And YHVH said, … ” MY SERVANT CALEB, because there hath been another spirit with him, and he is fully after Me… ”
Numbers 14:24 (Bold –YLT)
The revelation/unveiling in this Kairos season of Who is our LORD Jesus this side of the cross, this side of the finished work of His cross for us, what all means His present throne SEATED position in which place & in which Person we are seated (Eph. 2:6), is revealing to us what is the REST of faith, (as opposed to the “works” [of the Law]). The eyes of our hearts are being changed in this hour as the Spirit of the LORD is making known to us that our NEW Covenant walk is not a comparison to Old Covenant demands to holiness, rather an utter dichotomy to it, a complete contrast to the demands, to the requirements to holiness, of the Old Covenant.
“They said therefore to Him, “What shall WE do that WE may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “THIS is the work of God THAT YOU BELIEVE in(to) Whom He has sent.”” j John 6:28-20 (NASB)
We have been stuck on the question for too long, Beloved, (“What shall WE DO that WE may work the works of God?”) without having let sink into our hearts Jesus’s answer to us. We have made “Christianity”, that is, our walk/our following God, to be about “doing” and “works”, forever having let stay engraved upon our hearts and minds that we’re supposed to “do” that we might “work the works of God” in order to really please Him, that if we don’t focus on our doing, we are not pleasing to God. (Two different precious saints, from opposite sides of this planet, whom I know, told me that they were instructed that “ministry” is spelled “W-O-R-K”).
But this is “demand” from out of the Old Covenant. This is the “requirement to holiness” thinking, yet by no means reflects the Grace-truth reality of the FINISHED work of Jesus’ cross, of His consequential Throne-seated position for us and as us, as that which completed the Divine Demand, as it were, to our holiness in the face of Holy God, who is equally now our Abba Father.
Look again at the account of Numbers 13 after the spies had returned from having looked over the land which the LORD had sworn to give to them.
“Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. … “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.” Numbers 13:28, 31 (NASB)
The people made receiving God’s promise to them all about their ability instead of resting in (“amen”ing) His promise, out of which He would have imputed (literally from the Hebrew root as seen in Gen. 15:6, “weave into” them) His righteousness – the authority AND power of His own very nature, whereby is a gracing by His working for them, in them, and through them to so receive, to be able(d) to so possess His Divine promises of exceeding goodness. The people were, in essence, depending on their “perceived” “imputed-by-God” demand of their own effort – works – to take the promise … “What shall WE DO that we may work the works of God?”
Caleb was a man of a different spirit … He was a man of the Spirit (the breath) of YHVH. Caleb was literally taking a bold stand for resting upon God’s Word, God’s sworn oath to them. For his words show that their taking the land of promise was wholly based upon the LORD’s pleasure upon them, which was thus His gracing to cause them to go up to possess.
Then Caleb QUIETED (lit. also “HUSHED“) the people before Moses AND SAID, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it. … The land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the LORD is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us …” excerpt frm. Numbers 13:30, 14:7b-8 (NASB)
It is the LORD’s response as to Caleb that caused me to see something I had not seen before, until this morning.
“And *My servant Caleb—because there was another spirit with him, he was full to follow Me.” Excerpt frm. Numbers 14:24
The LORD calls Caleb “My SERVANT“. Beloved, it is not in what Caleb “did”; rather it is in what Caleb declared. He was re-setting the people’s focus back on YHVH who had delivered them by His great power out of the hand of the Egyptians, from out of whose hand this people had had no self power to deliver themselves. Caleb was a “Servant” of the LORD, Beloved, because he was an “Amen-er” of His Word. He believed and so declared (“barked”, as it were [per the root of his name]) the bigness AND the goodness of their God in the ears of God’s people… and it was THIS that was and is “the work of God”, making Caleb a true “Servant of the Word”, a Servant of YHVH, a Servant of the One Whom Himself watches over His word to perform it (Jeremiah 1;12).
And His “Word” … is His Son; (John 1:1)
Everything of God the Father’s working is wholly focused on His Son. Though it was a mystery in the Old Covenant, it is an unveiling of this mystery in the New Covenant. The Father’s heart is all about Christ Jesus His Son, and thus all about the work, even the finished work of His Son. Hence, our entire life as a believer must focus upon our LORD Jesus, God’s Son, yet completely, even imperatively, this side of the cross, not as He was prior to the cross (ref. II Cor. 5:16); for in this is our transformation from glory to glory, and thus gained inheritance of Divine promises.
Our focus as to “obedience” to the Word, accordingly, as to what means our being Servants of God, has not to do with focusing upon our “doing”, but upon what Jesus already has done for us and as us.
I saw something of a declaration that the LORD made to Isaac concerning his father, Abraham, which bears witness to this, that God the Father’s view of us has got more to do with our focus upon His Word than upon whether we think we ourselves are doing enough and/or all the right things to be pleasing to Him.
“And the LORD appeared to him (Isaac) and said, ” … I will be with you and bless you … because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.” excerpt from Genesis 26:2-5 (NASB)
If we didn’t know anything about Abraham, we would think what an obedient and pious man he was. Yet too many us know more of his mistakes and blunders … and can hardly come up with a list such as what the LORD here speaks, that Abraham did all the above. Yet you would also say, “See, God did focus on Abraham’s “obedience”.” But the Grace-truth reality in the eyes of the LORD concerning Abraham and thus concerning we who have believed into Jesus is in the Hebrew word “obeyed”. This word, in Hebrew, even in the Greek of the New Testament, as well as the etymology of the English word, is not at all rooted in “doing” rather in “hearing”, in willingly “bending one’s ear” (continually) “to hear” the Word of the LORD, to hear God’s Spirit. That ongoing, willing desire to keep our ears bent to the Living Word of God IS OUR BELIEVING (AMENING) (Rom. 10:10; Gen 15:6). We do it willingly because we continually fall in love with hearing Him. Even the “kept My charge” from the Hebrew shows that Abraham let be engraved into his heart and mind (so as to guard from loss) the words of the LORD to him.
The “doing”, Beloved, is the true fruit, the effortless outworking, if you will, of the inworking, the engraving (II Cor. 3:3) of God’s living word upon our hearts and minds (Eph. 2:8-10; Phil. 2:12-13). As a man of God has often said in accordance with our rest walk of faith, “Rest is not inactivity, but Holy Spirit led activity”. Our focus thus remains on Him, on Christ Jesus our LORD, our WORD from the mouth of God, from the heart of Abba Father.
Almighty God sees true servants of Him as those who keep hearing and thus keep believing Him. Their deeds will indeed follow, will be fruit abundant for the world to pick and eat to taste and see how good (not how demanding) is our God and Savior, Jesus Christ!
Let the ears of your heart be captivated by the Word of our God, by this ongoing unveiling of Jesus from the scriptures. Shut your ears, Dear One, to the ongoing noise of this world’s news, this age’s noise. You will find yourself falling in love again and again with how much Abba Father really does love you, with how amazing the unfolding of His goodness and grace speaks to you all through your day. You will find yourself willingly unwittingly becoming a true Servant of the Word, of His Voice, of HIM!
You are deeply Loved, Beloved.
Mark Dingemans
(*underlined portion of Num. 14:24 frm. Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible – EBR 1902)
kairos – (Kahee-ros’) – Strong’s concordance defines this word: “an occasion, I.e. set or proper time.” The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible (NASB) defines this word; “season, time, but not merely as a succession of moments, which is chronos,” [from which we derive the English word ‘chronology’]. “Kairos, however, implies not the convenience of the season, but the necessity of the task at hand, whether the time provides a good, convenient opportunity or not.” This must be understood. Strategic times of the Lord do not necessarily imply good or convenient times. We are in Kairos times. Maybe not good or convenient times, but definitely strategic, opportune times because of the season we are in. We must have “ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches,” (Rev. 2:29), so as to respond correctly to the Kairos time.
* Some Scripture for this letter is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, (c) 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Other references translated from Grk. Txt as presented in T. Newberry’s Englishman’s Greek New Testament, Zondervan Publishing – 1982- originally published in London, Eng. 1877