Numbers 14:24 But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and has followed me fully… 1. From what I see of him here, I take Caleb to have been, first of all, a thoughtful person, a considering man, capable of being taught, which cannot be said of many. He had seen no more of God than had all the others, but what he saw, he saw, and after he had come through the Red Sea, and looked at the hand of the Invisible One in the wilderness, he felt that that was enough for a wise man; and so he did not go about afterward, as the others did, to frame doubts or to call every new case different, and say, "True, He saved us there, but can He save us here? He gave us water, but can He give us bread also?" He had no brutal capacity for forgetting, either. When the illustrious moments of God were past, their shining kept with him. He was not so swallowed up in to-day as to forget yesterday, and to say, "Where?" He forgot not how God "had wrought His signs in Egypt, and His wonders in the field of Zoan." On the paths behind us, all along them, are scattered the tokens of a God as wonderful as the God of the Red Sea or the God of the desert; but, like these Hebrews, we must hear the sharp crack of His thunder again to-day, or we will not so much as know that there is a God. 2. See next the independence of Caleb. The act altogether nearest the godlike is that of a man who, in the face of opinion and of public shame, and against a fiery current of everybody's feelings, even of those who are near to being a part of himself, stands fixed in his judgment of what is right, uncorrupted, and unshaken — a liegeman of duty! So stood Caleb; and his attitude is to me the noblest I can imagine. I know it is false and blasphemous, the maxim that "the voice of the people is the voice of God," yet the mere power of universal opinion, universal feeling, is such that no one can exaggerate it, and few withstand it. He who resists it must be something above or below man. And no fine soul can resist it, unless he is under a higher sympathy — a sympathy with a better public opinion and with the nobler society of God and the just. A sympathy with God and with duty, with the welfare of the people — that, and that only, lifted Caleb up clean out of sympathy with the whole degraded nation. 3. See again, not only his independence toward his own people, but his courage. Never was there greater occasion for apprehension. "We are nothing"; all the people, all the leaders, say, "We be not able," &c. "We are of a gigantic brood, higher and mightier than they all," say Caleb and Joshua. All courage, if it is not merely animal, rests on something higher — rests often on duty and devotion to others. I think an example of this is seen in Arthur, Duke of Wellington. He was unawed, at the great crisis of Waterloo especially, because of duty. When all Europe, and military men particularly, were under a fascination as of magic from the genius and success of Napoleon, who towered over them like a phantom, the Duke had little or no imaginative fear on the subject. He looked coolly and soberly at the object as it was, and calmly confided in his forces and plans, resting on duty and right. And so this was the man whom God appointed to win: hence Waterloo. He first kept his soul unsubjugated, and the unprecedented and irresistible genius against him did not master or overawe his imagination. But the courage of Caleb was far higher than this; it was against far greater odds, and it was founded not merely on devotion to duty, but on perfect assurance in God. We call this courage, and is was; but it rested on something deeper and far more rare — on trust. The heroic virtues of those old Hebrews were net the heroic virtues of Plutarch; they were all that, but much more. Though the obstacles were bristling before him as high as heaven, the Lord on high was mightier. To go forward was to move in the invincible line of right. See, then, in Caleb just the virtues demanded of us to-day. To us — to each man of us — who have always a crowd of discouragements holding us back, creeping on with but half a heart, to us this exhilarating voice comes like a trumpet sounding from that distant time: "Let us go up, for we are able." We need the joy, the hope, of courage; and that we may have courage, we need an unbounded trust in God. In this story of the old time — this historical picture, seen far back and illumined with miraculous lights — there is nothing old or strange to me; ourselves are there, in bare fact, as we are every day. We see that the land is good — but ah, the giants! We are appointed to reach a wide and rich and peaceable land through enemies. For this, I have said, we need a will which grasps success, and fastens upon it, and will never let it go; and there is no such courage without a fulness of trust in the heart. But this is not all our need. Listen: "But My servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed Me fully, him will I bring into the land." That is God's description of the man who wins. "Another spirit" — a spirit the precise opposite of that of the Hebrew mob — and "because he hath followed Me fully." Wholeness — the heart whole. God does not praise Caleb's courage and faith, though He might well have done so. One thing fixed the Divine attention and applause: "He hath followed Me fully." "And him will I bring into the land." The land — the better land on high — it is for him, and for all such. I sometimes ask myself: Must all this weak race perish except the handful who have a Divine energy in their souls? Ah! Lord God, some of us would follow Thee fully — but our weakness! Breathe Thou light and strength within us, touch us with a better trust, let us see and live in Thy presence, and feel Thy power, and remember Thy gracious promise. And oh, when we have finished our course here "as good soldiers of Jesus Christ," may we rest in hope, and our record be: "This My servant, because he hath followed Me fully, him will I bring into the land." (A. G. Mercer, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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