 40 years under him.  There are lasting consequences, you see, when we are trusting and acting and listening for our Father’s voice.  Be like Caleb.  God grant that this may be true for each of us.

Amen