Introduction

Next to David and Joshua, Caleb is one of my favorite heroes of the Bible. And he is a hero for the same reasons that William Carey has been one of my favorite heroes of modern times. Let me list twenty points of comparison so that you can get a little bit of a taste of both men. This is my way of introducing Caleb to you without going through all the Biblical material today.

1. Both Caleb and William Carey exhibited enormous faith in a time of downgrade when most people had a hard time seeing beyond their own daily routines. And the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy show how Joshua and Caleb stood head and shoulders above their generation as men of faith. And I think it is one of the things that made them such good leaders.
2. Second, God placed both Caleb and William Carey into the spear-tip of God's conquest of planet earth. They weren't afraid of being on the front lines of the battlefield. Praise God!
3. Third, both were willing to accept any challenge that God gave them, and I believe it was because both were confident that if God was for them, who could be against them?
4. Both had a constant awareness of God's presence and power with them. That will sustain a leader through the hardest of times. If you do not daily experience God's presence and power in your life; if your Christianity is merely academic, you will have weak points that Satan can take advantage of.
5. Fifth, both were men of courage. And that courage inspired others to be courageous. And in both cases, it was inspiring the next generations to be courageous.
6. Sixth, both were men of prayer. I consider that to be an absolutely essential prerequisite for good leadership. It’s one of the reasons Gary and I have emphasized prayer so much during this past year.
7. Seventh, both knew how to repent on behalf of a struggling church. And wow, was there a lot to repent over in both generations. Leaders don't just repent over their own sins; they repent over the sins of the people that they lead. They identify with their people. Gary and I do a lot of repenting on behalf of our church.
8. Eighth, both were galvanizers of God's people into action. This is actually one of my weak points. Gary and I are praying for an elder in the future who is strong in the area of Galvanizing. Not all leaders are, but Caleb and William Carey definitely were.
9. Ninth, both faced and overcame obstacles that were absolutely formidable.
10. Both had a God-sized vision of what could happen to change one geographical area on planet earth - with William Carey's vision being to transform India. If you have never read Vishal Mangalwadi's books that show how William Carey profoundly impacted India, you need to. It is so inspiring to see what one man can do. He and his wife co-wrote a cool biography that is very easy reading, and nice way to start understanding William Carey.
11. Eleventh, both were passionate for God's glory.
12. Both believed the sufficiency of Scripture even when others doubted it.
13. Both were opposed by Satan - and for good reason - they were both sold out to God.
14. Both were men of initiative.
15. Fifteenth, both inspired an entire generation to make similar sacrifices to the sacrifices that they had made. To inspire others to make sacrifices is an incredible gift.
16. Both knew what it meant to lead because they knew what it meant to be in submission to God's chain of command. Leaders who are not in submission are not very good leaders. It may seem counter-intuitive, but good leaders know how to submit to authority and to thrive under that authority.
17. But that very submission (and this is the seventeenth comparison - that very submission) under God made both leaders willing to oppose ungodly authority wherever they found it. That means that such submission is never a blind submission; it is submission in the Lord.
18. And it made them hate the evils in their land with a passion. That's the eighteenth comparison. William Carey was torn up over slavery, infanticide, forced prostitution, idolatry, and the other evils in India, just as Caleb was torn up over the evils in Canaan. Good leaders are made by God to be able to handle the stress of being torn up over the evils that they are opposing. It's not a passionless work - not at all.
19. But (comparison nineteen), both believed such evils could be stopped if Christians would take God's Word and His grace more seriously. Both of those men had a supreme trust in God's promises.
20. And finally, both followed the Lord fully. In Numbers 14:24 God says, "But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it."

The Character of the Man With the God-Sized Vision (vv. 1-11)

I love the man Caleb. I see Caleb as being so significant, that I will spend at least two Sundays analyzing this fascinating man - maybe more. And today we are just going to begin looking at the character of the man with the God-sized vision. His outward achievements flowed from inward character. So we are going to look at his inward character today - an inward character that helps to explain his phenomenal leadership.

He was a man who thrived under authority (v. 6a-b)

And the first thing that I see is that Caleb was a man who thrived under authority. I've already summarized that in the 17th comparison we just went through, but take a look at the first sentence. It says, "Then the children of Judah came to Joshua in Gilgal." We will see that Caleb was the leader of Judah, but he was a leader who respected the authority of Joshua. I doubt very much that Caleb was any less gifted than Joshua was. From Numbers and Deuteronomy you might even get the idea that Joshua and Caleb were two peas in a pod. Yet God put Joshua in leadership over all Israel, and Caleb was OK with that. He thrived wherever God put him.

Just by way of comparison- you would think that Jesus, who was destined to be in authority over the entire universe would not have to be in submission to anyone, but He not only submitted to the Father, Luke 2:51 says that he submitted to His parents' authority when he was a teenager - yes, He submitted to His parents authority even when he was a teenager and thought He knew better than His parents. And of course, in His case, He did know better than His parents. But He submitted. And if you teenagers want to grow up to become godly leaders, you need to learn the submission that the greatest leader of all time- Jesus. All who are in authority must first learn to submit to authority. If you struggle with submission to your boss, or your session, or other God-ordained leaders, you are lacking one of the most important prerequisites of godly leadership, and you are not yet ready to be a leader. So that's the first inward character quality that made Caleb such a good leader.

He was a man who knew that he could not accomplish the vision on his own (v. 6a)

Verse 6 also hints at the fact that Caleb knew that he could not accomplish the vision the Lord had laid on his heart on his own. He was not a loner. Caleb came with the men whom he led. And we will later see that a lot of his character rubbed off on the men that he led. That's the way it is with good leadership. He had obviously been influencing them.

In the same way, William Carey said that if Christianity were to spread in India, it would have to be through Indian Christians. He rubbed shoulders with the Indians to influence those who would become leaders in a godly way. In one of his articles he wrote of the necessity of,

...the forming of our native brethren to usefulness, fostering every kind of genius, and cherishing every gift and grace in them [ I love that - cherishing every gift and grace in them]; in this respect we can scarcely be too lavish in our attention to their improvement. It is only by means of native preachers we can hope for the universal spread of the Gospel through this immense Continent.¹

Without that vision of what God could do through others, his ministry would not have had nearly as large an impact as it did. True leaders do not see themselves as the only important workers who do it all. That's not leadership. No, they valued the body and they stirred up the body to the ministry of the saints.

He was a man who did not get discouraged by what others thought of him (v. 6b - “Caleb” means dog; Kennezite = Canaanite)

Third, apparently Caleb didn't get bent out of shape by teasing; he didn't get discouraged by what other people thought of him. I know this is reading between the lines, and there is a danger in that, but think about it - would a parent actually name his or her kid, "dog"? Not likely. Today "Caleb" doesn't mean "dog" to us; to us it means a hero of the faith. But back then, there were no people with the name "Caleb" until Caleb, the son of Jephunneh. The word Caleb was a term of derision, and it is frequently used in the Bible as a term of derision. So it is very likely that this was a nickname that somehow stuck. But he was OK with that. He wore his name, and went on with life.

Furthermore, his dad was a Kenizzite, which was one of the tribes of Canaan destined to destruction. I've often wondered if it was because his dad was a Canaanite that Caleb got ribbed and put down and teased. Whether he had different skin color or not, who knows, but it's astounding the background that he had to live down. But he did live it down and proved people wrong. His focus was on what God thought of him, and he was secure in God's grace. And by the time he was an adult, he had shown himself to be such a man of God that he was made a chief over Judah, the chief tribe. That's incredible; a non-Jew (by ancestry) was the head of the chief Israelite tribe. Numbers 13:3 says of the twelves spies, "all of them men who were heads of the children of Israel." Heads means the chief. And it lists each head of each tribe, and verse 6 says, "from the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh."

By the way, this shows that to be an Israelite at any time was not primarily an issue of ancestry; it was primarily an issue of faith. But the point is, his inward characteristics made him rise to the level of a tribal chief.

And many great leaders since Caleb have had to overcome similar put-downs. William Carey was a cobbler - repairing shoes. Nobody thought that he could do missions. But he taught himself Greek, Hebrew, and theology. And over time he taught himself many other disciplines. Steve Gallagher tells one of the stories of his reception when he wanted to have his denomination start a mission to India. Gallagher says,

As a young Christian, William Carey and a couple of friends formed a “mission society” to explore the idea of taking the gospel to India. However, when they shared their idea at the local ministers’ meeting, they were ridiculed to scorn. Undaunted, young William began making plans to go to India. Upon hearing of his plans, his father wrote him a scathing letter and rebuked him for such a fool-hearty pursuit. Worse than that, his wife refused to go or allow their children to go. William responded to his wife in a letter dated May 6, 1793: “If I had all the world, I would freely give it all to have you and my children with me, but the sense of duty is so strong as to overpower all other considerations. I cannot turn back without guilt on my soul.” Dorothy finally relented, and the small party boarded a ship that arrived in Calcutta six months later.²

But once in Calcutta, he was opposed left and right by all kinds of authorities, not least of which was the East India Company - which had enormous power. Here is an excerpt from a director's meeting of the East India minutes. I think it gives you a bit of flavor of the kind of ridicule he received from them. It says,

The sending of missionaries into our eastern possessions is the maddest, most extravagant and most unwarrantable project … ever proposed by an enthusiastic lunatic.³

You can see what they thought of Carey. But he didn't worry about them or what they thought. He pressed on with God's vision.

So don't get discouraged if you have received teasing, opposition, or if people don't believe your God-given vision. Leaders must learn to get their sense of identity from God, not from those that they lead. And it is important that you children learn to not get bent out of shape when you get teased. That would be to allow others to control you. Leaders become leaders because they know how to get beyond that.

He took initiative (vv. 6a-b)

The next thing that I see is that Caleb took initiative. Verse 6 again, "Then the children of Judah came to Joshua in Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him..." Leaders are much more proactive than they are reactive. They take actions based on a plan rather than always reacting to other people's attitudes and actions. In other words, they have a long-term trajectory that lets them take initiative exactly when initiative is needed. They actively step into God's call upon their lives.

He took God’s promisory note to the bank (v. 6c)

The next thing that I see is that Caleb did not treat God's promises as being simply nice poetry to put on a wall, but which has no real impact in our lives. If God made a promise, he was going to hold God to it. Verse 6 goes on to say, "You know the word which the LORD said to Moses the man of God concerning you and me in Kadesh Barnea." He is taking God's promissory note to the bank, as it were. He is basically saying, "God made a promise back then, and I think now is the time for that promise to me to be fulfilled."

Now, I should hasten to say that promises are different than predictions of the future or planning for the future. Your plans don't always come to fruition, but if you made a promise, God expects you to keep it even to your own hurt. That's how seriously God takes promises. But let me tell you something: God takes His own promises just as seriously as He wants us to take our promises. He will fulfill them, even to His own hurt. (It's not possible to hurt God, but you know what I mean. He takes His promises with the utmost seriousness.) And when we really believe God's promises, we can act upon them. This is yet another dividing line between a leader and wannabee. 1 Peter 1:4 says that God's promises guarantee that we become partakers of the divine nature. What an incredible promise. Verse 3 says that God's promises give to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. I love what Charles Spurgeon said in a sermon titled, "Knock!" During that sermon he said,

I have said that the Lord has provided a knocker. What is this knocker? First of all, it may be found in the promises of God. We are sure to speed well when we can plead a promise. It is well to say unto the Lord, “Do as thou hast said.” What force abides in an appeal to the word, the oath, and the covenant of God. If a man presents to another a promissory note upon the day on which it is due he expects to receive the amount stated therein. God’s promises are bills of exchange, and he will duly honour them. He was never known to dishonour a bill yet, and he never will do so. If you can only quote a promise applicable to your condition, and spread it before the Lord in faith, and say, “Remember this word unto thy servant upon which thou hast caused me to hope,” you must obtain the blessing. Pleading the promise gives such a knock at the gate of heaven that it must be opened.⁴

And I say, "Amen!" May we grow in leadership by growing in our faith to treat God's promises as promissory notes.

He had a grand vision grounded in God’s Word (v. 6c)

The sixth characteristic that I see in Caleb is that he didn't make up his vision. He had a grand vision, but it was not a naive vision because it was grounded in God's Word. The last part of verse 6 shows that he was going to ground everything he was about to do in "the word which the LORD said" (v. 6c). If God hasn't said it, then we have a less sure foundation for our vision. We will shortly see that his vision was stunningly grand, but it was a big vision precisely because it was a God-given vision.

Helen Keller was once asked by someone, “What would be worse than being born blind?” They perhaps thought that nothing could be worse than her condition of blindness. And Helen Keller (who was stone blind) replied, “To have sight with no vision.” That is an incredibly profound statement. To be able to see perfectly with your eyes, but to have no vision for what God can accomplish through you is a sad state indeed. Mothers - you are leaders of your children. Do you have a grand vision of what God can accomplish through you? To have no vision is a sad state for any leader. Vision is so critical to leadership that Barna defines a leader as a person who "is driven by a vision," and he contrasts that with "a teacher [who] is driven by an audience who can be affected by information." There is a difference between the two. Now, good leaders can also be good teachers, but not all good teachers are leaders. Leadership is a calling just as teaching is.

When a leader has no vision, his followers have no direction. In other words, they are not being led. John C. Maxwell said, "Vision is not just an advantage for great spiritual leadership — it’s a prerequisite." And all of the great leaders of the past were driven by a vision that was bigger than them. John C. Maxwell gives illustration after illustration of this in a commentary on Deuteronomy that was written by him and Lloyd J. Ogilvie. (You maybe didn't realize that he had written a commentary, but he has.) Let me quote him at length, because I think this is a big point. He writes,

Phillips Brooks once said, “Sad is that day for any man when he becomes absolutely satisfied with the life that he is leading, the thoughts that he is thinking, and the deeds he is doing. Then there ceases to be a desire to do something greater for God than ever before.” ...

William Carey, a pioneer missionary, was able to envision the needs of the whole world, while his fellow preachers were preoccupied with their own little parishes. Vision has a wide-angle lens.

Henry Martyn saw India, Persia, and Ardia (a vision of the Muslim world), while the church at home was engrossed in its petty theological squabbles. Vision sees needs and is not thwarted by problems.

The contemporaries of A. B. Simpson said that his life work seemed to “push him on alone, while his fellows had nothing to explore.” Vision is compelling.

David Livingstone exclaimed, “I will go anywhere provided it is forward.” Vision instigates positive action. Those who have most powerfully and permanently influenced their generation have been “seers.” Men and women of caution have never advanced the kingdom of God. People of vision are willing to take risks, knowing that they are attached to God’s rope of security.⁵

He never lost his vision, even during years of dryness (v. 7a)

The seventh characteristic that I see in Caleb is that he never lost his vision - not even during the dry years of wandering in the wilderness. If anything could have killed that vision, it would be those forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and the last five years of fighting - but fighting for someone else's territory.

Verse 7 begins, "I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land..." Well, if you follow the chronology, this is now 45 years after that event, which makes Caleb 85 years old. 85 years old is a long time to be waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. But he didn't doubt it. He never lost his vision. And you can see many great leaders of modern history who finally achieved their vision after a lifetime of labor.

But Caleb's faithfulness during the forty years of wandering shows that he was not trying to manipulate God, or be demanding that God meet his timing. You can think of the promises God gave to Abraham. Abraham had to wait a long time for the promise of Isaac to be fulfilled. And he never did get to see the promise of the land fulfilled in his lifetime. But he knew that it wasn't just his seed who would receive it; he would. Which is one of many arguments that can be mustered to show that Abraham will inherit terra firma earth after the Second Coming. In any case, Scripture says that Abraham believed God's promise and prepared his children to pass on his vision. So God gets to define the vision and He gets to define the timing. And often the waiting is for the purpose of testing the leaders on whether they will live by faith or by sight. There is always a reason God has for the postponement of the vision being fulfilled.

He expected great things from God (v. 7b)

But this brings us up to the incredible faith that Caleb displayed in Numbers 13-14. Here he simply says, "and I brought back word to him as it was in my heart..." He had internalized this word in his heart. And when you read the account in Numbers 13, the word that Caleb brought back was a word that took God's promises at face value and expected God to follow through. He said, "Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it" (Numb. 13:30). Compared to the testimony of the ten spies, it is no wonder that God promised Joshua and Caleb on the spot that they would see a fulfillment of their great vision before they died. Their vision was totally consistent with true faith.

Whitehead and Boyd say,

... a lack of leaders “is one of the driving difficulties we have in most churches in America today. We have good people who are well-educated, good-intentioned, and called to ministry, but they are not for the most part leaders. They are teachers, preachers, counselors, they have good skills, and they certainly have spiritual gifts, and they can help people, but they can’t lead.”⁶

We desperately need some Joshua's and Calebs in our own generation. Men who can lead their churches to expect great things from God and to attempt great things for God.

And its not as if such leaders must have their heads in the clouds. Caleb didn't. William Carey didn't. For six years Carey urged his denomination to form an organization to send missionaries overseas. He had it all mapped out. He wrote an eighty-seven page booklet outlining the Biblical and factual basis for the plan and how it could indeed work. So if you have a good vision, you are going to be planning for that vision, right? Is it really a vision if you have done very little thinking and concrete planning about it. And William Carey grounded his plan in the Word of God by preaching from Isaiah 54:2, which is God's call for the church to enlarge the place of its tent so as to inhabit the Gentiles. At one point he summarized his vision in the expression that I've already quoted twice, “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” It came from that sermon.

Heart, word, and deed are matched (v. 7d)

Verse 7 also shows that Caleb's words and his heart matched. He says, "I brought back word to him as it was in my heart." And his actions in Kadesh Barnea fully matched his heart and words. Our words often reflect the state of our hearts. When I used to have negative words of doubt, it reflected the doubt that was already residing in my heart. And people would point that out to me, and I would not like to admit to it. But it's true. When I grumbled, it reflected lack of contentment in my heart - even if I might have tried to deny it. It was not until I began applying God's grace to the secret places of my heart that the changes began to be evident in words and in deeds. May we be like Caleb - showing faithfulness to the Lord in heart, word, and deed. You can hide secret sins that only exist in your heart - you can hide them from men; but you can't hide those heart-sins from God. Leaders constantly work on the state of their heart because (as Christ worded it) "out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." I remember as an unregenerate teenager trying to outwardly be a Christian while harboring sinful thoughts and sinful cuss words in my heart. And one time I let blasphemous cuss words fly with my mouth. I was dumbfounded; embarrassed; shocked that I had even said such a thing. Where did those words come from? Well, they came from my heart, which was not yet lined up with words and actions. It was one of several things that the Lord used to show me my unregenerate state. Pagans can sometimes put on a good outward show, but only God's grace can master the heart. Caleb was a good leader because heart, word, and deed matched his profession of faith.

He shared his vision with others (v. 7c)

But that same clause in verse 7 shows that Caleb shared his vision with others. As a leader he couldn't help but share it and seek to persuade others of it. It's what made him a leader. Brandon Crowe's Biblical Theology of Covenant and Law says,

Sometimes the right leader makes all the difference—especially in times of crisis. Good leaders cast a vision and inspire confidence. They understand what’s important and what needs to be done. They recognize the challenges. Good leaders benefit those they lead. Nations need good leaders.⁷

He did not allow others to kill his faith (v. 8a)

When you begin studying what would be involved in conquering Canaan, with the cities fortified to the heavens, the giants in the land, the chariots and massive armies, you can understand why the other spies said,

We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we... The land is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants... and we were as grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.

Their vision of what could be done excluded God's power and God's promises, and as a result it was a puny vision. But it was the fellow believers with their puny vision who gave the most resistance to Caleb. Yet despite their drag upon his soul, verse 8 says, "Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt, but I wholly followed the LORD my God."

Sadly, many leaders today are giving up the fight because of the resistance and unbelief that they face in others - including their followers. And we need to pray for leaders in business, politics, media, entertainment, church, and other places. It has often been fellow believers who are the ones who take the wind out of the sails of enthusiastic Christians. It is often fellow believers and even fellow leaders whose cynicism dampens the enthusiasm of leaders who want to have a God-sized vision like Caleb did. But Caleb kept his vision and kept leading his people to enthusiastically follow that vision despite the negativity of some.

A counseling Encyclopedia that I have summarizes this point well when it says, "Leaders create positive change even in the face of natural disinclinations in followers."⁸ Let me re-read that: "Leaders create positive change even in the face of natural disinclinations in followers." In other words, they keep influencing others to follow God wholly despite the lack of faith and negativity of others.

Conclusion - summary of what we have covered thus far

I will try to finish off this section next week, if possible. But let me quickly summarize what we have covered so far. These first principles are very very important.

We have been seeing that the outward achievements of Caleb flowed from his inward character, and it is critical that leaders keep challenging themselves to grow in the inner man. Never stop growing.

The first inward characteristic of this great leader was that he thrived under authority and therefore was able to exercise godly authority.

Second, he was convinced that without God's grace, he would not be able to achieve the huge vision God had placed upon His heart. Godly leaders are driven to achieve things way beyond their ability because they lean on the God who gives them supernatural strength beyond their ability.

Third, his God-given vision helped him to focus on what God thought of him more than what others thought of him. If you are dependent on the approval of others, it will be hard to lead like Caleb led.

Fourth, he took initiative rather than always being reactive. Initiative is the ability to make decisions and act on them without being told what to do.

Fifth, he had no doubts about God's promises. If God promises you something, you can bank on it.

Sixth, his vision was big because it was grounded in God's Word. We must immerse ourselves in the Word of God if we are to grow in our ability to lead.

Seventh, he did not allow dry spells, discouragements, or the passage of time to make him give up His God-given vision.

Eighth, like William Carey, he expected great things from God.

Ninth, his heart, his words, and his actions matched his vision.

Tenth, he shared his vision with others. Leaders can't help but share their vision. It is something that so grips their lives that it spills over into the lives of others. In fact, we will see in the future that his daughter, Achsah, took on a lot of these leadership characteristics. She is a rather remarkable woman. I see it as her dad's leadership spilling over into her life.

And eleventh, he did not allow others to kill his faith.

Brothers and sisters, I am praying these inward characteristics into your lives. I'm claiming them for you by faith. And it is my hope that you will aspire to them in the coming year - a year in which we will focus on joy and thanksgiving in the Lord. Amen. Let's pray.