Know Your Future
The Promise of Emmanuel
For millennia, people have looked to the skies for direction in their lives. Longing for some promise of certainty about the future—whether good or bad, joyful or painful—we ache to know. Waiting for the answers to our hearts' deepest hopes and fears can be unbearable, so we devise ways to divine our futures. We attempt to gain some semblance of control over our lives by turning to what seems most informed and transcendent—the stars.
The future God promises is not mysterious; it is revealed throughout His Word.
But beloved, we must not worship and serve created things; rather, it is the Creator who justly demands our exclusive worship. And He has not set each star in its orbit to give us regular updates about the details of our individual personalities and futures. He has fashioned the firmament for His glory: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. . . . their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world" (Psalm 19:1-2, 4).
The song of the stars is the same glorious refrain that has been resounding since the beginning of time: "The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power" (Job 37:23). He composed the cosmos not so we can know the future, but so we can know Him. He reveals Himself to mankind through creation, but He didn't stop there.
Over two thousand years ago, God sent His Son to earth to be born as a baby. The very Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory—the glory of Emmanuel, God with us (see John 1:14; Matthew 1:23). God did not leave us to guess at signs and symbols; He did not leave us riddles and horoscopes. He revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, giving us the ultimate revelation of the divine—infinitely superior to the unfounded, man-made predictions offered in astrology. For Jesus, the Son of God, came speaking, acting, healing, forgiving, teaching, saving, loving, calling, dying for us, resurrecting eternally, and preparing a glorious future for all who call on His name.
Do you want to know the future? Do you want to know what's coming? Look to Jesus—His character, His words, His sacrifice, His love. That is what all of history is moving towards—eternity with Emmanuel. One day soon, He will be fully with us just as Revelation 21:3-4 proclaims, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
The future God promises is not mysterious; it is revealed throughout His Word. It's a promise that lifts us above the trials and struggles of this life and seats us already in the heavens with Christ (see Ephesians 2:4-7). For Jesus has secured for us "an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. . . . kept in heaven for [us]" until He ushers in the New Heaven and New Earth by the same power that "bring[s] forth the constellations in their seasons" (1 Peter 1:4 and Job 38:32, respectively). And we don't have long to wait—Christ is coming soon (see Revelation 22:20).
So this season, as you look to the stars in wonder and awe, may they point you to the only one worthy of our worship. I pray that you will know not just your future, but the one who holds your future in His loving hands, that you might have fullness of joy and peace in every circumstance from now to eternity.
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