Claiming a Mountain With Giants Hidden There

The Scripture:   Joshua 14:7-14

As a forty-year-old man, Caleb was sent to spy out the land for Moses and the Children of Israel. Of the twelve spies who were sent, Caleb was only one of two who came back with an accurate report.

All twelve spies came back loaded with fruit – bunches of grapes so large they had to be carried by more than one man. Pomegranates such as they had never seen before. The evidence was before them and could not be denied. They not only saw the fruit, they got to taste and consume it.

Yet what the people remembered was that in that land flowing with milk and honey, there were giants.

When the people listened to the report from the other spies about the “giants in the land”, they decided they were too afraid to enter the land that God had promised them.

Caleb continued to trust and follow the Lord. He didn’t change his scouting story and he kept believing.  He said God had promised them that land, and He would give it to them.

Basically, he said, “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

It turns out he was right. His report was accurate, and God proved it by rewarding the two men who told the truth. The other ten spies were never allowed to enter that promised land.

And now, in this biblical account, the focus turns to Caleb and his story.

Forty years have passed since that spying expedition. At eighty, Caleb is as strong as he was forty years before.

He was given a vision then (those many years before). He hasn’t forgotten that vision. I can’t imagine waiting forty years for a vision to be fulfilled, but he waited.

It’s time now, he says, to see that vision fulfilled.

Caleb wants to go forward and conquer the land – that land with those giants. That land whose giants kept the Israelite children so paralyzed that they refused to believe God would really give it to them.