Caleb: A Good and Broad Land

               God has been good to me.  There have been many times in my life when he has brought me to a land where I could say with the psalmist, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places” (cp. Psalm 16:5-6)   I have friends scattered throughout the world, good friends, who have stamped my soul with their care for me.  Though now they may have forgotten my name, I bask in the light of their kindness and love for me.  If any of them had need, I would rise with whatever zeal and resources I could muster to come to their aid.

                There have also been times when I have been discontented.  It was only later that I recognized the good land to which I had been led.  I had different expectations, and in the midst of what God had planned for me, I was disappointed.  God was to be my portion and my cup, and I missed it.

                I am no different than the Jews of Moses’ day.  The pattern of God’s blessing for me follows the same steps as the Exodus:

                1.  God sees our slavery.  In Exodus 3, God tells Moses, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt.  God is not oblivious to our sufferings.  He will come to our aid.  “The cry of the people of Israel has come to me.”  We are not outcasts in a random, barren world.  The love of God has heard our cries, understood our pain and risen to help us.

                2.  God announces His intent to provide full deliverance:  “I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites… a land flowing with milk and honey.”  God’s promise had two sides.  He would bring them out of slavery and into blessing, out of pain and into rest.  It was a good land.

                3.  God’s promise comes with an invitation to be accepted by faith.  Listen to the richness of God’s plan:

“For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.  And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land He has given you” (Deuteronomy 8:7ff).

The goal of His plan is always His glory and our good.  We will be satisfied and He will be glorified.  And our fellowship with Him will be sweet.

                To a man in slavery, that kind of promise and that kind of God can capture your imagination.  It can kindle a zealous heart for following Him.  “A land flowing with milk and honey” described a fertile and abundant harvest, a rich blessing in the agricultural world of the Exodus.  A good and stalwart man like Caleb will clutch the refrain tightly to his breast, not because it presents a change in his circumstances, but because it represents by faith a new and intimate relationship with a powerful, caring God.

                Like the children of Israel, God knows our suffering and has heard our cries.  He has announced His intent to deliver us from our sin, and to bring us into a good and broad land.  Like Caleb, I will arise and follow- only God has what I need.