I would like for us to turn this evening to Philippians 3. I would like to read a couple of verses we read the other night from this chapter: Philippians 3:12-14.
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us pray.
Lord, as we continue in Your presence tonight, we are ever grateful for the opportunities we have to remember Your death at the table. Lord, how it has a way of putting life in a proper perspective. It brings us back to the foot of the cross. It puts everything else aside and brings our hearts to You. What a privilege. What a blessing we have.
Lord, we are thankful, too, for how You have not left us helpless, but You have sent the Helper, the Comforter, the Paracletus. Lord, tonight we come looking unto You, that You would be able to speak and to work within all of our hearts in a way that would bring glory unto You.
Lord, unless You are glorified and satisfied tonight, this time is simply in vanity. We have a great desire within us that, as we open Your Word, as we look to You, Lord, that You would speak, that we would hear—not just gaining knowledge about You, but truly touching You in life and allowing the very One that lives within us to speak to us in a greater and fuller way. In Thy name we pray. Amen.
As I shared the other night, the thing that has been upon my heart recently is this matter of finishing well. I am not going to say how old I am. You have to listen to the tape and figure that out. But anyway, as I am getting on up in age, I am starting to have this desire to finish well, and this whole thought of pressing on.
Because you just see how, as we are going on in this Christian life, we can have such a tendency to settle down. Now, when I was a lot younger, most of my first twenty-five years were involved in playing sports. Every year, I was doing a couple of different sports. I remember how difficult it is. It did not matter what you were playing, but the key is finishing well.
You start that fourth quarter and you are tired and exhausted. It seems like that is a long quarter, but you want to finish well. You get into that seventh or eighth inning. It seems like it has been a long game and you do not have anything else to draw from, but you want to finish well. Because that is what really separates, in the sports world, champions: ones who can finish well.
And brothers and sisters, the Lord has it on His heart, and He has made every provision for us at this table that we just took of, that we could finish well. In His eyes, each one of us is a champion. We are so thankful that we have the Champion on our side. He has so desired for us to finish in such a way that would bring glory to Him.
So I really do have it on my heart in these days that we could encourage one another to really press on. It does not take a very sensitive Christian—even an old accountant can figure out—that the days we are living in are pretty tough days. There is a lot of shaking going on.
If we went around the room tonight, I think everybody would have a testimony of something they had to overcome just to be here. It would be a great variety of things, but everybody had to press through and overcome something. Most of us, it just did not fall into our laps and we were able to come up here peacefully and easily. It was that coming on through.
That is what the Lord is really looking for in our lives: that we are taking the grace of God that He has made available to us and allowing that to lead us on into a fuller measure of Him, knowing Him in a fuller and greater way.
Now, to help us learn some of the lessons in this, we have been looking at Caleb in the Old Testament. Caleb was one who, we could say, finished well. He had to press through many difficult circumstances. At times, he found himself rejected by all of his other brothers and sisters. He found himself having to be in that wilderness for many years, and he found that he had to have a patience that was not of himself.
But praise God, in the end Caleb finished well, and he stayed the course. As we talked the other evening, when they came out of Egypt and were getting ready to go into that promised land, those twelve spies went into the promised land. All twelve of them went to the same place. They walked through the same territories. They had the same experiences and naturally saw everything similarly.
They saw how great the fruits were. They said, “This is a land flowing with milk and honey.” But Caleb saw something different. The eyes of his heart were enlightened. He came to that place of Hebron. Now, in the South, we say “Hebron.” I know some people say “Hebron,” but I am a Hebron guy, okay, just to clarify. That is how we say it, just to correct the rest of you.
As he came to that place of fellowship and communion with God, the eyes of his heart were enlightened. He had heard Moses talk a lot about how this land had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all that God wanted to do in this land. He had heard about it.
But once he came into that place of communion there in Hebron, it was like the eyes of his heart were opened. All of the promises that had been given to Abraham, about God’s desire for this land and this people to dwell in this land and be a testimony upon the earth to all the nations, became Caleb’s testimony.
That promise gripped his heart. That became his inheritance. It was no longer just Abraham’s or Isaac’s or even Moses’s. It became Caleb’s. That precious promise of all that God desired to do through this nation, and to be that testimony and light shining into all the world, became so real to him.
As we said the other night, the inheritance Caleb had—that precious and magnificent promise—was in his heart far more quickly than he was actually in the inherited place. Tonight, we will see how he takes possession of his inheritance, but his inheritance was in his heart.
Because his inheritance was in his heart, he was able to make it through those forty-five tough years. He had something that held him steady. He had something that enabled him to press on. His inheritance preserved him through all the difficult times that he had to face and through all the many trials.
We saw that his faithfulness did not shield him from a lot of troubles. It did not shield him from pain. He had to go through the wilderness. He had to eat the manna. He had to put up with everybody. It was not like he had a special cart that he was carried on, but he had to go through it day by day.
When I think of the whole matter of daily life, I think of Caleb, because day by day Caleb was one who really was faithfully following the Lord. In fact, we will read in a minute that it testifies that Caleb fully followed the Lord. That was his testimony, and he did it every day, day by day, pressing on through.
If we want to be those who are pressing through to the glory of God and to be the testimony He desires for us to be in this hour, we have to have that settled within our hearts: that call of God and the purpose of God, why we are here, and all that He is desiring to accomplish. Then we can press on when everything comes against us.
When everything else is saying, “No, you have not heard right. No, you are foolish. No, it is too hard. It is too difficult,” it makes us question what we have seen and what we have heard. But if we have that sure and steadfast and firm foundation, we can make it through. We can make it through not just somehow, but triumphantly in Him. This is what we see in Caleb’s life.
So tonight, I would like for us to turn to Joshua. This is where they are in the land and Caleb is getting ready to take possession. Let us turn first to Joshua 14. We will read Joshua 14:6-12.
There are a couple of things, as we read these verses. Listen to how the Lord speaks of how Caleb followed the Lord fully. Listen also to the number of times it speaks of the Word of God. Caleb had that Word in his heart, and it held him. We will hear that word mentioned over and over again.
Then the children of Judah drew nigh unto Joshua in Gilgal: and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the Lord spake unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadesh-barnea.
Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in my heart.
Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt; but I wholly followed the Lord my God.
And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy foot hath trodden shall be an inheritance to thee and to thy children for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God.
And now, behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as He spake, these forty and five years, from the time that the Lord spake this word unto Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old.
As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, and to go out and to come in.
Now therefore give me this hill-country, whereof the Lord spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakim were there, and cities great and fortified: it may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out, as the Lord spake.
So Joshua blessed him; and he gave Hebron unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance.
Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day; because that he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel.
Now, a couple of verses over in Joshua 15:13-14:
And unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a portion among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of the Lord to Joshua, even Kiriath-arba, which Arba was the father of Anak (the same is Hebron).
And Caleb drove out thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak.
It is interesting, as we look at these verses, we see how six times it says of Caleb, “He followed the Lord fully. He followed the Lord fully.” Now, what does this really mean, to follow the Lord fully?
For one thing, it shows the fallen state that we are in. It is tragic that, to describe our condition, we have to add—uh, we have to use adverbs. I get all these words mixed up sometimes. That is an adverb, I think.
Why cannot we just say, “And he followed the Lord”? But it would leave a little room, because we know ourselves. The Holy Spirit puts it in there: “He followed the Lord fully.” He put it in there for our weakness, because we could find ways to say, “Well, he followed the Lord most of the time. He followed the Lord almost—on good days he was following the Lord.”
No, to remove and eliminate any doubt, it says he fully followed the Lord. The wonderful thing about that is that he followed Him in a simplicity. Sometimes we can make following the Lord so complicated, particularly in this day and time. We love to complicate things.
But simply, Caleb was one who, in the simplicity of faith, just said yes to God and no to self. He said yes to God. Paul calls that the obedience of faith in Romans. When God spoke, he just responded. He responded to the grace and the faith of God.
Brother Sparks says that this matter of following the Lord fully is just one who goes through to the end, who finishes well. How we want to be those. I wish that I could testify in my life that I followed the Lord fully. That is one of the things I will never be able to say. But I can still testify of the grace of God.
The wonderful thing is that, even though we might not follow the Lord fully, because of the blood of the Lamb, we can always get back up and get in the race again. That is what we are thankful for. We are thankful that we have examples like Caleb.
Sometimes you look at these ones and it can condemn us. But it does not mean that Caleb was sinless, perfect, without sin. He knew the Lord, and when he would sin, he would come back, repent, and allow the Lord to restore him. That is what we want: to allow the Lord to restore us.
The enemy is out there trying to get us out of the race in any way. One of the greatest ways he can get us out is that he starts accusing us. A lot of the things he accuses us of are true. “I am this, this, and that,” and the enemy says, “You are that, that, and that.” You say, “Well, that ends the argument.”
But praise God, the Lord knew that, and He has provision for us at this table to handle everything. We can get up and keep going on in the race. Praise God for that.
As I was thinking about how it says Caleb followed the Lord fully, we have to describe it in that way because, as I said, in this fallen state we can marginalize things. You ever talk to somebody and say, “Now, there is a stop sign down there. That stop sign, you have got to make a full stop”?
Why do you have to say “full stop”? It is like, you know, you better make a full stop. It is because we are going to roll. If you have a rolling stop, then we kind of roll all through, and that policeman is right there to give us that rolling ticket. But we just kind of cruise through.
The Lord gives us these words to help us keep things in perspective, and we are thankful for that.
As we think about following the Lord and following fully, within Caleb there was a spirit, as I have said, of obedience. Obedience was simply responding to the grace of God. The obedience there was a full obedience. It was not partial obedience.
Oftentimes, we love to partially obey. I remember when I was a child, my mother would give me two or three things to do. If I got a couple of them done, I thought that was pretty good. But she was never satisfied. She wanted the whole list done.
Remember back in the Old Testament how Samuel told Saul to kill all the Amalekites? “Take everything out. Do not bring anything back.” But Saul had his own idea. He was going to save the best for God. Great example of partial obedience. He was not following fully. God had said this; we do it. We do not lean to our own understanding.
This is Caleb. When God said something, he simply obeyed and simply did it. Would that, when we hear the voice of God, when we hear that resident voice speaking to us, we could simply obey. We might not fully understand what all is going on, but we could, in a simple obedience, just say yes. “This is the way that that resident voice is leading me, and I want to follow and do that.” Thank the Lord for it.
Another word, when we are talking about fully following the Lord, is everybody’s favorite word. You cannot go through a conference without hearing it. It is the word consecration. You know, we all have to hear the consecration message at least once every conference.
But if we really stop and think about it, what is consecration? It is just settling the issue of who is in charge of our life. So often we hear, because we are so fixed in this old covenant and the old law and everything, that it is like we have to do something.
But consecration is not doing something for God. It is letting Him do something through us. It is not giving ourselves to Him to do something, but it is giving ourselves to Him so that He can live through us, that He can have freedom to live His life through us and express that.
Again, consecration is simply responding to the grace and mercies of God. We see that, and we respond and say, “Lord, I want to give my life to You, that You can live it out through me.” Not doing my own thing, not trying to figure out how to do this or that, but simply allowing You to lead me and guide me.
One of the tragic things about the ten spies who brought back the bad report was that, within their lives, they denied the Lord the opportunity to prove Himself to them. Joshua and Caleb allowed the Lord to prove His faithfulness to them, but those ten lost a wonderful opportunity.
They said, “God is not able to overcome these giants,” because they looked at things with their own eyes and said, “We are just grasshoppers. These giants—everything—it is too hard, Lord. We cannot go on.” They said no, and they stopped. They denied God the opportunity to prove Himself.
Do we find ourselves in situations at times where we are denying God the opportunity to prove Himself? One of the most wonderful ways that God can prove Himself is through problems.
When we have problems in our assemblies, when we have problems in relationships between brothers and sisters, between one another, that is a wonderful opportunity for God to prove His faithfulness—to prove that He is the God who has a desire for reconciliation and restoration.
But are we saying, “No, God cannot. This situation between me and that brother—there is no way. I quit. I am leaving”? We immediately, at that point, are denying God the opportunity.
Would we give Him those opportunities to work through those hard times? As we humble ourselves before Him, would we stay in there and press on, allowing His grace to lead us through? What actually happens is that, as you work through those impossible situations, the relationship is strengthened. There is a stronger testimony. Praise God for that.
Let us not be denying God the opportunity to do the work He desires to do in each of our lives. He calls us, just as He called Peter, just as He called Caleb. He says, “Follow Me.”
Again, let us just respond to that call to follow Him. Caleb fully followed Him. May we allow Him, as our Lord and Master, to lead us through. He leads us through in life. We heard of that anointing this morning. There is a life that leads us through.
As we follow Him, as we simply keep our eyes on Him, we are following Him. We are not in front of Him. We are not alongside, giving Him a hand. We are behind Him. We are just going on, and we are following Him.
We are following a Person. We are not following a teaching. We are not following an experience. We are not following doctrine. We are following a Person. We are following the living Christ, who is leading us on.
He leads us from victory unto victory. He leads us on through all of the difficult times, that we can learn of Him and be the testimony that He wants us to be.
Again, as we mentioned the other night, following our Lord is not always going to be just a bed of roses. Think about following Him as He was upon this earth—what all He had to go through.
Just as He was born there in Bethlehem, think of the humiliation that He had to suffer. Are we willing to go through those times of humiliation as we follow Him? There will be times of that humiliation. Nobody will understand. We will be misunderstood. Ones will take advantage. Are we willing?
Our Lord was willing to go through that humility of being born as a little babe in a feed trough. Are we willing? We talk about following the Lord. Are we willing to go that way? Are we willing to go through that way of Nazareth, those hidden thirty-some years that were there?
As we heard the other night, it is that time of training—Christ being formed within us. One of the things the flesh hates so much is this matter of the hidden life. We want to be seen.
Now, some of us—we are so… I should say, we sometimes are so good. We know we should be hidden, but we want people to see us. So we learn certain ways to work around it, so that all of a sudden, “Oh, there is Mac.” “Oh, I did not know you saw me. I did not know you saw me doing that.”
Maybe we are in the back cleaning the room up, and all of a sudden we kick the trash can to make a little noise so people look around and see, “Oh wow, look at Matt cleaning the room.” You know, there is a hidden life. We are so crafty.
But the Lord deals with all that stuff. He is not surprised. He works through it, and that is the hidden training of going through all of that.
Then, after that, He came into Judea. He came to His own, and His own received Him not. What a tragedy. The very ones He came to, they received Him not.
We know Caleb went through the rejection. He and Joshua came back. They gave the report. Everybody rejected them. They were ready to stone them. Are we willing to go through those times of rejection?
That is why we have to have that promise so solid within our hearts. We have to know God’s calling and purpose within our hearts, or when we start going through those times of rejection, we are going to be giving up. We are not going to make it through. But He has given us that grace. That grace is there to respond to and to lead us through.
Again, as we are following Him, we go on to Gethsemane. We have to come to that point in our lives of saying, “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” Not my will—in an agonizing way, really crying out to that.
We know from Gethsemane we go to Calvary, that death. Paul, as Paul writes us, encourages us to die daily. We do not mind dying periodically, but the dying daily—at times, it is just, “Lord, I need a break.”
Okay, here: you want a real break? You want to be free of yourself? Die a little more. As Brother Lance says, the problems we face in Christian life are not in living; they are in dying. If we would learn to die, many of our problems would be taken care of.
We are trying to live this life. We cannot live it. But as we die, His life can come forth and carry us on in the strength that is in Him. Praise God for that.
Finally, thank the Lord, it does not end at Calvary. From there, we can follow Him to the throne. There is the throne of God, and all that victory and all that splendor.
Oh, brothers and sisters, if we have that end in view, if we see God’s purpose of all that He is desiring to do—of bringing a people together, not just individuals, but His desire to bring us together, to prepare us, to be that bride that He is desiring—oh, that will just so drive us.
Now, I do not have much experience in being a bride, but I notice that when ones are getting ready to get married, they are focused. They are focused, and every little detail is taken care of.
All of a sudden, things that did not matter in the past matter. The color of this, the color of that, how many this and how many that—all of those details, all that preparation. It leads up because there is something within their heart that has brought about a focal point.
Brothers, do we have that focal point of the Lord in our hearts, leading us into all that He is desiring for us to be? Praise God. Caleb had that. There are so many that have had that, and would that we get that, and it could lead us through too.
As we read here in Joshua 14, Caleb was very clear about the strength in his life. Now, what was the strength of Caleb’s life? Or maybe we should phrase it: Who was the strength of Caleb’s life? The Lord was Caleb’s strength.
When Caleb was forty years old, it was not like he was in good shape, and then, all of a sudden, during those other forty-five years, he continued working out in the wilderness. They did not have a Gold’s Gym throughout the wilderness where he could go every day and keep pumping iron and doing his aerobics and Pilates and staying in shape.
But no. God was his strength at forty, and God was his strength at eighty-five. So often, we can know the Lord is our strength at one point, but then, as we go through, we start getting a little self-confident. We think we can handle things. All of a sudden, we find out, no, we are trying to do it ourselves.
But Caleb had learned. He knew the Lord was his strength then, and the Lord was his strength now. If God had said it, God would do it then and God would do it now. It was not depending on how old or young Caleb was. He had a confidence.
He knew the joy of the Lord. He knew that joy—that was his strength. It was not Caleb’s joy for the Lord; it was the Lord’s joy. He knew the Lord’s joy was that He would have a people for Himself. There was a purpose. That was the joy of the Lord.
It is interesting, as you look at this story of Caleb. I love verse 12. It says, “Now therefore give me this hill-country, whereof the Lord spake in that day.”
It was not like he went through the land and said, “Okay, I have made it through the wilderness. I know when I was forty, I wanted that big hill country, but now I just want a nice little easy plot of land here. I can plant me a few vegetables here, take care of things, and just live an easy life the rest.”
He said, “No.” He knew that God had spoken within his heart. God had said, “Caleb, that is your inheritance.” So he was not content to settle for anything less.
Brothers and sisters, do we get content at times just to settle for less than all that God desires? As we read those verses of Paul in Philippians 3, he said, “I am pressing on. I was laid hold of by God for a purpose, and I am pressing on that I can achieve all that I was laid hold of for.”
Now, if you look over in Philippians 4, there is another verse where Paul testifies, “I have learned to be content in all circumstances.” When you read Philippians 4 about Paul being content in all circumstances, and you look at Philippians 3 about him pressing on to keep going, that seems like a paradox.
Wait a minute—he has learned to be content, but yet he is pressing on. What is going on with Paul here? But if we look at this, there was not any paradox at all.
Paul had learned to be content in the circumstances of life. He could learn Christ. He learned more and more of what the Lord had. But he was never content with his experiential knowledge of the Lord.
He was never content with that experiential knowledge of the Lord. Whatever circumstance he might be in, he knew the Lord was his peace and rest, and he could be at rest and content there. But as far as knowing the Lord in that experiential way, in the reality of that inward life growing within him, he knew there was much more.
Over and over through Paul’s writings, he says there is much more. In Romans, even when he talks about justification, there is so much more about justification you need to learn. There is so much more about sanctification. There is so much more of Christ we need to learn.
How we can just settle in and be contented with so little. Oh, would we truly be those hungering and thirsting? So often we get it backwards. We become content with our Christian life where we are, but then we become discontent with the circumstances of life.
We have a good life now, but we become discontent with our job, our home situation, and all the circumstances of life. They keep us out of rest, but our Christian life, we are content. We need to flip it around.
We need to be those pressing on to know Him and learning that peace and contentment that we have in whatever circumstance. Paul said, “I learned to be content.” As he allowed the Lord to meet him, he learned to be content.
We read those various trials. He said, “I learned to be content in the midst of a shipwreck. I learned to be content in whatever place I was being abused and had to suffer.” He did not say it was easy, but he knew that God was on the throne. He knew that the Lord was teaching him something through this, and so he wanted to learn all that he could.
Oh, would we be those that learn to be content? Even when we can be very faithful in the Lord, we can say, “Oh, well, this was good. We can have this wonderful conference this week, and then say, ‘Oh, it is good.’”
I always appreciate what Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica. Hold your finger in Joshua; flip back to 1 Thessalonians—or I will read it to you. It is 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10. Paul is commending them.
But concerning love of the brethren ye have no need that one write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another;
for indeed ye do it toward all the brethren that are in all Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren, to abound more and more.
What a wonderful testimony. He said, “You have no need to be taught of the love of the brethren, because you have heard it and you are practicing it.” But he does not stop there. He continues with the rest of the verse: “We urge you, brethren, to excel still more.”
Keep pressing on. Yes, we have love with the brethren. Yes, we care enough. But there is still much more. There is an excelling even more that we can do. Sometimes we can think, “Well, I have served enough. We have loved this one enough. I have done enough.”
Oh, the Lord says, “Praise God, you have done what you have done, but excel still more.” This excelling more, the much more—this captured Caleb’s heart. That is why he wanted that hill country. He was not going to settle just for an easy plot.
He knew God had said, “Caleb, this is where you are going to live. Your foot was there at Hebron, and that is where the revelation of God came to you. This is where you are going to live.” Caleb continued to say, “That is what I want.” Even though those giants were there, even though it was a difficult place, “I am pressing on. That is what I want for my life.”
As you look there in Joshua 15:13-14, we see how Caleb goes up there and starts to take this land. As he gets there, these giants are there. They are there. It shows the significance of it because there is a great battle that he is now having to enter into.
There are giants without, and brothers and sisters, there are also giants within us. There are giants without and giants within, and we are having to do battle.
Actually, the greatest obstacle within our finishing this race, our greatest obstacle to finishing well, is the battle within—that self trying to pull us one way or the other. The Lord has the victory over the enemy. We have to work through it at times, but He has that victory.
But that self—that is where most of us have most of our struggles. I know within my life that battle with self, wanting to do this or do that. Oh, that is where it can keep us from finishing well.
Let us look at these three giants that Caleb had to take on, because really what they are, they are counterfeits to what God’s heart and purpose are. God has a character and characteristics that He desires within His people. The enemy knows that and brings some counterfeits in.
Now, this first guy is named Sheshai. That is in Joshua 15:14. Sheshai. To simply translate his name, it just means “free” or “freedom.”
Praise God, when we are saved, the Lord has set us free. But there is a counterfeit freedom here that is coming against the people of God, and we see it so much today. This is actually the freedom of self to do whatever he wants to do. It is that freedom to do your own thing. It is not a freedom to come under the lordship of Christ.
When we look at this word free in the Scriptures, it talks about how we are free from sin to be servants of righteousness. We are free from sin to be bondservants of Christ. We are free from the law of sin and death that we can be under the law of the Spirit of life.
Yes, there is a freedom we have, but it is not for us. It is for Him to work. Praise God.
Our brother the last couple of nights has opened with that wonderful verse out of 2 Corinthians 3:17:
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
Now, who is that liberty for? In our self-centered way, we look at it as for us. “Oh, that is a liberty for me to do what I want to do.” No. The liberty there, where the Spirit of the Lord is, is liberty for the Spirit to work.
Because, as you look at the next verse, it talks about how we will be transformed into the glory and image of Jesus Christ. That work of the Spirit that our brothers spoke of this morning.
Oh, how we see such a counterfeit freedom permeating Christianity today: “I am free to do whatever I want.” No, we are not. He set us free. He set us free with a purpose. He set us free that we could be bondservants unto Him, that we could be servants unto Him, that we not serve ourselves.
Oh, praise God for the freedom. We have been set free from the sin that entangles us so much. Praise God, we do not have to come under it. There is a battle because we think we are free and can do our own thing. But no, it is a freedom with purpose.
Would we respond to that purpose and give the Holy Spirit the freedom within us to work? We give the Holy Spirit the freedom to work by declaring that Jesus Christ is Lord over us, that He is the Master. That Spirit does the work of transforming us into the image of Christ.
That is great liberty, brothers and sisters. That sets us truly free, because we are free from the things of this world. We are free from so many things that entangle us, and we are free to serve the Lord and enjoy Him in a greater way.
But the enemy has brought a counterfeit in among us, and it robs us of much of the glory of God. It is tragic here, because many did not receive it. When you come to the time of Judges, we know it says there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
They had a freedom of self. They rejected the King. There was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Sadly, as we look around Christianity today, sometimes we have to ask, “Is there a King, or is everybody just doing what is right in their own eyes?”
Would we learn to come under His headship, come under that dominion, that we could know that glorious liberty of the sons of God? Praise God. Would it be recovered in this hour and taken away from the enemy—all that he has stolen by lying to us about that?
The second one we come to is Ahiman, and it means “brother of man.” We are so thankful that, within the body of Christ, we have been made brothers and sisters in Christ. One of the most precious things we have is the brotherhood and sisterhood that we have together in Christ.
But this one, this lie, this counterfeit that comes in, brings us down from the relationship we have in Christ and brings it down to a natural level. It wants to rob the Lord of His glory and bring us into relationship with one another based on our natural likes and dislikes and all of the similarities we have.
It brings us into the bondage of the elements of this world, as Galatians speaks of. We are no longer controlled by the Spirit of Christ and seeing Christ in one another, but we form our relationships based on how many of you like the Yankees, how many of you like the Dodgers, and how many like the Giants. We have all of these natural relationships.
It is okay to have those, but they have to be in the right order: Christ first. Because we are in Christ, then we can enjoy Him together. There might be some other things, but they do not take preeminence at all.
The Lord has so desired that we experience this relationship we have in Him. I have yearned more and more to be able to experience the brother-sister relationship we have in Christ, and not know each other so much after natural likes and dislikes.
Paul, as he testified of Timothy in Philippians, said, “I have nobody else like-minded.” Now, if you stop and think about that for a moment, that is an amazing statement that Paul would say of Timothy.
If you look at Paul and Timothy, they are two totally different people. Paul was this educated man, studied under Gamaliel. Timothy was just homeschooled by his grandmother and mother—a homeschooler at that. Here is this most educated man in the world, Paul.
Even if you look at their background, Paul was that Hebrew of Hebrews, the tribe of Benjamin. Oh, he was a thoroughbred. Timothy was just a little half-breed. His father was Greek. He was not even a pure Jew. What did they have in common?
They had one thing in common, and that was Christ. That is where there was a like-mindedness. Paul and Timothy could go on and serve together not because of any natural affinities, but because of Christ in Paul and Christ in Timothy. They were joined together.
Paul could say, “I have no one else like-minded.” Paul was one who would run into the midst of a crowd and fight and try to save people. Timothy, if you looked at him and said, “Boo,” he would faint. But there was nothing they had in common except Christ.
That is all they needed, and that is all we need. How can our assemblies and relationships go on together? It is not by establishing more relationships on the natural realm, but by knowing Christ in a fuller and greater way in each and every brother and sister.
I have to confess, for some of us that is tough—to look beyond this outer shell and get to see Christ in one another. That is where the eyes of our hearts have to be enlightened. Once we see Christ, it puts a whole different perspective, and we are able to press on.
Would the Lord really be able to encourage us in this? May we not give in to this enemy that wants to divide and bring us down to a lower level.
This third enemy that he had to overcome was Talmai. Talmai means bold. There is a brazenness there.
You see this brazenness, this boldness, among the people of God because God had said to this tribe, to the nation of Israel, “Go in and possess the land.” They said, “No, we are not. It is too hard.” They stopped, and He had to discipline them.
We see how, in this day and time, there is such an elevation of man’s self-assurance and self-importance. How often we can hear it. It is so tragic: “The Bible says this, but I think this.”
There is a boldness and a brazenness in the world today, and in Christendom, that is attacking everything that God is standing for. We see that it is really a characteristic of the end age.
If you look at the end of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, God challenges them. He says, “I have loved you,” and they are bold enough to say, “How have You loved us?” He says, “You have defiled Me.” They say, “How have we defiled You?” He says, “Your words have worn Me out. Your words are arrogant.”
They were coming back with a boldness. They might not have uttered it with their lips, but their hearts were saying that. If you look at the end of the New Testament, in the church of Laodicea, there is that same spirit. They said, “We are rich. We have need of nothing.”
That is a bold arrogance. It is a total lack of seeing who the Lord is and our great need and dependence upon Him. How we see, in this day and time, that this is trying to work and permeate and draw us and rob God of who He should be within our midst.
Praise God, Caleb overcame these three. In many ways, if you wanted to compare, Caleb is a contrast. We have the counterfeit one who is free, a brother of man, and bold. But then in Caleb, you see the true.
In Caleb, you see the true one who is free. He is free of himself. He is free of the hindrances and impressions of man. He is free to serve the Lord. He has a boldness to serve, a boldness to stand up for what the Lord is calling him to do.
He is standing for all the brethren. He is there as a true brother, standing for the Lord’s interests. Oh, may the Lord search our hearts in this day. Where we have allowed any of these enemies in, where they have not been dealt with, would we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, that we can keep pressing on?
They are going to be there, and we have to work our way through these. But praise God, there is a grace and a way of doing that.
Praise God, Caleb fully possessed his land. But the story does not stop there. Caleb possessed his land fully. He got hold of that, but he had a desire. He saw God’s heart in such a way that he wanted to pass on his inheritance.
He did not stop with Caleb. Caleb did not see himself as the center, but he saw God’s heart and God’s interests in a way that he wanted to pass this on, because he knew God was going to use this people in a marvelous way to accomplish all of His purpose.
So, if we are back in Joshua 15 again, we will read Joshua 15:15-19.
And he went up thence against the inhabitants of Debir: now the name of Debir beforetime was Kiriath-sepher.
And Caleb said, He that smiteth Kiriath-sepher, and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife.
And Othniel the son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, took it: and he gave him Achsah his daughter to wife.
And it came to pass, when she came unto him, that she moved him to ask of her father a field: and she alighted from off her ass; and Caleb said unto her, What wouldest thou?
And she said unto him, Give me a blessing; for that thou hast set me in the land of the South, give me also springs of water. And he gave her the upper springs and the nether springs.
Caleb saw that God had a purpose in this land that He desired to accomplish. He knew that he would be passing away, and he knew that this testimony would have to be carried on.
He knew that it would take one of a character and nature that had really been captured by the Lord to carry on. We have that challenge before us today. Are we passing on our inheritance? Are we really caring about ones being raised up to serve the purpose of God in their generation?
I am reminded of Psalm 48. I am just going to turn over and read that a second. If you look at Psalm 48, it is interesting. It is actually one of the songs of the sons of Korah.
It has a precious conclusion to this psalm, encouraging us:
Walk about Zion, and go round about her:
Number the towers thereof;
Mark ye well her bulwarks,
Consider her palaces:
That ye may tell it to the generation following.
Why are you doing that? Why are you looking at Zion? Why are you beholding where God has chosen to place His name? Zion, when we think of His lordship, His kingship, that dwelling place of God—you are considering it, meditating upon it, seeing the dominion of Zion. Why are we doing that? That we may tell it to the next generation.
It was not just about us getting it and acquiring everything and learning more and more of what God’s heart is. There is also a responsibility we have to pass it on. Caleb saw this.
Praise God, we see how throughout Scripture Moses had a Joshua, Paul had a Timothy, and Caleb had an Othniel. Who are the ones in this generation that will carry on that testimony?
Those of us who have been around a little while, are we clear on Zion? Are we clear on what it is? Are we clear on God’s heart, purpose, and testimony? If not, let us keep walking around. Let us look at it. Let us consider it. Allow the Lord to show it and clarify it within our hearts, that we can tell it to that next generation.
That generation would be a generation that seeks His face, a generation that would be serving the purpose of God. If the Lord delays, it would be that generation that hastens His return.
It is wonderful how Caleb, even after he possessed the land, did not stop. He kept pressing on.
Sometimes we can think of Caleb as a rough old guy. That is how we said his name is “mad dog” and all that. But it turns out he was a pretty good father too. He cared about his daughter. He was not just going to leave his daughter to anybody.
He was a typical father. He said, “I am going to make sure my daughter gets a good one.” He said, “Here is the test. You go down, and if you win this battle, you get my daughter.” Old Othniel went down and won the battle.
Do you know who Othniel is? He is the first judge. You go to the book of Judges. The people of God had gone their own way. They had been caught up, and the kings from Mesopotamia and Syria had come in.
Othniel was there to restore the people of God to where they should be. He was a good judge. He judged the people for forty years.
Because of that, Caleb had this desire. He knew there were tough times ahead. He knew also one of the most tragic verses in the book of Joshua: “There was yet much land to be possessed.”
Caleb knew that. He wanted ones there who could still be possessing more of the land. For many years, that verse has been very convicting in my own life, because I know within myself there is yet much land to be possessed. I know within our assemblies there is yet much land to be possessed.
But praise God, there is a way and a provision there. As we continue day by day to experience and draw upon the Lord, standing for His heart and purpose, gradually that land is possessed.
One day that bride is made ready. One day there is that glorious return. We want to be those found hastening His return. We do not want to be those delaying it.
I think often of how Caleb had to wait forty-five years for his inheritance. Do you ever stop and think how long our Lord has waited for His? The problem is not on His side. We have delayed it.
I pray that we would wake up at this time, and the Lord would really be working within us in a way that we could hasten His return.
Caleb simply walked by faith. As he walked across Hebron that first time, he was just being obedient to God. In his obedience came revelation. As we walk daily in the light of His light, there will be that revelation.
As we walk daily with Him, He will show the things in our hearts that need to be dealt with. We do not have to look for them. He will point them out, because He loves us so much. He will point them out.
He will show us those things that are delaying His return, and He will be working within us to His glory and honor.
There is this old saying that all these—what do you call them? I want to call them promotional speakers, but they are motivational. That is the word: motivational. They say, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
We have probably all heard that in the pep talks and all that. But in many ways, there is truth to that. Today, every day we wake up, is the first day of the rest of our life.
Every day, would that, with the provision we have in Him, it would be fresh and new to us—that we would respond and learn of Him every day.
Because, as Mordecai said to Esther when she was in a tough place, “You are here for such a time as this.” We are not here by happenstance. The Lord has each and every one of us here in this day and time we are living in for such a time as this.
We want to respond as Esther: “If I perish, I perish. But God’s will be done.”
Let us pray.
Lord, we are so thankful for a love that will not let us go. Paul testified that he was constrained by the love of Christ, that he no longer wanted to live for himself, but live for the One who had loved him and died for him.
Lord, as we had Your table earlier, we saw that great love. We pray, too, that we could be those constrained by the love of Christ, that You could be working within us, both individually and in our assemblies, in ways that would really bring glory and honor unto You. In Thy name we pray. Amen.