Give Me This Mountain
Mark Christian
This morning we talked about God sending people for a particular mission. Tonight we are going to examine Caleb, one of the spies sent into the Promised Land to scout it out.
We will read from Deuteronomy 1:19-33. In this passage, the Israelites are ready to go into Canaan after their forty years of wandering. Before they go, Moses talks to them. He reminds them of how God has taken care of their needs. He reminds them of God’s perfect law. And he reminds the Israelites that they have not always been faithful to God. In some ways, the book of Deuteronomy is a record of Moses’ last words. He encourages the Israelites to be faithful while he must stay behind, forbidden from crossing the Jordan himself. In the brief section that we will read, Moses recounts the events of the spies sent in forty years earlier.
Deuteronomy 1:19-46
19 Then, as the LORD our God commanded us, we set out from Horeb and went toward the hill country of the Amorites through all that vast and dreadful desert that you have seen, and so we reached Kadesh Barnea.
20 Then I said to you, "You have reached the hill country of the Amorites, which the LORD our God is giving us.
21 See, the LORD your God has given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the LORD, the God of your fathers, told you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."
22 Then all of you came to me and said, "Let us send men ahead to spy out the land for us and bring back a report about the route we are to take and the towns we will come to."
23 The idea seemed good to me; so I selected twelve of you, one man from each tribe.
24 They left and went up into the hill country, and came to the Valley of Eshcol and explored it.
25 Taking with them some of the fruit of the land, they brought it down to us and reported, "It is a good land that the LORD our God is giving us."
26 But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God.
27 You grumbled in your tents and said, "The LORD hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.
28 Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, `The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’ "
29 Then I said to you, "Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them.
30 The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes,
31 and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place."
32 In spite of this, you did not trust in the LORD your God,
33 who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.
34 When the LORD heard what you said, he was angry and solemnly swore:
35 "Not a man of this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your forefathers,
36 except Caleb son of Jephunneh. He will see it, and I will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on, because he followed the LORD wholeheartedly."
37 Because of you the LORD became angry with me also and said, "You shall not enter it, either.
38 But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because he will lead Israel to inherit it.
39 And the little ones that you said would be taken captive, your children who do not yet know good from bad--they will enter the land. I will give it to them and they will take possession of it.
40 But as for you, turn around and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea. "
41 Then you replied, "We have sinned against the LORD. We will go up and fight, as the LORD our God commanded us." So every one of you put on his weapons, thinking it easy to go up into the hill country.
42 But the LORD said to me, "Tell them, `Do not go up and fight, because I will not be with you. You will be defeated by your enemies.’ "
43 So I told you, but you would not listen. You rebelled against the LORD’s command and in your arrogance you marched up into the hill country.
44 The Amorites who lived in those hills came out against you; they chased you like a swarm of bees and beat you down from Seir all the way to Hormah.
45 You came back and wept before the LORD, but he paid no attention to your weeping and turned a deaf ear to you.
46 And so you stayed in Kadesh many days--all the time you spent there.
There is a fairly detailed account of these events in Numbers chapters 13 and 14. Even though I will probably mispronounce most of these names, I want to list for you the names of the spies.
• Shammua
• Shaphat
• Caleb
• Igal
• Hoshea, whom Moses renamed “Joshua”
• Palti
• Gaddiel
• Gaddi
• Ammiel
• Sethur
• Nahbi
• Geuel
Unless you are a Bible scholar above most Bible scholars, you will only remember a couple of those names; the names Joshua and Caleb. The reason is that Joshua and Caleb were faithful to God, and the rest were not. Joshua and Caleb made it to the Promised Land, and the rest died in the desert.
Reading from the Numbers account, listen to how Joshua and Caleb reacted to the Israelites who refused to go into the land.
Numbers 14:6-10a
6 Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had explored the land, tore their clothes
7 and said to the entire Israelite assembly, "The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good.
8 If the LORD is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us.
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."
10 But the whole assembly talked about stoning them…
When the people of Israel would not listen to Joshua and Caleb and instead listened to the faithless spies who were afraid, God was terribly angry. He was so frustrated with them that He was ready to strike them down and start over with Moses and the faithful. Moses pled with God and He spared and forgave them, but because of their unfaithfulness, they and their children paid a high price.
God demanded that the Israelites be faithful to Him, and He in turn would be faithful to them. But when these twelve spies were sent in to scout out the Promised Land, only two remained faithful. So because the Israelites had listened to the faithless spies, they were turned back out to wander in the desert.
Forty-five years later, after the Israelites had wandered and their children had begun taking the Promised Land, Joshua and Caleb returned to the mountain; the hill-country they had spied out before.
Joshua 14:1-14 (NIV)
1 Now these are the areas the Israelites received as an inheritance in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun and the heads of the tribal clans of Israel allotted to them.
2 Their inheritances were assigned by lot to the nine-and-a-half tribes, as the LORD had commanded through Moses.
3 Moses had granted the two-and-a-half tribes their inheritance east of the Jordan but had not granted the Levites an inheritance among the rest,
4 for the sons of Joseph had become two tribes--Manasseh and Ephraim. The Levites received no share of the land but only towns to live in, with pasturelands for their flocks and herds.
5 So the Israelites divided the land, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.
6 Now the men of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, "You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me.
7 I was forty 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,
8 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.
9 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.’
10 "Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today, eighty-five years old!
11 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.
12 Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said."
13 Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance.
14 So Hebron has belonged to Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite ever since, because he followed the LORD, the God of Israel, wholeheartedly.
Caleb was a fighter! At eighty-five, he stepped forward to claim the land he was promised. God had promised the Israelites that He would go into battle with them to drive out the people who inhabited the Promised Land, but He didn’t say there would be no war.
Look at verses 11 and 12 again.
11 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.
12 Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.
The King James Version reads, “Now therefore give me this mountain…”
Caleb was faithful, and Caleb was ready for battle.
As I said this morning, we can’t always just read an account from the Bible and directly follow the example set. So what can we learn from the life of Caleb?
1 God will give us opportunities to stand by Him. Joshua and Caleb had a choice. They could have followed the crowd or they could trust in God. It would have been easier on them socially to stand with the other spies, but they wisely stood with God.
2 God rewards our faithfulness. Joshua and Caleb proved their faithfulness to God when they went against the other 10 spies and stood with God.
3 God will keep us in His battle as long as we will fight. Caleb was eighty-five years old and ready to take up arms to claim the land that he had been promised. And Caleb knew that the battle belonged to the Lord, even then.
Now I didn’t tell you this morning that these lessons went together, but put it together now. God is ready to send you. Are you a Caleb or one of the 10?
(prayer)
* (This sermon followed "Whom Shall I Send" on Isaiah 6:1-8 and other scriptures.)
