Caleb's Unwavering Faith

[0:00] Morning. Wonderful to see everybody. I had a bit of a cold, a pretty nasty cold. I couldn't make it last week, but I'm feeling pretty good today.! Let's fire up and get to work to do God's work.

[0:14] Well, before we start, let's have a word of prayer to our Savior. Thank you, Father, for another beautiful morning here. It's the springtime, such a fun time.

[0:28] My tulips are up. My daffodils are up. I see little buds on some of them. It's just really a fun time, fun things to see grow and the new life.

[0:39] It just reminds us of the new life we've given us. We need to be thankful for that, Lord. I want to just thank you. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for taking care of me.

[0:51] Thank you for guiding me. All of us here, thank you for that, Lord. Thank you for that we can follow you. You've made a path for us to follow you through the Word and through the Holy Spirit's work in our life.

[1:04] We thank you for that. We praise you for that, God. This is such an important thing. Continue to help us this morning to learn what the Word says. We're chatting about Caleb and his faith.

[1:17] Lord, we want to have faith. Continue to have faith and never give up. Amen. And I forgot to pray one more important prayer that I forgot to pray about. Harold asked me to pray for his daughter-in-law.

[1:31] She's hanging on by a thread. She's the wife of his deceased son recently. So I'm going to lift her up right now. Lord, I lift her up. And you just, whatever your plan is there, Lord, don't know.

[1:45] But if there's a way to heal her and get her back on track, Lord, please do that work. The mighty hand that you do. Lord, and a few other people, too, continue to pray for Trish and her healing of her cancer and Jim Potter.

[1:59] And I know there's a myriad of others that are ailments that we all have. Put my own heart valves or my veins in your hands, Lord, too, that you'd help me in my healing process.

[2:14] Let's just praise you again here today. Amen. All right. So we got Caleb's unwavering faith there.

[2:25] And I put a picture there of an older couple. I will be probably specifically addressing older people. You can decide if you're in that category or not.

[2:38] I'm not going to tell anyone that you're older or not. I'll let you decide that for yourself. I kind of put myself in that category. But that's me.

[2:48] That's how I decided to do that. But that's part of what we're going to talk about. So to get us up to the story of Caleb, I do want to talk a little bit about some background information to the story.

[3:00] So help us understand where Caleb fits. Fits in the plan. I think it's really interesting. I've learned a lot. And it's exciting stuff. So we start out with the Israelites are in Egypt.

[3:11] And we know that they got there from a famine. And they're through the awesome story of Joseph. We remember that story. If you ever read it, you should really read that in Genesis.

[3:23] And so they're in Egypt for about 430 years. And then Moses comes along and he helped. God uses him to deliver them to freedom. To free from Egypt.

[3:37] And we have the Exodus. The story of the Exodus. And so about one to two years after leaving Egypt, you can actually wind this down to about 14 months, really.

[3:51] They left after the Passover, which would have been probably April, March or April. And we're going to go to Numbers. If you've got your Bibles here, I don't have these scripture verses.

[4:03] I kind of wanted to read them with you today. So I want to go to the book of Numbers. So where's Numbers? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers.

[4:14] If you follow your Bible at the beginning there. And I want to go to chapter 13. So we're going to see here this takes place about somewhere between one to two years after they left Egypt.

[4:36] And I'll tell you why in a minute, why you can narrow it down to about 14, 15 months. And so they're getting closer to the promised land.

[4:48] You know, we read it's 40 years. Well, they're getting pretty close after about 12 months, 14 months. They're getting close. And so Moses wants to send out 12 spies, one from each tribe into the promised land.

[5:01] And this is the part in Numbers that talks about that. Actually starting in verse 4, these are the ones that they picked to go to the promised land. If you look at verse 6, it says, This is the first mention of Caleb in the Old Testament.

[5:19] He was picked as one of the spies. As they're doing reconnaissance, if you will, to the promised land. Figure out what's there. What are they up against? Because God said he's going to give them this land. And so they want to see what they're up against to take it.

[5:33] And in verse 8, from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshia, the son of Nun. If you look in verse 16, you'll see Hoshia really is Joshua. So two of the 12, I'm not going to read them all.

[5:45] You can read them. Two of the 12, one is Joshua, one is Caleb. And they're called to lead part of this party of 12. They're going to go spy out the promised land. And so let's read now verse 21.

[6:01] So they went up and spied out the land. From the wilderness of Zin, as far as Rehob, at Label Hamath. And they had gone up into the Negev and came to Hebron.

[6:13] Where Ahimon, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were. Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. Let's continue to read here.

[6:28] Then they came, I'm going to jump to verse 25. Then they returned from spying out the land at the end of 40 days, and went and came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh.

[6:42] And they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Thus they recounted to him and said, We went into the land where you sent us, and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.

[6:59] Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there.

[7:10] So the descendants of Anak, we read that in verse 22. That's in Hebron. And I'm going to show you a map in a little bit where that's at. And back to 29. Amalek is living in the land of the Nebgev, and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.

[7:34] So we see that they brought back, the spies went in the land, they came out, they brought back a report, reported that there's milk and honey, and there's fruit. This is a good land.

[7:46] However, there's these other people there, and let's learn more about them now in verse 30. Then Caleb quieted the people. So there's Caleb, right?

[7:57] Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we are surely able to overcome it. But, but the men who had gone up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.

[8:17] So they gave out the sons of Israel, so they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land, which they had spied out, saying, The land which we have passed through to spy out on is a land that devours its inhabitants.

[8:32] And all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. They are also, they're also, we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak are part of Nephilim.

[8:46] That's Hebron, the land of Hebron. And we became like grasshoppers in our sight. And so we were in their sight. So Joshua gave a, or Caleb gave a wonderful report.

[9:00] Let's go. God says, This is the land. We're going to go take it. But the other 10, they're scared. They're afraid. No, we're like grasshoppers in their sight.

[9:13] These are giants, kind of giant-like people. And they gave a bad report. And we see there, at this time, Caleb is 40. We're going to read that in a minute a bit.

[9:24] Joshua is about 40 years old. So these people complained and grumbled. And they did not go into the promised land. It's so close.

[9:36] So close. So why about 14 months? Well, they harvested grapes. Grapes would have been maybe June, July. They left Egypt, April, March, April.

[9:49] And they were certainly out there about a year to travel. So if you add up the April, and then a year goes by, the next April, then a few months into June or March would have been around maybe 14, 15 months.

[10:02] So here they are, ready to go in the promised land over a little over a year. And yet we know it's going to take 40 years. So they grumbled, complained, turned around, went back out into the wilderness.

[10:14] Poor Caleb. He's ready to go. Ready for the battle. Ready to do God's work. And we see there in Numbers, if you go to chapter 14 in your Bibles, verse 24, next chapter.

[10:29] It says, But as for my servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring him into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it.

[10:46] Unfortunately, he's going to have to wait another 38, 39 years. Poor guy. Okay. The promise of Caleb to inherit the land.

[10:58] Okay, now let's look at a map. Can you see it pretty good? Yeah, it's not too bad. So we have to pretend for a minute that they did not, they haven't taken the promised land yet.

[11:11] And we'll get into that. So if you look at, I thought, I know I brought my pen here. So Hebron is right here. This river going straight up here is the Jordan River.

[11:24] The promised land is left up in here. So eventually it will look like this when they take the promised land. I'm going to chat about that in just a little bit. So Hebron's right in here.

[11:36] Just a little side note. Do you know who was buried in Hebron? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried right in this, right in the Hebron area right here.

[11:46] Jericho will be probably the first, you read, it's one of the first place that they conquer when they start entering in the promised land. And I'm going to share a few more things on this map in a minute. So back out to the wilderness they go.

[12:02] Poor Caleb. Poor Caleb. He's ready to take the land. So what does he have to endure? Another 38, 39 years of complaining people.

[12:13] You can read about this in the Exodus. Desert conditions at times. The manna. The quail. So they whine about meat and God brought them quail and so much quail was coming out of their nostrils, the Bible says.

[12:29] Complained about Moses that he loved. The hardship of carnal people. But Caleb's heart was with God. And so how is he to be faithful among all these people?

[12:45] But we're going to see he's going to be stronger than ever. We're going to read this. The desert isn't going to make him bitter. It's going to make him better. Adverse conditions make people better.

[13:00] My tulips, they've been snowed on. They've been froze on. They look strong. Some flowers do really, really great when they get adverse conditions.

[13:11] Can't wait to see him. They put new bulbs in last year, so it's fun. He knew that God's promise were true and he believed in them and his inheritance.

[13:26] There will always be people around you that are unfaithful telling you that God doesn't care and there is no God. And that's the kind of people he was hanging out with much of the time. And isn't that true in life?

[13:40] Isn't that true in life? The Christian life was never easy. God never said it's going to be easy. We're going to be around people like Caleb was that want to turn and go the other direction.

[13:51] Those giants? I'm not going there. Back out to the desert. Could have had the milk and honey land. Nope.

[14:02] Wrong direction. And we're going to see Caleb doesn't stop believing in the promise. So we're going to pick up the story. Back to the...

[14:12] So now we're going to... Now we're... The story is going to begin with Caleb when they're beginning to enter the promised land. So not all of it's been taken yet. But there's a few more interesting things to learn about when they enter the promised land that I want to chat about before they get to him, Caleb, taking on Hebron there.

[14:32] You'll notice that there's three tribes on the right side, the east side of the Jordan. They chose not to go in the promised land. They saw some fairly good land.

[14:44] They thought, well, Moses, we want this land over here on the right. That was Gad. Half of Manasseh. You see Manasseh's on the right. The other half's on the left. Half of Manasseh, Gad, and Reuben.

[14:56] They took these three lands. Moses let them do it. And Moses said, however, I'll let you have the land, but you have to help us conquer the promised land. And they did. They did. But however, they left themselves exposed.

[15:12] These were the first three tribes to be attacked by the Ammonites and different people over on the east side there. You know, the Israelites were attacked many times, and they're the most exposed.

[15:24] And I was just thinking about this in our little fellowship here. Sometimes when we don't jump in all the way, we can leave ourself exposed. In the Christian church, there's many Christians that maybe just show up once in a while, and they don't really connect.

[15:41] Pastor John was sharing with us how we need to connect with one another. It's for your protection. It's for your protection. They left themselves exposed because they didn't go in the promised land.

[15:54] They would have been better protected. And it's the same, I think, in our church. If we come to church and just kind of get to know someone and maybe just show up once in a while, we're leaving ourself exposed.

[16:06] For one thing, when something happens, I'm a pastor. How do I even know what happened to you if you're not connected in and talking with people? And we talk with each other, and you're, Oh, hey, Tim, I'm struggling today.

[16:18] If I know that, we can pray and we can connect and things like that. So that's one lesson, I think. There's other important lessons, I think, why they didn't go into the land that we can learn from that.

[16:29] But that's one that I've been pondering a little bit. Also, another interesting observation that I found really fascinating. If you count the tribes, there are 12.

[16:44] There are 12. But one tribe, there's actually two names. Jacob had 12 sons. Two of the sons are not on the list. And that's Joseph and the Levites.

[16:56] The Levites, they're, they're, so, so one thing, when they enter the promised land, each tribe inherited, it was like a tribal inheritance. The Levites, they don't have a tribal inheritance.

[17:11] God was their inheritance. But they did get land throughout all of it because they ministered as priests to all the people. So they're there. Levites are there. Just not as a tribal land, you might say.

[17:24] Ministering. So they're not there. So that gives you, that puts you down to 11. Joseph's not there either. That puts us down to 10. The story of Joseph was, is he, his two sons became tribes.

[17:39] That's Ephraim, Ephraim and Manasseh. And so Joseph's two sons got a special blessing from, from, from Jacob. Another thing, maybe you don't remember this, but Reuben had a, he was the first son.

[17:52] He would have got a special blessing, but he didn't because he committed a pretty big sin. He slept with his father's concubine. It's a very horrible sin. Lack of respect to his father, all kinds of things, the authority and so forth.

[18:05] So, so, so Joseph, we know the wonderful things he did. It's almost like he got a double blessing. Both his sons got blessed. They became two of the tribes. So that puts us back to 12.

[18:16] So there's the 12 tribes of Israel. If you will, I find that. It took me a while to understand how that all works. Because I always wonder, where's Joseph? Where's the Levites? Well, he's, they're there.

[18:27] They're all there in different capacities. Okay. All right, let's continue. So let's get into the story now of Caleb.

[18:41] That don't work. There we go. Let's read the Joshua chapter 14 is where the heart of our message is today. Talking about Caleb.

[18:53] So let's go there. Joshua 14. You ready? Then the sons of Judah approached Joshua and Gilgal. And Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, said to him, You know the word which the Lord spoke to Moses, the man of God, on account of you and me and Kadesh Barnea.

[19:13] So Caleb's talking now. In verse 7, Caleb says, I was 40 years old when Moses, the son of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land and brought word back to him as it was in my heart.

[19:27] So we read about that, right? He's 40 years old and he's spying out the land. In verse 8, Nevertheless, my brothers who went out with me made the heart of people melt with fear.

[19:39] Remember the other 10? Talked about that. But I follow the Lord my God fully. This is really important to see this, this part of the scripture.

[19:50] But I follow the Lord my God fully. So Moses swore on that day, we read about this, saying, The land in which your foot has walked shall certainly be an inheritance to you and your children forever, because you have followed the Lord God fully.

[20:10] There's a summary of what we just got done talking about in Numbers, isn't it? It's pretty much a summary of it. He will follow the Lord God fully. And he believes the promise of God and Moses assured him that you're going to inherit that land.

[20:25] Okay, let's continue. Verse 10, And now behold, the Lord has let me live just as he spoke these 45 years.

[20:36] From the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, when Israel walked in the wilderness, now behold, I'm 85 years old. So we just jumped 45 years from when he was 40, spying out the land.

[20:53] He's 85. I am still as strong today as I was on the day Moses sent me. As my strength was then, so my strength is now for war and for going out and coming in.

[21:06] Now then, give me this hill country, about which the Lord spoke on that day. For you heard on that day that Anakim were there with great fortified cities.

[21:18] Perhaps the Lord will be with me. And I will drive them out just as the Lord has spoken. 45 years later, he still believes the promise of God. He's ready to go.

[21:29] Remember, he lived with these Israelites this whole time out in the wilderness. His faith is as strong as it is today as it was 45 years ago. Well, you say, you wonder why 45 years?

[21:41] I thought it'd be 40 years. If he's 40, 40 years in the wilderness, that makes him 80. Well, it took probably five to seven years for him to conquer the promised land, to get into it.

[21:53] It took five to seven years. He's not scared like the other ones were. He's ready to go. Just as ready as he was at 40.

[22:04] He's ready to 85. He believes the promise of God is true then as it was 45 years ago. He's a very faithful man. He's a very faithful man.

[22:15] Oh, I want to learn that. The Galatians 2.20. I'm jumping to Galatians here. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

[22:28] And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. We live by the same faith that Caleb had.

[22:43] We live by faith in the Son of God. They look forward to the coming Christ. We look back at what Christ did. It's the same faith. He waited 45 years. That's a long, long time.

[22:55] I'm trying to think 45 years ago. I'm 63. That's a long, long time ago. I wasn't even a Christian then. He wasn't guided by fear.

[23:08] He was not guided by fear. He had the faith, his eyes of faith, not fear. Have you ever been stuck by fear? You ever been caught up in fear?

[23:22] I have many times. I've been caught up by fear. Fear is a powerful negative force. It's a powerful, and I know we fear God. That's a different type of fear. But the fear of, I'm afraid.

[23:34] I can't do things, right? He had a simple faith in God and he's not afraid of the giants of Hebron. He believes the promise of God to inherit the land.

[23:47] That's it. He's not asking for an easy share of the land. He's not asking, oh, get me over by the Mediterranean Sea. If you saw the map, to the west was the Mediterranean Sea.

[23:59] He's not asking for land along there. Not open farm field. I've seen the Mediterranean. It's gorgeous. It's a beautiful, I swam in it. There's some urchins down there.

[24:11] We had to be careful. One guy was with us, got hit an urchin on his foot. It's a beautiful place. He just wants to do what God said in that promise.

[24:27] Are we believing in the promises of God? This is, I think, the story of Caleb. This is maybe the heart of his story. He believes God's promises. So I'm asking myself, what promises am I believing in God?

[24:42] What promise today that I can read about? Well, yeah, of course you got to read them to find them. Well, I don't know what promises to believe. Well, have you been reading? Reading God's word regularly. That's the only way you're going to find God's promises.

[24:54] By reading it and fellowship with one another, learning about scripture. That's where the promises come. Back to Joshua.

[25:05] Let's go back to verse 11. I am still as strong today as I was on the day Moses sent me. As my strength was then, so my strength is now.

[25:19] For war and for going out and coming in. That is interesting. He's as strong as he was from 40. Now, I don't know about you.

[25:33] Like I said, I'm 63. Clearly, I'm not as strong as I was when I'm 40. It hasn't even been 45 years. You know some of my health problems. I'm on a pretty strict diet now.

[25:45] And by the way, you can hold me accountable to it anytime you can say, Tim, how are you doing on your diet now? Because I got to have a better diet because I got some blockage. You guys are aware of that in my, around my heart and some of the, some of the arteries.

[25:58] The joy of the Lord is my strength. I can't rely on my, my good looks anymore. As we get older, we got to rely on the work of the God in our heart.

[26:17] The Holy Spirit's work. That's what I got to rely on. My body's falling apart. I mean, I, I, that's just one of my problems. I got a lot of, I got, I got a whole list, laundry list of things going on in my body.

[26:29] I know some of you do too, don't you? Got a lot of things going on in our old bodies. But I want to believe in the promises of God because they don't die out.

[26:45] They never die out. They're amazing. This verse, I bet I memorized this verse. Probably in the first two years I became a Christian, probably very early on.

[26:59] Don't let this verse lose value. Sometimes we memorize scripture verses and we know them so well over and over and over. They, sometimes they lose a little bit of value.

[27:09] Let's reevaluate this verse. Maybe it's new for some of you. Some of you might be really old. I can, I can do all things to Christ who strengthens me.

[27:22] I can have that strength. I can have that strength. It's, it's awesome. There's no age restriction. I don't, I can do all things through him who's, uh, under 60.

[27:34] Doesn't say that. Does it? Our bodies are getting weak. My body's getting weak. Our bodies are getting weak, but hopefully our spirit's getting stronger.

[27:47] The fight, fight battles. Biblical scripture battles from God doing his work, letting him do the work, letting him get in, leave it by faith. This is such an important thing to know as we get older.

[28:04] Verse 12. Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day. For you heard on that day that Anakim were there with great fortified cities.

[28:15] Perhaps the Lord will be with me and I will drive them out just as the Lord has spoken. Caleb wants the mountain. The place that everyone ran with from fear.

[28:28] I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go, he said. He wants it. This fortified place that the big, tall, giant-like people live. He believes God's going to give it to him.

[28:41] This is the land that everyone else wants to give up on. Sometimes we've got to just persevere in our promises with God. Sometimes we pray for a few days or a week and we just kind of give up.

[28:57] He believed it for 45 years. That's a long time. When we get promises from God, stay with it. Keep leaving. Keep praying.

[29:08] Keep talking with close Christian friends. And as we said before, life's not easy. Life can be difficult. Physically and spiritually both.

[29:22] Emotionally. Pain, suffering. That's all part of our walk with God. The desert conditions that they're out with. All kinds of stories about tough times that they had.

[29:34] You can read the Exodus story that Caleb would have been a part of. But Caleb sees through the eyes of faith. His faithful eyes are really so incredible.

[29:46] He could have had a book after Caleb. Joshua got it. He was a great man too. One thing we didn't mention, both Joshua and Caleb were the only ones.

[29:57] Only two adults that were allowed to enter the promised land. All the other adults that left Egypt, all of them died. Their offspring.

[30:09] We know even Moses didn't get to go into the promised land. He was 120. Because he made a sin that didn't allow him to go in.

[30:20] He begged God to go in even. Just read that in, I think, Deuteronomy. Oh, and one, I forgot to mention one other thing. If, as they're preparing to go into the promised land, if you get a chance, read Deuteronomy 11.

[30:34] Moses gives the children of Israel a really interesting charge. He talks about some history of what God did. He talks about what to do and what not to do as they enter in the promised land.

[30:51] You read, that's Deuteronomy chapter 11. Much of Deuteronomy is preparatory for these rights entering in the promised land. That's what the book is about. Some of it is, certainly. He's holy following the Lord, Caleb was.

[31:10] And he understands the mission. We need to understand our mission. The holy follow God in that mission. It was to enter the promised land.

[31:21] What's our mission? We're going to get to that in a minute. No matter how old we become, we must never retire from trusting and serving the Lord.

[31:35] Never. We're not retiring. I hope not. I'm not. I'm going to retire from my job. Hopefully in about a year, I'll retire from my job. But I'm never going to end doing God's work.

[31:49] Caleb did not stop. He did not stop. He just understood these promises.

[32:00] This is one of the promises that I think Caleb understood. Now we're going back to chapter 3 about entering the promised land again. And Joshua said, By this you will know that the living God is among you.

[32:14] And that he will assuredly drive out from you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivite, the Perizzite, the Gergashite, the Amorite, and the Jebusite.

[32:28] Something site. Right? So this is another incredibly important principle to remember. Why we have faith and believe the promises of God.

[32:43] By this you will know that the living God is among you. So important. We want the world to know that the living God is here today.

[32:54] Because we know he is. We want them to see that. That's part of how we're going to evangelize and share our faith with people. It's believing promises of God.

[33:04] That's part of how that works. And we see them happen. God's going to move. And we can see people come to know him. Caleb is full of belief of his promise.

[33:17] And he wants God to be glorified. Once again. Here it is again. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

[33:31] By faith. By faith. Caleb's faith. All right. Continue reading now. Verse 13 to 15. So Joshua blessed him and gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, as an inheritance.

[33:48] Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, to this day, because he followed the Lord God of Israel fully.

[34:00] He's all in. Lock, stock, and barrel, the whole thing. He's in, right? We've read that how many times about Caleb here in the scripture. Now the name of Hebron was previously Cariath Arba, for Arba was the greatest man of the Anakim.

[34:18] Then the land was at rest from war. So somehow he took the land, and it was his. And he got rest. That feels good.

[34:29] It feels good just reading it, thinking about what must have took place to take over that land. Fully followed the Lord God of Israel, and there was rest.

[34:40] So we're looking at an 85-year-old man today. And I wanted to maybe focus in on that a little bit. You saw the picture of an elderly couple there that I had up on the screen.

[34:55] And I wanted to take a look at the older people. Again, you can decide if you're an older person or not. I know we're always trying to say we're 29 or whatever. Joke about that, right? What are the older people like?

[35:10] We all know who we are. Our voices are different. Our skin has maybe a wrinkle or two. Our hair color is different.

[35:22] Unless maybe we try and diet or something like that. But we know who we are. You can't hide. Right? We walk different. Don't we know?

[35:34] We walk different. Older people walk different. We don't have a skip in our step like the young 25-year-old does. As I said before, I think I'm in this group. I'm an older person.

[35:47] As we said before, we have all kinds of ailments. Knee replacements. Hip replacements. Bad eyes. Hearing.

[35:59] Hearing loss. We got all kinds of ailments, don't we? Older people. All kinds of things. But let me just say this. Please, I hope you get this carefully.

[36:11] We really, really need you older people to help the younger people in this fellowship. We desperately need you folks.

[36:22] Don't feel for a second, I'm not worthy. Even if you're an older person just coming to know the Lord, you have so much to offer. We've been chatting about some of the older people that have come to know the Lord, maybe form a little group to help you learn more of Scripture.

[36:36] You have so many experiences. It's so important. So you younger people, look around for a second here.

[36:48] Look around at these older people. Look around who they are. What do they have to offer? Now we know who they are physically. So what does the older person have to offer spiritually?

[37:04] So many things. This country, we so devalue older people and so disrespect older people. I've seen it. I teach at the community college.

[37:14] I see the young people. They have, not all of them, but there's a large group of young people that just don't understand what the value of older people is. Older people, long, loving relationships, long, loving marriages.

[37:33] That's what the younger people want to have. We've been through heartaches. Been through broken relationships. Been through and have overcome many, many trials.

[37:50] That's valuable to teach. We have a story to tell. We've learned how to work hard. We've learned how to press on. Older people are great listeners.

[38:04] Lots of wisdom. Patient. More calm. Older people live in the moment. Loyal.

[38:17] When I see young people jumping from job to job to job, Don't come to class. I've seen that how many times. I got students walk in the classroom like this.

[38:31] No backpack. Not even a pen or a notebook. It's crazy. College class, walking in a class like that. You think you'd have your pen and your pencil ready to go, nope.

[38:43] Oh, can I borrow a pen or a pencil and some paper? You know, it's crazy. Loyal. They're more red and steady.

[38:53] They're more careful with money. This sums up how we treat older people. God said it in the scriptures pretty clear.

[39:05] You shall stand up in the presence of the gray-headed and honor elders. And you shall fear your God. I am the Lord.

[39:17] We really need you people. Older people know how to feed themselves. Spiritually. Young people need to learn how to do that.

[39:28] Old people know how to feed themselves. They know how to go through trials. And they certainly have a story to tell. Let's go back to our mission statement here.

[39:44] We exist to glorify God. Walking close. It is hard to say it, even though I got it memorized. Up in front. We exist to glorify God.

[39:57] Walking close with Him. Striving together to become more like Jesus. Every day. This is what I'm charging the older people with today. And the younger people, equally.

[40:09] Striving together part. Look at the striving together. We need. Need. I mean need, not want. We need the older people to help disciple the younger people.

[40:20] To give those qualities that we talked about to the younger people. So help them with their walk with God. Discipleship. The scripture teaches in Matthew 28. It says, Go and make disciples of all the nations.

[40:34] We're all called to discipleship. There's no one exempt. At least I don't see that. Show me. Show me otherwise. We're all called to disciple. I'm just charging the older people.

[40:48] Think about maybe one young person in this fellowship. I know you have kids to disciple. That's important. Think about one person that you can maybe get to know better. Go out for coffee.

[41:00] Have them over for a meal. If you're a younger person. Get. During the. Our little get together time. Or after church. Before church. Go.

[41:10] Go. Go meet an older couple. Ask them their story. What they're about. Who they are. Invite them over for a meal. Or go out for coffee. Either way. Young to the old.

[41:21] Old to the young. We need that. We desperately need that. Us. The younger people. Not us. Because I'm an older person. Us younger. The younger people really need to learn the faith.

[41:33] Of you guys. Like Caleb. Caleb's faith. Right? Caleb's an 85 year old man.

[41:44] And his faith was amazing. It was amazing. Let's have a word of prayer. Father, I want to say thank you for your.

[41:57] Great example of an older man. 85 year old man. That just loved you. And just believed your promises. Fully.

[42:09] Fully. Lord, that's the kind of faith I want to have. That's the kind of faith. All of us here I know want to have. Faith like that. Show us, Lord. One promise. Caleb had a promise.

[42:20] Lord, you show us one amazing promise. From scriptures that we can read and believe. Some character quality we need to change. Something we need to do.

[42:30] Maybe we need to talk to someone. Some promise from the scriptures about maybe forgiveness. That we can work on one by one. Little by little. Lord, help us to connect.

[42:41] Older and younger people. We need each other. We have great value. Until the day we die, we have amazing value. Please help us with that, God.

[42:55] Give you the glory and praise today. And one more thing. Older people often say, God's got this.

[43:06] By faith. By faith.