Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Chris:
Hey everybody.

Jeff:
We’re back.

Chris:
Welcome haha. That reminds me of Poltergeist. Remember that old movie?

Jeff:
That was the joke I was making.

Chris:
Oh, they’re here. Hey, my name is Chris. This is Jeff. We are the Bible Guys. And today we are inserting a story about Caleb that we weren’t necessarily planning on talking about, but we’re going to get to that.

Jeff:
I know it wasn’t on the list, but I just can’t skip it. You can’t do it. I can’t skip it. So this is one of my favorite stories in the entire book of Joshua. Yes.

Chris:
Wow. Yeah. Okay. Well, before we get to that, Jeff, we have an episode that are segments, a segment that Desiree has given to us called mail bags. So this is by Paul W. That’s fantastic. Paul W. Thank you, Paul, for writing. And he says this during a past episode, you both talked about items on your bucket list. I’m curious to know what’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done.

Jeff:
Boy, that’s tough. That’s tough for you.

Chris:
You’ve got a bunch. I’ve got some. It depends on what you mean by adventurous, like dangerous adventurous.

Jeff:
What do you think of when you think of it? Or adventurous more like travel. What do you think of when you think of the word adventurous?

Chris:
Well, I thought both of those things, like jumping out of an airplane. Well, then give us the most dangerous thing and then the most… I would say jumping out of an airplane with my son on his 18th birthday. Wow. I think that was pretty cool. It felt pretty adventurous, you know.

Jeff:
That is.

Chris:
It was great. I loved it. And then, but then I would also say in terms of travel, when I was heading to Egypt, I had a 15 hour stop in Rome, layover, and then also a stop in Paris on the way back. So within a 10 day timeframe, I actually saw the Roman Colosseum, went inside the pyramids of Egypt and went to the Eiffel Tower.

Jeff:
Wow. Wow. Yeah. That’s pretty great. It’s pretty adventurous. That’s not too bad. Yeah. So you just got them all, got them all off the bucket list and in a week and a half. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. I think about that. So I’ve always been that guy that somebody go, Hey, you want to try that? And I’d be the one to do it, you know? So that’s why I’ve been to the hospital so many times for stitches.

Chris:
Like Forrest Gump. Hey Gump, stick your head in that hole.

Jeff:
That’s exactly, I was, well, my name’s Forrester. And by the way, you know, did you know, I grew up wearing braces on my legs, like Forrest Gump? Did you really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Run Forrest, run.

Chris:
You remember that? Yeah. But I’m not sure I knew that.

Jeff:
Yeah. They were so heavy. If I fell down, I couldn’t get back. I was like a turtle. I couldn’t get back up by myself. Really? So kids would push me down. I lived in a trailer park as a little kid. They pushed me down. I couldn’t get back up.

Chris:
And how long did you have those? A couple of years. Yeah. Two years? Yeah. Wow. Did they magically come off when you started running?

Jeff:
Yeah, that’s why I’m so fast It also made me a world-class ping-pong player Yeah. So adventure, maybe one of the most, one of the things I look back on and think about the most as far as, wow, that was a great adventure was, and you’ve been out in this area among the Pocat people. Several years ago, I was a co-leader on a motorcycle trip. uh, out in a bush that, um, uh, was off the roads for the most part during the daytime. So there were roads to the final villages that we would stop at. So we could have a support truck that would meet us at those places. But there were lots of places we went that we were just on like animal trails and riding across dried out river beds and stuff. And then we slept in tents the whole time. Right. And dug latrines and yeah, it was pretty, pretty rugged. That was fun. And, you know, on that trip, we had hyenas coming to our camp in the middle of the night. I stepped on a little cobra, you know, it was, it was a, it was a crazy, crazy, crazy trip. So that was pretty adventurous. As far as other things like that. Dude, a whitewater raft during, rafted one time during the monsoon season in the Himalayas in Nepal.

Chris:
Wow, that sounds more adventurous than anything I’ve ever done.

Jeff:
Yeah, that was pretty crazy. I mean, I’ve just, I have a million of those kinds of stories that, just adventures. We went ballooning through the jungles, right above all of the, the temples in Bagan in Myanmar, right along the Irrawaddy River. with all the fog. That was really cool. Been dune bashing out on the Arabian Peninsula. Do you have fear of heights?

Chris:
No. Okay. Cause I would be pretty fearful of ballooning.

Jeff:
We had a couple of guys that were afraid of heights, but loved the balloon trip. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s super calm and peaceful and very, very gentle. Everything moves, how it moves is very, yeah. So it was nice. Dune bashing in outside of Abu Dhabi, you know, all those kinds of things. So, Yeah, just tons and tons and tons of those kinds of things. That’s how I live my life. Wherever we go, I always try to figure out what’s the most adventurous thing to do while we’re there. And so our policy usually is, and you know this too, we’ll work five or six 10-hour days. But once we hit that sixth or seventh day, we’ll take a whole day and just go play. And whatever the fun thing is to do in that country or in that place, you know, I’ve been in 43 countries around the world. So whatever the fun thing is to do in that place, we’ll try to carve out one day. We’ll have worked 50 hours up to that point. We’ll carve out one day and go do fun things, you know?

Chris:
Yeah. Well, when I ziplined in Costa Rica over the forest, it was the last zipline was a quarter of a mile long. Yeah. And it was just unbelievable. And it was in, it was in the rain. It was like pouring down. And so that was, that was pretty, that’s pretty great. Yeah. And we were really, really, really high up. I’m talking like, I bet you, we were a hundred feet in the air, maybe.

Jeff:
When, so we were in Costa Rica, we did sabbatical in Costa Rica. Right. And my wife wanted to do the jungle canopy tour. Yeah. You know, where you get up at the top and then you walk along these little walkways and all the monkeys and the birds and all at the tops of the trees. Right. Yeah. So we were having trouble with the translator. There was no translator. And so we’re just trying to explain what we want to do to the lady selling tickets. And she goes, Oh, trees. Yes, yes, trees. Okay. So she sells us these tickets and then these guys pick us up and we go up the mountain in like side-by-side UTVs, you know, up to the top. We get to the top, they start putting on harnesses and helmets. And we’re like, that’s weird. I don’t remember ever seeing anybody wearing harnesses and helmets in the treetop walks. And so they take us up to the top of the thing. They hook my wife up. My wife was like, no, no, no, no. I want to walk, walk, walk. He goes, nope. Zip, zip, zip. And he just shoved her. And you know, the zip lines go from one mountain across the Valley to the other mountain, and they’re going back and forth. And so our first one was over a mile, over a mile was our first zip line. And she didn’t want to do any zip lines ever. And they just hooked her up, zip, zip, and shoved her. And she’s screaming all the way across that thing. And there were 16 zip lines to get to the bottom of the mountain. Right. She was so mad.

Chris:
Yeah. A translator would help. That’s so funny.

Jeff:
So, hey, that’s a really fun question, Paul. You should come with us sometime on one of our little adventures. Like I said, it’s hard work, but we’ll usually take one day and go have a little bit of fun.

Chris:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, we are going to be talking about Caleb and I am very curious as to why this is one of your favorite stories in the book of Joshua, but I’m sure we’re about to hear it.

Jeff:
Yes. So, By the time you get to Joshua chapter 14, they have won most of the battles. They haven’t won all the battles. They didn’t completely finish everything that God told them to do as far as driving out the wicked inhabitants of the land and all these things. And you know, it’s weird. It’s hard to talk through the book of Joshua and judges. There’s a lot of death. There’s a lot of war. Through this, God is bringing judgment on the Canaanites and he’s using the Israelites to do that, right? In the same way that later on, God sends the Assyrians to bring judgment on Israel when they’re not obeying God. He sends the Babylonians to bring judgment. So God often uses governments and peoples to bring judgment on other governments and other peoples, right? And so that’s the, while war is a horrible thing, God uses it for his purposes. And so he had commanded them, wipe out these peoples. And they did most of it, not all of it. But Joshua decides, okay, we’re going to divide up the land. And so there’s 12 tribes and he begins to say, okay, that tribe needs to go over there. This tribe go over here and start to settle the land because early on they’re traveling together as one great big giant group. Well, now they’re taking over a large piece of land and they need to hold it. So they need to divide it up equitably based on the size of each of the tribes. And so that’s what they’re doing. Uh, they, they divide the land on the west side of Jordan. They divide the land on the east side of Jordan. And then finally, uh, Caleb in the middle of that, Caleb comes to Joshua, sends a delegation. And here’s what it says in verse six. This is a delegation from the tribe of Judah led by Caleb, son of Jephunneh the Kenazite, came to Joshua at Gilgal. Gilgal kind of became one of Joshua’s capitals. Caleb said to Joshua, remember what the Lord said to Moses, the man of God about you and me when we were at Kadesh Barnea? Remember that was the time when they were going to go across as spies. When they came back, 10 spies said, no, Joshua and Caleb said, yes, we can go win this thing. And Moses pours out a blessing on them, even though God poured out a curse on everybody else. So he says, I was 40 years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land of Canaan. I returned and gave an honest report, but my brothers who went with me frightened the people from entering the promised land. For my part, I wholeheartedly followed the Lord, my God. So that day, Moses solemnly promised me, the land of Canaan on which you were just walking will be your grant of land and that of your descendants forever because you wholeheartedly follow the Lord my God. Now, as you can see, the Lord has kept me alive and well as he promised for all these 45 years since Moses made this promise, even while Israel wandered in the wilderness. And today I’m 85 years old. I’m as strong now as I was when Moses sent me on that journey, and I can still travel and fight as well as I could then. So give me the hill country that the Lord promised me. You will remember that as scouts, we found the descendants of Anak living there in great walled towns. But if the Lord was with me, I will drive them out of the land, just as the Lord said. So Joshua blessed Caleb, son of Jephunneh, and gave Hebron to him as his portion of land. Hebron still belongs to the descendants of Caleb, son of Jephunneh the Kenazite, because he wholeheartedly followed the Lord, the God of Israel. Previously, Hebron had been called Kiriath Arba. It had been named after Arba, a great hero of the descendants of Anak, and the land had rest from war. So I love the fact that Caleb is 85 years old and he goes, dude, I’m just as strong today as I was then. I can fight just as well as I can then. And as they’re dividing this up, you notice Joshua kind of skipped this region. right? So this is where Hebron is, uh, that became the city of David. It’s up near where Jerusalem is. It’s up in the, in, in, uh, the hill country. Uh, there were fierce warriors, extremely strong towns. And so while Josh was dividing up all the rest of the land, he hasn’t done this part. And Caleb goes, dude, give me the hard part. He’s 85 years old. And he said, I still want that mountain. That’s the mountain I want. Give me that mountain. And we’re going to go take these people. But he keeps going back to the fact. I obeyed God. Then I’m obeying God. Now God’s still going to keep the promise. I had to wait 45 years for it, but God’s going to keep it. Right. And what I love about Caleb is that in 45 years, he never wavered. Right. So his faith was strong at 40 and at 45, even though he waited so long, 85, At 85, yeah. At 85, even though he waited so long, he never wavered. He knew that God was going to keep his promise. And so when the opportunity finally came, he’s like, give it to me.

Chris:
I’m ready. So you love the fact that this is a testament of a life well-lived and completely believing and obeying God’s promises, and then still having just as much faith at the end of his life that he had at 40. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff:
That’s what I love. I love the fact that he never gave up. He just, he kept serving God and he kept the same vision. God had said, you will take this land. And so I think personally, because he’s highlighting the fact that he said, you know, I went in, I saw the armies of, you know, the people of Anak, and then I came back and said, we can still take them. And so then all these years, 45 years, he’s been thinking about, I want to go get that place. Right? God said, wherever my feet are, that’s going to be mine. Moses told me that land’s going to be mine. So I just want to remind you, I haven’t forgotten that. That’s mine. I’m going to go take it. And by the way, he had some unfinished business and I love the idea of unfinished business that this guy’s going to go finish. I love that. That’s great.

Chris:
And by the way, he’s 85 and he claims, and it must be true, that he is just as strong and can fight just as well as when he’s 40. Let me tell you something, my father, who I just took to New York, I just mentioned a couple, yesterday’s episode, he’s 85 exactly. And he fell. And so as we were walking through the streets of New York, he falls down. And I thought, I thought the trip was over, right, because he’s so frail. And he was cut up everywhere. And, you know, it was just everything was bleeding and everything else. And we walked up the Statue of Liberty and he had to stop halfway and, you know, couldn’t do all those things. I cannot imagine my father going up against himself at 40 and saying that he’s exactly the same as he was at 40. Because he was probably decently tough at 40, right? Who in the world do you know in your lifetime who’s as good at 85 as 40?

Jeff:
Yeah, my dad’s 86 and he’s in that kind of that falling stage right now too. At 70, I would say I would think my dad at 85 is still going to be a tough guy. My dad at 70 could outwork both of us in a day. He was so strong and so sturdy. And then he had an accident wound up breaking his hip and he had some other things and then his health is you know, deteriorated since then. But at 70, I remember thinking I’m, you know, less than 40 at that point. And I remember thinking my dad could beat me up right now. Wow. Right. That’s pretty good. And so he was pretty tough, but you know, life catches up fast. Right. Right. We’re, we’re, we’re humans. We’re just, we’re frail. Life catches us up fast. So to, for him to be able to say, I’m just as strong today. Now there might’ve been a little bit, I think that you’ll be saying that when you’re 85, right? I’m just as strong today! A little bit of hyperbole. There may have been a little bit of hyperbole there. He also had a bunch of sons and nephews and all that kind of stuff at this point too, right? That probably were ready to go. But yeah, his confidence. By the way, he’d also seen God do all these miracles. He remembers when God stopped the Red Sea, split the Red Sea, man, wiped out the Egyptians. It was only him and Joshua left that can remember all those things. And then he had just recently seen God do more miracles here, you know, stop the River Jordan, let him cross over on dry ground. He got to see how God wipes out Jericho, all these other cities and fulfills all the promises he said he was going to do. Now there’s still more work to be done. And this is where, you know, I mentioned this, I think it was last week. It’s interesting, God told Joshua in Jericho, just march around and shout, the walls are going to fall, you guys are going to win. He doesn’t do that in any of the other cities. All the rest of the cities, it’s a full-on fight. It’s a war, right? And it’s unreasonable for us to expect that there would never be any battles. If there’s no battles, there’s no victories, right? The victory only comes because otherwise it’s just another day. Right. There’s no such thing as a victory. You don’t win if you don’t have to compete. And so there are struggles and God doesn’t say life is going to be easy. And this is the other thing I think I love about Caleb is that 85 years old, most people are thinking I should probably kick back and take it easy and let another generation do it. Let other people do it. And he doesn’t, right? He knows a battle’s coming and he’s not saying, I think God’s going to do in Hebron like he did in Jericho, right? That was a one-off. He’s seen a whole bunch more battles that happened after that time. God did great things, but there were still battles. There were wins and losses. There were fatalities. There were all these things that they struggled with. And he did not have any expectation, it doesn’t appear, that he’s thinking this is going to be another Jericho battle. Because he references the people of Anak and their big walled cities and the fact that they’re tough guys. And he goes, and I’m just as tough as I was too, and I’m ready. Right? So unfinished business and this idea that, you know, God’s going to bless me, but I’m willing to go in and pay the price. Whatever the price is, I’m willing to go pay that price for this victory.

Chris:
So I want to read the note in the Life Application Study Bible that says, When Joshua gave Caleb his portion and fulfilled a promise God had made to Caleb 45 years earlier, we expect such integrity and reliability from God, but do we expect the same from his followers? How about you? Is your word reliable? Would you honor a 45-year-old promise? God would and does. And even today, he is honoring promises he made thousands of years ago. In fact, some of his greatest promises are yet to be fulfilled. It gives us much to look forward to. Let your faith grow as you realize that God keeps his word. So what a great turn of thoughts there, where he’s talking about God’s faithfulness, but he’s also talking about, you know, just the, The idea that a 45-year-old promise can be trusted, when you think about men, right? Mankind, you think, wow. So it’s just really cool.

Jeff:
That’s fantastic. Yeah. Keeping a 45-year-old promise, God’s still in the business of keeping thousands of year-old promises. Yeah.

Chris:
That’s great. And you know, when it comes to God’s promises and when it comes to, you know, just this chapter, I am constantly reminded of my mother-in-law. So my mother-in-law, Sally, she’s on full dialysis. And she’s not really doing great. And her health has declined and she’s really struggled. And she had an episode a couple of weeks ago where we thought we were going to lose her and everything else. But you know, what’s so interesting is that she has absolutely never wavered in her faith ever since. In fact, I would venture to say she’s probably she’s probably one of the first like praying women I’ve ever met in my life, where when I was just young, and she would just talk to me about, you know, praying and doing her devotions and everything else. I thought to myself, oh, I better marry your daughter because this is a good woman, you know? And anyway, but she’s, I met her when I was 14 years old. Well, now I’m 53. So that’s been a long time. And I’m telling you, she has never wavered either. And so in the midst of, you know, all this really, you know, I mean, finality, I mean, think about you know, somebody who thinks to themselves, okay, in a couple of years, I might not be alive. So all those different things, she’s never wavered at all. She still loves the promises of God and she still reads. And so every Mother’s Day, she looks forward to me writing the Bible verses and I’ll look up verses just for her. And then she says, oh, I got your card. And she said, and it took me like a month. And I, and I went through all of your Bible verses and I did a study in all of them. every time I send her. So now it’s become a tradition. So every Mother’s Day, I’ll give her like 20 or 30 different verses and she’ll do a study in all of them.

Jeff:
Oh, that’s great. Isn’t that cool? Yeah. So that idea of your faith never wavering, this is Caleb’s story, right? For 45 years, waiting for God to keep his promises. I wonder if Caleb worked out extra hard and watched his diet during that time. So he’d be ready when, because God had made a promise. He knew God was going to keep his promise. I wonder if Caleb kept preparing. Right. Sometimes I think we, we, we get older because instead of doing the hard work, we start paying somebody else to do the hard work. Instead of leaning in, we start leaning back in the lazy boy. Right. We just kind of slow down. And so there are some people you meet, they’re 70 years old. They’re going a hundred miles an hour, doing all these things, playing pickleball, going, and there’s other people, 70 years old and then there’s the other 70 year olds that seem like they’re 90. Right. And it’s, I wonder if Caleb, just continued to lean in, do the hard work, not lean back, because he knew that God had unfinished business. Not just him. God had said, hey, this is gonna be your land. And it wasn’t yet his land. So he just kept staying there, leaning in, staying fit, working at it. Because then he comes in, and here’s the thing we didn’t say. The people of Anak were giants. There’s a whole race of giants. So the giants that David had to fight that had not been wiped out yet were down in what is now Gaza, right? The Philistines. And they were, Goliath was 10 feet tall, right? So somewhere in that range, very likely, you know, the seven to 10 feet tall are these men of Anak and, you know, the Israelites were not known for being tall. So, but Joshua, or Caleb is like, I’m ready, man. He’s not resting on his previous accomplishments and successes. Right? He already had successfully been a spy. He’d already successfully helped Joshua lead the people. He’d already done some really, really great things. And he wasn’t to the point where he was like, well, my time’s passed. That’s not what he did. He didn’t come to that point. Instead, he’s not resting on his old accomplishments. He’s still leaning in. And he’s ready. When the opportunity finally comes, he’s ready. And I think about that. How ready am I? If God doesn’t continue to fulfill his promises for 20 more years in my life, will I still be ready at 73 as I am at 53? That’s great. And so I think there’s something to that, that he’s ready to go fight giants because God promised that he would.

Chris:
Hey, by the way, my brother-in-law and I measure ourselves, our height. And when I say that I’m 5’8″, my brother-in-law says, no, you’re not. You’re 5’7 and three quarters. Cause he will not give me 5’8″. So you reference Goliath is 10 feet tall. He’s nine feet, nine inches. Cause details matter.

Jeff:
It depends on how you measure a cubit, but yeah, a cubit and a span. There’s different cubits. You know that, right?

Chris:
Oh yeah. But I thought it actually gave, Oh, I guess it’s just the way it’s translated.

Jeff:
It’s how you measure the cubit. Some cubits are 18 inches. Some cubits are 21 inches.

Chris:
Well, the NLT actually translates it and says nine feet, nine inches.

Jeff:
Yeah, because they arbitrarily chose how big a cubit is.

Chris:
Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it is. Yeah. Well, hey, that is, it looks like it’s our time. So we will see you hopefully next time on The Bible Guys.