Birthdays have a way of making us think about
the past and the future more than we usually might. Like New Year’s, they are a
time of reflection and anticipation. But the more birthdays I experience, the
more the reflection lends itself to an uncertain anticipation—a vague
hopefulness that new things await but a realization that those new things could
include unexpected difficulties as well.
At the end of a year, looking back on all of the
unforeseen circumstances we encountered causes us to realize that we never
truly know what a year will bring—much less a day. Even looking back on a single
day, we often find that it looked altogether different from how we had thought
it was going to when we woke up.
In some ways, this realization can be exciting—there’s
always the possibility for unanticipated joys. But in other ways it can be
frightening, because there’s always the possibility for unanticipated hardship,
too. For those of us in Christ, though, there is a truth that is so very
reassuring, and we see it in both the Old Testament and the New.
In Deuteronomy 31, Moses is nearing the end of
his life and is preparing the Israelites and their new leader Joshua to enter
the land God had promised would be theirs. The people had wandered for 40 years
in the wilderness and had experienced a series of events that they (and their
parents who left Egypt) undoubtedly had not anticipated. Now they were facing
entering a land filled with people who claimed it as their own and who were
hostile to the living God. In short, their future was headed toward a promised
certainty, but the path to get there was filled with unknowns.
It is into this situation that Moses speaks to
Joshua in front of the entire community: “Be strong and courageous, for you
shall go with this people into the land that the LORD has sworn to their
fathers to give them, and you shall put them in possession of it. It is the
LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you nor
forsake you.” (Deut. 31:7-8, ESV)
In the middle of this encouraging passage is the
truth that reassures us even today—“It is the LORD who goes before you.” Said
another way, just a few verses before, “The LORD your God himself will go over
before you” (Deut. 31:3, ESV). Whatever Joshua and the Israelites were about to
face, God himself would face it first. Because God is outside of space and
time, He could be in their future and their present simultaneously. And because
He never changes, He can do the same for us.
The LORD (Yahweh, the covenantal God who
relationally reveals himself) abides in our future before we even begin to step
into it. This means that whatever is unknown to us is not unknown to Him. He
knows exactly what we are going to face from every second of our future. But why
is that reassuring to us? It’s not particularly, unless of course we put that
truth in concert with the other truths that God has revealed to us about
Himself, e.g. that He is loving, merciful, and gracious, that He gives good
gifts to His children, that He is our strength, and that He hears the
intercession of His own Spirit on our behalf (see Exodus 34:6-7, Matthew 7:11,
Psalm 28:7, Romans 8:27). In other words, He knows what we are going to
face, and He prepares us to face it, even when we are unaware of His doing so.
With this truth, though, comes a promise. Not
only does He prepare us in advance (sometimes years in advance), but also He is
with us when our future becomes our present. “It is the LORD who goes before
you, He will be with you; he will not leave you nor forsake you”
(emphasis added). He already exists in our future, yes, but more than
that, He accompanies us as we enter it ourselves. Whatever we will face,
whether joyous or heartbreaking, He will be with us every step of the way.
As if that wasn’t encouraging enough, we find a
deepening of this truth, in Jesus’ words in John 10. As He is revealing Himself
by analogizing Himself to a shepherd (a familiar occupation of the time) He
says, “When he [the shepherd] has brought out all his own, he goes before
them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice” (John 10:4, ESV,
emphasis added). In calling Himself the Shepherd who goes before His sheep,
Jesus is revealing that He is God—the same Being as the One who went before His
people in the wilderness. Conversely, the Yahweh who preceded the Israelites is
the same Being who took on flesh for Jews and Gentiles alike and laid down His
life so that we might be with Him forever (John 10:14-18).
The transcendent God who goes before came to
live intimately among us in the person of Jesus Christ. And now, through His
Spirit who came to us after Jesus rose from the dead and returned to heaven, He
is not just with us; He is in us, giving a richer understanding of the promise
“he will not leave you nor forsake you.” So no matter what our future may
bring, we can rest in the knowledge that God Himself, who loves us enough that
He died a death we and not He deserved, has already been there and is powerful,
wise, sufficient, and good enough to equip us with what we need and to
accompany us as we face whatever lies ahead.
May we live increasingly in the sure and steady
peace that such God-provided knowledge brings.
