Let the Fire be Your Guide

Exodus 13:17–22; 40:34–38

Rev. Juvenal Cervantes, Pastor
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Greeley, Colorado
February 6, 2022

Sometimes life can be a wilderness and it requires the direction and leadership of God.

Some of us remember what life was like before smart phones, especially when we got lost.

I remember when I was eleven years old, I worked with my grandfather. I jumped on back of his 1972 Dodge Pickup and he drove slowly on the streets of San Antonio. We parked on a corner and I knock on the door at people’s homes asking if they wanted to buy a watermelon. On one occasion my grandfather and I were in an unfamiliar neighborhood and we got lost. It was raining and we went in circles and it was confusing, it was a puzzling place to be. We should have asked for directions, but we did not.

Nowadays we ask Siri, Google, Ways, or other app and they tell us how to get where we’re going, and they’re generally accurate.

In the late 1700’s Daniel Boone traveled the American frontier and was asked, “Have you ever been lost?” He said, “I’ve never been lost, but at times I found myself bewildered.”

Holly Ordway wrote a poem called “Maps.”  Listen to her insight on the life journey:

Antique maps, with curlicues of ink as borders, framing what we know, like pages from a book of travelers’ tales: look, here in the margin, tiny ships at sail

No-nonsense maps from family trips: each state traced out in color-coded numbered highways, a web of road with labeled city-dots

Punctuating the route and its slow stories.

Now GPS puts me right at the center, a Ptolemaic shift in my perspective. Pinned where I am, right now somewhere

I turn and turn to orient myself. I have directions calculated, maps at hand: hopelessly lost till I look up at last.

In this journey we call life, we can find ourselves bewildered and what we need is not a map, but a guide.

I’d like for us to look at the Exodus 13 and then Exodus 40 to reflect on how God led his people during the wilderness time.

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer; for God thought, “If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea.

The Israelites went up out of the land of Egypt prepared for battle. And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph who had required a solemn oath of the Israelites, saying, “God will surely take notice of you, and then you must carry my bones with you from here.” (that was a promise that was made more than 400 years before)

They set out to Succoth, and camped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness.

This map shows the direction they went. On the top left you can see where they started and traveled down and then north. It would have been a shorter trip if they went clear east.

The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in from of the people.

The remaining chapters of Exodus deals with the giving of the law and the building of the tabernacle. Now let’s read a few verses in chapter 40:

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting became the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey; but if the cloud was not taken up, they did not set out until the day that it was taken up.

For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.

The witness of Scripture from the Old Testament wilderness experience, to the Psalms and the prophets and the gospels, book of Acts and letters of Paul and other is that God leads His people.

The shepherd goes before the people. Jesus said, “I am the way, the pathway.” In the book of Acts, the Christians were called the people of the way, following the path of God.

God’s leadership on our lives comes from the Holy Spirit and our relationship with him, it is not mechanical, digital, binary, it is a relationship.

We follow by tending to that relationship with God.

It seems that the further people of God were from God, God had to use more dramatic ways to get people’s attention. Consider Jonah being swallowed by a whale and was vomited.

Saul of Tarsus riding on a horse and then being blinded and God’s voice, “Why do you persecute me?”

Then the small voice of God upon Jeremiah and Elijah and they walked close to God.

So how do we hear God’s direction for our lives:

1.   Pay attention to God through spiritual practices

-spending time in silence

-fasting

-journaling

Not to manipulate God or to get God’s attention, but so that we may know Him.

God never gets his eye off of us.

Author Dillard said, “Grace is not opposed to effort, grace is opposed to earning.”

2.   Obey what we already know.

People ask, “How can I know God’s will for my life?” Have you read the book? There is a huge amount of information in God’s word.

Jesus said, “Go and make disciples…”

Love neighbor

Love enemies

Learn to live simply

End of sermon of the mount:

Jesus said that those who listed and obeyed the word are like a man who built his house upon a rock and those who do not are like a foolish man who builds his house upon the sand.

Paul: God’s will is that we be sanctified, more and more holy, rejoice, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.

3.   By saying yes to opportunities

When doors open, say, “Yes, Lord.” When doors close, say, “Yes, Lord.”

Keith Johnson is an 88-year-old playwright director of theater, and educator, a pioneer in improvisation theater. Improvisation is when you have a group of actors on the stage with no script. They are given a role and they have to respond to each other and interact automatically. Every time they hear something they have to respond “yes” and continue the conversation or acting.

It is like playing ping pong, the ping pong ball is thrown your way and then you have to respond.

Johnstown made a comparison of improvisation to life:

“There are people who prefer to say “Yes” and there are people who prefer to say “No.”

“Those who say “yes” are rewarded by the adventures they have and those who say “No” are rewarded by the safety they attain.

“There are far more no-sayers around than yes-sayers.”

Will you commit to continue in your spiritual practices, doing what you know you can do and saying “Yes” to God’s call?