Ambition

Now these are the areas the Israelites received as an inheritance in the land of Canaan, which Eliezer the priest, Joshua son of Nun, and the heads of the tribal clans of Israel allotted to them. Their inheritance was assigned by lot to the nine and a half tribes as the Lord had commanded through Moses. Moses had granted the two and a half tribes their inheritance east of the Jordan, but had not granted the Levites an inheritance among the rest, for the sons of Joseph had become two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim.

The Levites received no share of the land, but only towns to live in, with pasture lands for their flocks and herds. So the Israelites divided the land, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. Now the men of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizite said to him, you know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Banir about you and me? I was 40 years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Banir to explore the land, and I brought him back a report according to my convictions.

But my brothers who went up with me made the hearts the people melt with fear. I however followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. So on that day Moses swore to me, the land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.

Now then just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for 45 years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today, 85 years old. I'm 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.

And Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. So Hebron has belonged to Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizite ever since, because he followed the Lord, the God of Israel wholeheartedly. Hebron used to be called Kiriath Arbor after Arbor, who was one of the greatest men among the Anakites.

Then the land had rest from war. Spirit of God, show me Jesus, remove the darkness, let truth shine through. Spirit of God, show me Jesus, remove the darkness, let truth shine through.

Spirit of God, show me Jesus, remove the darkness, let truth shine through. Spirit of God, show me Jesus, remove the darkness, let truth shine through. Now I'm faced with the impossible task of having got to 6 foot 2, needing to be about 8 foot 2 to see all of you, but I'll try.

I want to fix your attention on the passage of Scripture read to us earlier by Brother Ted, the 14th chapter of the book of Joshua, in what I referred to in my prayer as the dusty pages of the Old Testament. For there we read of a man who's fairly elderly, only 85, and in the 12th verse he gives vent to what is an overriding concern, an objective that he's had for many a long year. He speaks to his mate, his friend, maybe his closest companion Joshua.

Joshua has almost full authority in Israel at this time, and he says, now give me this hill country, or as the authorized version puts it, now give me this mountain that the Lord promised me that day. I want to talk to you about ambition. Listen to this, it almost put me off my subject matter.

Here's an old Puritan declaiming against ambition. Ambition is a gilded misery, secret poison, hidden plague. It's the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original vice, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies and remedies into diseases.

High seats are never but uneasy. Crowns are always stuffed with thorns. Well, he obviously didn't like the idea of ambition, did he? And yet, even the Puritans could engage in overstatement.

There is a sanctified sense in which it's right for Christians to have ambition. If that's not so, then what was the Apostle Paul speaking about when writing to the Philippians he said this one thing, I do, and his desire was to be more like the Lord Jesus and to see something of the radiance of the gospel of Christ illuminate the world. So, I want to talk to you about ambition.

Have you got one? What is your ambition in your life? You know, they talk about some philosophies and some political codes as being flabby in the centre. Something that's flabby has no real heart to it. And it's possible to consider that evangelicalism, as expressed in some areas of the church in the United Kingdom, is just like that flabby in the centre.

No real heart to it, no real muscle, no real purpose. And if that's so, then it's a far cry from the dynamic of the New Testament message which propelled ambitious men and women around the globe. Their ambition was not to enhance self, but rather to raise up the flag of the Lord Jesus Christ so that it eclipsed the ego standards of the Roman Empire.

So, what's your ambition? Says Woodrow Wilson, I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail. Now, some of us are very good in the area of failure. We know what it is as Christians, young, middle, older age people to shoot at a particular goal and to miss it.

And the net result of failing in your spiritual ambitions is really to reach cut-off point and to engage in a sort of lethargy where you just move along with the crowd but you've got no specific purpose in your life directing you. If at first you don't succeed, how does the adage go? That makes you just about average. If at first you don't succeed, it makes you just about average.

And many of us here are in that condition. We have tried and we have to keep on trying, because to secure the spiritual objectives that are ours is not always easy, but at least to have your ambition clear and focused and to try again. That's the essence of the Christian faith.

So, let me bring you to this man Caleb. He's a wonderful character, 85 years of age, yet as youthful as anybody in track two and probably more determined in certain areas, with great respect to track two or track one or the elders of the deacons here in the tab. His name means bold and Caleb was a man who fought against the tide.

Do you remember, some of you who are old enough to recall the time when scripture choruses were published by CSSM? Others of you haven't got a clue what CSSM is. It's not a department of the CIA, it's actually a youth organisation that used to work, or still does work amongst boys and girls. Twelve men went to spy in Canaan.

Ten were bad, two were good. Some saw the giants great and tall. Some saw the grapes in clusters fall.

Some saw that God was in it all. Ten were bad, two were good. Well, it wouldn't win the prize at the Eisteddfod, would it, for sheer poetic beauty? But it does encapsulate this, it does underline this particular point that there were two men in Israel at the time of Caleb, indeed he was one of them, who when they moved out of where the Israelites were passing the wilderness of Sinai into the Promised Land were prepared to bring back an optimistic picture of the possibility of the Israelite nomads going into the land and taking that land in the purposes of God, for the glory of God and settling there.

But the majority, well, they didn't accept the report of Caleb and Joshua, and as a result of that for forty years the whole of this nation, it was an incredible sight, they moved around the wilderness of Sinai and God would not allow one of the contemporaries of Joshua and Caleb to enter that land. Joshua and Caleb became the two exceptions. And what you discover now is that the years have gone by, forty-five years have shot into history, and here is this now relatively old man, seriously speaking, Caleb, and he's saying to his old colleague Joshua, as they're both just over the borders into the Promised Land, and speaking about the dealing out of the land to the various tribes, give me this mountain, give me this mountain.

Because when we were younger men and when it looked as though we might in an earlier age have entered into the land which God promised our fathers, Moses had said to me that that particular mountain would be the area where I would settle and my wife would settle and my children would settle and our relatives would settle. Forty-five years have shot by, but Joshua, I'm asking you, give me this mountain. And it seems that it's legitimate to spiritualize that particular passage of Scripture, you see, because Caleb should be standing for you and for me.

There was something that he wanted in the purposes of God, something that he wanted to be, something that he wanted to do. He wasn't flabby at the centre, he was a man of ambition, it was a holy ambition. He wanted his life and his family's life, lives to be used for the glory of the Lord.

And so he says, Joshua, give me this mountain. I suggest to you that it was a mountain of constant stimulation. You see, forty-five years is a long time, isn't it? One of the men that I knew most in terms of preachers, great preachers, was Martin Lloyd-Jones.

I honour his memory, he did such a lot under God in my life. And for years he preached his heart out in the centre of London, hoping that God would visit this land with revival. It never came.

But to the day that he died, Lloyd-Jones still had at the front of his mind the plea that constantly was expressed in his praying, Lord, send revival. Use my ministry in the centre of London, that a flame may be lit throughout the whole of the British Isles, that men and women in their tens of thousands would come and find Jesus Christ as Saviour. Old age had in no way caused the flame to dwingle to a flicker.

A man who still burned passionately for the cause of God. My older friend, are you like that? You see, very often on a Sunday evening I'm plugging at the younger people, but here, let me pause, I've got to, the man was eighty-five years of age, older than the vast majority of us, even the older section of our congregation, and he still had his spiritual vision as clear as it was forty-five years back. Grow old along with me, says Browning, the best is yet to be, the end of life for which the first prepared.

I refuse to be an Isaac, I am not going to rust out, I'm not going to rot out, I want my life still to have the enthusiasm, even if my body does not have the same physical health and strength as I had when I was in my forties. Thank God for every older person who's like that, and we've got dozens of them at the tab. Give me this mountain.

Forty-five years, it's a long time, isn't it? You imagine being in love with a girl for forty-five years, you're single, she's single, but there are certain things that have happened. To keep you distant from one another, to keep that love percolating through for forty-five years is a challenge. To keep a vision for God, to have an objective in front of you that lasts forty-five years and still to be as enthusiastic at the end of the period as you were at the beginning, my, that's wonderful.

But you see, the enthusiasm that Caleb has here is not the enthusiasm of wishful thinking. Five times in this chapter he reminds his friend Joshua what God has promised. God had said one day, Caleb, that mountain would be your mountain.

And the promises of God are sure. There are things God cannot do. He cannot go back upon His Word.

Forty-five years and every day of Caleb's life, I suggest, he still had in mind that the moment would dawn when he, Caleb, would move into that tract of land and a bit of Israel, a bit of the land that God promised to Abraham would be his. My old friend, I plead with you in the name of God, as much as human responsibility is yours to maintain the fire of vision, the fire of enthusiasm, then keep stoking it up. It was a mountain of constant stimulation.

But why, Caleb, are you so concerned about that mountain? You see, it's very precise, is this bold man as he speaks to Joshua. He won't settle for any other part of the land. Now, Palestine is a beautiful country in many ways, many areas.

Not all of it, some of it is desert. But it is a gem there in the Middle East. Of those of you who visited, the Holy Land will know.

Now, why was it that Caleb had this sharp objective? You see, my vision last night or early this morning when I was searching for those throat lozenges, my vision was blurred. There was no clarity. I mean, I don't normally – whoever hears this tape now will wonder what on earth he's talking about – I don't normally suck cat biscuits.

I mean, I do have peculiarities in my dietary taste, but there is a limit, even when you've been into Namibia and third world countries. But you see, there's no lack of focus as far as Caleb is concerned. This mountain, the mountain of constant stimulation.

But why are you so stimulated? What is there about that tract of land? Well, you see, the secret is really revealed, at least if you're following the NIV. I haven't checked in the AV, in verse 15. Hebron used to be called Kiriath Arba.

The tract of land is none other than Hebron. Now, what does Hebron mean to you? Possibly to some of you nothing, but to a lot of you a great deal. Hebron was the area that Abraham went to, you remember, when God called him out of Ur of the Chaldees? It was to Hebron that God brought that Old Testament patriarch and entered into a covenant with him.

It was at Hebron when three men came out of the distance and approached the tent of Abraham and revealed to Abraham the impending judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. And if you check that story carefully, you cannot but come to the conclusion that here is a pre-, this is an Old Testament indication of Jesus Christ revealing Himself before Bethlehem, because He did that on a few occasions in a most extraordinary fashion in the Old Testament era. It was at Hebron that Abraham had a great encounter with God.

It was at Hebron that Abraham bought some of the caves that are in that tract of land called Nachalpah, and in that cave he entombed the remains of his lovely wife, reckoned to be one of the three most beautiful women in the whole of the world. It was in Hebron where Abraham's remains were also placed and those of Isaac and those of Jacob. This was the area of land of great association.

It spoke of an age gone by, an age when men had been obedient to the plan of the Lord, and when Caleb looked back on his spiritual ancestry, he identifies with those men. He wants to live where those men lived. Give me that mountain.

Do you ever read church history? We've got a wonderful legacy in terms of great men and women of God who have lived out their lives in this land and in other countries for the Lord. We follow in their trail Hudson Taylor, one thinks of, Charles Spurgeon, John Calvin, a great man called Anselm, and Augustine, and Athanasius. These names may mean little to you as far as I'm concerned, and some folk here will come alongside me in this.

They are names of men whose story and whose lives I revere because God used them in most remarkable fashion. And I want to identify myself with those men, not specifically the tract of land, obviously so where they lived, but the lifestyle that they adopted, the testimony that they had, the fragrance that they left. You see, Caleb had a tremendous ancestry and the mountain reminded him of it.

And you and I have an ancestry that eclipses in importance the names of the men that I have just mouthed. It takes you back to Jesus Christ. We are His sons.

We are His brothers. What He stood for, we are to stand for. The land that He occupied is the land that we are to occupy.

He was a man who was concerned to establish the purposes of God in His generation and to pass on ministry to those who would be saved as a result of His life and death and mighty resurrection. You say, you know, the problem with me is, I live here in Worthing and I'm just an ordinary person. And the problem with your preaching is this, every time I come in on a Sunday evening or a Sunday morning, you're preaching above my head.

You're preaching to people whose spirituality is such that I can never reach it myself. And what I want to say to you from the Lord God I believe this evening is this, that the associations that I have mentioned in terms of great men and women of God who have lived in bygone days and their attainments, they're possible for you in terms of knowing the intimate walk that they had with the Lord in your life. You see, an old Puritan preacher says this, God has no favourites but He does have His intimates.

Favouritism is not something that God trades in. Intimacy is something that is left within your responsibility. To this extent, you can be as holy as you want to be.

You can know God as much as you want to know God. You can associate with the things of God in the degree that you wish to associate with them. You see, I'm not talking about salvation now.

Salvation is the gift of God. God creates faith within your heart. But I'm speaking to those who've gone beyond that point.

Your spirituality, to a large degree, is within your control. Did you know that? I don't really care how old you are or how young you are or what your background is. I am saying this in the name of God, that it's possible for you to walk where Jesus walked.

It's possible for you to cherish what the Lord Jesus cherished. It's possible for you to know an encounter with God each day of your life. I tell you that on the authority of God's Word.

If you say you're not there, it's not because it's impossible. It's because your horizons have been set too low. Your ambitions have not focused properly.

You can be, I repeat, as holy as you want to be. Know an intimacy with God to the degree that you desire it. As the heart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after you, says David.

A stronger than David, more authoritative word, draw near to me and I will draw near to you. Give me this mountain. It was the mountain of constant stimulation.

Caleb was living for that day when he'd enter into that territory and call it his own. It was the mountain of blessed association. There had lived Abraham and all the greats of an older generation with whom Caleb identified himself.

But finally, hear me, it was the mountain of illegal occupation. You see, that's what the passage says, doesn't it? It tells us, for instance, in that rather curious historical comment, thank God for the curious comments in the Bible. Generally, if you dig in deep enough, they'll yield their meaning.

Hebron used to be called Kiriath Abba, after Abba who was the greatest man among the Anakites. Now, there was a very curious thing that happened historically in that land. Abba gave birth to a man whose name was Anak, and he had some rather unique physiological properties.

I mean by that, to put it very simply, he was a giant of a man. And in that whole area, the people who were descended from him, they were unusually tall. And knowledge of this group of men and women permeated throughout the whole of the nations in the time when the Israelites were wanting to take up occupation of Palestine again.

These were people to be frightened of. And so they'd occupied these overgrown people, the land that originally belonged to Abraham for many generations. And their very name brought fear into the minds of those who heard of them.

That's the reason, you recall, why the Hebrews didn't go into the Promised Land forty-five years earlier. The majority report was, we'll never make it because the Anakites are so strong. They controlled Hebron.

It was an illegal occupation. And Caleb, in his assessment, recognized the strength of the Anakites, but he placed over against this, check it in Numbers 14, the strength of God. He was arguing on the basis of a New Testament principle.

If God be for us, who can be against us? Let's go at them. They are bred for us. But no, the majority report won.

And Caleb, Joshua, and the rest languished in the wilderness for forty-five years. But now the time has come for Caleb to take occupation of that land promised to Abraham. Promised by Moses to his servant Caleb, and he was going to claim it as his own.

Shall I tell you that in one sense this prefigures our Lord Jesus Christ? Where was Jesus crucified? The answer is Calvary. What is Calvary called elsewhere in the Bible? Sometimes it's referred to as the place of a skull. There's a very flimsy Jewish tradition that says Adam was buried there.

Richard Wernbram works out that the actual name, place of a skull, is very interesting because it's in the skull, the head of man, that sin actually has its root. And the Lord Jesus, we can almost see Him as He's moving towards Calvary, the place of a skull, which becomes in effect the headquarters of evil, saying to the Father, give me this mountain. Let me settle the battle once for all on Mount Calvary, which will release into this world the power of righteousness so that your kingdom can be established.

And the victory of Calvary, in one sense, has some prefiguring, has some anticipation in the way that Caleb scales Hebron and routes out the Anarchites and raises the flag of Jehovah God. So, Jesus spoiled principalities and powers at Calvary and made it possible, with Satan routed, for you and for me to come to a relationship with the Almighty Father. Give me that mountain, says Caleb.

It's mesmerized me for years. It's a mountain of my mental stimulation I've lived for that moment. It's a mountain of blessed association.

It's a mountain that's occupied by the alien forces of unrighteousness who need to be taken out of the way. And in the next chapter you discover that Caleb is utterly successful and he takes over this tract of land for the Lord, his God, verse 13 of the next passage of Scripture. Now I'm just about through.

Caleb had an ambition. It was a worthy ambition, and the problem with many of us, friends, is this. Our ambitions are too small.

Our understanding of Christian responsibility is too limited. What can you say about Caleb's in terms of the characteristics that you and I also need to demonstrate? A holy optimism. Says Caleb of those giants, they're bread for us.

Let's go to it. Let's get them out of the way. Let's fulfill the purposes of God through our lives.

Do you have that holy optimism? Or are you flabby at the center? There's an utter realism. They're optimistic. They're realistic.

Are these Caleb's? For he argued that the defense of the Anakites had departed from them, but the Lord is with us and therefore we're not to fear. And what's more, Numbers 14.24 will tell you this, that Caleb's are completely pietistic. I mean by that, it says of Caleb, he was a man with a different spirit.

Now does not that apply to you and me? What spirit is within those who are Christian people? It's the spirit of the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit who fills us with power to achieve purposes for God in our lives. There should be a holy optimism about us. We are the people of God.

The future is in our hands. There is a realism about us. If God before us, who can be against us? Well man with God is the majority.

Okay, what's your ambition? What really is your ambition? Have you set it high enough? Are you settling for something that is less than it really ought to be? Lord, give me this mountain. Success in evangelism. Give me this mountain, a life of holiness.

Give me this mountain, a character like the Lord Jesus. Give me this mountain, an ability to defeat the devil. Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring, for his grace and power as such none could ever ask too much.

John Newton endorses Caleb. Let's pray. And after just 20 seconds or so of silence, let's prayerfully listen to a song being sung.

Jesus, you are changing me, as I let you reign supreme within my heart. I praise you, Lord, for every seed you've sown. Fulfill my heart and make me new again.

Fill me with fire where lusts I can't quench. You're calling me to be higher than you are. Oh, Holy Ghost, revive and console me.

Send a revival, suffer and heal. My heart is repressed. Love is the fire of healing.

As holy as you want to be, I assure you it's true. As intimate with God as you would like, the possibility is held in front of you. But your ambitions, they've got to be raised.

Lord, Lord, give me this mountain and enable me to help establish your kingdom on this earth, which after all belongs to you and the fullness thereof. Father, send us on our way, encouraged and determined to live for you in a fashion that we haven't made heretofore by the power of the Spirit. Realize our most ambitious dreams in terms of our spiritual progress.

Send us out into this world, into this week, knowing your blessing, the blessing of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and always. Amen. Good night.

God bless you.