“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.” Num. 14:24.
I would like to call your attention to this one thought of “fully following the Lord.” The Lord requires of any man who intends to serve him, or pretends to serve him, a whole-hearted service; anything short of that is not acceptable to him. It does not make very much difference to the Lord about a man’s position, or ability, or education; God looks straight into a man’s heart, and requires implicit obedience, and the man who renders such obedience has acceptance with God.
That which is written of Caleb in this text brings him prominently before God’s people in all the ages. He was one of the two men who saw light when other men saw darkness. He saw with the eye of faith the possibilities that lay before God’s people, when all about him was confusion, chaos, and rebellion. God has ever recognized the loyal heart; he takes account of the men who are obedient to him, and he remembers it; and in this, Caleb, and Joshua, who was his companion in this matter of obedience and faith, have been examples to the people of God through all time since that day.
No excuse, no argument, no reason, can ever be given for not obeying God. Take the case of Solomon. God took Solomon, a strong, mighty man, and he dealt most wonderfully with him, and gave him very great blessings. You remember that God said to Solomon, “Ask what I shall give thee,” and Solomon said: “I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. . . . Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad.” God bestowed upon Solomon the gift of wisdom in a pre-eminent degree, so that he could look out on all nature, and name every plant that grew in the field, and call every tree by name. “He spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.” His wisdom was proverbial, and kings and queens came from all nations “to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.”
But God required one thing of Solomon,—that he should fully follow the Lord,—and in that one thing Solomon failed. And when that man, who had received the greatest gifts that God could bestow, departed from the path of obedience, God left him to his folly, and he went down, as far as we know, in his idolatry and sin. How pitifully sad for a man to end his days in disobedience to God!
Take also the case of David, of whom God says that he was a man after his own heart. God loved David, and gave him almost every gift that he could desire; yet when he departed from the path of virtue, and followed his own way, he suffered intensely for his sin. And so our minds call up instance after instance in God’s Word where the Lord gave great light and great power, but where that light became darkness when men departed from the Lord’s way.
Take the sad story of the disobedient prophet, recorded in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Kings. You remember he came to the altar that Jeroboam had erected, and Jeroboam stretched out his hand, and said to his armed men, “Lay hold on him.” And the hand that Jeroboam stretched out against the prophet was paralyzed. And Jeroboam said, “Pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again.” The prophet prayed, and the Lord answered his prayer. Then said Jeroboam to the prophet, “Come home with me, and refresh thyself, and I will give thee a reward.” But the Lord had told the prophet that he was not to go home by the way that he came, but was to return by another way. So when Jeroboam tried to persuade him to return to his house with him, he turned and looked upon him, and said, No, “if thou wilt give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place.” So the prophet started home another way. But there was an old prophet who dwelt in Bethel; and when he heard which way the young man went, he went out to meet him, and found him sitting under an oak. And he said to the young man, “Come home with me.” But the young man said, “I may not return with thee. . . . For it was said to me by the word of the Lord, Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest.” And the old prophet said to him, “I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water.”
The young prophet listened to his lying words, and went back with him, and the man made a feast for him. He ate and drank; and what followed?—When he departed, a lion met him in the way, and he was destroyed. It seems hard, does it not? but it is a lesson to every man that believes in God, that he is to follow God, and that no man that10lives shall lead his feet away from the command that God has given him.
If any man chooses to depart from God’s command, he does that thing at the peril of his soul. God means what he says; he says nothing he does not mean. It becomes every man and every woman who expects to get into the kingdom of God to take heed to God’s word; for God is in dead earnest in his commands, and in his work with the children of men.
There is no need of multiplying instances; but let us consider for a moment the case of Saul. You have all read the story many times. God crowned him king. He honored him. He lifted his name up above all the sons in Israel. He said that all his people should obey him. One day God sent word to Saul to go and smite the Amalekites. “Now go and smite Amalek,” he said, “and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
You remember how the biography runs. Saul went out, and did valiantly. God was with his army. The enemy was put to rout. Defeat came to the Amalekites, and the Israelites slew on the right hand and on the left. But they took the king prisoner. Why?—O, they had an idea of redemption money, the price that would be put on his head; they could get great riches from it. But that was not all. They spared also “the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs.”
That night the word of the Lord came to Samuel, and in the morning he went out to meet the king, as he returned in victory from the battle. And he said to Samuel: “Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” And Samuel answered, “What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” Saul immediately began to excuse himself. “The people,” he said, “spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God.” Then the prophet, speaking as the mouthpiece of the Lord, said: “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”
I tell you, brethren, there is a great meaning for us in that question,—Hath God so great delight in sacrifice and offerings as in obedience? Let me impress its answer upon your hearts: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” That is God’s answer in regard to obedience. A man never did a work so grand and glorious, when selfishness and sin and disobedience were mingled in it, that he could gain the favor of God for that act—never. God hates sin and rebellion and wickedness.
I wish that every one of us could remember how severely God punished Saul, and how Solomon was punished, and David, when they turned from the path of obedience. Saul lost his crown. You can take up instance after instance of disobedience, and see how God put his mark of disapproval upon that thing.
There was Moses. If ever a man came near to the heart of his fellow men, it was Moses, by the trials he endured, the patience he manifested with that great, rebellious people he led out of bondage, through that wilderness, and over those mountains, and all along that dreary pathway! He stood all their murmuring, all their complaining, all their stubbornness, but once—just once! And that once Moses stood before the rock, and in his wrath said, “Must we fetch you water out of this rock?” You remember the penalty that came to him, do you not? God spoke, and said, Moses, because of that thing, “ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.” And God never relented on that thing, either.
Moses had led that people for forty long years up and down in that wilderness. When God was about ready to take them across the Jordan into Canaan, he led Moses, who was now one hundred and twenty years old, up on Pisgah’s height. “This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob,” he said; “I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.” That is God’s way of dealing with disobedience. We do not appreciate the character of God. We do not understand how exacting God is, and how he expects men to obey him. If we did, we would be more careful to follow him fully.
God often requires of his people the unexpected; and oftentimes he gives us precepts and commands that almost stagger us; and we wonder whether he really requires this thing of us or not. We find it so in our work in this earth, do we not? Why, there are men who could rise up in this audience to-day,—and I am one of them,—and say that often the plain command of God’s word staggers us. And then we parry it, and reason about it, and turn it this way and that way, and wonder if somebody has not been trying to “influence,” and somebody has not been “presenting the other side of the question,” and whether God really means what he says. I have heard a great many query the same way. Brethren, there is one thing that ought to be settled—is God among us, leading his people, or is he not? If God is among this people, we ought to be ready to hear great commands from him. When he speaks, every loyal heart ought to bow his head, and say, “By the grace of God, that thing shall be done.” If God is not with us, then we are the most deceived people I know of in this whole earth. I am not going to argue the question whether God is with us or not, for I believe he is. And from that standpoint I am going to encourage my own heart to fully follow the Lord when he says, “Go forward.”