Living in the Rearview Mirror

By Grant Gaines

The Old Testament is jam-packed with commands. In fact, there are 613 commands listed within the first five books of the Bible. Thankfully for us, Jesus summed up these 600+ commands by telling us, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”(Matthew 22:37-40, NIV). As long as we’re loving God and pursuing others well, we will be fulfilling the Law in its broad entirety.

And while this is the most important commandment listed in the Old Testament, it’s surprisingly not the most often repeated command. Before I tell you, do you want to take a guess at what it is?

If you guessed something along the lines of “remember” or “do not forget,” you would be correct. Time after time after time as we read the pages of the Old Testament, the Israelites are encouraged to remember what the Lord had done for them in the past. In fact, it’s interesting that as you read the final book of the Old Testament – Malachi – which was written nearly 1,000 years after the Israelites escaped from Egypt, they are still being reminded of, “…the time of [their] ancestors…” (Malachi 3:7, NIV) referring to the Lord’s faithfulness during their ancestor’s rebellion against Him shortly after they were delivered from Egypt by His mighty hand.

By reminding the Israelites of God’s past faithfulness, their future fears quickly dissolved and they were able to move forward into wherever the Lord was calling them.

Throughout Moses’ 40 years as the leader of the nation of Israel, he implemented this look-back-to-move-forward leadership technique quite often. And for good reason too – apparently the Israelites, although many of them lived through the incredible, miraculous escape from Egypt which included a highlight reel of God displaying His power time and time again, had forgotten the ability of the God they served.

Nowhere was this strategy of looking back to get strength to move forward more evident than in the book of Deuteronomy. In this particular book of the Bible, Moses is simply reminding the people of their brief history and the laws the good Lord had laid before them before they entered into the Promised Land. You can almost view Deuteronomy as a pre-game speech in which a coach reminds his team what they’ve worked on the previous week in practice and attempt to motivate them to take hold of the prize that is in front of them.

How exactly did Moses accomplish this task? He laced nearly every charge to action with a reminder of God’s faithful provision and protection in the past. If you care to look up a few of these examples from the first several chapters of Deuteronomy, here are some good places to start – Deut. 1:29-31; 3:7, 3:21-22; 4:9; and 7:17-22. And those are only a few examples of the many that Moses laid out before his followers.

Moses’ reasoning in doing this was simple: if you remind people of God’s past faithfulness, fear of the future will vanish. There’s no reason to fear taking on a powerful nation when you’re reminded that the Lord had already delivered you from the most powerful nation in the world – Egypt. There is no reason to stress over the size of the Jordan River when you’re reminded that the Lord had already parted a sea so you could walk across on dry ground. And there is certainly no reason to doubt the food supplies in your new home when you’re reminded that God had faithfully and daily provided you with manna from the sky. As the Israelites remembered God’s past faithfulness, they had confidence to move forward.

The same could be said for us sitting in 21st century America – as we remember God’s past faithfulness, not only in the Bible but in our own lives as well, we have confidence to sprint into the unknown of the future knowing that the Lord who provided for us in the past will be the same God that holds the future.

Just like Moses did to the Israelites in the Old Testament, when we’re reminded of past provision we have courage to move forward.

How has God pulled through for you in the past?