Numbers 13, Joshua 14
Max Lucado, in his book, In the Eye of the Storm, opens his book with the story of Chippy the Parakeet. Chippy’s cage was being cleaned out one day by his owner when this particular event occurred. Chippy’s owner had the vacuum cleaner out...had the attachments removed...and was using the hose to clean out Chippy’s cage while Chippy, by the way, was still in the cage. The phone rang. As she turned to her left to answer the phone, she accidentally moved the vacuum cleaner to her right, a little bit too close to Chippy. Suddenly, while she was answering the phone, she heard this "zoop." To her horror, she realized that she had sucked Chippy into the vacuum cleaner. She dropped the phone and reached down to quickly turn off the vacuum cleaner. She opened it up and found Chippy in there still alive but covered with soot. So she grabbed him, raced to the bathroom, turned on the cold water and stuck Chippy under the running cold water. She washed him off real good, and then she noticed him shivering.
She got out her blow dryer and decided to give him some blasts of hot air to quickly dry him out. Well, the reporter who had found out about the event and was following the story called back a few days later to find out how Chippy was doing. The owner replied, "Well, Chippy doesn’t sing much anymore. He just kind of sits and stares."
Lucado observed that Chippy was sucked in, washed up, and blown over. I wonder how many of you have been sucked in, washed up, and blown over. Indeed, we’ve all faced, from time to time, some giant-sized challenges. Many of you still face those same giant-sized challenges. Many of us still have lurking somewhere in our hearts that fear of some giant-sized challenge that we know is looming on the horizon .... something we already have identified and know we’re going to have to face. For the rest of us, we have been met with the stark realization that every year is going to hold its giant-sized challenges.
Now I don’t know what your giant-sized challenges may be. It may be a challenge regarding your family. It may be a challenge regarding your finances.
Being a witness for Jesus Christ and focusing on that emphasis may be your giant-sized challenge. Perhaps, your giant-sized challenge is an area of temptation. Maybe, it’s dealing with your past. Whatever it is, I want us to look at the life of a man in God’s Word who can give us some wonderful helps for how to face those giants.
A Biblical Example to Follow
Now probably the person that came immediately to your mind was David. But the man I want to tell you about was named Caleb. You see, Caleb was the first giant killer, and he didn’t just drive off one giant. He took care of three giants.
By the way, he did it not as a young man but as a man in his eighties. He was eighty-five years old. That ought to be an encouragement to all of us.
Let’s look at Numbers 13. Let me remind you of the setting for this passage. Caleb was an Israelite. He was part of the some two million Israelites who had been delivered out of bondage in Egypt. Moses was their leader. God had promised that Moses would deliver his people and would take them to a land of promise, flowing with milk and honey.
As we come to this passage in Numbers 13, they had arrived at a place called Kadesh Barnea. Here, they have found themselves on the very edge of entering the promised land. God told Moses at this point to select twelve men to go and explore the land, to be spies, if you will. So they selected one leader from each of the tribes of Israel to carry this out. Caleb was the one selected as the leader from the tribe of Judah. So Moses sends the spies into the land. For forty days, they explore the land, and they come back with some evidence that indeed this is a land flowing with milk and honey. In fact, the Bible says that they found a cluster of grapes, and it took two men to carry this cluster of grapes on a pole between them.
But let’s look at this amazing report that is given by these spies.
First the majority reported, beginning in Numbers 13:27: "They gave Moses this account: ’We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. [The huge cluster of grapes] But the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. [These would be giant-sized warriors.] The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.’" That’s the majority report of the ten.
Now Caleb speaks up for himself and Joshua, the two we will call the minority report. "Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, ’We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.’"
Well the people didn’t listen to Caleb. The people didn’t listen to Joshua. They listened to the bad report of the majority of the ten, and they became frightened. They began to gripe and complain, and they decided they wanted to go back to Egypt. We read on in Numbers 14 beginning in verse 6 and we discover that Joshua and Caleb by no means wanted to go back to Egypt.
READ 14:6-9 In spite of the pleas of Joshua and Caleb, the Israelites made a tragic mistake, a tragic decision. They rebelled against God. And those of you who have studied these verses before remember that the verdict and punishment that God placed upon them was that generation, everybody over the age of twenty, would wander in the wilderness for forty years until they all died off with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, and that’s exactly what happened.
Then as we move to the next place where we read about Caleb, this man who was willing to face the giants of the land, we find that in Joshua 14. Here, we read about Caleb once again. The setting of this passage is that the children of Israel have wandered in the wilderness forty years. They’ve all died off except for the new generation. Their new leader is Joshua, and he has taken them into the promised land. They have divided and conquered, and now they are parceling out the land.
We hear Caleb speak, beginning in Joshua 14:6 [READ 14:6-14].
What a guy! He kind of reminds me of the fellow that was featured in the Nike shoe commercial several years ago. You remember, he was a man in his eighties who went out jogging faithfully for miles every morning. He was standing at his locker, about to go out on his jog, and the announcer said ’Sir, how do you keep your teeth from chattering on these severely cold mornings?" The man smiled at the camera and said, "I leave them in my locker." Then he took off for his jog.
This is Caleb. He’s eighty-five years old and saying, "I want that mountain. These giants are nothing."
Act in Obedience on the Word of God
What can we learn from this man about how we can face our own giant-sized challenges? First, there’s this. Caleb was a man who was willing to act in obedience upon the Word of God. Now Caleb knew as they arrived at the promised land that God had never said that it was going to be easy. He had never promised that they would just waltz right in. How would a land this wonderful be without inhabitants? In fact, God had listed in Exodus 13:8 the peoples that were living in that land. Caleb knew that it would not be easy. Yet, he was ready to act in obedience upon the Word of God.
Now as you look at the passage, you have to marvel at the way the Israelites behaved, this vast majority of Israelites who had seen God act miraculously time after time after time. He had not only released them from bondage, but He had protected them by destroying practically the entire Egyptian army as they made their way out of Egypt. Yet, here they are seemingly just throwing their hands up in the air, saying, "God isn’t in control anymore. I want to go back to Egypt. At least, back there we know what to expect. It might not be all that easy, but at least, we know what’s there."
But not Caleb. It is a difficult thing for us to hear sometimes. But God has never said that just because we become Christians that life is suddenly made easy. He doesn’t even say that it will be fair, and He certainly doesn’t say it will be without its giant-sized challenges.
Notice what God’s Word says about Caleb. Did you hear how it described him? On four different occasions in the passages that we read, God described Caleb as a man who had a different spirit, who followed Him, how?
Wholeheartedly!
There’s a man named Bob Wylan who was also a man of a different spirit, and he attacked his giant-sized challenges wholeheartedly. In 1986, he lined up with some twenty thousand other runners to race in the New York marathon. The giant-sized challenge he faced was the fact that some seventeen years before his legs had been blown off while he was fighting in Vietnam, and he was to run that race on a fifteen-pound pad that was strapped beneath his torso and on pads that had been attached to his fists. He would catapult his torso forward one lunge at a time. Four days, two hours, forty-eight minutes and seventeen seconds later, Bob Wylan crossed the finish line. He had wholeheartedly attacked his giant-sized challenge. He had finished the race. That was victory for him. It is with that same kind of spirit and wholeheartedness that the Bible says that Caleb obeyed the Lord and acted in faith upon the Word of God.
You see, Caleb had discovered and knew that which we must all learn as Christians. He learned that ultimate blessing is always going to be found in obedience. In Psalm 119:2, the psalmist says, "Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart." Caleb knew that life was a long obedience in the same direction. He acted in obedience upon the Word of God.
View Giants From God’s Perspective
The next thing we can learn from Caleb is we must view these giants from God’s perspective. I want us to see the stark contrast in how Caleb viewed those giants compared to the ten other spies. You know, perspective can be a very powerful thing.
There was one young lady who was a very sharp, young college coed. She was trying to figure out a way to relay some difficult information to her parents.
Taking advantage of the power of perspective, she wrote, "Dear Mom and Dad, I just thought I would drop you a note to clue you in on my plans. I’ve fallen in love with a guy named Jim. He quit school after the eleventh grade to get married. About a year ago, he got a divorce. We’ve been going steady for two months and plan to get married in the fall. Until then, I’ve decided to move into his apartment. I think I might be pregnant. At any rate, I dropped out of school last week, although I’d like to finish college sometime in the future."
Now on the next page, she writes, "Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I’ve written so far in this letter is false. None of it is true. But, Mom and Dad, it is true that I got a C in French and flunked Math, and it is true that I’m going to need some more money for my tuition payments."
Here was a young lady who captured the power of perspective.
From what perspective do you view your giant-sized challenges in life? Again, look at the stark contrast of the way that Caleb viewed his challenges and the way the ten viewed theirs. In Numbers 13:33, we read again, "We saw the Nephilim there [these are the giants] (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked like some to them." Do you hear what their perspective is?
They are looking at those giants through their eyes and through the eyes of the giants. So what they come up with is: "We must be grasshoppers." In other words, from their perspective, they think they could be removed as easily as a giant just flicking a grasshopper from his sleeve with one finger.
Yet in dramatic contrast to that is the perspective of Caleb. Caleb’s perspective is revealed in Numbers 14:9: "Only do not rebel against the Lord.
And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them."
Caleb’s perspective is looking at the giants from God’s eyes. Caleb says their protection is gone. This is an expression that means "they’re bread for us."
In our day, we would say, "Hey, this is a piece of cake." Caleb is just as confident of victory as the other guys are confident of defeat. Why is that? Is it just a phrase? He says, "...the Lord is with us." You see, Caleb was looking at the giants from God’s perspective. The majority reported they were measuring the giants from their own strength, but Caleb is measuring the giants from God’s strength.
Understand that your giant-sized challenges are grasshoppers in God’s sight.
You see, Caleb never lost that perspective. It’s important to note that he continued that focus for some forty-five years. We read that passage just a moment ago in Joshua in which Caleb is ready to take the land, ready to drive out the giants. This is a promise that’s forty-five years old, and Caleb says, "I’m ready." He never lost his focus.
What happens to us is when those giant-sized challenges come into our lives, they become a severe distraction. They take our focus off God, and they try to draw our focus to themselves. But Caleb’s lesson for us is: Maintain that focus.
Back in the 1950’s, there was a famous female swimmer named Florence Chadwick. She had broken all kinds of time and distance records. She had swum the English Channel three or four different times and had broken records for that. But there was one time that she didn’t succeed when she lost her focus.
She was trying to cross from Santa Catalina Island to the coat of California, about a distance of twenty-one miles. She waded into that water. Fatigue would not be a problem. The main problem that she faced was severe cold. She would have to fight that. But then something else happened. A dense fog rolled in. It was so thick that she could barely even see the two boats that were accompanying her on either side, one of which contained her mother and her trainer. She kept going, kept going. But because of the fog, she couldn’t see the shore in the distance.
She finally came to the point that she said, "I give up." Her mom encouraged her, saying, "The shoreline must be close." Her trainer encouraged her,
"Don’t give up it must be close." But because she couldn’t see, her focus was removed, and she said, "I’m quitting."
She got out only to discover a few moments later that the shoreline was only a half mile away. She lost her focus. The writer of Hebrews in 12:2 says to fix your eyes on Jesus when you’re running the race of life. Don’t focus on the giants. Look at the giants from God’s perspective. Maintain that focus, and then you can be victorious.
Go Into the Battle
There’s a final word of wisdom that we can learn from Caleb’s life. It’s this: He went into battle. We didn’t read it, but in Joshua 15, we discover there that Caleb went in, he drove the giants off, and possessed the land. You see, many of us never experience victory over our giants. We never defeat the giants, because we never go into battle.
People never defeat the giant of tithing, because they never fight the battle of budgeting and fiscal responsibility. People never defeat the giant of their fear of witnessing, because they never go into the battle of prayer and preparation.
People don’t defeat the giant of restoration of marriage, because they never go into the battle of paying the price, of doing the work, the commitment, the effort. People never defeat the giant of temptation, because they’re not willing to go into the battle with the flesh, and they would just as soon succumb to the desires of the flesh.
Stuart Briscoe wrote that every battle is a God-given opportunity for victory. Do you want to win? Do you want to defeat those giants? I invite you to go into battle and view those giants from God’s perspective. They are grasshoppers in His sight. Act obediently upon the Word of God, and you will discover every battle will be your God-given opportunity for your victory.
