A ceremony and reception were held in our town on the campus of the University of Illinois to honor Nick Holonyak, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his development of the LED (light emitting diode).  I read a partial transcript of Professor Holonyak’s remarks made before his assembled well-wishers.  After acknowledging that he was eighty-three years old and still working, he expressed some regret at not being able to do more because, as he put it, “There’s nothing but more to do, more to do, more to do!”  I admired his zeal and compulsion for productive work.  Yet I wondered how many of those of us who know the Lord have the same sense of ardor and urgency for the service of the Lord.  We need more like John Knox, who is reported to have prayed concerning the souls of his fellow countrymen, “Give me Scotland, or I die.”  Caleb was such a man.

            Toward the latter part of his life, Caleb recounted his earlier experience of spying out the land.  “Forty years old was I when Moses . . . sent me . . . to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in my heart.  Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt [with their faithless testimony that “there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants:  and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight {Num. 13:33}]:  but I wholly followed the Lord my God.  And now, behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years . . . and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old” (Josh. 14:8-10).

            “Well past time to retire,” we might suggest to Caleb.  “You’ve been faithful for forty-five years, been a leader, fought hard, and have endured many difficulties.  Why don’t you just sit back, relax, and enjoy some well-earned rest?”  But Caleb would have none of it.  “As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me:  as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in” (v. 11).  Then Caleb made a request of Joshua:  “Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that day” (v. 12).  And what is the mountain that Caleb requests?  Is he asking Joshua to give him a peaceful retreat or a scenic piece of property on which to construct a retirement home?  No.  “For thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced:  if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said” (v. 12).

            Caleb was jealous for the glory of the Lord, for the vindication of God’s name, for the fulfillment of God’s promise.  It was the children of Anak, a race of gigantic men, who had struck fear in Caleb’s brethren forty-five years earlier and had provoked them to disbelieve God’s promise that He would give them the land.  And so now, at eighty-five years of age, Caleb seizes the opportunity to fight and defeat the greatest foes before him in order that God might be honored and His Word vindicated.  In the following chapter we read that “Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak” (15:14).  Still he was not satisfied.  For we read that he went up to Debir and announced that “He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher, and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife” (v. 16).  Othniel responded victoriously and was duly rewarded with the hand of Achsah.

            Yes, there’s more to do.  There’s as much opportunity to serve as you and I are willing to shoulder.  Believers are encouraged to be “stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (I Cor. 15:58).