Caleb
The Man Who Found the Fountain of Youth
Joshua 14:11
Introduction
The bible contains a great number of little known big men. They are unknown and unsung. Caleb is one of these great men of God. Caleb is right up there next to Joshua.
Caleb was a great man of faith. Listen to the words here in Joshua 14:11:
“I am still as strong today as I was in the day of Moses sent me; as my strength is now, for war and for going out or coming in.”
Somehow or another Caleb had found the fountain of youth. Forty years in the wilderness were hard and only Joshua and he were the only ones of their generation to make it through and he could still say, “I’m as strong this day as I was forty years ago.” There are not a lot of people today that can say that.
Many men like Ponce de Leon and LaSalle have spent a lifetime looking for the fountain of youth with no avail. So what was Caleb’s secret to finding the fountain of youth. I want you to look at three things concerning Caleb to see the answer.
I. Faith to Forget the Past
In the book of Numbers we are told that Caleb was one of the 12 spies chosen to go into the land, look it over, and bring back a report to Moses.
Now when they all returned with their reports they all had the same facts. The land was flowing with milk and honey. But the interpretation of those facts differed between the spies. The majority said lets not go in. But listen to what Caleb’s response was in Numbers 13:30-31:
“Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger then we.”
Now that was true. The people in Canaan were giants. But Caleb was a man of faith and knew what God has promised. Listen to the following response of the people that had forgotten about God’s promises in Numbers 14:4:
“Let us select a leader and return to Egypt.”
The children of Israel wanted to go back to Egypt. They were basically saying, hey those slavery days of making bricks for Pharaoh wasn’t all that bad. Those whippings we took from the guard didn’t really hurt that much. They really started to believe that it would be better to return to that.
Caleb though was able to forget those days, because he had faith in what God had promised. Notice what the Bible says in Numbers 14:6-9:
“But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes; and they spoke to all the children of Israel saying, ‘the land we passed through to spy out is a exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us; a land which flows with milk and honey.’ Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.”
Caleb had turned his back on the past life, and he was now focused on the promise of God. When we focus on the promises of God and give God our all. He will always give us the strength to push on to the prize.
II. Faith to Face the Facts of the Present.
The second part of Caleb’s formula was that he had faith to face the facts of the present. In the book of Deuteronomy, we have a review of the wilderness experience and a statement from God to Caleb.
Deuteronomy 1:30-33: “The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw hoe the Lord your God carried you just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. But for all this, you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way, to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go.”
Now notice God’s promise to Caleb in verses 34-36: “Then the Lord heard the sound of your words, and He was angry and took an oath, saying. Not one of these men, this evil generation, shall see the good land which I swore to give your fathers, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh he shall see it, and to him and to his sons I will give the land on which he has set foot, because he has followed the Lord fully.”
Caleb wholly followed the Lord. The world today is looking for a way to escape form the facts of life. A lot of people today just can’t face the reality of life and they turn back to the past life, or they turn to alcohol, drugs, or false reality games to hide.
Caleb could face his present situation because he looked beyond it. God had called Israel to go into the land of Canaan, and Caleb believed it could be done.
III. Faith to Face the Future
Notice Joshua 14:7, 10, 12: “7 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 word back to him as it was in my heart. 10 Now behold, the Lord has let me live, just as He spoke, these forty five years, form the time that the lord spoke this word to Moses, when Israel walk ed in the wilderness; and now behold, I am eighty five years old today. 12 Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out as the Lord has spoken.”
Caleb picked the toughest place in all of Canaan to be his new home, and said one day that land were the giants live will be mine. Caleb didn’t get to cross into that Promised Land that day after spying it out, due to the lack of faith from the majority. And God sent them back into the wilderness for 38 more years.
That desert was real to Caleb, just like all the other Israelites. But the difference was as they kept looking back to what they knew in Egypt; Caleb was looking to Hebron, the home of the Anakim (the giants). Did you know that the word “Hebron” means communion with God. Caleb knew that one day he was going to be in that place of communion with God. And when the others of his generation passed away looking backwards, Caleb had his eyes set on the promise of God.
In Joshua 15:14, we see that Caleb did get to Hebron and he did drive out the giants. It was his possession now, because he knew that God was bigger than the giants.
Closing
Let me sum it all up for you with the words of Paul in Philippians 3:13-14:
“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
