JOSHUA 14. God our Father, bless our time
together this morning. Bless these words to the encouragement
of our hearts. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
Now let's begin reading at verse 6 of Joshua 14. Now the men of
Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb, son of Jephunneh,
the Kinezite, said to him, you know what the Lord said to Moses,
the man of God, at Kadesh Barnea, about you and me. I was 40 years
old. when Moses, the servant of the
Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report
according to my convictions. But my brothers who went up with
me made the hearts of the people melt with fear. I, however, followed
the Lord, my God, wholeheartedly. So on that day, Moses swore to
me, the land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance
and that of your children forever, because you have followed the
Lord my God wholeheartedly. Now then, just as the Lord promised,
he has kept me alive for 45 years since the time he said this to
Moses while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today,
85 years old. I am still as strong today as
the day Moses sent me out. I am just as vigorous to go out
to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country
that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then
that the Antiquites were there, and their cities were large and
fortified. But the Lord helping me, I will
drive them out, just as he said. Then Joshua blessed Caleb, son
of Jephunneh, and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. So Hebron
has belonged to Caleb, son of Jephunneh the Kinezite, ever
since. because he followed the Lord,
the God of Israel, wholeheartedly. Hebron used to be called Kiriath
Arba, after Arba, who was the greatest man among the Anakites. Then the land had rest from war. Now, Chapter 14 begins the dividing
of the land on the Canaan side of the Jordan. Now, if you'll
remember, there were some, two and a half tribes actually,
who decided that their portions would be on the eastern side
of Jordan. And the rest would have their
allotments on the western side. And so chapter 14 begins describing
the apportioning of the various allotments
to the various tribes. Now, when the Lord or excuse
me, when the Israelites first came to Jordan, to the land of
Jordan, excuse me, to the River Jordan, and they were told to
enter the land, they sent in 12 spies, and two of them gave
a good report, 10 of them gave a poor report. And for that reason,
the people refused to go into the land of Canaan. And as a
result of that, God swore in His wrath that that generation
would never enter His rest. And the only two of that generation
that left Egypt, and when they left Egypt, they were 20 or above,
The only two of that generation that ever entered into the land
of rest was Joshua and Caleb. Everyone else was dead. Now, we have in this, or in that very
fact, a picturing or an illustration of who it is that enters God's
rest. We know who Joshua typifies. He is a picture of our Savior,
the Lord Jesus. The interesting thing to note
is this, that Caleb, his name it doesn't so much mean dog as
it sounds like the Hebrew word that means dog. I need to make sure that my phone
doesn't make any noises while I'm speaking. And consequently,
and the Hebrews were, they did that a lot. In fact, I heard one rabbi talking
about it, that the Old Testament shows that the way the Hebrews
wrote things or spoke things, they often resorted to puns. Now, not puns for the sake of
laughing, but they use the idea of a pun to connect ideas together. So, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing
it exactly, but it's Caleb's name, Kolev. But the word for dog was kelev.
So there's just one vowel difference in between them. And just like
with the name of Jacob, it isn't actually just the word for heel,
but it sounds very much like the word for heel. And consequently,
he was known as the heel grabber, the supplanter, and whatnot.
So Caleb, his name is meant to connect him to the concept
of a dog. Now, you know, on at least two occasions that I'm
aware of, a dog is used to illustrate a
child of God. And I've noticed that never once
did they use a cat to illustrate you know, the people of God.
I mean, I kind of like cats, but not like I like dogs. Dogs
are called man's best friend, and for whatever reason, dogs
do have a tendency to connect themselves to humans and to become
very good companions for humans. And there are many characteristics
of a dog that illustrate to us the relationship or how, let
me put it this way, how a believer relates to the Lord Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, the word
most commonly translated, worship, is actually made up of the Greek
prefix pro-, which means toward, and then the word for dog. I
think that our word canine, proskaino. And what it means is that the
worship, They looked at how a dog, the
kind of posture a dog will make towards his master. And how often
have you seen, you know, if you have a good dog anyway, how often
have you seen a dog will come up, you know, and he'll be both
happy to see his master, but quite often they will, as it
were, bow down. The front of them will be down
on the ground. That's so common among dogs that
they even named a yoga pose after it. And so, here we have that the only two people from
that generation that left Egypt, the only two that go into the
land of promise, the land of rest, is the Savior and his faithful
dog. And I think that's a very endearing
picture. That we would learn to be as
a dog towards its master if we would learn to have that attitude
towards our Lord. There was a song we sang in the church I grew up in, and
it goes, where he leads me, I will follow. Now, I wouldn't sing
it. I wouldn't use it now. I don't like hymns that make
boasts. Where he leads me, I will follow.
Peter said that. Didn't he? He said, I'll follow you to death.
The Lord said, will you? And so we generally, as far as,
well, I would never on purpose sing a song wherein we are declaring
our own dedication and our own commitment and how well we're
going to do. And if ever you've seen anything
like that in one of the hymns, just understand it was a mistake.
I missed that part, or I never would have chosen that hymn.
But here is the truth of things. God's people do follow Him. They
do follow Christ as a dog follows its master. In fact, one of the
descriptions of the 144,000. I believe this is where it is
when it describes 144,000 there in the book of Revelation. And
you know, people love to make a big deal out of it. Jehovah's
Witnesses believe that there's only going to really be 144,000
in heaven. I don't know where the rest of,
that doesn't mean everybody else will be in hell, but there's
going to be 144,000, I think it's them, might be the Mormons,
you know. But, you know, kind of the elite. Here's the description of them.
They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. And so we find a beautiful picture
here of the Lord Jesus and those who are his people, who like
dogs follow their master, who like sheep follow their master. Now, this is the family of God,
the Savior and the sinner. There is only one head of the
church, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Everybody else is just
a follower. And there are not followers who
are higher in some kind of hierarchy. It's not as though we have Jesus
and then, well, if you think, I mean, just nobody's more obvious
about it than the Roman church, you know, and then you got the
Pope and the Cardinals and the bishops and then priests below
that, you know, then down here's the people, the riffraff. There is no such thing within
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. like the idea of titles. I remember
when I came here, they asked me, this was when they had already
extended a call via a letter to me, and the next time I visited,
they wanted to know my answer, and I told them, yes, I would
come. So then there were questions, some practical things, and they
said, what do you want us to call you? I said, my mother named
me Joe, and that works really good. If you say Joe, I'll know
whose attention you want. Now, it's not because, at least
I hope I don't do this kind of stuff because I'm proud of my
humility. I hope that it comes from this,
what in the world do we want with titles? You know, some have called me
Pastor Joe, and I don't make a fuss about it if they want
to do that. I realize sometimes it's just a tradition thing.
I am the pastor, but I don't see myself as Pastor Joe. I just
happen to be the member of this church who spends the majority
of the time up here. That's it. There's only the head
and the body. The body may be made of various
parts, but none is elevated and considered to be more important. And so there are only two categories
of people within the household of God. There is Jesus Christ,
the firstborn, the head of the church, and then
there's everybody else. And that's illustrated by this,
that this whole thing surrounds a conversation between Joshua
and Caleb. And then Caleb stands as an example
of faithfulness. God's people are faithful. It's not that they should be
faithful, they are. not perfectly faithful in the
sense that we always do what we're supposed to do. Interestingly, in the Greek language
of the New Testament, the word for faith and the word for faithful,
it's the same word. You know, it's just in one case,
it's being used as a noun, and in the other case, it's being
used as an adjective, but it's the same word. And so what I'm
saying here is that God's people, all of them, believe. And they
believe until they die, and they believe all the time. Now they wrestle with unbelief
in the flesh, such that they would say, right along with that
father whose son was possessed by a demon, he says, Lord, I
believe, help my unbelief. And that'll sound strange to
merely religious people, but the believer knows exactly what
that father meant. We probably don't think we're
faithful. But the truth is all God's people
are faithful. He said, my sheep hear my voice
and I know them and they follow me. Doesn't mean they don't ever
trip and fall. It doesn't mean that they never
get distracted for a time. But they always follow him. So Caleb was faithful. Caleb was like his predecessor
Abraham, who, as the scriptures say, he staggered not at the
promise of God through unbelief, being fully persuaded that what
God had promised, he was able to perform. And you know, that's
the essence of faith there. Remember, we have made the point
probably several times that faith always rests upon promises. It cannot be called faith unless
it is attached to a promise. The church, again, the church
I was raised in, they thought that they needed to build a new
building. For sure, we were growing out of the building that we had.
And so they bought some property and got an architect to draw
up some plans. And then they had to start, you
know, collecting money. And they would say things like, you
know, we're going to step out on faith. Believing God will
provide the means. Well, the only problem with that
is there is never any promise in the scriptures that God is
going to pay for a new building. Now, if there was, then you could
do that. the same church every New Year's
Eve, we'd have one of those watch night services, and they would
try to get people, they would have them write down on a piece
of paper how much money they could give to missions in the next year. Actually, it
wasn't a watch night service, I remember it was the last night
of our missionary conference. And what did they call this? They say, well, we realize, you
know, you might not be able to do this, but this is your faith
promise goal. See, they knew that if they would
work the word faith in there, they could get people to go along
with it, and they could get people to maybe commit more than they
thought they could do. and then afterwards feel duty-bound
to perform. Because after all, if you made
a faith promise, now they didn't say this out loud, but if you
made a faith promise goal and then didn't come through, must
be something wrong with your faith, huh? But God never said, God never
made a promise to anyone. that they would be enabled to
give any particular amount in the future. No, faith must always
have a promise that it is relying on. Now, we
can hope for things, we can ask our Father for anything, but
we cannot say that We are believing. We cannot say, well, I ask God
X, and I believe he's going to do it. Well, if your belief,
if your faith is not based upon a promise that you can find in
scriptures, then your faith is simply presumption. So anyway, all God's people are
faithful. Now notice this also in the story,
that when Caleb comes to Joshua, he comes with other members of
his family, the tribe of Judah, which is the tribe, by the way,
from which our Lord came. The promise to the oldest member
of the family is the same promise as to the youngest. In other words, Caleb is saying
You know, the promise was made to me, and therefore it is, you
know, I have come to claim it. And yet He doesn't claim it for
Himself only. He claims it for Himself and
all His descendants, all who are in Him. Now this is not a
picture of the covenant theology of the Reformed churches. Our descendants, so to speak,
are spiritual descendants, not physical ones. It says of the
people of God that they are not born of the flesh. or of the
will of man. They are born of God. But here's
the thing. The promised possession was for,
shall we say, the greatest of them and the least, the oldest
among them and the youngest. It was all theirs. The promise
is salvation by the person and work of Christ. This is the inheritance
of the saints, bought and paid for by the blood of the surety
and the testator of the new covenant. This promise was not only to
Caleb and his seed, so he brings, excuse me, His promise was not
only to Caleb, but also to his seed. So he brings his seed with
him when he makes the claim. They didn't come with him to
provide him with moral support. They came with him because, like
him, they believed the promise of God and were intent on claiming
it. Secondly, notice that the land
that was promised, the area that was promised, where was occupied
by the Antiquites. Now, the Antiquites were giants.
That has been mentioned before. Now, Caleb's humility and the
testimony he gives is based on the promise of God and the declaration
of his strength. Caleb says, and if you'll look
at verse 11, he says, I am still as strong today as the day Moses
sent me out. I'm just as vigorous to go out
to battle now as I was then. Now, he is not making a boast
in himself. Now, the land that had been given
to him was the very portion of the land of promise that he was
sent to spy out. And he spotted out, he saw the
giants, the Antiquites, but he said, it doesn't matter that
they're giants, the issue is not how great they are, the issue
is how great our God is. You see, the other spies went
into the land, and what they saw, What they saw were the difficulties. What they saw was those things
that they felt that they could not overcome. But Caleb went in and what he
saw was a land flowing with milk and honey that the Lord had promised
to give to the Jews. And that's all that mattered.
The Lord had promised it to them. So it didn't, who's living there
now doesn't matter. And we're gonna have to close
with this portion of it, but for us, we may apply this to the general
difficulties of the lives we live, and some of our troubles
are very serious, but I think that the primary issue here is our sins. Our sins. Don't they look like
a giant in your eyes? Something bigger than you can
deal with? Isn't it interesting? But those
12 spies went in there, and from what we get from the story here
of Caleb claiming the area of Horeb, it said he was given the
area that he walked on. So those 12 spies didn't go around
as a bunch. They all split up into different
areas. Doubtless, they spoke to one
another afterwards, but the ones who went out and all they saw
were people. They came back with a bad report. The one who saw the giants, he came back and said, let's
go in. Now, there's a lesson here, I
believe. Those who see their sins is not so big. They will naturally think that
it is their responsibility by their own strength to overcome
them. Consequently, they won't simply
believe. but those who, by the grace of
God, see their sins as giants, as those so powerful that it's
impossible that they would be able to overcome them. They are forced, as it were,
simply to believe. There's nothing else to do. They say, oh, my sins, they're
so great. Good! Not that your sins are great,
but that you realize they are. They're giants. You can't deal
with them. But Caleb says, I don't care. I'm not the one that's going
to be dealing with them. Yes, the sword will be in my
hand. I'll be the one running or sitting
on a horse or something. But it will be the strength of
the Lord that kills these giants. What did David say as he approached
the giant Goliath? He said, you come to me with
a sword and a spear. He did not say, but I'm coming
to you with a sling, and you weren't expecting that. He said, I come to you in the
name of Jehovah, the God of Israel. Then it didn't matter what David
was carrying. David didn't take down Goliath,
God did. So here we have Joshua and his
faithful dog enter in. They alone from that generation
enter into the promised land and they enter.