“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" (Numbers 14:24).
Caleb was “my servant,” according to the Lord’s own testimony, and a remarkable servant he was! He—except for Joshua—was the only one of the twelve spies who was. willing to follow Him all the way, even in spite of the giants in the land. Therefore, he alone was allowed to go with Joshua into the promised land.
Six times in the Bible, first of all here in our text, we are told that Caleb “wholly followed the Lord.” Of no one else in the Bible is this testimony repeated so frequently. In addition to God’s witness at the beginning of the forty years in the wilderness, Moses so testified at the end: “Caleb the son of Jephunneh . . . and Joshua the son of Nun . . . have wholly followed the LORD” (Numbers 32:12). At that time, God also said: “To [Caleb] will I give the land that he hath trodden upon, and to his children, because he hath wholly followed the LORD” (Deuteronomy 1:36). Therefore, this land was given him by Joshua “because that he wholly followed the LORD God of Israel” (Joshua 14:8,9,14).
To possess it, however, Caleb had to conquer the land he wanted, the mountain of Hebron. At this time, he was 85 years old, at least 25 years older than any other man in Israel. Yet he and his family alone, of all the tribes who entered the land, were able to complete God’s command to drive out all the pagan inhabitants from his inheritance—even though these were the same fearsome giants who had so terrified the ten spies forty-five years earlier (Joshua 14:12–15; 15:13–17)!
Likewise, Jesus says to us today: “If any man serve me, let him follow me; . . . if any man serve me, him will my Father honor” (John 12:26). HMM
