Praise the Lord! This week’s Bible Study started from listening to Priscilla Shirer’s “Fear Not” sermon on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeLoU9rbZXc It is based on Exodus 14:13 as Pharaoh and the Egyptians were chasing Moses and the Israelites before the Red Sea. And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more for ever.

Several things were happening as I listened to Priscilla Shirer. First, I watched the piece because Kadesha Carroll, Mrs. Live on Purpose, suggested it to me. But she also suggested it to me during a conversation where she suggested that God could reveal things to us faster than we think it takes to get a Word from God.

When Priscilla Shirer read Exodus 14:13, the words, “See the salvation of the Lord,” jumped out at me. Priscilla Shirer emphasized overcoming fear, and touched on standing watching God work, and being quiet. But my spirit jumped at seeing the salvation of God.

For Priscilla Shirer, seeing the salvation of God is about seeing everything that God is doing in the midst of our troubles even before we see the big miracles. God wants us to acknowledge the little miracles in our lives so that we can trust God for the big miracles.

So as the Egyptians approached, the Israelites could have seen that Moses was still speaking to them in faith. The Israelites could have seen God move the pillar of cloud behind them to protect them from the Egyptians during the night, Exodus 14:20. Priscilla Shirer noted that the Israelites should have also seen the miracle of the dry land, and not muddy ground, that they stepped on as God rolled back the Red Sea. God told Moses that the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea, Exodus 14:16. All of this faith and encouragement could have come from seeing the work of God with the Israelites’ eyes.

But seeing the salvation of the Lord is about more than objectively seeing what God is doing in our lives. Seeing the salvation of God is seeing with foresight the coming work of the Lord. Seeing the salvation of the Lord is seeing a narrative that saves us to the utmost.

Seeing the salvation of the Lord with foresight is essential because salvation will bring us into a new place and call for us to act in faith where there is little to be seen with our two eyes.

For the Israelites, seeing was all about developing a narrative of what was happening to them. After all, they had just escaped 400 years of slavery. All of their lives had been based on making the best of a bad situation. And now, the little bit of goodness that they had received looked like it might have turned into their permanent genocidal destruction.

The Israelites knew that the Egyptians were storming towards them. That is what they could see with their two eyes. But the Israelites were also beginning to “see” that Moses might have working to bring about their destruction after all.

12 And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?

13 Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better to use to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness, Exodus 14:12-13.

From what the Israelites saw with their own two eyes, the Israelites began to see a lot of things. They saw that they were up to no good. They saw that Moses was up to no good. They saw that they needed to trust their own instincts. They saw their own deaths.

Projecting beyond our circumstances is what humans do. Humans see beyond and develop a word for everything. That is a curse and a gift of who we are.

But Moses told the people of Israel to instead see the salvation of God. See the salvation that you can safely foresee with because it saves to the utmost. The salvation of the Lord saves completely and all-sufficiently. Our El-Shaddai completely delivers us from harm and satisfies all our needs.

See the salvation of the Lord and see with faith that God will step in over and over again in our lives with the protection and the mercy that we need for complete deliverance. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them, Hebrews 7:25.

This is not about seeing one miracle like the parting of the Red Sea. This is about seeing the salvation of the Lord that works in out lives over and over again from many different angles. Look at all the ways that God stepped in to save the Israelites from the Egyptians in this passage. God encouraged Moses after Moses promised God’s salvation, Exodus 14:15-18. God hardened the hearts of the Egyptians to follow the Israelites across the Red Sea, Exodus 14:17. God sent an angel that manifested a cloud to go behind the Israelites to protect them at night, Exodus 14:19-20. God caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided, Exodus 14:21. God looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, and took off their chariot wheels, that they drave them heavily. God made the Egyptians realize that God was fighting for the Israelites, Exodus 14:24-26. God told Moses when to stretch out his hand a second time to make the Red Sea go back into its place, Exodus 14:26.

Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians…Exodus 14:30. And thus we should see the salvation of the Lord as able to step into our lives repeatedly and in many different ways. See the salvation of the Lord that is able to save to the uttermost, seeing that Jesus lives to ever make intercession for us, Hebrews 7:25.

We need to see the salvation of the Lord and project its narrative onto our lives because salvation will make God the only narrative for our lives. Going back to Exodus 14:13, Moses said unto the people, fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show you today: and note this – for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more for ever.

I know that I need to get this. See the salvation of the Lord because your old narrative is over. It doesn’t matter how we told our old stories, or how true they are. It doesn’t matter who the Egyptians were or what we think of the end of our old stories. Once the Israelites entered the story of God’s salvation, they would never see the Egyptians again.

There is no other story that we can accurately predict but the salvation of the Lord. The Israelites did try to go back to their Egyptian story over and over again. And we can project what we went through onto our futures to our own detriments. But there is one thing that the Israelites could not change. They never saw the Egyptians again. I am sure that some of the Israelites died in the wilderness with the names of the Egyptians on their lips. We might die with our truly sad stories in our hearts. But in the story of the salvation of the Lord, these stories are over and we are free to rejoice in what God has for us.

We finally need to see the salvation of the Lord to have the faith to go forward when there is little to see in front of our own two eyes. God got in front of the Israelites to lead them with a cloud. But when it was time for Moses to stretch out his hand over the Red Sea and go across it, the cloud was behind the Israelites. If we are going to see the salvation of the Lord, we are going to have to go forward and see the salvation of the Lord beyond what our two eyes have showed us. We are going to have to walk by faith and not just by sight, 2 Corinthians 5:7, with the trust that God is working behind the scenes.

Seeing the salvation of the Lord is awesomely bold. It calls for people with not much but failure to see God educating them, getting them a job, finding a spouse, starting a family, and giving them all abundance. See the salvation of the Lord calling for people who had been slaves for 400 years to walk out of their captivity without a war to walk into a land already inhabited but still promised to them.

Can you see people ravaged by drug wars in Mexico walking out of slavery and into a promised prosperity in the United States? Can you see people trapped in sin becoming paragons of righteousness? Can you see the person serving a 10-year drug sentence becoming this country’s Attorney General? Can you see a woman trafficked into sex slavery in the United States becoming this country’s President? God can. And we can all see a lot more for ourselves in the salvation of the Lord.

I pray that God does for each of us what comes with seeing the salvation of the Lord. God is going to pull off the miraculous by moving in so many ways around us and through us and in spite of us. We are going to see the salvation of the Lord and realize that our old stories are over forever. We are going to see the salvation of the Lord and act in visionary ways.

Amazing blessings!

Tobias Pinckney, Powered to Witness University, 5/20/17