“They set out from Succoth and camped at Etham on the edge of the wilderness. The Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day and in a pillar of fire to give them light at night, so that they could travel day or night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night never left its place in front of the people.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I was once the drummer in a band called Fire by Night. The founder really wanted to have a band like the Christian jam band, Waterdeep, because he was such a big fan of them. I had never heard of them at that point (I grew to be a huge fan over the next couple of years), so it was tough for me to grasp his vision. Also, their drummer, Brandon, was much, much more talented than I was, so I was never going to be able to imitate his style very well. In any event, he cobbled together a few friends, and we gave it a go. I still remember sitting around trying to think up a name for the group. We threw around various ideas until someone (not me) said, “What about ‘Fire by Night’?” Everyone knew immediately that was the right name. I think we played exactly one show at someone’s house party and recorded an incomplete version of one song that I still sometimes find myself singing. I tell you all of that because the whole thing was inspired by this story. Let’s talk about what’s happening here, and why we have something even better today.

Because God didn’t lead the people by the short route to the Promised Land, and because they now had the entirety of modern Syria to wander around in (assuming on the more southerly route in which they crossed the Red Sea at the Gulf of Aqaba rather than the Gulf of Suez), the Israelites needed some way to know where they were supposed to go. They may have generally known where Canaan was, but it had been 400 years since any of them had been back there. God could have simply given Moses the directions for each leg of the journey and let the people trust him, but that wouldn’t have ultimately worked for a couple of reasons.

For starters, they struggled with trusting Moses over the course of their journey. God knew they were going to do that. Following one strong human leader is not at all uncommon, but over the course of a difficult journey like they had ahead of them, that kind of a situation can get dicey. If another member of the group decided he wanted to lead, he only had to announce that God had given him directions instead of Moses and convince enough people to go his way. That could have led to a national split or even a civil war. It would have been setting the people up for failure out of the gate. The other reason that wouldn’t have worked is that if Moses was the only one the people saw leading them; that is, if they weren’t able to see God’s leadership displayed in front of them on a regular basis, they were eventually going to start to deify Moses just like the Egyptians had done with Pharaoh. God wasn’t looking to create a people who followed a person. He was looking to create a people who followed Him.

Because of this, when it came time to give the people instructions on where to go in their journey, God Himself took the lead. He did this by appearing to the people in a giant pillar of cloud during the day and a giant pillar of fire during the night. Just go ahead and let your imagination run wild with what that might have actually looked like. No one really knows, so you just might be right. It had to have been absolutely incredible. The people of Israel had this visible reminder and assurance of God’s presence and leadership every single day. As we later learn in the story, they always knew when and where to go because they just followed the pillar of cloud or fire when it started moving, and stopped when it stopped. If the pillar settled in one place for a while, they made camp and hung out until it was time to go. And, this pillar remained in its position until they reached the Promised Land (except in the next part of the story when it went into action to keep them from being overrun by the Egyptian army, but we’ll talk more about that in coming days, Lord willing).

In other words, the people of Israel received from God the very kind of direct clarity we often talk about wanting from Him in our own lives. When we have a big and consequential decision to make, it is not uncommon to express a desire for God to just write in the sky in big, bold letters what it is we are supposed to do. We pray for clear signs. A letter in the mail would be handy. Perhaps a text from “the Big Guy in the Sky” would hit the mark. Some of this is because we don’t want to get these kinds of decisions wrong. Some of it is because we’re lazy and would rather be given the answers than do the harder work of figuring them out ourselves. Yet this is exactly what Israel got. Whenever they were puzzling over which way to go on their journey, all they had to do was literally follow God’s cloud around through the wilderness. There was never even the slightest question where they should go.

And yet, if we imagine somehow that receiving this kind of super clear direction from God would make us more faithful, we’d better think twice about that. After all, it didn’t work out so well for Israel. They had it, and yet still doubted and waivered and blatantly disobeyed His commands. This kind of clarity wouldn’t make us more faithful at all. It would make us lazier, and our faith would actually atrophy. We would cease to follow God willingly and from out of our loving commitment to Him and start doing it instead merely out of obligation.

Besides, what we have from God on this side of the cross and Jesus’ ascension back to the Father’s right hand is even better than a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. We have the Holy Spirit. This third person of the Trinity is not merely God with us, but within us to do His character shaping work from the inside out where we need it most. If and as we learn to listen to His direction, we will never find ourselves wandering from the path or questioning for very long which way to go in the big decision moments of life. By the Holy Spirit, God is also not limited in terms of how He can interact with us. The pillars of cloud and fire were just that. With the Holy Spirit, God can speak directly to our own spirits, He can move in the text of the Scriptures, He can whisper through the words of a friend, He can direct through the particulars of our circumstances. There’s no limit to what He can do. We just have to learn to listen and obey.