Faith in Focus
Joshua 14:6-15
How many of you ever played with a water hose growing up?
I don’t know how many times I turned the water hose on that was in front of our house.
We used that for everything.
That was our water fountain when we were playing outside.
We’d turn it on and make mud to play in.
We washed cars with it.
We would have water fights with it.
Now, we rarely had any sort of sprayer attached to it.
Those usually got misplaced somehow.
If we needed a little more pressure or a little more distance, we did that age old, tried and true method of sticking your thumb over the end of the hose.
It still amazes me how water that coming out without a lot of force, the second you make that opening smaller how the force of the water increases.
I remember some lessons on hydraulics from high school that explained why that happens, but I can sum it up for you.
You get a lot more power when you focus your energy.
The same is true with flashlights.
I have always liked the ones you can twist the end to focus the light.
I can have a wide beam that isn’t very bright, that a few twists later I have a narrow beam that is pretty bright.
Essentially that is all a laser is – focused light.
As I was thinking about a theme for this year, I have kept coming back to the word focus.
A few months ago I was thinking about foundations or roots, but I they just didn’t seem right.
I think in some ways the theme is me preaching to me.
Sometimes it is easy to lose focus or have too many things dividing your focus.
But there is great power when you can focus your attention, your passion, your energies onto one precise target.
Now, we know from the Bible that the Just shall live by Faith.
We know that without faith it is impossible to please God.
We know that God works through our faith.
I hope to challenge us to focus our faith and see what God can do.
Our text this morning is one of the great stories in all the Bible.
It features one of the many people I cannot wait to get to heaven and learn more about.
His name is Caleb, which means “capable.”
We first meet him in Numbers 13 where he is one of the twelve spies sent into the land of Canaan.
He is the representative of the tribe of Judah.
He was one of the first to see the goodness of the land God had promised to the children of Israel.
He saw the fruitful plans, the rolling pastures, and the flowing streams.
He tasted the grapes of Eschol and the pomegranates and figs.
He saw the cities and the farms and the garrisons of soldiers.
His heart burned within him.
This would be HIS land, and his children’s, and his children’s children’s.
They would not have to be a slave as he had grown up.
No, they would live in a land flowing with milk and honey.
We know the story how the twelve spies returned.
How ten of them said there was no use – the enemy was too strong.
How two men – Joshua and Caleb – failed to rally them people to trust in their God and claim the land.
The nation of Israel rejected God’s promise, and God let them wander in the wilderness for forty years.
Everyone over the age of twenty died and was buried there.
All except the two faithful spies – Joshua and Caleb.
Here is what God said about this amazing man:
Num 14:24 But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it.
That different spirit I believe is talking about him being filled or led by the Holy Spirit.
His righteous heart directed his steps so that God could say Caleb followed him fully.
Six times – you can go and find them – God told them Caleb would not die in the wilderness but would possess the land he had spied out and set his heart on.
Caleb’s courage and character led to him being named the chief of the tribe of Judah in Numbers 34:19.
This amazing man fades into the background of the story as Joshua leads the Israelites across Jordan and begins the conquest of the Promised Land.
Surely Caleb was there when the walls of Jericho fell.
Surely Caleb was there when the sun stood still in Joshua 10.
Surely he fought in the southern and northern campaigns.
While they were not able to completely rid the land of the Canaanite tribes, Israel had a firm enough hold to begin dividing the land among the tribes and families.
As this is being done, a party from the tribe of Judah approaches Joshua while they are camped at Gilgal – This is our text.
There is Caleb – 85 years old – and begins starts to tell his story to Joshua.
Now he and Joshua are bonded by their time as spies, their faithful stand against the doubters, and the fact that they are the two oldest guys around.
Caleb tells his story about spying out the land.
He recalls a promise that Moses had made to him personally:
Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children’s for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the LORD my God.
He said he has waited 45 years for this day but it was time.
There was a place he had seen while spying out the land.
This place captured his heart and I imagine he made a vow that God allowed him it would be his.
It was in the hill country of Judah about twenty miles south of Jerusalem.
It had historic ties to Abraham.
Abraham dwelt there for some time, and it was there that he purchased a burial ground for his family.
Abraham and Sarah were buried there.
Isaac and Rebecca were buried there.
Jacob and Leah were buried there.
There is even a Jewish tradition – I highly doubt its true – that Adam and Eve were buried there.
Hebron was also set aside to be a city for the Levites and city of refuge.
Caleb could not have known it, but it would be David’s first capital when he first ruled only over Judah for seven and half years.
Now, the problem with Hebron is that it was still in Canaanite hands.
And not just any Canaanite people, but the descendants of Anak.
Anak means “long neck” – they were some of the giants that had startled the fearful spies.
If you read into chapter 15, beginning in vs. 13, you can read about how Caleb drove them out.
He defeat three sons of Anak – probably princes or kings.
There was a town nearby called Kirjathsepher.
Instead of fighting it he proclaimed a reward for the man who could take the city and promised his daughter Achsah as the prize.
His nephew Othniel did so and married Achsah.
We have the added detail that she made her husband request land with springs because it was not as fertile as other areas.
By the way, this same Othniel would become the first judge over Israel in Judges 3.
What is Caleb know for?
As far as the genealogies go, his line is not very important and he and his three sons are only briefly mentioned in I Chronicles 4:15.
Many remember him as one of the faithful spies.
Few that he was a great leader among the tribe of Judah.
Most remember his bold faith – claiming a piece of land in enemy territory and taking it for his own and his family.
Caleb was a great man, yes, but an even greater man of faith.
It was not bravado or boasting the moved him.
No, he trusted in God promises and power.
He put his finger down on a map and said – “this spot is mine”.
Through God’s faithfulness it was made so.
That is the power of faith in focus.
We live in a world that does not know how to focus.
Our attention spans are minutes or seconds long.
This is not just in the secular world but in the spiritual also.
We have faith, yes.
We may even have great faith.
But how few are the men and women who focus their faith like a laser and see God do great things.
John Knox was one of the most famous leaders of the Reformation.
His prayer was this: ‘Give me Scotland, or I die.”
He focused his faith on that goal.
God used him to turn Scotland from Catholicism to Presbyterianism.
If only He had kept turning that knob until He hit the Baptist setting, but oh well.
The Scottish missionary John Keith-Falconer, who turned his back on a promising career as a cyclist and on a professorship at Cambridge said:
“I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light.”
He died at the age of 30, but many have followed his example of faith in focus to respond to the need of Missions work.
It was faith in focus that led Edward Kimball to visit one of the young men in his Sunday School class and led him to the Lord.
That young man was D.L. Moody, who shook two continents for Christ in the late 1800’s
Bob Jones says in his book “Things I Have Learned” that “Every successful person I have ever met had come at some time in his life under the dominating power of some great truth.”
That is what I am talking about today.
You can apply that principle in any walk of life, but oh the power of having your faith focused on a target!
This is the kind of faith that God honors and rewards!
I have explained the theme and given you a tremendous example from Scripture.
I have given you a few illustrations of its power.
Now, let’s get down to business for a few minutes.
First I ask, how is your faith this morning?
Faith is a measurable quantity in Scripture.
You can have no faith, little faith and much faith.
Christ said in Matthew 17:20 – “…If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
Now that is focused faith!
Second I ask, how focused is your faith?
I don’t know that we have less faith than previous generations, or that we have less faith from those that God greatly uses.
I think it may just come down to focusing our faith into action.
Third I ask, what are you focusing your faith on?
There is no reason why we cannot spend daily time in the Word or in prayer – it is a matter of focusing the faith we have into action.
There is no reason why we cannot continue to grow our missions program – it is a matter of focusing the faith we have into action.
Do you want to see God do great things in your life?
Do you want to see that in our church?
Well, we need to lock onto the promises of God, focus our faith and our attention and our energies.
We need to be united in prayer and vision.
We need to constantly help keep each other on track.
If you want 2026 to be a better year than 2025, and even the best year yet, we need to get on board with this.
We need to focus our faith and see what God can do
It takes little faith to focus on Christ to find salvation.