Matlock | 09/08/26 | Caleb- Wholehearted For God | Nev Kelvey-Brown

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We're gonna put around the offering baskets, which I can't see them.

That's why I nearly forgot.

So whilst don't be distracted by Nev's word.

Give generously.

If you are a I don't think we got any visitors, but if you are a visitor, you don't have to to give, but uh please feel free to if you wish.

Nev over to you.

Okay, thanks very much, Dave and Tony.

Um what an absolute joy to be here.

It really, really is.

Um, in case you're wondering about the far north, it's Hathersidge, where I've come from, uh, with Pam, my wife, that's where we live.

And until a year ago, we were a part of the congregation here, but then we moved to the Buxton congregation, so we've been worshiping over at Buxton for the last year, and we've been loving it.

And we want to uh I want to share just a little bit of news.

I know Andy was here a couple of months ago and gave you some information, so I'll just let you know that quite often we gather about 2025 on a Sunday morning.

Uh it was 17 last week, summer holidays numbers are down.

Um, but we are very much part of Church in the Peak.

I think every week we say we are one site out of three, and we mention um Matlock and we mention Worksworth, and we are part of Church in the Peak.

We are together in this and we really feel a part of that.

And we feel your uh giving to us in in Buxton as well.

We thank you that uh Caroline comes once a month and leads worship, which is wonderful.

Matt's been over as well to lead worship.

Any other leaders of worship here, you're gonna be most welcome if you want to uh come and join us for a Sunday, um, and and that's been terrific.

Uh we've just finished an alpha course, um, which was really about developing friendship and eating together, and we invited the whole church to do it, which is why the numbers were so uh so large.

Uh we had about um 25 there most weeks, um, and a lot more than that altogether.

Um it's built fellowship, um, it's given momentum to future alpha courses because the church just buzzing about oh, the alpha's great.

Next year, when we run an alpha course, I invite your friends, they're gonna be thinking, Yes, that is a good thing to go to.

So uh the alpha course has gone well.

And what we weren't really aiming at, but was a real blessing from God, uh, we had guests as well, about 12 people, not normally members of the church and not normally with us in church, um, came along.

So that's terrific.

And then we are gonna be starting up uh probably uh two community, at least two community groups in Buxton in the autumn.

So that's sort of the follow-on from Alpha.

Thank you for being ascending congregation as well.

Uh Harry and Lee serve us every week over there, and they are pastoring brilliantly.

They just love people to bits.

So good.

Um, Jay and Katie, who were here for a while, have now found a permanent home in Buxton and they're part of us there.

Jay's on the A V team, and they'll probably be hosting one of the community groups that we have in the autumn.

Um I've got to say as well, Heidi and Simon, they served us so well.

Churin Alpha, every week they came over, served tables.

Simon's the best washer-upper I know.

They're so good, thank you.

And uh thank you.

It's an absolute black.

Thank you, mate.

So that was good, and also, of course, for releasing Phil, because you know, without him, it ain't gonna well.

Yeah, but thank you for releasing Phil.

Um, both to preach, as he's there this morning, and uh for leading the leaders there.

Right, a couple of anecdotes.

Um, I guess a few people have been doing a lot of things at that church, and we're praying for more sort of serving in the church.

Week before last I meant I met with uh four um I've got four guys who are going to now help with the AV.

They've said, yeah, we'll serve.

Three of those guys weren't even coming to the church a year ago, so there's a bit of serving going on there, and you know, every now and again something just clicks inside.

You think God's done something here.

We're on our Holy Spirit Day in the Alpha Course, and after lunch, we just said we just had a worship song before we went into the next video, and suddenly the congregation just lit up, you know, it's hands in the air, there was clapping, there was worship, and I just thought, you know what, a year ago that never would have happened.

So praise God, there's a change of spirit, a change of step.

Um, but do keep praying for us.

Um, we have no children in the church.

We've got one lady come sometimes with a couple of children, but um, pray for children, for families to come, pray for our own worship leaders to lead us because we're a bit thin on the ground there.

And uh there was something in the uh first song that Matt and the band uh sang this morning, which I thought was quite uh which was very significant.

Um, it said, you know, yeah, we're believing you for miracles, healing power, breaking through, for prodigals to turn to you.

We will keep on.

And right at the beginning of this year, in the Friday morning prayer meeting, we had a word about this is the year of the prodigal, and we've been praying for prodigals, no people that know the Father, that know the church, want you to come back and be part of us, and we've seen a bit of that already, but do pray for prodigals to return.

And do pray as well together.

Um, hey, if you are available from 7 till 8 o'clock on a Wednesday morning, there is a brilliant chance to pray together online.

You get the little um, yeah, I'm doing my plug, Elizabeth.

It's okay.

Um, it is there's a link everywhere.

If you can make it, it is so worth that hour.

I was saying to Elizabeth earlier.

Um, I wake up at 6:30 and I never feel like praying.

By eight o'clock, I think that was fantastic.

So come and join us.

It's a good way to learn how to pray, you know, if you're not sort of used to there's no pressure to pray.

You can sit and listen, you can learn, and it'd be great to learn how to pray.

We pray uh for each of our sites, uh for Worksworth, for Matlock, for Buxton, we pray for the Peak District, and we pray a lot for revival.

So do join us on a Wednesday, it is well worth it.

Or if you get up a bit later, eight or nine here on a Friday.

Yeah, let's pray.

Father, thank you uh for a wonderful day, for being together, for being your people, joined together, worshipping you and receiving the touch of your Holy Spirit upon us.

Pray, Lord, as I speak now, you give me a wisdom to say the right thing, and I pray for each one of us, Lord, that we would hear you speaking uh this morning.

Amen.

Right.

Um whole-hearted.

That's quite a nice word, isn't it?

Whole-hearted.

I don't know if anyone has ever called you whole-hearted, it means uh hearty, generous, zealous, sincere.

Those are all good things.

Um I've sometimes been described as obsessive, which I don't think is quite the same.

I would much sooner be described as wholehearted, because whole-hearted is all good, isn't it?

It's like very, very focused, but it's a good focus, it's not a bad focus.

Now, I did a little search in my Bible and discovered that the word whole-hearted or wholeheartedly comes 20 times in the entire Bible, and of those 20 times, six of them are applied to the same bloke.

Any idea who?

Jesus.

It wasn't Jesus, though I'm sure he was.

That's a good Sunday school answer.

It wasn't Paul.

No.

Okay, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to help you out here.

Caleb.

Do you remember?

Do you know Caleb?

Yeah, in the Old Testament, as I'm gonna give you a bit of history just then.

Caleb, six times it says he's wholehearted or he followed the Lord wholeheartedly.

So we're gonna uh take a little look at Caleb.

I'll get there eventually.

Um good.

Um there, Numbers 14, 28.

That's my text for this morning, because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly.

Right, bit of historical background to that.

Uh there's a map coming up because I'm a geographer and I can't preach without a map.

Um Israel were slaves in Egypt.

They went down as a family, but some years later the Pharaoh in Egypt enslaved them, and they ended up in the hot sun of Egypt making bricks for the pyramids, I guess.

Up there in the top left corner, or northwest, if you're a geographer, um, was the bit in Egypt.

They didn't like it at all, not surprisingly.

God raised up a leader, Moses, and after a number of miracles and the instigation of the Passover meal, uh, they were let free.

And this really is the uh story of the birth of the nation.

This is Israel becoming a nation.

They went down as a family, but they came out of Egypt as a nation.

Uh miracles followed.

They went through the Red Sea, uh, you know, the water parted, Israel went through, the Egyptians didn't.

Uh, and then as they got into the desert, God gave them the Ten Commandments.

I'm guessing Moses started to write the law at this stage, uh, and God had promised them a land, a place to live.

Now, this is an agricultural economy, you need good land, and this land clearly was going to be good land because it's a land flowing with milk and honey.

I guess not literally, that would be a bit sticky and messy.

Um, but it's uh it means it's an abundant land.

It's a land where you can grow your crops, it's a land where you can graze your animals, uh, you will be happy in this land flowing with milk and honey.

But just right now, they're at Kadesh Barnia, sort of right-hand side, three-quarters of the way up.

They're in the wilderness of Paran, and they're about to go into the land.

And I'm going to read a little bit, a few extracts from Numbers 13.

I suggest you read it up there because I'm sort of not reading all of it.

Here we go.

Um The Lord said to Moses, Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I'm giving to the Israelites.

From each ancestral tribe, send one of their leaders.

So at the Lord's command, Moses sent them out from the desert of Paran.

All of them were leaders of the Israelites, and these are their names.

And I'm not going to embarrass myself by mispronouncing all of them, but I can assure you there are twelve guys there.

These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land, and Moses gave Hoshia, son of Nun, the name Joshua.

When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, Go up through the Negev and onto the hill country, see what the land is like.

So they went up and explored the land from the desert of Zin as far as Rehob towards Lebo, Hamath.

When they reached the valley of Eshkol, they cut off a branch containing a single cluster of grapes.

Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs.

That place was called the Valley of Eshkol because of the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut off there.

At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.

They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the desert of Paran.

There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land.

They gave Moses this account.

We went into the land to which you sent us.

It does flow with milk and honey.

Here's the fruit.

Oh, but the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.

We even saw descendants of Anak there.

The Amalekites live in the Negev, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.

What's just happened here?

Twelve men went out to scout the land, sent by Moses, not to see if it was possible to take the land.

Read Numbers 13, verse 1 again.

Numbers 13:1

I'll read Numbers 13, verse 1 again.

Numbers 13:1

The Lord said to Moses, send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I'm giving to the Israelites.

Notice that their job was to explore, not to assess.

They weren't to say, Oh, I'm not sure we can do this.

Yet when they came back, they had explored it, but they also assessed it.

And the report that they gave, sorry, the report that ten of the spies gave was very biased.

We can't do it.

They're too strong.

They're in fortified cities.

It's a bit of a disaster because the people they said, oh, we can't do this, Moses.

It's too much.

We can't do this.

We can't attack those people, they're stronger than we are, they said.

Also, why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword?

We're all going to get killed.

And our wives and children will be taken as plunder.

Very dangerous.

They're speaking against what God has said.

And as a result of that, you probably know the story, the adults there end up never going into the promised land.

They have 40 years in the wilderness.

But who came out of this well?

Well, Moses and Aaron were doing Aaron were doing what God told them to do.

Joshua and Caleb were the two of the twelve that said, This is good, we can do this.

They came out of it well.

And the under-twenties, okay, they came out of it well because they were going to go into the land.

They were going to have to wait 40 years in the wilderness, but the under-twenties were the ones who uh eventually went in and took the land.

Now, I'm just going to follow a short sidetrack here.

People are quite rightly worried about their children.

The uh Israelites were saying, Oh, our children will be taken as plunder.

We can't go in the land, our children will be taken as plunder.

And we still do that, don't we?

Oh, it's so difficult for our children.

It's the rubbish they're taught in school at times, uh, the pressure of their peers.

Uh and goodness me, don't even get me started on social media and the internet.

It's like our children are in a perilous place.

And so we pray.

And that's quite right.

That we pray for our children, for protection.

That is very good.

When I was a young father many, many years ago, I had a one-year-old at the time, and I was in a church where the church leader was talking about parenting.

He said, pray this for your children.

Do you know what he asked us to pray?

He said, Pray that my child will do major damage to the dominion of darkness.

What a good way to pray.

I did feel a bit foolish watching my one-year-old crawling around on the floor saying, Do major, I pray that you'll do major damage to the dominion of darkness.

But do you know what?

God's heard that prayer for all three of my children, and they have, by his grace.

Let's pray big prayers for our children as well as protective prayers.

Okay, let's get to Caleb.

He's the one who followed God wholeheartedly.

Just to give you the examples, Numbers 14, 24.

But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land.

Numbers 32, 12.

No one except Caleb, the son of Jephunh the Kenesite, and Joshua, son of Nun, for they followed me wholeheartedly.

Juteron 136.

No one from this evil generation will see the good land I swore to give your ancestors.

Except Caleb, son of Jephunah, he will see it.

I will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on, because he followed the Lord wholeheartedly.

Joshua 14, verse 8, this is Caleb speaking.

Joshua 14:8

He clearly feels this that is written about him.

I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.

Joshua 14, verse 9.

Joshua 14:9

So on that day Moses swore to me, 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.

And finally, Joshua 14 14, 14, so Hebron, so Hebron has belonged to Caleb, son of Japun of the Kenisni, ever since, because he followed the Lord, the God of Israel, wholeheartedly.

So you get the message, it's quite clear, he's wholehearted.

But what did Caleb do to receive that description?

What is it that he did that made him wholeheartedly?

Now, I think when I first sort of read this, I thought, I wonder if he's very sort of righteous.

You know, was he the one that always followed the law, that always did what was right?

Is that what is that being wholehearted?

Uh but clearly not.

I mean, they had the Ten Commandments, they've had them for less, probably less than a year at this stage.

And as for the law, I don't think Moses has written it.

So it's not like obeying the law or doing good things.

It says Caleb has a different spirit.

He follows me wholeheartedly.

Okay.

Then Caleb signed.

This happened after the spies had given their rather dour report of the land, like, yeah, we can't do it, it's too hard.

We're not going to be able to do this.

Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.

See, he's quite different to the other ten.

And he's the one that stood up and says, Look, you people, we can certainly do it.

Now, why does he sound so confident?

Okay?

What's he thinking about?

Nephilites and Amalekites?

They're nothing.

No, it wasn't that.

Grapes and milk and honey.

I can't wait to get into where the grapes and the milk and the honey is.

It's not that.

Caleb is.

Demonstrating his faith.

He is thinking about Numbers 13, verse 1, which was the first verse I read this morning.

Numbers 13:1

The Lord said to Moses, Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites.

It's done.

I am giving it to the Israelites.

It's yours.

This is your land.

This is your blessing.

Quite often in the Old Testament, you come to land, and if you um alternate with the word blessing, it works quite well.

This is the blessing of God.

You can take it.

God's promised it.

This is what's been promised.

God will do it.

Now that sounds a lot like faith to me.

Caleb was wholehearted because he had faith.

And that's why he was whole-hearted.

We had Elizabeth brought a prophecy this morning.

I call you to faith in the valley of bones.

I thought that was a great confirmation that I might have picked the right one today.

Okay.

So Caleb was wholehearted because he had faith.

If you would like to be described as whole-hearted, you need faith.

So, three questions.

How do you get faith?

How do you stay in faith?

How do you increase your faith?

One word.

Very simple.

You remember what God has done.

You remember what God has done.

Israelites are continually told to remember what God has done for them.

It's to build their faith.

In Chronicles 16, verse 12, it says, remember the wonders he has done, his miracles and the judgments pronounced.

Faith is anchored in knowing the nature and character and works of God.

Deuteronomy 15, 15.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you.

I love telling the story of my salvation when I became a Christian.

I was only 15 back then, but I love sharing that story.

It increases my faith and others as well.

The story of salvation is so powerful.

Every alpha meeting that we have, somebody stands up and shares the story of, you know, this is what God has, this is how I was, this is what God did for me, and this is the difference it's made.

And in the room, the faith just rises week on week as people share the story of salvation.

Every prayer meeting, when we come here on a Friday morning and Phil's running it, what's the first thing he says?

Any stories?

Yeah, he got his stories.

And that kind of I didn't quite get that when I was first here.

And and I realised, no, it's not.

It's because it raises our faith.

Stories of what God has done raise their faith.

Just a couple of weeks ago, he did his any stories thing, and uh Neil said, All right then, I'll tell you about Hannah's church, and then had a conviction to be more outreachy.

They put up some billboards around Birmingham.

Neil's probably told you this story, so no, don't stop me, I'm gonna tell you anyway.

Put up some billboards and they had four weeks where they're gonna preach the gospel, and they said to everybody, bring a friend, brought a friend.

70 people became Christians in those four weeks.

How about that then?

That and then suddenly that's at the beginning of the prayer meeting, and suddenly our faith is rising, and we're praying for uh the peak district, we're praying for our different congregations, we're praying for revival, and we're saying, Lord, we believe you can do it because we are remembering what God has done.

And it's so good to remember what God has done.

Um while I was in fact, while I was in that prayer meeting a few weeks ago, um I I just looked up on the wall at the back, which is I mean probably see it clearer if you look behind you, but there we go.

Um I will open up rivers for them on the high plateaus, I will give them fountains of water in the valleys.

That's a promise spoken over Church in the Peak.

I will give them fountains of water in the valleys.

Sorry, I will open up rivers for them in high plateaus.

That's miraculous, okay?

High plateaus tend not to have rivers, they're too high.

Rivers run in valleys, but God says, rivers on the high plateaus.

That's supernatural.

God is going to do things for us in church in the peak.

Remember what God has done in his church.

Feed yourself on the stories of God's uh goodness.

Uh, do you ever read about revivals, church planters, mighty men and women of God?

It is so uh good to read about what and remember what God has done.

Just over a year ago, Phil asked Pam and I to lead the Wednesday morning prayer meeting.

I thought, why me?

Why I'm no good at praying.

Okay, and so I thought, well, I've got to do something about this.

I started reading books.

Rhys Howell's intercessor.

Do you know World War II, his praying group in the south of Wales literally changed events in World War II through their prayers in miraculous ways that you couldn't understand.

I read about Charles Spurgeon every Monday at a prayer meeting with more than a thousand people there.

That was in Victorian London a century and a half ago.

God has done it.

Remember, because what God has done, he can do again.

When we have small groups, when your community groups come together, do you share stories?

It is so good to share stories of what God's done for you.

And many of their stories are just little things.

I spoke to someone at food bank, uh, prayed for someone the other day.

Um, you know, we had several coming at healing on the streets, and and uh we we had three, four, five people sit down, we prayed for them, shared the gospel.

Share the stories because it builds our faith.

And when we build our faith, we become whole-hearted, like Caleb was.

So if you want to be whole-hearted, you want to raise your faith, remember what God has done.

Done for you, done for others.

And just one cautionary note uh to finish on.

There is one thing, if you're not careful, that destroys faith.

What destroys faith?

Could be fear.

The Israelites, it was a slightly different problem.

It was ingratitude, it was a feeling of entitlement.

Just two chapters before the one we've read, where clearly the Israelites were not full of faith.

Caleb was, but the Israelites weren't.

So this is going to be dreadful.

They'd had a little grumble at Moses.

In fact, most of the time in the wilderness, when you get the Israelites, they're grumbling or whining or moaning or something like this.

And this particular one was uh, what is it?

They were wailing in this one.

Um, because God had miraculously taken them out of slavery and saved them.

He'd given them the Passover meal as a sign of his covenant to them.

They'd gone through the Red Sea, they'd had the miraculous provision of water in the desert and their manor each day to feed them.

So there's miracles all around, and this is what they were saying in Numbers 11, verses 4 and 5.

Numbers 11:4

And again the Israelites started wailing and said, Oh, if only we had meat to eat, we remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic.

And this happened just before their loss of faith in the wilderness.

They will continually remember what they'd left behind in their old life.

Oh, we used to have cucumbers.

We don't have cucumbers anymore.

Moses doesn't give us cucumbers.

Oh, if only we had cucumbers, like in Egypt.

A little bit of a warning.

If you're continually remembering the cucumbers that you now don't have, you're in danger of not enjoying the blessing of God, and it will stifle your faith to step into what God now has for you at present and in the future.

Have we got time to sing a song at the end?

Yeah?

Okay.

Right, here's what we're gonna do.

Just gonna take a moment to remember what God has done for you.

Okay, we just just one moment.

I want you to sit and remember what God has done, the goodness of God, to raise your face.

And if Matt and the band would like to come back, we'd be ready to uh sing in just a minute.

But I think it ties in very uh neatly with uh one particular uh strand of what Nev as brought this morning.

God gave me this in the worship, so you were totally spot on, Nev.

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.

I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke, the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

What God I felt God was saying to me was uh yep, wonderful.

I love this promise of God, he will pour out of his Holy Spirit, and we will receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

But I felt in that there was a warning, um, and I felt God was saying, He wanted me to address our younger generation.

Uh, yeah, absolutely teenagers, but uh specifically 20s and 30s, and may you be pushing into your forties.

Well, uh no, sorry, not this one.

Yes, this is for all of us, but I felt God wanted to uh say a warning to those uh who I love dearly, who are part of our family, do not waste your life because oh, here we go.

God has only given you one life on earth.

I'm 70 next year.

Could be pushing towards the end of my earthly life, couldn't you?

God has only given us one earthly life.

Choose to absorb yourself, consume yourself with God, which is exactly what Nevi's saying, Caleb did.

Choose Don't waste, don't waste these years.

Please don't waste these years.

Choose walking and absorbing yourself in God.