Caleb is my favorite character in the Bible. Bar none.
Moses stood against an empire. David brought down giants and crushed nations. Peter was bold enough to swing a sword in the dark. Paul drove forward like a man who could not be stopped. But Caleb. Caleb was magnificent.
I know what you may be thinking. Caleb? Sure, he had faith. Sure, he entered the Promised Land. But so did Joshua. What makes Caleb so great?
We all know how Caleb began. He and Joshua were sent into the Promised Land to spy out the land. Ten men came back shaken by what they saw. Caleb was not one of them. While the others melted in fear, Caleb stood up and said they should go take the land, because God would give it to them.
But the people sided with the ten. They chose fear over faith. They rebelled against God. Judgment came quickly. The ten faithless spies died. The people were sentenced to wander. Caleb was promised an inheritance. Then, in a last burst of regret, the people tried to take the land anyway. And they were crushed.
But that is not why Caleb is my favorite.
I love Caleb for how he finished.
Forty years passed. Forty years of wandering. Forty years of waiting. Forty years of discipline for a rebellion he did not join. Caleb had been ready then, but he had to wait while a whole generation died in the wilderness.
At last, the time came to enter the land. Not everyone made it. Moses did not go in. The ten spies did not go in. None of that generation entered except Joshua and Caleb.
Then more years passed in battle. The land was largely subdued. The time came to divide it. And Caleb stepped forward once again.
“So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.”
Joshua 14:10–12 (NIV)
That is what I love.
Here stands Caleb at eighty-five, not asking for a quiet corner, not asking for ease, not asking to be excused. He asks for the hill country. He asks for the hard ground. He asks for the place where the giants still live.
He had been ready forty-five years earlier. And now, at eighty-five, he was still ready.
That is rare. That is beautiful. That is the kind of old age worth praying for.
And Caleb did not just talk. He took the land.
“Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. So Hebron has belonged to Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite ever since, because he followed the Lord, the God of Israel, wholeheartedly.”
Joshua 14:13–14 (NIV)
I sit at my computer at fifty-five and wonder what eighty-five will look like.
Will I still want to fight? Will I still want to take hard ground? Will I still trust God enough to move toward the battle instead of away from it? That is my prayer. Not merely that I would make it to eighty-five, but that I would be training for eighty-five now. That I would fight daily. That I would stay strong. That I would stand firm to the end. That I would follow God wholeheartedly, like Caleb.
The future holds a choice. We can shrink back, let fear settle in, and slowly become smaller men. Or we can keep trusting God, keep obeying, and keep taking the ground he sets before us.
Have you fought and come away disappointed? Caleb knows something about that. He was ready to go in the first time, and still had to wait forty years because of the unbelief of others. Faithfulness does not always mean immediate victory. Sometimes it means waiting, enduring, and staying ready until God says the time has come.
God had ground for Caleb to take. He has ground for you to take too.
The question is not whether there is a battle.
The question is whether, when your moment comes, you will still be ready.