Year 7, Day 199: Joshua 14

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Do you hear the support for the thoughts that I gave yesterday regarding the age of Joshua?  Today we learn that Caleb was 45 when he was a spy.  We know that they wandered the wilderness for forty years.  In this chapter he asserts that he is 45.  This helps us to understand that the opening of the last chapter wasn’t to tell us that a great time period had passed or that Joshua had been sitting around after conquering the easy parts of the land.  Caleb – and likely Joshua as well – were already advanced in years when they got to the Promised Land!

Having said that, there are two more points that I would like to discuss with you today.  First of all, there is the issue of Caleb’s reward.  What I really like about this is that it shows the proper order of things.  Caleb was indeed faithful when he was one of the spies.  He is promised a reward.  But, he doesn’t fret about the reward until after the work is largely done.  Caleb fights in the army with the rest of the people until the tribes of the Transjordan are dismissed.  At that point, Caleb turns his mind to his reward.

So often we get our mind to the payoff that we forget about the work at hand.  I do this all the time with projects around the house.  I get far more interested in what the end result will be that I become frustrated with the level and intensity of the work to get to the end result.  I’m willing to bet that most of our jobs are that way, too.  We get focused on life will be after we’ve completed a certain task that we forget to enjoy the task and do our best at it.  This is human nature.  It’s not anything to be ashamed of – we all do it.  But it is something about which we should be aware and then resist against.

Second, do you hear the last words of this passage?  The land had rest from war.  God did bring his people into a time of peace.  God honored his covenant.  He is faithful.  Here we have a beautiful counterpoint to the major theme of obedience in Joshua.  Again and again we’ve seen Joshua’s obedience.  What we see here is that God is faithful to Joshua and the people.  Obedience and seeing God’s faithfulness go hand-in-hand.

That doesn’t mean that we always get our way.  You’ll notice that being the richest and most powerful people in the world are not synonymous goals with faithfulness to God.  However, God is faithful to our needs.  He is faithful to His promises.  In the things that really matter, God is absolutely faithful.

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