Building on Faith:
How God Guides
Exodus 13:17 – 14:31
The Atlantic salmon leaves the place of its spawning, swims downstream as a silver streak in the sunlit stream, and makes its way 900 miles out into the ocean. By some unknown process, it makes its way back to the exact tributary it left. No certain reason exists for this navigational guidance. Some scientists believe that the Atlantic salmon is sensitive to slight chemical differences at the mouths of different streams. It senses its own stream and swims back to its original spawning grounds. For the believer, there is a more fundamental explanation: God guides the fish, and God guides many other animals, too.
We now have Global Positioning Satellite technology that is being used for so many things. New cars and trucks have GPS systems where all we have to do is type in a few coordinates, or even an address, and the computer guides us to where we want to go. We think if only God’s guidance was as easy for us as for the animals and automobiles.
The need for guidance belongs to every level of life. The longing for direction, the need to be navigated, and the desire for leadership is discovered at all levels of life. Faith lives with the certainty that God does guide.
But by what process does God guide people? Many of us will stand at a crossroads in the campaign before us. We will seek God’s guidance on matters of overwhelming significance to our families and our church. We will make decisions in the present, grounded in God’s ability and willingness to guide us both now and in the future.
People approach God’s guidance in two large schools of thought. One view emphasizes the direct guidance of God through constant intervention. The other view emphasizes a slow road by which God guides through God’s protection and our recollection of God’s past faithfulness. Whatever our approach to God’s, we may be sure that prayer plays a vital, central role. Whether God’s guidance comes quickly and intuitively or slowly and by process, the atmosphere in which God guides is always one of persistent prayer.
We experience the guidance of God in different ways, but have assurance that God does guide. God guides us by His protection, our recollection, and His direction. Exodus 13–14 reveal in a striking way how God guides His people collectively and individually. I want to organize our thoughts about God’s guidance around the words “protection, recollection, direction.”
GOD GUIDES US BY HIS OWN PROTECTION
God protects us from dangers we have never seen and do not even know exist. We see this clearly in the Exodus experience of Israel. One cannot overstate the significance of the Exodus in biblical revelation. Other than the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the Exodus stands as the mightiest expression of God’s power in the Bible. Six hundred thousand Hebrew men, with their families and animals, left Egypt and walked out to their destinies. Not only did the slave force of Egypt leave, the Egyptians requested them to leave. Not only did they request them to leave, the Egyptians even paid them to leave. This magnificent story reveals how God guides. We can see God’s guidance in the routes, the reasons, and the revelation that God makes.
We can see God’s guidance in the routes. God did not guide His people from the land of slavery to the Land of Promise by the short, direct, obvious route. God guided them by a long, indirect, and unexpected route: (Exodus 13:17)— “When Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them on the road that runs through Philistine territory, even though that was the shortest way from Egypt to the Promised Land. God said, ‘If the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt’.” There were two ways to go to the Promised Land from Egypt. One was the short way, the Via Maris, the Way of the Sea. By that route, the Israelites would have taken only five days to march straight from Egypt to the Promised Land. It would seem the reasonable and obvious thing that the captives for centuries would move directly and triumphantly by the shortest route to the Land of Promise.
Instead, God sent the Israelites home by the long route. They trekked along the waters of the Suez arm of the Red Sea. More than that, it appeared to be a bad alternative. Having lived there for the previous 40 years, Moses knew there was nothing to eat or drink. God intended to lead them by the longer route. God’s direction for their future began with a detour. We may even identify with that. Perhaps we feel that God has sent us on a detour. Why does God lead us the long way around?
God leads us the long way because of our own timidity. God led the Israelites the long way because there were enemies they were not ready to face. They could not yet face the Philistines, whose home was along the short, direct route. As it was, the first time they encountered a problem, they wanted to go back to dance the two-step in the brick vats of Egypt (Exodus 14:10).
Why does God lead us on detours? God leads us on detours because God knows we cannot face enemies we do not even know exist. How many times have we found ourselves surrounded with obstacles because we took our way rather than God’s way? God often leads us by the long route rather than the short route to protect us from our own timidity. But that is not the only reason God leads us by the long route.
God leads us by the long route to demonstrate God’s own victory. The Gulf of Suez is 160 miles long and averages 30 miles wide. Its depth ranges from nine to 14 fathoms. Yet this was the very location of the famed “parting of the sea” by which the Israelites were rescued from Pharaoh’s army. Had they not taken the detour, they would not have experienced God’s powerful victory over that which threatened them. God’s detours often become God’s demonstrations of victory. On the long route to the destination, we may see more evidence of God’s victorious power. But there is another reason for God’s guidance by the long road.
God leads us by the long route for our own maturity. God is more interested in our character than our arrival. It took God 40 years to put into the Israelites the character God wanted them to have before they arrived where God wanted them to go. For 40 years, God instructed them in the wilderness, provided for them with the manna, and caused them to lean on God’s promises. Only after the discipline of those 40 years did God lead them to their destination. God leads us by the long route for God’s own reasons: our timidity, God’s victory, and our maturity. But what is the revelation in this?
The revelation is just this: God makes no unnecessary use of His miraculous power in our guidance. God leads His people by His own routes for His own reasons until they discover His leadership.
Whatever the route by which God guides, the signposts on that route are read only by prayer. There is no automatic process by which God guides that excludes an emphasis on prayer as the beginning, middle, and end of the way.
God’s protection is not the only method of God’s guidance.
GOD GUIDES US BY OUR RECOLLECTION OF GOD’S PAST GUIDANCE
Not only does God guide for our protection; God also guides by our recollection of God’s past guidance. God reminds us of a faithfulness we cannot forget. One way to find God’s guidance for the future is to remember God’s faithfulness in the past.
Exodus 13:19 reminds us of a promise, a performance, and a purpose in God’s past dealings: “And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of Israel under solemn oath, saying, ‘God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you.’ ” Those words recall the last words and wishes of Joseph, as recorded in Genesis 50:24–25. Joseph was 110 years old. He knew he was about to die. In his remarkable career, he had gone from the pit to the prison to the palace of Egypt. Joseph was of the fourth generation of those who had received the original promise to Abraham—the promise of a land for God’s people. Joseph died in Egypt without reaching the Land of Promise. Yet he died with the certainty that God would one day keep God’s promise. He wanted his mummified remains to be carried to that Land of Promise. Indeed, Acts 7:16 recollects that the Israelites carried the bones of all the patriarchs—perhaps as many as 75 people—out of Egypt to the Land of Promise. They carried 75 coffins out of Egypt, across the Dead Sea, to Mount Sinai, and for 40 years in the wilderness. Every day those artifacts were a reminder that God is faithful to keep His past promises. The Israelites of the Exodus could look back to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph as reminders that God kept His promises in the past and would do so in the future.
When all is well and God is in heaven and all seems bright and right with our world, we should build memories of God’s faithfulness. Then when the clouds of difficulty appear, we will be on course. In times of grief, illness, loss, confusion, and misdirection, we can count on God’s past remembered faithfulness to give us future guidance.
As individuals and as a church family, we are in the midst of a campaign that calls for decision. We must look ahead into the mist of an unclear future and make a decision about our resources. Five previous times, this church has stepped out in faith to build or to move. Every time, God has been faithful. We can base our decision about the future on God’s faithfulness in the past. That faithfulness must always be remembered in an atmosphere of prayer. Prayer is the lens through which we look back at God’s guidance in the past and the telescope with which we see God’s guidance in the future. But that is not all.
GOD GIVES US SUPERNATURAL DIRECTION
It is further true that God guides us with a guidance we cannot explain. Beyond God’s protection and our recollection, there abides the fact of God’s supernatural direction. The story of the Exodus moves far beyond what mere humans can fathom: (Exodus 13:21)—The Lord guided them by a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. That way they could travel whether it was day or night.
Israel never forgot this striking manifestation of God’s presence with them. They remembered it in the Psalms, the Prophets, and even in the New Testament. The pillars of cloud and fire burned their way into the collective memory of Israel.
This supernatural guidance was timely. Evidently, the tribes rendezvoused at Succoth. From there, they marched to Etham on the edge of the desert (v. 20). There was a clearly marked pathway from Egypt to Succoth. But at Etham, they entered the trackless wilderness. They were at the edge of nowhere: no markers, no signs, no Mapquest—just desert. At the very moment they needed the intervention of God, and not a moment before, God provided them with the miraculous intervention of cloud and fire.
Dr. J. I. Packer said that God will not give us His guidance until we need His guidance so that everyone around us will know that it is indeed His guidance. God’s guidance was timely, given at the very moment needed.
As we struggle with our decisions during these days, we will find some impressions come to us naturally and others will come from beyond the natural. We will weigh our incomes, our obligations, our potential, and our church’s needs. But beyond that, there will be another factor: the intervention of God. Weaving in and around the natural, there will steal over us the sense of God’s supernatural guidance.
CONCLUSION
What can we learn as a practical lesson concerning God’s guidance in these days as we reflect on this great biblical story? God guides us externally and God guides us internally. How does God do that? God guides us externally through circumstances, counsel, and consequences.
God guides us through circumstances. Israel took a detour because the people were not ready to face the enemy. God will use our personal circumstances to help us in our decisions in these days to give to our church’s future.
God also uses the external method of counsel. From testimony, in meetings for prayer, and in personal conversation, we will all take counsel as we move toward our decision of sacrificial giving.
God also guides us through consequences. The consequences of past actions enable us to weigh our future actions as God leads us. As we reflect upon the consequences of faithful giving to God in the past, we will be enabled to make wise decisions about giving in the future. But these external signs of God’s guidance are complemented by the internal.
Internally and subjectively, God guides us by common sense. Do not think that God’s guidance will always lead us to make an irrational decision. God’s guidance in our lives will, most of the time, use the judgment God has given us in common sense.
But to balance that, God also will lead us through compulsions. There will be an instant in which God will break through and we will simply know that this is the will of God. We will be moved by the impulse, that inward bending of our wills toward the will of another.
At the same time, God will guide us inwardly through conscience. That inner voice which whispers in the night “this is the right thing to do and that is the wrong” will be used of God to guide us.
But finally, there will be an inner sense of contentment when we have made a decision in the will of God. One man put it this way: “Pray, peace, push.” Pray about the decision until there is a sense of peace about it and then push forward.
As we weigh our decisions in these days, we must think about these seven words: circumstance, counsel, consequences, common sense, compulsion, conscience, and contentment.
George Mueller was a person of incredible prayer. Mueller founded an orphanage in 19th century Bristol, England. He supplied the needs of the orphanage by prayer and prayer alone. That is, he never once asked a living soul for contributions to the orphanage. When need existed, he turned to God in prayer.
Sometimes the answers to these prayers seemed to come in “normal” channels. At other times, the answer to these prayers came through “supernatural” acts. On one occasion when the orphanage had run out of food, Mueller prayed to God for food for the very next meal. A bread cart broke down in front of the orphanage and the vendor gave his bread to the orphans!
Mueller said that his approach to determining the will of God was to pray until Mueller himself was neutral, until he had no personal inclination at all. Then Mueller would ask God to impress.
In that regard, the mandate is clear. Pray until there is peace, and then push ahead.
Pray, peace, and push!
