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Full Episode
Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Welcome to our March RNC episode. We're aiming to do an episode like this at the end of each month, offering some reflections and some corrections. Let's start with the reflections and look back at all we've covered so far. We just finished the book of Joshua, our seventh book.
So let's get the 30,000 foot view on where we are in the chronological timeline of the Bible's overall metanarrative. The Bible is one unified story. Way back in Genesis, God set out to build a relationship with one particular family, but things went terribly wrong when they fractured the relationship through sin. But their sin didn'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 a man named Abraham to be the patriarch of this family, and he gives this family a name, the Israelites. They're a bunch of busted people who lie, cheat, and steal.
God blesses them despite their sin, but sin still has its consequences. One of the long storylines of consequence is of the 400 years they spend enslaved in Egypt. God sent a man named Moses to demonstrate his power over the Egyptian ruler who's enslaving them. And eventually, he reluctantly agrees to let the Israelite slaves go. They flee to the desert, led by God and his servant Moses.
Little by little, God gives these people the basic rules of how to have a stable society— All they've ever known is slavery under a cruel dictator. They've never seen good leadership demonstrated. They're a bunch of uncivilized, ungrateful people who have only just met God and Moses, and they're not keen on obeying either of them.
But in the midst of their sin and stubbornness and foolishness, God knows that what their hearts need is Him. So He sets up camp among them in the desert. He's already told them how to have a civil society, so now He begins telling them more about how to interact with Him. That involves establishing a team of people to help mediate this relationship, to make sure everything goes as He commands it.
He sets up a system of sacrifices and offerings and puts together a calendar of feasts to celebrate His provision for them. More than anything, He wants them to remember who He is to them, the God who rescued them out of slavery. He's trying to point them back to the truth that people who recognize Him as God can rely on His pattern of faithfulness even when they are unfaithful.
But they keep forgetting. And every time they forget, they either get fearful and disobey, or they get prideful and disobey. Their disobedience lands them a 40-year sentence in the desert wilderness. And on top of that, they will not get to move into the land God keeps talking to them about. But the good news is that their kids get to go in—
After all the first generation dies off, God raises up a new leader, Joshua, to lead them into that promised land. Joshua learns to listen to God and do what he says. And as a result, they begin to take the land God promised from their enemies, the Canaanites, who currently live there.
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