Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Character
- Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person. It is hearing from God and obeying. It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.
Okay, here’s a third good chapter in which we can look at
character. As I say above, character
means doing the right thing regardless of whether or not people are
looking. Character is about hearing and
obeying. Character is about submitting
to God and allowing Him to lead.
What does God task the spies to accomplish? They are to go in and judge the quality of
the land. They are to evaluate the
strength of the people. That means they
are to note where the towns are and where the people are strong and where they
are weak. That’s their job.
The spies do go and accomplish the job. They at least have the character to get the
job done. This makes this perspective
upon character different than the perspective we saw yesterday with Miriam. At least here the spies are not a roadblock
to getting the job done. They come back
and make their report.
However, they go too far.
When Caleb gets up to encourage the people in God’s ability to provide
victory, the rest of the group talk about how they cannot do the job. They talk about how they will not be successful. They intimate that God’s not powerful
enough. They go too far and get ahead of
God. Rather than follow God’s lead, they
jump to their own wisdom. They put their
character flaw on display.
Of course, this is human nature.
We all have a tendency to do this when making decisions. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see how
this character flaw impacts the community.
Rest assured, it will. For today,
we should focus on how when we get ahead of God we are not putting a godly
character on display for Him or the world to see.
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