Numbers 15:1-5: in context

While Israel is still in the wilderness, wandering and far from the promised land, God gives Moses instructions about offerings, and he prefaces them with a phrase full of quiet assurance: when you have come into the land of your habitations, which I give to you. He gives directions for a settled life of worship in a land they had not yet reached, a life still in their future. Even in the wilderness, God prepares his people for the future he has promised them, giving them direction for a life they will live only later, in the land he will surely give.

The phrase when you have come into the land carries an assurance worth noticing. Israel was in the wilderness, and the land was still ahead, not yet reached, its arrival still uncertain to them. And yet God gives instructions for their worship once they are settled in it, speaking of that future life as sure: when you have come into the land which I give you. He does not say if you come, but when; and he prepares them for that future by giving direction for it now. The very giving of these instructions was a sign of God's assurance that they would indeed come into the land, and of his care to prepare them for the life ahead. This reveals something of how God works with his people. God prepares us for the future he has for us, sometimes giving us direction, shaping, and preparation for a life we have not yet reached. Even in our present wilderness, God is preparing us for what lies ahead, working in us and directing us toward a future secured by his promise. And the very fact that he prepares us for it is a sign of his assurance that it will come. I know the plans I have for you, God says, plans for a future and a hope. God's preparation of us for the future is grounded in his certainty of the future he has promised. This gives us confidence about the future God has for us. We may be in a present wilderness, the promised future not yet reached, its arrival seeming uncertain. But God prepares his people for the future he has promised, and his preparation is a sign of his assurance that it will come. He who began a good work in you, Paul says, will complete it. God does not prepare us for a future that will not come; his preparation is grounded in the certainty of his promise. This calls us to trust the future God has for us, and to receive his present preparation for it. As God prepared Israel in the wilderness for the land he would surely give, speaking of it as when, not if, so God prepares us in our present for the future he has promised, working in us and directing us toward what lies ahead. And we may trust that the future for which he prepares us is sure, secured by his promise, so that the preparation itself becomes an assurance: the God who prepares us for the future will surely bring us into it, as he brought Israel into the land he had prepared them to enter.

When I am in a present wilderness and the future God has promised seems not yet reached and its arrival uncertain, can God's instructions to Israel for their worship when you have come into the land which I give you, spoken as a sure when and not an uncertain if, assure me that God prepares his people for the future he has promised, and that his very preparation of me for what lies ahead is a sign of his certainty that it will come, so that I trust the future he has for me and receive his present preparation as the assurance it is?