The God Who Goes Before

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.