The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. – Exodus 14:14
Have you ever noticed that when you are in an accident, things seem to happen in slow motion? Maybe you are falling down a stairway, or perhaps you can see the oncoming car approaching yours. Even if you scream out, to your own ears the words seem lower in pitch and extended in length. What actually only takes seconds, seems to never end. Your altered perception of time switches back to normal in mere moments. Some scientists say that the slow-down phenomenon is a neurological or psychological ability that helps to increase survivability as physiological response increases.
Imagine the heightened sense of awareness you might have had if you were among the horde of Israelites fleeing Egypt. Ahead of you was water, closing in from behind were the horses and chariots of Pharoah. Pastor, teacher, and Bible scholar, David Guzik, wrote, “Moses told the people of Israel to stop. This is often the LORD’s direction to the believer in a time of crisis. Despair will cast you down, keeping you from standing. Fear will tell you to retreat. Impatience will tell you to do something now. Presumption will tell you to jump into the Red Sea before it is parted. Yet as God told Israel He often tells us to simply stand still and hold your peace as He reveals His plan.” Standing still and being quiet seems antithetical to your circumstances. But isn’t that how God often works?
“Trust me,” the Lord says to them again and again. The people had forty years of wilderness wanderings ahead. All they could see was the water of the sea they would soon cross. Theologian Steven Cole said, “Trusting God sometimes means doing nothing else, but at other times, using appropriate measures.” The Lord would do for His people what they could not do for themselves. It is a great picture of your salvation. The Lord has provided for your deliverance. What you have to do is receive His grace by faith. Cole adds, “God is sovereign over all things, including the trials that come into our lives. He ordains those trials so that we will trust Him to deliver us.”
Pray and live according to Edgar Page’s hymn, “Trusting as the moments fly; trusting as the days go by. Trusting Him, whate’er befall. Trusting Jesus that is all.”
Today’s Verse: Exodus 14:14
The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Recommended for further reading: Exodus 14:10-18
10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” 13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
15 The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. 16 Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. 17 And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
