Give Me That Mountain Series

Born a Gentile and an outcast he became a child of the promises of God. According to Hebrew customs if you joined Israel you were adopted into one of it’s tribes and your name was added to the genealogy. We too were born outside the family of God, when we accepted Christ we too are adopted into the family of God. Paul says in Romans 8:15-16, “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” (16) The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,”

Third, is the Obstacle of Age. At age eighty-five Caleb is not ready to quit. Even at the age of eighty-five he had not lost his enthusiasm for the Lord or his faith in God’s power. And his boast was not idle (15:13-14).

Age is no barrier in doing God’s will. God keeps His people alive as long as they need to be in order to fulfill all that He has planned for them.

In our society when speak about planning for retirement we think of setting money aside so that we can have an enjoyable, stress free life in our final years. But I am more and more convinced that we should be thinking about how we can use those last years for our most productive service to God.

Illustration

“Dr. Paul Brand, a well-known doctor & author, was raised in India. His parents were missionaries there. In his book, "In His Image," he writes about his mother. It is one of the most touching stories I’ve ever read. He writes that when his mother was 75 years old, she was still walking miles every day, visiting the villages in the southern part of India, teaching the people about Jesus. One day, at age 75, she was traveling alone & fell & broke her hip. After two days of just lying there in pain, some workers found her & put her on a makeshift cot & loaded her into their jeep & drove 150 miles over deep rutted roads to find a doctor who could set the broken bones. But the very bumpy ride damaged her bones so badly that her hip never completely healed. He said, "I visited my mother in her mud-covered hut several weeks after all of this happened. I watched as she took two bamboo crutches that she had made herself, & moved from one place to another with her feet just dragging behind because she had lost all feeling in them."

He said, "At age 75, with a broken hip, unable to stand on her own two legs, I thought that I made a pretty intelligent suggestion. I suggested that she retire." He said, "She turned around & looked at me & said, `What value is that? If we try to preserve this body just a few more years & it is not being used for God, of what value is that?’

So she kept on working. She kept on riding her donkey

to villages until she was 93 years old... And she continued to tell people about Jesus Christ until she died at age 95.”

The Final obstacle is the obstacle of the enemy. We need to see that just because God had made a promise to Caleb does not mean that he could just sit make and watch it happen.

Caleb asked for the hill country surrounding Hebron – land that had not yet been conquered and still inhabited by some of the strongest people of Canaan (v.12). In fact Caleb requested the very location that had put the most fear into the hearts of the other ten spies.