The God Who Goes before Us
Exodus 33:12-17 (ESV)
Moses' Intercession
12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”
When
God calls his people to a task, he also provides for them. That is to say that God
will never lead someone to a place for which has not already prepared them.
Moses’ encounter with God, in this passage, illustrates the assurance all
believers have that God goes with them. In fact, Moses indicates that he refuses
to go anywhere God will not go with him (v. 15). How often do we make excuses
to accomplish a task to which God has called us out of fear that we are not
prepared, that we will fail, or that God will fail us? The polar-opposite is true,
especially regarding God ever failing us; he has never failed and never will
and is, in fact, incapable of failure. To be people of obedience, we must be
people who trust in God’s certain provision and who lean not on our own understanding
(Prov 3:5) but on the mission to which God has called us. It is not that he has
never failed us yet but that he has never and will never fail us period. May we
ever seek his guidance and obey him with full confidence that he goes before us
and prepares the way.
