Sharing The Life Series

What I am going to do in these next five chapters is pull out some spiritual nuggets that are there. In today’s study we will again be looking at the person of Caleb in verses 13 to 19 of our text today. We saw last week that Caleb was a man of radical faith. He had an unwavering belief that God’s promises were sure. And Caleb stepped out in the faith believing that if God said something that he had nothing to fear.

As we walk in the life that Jesus promised us, we need to find people like Caleb in our lives. We need to learn from their faith how to live this life. As they, in faith, follow Christ we can imitate their behaviors until that same faith is ours.

The apostle Paul said to the Corinthians:

Read 1 Corinthians 11:1 page 606

Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.

God will provide people like Caleb for you to imitate. Look for them and begin the process of watching their lives to see how they live so that you also can learn to live the same way; with the same fearless faith. This is called discipleship.

God has taught me in my Christian walk that there are three different types of discipleship relationships that I need to be developing in my life at all times. The first type of relationship that I need is a Paul.

Spiritual Relationships

1. Paul

o Spiritually more mature

2. Barnabus

o Spiritual peer

3. Timothy

o Spiritually less mature

It is necessary that we have all three of these types of relationships active in our lives at all times. This is one of the reasons why fellowship with other believers and participation in Bible studies is so important. It is usually within those environments that you develop those kinds of relationships.

In our text for today we are going to see some other ways that Caleb’s faith is lived out. But first we will look at the beginning of the process of the dividing of the Promised Land.

Read Joshua 15:1 page 124 Bible

Eleazar casts the sacred lots and determines that the tribe of Judah is the first tribe to receive its allotment in the Promised Land. This is very providential as we are soon going to see. But it is also significant because of the role that Judah plays in the future of the nation of Israel and for us as Christians.

Turn in your Bibles to Genesis 49. The twelve tribes of Israel are all descended from one man. His name was Jacob, but God renamed him Israel. Jacob had twelve sons and so each of them is named as the head of one of the tribes.

Judah was the fourth son of Jacob. In Hebrew culture, birth order was very important. The first son born was given a greater portion of his father’s estate. Birth order also dictated who would lead the tribe once the patriarch died. Rueben was Jacob’s firstborn son and should have led the tribe.

Rueben was eliminated from the rights of firstborn son because he slept with one of his father’s concubines. Simeon and Levi were second and third in line but Jacob demoted them because they deceived and killed all the men of the town of Shechem after their sister Dinah had been raped. This leaves Judah in line to receive the inheritance as firstborn son.