Numbers 14:20-24

But Caleb was different. Notice verse 20:

Caleb had a different attitude. As a matter of fact, there are more modern translations that actually put that word in there. “Caleb, My servant, had a different attitude.” He was not rebellious. He did not have that slave mentality. He was not pessimistic. He was not focused on himself. He did not want just what he could eat and drink. He wanted what God wanted. He had his eye on the goal. He saw what God was doing and he worked for it. He worked with God in it.

Caleb had a better attitude than all the other Israelites. God picked him out from the crowd to give him what he deserved—praise—for his different spirit, his better mindset. He was set apart by that mindset.

Caleb did not see just giant men and rough terrain and impregnable fortresses. He saw God. He saw God’s power. He remembered all that God had done in Egypt and in their wanderings up to that point for Israel and for everyone. He had a ‘can do’ attitude based on his experiences with God, and his outlook then—his attitude—made him confident and bold. He knew, from his hair to his toes, that if they would just go into that land, it would fall before them with hardly any effort (It would take some effort, obviously. Look at what they had to go through ultimately when they did go in). But compared to what it would be without God, it would have been easy.

Now notice how God explains here why Caleb was different: He said, “He followed Me fully.” That was what made Caleb different. That was what his attitude was centered on—following God fully.

Like Abel, Caleb’s attitude put him in the right frame of mind to obey God in everything. He started with the right outlook. His outlook was that he was going to obey God, no matter what. So when God gave him a difficult assignment, he said: “This might be difficult, but I’m going to obey God because that’s what God wants me to do.” And he did it. That was his attitude. It set him up for success, it set him up for praise, and it set him up for reward.

When God gave him something to do, he did not hold back because if God gave him something to do, he was going to follow God despite the entire nation of Israel standing against him with stones in their hands. For that faithful and bold and positive attitude, he was rewarded with entrance into the Promised Land unlike everybody else, except for Joshua. He was rewarded with a long life and he got a lot of land around the city of Hebron for himself and for his descendants.

God loved that man. He loved the example that he gave to the rest of Israel and He just poured it on him in reward for his obedience and his good attitude. He had a different spirit, a spirit that was set to fully obey God.

Numbers 14:21-29

In their comments about this verse, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown cite Numbers 14:21-29. That is the scripture about the spies’ rebellion, the peoples’ refusal to enter the land, and God’s judgment that He would not grant entry to those over the age of 20. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, and a number of other commentators, including E. W. Bullinger, find correspondence, that is, parallels, between the way Christ will deal with regathered Israel at His return and the way He dealt with the children of Israel after the Exodus.

In that historical event, God led the people out of Egypt, a land of captivity, with signs and wonders, with “an outstretched arm,” that last term appearing about eight times in the Old Testament in reference to God’s work in the period of the Exodus. But, for all that display of power on their behalf, the people obstinately remained rebellious. God did not permit the rebels among them to enter the Land of Promise. Of the two million or so people who walked out of Egypt, only Joshua and Celeb entered the Promised Land, because, as Numbers 32:12 puts it, only they “wholly followed the Lord.”