Isaiah 41:10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
What does the future hold? Well, no mortal knows the answer to that question, but it’s a question to which everybody would like an answer. It is the reason people plan, invest, and, in some cases, look at history. They want some glimpse into the future that no mortal can actually have. It is astonishing to look at the last fifty years and what may happen in the following fifty years just based on the rapidity with which things have been moving for the last half century.
There is an aging app on many phones now where you can take a photo of someone and see what they will look like in, say, fifty years. It’s astonishing! I don’t know how accurate the aging app is, but I guess we will see in fifty years. Who knows the future? No one. Yet, God does. That is kind of the drum that is beaten over and again in Isaiah. What you find is that your relationship to the future depends upon your relationship with God because God is the One Who already stands in the future.
In Isaiah 41:10 God says, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” It is not my righteousness that gives me strength for the future; it is God’s. It is not my strength; it is God’s. And, He is my God.
This was written to Israel, but by faith in Jesus Christ I have the right to not be dismayed. Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled.” Jesus Christ was troubled so that you and I need not be. “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.”
So, how do you know what God you are following? There are a number of aspects of your life that are an indication of your relationship to God and the future. Your relationship to money is an indication. There were many idols in Isaiah’s day, and if you look at Isaiah 41:7, you find that they were often overlaid with gold. That was to give them some value because inside, the god itself, was just vanity. It was nothing.
Sometimes we put our dependence upon money when few things are more uncertain than money. The Bible calls money “uncertain riches,” and that is in contrast to the living God. So, your relationship to the future depends upon your relationship to God, and your relationship to money is an indication of your relationship to God.
Your relationship to your plans is also an indication of your relationship to God for the future. God speaks in Isaiah 41 of a man, Cyrus, who had not yet been born, but who would be a century and a half later. If you look at the first four verse of Isaiah 41, it is what we might call a “prophetic past.” God is speaking in the past tense as if the things about Cyrus had already happened, but they were actually yet future. God said, “Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot…?” He is talking about Cyrus, and God is the One Who had done that. “Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.” So, is it wrong to plan? No, it is not wrong to plan. However, Cyrus did not have the success he had merely or only because of his plans. There was a God Who was in control.
In chapter 10 God speaks of Assyria, another world power, who had been quite proud of themselves because of how powerful they had been. God basically said, “You are just like an axe in the hand of a workman. Does the axe shake itself? No! An axe is nothing but a tool.”
So, how much do you know about tomorrow? You can guess and make plans about tomorrow and perhaps you should, but no one can put trust in plans that should only be put in God. James 4 tells those who have plans for the future to pay attention because you don’t know what is in the future. Your life is a vapor that appears and then vanishes. How much do you ask God about what you need in the future? How much do you consider Him for the decisions and investments you make? “Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know?” verse 26 says. Who knows the future? No one.
Today, I don’t know the future, but I do know God. I can’t make every provision that might be necessary for the future, but I can trust God to do what I can’t. When I do what I should, God will do what I cannot. I just need to be wise, to make good plans, to be prudent with my money, but ultimately to put my dependence upon the God Who made this world. “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.” Your relationship to the future depends upon your relationship with God.