Tara-Leigh Cobble

So here's a brief summary of what we've seen in the Bible's overall metanarrative.

The Bible is one unified story.

In Genesis, God sets out to build a relationship with one particular family, but things go terribly wrong when they fracture the relationship through sin.

But their sin doesn't surprise God.

He already had a plan in place to restore this relationship even before it was broken, and He continues working out that plan immediately, undeterred and unhindered by their rebellion.

He sets apart Abraham to be the patriarch of the family he calls the Israelites.

They're a bunch of sinners, just like us.

God blesses them despite their sin, but sin still has its consequences.

One of the long storylines of consequences of the 400 years they spent enslaved in Egypt.

God sends Moses to set the Israelites free from slavery.

They flee to the desert where, little by little, God gives them the basic rules of how to have a stable society.

They're uncivilized people who have only just met God and Moses and they're not keen on obeying either of them.

In the midst of their sin and stubbornness, God knows that what their hearts need is Him.

So He sets up camp among them in the desert.

More than anything, He wants them to remember who He is to them.

The God who rescued them out of slavery.

But they keep forgetting.

And every time they forget, they either get fearful and disobey, or they get prideful and disobey.

Forty years after he rescues them from Egypt, their new leader Joshua leads them into the Promised Land and commands them to eradicate their enemies who live there, the Canaanites.

God has warned them repeatedly that if they don't drive out the Canaanites, they'll become a snare and lead them away into apostasy.