Because she studied, she did well on the test. Because he practiced, he made his free throws in the game. Because she was diligent, she was given the raise. Because he was reliable, he was chosen for the position.
Caleb was one of two spies who came back from an assignment with a positive report. Ten spies (no one remembers their names) said it couldn’t be done. Joshua and Caleb proclaimed, “Do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.” Such confidence produced discussion among their fellow Israelites of a stoning, but God intervened. “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me?” Moses then begged God not to destroy his faithless people. So they wandered in the wilderness forty years and only Joshua and Caleb got to enter the Promised Land.
As an old man, Caleb remembered something Moses had promised him: “The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.” (Joshua 14:9) Moses had communicated to Caleb what the Lord had told him about the people’s lack of faith to enter Canaan. “No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendents will inherit it.” (Numbers 14:23-24)
Whether a forty-year-old or an eighty-five-year-old, Caleb was consumed with God. Knowing God made him a warrior. ‘God is love’ and ‘perfect love drives out fear.’ Because he followed wholeheartedly, he gained the prize.
“‘Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still just as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.’ Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Japhunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. So Hebron has belonged to Caleb son of Japhunneh the Kenizzite ever since, because he followed the Lord, the God of Israel, wholeheartedly.” Joshua 14:10-14