Caleb's Faithful Heart
Forty-five years after spying out Canaan, eighty-five-year-old Caleb claims the mountain God promised him, demonstrating that faith sustained over a lifetime yields eternal rewards.
When Moses sent twelve spies to explore Canaan, all twelve saw the same land flowing with milk and honey, the same fortified cities, and the same giants. Yet only two—Joshua and Caleb—saw what God had promised rather than what their eyes feared. The ten brought an 'evil report,' but Caleb declared with unwavering conviction: 'Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.'
The congregation sided with fear and spoke of stoning Caleb and Joshua, but God intervened, declaring that none of that generation except Caleb and Joshua would enter the promised land. To Caleb, God gave a specific promise: 'My servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land.'
For forty years, Caleb wandered in the wilderness with a faithless generation, yet he 'wholly followed the Lord.' When Joshua began distributing the land, eighty-five-year-old Caleb came forward to claim his inheritance: 'As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me.' He requested not the easy portions but the mountain still inhabited by giants. Joshua blessed him, and Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak from the land.
Caleb's life demonstrates that faith sustained over a lifetime receives its promised reward. At eighty-five, he was still taking mountains.