A God Who Leads Us
Oh, what it must have been like to walk within the enormous caravan of Israelites as God led them out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and on toward Sinai. Scripture teaches us in Exodus 13, “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.” We can only imagine the fearsome glory of that experience. To have seen a physical manifestation of the power and presence of the Lord God Almighty would be something we’d never forget.
Or so you’d think.
But many of the Israelites did forget and did lose faith and didn’t receive all the blessings God intended to give them in the Promised Land of Canaan. Instead, they sinned and rebelled against God’s leadership, and most of them died in the wilderness. It’s true that God remained with them and led the next generation of his people across the Jordan River into Canaan, but it’s still sad to think of all those who refused to be led by God because their faith was too small.
We live in a very different time and place, and God isn’t currently manifesting his power in the same way for us that he did for them. God is still leading us, nonetheless. He leads through his Word and through the guidance he gives through his Holy Spirit. He can surely do this individually, but he often does so more clearly within community of faith. And it’s through that community of faith that God makes available the blessings we need for spiritual restoration and the opportunity to rest in him. I’ll talk more about this in our sermon time this morning….
Patrick Barber, preaching minister
0 Comments