The sequel's setup and a request from Moses
God made known through the plagues
God's power displayed in the rescue of Israel
God's provision, becoming his people, receiving the first laws
Instructions for a tabernacle for God to dwell in, Israelites worship an image
Moses asks God to forgive. The tabernacle is built triumphantly.
Thoughts on who God is so far.

The sequel to Genesis starts out with a lot of setup. Israel is now numerous but enslaved, a story about killing babies, Moses surviving the slaughter, God looking down and remembering his promise to Abraham, Isaac and Israel.

Then the action begins: Moses ends up an outcast but God meets him in the desert of Sinai. He tells Moses he will rescue the Israelites and give them great land but Moses is terrified and is afraid he won't be able to help. God tells him he will succeed and the sign of that will be that they will return to Sinai and worship God on Mt. Sinai.

Moses and his bro Aaron ask Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out to worship God and Pharaoh refuses, and in fact makes the Israelites' lives harder, so they complain to Moses who complains to God. At the same time, it's all going down just like God said.

God sends Moses to initiate 10 or so plagues in Egypt. This proves God's power and his love for Israel, solidifying Moses' faith in God. Pharaoh, however, is stubborn and even as Egypt is being destroyed by these plagues, won't let Israel go. Moses warns him that something terrible is coming.

God strikes down every firstborn in Egypt, sparing the Israelites, who had celebrated a festival and put the blood of firstborn livestock over their doors. This terrible event shakes Pharaoh to his core, who sends out Israel with God leading them by cloud/fire.

Pharaoh changes his mind and sets out after Israel (Moses trusts God while Israel panics), but God parts the sea for Israel to get through, while confusing Pharaoh's army and then bringing the sea down on them. Israel sings a beautiful song about God and his unparalleled love and faithfulness and power.

God provides for Israel in various ways, in battle, in food, in water and in health. Moses seems to have a complete trust in God while the Israelites are always complaining.

They arive at the desert of Sinai and Moses goes up to the mountain to meet God. God says that if Israel agrees to follow his law, they will be his people, he will show them favor and they will be in a special treasured relationship with him, which include him giving them the land he promised Abraham.

Israel agrees. The laws God give involved worshiping only God and not making an idol of him or any other god, treating each other justly and kindly, punishing violence, and celebrating certain festivals. Israel agrees to it all.

God then tells Moses all the instructions for a tabernacle Israel is to build. With the tabernacle God will be able to dwell among Israel.

But when Moses goes down the mountain, he finds Israel worshiping a cow made of gold. God is willing to start over with just Moses but Moses talks him out of it. There are lesser punishments, and Moses sends those faithful to God, the Levites, out to punish with death their family and friends who have turned away.

God insists he won't now travel with the Israelites.

Moses speaks with God regularly and asks him, as a friend, to PLEASE travel with Israel. God agrees and, at Moses' request, passes by where Moses is, covering only his face. He declares about himself his faithfulness, love, forgiving heart, power, just nature, etc.

Israel has a rare triumphant moment as the nation builds the tabernacle to EXACT specifications as worship to God. God then travels with them wherever they go as they move toward the promised land.

Wow! What a book! I found it to be very exciting. It is a direct sequel to Genesis and took God's plan from working with just a couple guys to setting off plans for a whole nation.

Not only did God free Israel and make his covenant with him, but he made him self known a whole bunch along the way. Moses comes to know and trust him through the plagues. He knows him as both God and best friend. Pharaoh and Egypt comes to know his power and punishment. Israel comes to know his power and faithfulness and love for them. Then, when they turn away from him, the end up knowing his forgiveness, and at the end of the book are being led by God through the desert.

I'd say those are the two main threads in this book: God historically taking Israel out of Egypt and kicking off their statehood while still in the desert, and God making himself known to the world, especially to Moses, Pharaoh, Egypt and Israel.

Exodus is behind us and that means it's time for another reflection article on a relevant topic. If you hadn't noticed it's been a few days since I last posted... That's because this topic is hard! I've been thinking and procrastinating for a few days on writing a blog about who Genesis and Exodus say God is.

I am not a Biblical scholar or an expert; I'm just a guy who spent the last couple weeks reading and taking notes on and reflecting on Genesis and Exodus, trying to see what they're really about. But here's what I see as far as who God is so far in these books.

1. God exists. This is not something that the Bible argues; on the contrary, it is taken for granted and therefore never discussed. In the world of Genesis and Exodus, God is the most real thing there is.

2. God is the unique, ultimate power of the universe, who is active in creating earth and humans and also active in guiding society along a path whose end we have not yet reached by the end of Exodus. He scoffs at and hates worship of any other god, an image of any other god, or even an image that is supposed to represent him. He is bigger than these things.

3. God is also active in directing the lives of individuals, such as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. He cares about them, blesses them, tells them what to do, and also brings them along in their relationship from a point of being unfamiliar with him and not trusting of him to being completely trusting and content with and confident in God. In fact he ends up a personal best friend with most of these people.

4. God has a plan. It is obvious God has a plan for all of history even in these first two books. He has a plan to make the world like it was when he first created it. We don't know how long this will take or how he will accomplish this. But it definitely has something to do with the Israelites. There is also a clue in Jacob's blessings of his sons that something important will come from Judah's tribe.

5. God has reasons. I am still struggling with whether I agree with them all, but God has reasons. He has reasons for destroying humanity with a flood, for destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, for sending the Levites violently after their friends. He also has reasons for all the other things that he does, which are inarguably good and loving and powerful (so far). He does not act haphazardly or randomly very often.

Don't worry, at the end of Leviticus I will discuss more what I think about some of these shocking differences between what we think is loving and caring and just and what the authors of the Torah think. But for a few more days I want to further familiarize myself with the adjectives that describe God. And no passage so far has seemed more critical than the following.

God, ready to destroy Israel and start over with Moses, has been talked out of it by Moses. Because Moses is God's friend, God listens. Then God asks to see "God's glory." God says that seeing his face will result in death, so he puts Moses in a cleft of a rock and blocks Moses' view while God's face is visible. This is what God declares as he passes by:

"The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation."

Wow. This the climax of Exodus, shows that God is an almighty loving being who not only cares but FORGIVES!, forgetting sin! Yet he is still just and punishes.

After this statement, and the Israelites triumphantly build the tabernacle to God's specifications, and he travels with them as the book ends.

If Genesis was about God beginning his plan to restore the world to harmony and order and goodness, Exodus is step one in this plan: Yes, creating a nation, but perhaps bigger than that, making himself known to these people. And these are the top things for God to make know: Yes, he won't forget to be just, but he loves and is loyal and patient and forgiving!

It is a triumphant anding and a hopeful message. I look forward to the next book, to see God continue his quest to restore earth.

(Note: As I said above, there are plenty of difficult passages to reconcile with God's statement about himself. I will discuss that in a few days, Friday or Saturday, after I finish Leviticus. This blog entry is a further attempt to completely understand what Exodus is saying about God before I begin to criticize or question it.)

Synopsis

So Moses heads into this tent he had put up and God comes down in the cloud and talks to him face-to-face like he would a friend. They have a discussion in which Moses, apologizing for the idol worship of Israel, asks God to stay with them and travel with them. God agrees to. Then Moses asks to see God's glory. This is when it really gets interesting.

God passes in front of Moses but doesn't allow Moses to see his face, or else Moses will die. This is all very intimate and reminds me of the more serious God-to-man scenes of Genesis. God declares as he goes by: I am compassionate, gracious, patient, loving, faithful, loyal, forgiving, and yet still just.

God goes over the covenant again, emphasizing especially the sabbath and festivals and not worshiping idols. After this experience, Moses face actually glows and he has to wear a veil so as not to scare everyone to death.

Now the Israelites bring their offerings to the Lord to build God's sanctuary so that may dwell among them. It is a triumphant part of the story because the Israelites are generous and give more than what is needed. Everyone follows God's instructions exactly when building what becomes known as the tabernacle. At the end Moses sets up the tabernacle and everything is done for God and by God's commands. From then on when the Israelites set out God is with them and leading them. This is the end of Exodus

Analysis

Whew! That's it for Exodus. Once again I'll be writing a couple more posts before I get to Leviticus. Over all Exodus is very much explaining how the Israelites came to be in covenant with God. But in that, he brings Moses from a place of incompetence to total trust in and friendship with God. Meanwhile, the nation of Israel is coming along very slowly but have moments of triumph and still have God being very faithful to them.

All the laws and commands God gives in this book is so that God can know the people and can dwell among them. I have to say it's a powerful and exciting book.

Yesterday my post was all about laws. Laws and laws and laws. Today that continues for a big, with instructions upon instructions about making a sanctuary for God. But the reason I'm not bored with it is because there is clear purpose in what God is telling Moses.

Synopsis

The Israelites have just agreed to God's laws to become his people, his treasured posession. So Moses and Joshua are up on the mountain for forty days and God speaks to them:

Take offerings from the people, whatever they want to give, good stuff. Build a holy box exactly as I instruct you, build a big tent as a sanctuary as I instruct you, and set apart Aaron and his sons to be priests for this sanctuary. Build them really complicated clothes in order to do this just as I instruct you. All of this is so I, the LORD, can dwell among you (the Israelites). The Israelites each year must give a half-shekel to atone for their sin. Build a special basin and make special oil to anoint Aaron and his sons. I've chosen one guy from Dan's tribe and one from Judah's to be "filled with God's spirit" and to make a bunch of sweet designs for the sanctuary. Remember, REST ON THE SABBATH like I did on the seventh day of creation. Here are a couple tablets I made personally with the laws on them; put them in the holy box.

Meanwhile, down at camp Sinai, the people are sick of waiting for Moses to come down so they tell Aaron to make them a God to worship (yikes!! this is directly against God's command). Aaron uses a tool to make a gold cow for them. They go crazy worshiping this thing, which they say is the god that brought them out of Egypt.

God lets Moses know about this and tells Moses he'll just destroy the Israelites and start over with Moses, but Moses reminds God of his promise to Abraham and God relents.

Moses heads down the mountain, destroys the tablets in frustration and burns up the cow while Aaron makes excuses. Moses sees the people are running wild out of control. He calls for all who are loyal to The LORD to come to him. The Levites (of which he is one) come to his side. He commands them to kill with the sword their friends and relatives in the camp runnign wild. 3000 people are killed, and this gets everyone back in line.

Moses goes to God and asks for forgiveness for the Israelites; God relents but says there will be punishment, and the Israelites experience plagues. God says he will still give the Israelites Canaan, but he won't be able to travel with them or else he would have to destroy them for their evil.

Analysis

There is a whole lot to take in here. First of all, the parts about the sanctuary and all the details could be boring, but I have to remember that there is explicit purpose in it all: That the Israelites could know and worship God and so that he could dwell among them. It's actually a loving gesture.

So just as God is commanding this, the people completely go the other way, going against their promise to worship only God and claiming that another god, this golden calf, brought them out of Egypt! It's pretty stunning. While God is willing to destroy them for this, Moses looks a lot like Abraham as he calms God down and gets him to relent.

There is still punishment: 3000 cow-worshipers are killed and the Israelites get sick. But God is careful to not travel with them in order to withhold his judgment.