Caleb's Request and Inheritance

 

Joshua 14

 

Caleb's Request and Inheritance

 Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. 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.   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.   But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt, yet I wholly followed the Lord my God.   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.’   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.  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.   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.”

Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance.   Therefore, Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel.   Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba.  (Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim.) And the land had rest from war.

 

If Jesus Christ is living in you and you in Him and as my pastor stated yesterday, not the American Jesus, the one that a lot like you, but the real Jesus, the Son of God, then Psalm 28:7, 8, should be the lifeblood of His Church.  Not a building, but a body of believers, a congregation, never a building, no matter how amazing its architecture.  “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. The LORD is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one.”

 

Caleb, was such a man, at the age of 85, he was still a warrior and did not ask for an easy assignment, sure he could have, for he had been a faithful servant of God and believed the battle was the LORD’s and had observed all that God had done, put his trust in God, not in himself.  One wonder, why do followers of Jesus not do the same?

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice