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Rowland Croucher writes:

Give me this Mountain
(Part 3)

Unfortunately for many in our churches 'the faith' is a body of beliefs they affirm in the creed - 'faith about' God but not yet faith in Him. The church is thus a social club with a religious flavour. It is very dangerous when such a church elects uncommitted people to high office. A church that's alive will be stretching their people's faith all the time.

The pastor of a dynamic church in England was preaching about the wonderful opportunities all around their parish. His text: Deuteronomy 1:19 ff.

'Look, there is the land. Go and occupy it as the Lord your God commanded. Do not hesitate or be afraid. The Lord your God will lead you.' To press his point he gave out 800 seedless grapes to the people (seedless in deference to the caretaker!). 'God is leading us!' he preached that day.'Men and women of faith - lead, conquer, win - take these grapes to others!'
Now 'fides' faith includes an ingredient of optimism, but biblical faith is more than optimism. So is the biblical idea of hope. The New Testament talks about the 'patience of hope'. Christian hope is deep; mere optimism may be shallow. Optimism may be a good natural trait - and have no religious connections at all. 'Hope', says John Macquarrie is his little book The Humility of God, 'is humble, trustful, vulnerable. Optimism is arrogant, brash, complacent... Our hope is not that in spite of everything we do, all will turn out for the best. Our hope is rather that God is with us and ahead of us, opening a way in which we can responsibly follow.'

Hope is not conditional upon trouble being removed. Hope means God is with us in trouble and in triumph. Resurrection hope means God is with us in life and death. Hope means the God who was with his people in the past will be with them always.

Hope is a primal human need. Victor Frankl was a young psychiatrist who had just begun his practice when the Germans took over his native Vienna and shipped him and his fellow-Jews off to a concentration camp. Then began the awesome task of survival. With his trained psychiatric eye he noted that many prisoners simply crumpled under the pressure and eventually died. But some didn't, and Frankl made it his mission to get to know these special people and discover their secret. Without exception, those who survived had something to live for. One man had a retarded child back home he wanted to care for. Another was deeply in love with a girl he wanted to marry. Frankl himself aspired to be a writer, and was in the middle of his first manuscript when he was arrested: the drive to live and finish the book was very great. Frankl did survive, and has contributed greatly to our understanding of the human 'will to meaning'. He developed a process called 'logotherapy', which, expressed as a simple question is: 'If the presence of purpose or meaning gives one the strength to carry on, how do we human beings get it touch with it?'

Caleb's answer was, in one word, HOPE. Human persons are 'hopeful beings'. Where there's hope there's life. That's because our God is a 'God of hope'(Romans 15:13); those who don't know God are 'without hope' (Ephesians2:12).

Once when Martin Luther was feeling depressed, his wife asked if he'd heard God had died. Luther replied angrily that she was blaspheming. She retorted that if God had indeed not died what right had he to be despondent and without hope!

Hope, says Martin Buber, is 'imagining the real'. It is not fantasy or wishful thinking - like Mr. Micawber's 'hoping that something will turn up'. It's not 'she'll be right mate'! Hope deals with imagining possibilities, then having the faith to work hard to see those possibilities realized.

5. CALEB WAS A MAN OF ENERGY and SELF-DISCIPLINE

'Faith' and 'hope' don't mean expecting God to do for you what you can do for yourself. As we said before, Caleb could have adopted the attitude 'Now I'm 85 I've earned the right to take it easy. I know Moses offered me that mountain country around Hebron, but how about switching to 'Plan B' - a nice fertile valley that's already been conquered so I can settle down?'

When Caleb fought the great battle with the 'sons of Anak' the story is described simply in a few verses in Joshua 15. Now I'm not suggesting you do this to people who oppose your goals: the kind of militarism that pervades the OT must be viewed now through the prism of the perfect revelation we have in Christ.

With God the giants are vulnerable. Caleb was no fool, not blind or stupid. Fighting giants in mountain country is difficult. Fighting ordinary-sized people in mountain country is difficult when they don't want you invading their territory - ask the Russians leaving Afghanistan!

6. CALEB HAD GOOD RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS

Caleb wasn't part of the rebellion against the leadership of Moses and Aaron. There's no hint about a leadership struggle between himself and Joshua: he was willing to be accountable. He wasn't even elected second-in-command of the army when Moses died. But when he came to Joshua to claim his inheritance they had the sort of relationship that led Joshua spontaneously to bless him.

7. OBEDIENCE

Caleb's eulogy (Joshua 14:14): he 'faithfully obeyed theLord' (GNB); he 'wholly followed the Lord' (RSV); or as the Jerusalem Bible translates it he 'scrupulously obeyed the Lord'. I wonder if they'll say that about me, about you? Obedience means that when our Lord, our Master, our King asks us to do something there are no questions.

So in the story of Caleb you have in contrast the fear of people who look at difficulties, and the faith of those who look to the Lord. Just as he inherited the place where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah were buried, may we follow in his footsteps.

It is a sobering thought that just ten people in the whole company of the people of Israel were able to infect the rest with their faithless unbelief. May God give us something of Caleb's strong faith hope and courage, so that we might fulfil His ministry through us all together.

Let us get to know our God, get to know the world in which he has put us to do a job for him, and let's get these two in proportion. With the help of Caleb's God who is our God, we can conquer these mountains. Let us go forward together in his name, giving courage to those who go with us...

A sermon preached at the induction and commissioning of Philip Hunt as the executive director of World Vision Australia.

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Copyright & copy; 1996 Rowland Croucher. All rights reserved. May be freely used and reproduced by the Christian Church for the non-profit purposes of study and training only, provided all copyright information is included. May be resent only with copyright, authorship and contact information intact.

This article is published courtesy of Rowland Croucher, John Mark Ministries. If you would like to peruse more articles from the pen of Rowland Croucher, visit his website at http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm.

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