“Where Do We Stand? What Will We Do?”

Thank you, Becky.

In the Old Testament God called his people Israel.  Today he calls them the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Many of you know the story of the Exodus.  Moses is one of the most well known names in the Old Testament.  He was God's chosen leader to take his people out of bondage in Egypt.  There are many things the Old Testament story foreshadows for us and tells us about Christ and tells about God's people, the church, in the church age and tells us about the Christian life and how it's going to go for us and what it's going to be like.  It is good He did that so we wouldn't be so surprised.  It's kind of like one man said, "Life wouldn't be so hard if we didn't think it was supposed to be so easy." And sometimes we need to be awakened to that about the Christian life.  Somewhere along the line, someone told us that if you really do trust Christ then that means a bit of a smoother road in front of you.  Now most of you in this room know better than that mentally, but when trouble comes we're always wondering where in the world God is.  Why did you let this happen?  Why is it so hard? Why am I this way? Why are my children this way? In the life of Caleb we learn some significant things.  [Cell phone rings in background.]  Caleb didn't have a cell phone, but if he did, he would have called and said, "I want to give $100,000 this year to the building program.

[I'm sorry for that.  I have a very random mind and I have very good hearing.  And do sometimes you are actually doing things in church and I'm listening to you and you have no idea I'm hearing what you're saying.  So, it just comes out of my mouth sometimes before I can shut it off when I hear things like that.]

Caleb was one of 12 chosen men after God had redeemed Israel out of Egypt by the miraculous plagues and Passover.  He'd seen God with all of Israel part the Red Sea and one thing you definitely learn about Caleb's life and from him is that being close to the power of God is not enough to change the human heart.  We're always looking for miracles.  We're always looking for something to happen to prove that God is there.  It doesn’t matter if God parted the Ohio River for you on New Year's Day and let you walk across it, that wouldn't change your heart.  The Bible is full of things like that.  It takes an internal work of the Spirit of God to change your heart and He's still doing that in people today.  That's how, one of the ways we know experientially that He's still alive, that He's still at work and He's changed many of you.

Caleb, Joshua at Moses' command, along with 10 other men, when they got to the edge of the Promised Land, this thing that God had promised them 400 years earlier to Abraham, this land that was to be theirs, they got to the edge, it was already promised them by God, and what Moses did, because there is all throughout the Bible, the mixture of the promise and power of God, and the mixture of human responsibility and action, they can never be separated when it comes to what we do.  Separated, yes, in fact, but separated as far as how our human minds can pull them apart and understand exactly what goes on…. I know that God saves people.  I also know that every person who has ever been saved has repented of their sins and trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  It's just that way.  So, we can never blame it on God when things don't go the way we want them to go.  We've got responsibility and we need to trust He will always hold up His end of the bargain… it's not a bargain, it's just His responsibility. 

So, at Moses' command, Joshua, Caleb and 10 other men went into the Promised Land.  They went through it, they took notes, they brought back some of the fruit of the land. If they had had a digital camera, they would have taken pictures and brought it back in an I-Movie presentation and shown everybody what it was like.  And the thing is, they told the truth!  Up to a certain point.  Because God said it, it is a land flowing with milk and honey, but we want you to know the people living in that land are large, the cities are walled, and in their site, we were light grasshoppers. Now, you could develop a nice, neat, soft message about self-image and seeing yourself as a grasshopper, but the Bible, at this point, has nothing to do with that.  Alright? It has to do with truth!  If you were standing in front of Shaquille O'Neal, you'd look like a grasshopper, my friend, and that's a fact!  That was the fact of the day.  The trouble is 10 of the spies saw these giants in the light and lens of their own heart.  Caleb and Joshua saw these giants through the light and lens of God's heart, and to them they were only humans.  But, because of unguarded, unprotected hearts, these 10 spies who did not trust the promise of God, did not realize that when God makes a promise, he always wants us to follow through with faith that leads to action.  Their hearts melted and their words penetrated all the hearts of the people because their hearts weren't satisfied in God, and the Bible says, "It melted their heart" and they refused to go in.  They listened to the words of men more than to the words of God and they didn't go in; and so God sentenced them to due punishment.  They searched the land out for 40 days.  He said for every day you searched the land out, you will be in the wilderness wandering for 40 years, and all of you 20 years of age and up will die in the wilderness and will not see the Promised Land, except for Joshua and Caleb because they followed me wholly, completely, fully. 

What we're going to look at in Caleb's life today, if you'll take your Bibles and turn to the Book of Joshua, some of Joshua's recordings for us, Joshua 14, we come to the end of the 45 years. 

Joshua 14.  They've already been in battles, they've crossed the Jordan, they've defeated Jericho, they sinned and lost the battle at Ai, they repented, they got their lives right with the Lord, had His power with them again, Joshua and Caleb had seen war, they are the two oldest men in the entire camp, they are the leaders, they are the spiritual icons, they are the influencers that are there, and now it's time under God's direction to give out the allotted portions of the Promised Land.  They were to be selected by lot.  In other words they were going to roll the Holy Dice and this is what you got.  But, just about the time they were to do that, Joshua was leading, here comes Caleb and this is what Caleb said:

Joshua 14:6

Jos 14:6  Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him,….

Let me stop just there… Caleb wasn't a Jew.  He was a foreigner.  Evidently his daddy married into the Jewish nation, Israel, and so he had some kind of special thing of this foreigner who had been brought into the family of God by God's open arms and grace, already learning that they were to be a blessing to the entire world….

And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him,

 "You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me.

Jos 14:7  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 him word again as it was in my heart.

Jos 14:8  But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the LORD my God.

Jos 14:9  And Moses swore on that day, saying, 'Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the LORD my God.'

Jos 14:10  And now, behold, the LORD has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the LORD spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old.

Jos 14:11  I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming.

Jos 14:12  So now give me this hill country of which the LORD spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the LORD will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the LORD said."

Where do we stand? What will we do?  God has given us many things.  At the year end of 2007, the next time we're together, Lord willing, it will be next year.  It will be 2008.  In one sense, no real difference.  In another sense, every day is a huge difference in the life of God's children.  So what will we do from the perspective of where we presently stand?

One of the most significant things in this passage is its permeation in Caleb's life with the Word of God.  Sometimes I fear that we become bibliolators.  In other words, we worship the Word of God.  The way to honor the Word of God is obeying it because of the One who spoke it.  This is just regular ink and regular paper, and a regular leather binding.  But the words that are here are to us today the voice of God.  So, when you are believing the Bible you are believing God.  God is to direct us and that is what mastered Caleb's life.  He followed the Lord his God wholly and that's why when the Lord spoke, Caleb acted.  So let's see what we can learn from Caleb today.

The first is this:  Your heart can be molded by the promises of God or melted by the words of men.  Obviously they can.  Who is shaping your heart?  What influences are coming in on you? 

I noticed in today's paper there was a 6-year-old girl who won an essay contest, I think in Texas.  She lied in the essay.  She said her dad was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq and it wasn't true. So they took away the essay.  What in the world would make a 6-year-old girl lie to win an essay contest? Because she had a mother that influenced her heart.  Her mother said "We'd do anything we could to win. No, the story is not true, but we did win the essay."

Oh, my friend, unless the athlete competes according to the rules, God says, he cannot have his crown.  So, who is influencing your heart? Because your heart is shapeable and what we ask is what shapes your heart?

The Proverbs in Proverbs 4:23, I believe it is, tell us to "guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life."  Your heart, to the Hebrew, was the whole of you.  It was your mind, your soul, the best of you, all of you.  What your heart was, was what you did, it was what you are.  When we allow influences into us, that is what begins to shape us and when God spoke to us his word, he said "Hide my word in your heart that you won't sin against me." We ask God to give us an undivided heart that we might fear his name.  Your heart can be molded by the promises of God or melted by the words of men.  Caleb learned early on that your choices and your words always affect others.  Why? Because our hearts are influenceable.  He learned that for his side that whatever he said and whatever he did…. Can you imagine the influence that Caleb had when everybody else his age in the wilderness was dying off and Caleb was walking just as strong with the Lord? Every day they saw Caleb's daily faithfulness.  They watched him.  Can you imagine the young men that wanted to be around Caleb so they could be like him? Caleb knew that his choices and words always affect others.  He learned a positive lesson in a negative experience because he watched the words of 10 men overpower the word of God in the unguarded hearts of an entire nation, and it cost them 40 years in the wilderness and a multitude of funerals constantly for 40 years.  The wilderness experience for Israel was not happy. 

But there's a third thing about shaping our heart, and it is this: A heart molded by God produces the fruit of integrity.  You know, one of the things the world is going to ask for from all Christians is honesty.  Are you honest at work? Are you honest in your taxes?  Have you ever been in a situation where you fear to tell the truth?  Now, I'm definitely not talking about that situation when a friend walks up and says, "How do you like my hair?"  You and God can work that one out.  I'm talking about in every day life, do you ever fear telling the truth? Do you have this urge inside of you to make it softer, to make it clearer, to make it sound a little better? That, my friend, is from outside influences on the human heart and the inside influence of a corrupted flesh / nature.  But see, when God has your heart and your heart is satisfied on him, the natural productivity, the nature fruit of that is integrity.  Let me see if I can explain this.  Do you remember when Caleb went into the Promised Land to spy it out? When he came out, his opinion, his perspective did not differ any from the other men.  He didn't say, "No, no, no, no… those people really aren't that big.  The city walls really aren't that high.  He didn't resort to any of that.  It's just like the scriptures.  You see, God is a God of integrity and when he tells the story of history and how He's involved in it, he never protects his heroes.  All the heroes in the Bible are flawed human beings.  When your heart is satisfied with God and you're like God, it produces the natural fruit of integrity.  Why?  Because if you are in God who is sovereign over all things and you trust him, and you know He's in control, there's no need to make life different than it really is.  You can always tell the truth, which means you can always face the truth.  Never fear the truth when God is in control.  So Caleb came out and said, "Yeah, man, those guys, they're huge!" They need to start an NFL team, maybe they could beat the Patriots! [That was for the football fans - sorry, they're undefeated this season] And he said, the city walls, they're huge!  Israel didn't even have a city.  But he said, "Oh, my friends, God is bigger than they are, listen to Him."  Caleb's heart was satisfied and therefore protected. 

And the final thing in shaping your heart is we must realize that only God is worth our whole heart.  We all give our heart to something.  That's the nature of humanity.  We long, we have a longing in our heart and we long to be satisfied.  We long to serve.  We long to sink our life into something and only God is worth our whole heart.  So what's shaping your heart?

We first learn from Caleb that your heart can be molded by the promises of God or melted by the words of man.  What's shaping yours?

Second, we learned from Caleb that you need God just as much to deal with the daily grind as you do to face giants.  Sometimes we preachers are guilty when we get a congregation in front of us of always preaching on the stories of killing giants, and telling you - you can slay the giants in your life.  Let me encourage you.  You can't!  God can.  I don't want to encourage you with this wrong picture of yourself.  I want to encourage you with the picture of God that's true, because when you're heart, then, is satisfied in a magnificent God, your heart is guarded and then you are set free. But where we learn to trust God that way is not in the fights with the giants, it's in the daily grind of life because that's where most of us are most of the time. 

Let's go back to the text and look at just a few things.

Verse 8:

Jos 14:8  But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the LORD my God.

Jos 14:9  And Moses swore on that day, saying, 'Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the LORD my God.'

So Caleb, that day, was given the land that he would one day live on.

Jos 14:10  And now, behold, the LORD has kept me alive, just as he said,…. [Here is the Word of God again] these forty-five years since the time that the LORD spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old.

Jos 14:11  I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming.

You need God just as much to deal with the daily grind as you do to face giants.  How do you do that?  By learning to seek God in every day.  One of the reason life is so dull for us is we have not exercised our eyes of faith to see the hand of God in every day.  But if we would simply read that Word and let it penetrate us, to know that all things are held together by the word of His power, by Jesus Christ, all things are consist, or are sustained, then when my heart beats, when the sun comes up, when my eyes see I have a God to thank for that instead of just expecting life to be normal.  Why does the earth rotate on its axis perfectly so we can have a year and have the sun come up? Because God ordained that it would be and holds it that way.  Caleb knew those kind of things.  He even knew the battle when God was asked to let the sun stand still and it did!  But do we see God in every day? Because when you do, it keeps you thankful for his provision.

When I go through those stale periods and I just act like a Christian atheist, you know what that is don't you?  You don't read your Bible, you don't say thanks for your food, well maybe you do that but you aren't really thankful, you just live as if God really isn't around.  You worry about everything but you go to church on Sunday.  That's a Christian atheist.  But if you see God in every day, it keeps you thankful for his provision.  Thank you, Lord, for this cup of orange juice that you provided.  That on the day you made the earth, you made trees that would bear fruit and have seed in them that bore their kind and now we can eat of those and squeeze them, and have juice from them.  We thank you for that, Lord.  We thank you that you designed them to have Vitamin C in them that keep us healthy.  We thank you that you didn't just leave us randomly to live and exist, but you designed a world in which we could live, thank you so much, Lord. 

It helps you rehearse God's promises when you see God in every day and dream your dreams.  You can rehearse over and over.  How many times in 45 years do you think Caleb sat and went back in the pictures of his mind, flipping them, flipping them through, seeing Hebron, seeing the giants.  He knew their names!  The Bible records the names of three giants in the Promised Land and they lived in Hebron where Caleb was going to conquer and interestingly they were still there when he had to go back.  He's seeing that; he's placing those giants in his mind beside God and they shrink down to the size of a shrimp, over and over and over he saw God in every day life.  He was thankful to God for his daily provision and he kept in his mind, because of God's daily provision, God's promises and he dreamed his dreams.  That is what causes us to be ready for crisis.  When you get up every day and you take time to think about God and who He is and you open His Word and you look into it because you're hungry, not so you can check off a box, and you read those promises and you worship with His people every Sunday and you try to just suck everything you can out of the words of those hymns that we sing, you listen to the scriptures, you fellowship in your Bible study class, you rehearse the faithfulness of God to His people, you listen to the stories of people in your Bible study class and how God's provided for them, you remember in your past God's provision, then you're ready for crisis.  When your loved one dies, and your finances turn south, but if you wait until then to start praying, it's almost too late.  That's how you face a giant!  People who face giants aren't heroes, people who face giants are those who daily are faithful seeing the hand of God, and, oh, yeah, by the way, seeing God in every day is the chief thing in life that guards you from bitterness.  Have you ever noticed how life has a tendency to turn us sour? 

I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but what I do watch… have you ever noticed that it has a great influence over you, not with the plot, but with the nature of the characters?  Do you ever go into conversations at work and subconsciously in the back of your mind you can see two characters on the show, 24, or whatever your favorite show is, House, anything, and they are looking at each other and you want to win the argument? And you see how people in these real-life situations on TV, (ha!) stare each other down, they are emotionless and they win the battle of verbs.  You get affected by those things.  You get affected by attitudes at work around you, people who have bad attitudes begin to drain you down; unfairnesses in life. But when you see God in every day it guards you from bitterness.  Can you imagine Caleb? Remember what he went through?  He went into the Promised Land.  He was one of 12 people to see it.  He saw it, he thirsted for it, he longed for the place to settle down and to live under the promises of God and his 10 buddies melted the hearts of the people with their word and for 45 years he had to wander through the wilderness with these jerks!  "I can't believe they did that!  What was wrong with those goofballs?"  He could have meditated on that, he could have seethed over that, his blood could have been boiling and he would have been the most bitter man in all of Israel.  But he refused to do it.  When he woke up each day, he saw that God was in control and that each day was one day closer to the promised land because God had promised him he would make it there.

God has promised you through Christ that you're going to make it to something far better than the promised land.  The Bible tells us that every day is a day closer to our salvation than ever before.  Why bitter?  Why bitter? It only ruins your life and those around you.  Seeing God in every day guards you from bitterness.  So you need God as much to deal with the daily grind as you do to face giants.

Third, we learned from Caleb that there are obstacles in your life, and the obstacles in your life are to be identified, named, and dealt with.  We tend not to name problems.  We don't like problems.  I don't like problems.  I like to ignore them.  Sometimes we have the great deal of ability in magnifying them, making them bigger than they are. Let's quickly learn three things about problems:

1.       Problems are not accidental happenings in your life.

When Caleb went into the Promised Land the first time they identified where the Sons of Anak lived, they lived in Hebron.  There were three of them there; I'm trying to think of their names, but I can't think of them, if I can, I can hardly pronounced them, but they're named, all of them.  As a matter of fact, if you'll look in Chapter 15, turn over a couple of pages I think we'll see it there,  I think I just told you an untruth.  That's what you get when you leave your text. If somebody finds it in Chapter 15, tell me the verse.  Okay, I lied, not there.  We'll find it later.  Sorry about that.

There are three giants.  All three of them are named.  They are there 40 years earlier, they are there 45 years later.  They are the ones Caleb is going to have to face.  He's already looked them eyeball to eyeball. For 45 years they could have haunted him, but for 45 years they compelled him.  It was an opportunity for God to show Himself strong.  Those problems were not accidental happenings in his life.  God left them there.  He knew Caleb was coming there, God was in control.

2.       Problems that are ignored, denied or magnified grow worse and weaken   our faith.

When we set problems aside as if it is not supposed to be part of our lives, if we ignore them, if we deny them or we magnify them, they increase in size and dimension, they weaken our faith as it shrinks in our view of God and we are not helped.  We are to name, identify and deal with problems in life.

3.       Problems are the terrain in which we obtain the promises of God.

Verse 12:

Jos 14:12  So now give me this hill country of which the LORD spoke..

God has a funny definition of giving.  Oh now you can have it Caleb.  He chose a portion of land that was yet unconquered.  He chose a portion that was filled with giants and Caleb says, "Give it to me." "Okay, it's use.

 …. for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the LORD will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the LORD said."

Is that not a perplexing statement, "It may be that the Lord will be with me." Oh, I find that the most honest Christian statement, one of those that is in the Bible.  He wasn't counting his chickens before they hatched.  He wasn't arrogant.  He just knew that everything he did was absolutely dependent upon the hand of God and walking into it without knowing the future, he could be totally confident.  Don't you wish more of us had a faith like that?

So that leaves us with three things to face:

1. The condition and protection of your heart.  Who is influencing you?  What is the condition of your heart? Had a physical lately? Had your blood pressure taken? Your pulse rate? Doctor fuss at you?  Don't dare go to the doctor yet, fast for a few days after the holidays.

But what about your spiritual blood pressure and pulse? You know what affects your heart a lot of times is what you eat.  And what affects your spiritual heart is directly what you eat, what you feed your soul with, what you let into that heart.  You need a protector over it.  Because what men say affects you deeply. 

When John Bunyon wrote his book, The Holy War, he was talking about the city of Mansoul and when the enemy attacked, he finally got access to Mansoul through the Ear Gate.  What you hear has deep affect on your heart.  That's why Jesus told the Devil and instructing us, "Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

How's your soul prospering?  How's your heart beating? Do you have a protection around that heart, are you guarding it with all diligence or are you sloppy with what gets put in, because what gets put in, my friend, will be what comes out.  "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," Jesus says.  The condition and protection of your heart - who and what is influencing you?

2. Learning to see God in every day.  Is life making you better or bitter? That's a simple test.  Are you a sourpuss? Are you mad at everybody that comes along? Do you not like it when people who are different than you invade your space? Watch out for the root of bitterness! God is in control.  The people that are around you are supposed to be there.  That's the ground on which your faith is going to grow. 

3. Identifying, naming, and dealing with your problems.  Are they feeding your faith or causing your faith to fail?

2008 starts in a couple of days.  Hmmm.. It's almost like we're Caleb coming up to Joshua.  We're not asking for land, but we've got time, we've got responsibility.

• How's your heart? Is it up for the run? 
• What if God blesses us and is with us and we begin to reach people, and we need to nurture those new baby Christians in the faith? What if they begin to sit in your seat, and they scoot you over and we're a little too crowded? What if we do some creative outreach things that push the envelope a little bit to really get in the world where real people live and need the gospel?  What if we need a second service? What if we need to tear the wall out, open the balcony, and build an education building?
• What if God calls you to be a student of his Word like you've never been before, to take him seriously and stop the foolishness of being a Christian atheist and begin to live by the very words of God, to be an honest employee or employer? What if God asked you to walk with Christ as a student in your school situation, not to be a weirdo, just to be a Christian? We are to be salt and light, you know. 
• The condition and the protection of your heart.
• Who is influencing you and who is influencing us?
• What do you see in every day when you wake up? Is it God or is it someone to blame your problems on?
• The problems you have, are you identifying them, are you naming them and are you dealing with them?  Now, the ones outside of us are easy to identify and name, but what about that attitude you've got? What about that anger towards your spouse that's been seething for a long time? What about the relational issue that's out there?

God's given me many years now of counseling and helping people.  I've also been on the other side of the counseling table and I don't mind admitting that because I love having someone climb inside my life and help me out.  It's never comfortable, but the end result, if you're willing to respond to God and his people, is always good.  But every single situation, whether it's counseling one-on-one, or counseling to a group through preaching, if you want to call it that, no good change ever takes place until you name the problem and your part in the problem, not someone else's.  Name it!  Oh, it's scary.  When you put the name across the front of that giant and he starts charging at you, and you wonder where God is as the ground begins to shake and your voice begins to quiver, but you bow before God and say, "Lord, this is bigger than me, but I want to tackle my anger, I want to deal better with my wife, I need to handle my finances better.  Lord, I need to be a better witness.  God, it's true, I don't even open your Bible through the week.  Help me to do that this year." If you don't name it, my friend, and admit who you are, you can't deal with it. 

So, let me invite you into a room as we close.  It's a throne room.  It's a place that at first you may feel rather exposed.  We talked about it just last week.  God tells us that we are naked and laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom have to do.  And just 3 or 4 verses later, He asks us into this throne room of grace, and if we've laid our lives down and placed our faith in Christ and received him by faith, then He says, "Come boldly to the throne of grace that you may obtain grace and find mercy to help just in the nick of time." 

So, I want you to name your giant, I want you to name your problem, not your husband's, not your wife's, not your boss', not your coworkers', I want you to name yours.  I want you to name your spiritual deficiency that you want God's help in, so you can walk into the throne room of grace and never be motivated by guilt.  The only guilt you experience there is the pinpointing conviction of His Holy Spirit that He immediately says, "You confess your sin and forsake it, you'll be forgiven."  And I want you to walk in that room with your giant that's on your back and I want you to say to God exactly what it is, and I want you to realize that because of the cross, you can face it, God's done his responsibility, now you do yours.  Take the steps of correction in your life that need to be taken.  What habit do you want to start or stop?  What is going to be different about the new year? For me, frankly, I'm hoping for a whole lot of difference.  For us, Lord willing, next week we'll talk as a church about some of those differences as we look at the vision for the coming year.  I can't read your mind, but God knows every thought you have, so this very morning, while you're sitting there right now, it is time to decide what is your relationship with God going to be? Do you know Him through Christ and are you walking with Him?