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  Josh 14:11-12 6 Then the children of Judah came to Joshua in Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him: "You know the word which the Lord said to Moses the man of God concerning you and me in Kadesh Barnea. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought back word to him as it was in my heart. 8 Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt, but I wholly followed the Lord my God. 9 So Moses swore on that day, saying, 'Surely the land where your foot has trodden shall be your inheritance and your children's forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.' 10 And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as He said, these forty-five years, ever since the Lord spoke this word to Moses while Israel wandered in the wilderness; and now, here I am this day, eighty-five years old. 11 As yet I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me; just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in. 12 Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day; for you heard in that day how the Anakim were there, and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said." Introduction: What the world needs today is more biblical men. (Men that God could Use) Biblical men who believe the bible are rare and hard to come by. Every now and then you run into a fellow who is crazy for God and feels as if God can do anything but fail. Dr. Henry Blackaby, one of the greatest minds in Baptist circles commenting on this passage says that “Caleb’s faith in God never wavered though everyone around Him doubted. God had convinced Caleb that the children of Israel should enter the promise land that God had in store for them. But the people were intimidated by giants that possessed the land and the fortified cities.” (Numbers 13: 28-33) According to biblical history it was the people’s unbelief that forced this soldier “Caleb” to wait for 40 years in the wilderness before he finally entered the Promised Land. Even after all those years, Caleb was as confident as ever in God’s power. Sometime good men must suffer because of the unbelief of others. Sometime good men must wait on the blessing of God because the congregation is saddled with unbelieving hearts. Sometime good men can’t move forward in ministry, because unbelief will hold them back. Caleb in today’s charge is a picture of the Man of God who has faith in God. Caleb represents a soldier with a great determination to follow and obey the will of God. Caleb is a picture for us of a man with God’s vision and heart, who believed that with God he could not fail. The Amazing thing about this verse is, he kept the word of the LORD. He did not allow the disobedience of a previous generation to stop him from completing the assignment once given to him by his GOD.

• This was a man who was committed.
• This was a man who was focused.
• This was a man who understood GOD”S sovereign rule and reign in life.

Background: It was after Joshua had become Israel’s leader, and God had given them the Promised Land. Caleb his fellow soldier and friend came and appeared to him as an older man (40 years later). When God was dividing up the land among the Israelites, the people were asking for the lush valleys and grassy plains (They were seeking a life of ease). Caleb came in and asked for the MOUNTAINS! This request was abnormal; he was up in age and he should have asked for the easy assignment. He should have asked for the least amount of work, then went on into retirement. But Caleb’s heart was the heart of a soldier for God. He wanted what nobody else wanted, the place where the enemy of the Lord might still be hiding. At this time in the story, the Israelites had driven the enemy into the mountains and there they built fortresses to fight against Israel. But this did not intimidate Caleb-he wanted the challenge, and he wanted the Lord to be glorified and praised.

1. Caleb was a man’s kind of man, who belonged to the faith club!
2. He saw what couldn’t be seen!
3. He believed what couldn’t be imagined.
4. He wanted what was best for God’s people and what would honor God the most.
5. Caleb did not trust in his own strength but he trusted in God’s presence.
6. He knew that with the Lord on his side, there was nothing he couldn’t do.

Caleb longed to see the LORD work in power; I believe he knew he would less likely see God work if he settled in the easy places in the new land! Caleb chose a place where he would have to trust God; A hard place, a difficult place, an uncomfortable place. His assignment was not for the weak at heart. Henry Blackaby said; “If you always choose the easy way, asking for the peaceful valleys, you will never see God’s power displayed to enable you to take the mountain.”

• The man who wants to please God ought to think like this.
• The man who wants to please God ought to be driven by the impossible.
• The man who wants to please God ought to love living in the abnormal and long to see God do miracles through Him.

Having faith was no problem for Caleb! Trusting in the power of God’s might was not an issue! God knew what kind of man he had in his hands with Caleb, and I believe he was pleased to no end at what this old man desired! As a modern-day Caleb, your responsibility is to seek out the mountain type assignments. The mountains of opportunity. The mountains of service, evangelism, discipleship and faith in order that you may witness God doing great things through your life that can only be explained by HIS presence and HIS Grace. So, go ahead and ask God for the hard assignments, and watch Him give you the desires of your heart!  

Ray Nickson was born in Adelaide, South Australia. Ray completed his undergraduate work at Flinders University (South Australia) where he received the Bachelor of Arts (honors) degree in English Literature and Criminology and the Bachelor of Laws and Legal Practice (honors) degree. While completing his law degree, Ray was sent to the Legal Service Commission of South Australia, similar to the public defender’s office in the U.S. After completing his degree, he was offered a position as a criminal defense lawyer with the Legal Service Commission, where he was admitted as a barrister (an attorney who tries cases before a judge) and a solicitor (an attorney who does not try cases before a judge). Ray represented clients in both adult and juvenile jurisdictions and was frequently responsible for providing counsel to the inmates of Adelaide’s prisons. While Ray found his work as a criminal defense lawyer rewarding, he became frustrated with the way the criminal justice system operated. As a response to his frustrations someone suggested that Ray pursue a Ph.D. to research alternatives. Thinking this was a good idea, Ray applied to the Australian National University in Canberra. There his doctoral work was supervised by John Braithwaite, the renowned criminologist and restorative justice advocate. Ray’s work focused on transitional justice, which looks at the ways we respond to abuses, human rights violations and war crimes during transitional periods from conflict or dictatorships to periods of peace or democracy. Ray’s research focused on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and was conducted in The Haag, Sarajevo, Belgrade and throughout Cambodia. Ray discovered that one of the significant problems was a gap between what people wanted from justice initiatives and what the justice initiatives could deliver. Thus, the focus of Ray’s thesis was to try and bridge that gap. After completing his Ph.D., Ray worked for several years for the Australian government in Canberra analyzing situations similar to his research. Ray left this work to teach in the Criminology Department at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales. There he continued his research on issues of restorative justice, which led him to Fresno Pacific University. “My research focuses primarily on the connection between restorative justice and transitional justice,” he says. So he and his family moved to Fresno for “an opportunity to work at an institution that focuses on restorative justice.” He is currently conducting research with tribal courts in Oregon to examine their restorative justice initiative. Last year, Ray was a member of a research team that was awarded a grant from the Australian Institute of Criminology to study the impact of a mass literacy campaign on the encounters that Aboriginal Australians have with the criminal justice system. Ray spent extended periods in remote Australia conducting fieldwork. Ray’s interest in teaching is genetic. Both of his parents are teachers, as is his sister. He finds his interactions with his students stimulating and mutually reinforcing. “Often students provide fresh insights that I haven’t thought of previously—it’s an invigorating encounter,” he says.

Pivot Questions

1. What is your favorite word?

Safe (in a baseball context).

2. What is you least favorite word?

Out (in a baseball context). Or strike.

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

It depends on the situation. Recently, I’ve brought my baseball glove and baseball into my office and I throw the ball to myself and catch it and it helps me to meditate on particular things and work through them by giving my hands something to occupy them with while I’m thinking. I sort of find that meditative. Sometimes it’s music as well. For instance while I was writing my honors thesis I listened to Bob Marley nonstop and particularly a couple of the songs that are messages of peace, which I found inspiring. And Steve Martin’s albums while I was finishing my Ph.D. (His comedy albums or music albums.) His more recent bluegrass albums. Spiritually, it’s the Society of Friends’ testimonies to simplicity, truth, equality and peace. I try to bear witness to these every day and they are the driving force behind my work.

4. What turns you off?

Too much noise.

5. What is your favorite legal word?

Ex injuria jus non oritur [‘law does not arise from injustice’].

6. What sound or noise do you love?

Sound of the baseball bat hitting the ball cleanly. And I love the sound of my daughter’s footsteps as she’s running about the house.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?

Car horns.

8. What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt?

Sports journalist.

9. What profession would you not like to do?

Anything in sales.

10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

I hope he says, “Come on in.” That I’m invited to stay.

Three words serve as the foundation of the mission, vision and description of the Center for Peacemaking & Conflict Studies (CPACS): shalom, eiréné and teleios. The importance of these words, therefore, necessitates a deeper look at their meanings and concepts. Most Christians know that the primary meaning of the Hebrew word shalom is “peace.” But this word also conveys more than just an absence of violence. In his essay “Peace (Shalom) in the Old Testament,” Claus Westermann points out, “The Hebrew word shalom is formed from a verb that means to make something complete, to make something whole or holistic. Shalom is this condition of being complete, of fullness or wholeness” (Westermann, p. 19). After sketching four uses of shalom in the Hebrew Bible, Westermann believes, “one can conclude the following: Shalom is so closely linked to what it means to be human, it refers to something . . . elemental. . . . To have shalom has obviously been essential for human existence throughout all ages, through all the manner and forms of existence” (Ibid., p. 20). Like shalom, the Greek words eiréné and teleios have wide semantic domains. The most common definition of eiréné is “peace.” Its most ancient usage was to describe a moment in time “purely as an interlude in the everlasting state of war,” (Foerster, p. 401) but Werner Foerster points out that it was used “for almost all” the shalom passages in the Septuagint and, therefore, “it is natural that the content of the Heb. term should have penetrated into the Gk.” causing the word eiréné “to be filled out with the sense of the Neo-Hebrew or Aramaic shalom” (Ibid., p. 406). During this same time eiréné was being used by rabbis in a way not found in the Hebrew Bible—to describe the relationship between God and humanity (Ibid., p. 410). This progression continued into the Christian era where w was used to describe one’s relationship to/with God; as well as one’s relationships to/with others and how these relationships affect one’s life and soul (Ibid., p. 412-17). One of the most famous forms of eiréné occurs in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers (eirénopoios); for they shall be called the children of GOD,” (Matt 5:9) which refers to an unbiased/neutral person who comes between two contending parties and tries to make peace (Ibid., p. 419). Like eiréné, teleios has a breadth of meanings and a depth of history. The earliest meanings of teleios are “whole,” “complete” and “perfect.” This “completeness” was understood as all encompassing “with no part outside, nothing which belongs left out” (Delling , p. 67). With the spread of Hellenism to Semitic peoples, the definition of teleios retained its earlier meanings but expanded to include “undivided” and “totality.” Several places in the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls use teleios to describe persons in right relationship to God as being whole, and in 1 Chronicles 28:9 as having an “undivided” heart (Ibid., p. 73). Teleios also features prominently in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “be teleios, just as your Heavenly Father is teleios” (Matt 5:48). Here, too, the context points “to conduct in relation” to others. “As God is unrestricted in His goodness, so . . . the disciples of Jesus should be ‘total’ in their love, bringing even their enemies within its compass” (Ibid., p. 74). As this brief study shows, there are several reasons why shalom, eiréné and teleios serve as a foundation for CPACS. Important to each word is the aspect of relationship. Through its academic and service work CPACS desires to help individuals, organizations and communities restore broken relationships. Each word also conveys the idea of an ideal human state. The faculty, staff and volunteers at CPACS understand that people are most “human” when they are healthy communities practicing shalom, eiréné and teleios. Finally, each word carries within it a focus on the other rather than the self. Shalom, eiréné and teleios are not the goal of CPACS as much as they are the means to the goal. CPACS seeks the well-being of others through the theoretical and practical use of peacemaking so that our communities can flourish as GOD intended. Delling, G. (1964). τελειος. In Theological Dictionary of the new Testament. (Vol. 8, pp. 67-78). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Foerster, W. (1964). ειρηνη. In Theological Dictionary of the new Testament. (Vol. 2, pp. 400-417). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Westermann, C. (1992). Peace (Shalom) in the Old Testament. In P. B. Yoder & W. M. Swartley (Eds.), The Meaning of Peace: Biblical Studies (pp. 16-48). Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press.

I have been thinking a lot about the Reformation these days. At least I have when I have a few minutes between preparations for new classes. We are heading out on a tour of Reformation Germany, Switzerland and The Netherlands in just about eight weeks. (If you are interested you can find more about it at Reformation Tours). A couple of weeks ago, I contributed a brief article to the Christian History Institute's blog called "Reformation Thursday." It is on a topic that hasn't received as much consideration as it might—the gracious actions of Christian leaders in times of conflict. If you are interested in the leadership of one of the great leaders of the French Reformation, Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry IV of France, you can get a glimpse into one episode in her remarkable strength as a leader, and faithful commitment to reform at the Reformation Thursday site.

_https://vimeo.com/161518253