Follow the Promises: Give Me This Mountain

Caleb waits forty-five years for one promise, then steps forward at eighty-five and asks for the hardest assignment in the land. That simple line, “Give me this mountain,” exposes what most of us fear: what if God’s timing feels slow, and the giants are still there when it’s finally our turn?

We walk through Joshua 11 to 14, where victory after victory is summarized with a repeated theme: the Lord gave. That word matters because it’s the heartbeat of grace. We talk about how the promised land points forward to the new covenant, where our inheritance is not something we earn by performance but something we receive by faith: Christ Himself, rest from striving, and a settled identity as sons and daughters of God.

Then we rewind to Numbers and the spy report to show how fear and faith can look at the exact same facts and reach opposite conclusions. The obstacles are real, but unbelief traps us in self-perspective. Hebrews presses the point even further: there remains a rest for the people of God, available today, and the real question is not whether God will give what He promised but whether we will enter it by faith.

If you’re worn out by “try harder” religion, this message aims straight at the relief of the finished work of Jesus, the strength of grace, and the freedom of living from rest rather than conquest. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review. What promise are you choosing to trust today?

Transcript

Follow The Promises Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:27

All right, today's uh sermon is called Follow the Promises. Give me this mountain. Give me this mountain. All right, and we're gonna be studying Joshua chapters 11 through 14. You're like, what? Yeah, we're just gonna kind of skip through some of it. All right. So Joshua 11 through 14, uh, it reads like you know, the closing chapter of a war documentary. You ever been watching a, you know, and it's like kings are defeated, armies are scattered, 31 thrones get overturned, and the land finally has rest. So they come into the promised land, and and there's just like this this list in chapters 11 through 14 of God keeping his promises to defeat all these different nations, but buried but you know, inside this sweeping victory that's described in chapters 11 through 14 is one man that's been waiting. Waiting. Forty-five years earlier, God made him a promise. And he was only forty then, so he's eighty-five. And this promise has not expired. Forty-five years he's been waiting on this promise. So Caleb steps forward and says to Joshua, his his buddy, his childhood friend, probably you know that what the Lord spoke to me, Joshua. Caleb isn't famous for a miracle in the Bible, he's famous for waiting. For waiting. And today we're gonna talk about what it means to follow the promises when they take longer than you expected. All right, so just to briefly summarize, let's we're let's summarize chapter 10, verse 16 through chapter 14, verse 5. So it basically records a sweeping compilation of Israel's conquests under God's faithful hand. So you got these five Amorite kings that we talked about last week, um, and they they were imprisoned in a cave, and then they're taken out of the cave and hung and killed and and publicly judged, and then you got the southern cities all fall in rapid succession, so you know there's no more kings, so the cities just fall pretty easily, and then there's this massive northern conquest over the the northern part of um the nation, and then finally you have the nation resting from war. Okay, so you got this roster of 31 kings that have all been defeated, and every single one of them, it's like God was faithful to do this. God 31 times God was faithful. Do you think they're gonna remember that the next time they had to fight somebody? No, they're gonna forget, like always, right? But it would be wise of us to remember that God is always faithful. And then even as someone, some some battles are there, the Lord declares that he himself was is gonna drive the rest out, that they're not even gonna have to really busy themselves with it. And Joshua begins distributing inheritances by lot to all the nations. So again, we're just cruising through these chapters. I'm I'm kind of summarizing it for you. And so he starts distributing to all the tribes, all the brothers had their families that became tribes, so there's these 12 tribes of Israel, except one, anyone for Jesus points, who's the tribe that didn't get any land? Levites, man, you guys are well taught. Good job. 12 Jesus points for you. Um, yeah, they don't get any, I was gonna say Jesus points, they don't get any inheritances, they don't get any land because the Lord says, I'm your inheritance. Their job was to serve the Lord and to be the priest for all the people. And so God says, I'm your inheritance, I will provide everything for you. So that's what they did. All right, so this whole section beats with one refrain, and that is the Lord gave them victory, gave them. And that word give is so vital and important when you're studying the Bible because that's how grace works. Whenever you see someone earn something, that's law, but every time God gives something, that's grace. And that's just this thing we have to memorize, we have to remember the language of grace. So under this new covenant, um when when they're getting land, it points to something in our lives in the new covenant. We don't get land as our inheritance as Christians, right? We get an inheritance of Christ Himself, He is our inheritance, right? So, what does that mean? He is our rest from work, he is our inheritance. We rest in Him from having to earn forgiveness and reconciliation. You know, the Holy Spirit Himself guarantees all this to us that we could never earn. And so this grace-based life that we have in the new covenant is never earned by performance. Like this land God gave them. Did they do anything special? Nothing. They were the least equipped, they were the least talented, they weren't the biggest. God gave them this land. And the same is for us. It's never about us, it's about we receive a promise that Jesus has earned for us. So Israel has now entered this land, Joshua is assigning the inheritances, and Caleb is like, hmm, I have been promised something very special. We're gonna learn about that today. He steps forward to remind Joshua the word, the promise that God gave him specifically 45 years earlier. Again, he's 85 years old now. He's been waiting patiently. When is God gonna fulfill his promise for me? Me specifically. When is God gonna fulfill that promise? We don't like waiting, do we? Waiting is the worst. And you ask God, God, just give me patience, and then he makes you wait for something, and you're like, that's not what I meant. Caleb's story in Joshua 14 and 15, where we're kind of landing right now, is this really beautiful story of faith that rests? I'm gonna say that word again, it rests in God's promise. That's where faith can rest. Do you feel like your faith is antsy or anxious? It's because our faith may be in the wrong thing. Okay, when our faith can rest in a promise, we're able to just wait upon the Lord, wait upon the Lord. How do we do that? Well, let's see. Josh, uh Caleb's gonna teach us. So look at uh Joshua 14, verse 6, is where we pick it up. Then the children of Judah came to Joshua in Gilgal, and Caleb, the son of Jephuna and the Kenizites, said to him, You know the word which the Lord said to Moses, the man of God, concerning you and me in Kadesh Barnea. I was 40 years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought back word to him as it was in my heart. Nevertheless, my brethren went up with me, made um made the heart of the people melt, but I wholly followed the Lord my God. Let me read that again. I wholly followed the Lord my God. So Moses swore on that day, saying, Surely the land where your foot has trodden shall be your inheritance and your children's forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God. Again, Caleb says, You know the word. You I want you to remember, I've been hanging on to this word, I've been hanging on to this promise for 45 years, or for you know, 40, 45, 40 years. We have to remember promises also. Well, where do we find his promises? I'm telling you guys, they are they are kept in this book for safekeeping. Where do we go to find the promises of God for us? As you're reading, God may really speak to your heart and to your spirit. This is for you. I promise you some healing, some peace, some something. God will speak to you a promise in his word. And it's in there. And I I like to highlight my Bible, like all these pages highlighted because I'm like, I don't want to miss a promise. I love thinking, I have other Bibles that are not highlighted. My wife hates to, she doesn't highlight her Bibles because she's like, it's you know, she underlines, but the the Bible safeguards the promises for you so you can go find them later. Maybe you're reading the Bible the next year and you see something that was highlighted, and you're like, wait a second, I forgot about that promise. Well, Caleb never forgot. He never forgot. God promised him an inheritance, and this was a portion of the land, and God basically said, You get to pick whatever part of the land you want. And so he picks the hill country. That makes sense for Texans, right? I've heard of this promised land of hill country out somewhere north of here. I I've I think aren't you going up there? Yeah, you told me you're going the hill country. I've heard it's got mountains as far as the eye can see. No? Oh, that's Colorado, where it's really pretty. Those are these are just hills, anthills compared to real mountains. Right. Yeah, anyway. I make I like making fun of Texas. Okay, so specifically, he saw this hill country. Caleb loved this little mountain, and so Caleb says, Give me this mountain. What was the key character trait that we saw in Caleb and mentioned two times? He mentioned it of himself, and he says, Moses said it of him. He said, I wholly followed the Lord my God. So when the ten other spies, and we're gonna read about this in a second, were dominated and paralyzed by fear, Caleb and Joshua lived wholly by faith. Do you think that's important to see the contrast between faith and fear? What is the Holy Spirit telling you about that right now? All right, we're gonna go all the way back to the book of Numbers, which is one book before this, and I'm gonna read to you that's the story. We're gonna we're gonna see this story play out so we can understand how deep this is for Caleb. So look in Numbers 26, 13, 26, it says, now they departed and came back to Moses. This is 40 years earlier. This is just a matter of weeks after they have left Egypt and through the parting of the Red Sea and all the miracles and the ten plagues, just a matter of weeks. And it should have only taken them a matter of weeks to get this entire two and a half million people up to Israel. It's literally right there. Let's just walk there, right? So they get to the border of it, and then this happens. They departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of children of Israel in the wilderness of Peran at Kadesh. And they brought back word to them, so they sent these spies in, right? To all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told them, and they said, We went to the land where you sent us, it truly flows with milk and honey. I guess that means it's good. If you literally imagine it flowing with milk and honey, that's weird, but I guess it's good. And this is the fruit, and I guess they were big old grape clusters that they were carrying. Nevertheless, the people who dwell there are in the land, they are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. Who are these guys? These are giants, okay? And and the Amalekites dwell in the land of the south, and the Hittites and Jebusites and Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and among the banks of the Jordan. And then Caleb he quieted the people before Moses. And he said, Let us go up at once to take possession, for we are well able to overcome it. Isn't that beautiful? What a great leader. But the men who had gone up with him said, We're not able to go up against these people, for they are stronger than we. Okay? That's flesh, thinking about things with only how I can see it and depending on myself, versus Caleb, who has faith. Faith speaks quiet over that. The flesh wants to worry and fear. And they they then they gave the children of Israel a bad report in the land which they had spied out, saying, The land through which we have gone as spies, it's land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. And we saw the giants, the descendants of Anak came from the giants, and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight. So Caleb is this picture of faith, and faith can quiet our fears and our thoughts and our worries and our concerns and our logical brains that want to just see things the way that they are. Was it true all the things that the spies saw? Were the difficulties real? Were the giants there? Yes, all those things were very true. No one's lying about it, no one's ignoring it, but when you just have a perspective of faith, you see something bigger than that. When you have the perspective of self, which the ten spies, they were a picture of the self-perspective. They see everything as bad, right? They only see the challenges, they only see from yourself as a point of reference. And this is what we're set free from when we learn to when we come into a relationship with Jesus, when we are invited into the new covenant by believing in Christ. We're freed from having ourself be our point of reference. When it's yourself and someone asks you, Are you a sinner? Is that your identity? The self says, Yes, of course. Look at the evidence. I struggle with sin, I must be a sinner. But when we come into the gospel, the gospel says something different over us. The gospel says, that part of you has been crucified on the cross, you're a new creation, you are pure and holy and righteous, you're a child of God, you're born again. And so, but that perspective is God's perspective, so we are freed from looking at things from our perspective so that we can see things from his perspective is true, more true than our perspective. Wrong. Just kidding. It's like a buzzer. That's right. Okay. So it's not how I see things anymore, it's how what God says that matters. Does your life, do you see the problems in your life? Of course you do. Do you see the giants? Do you see the difficulties? Of course you do. But what does God say about you in your life? That's where we can land, and that's where faith can rest. And people will look at you like, why aren't you freaking out about your life? Your life is crazy. You have this, you have that, and cancer and pain and sorrow, and why aren't you freaking out? And you're like, I see things from his what his word says. I choose to rest in the word, the promises. So the next chapter, Numbers 14, he says, So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept all that night. Man, that's not where God wants you to be. That's not the life, that's not the abundant life that God has for you. If they just would have believed Caleb and had faith, they could have entered into the promised land and we could have had Joshua happening then, but they couldn't, right? And all the children of Israel complained. Oh, when we live in the flesh, what do we do all the time? We complain, we cry, we're sorrowful, because what do we have? We got nothing. Against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, If only we had died in the land of Egypt, okay, now they're off the rails. Now they're having a total meltdown. If only we had died in the wilderness, why has the Lord brought us out to this land to fall by the sword? That our wives and children should become victims. They're not even making any sense. Why would it not be better for us to return to Egypt? So they said to one another, let's select a leader and return to Egypt. God's already given them a leader, right? Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before the assembly of the congregation of Israel, just like, oh, this is them. You guys are so difficult. But Joshua, the son of Nun, there you go, John, and Caleb, the son of Jephuna, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes. They were so upset. And they spoke to all the congregation of Israel, saying, The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into the land and give it to us. See, they have a grace mind, a grace perspective. It's his grace that does this. A land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread. They're like, we're gonna eat them up. Guys, we could do this. For their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us, do not fear them. And all the congregation said to the uh said to stone them with stones. So, like, shut up, we're not gonna listen to you. And they picked up stones to stone. Now the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of meaning before all the children of Israel, and he goes on to say, I'm gonna kill all these people of Israel, and I'm gonna make a new nation out of Moses. And Moses is like, No, Lord, let's let's forgive them. And he's like, fine, we're gonna wander for 40 years in the desert then. Okay, so that's the end of that story. These people are not a people of faith yet, and it's mind-boggling because God has they have seen God's miracles, they've seen God's plagues, they've seen God literally part the sea, they've seen all these miraculous things. And you're like, How can someone not have faith in that situation? Well, that's what's mind-blowing. You see, people are like, if only I saw a miracle, then I would believe. Yeah, that doesn't always matter, that doesn't always work. They need 40 years in the desert to learn faith. They couldn't enter the promised land because of unbelief or a lack of faith. Okay, their belief, their faith was still in what? And it takes a long time to be broken of self-faith. They were still seeing everything from their own perspective, not living by God and his promises, but living by their own abilities. We can't win this, they're stronger than we are. Let's, you know, let's die. They're just so confusing to me. Now, the book of Hebrews is the best commentary on this. So we're gonna look at the book of Hebrews, chapter three, where it says, Who, having heard these people in Israel, rebelled? So they heard the word of God, but they rebelled. Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt led by Moses? So they came out of Egypt, but they rebelled. Now, with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned whose corpses fell in the wilderness, and to whom did he swear that they should not enter his rest? But to those who did not obey, trusting in the Lord. So we see they could not enter because they were sinners. Nope. It doesn't say that. They couldn't enter because their parents were mean to them. Nope. They couldn't enter because they were predisposed to this behavior. No. They couldn't enter because of one thing which is unbelief. Okay, but what does that mean? Who can enter? Who can actually receive this promise of God? Who can rest in his promises? Look at the next verse. Hebrews 4, verse 1. Therefore, since a promise remains, the way of entering his rest, who's this promise to? All of us have a promise that remains. It wasn't just to them, but it's to all of us. Let us fear. Wait a second. I thought I wasn't supposed to fear. Well, you're supposed to fear one thing, lest any of you should seem to have come short of it. We should be afraid of not entering his rest. We should be afraid of living the Christian life by our own strength. We should be afraid of trying to take the promised land. You know what they did in our story back in Numbers? So they're like, God's like, fine, you're not going into the promised land. And they're like, oh no, no, no. Let's do it. We're going to do it. We're going to go in. So literally, a bunch of them took up their swords and tried to go enter the promised land. And what happened? They got their booties kicked. They got destroyed because God says, I'm not helping you now. You had a chance to trust me. You refused. And now you're going off in your own effort. Of course, you're not going to succeed. Because you're living by self, not promise, not faith. There's a promise, let us fear lest any of you should seem to come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them. Hebrews says they were hearing the gospel. Maybe not the gospel like Jesus died for your sins, but God keeps his promises is the foundation of the gospel. Why did Jesus die for your sins? Because God keeps his promises. That is the gospel. That's the good news. God loves you and He will keep His promises for you. But the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with going to church every week. Oh wait, that's not what it says. Not being mixed with tithing. That's not what it says. I'm going to this well deep. Not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. So you're going to hear a promise. If you choose to have faith, you will be able to rest in that promise. For those who have believed, do enter that rest. It's a fact of God's truth. It will always happen. You tell me I'm at rest. I tell you, I know. I know why you're at rest. Because you have confidence in God's word and his promises. You say, I don't have rest, and I can say, here's the path. It's always the path. It's never something different. There's never another gospel. It's God's promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We can have confidence in it and rest in it, or not. So he said, So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. This is a big deal to God. You are gonna believe and you will get the rest, or you will keep trying, and he says, I'm it makes me angry because I've provided something so valuable to you. It cost me the blood of my son. I had to kill my son as a sacrifice for you to give you this rest. And you refuse to take it and grasp it and believe it and rest in it. Because it for you, it has to be yourself. You have to depend on you. And that's where the breakdown happens. Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world, he said, I'm faithful even before the world started. I've already committed I was gonna die on the cross for you. That's been the plan the whole time. I'm always faithful. What moment in this history have I not been faithful to you? For it is spoken in a certain place on the seventh day in this way. God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and again in that place, they shall not enter my rest. Since therefore remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience. Again, he designates a certain day in David, saying, Today, after such a long time, it's been said, Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. So this whole entering rest thing, it's available to every single person when today. What about tomorrow? Today it's available, it'll still be available tomorrow because then that'll be today. Yesterday it was available because that was today, yesterday. Makes all perfect sense. And what's the one thing that keeps us from trusting in this gospel? A hard heart. Hardness of heart. Look at now what he says. If Joshua had given them rest, then he would not have afterwards spoken of another day. There therefore remains a rest for the people of God, for he who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from his. All of this story that we're reading in Joshua matters to you today, is what this means. You can enter his rest. Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. What do we hear? We hear the gospel. We hear that the work is done. What work? The work of dying, rising from the dead, all the work Jesus did. It's all done. Jesus has provided rest for his people. Rest from what? From works. The promised land is a life of resting in what Jesus did instead of myself, or rest like trying to become something different in my own abilities. That's the big truth that that somehow escapes the church as we as we are studying the Word of God year after year after year. We get hooked into this idea. What are you doing? What new Bible study are you doing? What new thing are you sacrificing? What new thing are you gonna do? And you just go look through the titles of the books in the Christian bookstores, and you'll be like, do this, do this, do this, change this. When the real gospel is done, done done done finished. So we enter this rest by faith. That's called obedience in the in the Jesus world, believing that he was sufficient, that he completed what he said he was gonna complete. So why couldn't they enter in this 40 years ago? Because of unbelief. So annoying. Okay, now back we're gonna go to Deuteronomy chapter one and see another perspective of this story. So surely not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land which I swore to give your fathers except Caleb. So we're seeing now this promise that God made to Caleb specifically, that Caleb was gonna stand on. The son of Japuna. He shall see it, and to him and his children I am giving the land on which he walked, because he wholly followed the Lord. The Lord was also angry with me for your sake, saying, Even you shall not go in there. This is Moses. Joshua, the son of none, who stands before you, he shall go in there. Encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it. Moreover, your little ones, your children, who you say will be victims, who today have no knowledge of good and evil, they shall go in there. To them I will give it, and they shall possess it. But as for you, turn and take your journey into the wilderness. He's like, Get out of here. Time out. By way of the Red Sea. Then you answered and said to me, We have sinned against the Lord. We will go up and fight, just as the Lord commanded us. And when everyone had girded up their weapons of war, you were ready to go up to the mountain. And the Lord said to me, Tell them, do not go up and fight, for I am not among you, lest you be defeated before your enemies. So I spoke to you, yet you would not listen, but rebelled against the command of the Lord, and presumption that word went up to the mountain, and the Amorites who dwell in the mountain came out against you and chased you as bees do. The Bible is awesome. And drove you back from Seir to Hormah, and you returned and wept before the Lord, and but the Lord would not listen to you, your voice, nor give ear to you. So they tried to take it themselves by their own power and effort. How did that go? Now, guys, I have to highlight this. How many times have we said, I'm fed up with my struggles? I'm fed up with living a life that I know doesn't honor God. I'm fed up with why do I keep struggling with the same things over and over and over? And what do we do? We gird up our loins, whatever that means, and we go and try harder, don't we? And God says that straight up foolish. He says, don't live the Christian life like that. If you need something, look to me and ask me because it's already done. It's already given to you. And I just I long to preach this gospel so much that you don't have to win the battle by trying harder. You don't have to be this version of a Christian that you think um is good enough. All of us are children of God that believe in Christ. God will get us there, He will purify your life, but He does it by grace, He does it by the work in the heart of saying, Does that sinful behavior actually make you happy? Does that behavior that clearly is not righteous, is that really you? And the Holy Spirit has this conversation in silence, and we can never get away from it as a Christian because the Holy Spirit is always with you, and he with love draws us, and we find we we we find we give up and we finally say, I surrender. I'm tired of running from my father who loves me and he's he just will always pursue me with these chords of love. How did it go for them when they tried? And I've seen over and over and over again how many Christians have like, you know what? I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna be better, I'm gonna do better, watch me go. And how does it always turn out? A worse failure than the last one. Every time. Because that's not the design, that's not how to live life in the new covenant. Jesus says, Jesus never asks you to live the Christian life. He says, I can live the Christian life, it's my life, I can live it through you. Just don't get in my way. Just give me control of your mind and your thoughts and your will and your emotions and every just give it all to me, and I will live through you, and you will find you're happier than you could have ever been, because this is what you were designed for. You weren't designed to go live your life the way you think you should. You weren't designed to go make your own choices. You were designed to be a vessel through which your father sheds love and light to this world. That's the design, and that's the only way we will ever find true sonship happiness, where you know that I'm a son, I'm a daughter of God. All right, we're gonna fast forward back to our time in Joshua 45 years, time travel with me to our text in Joshua 14, verse 10. And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive. As he said, These 45 years, ever since the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel wandered in the wilderness, and now here I am, eighty-five years old, and yet I am as strong this day as the day that Moses sent me, just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war. Do you believe Joshua? I don't. But I approve of the confidence, both for coming out and going in. So, Caleb, he's been waiting 45 years for this promise to be fulfilled. He did nothing wrong. He had faith. So why does he have to wait? And we have to answer this question: Is God unfair? Does God forget about me? What should I do when I have to wait for God's blessing and God's promise in my life? He's 85 now. He's super confident, but not in himself, actually. He's confident in the promise. He's like, I'm strong enough. What if Caleb was like some super nerdy guy with glasses and like one arm? Joshua's probably like, all right, you got faith, bro. He knows, Caleb knows, that the promise of God doesn't expire. It doesn't expire. The only thing Caleb is proving is that God will never lie. God's promises will be fulfilled. And he asks for literally the hardest place to conquer in the whole land. The place with giants in it. Verse uh 12. Is that one on there? I'm strong that day. I think I have verse 12 on there. Yeah. Spoken that day, for I heard the Anakin were there, and the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out. Okay, so Caleb knows full well that there's flipping giants in this land. And he's an 85-year-old geezer. He's like, I'll take them all one hand tied behind my back. I love it. I love his confidence. Okay, so let's look back in Joshua. Okay, verse 13. And then Joshua blessed him. Yeah. Joshua's like, you go for it, bro. And gave him Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jephunah, as an inheritance. Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb. This is so great, we don't even get a description of the battle. So I make it up in my own mind. You know, Joshua just went in there and I am not left-handed. And just killed them. Because he wholly followed the Lord God of Israel. And the name Hebr, Hebron was formerly Kirjath Arba. Arba was the greatest man of the Anakim. Uh, then the land had rest from war. So when God blesses your battle, because remember, Joshua said uh he blessed him, that means your battle's already won. Okay. Why did Caleb get into the promised land? Why did he get blessed? How did he enter? Though the text highlights why, because Caleb followed the Lord fully. That means faith with his heart. He took God at his word, not a law-keeping, I have to do what God says, but the result of living by faith was rest in what God says and gives. You know, he's like, I'm about, I'm 85, I'm about to die. I need to go in and take this land now because God's promise it. Okay, so let's look at this story briefly from the lens of grace. Caleb inherits inheritance of Hebron and this mountain, give me this mountain, foreshadows our inheritance in Christ. What does that mean? Heaven is like a mountain in the Bible, it's always called a mountain. And Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven right now, and he says, You've been given every spiritual blessing and a permanent place in God's family, not by striving, but by promise. And how do you get it? How do you sit there with Jesus on his mountain? By faith. So your Hebron, your mountain, is not a mountain that you have to conquer, but a finished gift in Jesus. You get total forgiveness, you get a new identity, you get perfect union with Christ as your heavenly bridegroom. That's what it means in Ephesians 1:3, when it says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. That is our identity. It's not something you have to strive for. We are loved, you're accepted, you're holy, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, your children of God, accepted, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. So Caleb's strength, he's you know, he's strong at 85, he says. It shouts that God sustains what he's promises. God will strengthen us. Likewise, your life, your spiritual life is sustained by the Spirit of God, not your own ability, not your working out, not your rule keeping. In 2 Timothy 2, 1, it says, Therefore, my son, be strong in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. In that is in Christ Jesus. That's where strength, that's why Caleb was strong. He was strong in grace, and that's exactly how we will become a strong people who will live by his promises, be strong in grace, which means we work out grace, we talk about grace. Every Wednesday morning at nine, we meet at the graduate group, we study grace. At the uh the life groups, there we're always talking about grace. And every Sunday, guess what we're gonna preach about? Grace. And if that's not for you, I don't know what to tell you. It's not gonna change. We're gonna talk about his grace forever and ever because he says we're supposed to be strong in grace. 2 Peter 3.18. Grow in the grace of Jesus. That's what we're that's what we exist to do. So we today, what what's our takeaways for today? We stand on promises, not performance. We stand on promises. God's word about you in Christ is settled already. He's already said what's true about you. You're redeemed, you're sealed, and that's your inheritance. Who gets inheritance from a dad? Their kid, right? Their sons, their daughters, their kids. We get not land, we get everything that he can give us in relationship. Acts 20, 32. So now, brethren, I commend you to God and the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. We are given this inheritance, it's ours already. Second little application: we live from rest, not conquest. You don't have to fight the battle. Caleb asked for what God had already given. Caleb asked for what God had already given in the same way, offer your body to God because God's already given himself into you. Remember when they when they came to Jesus and said, Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar? And they thought they were gonna trick him. And and and Jesus gave the literally best answer in the history of the world. He said, Show me a coin, whose inscription, whose face is on that coin, whose image is it made in? And it had Caesar and there and he said, So give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give to God what belongs to God. And that's how to live by grace, guys. We're not fighting, we're giving ourselves. We're not trying to take over the world, we're giving ourselves. And it says that in Romans 12, 1 and 2. I beg you, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Not uh which is your reasonable service, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may be able to prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So what do we do with this? Give me this mountain sermon. We give everything to God, hold nothing back from God. Why? Because God has held nothing back from you. His promise is I give all of myself to you. If you allow me, I will live, I will literally live your life for you, through you, as you. He can't, he will not force you. That's why God is a gentleman and God is love. He will never force a single person to give everything to him. That is your way to love God in return, in response for his love to you. He will never take that away from you. You can't go to your wife and say, I demand that you love me. You just love your wife and they respond with love. It's the same exact way. God loves you perfectly. Caleb waited 45 years on for this mountain. But there's a deeper question for us. Was the mountain the real promise that Caleb was waiting for? I mean, is it the physical manifestation of it? Was that the real promise? Because Joshua 11 ends with this line: the land had rest from war. The land had rest from war. And that sh that word rest should make us pause. Right? Rest, pause. Because 40 years earlier, an entire generation missed out on this land, not because the giants were too big, but because their unbelief was. And then the Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, says something even more shocking. There remains a rest for the people of God, it says, for you and for me. Meaning this Joshua story wasn't the ultimate rest. The land wasn't the final destination. Caleb waited for Hebron, but what he was really waiting for the whole time was rest. And that's what we get. Today we're not waiting for a piece of land. We're not climbing a literal mountain. There's not even any within a thousand miles of us. I don't know, maybe not in Mexico. But our inheritance is secured by Jesus because the war is over, the victory's finished, the question isn't will God give it, the question is, will we enter it? Caleb followed the Lord fully, not perfectly, but fully. His heart leaned in one direction, which was trust. And that's how you enter the kingdom of God. The rest of God. We silence all other voices. We want to hear what the Holy Spirit says to us today. We want what you have promised. Lord, I am fully convinced that we ask for far too little from you. We are satisfied with hills. We're satisfied with plains. We're satisfied with little earthly things when you have promised us a mountain. You have seated us at the right hand of the Father in the mountain of heaven. You promised us heavenly things and spiritual things peace without measure. You've promised us acceptance without shame. You've promised us so much. And we just walk through our life numbly, thinking that we have to live in a sad, sorrowful state. Live in fear, just accepting the stupid giants that live in the land that we've been promised. Lord, we repent of our small-mindedness. We repent of our self-perspective. And we instead lift our eyes to you. We look to the promises in your word, and we say, give me that mountain. I'm gonna rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ. I'm gonna depend on it like my life depends on it. In Jesus' name we pray. Let's praise the Lord. Will you all stand with us?

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Oh my soul. See I never before all my soul.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon you. Go forth, believe in those promises, search them out, and God will bless you. Now, uh I've been working a lot on the website. Go check out the website. Mess around on it. Let me know what you think. Talk to you later. Bye.