Ex 13:21+22, And the Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people. 
This morning we want to see that the guidance of the Lord in our lives is far more detailed and more purposeful than we might otherwise deem. We often lose sight of the many aspects of the fact that what the Lord does affects far more people than just our individual concerns. His work is much more involved and fully watched by the entirety of His creation as He shows forth the reality that He does have all things well in hand.
The Prophet Isaiah could see beyond the scope of the immediate circumstances of the Nation of Israel unto the reality that the other nations and peoples were being drawn to the testimony of the Lord through the manifestation of His heart of keeping and loving-kindness and majestic provision. Please turn to Isa 49:6-11, as we want to see how the Lord's salvation of the tribes of Israel revealed the fact of Who He was and what He had done to all the nations surrounding them. Isa 49:6-11, He says, "It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth."  Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and its Holy One, To the despised One, To the One abhorred by the nation, To the Servant of rulers, "Kings shall see and arise, Princes shall also bow down; Because of the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel who has chosen You." Thus says the Lord, "In a favorable time I have answered You, And in a day of salvation I have helped You; And I will keep You and give You for a covenant of the people, To restore the land, to make them inherit the desolate heritages; Saying to those who are bound, 'Go forth,' To those who are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.' Along the roads they will feed, And their pasture will be on all bare heights. "They will not hunger or thirst, Neither will the scorching heat or sun strike them down; For He who has compassion on them will lead them, And will guide them to springs of water. "And I will make all My mountains a road, And My highways will be raised up. 
As we find in this insight, there is very much more at stake in the revealed working of God's grace for the salvation and maintaining of His people. In their care, God's covenant of grace and mercy and up building manifested His heart for a relationship with any who would turn to Him and seek Him. Please note that in the Redeemer, many, many people would find salvation and restoration and compassion and refreshment. 
While His people were the direct object of that blessed grace of God, many others would be drawn and brought into it by the revealed work of the One Who showed forth the keeping power of Himself. There is no hunger or desolation or scorching heat or sun beating down upon those who seek to know and honor and rely upon the Lord God Almighty. They will be lead through those paths wherein they will find complete and gracious refreshment and sustenance in the light of the face of God. 
	This Isaiah passage brings to mind that favorite scripture of many of us wherein the mighty and comforting hand of God is shown to be our keeping force in full measure. Ps 23. Please read along with me, Ps 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou dost prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 
	Again, as personally as we want to cherish this wonderful reality of God, it is in place not just for you and for me, but for all those family members, and friends, and associates, and neighbors, and so many others whom we may never know who witness how God takes care of us in His so great mercy and love. While He guides us directly into the fullness of His keeping power, we are those exhibits to others of what to do and how to act and upon what we base our entire existence. As they see us under the Mighty and Omnipotent Hand of God, they will strive to understand what is going on. They will want to know why we can face such debilitating challenges and trials with the complete assurance that God will prove Himself glorious and victorious through it all. 
	Again, listen to the prophet Isaiah in Isa 58:11. "And the Lord will continually guide you, And satisfy your desire in scorched places, And give strength to your bones; And you will be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. 
	Think about it! This is what the world is truly seeking. Through all its misguided and defiled and self-centered methodology, it is trying to find anything that will meet the desires that will bring contentment and satisfaction and rest. It is going after this in all the wrong ways and with all the miss-guided philosophical and morally bankrupted means, but it wants to know peace and contentment and joy and refreshment. This is only found, as we completely know, in the living relationship that is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ! 
	That is why it is so important that we are seeking the guidance of the Lord and that we obey as He so leads. In Him, we will have the every source of peace and satisfaction and refreshment in the midst of all the desert regions through which we are led. The Lord manifests Himself through those tribulations, not just in His sustaining grace and mercy, but in the manner of putting to death those elements of our self-life which would cause us further grief and anguish. That is the reason that we are often so much more thankful and rejoicing in the completed work after those trials in which God has so fully and perfectly proven Himself as our Provider and Our Sustainer. He is the Almighty Who rules and overrules all the schemes of men including our own. 
	"And the Lord will continually guide you, And satisfy your desire in scorched places, And give strength to your bones; And you will be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. What a picture of the people of God, led by Him throughout every difficult and treacherous area of life on this earth. We go forth with the solid foundational reality that not only will He continuously guide us, but no matter how hard the terrain to navigate and endure, He will give us the strength and the endurance to go forward, with the knowledge of being those watered gardens of refreshment in the midst of the severest droughts. We will be seen as springs of water that do not fail despite the arid and acrid desert through which we flow forth in Him.
	Is this not the exact presentation of who we are in this present age which is so devastatingly scorched with the fires of hellish intent against everything that declares the goodness and the grace and the mercy and the love of God? As we look so carefully around us, at the manner in which our nation is becoming so much the antithesis of the Godly principles upon which it was founded, we often feel that we are the only source of what it means to hold onto the truth that Our God reigns Supremely and Omnipotently. Others are intensely and critically watching our every step and interaction with the evil intent of desiring our forsaking of the testimony to which we cling. We do flow forth in the witness of the risen Lord Jesus Christ and we do bring into this desert region of immorality and deceitful spirituality and utter mortality, the refreshing spring of the river of life, the life of Jesus Christ! 
	It is not our efforts or our intentions or our strength or our wisdom or our abilities that manifest the source of our life. It is all by the working and the guiding truth of the living Person of Jesus Christ revealed through the all-powerful work of the Holy Spirit, going before us day and night, just as He led His people in the wilderness. He is our essential source of everything that brings forth the beauty of life in the midst of this acrid and arid realm.
	Again we turn to the Prophet Isaiah in his declaration of the mighty and wonderful manner in which God made Himself very real to His people with the core element of the fact that they were the witnesses by whom His Name was revealed to all the inhabitants of the earth. Isa 63:11-14, Then His people remembered the days of old, of Moses. Where is He who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of His flock? Where is He who put His Holy Spirit in the midst of them, Who caused His glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, Who divided the waters before them to make for Himself an everlasting name, Who led them through the depths? Like the horse in the wilderness, they did not stumble; As the cattle which go down into the valley, The Spirit of the Lord gave them rest. So didst Thou lead Thy people, To make for Thyself a glorious name. 
	This is something with which we each need to come into a greater understanding in the course of our relationship with God. He works and He guides and He manifests Himself for the sake of His glorious name being invested and evidenced in His Chosen people. We are the complete benefactors of Who He is and all that He accomplishes as we journey forth. We made mention earlier of the fact that we are those springs of the refreshing water of life in this parched and desolate realm. In us, God shows forth the might of His glorious salvation in action! 
	Consider this as we read the account of what was revealed by the word of Moses to the people in Deut 28:9+10. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, as He swore to you, if you will keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and walk in His ways. So all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of you.
As the nation of Israel entered in to possess the Promised Land, they would be feared because of all that God had done and would continue to do. They presented to the nations surrounding them the reality that there is a God in heaven Who rules and overrules despite the self-centered and self-deluded philosophies and sociological and psychological mannerisms and rituals that were in place. 
	As the nations witnessed the Lord going before His people, they were in great fear that what they had would never give them the ability required to defeat the people embraced and guided and protected by the Lord God Almighty! Listen to what the spies sent into Jericho were told by Rahab in Josh 2:8-11. Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof, and said to the men, "I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And when we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. It is the Name of the Lord that brought fear unto all the inhabitants of the Promised Land because it was He Who went before His Redeemed people. 
	We close by carrying this truth into the New Testament as we read what the Lord Jesus Christ revealed concerning the members of the church being guided and led by the Holy Spirit. Please open in your Bibles to John 16:7-14, as we want to read this together. John 16:7-14, "But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. "And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you no longer behold Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. "He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. 
	It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we are now lead forth each and every day for the sake of the glory of God. Our every interaction with those around us is directed and guided by the working power of God that went before those Israelites through the wilderness and into the Promised Land. As He did then, so does He continue to do today in making others see the truth that He is the Lord God Almighty Who has redeemed His people unto Himself and goes before us throughout all of eternity. We have been redeemed by the death and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son and brought into the freedom and the salvation that will cause all creation to acknowledge His Glory and His Majesty and His Honor and His Praise and His Name forever and forever. So be it!
And the Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people. Amen. 

This morning’s benediction is 1 Chron 29:11+12. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Thine is the dominion, O Lord, and Thou dost exalt Thyself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from Thee, and Thou dost rule over all, and in Thy hand is power and might; and it lies in Thy hand to make great, and to strengthen everyone. Amen.