Today is the sixth day of February. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is great to be here with you and this is kind of a time where I'm in two places at once.

So I'm coming to you right this moment from the Rolling Hills of Tennessee when I am actually arriving in Israel and because of the time changes and all of the jostling around in the international travel and all associated with that sort of stuff.

I'm coming to you from the Rolling Hills of Tennessee and I will be with you from Israel tomorrow once we can get a little bit acclimated and a little bit set up for the excursion that we are about to go on together as a community.

Tomorrow evening will be our first official gathering our welcome dinner where we finally all arrive all blurry-eyed and excited with adrenaline and exhausted from jet lagging.

And we'll get to see each other for the first time and so excited about that.

I'm very much looking forward to touring the land of the Bible together in person and as a community virtually for the first time since we all became familiar with a term called COVID.

So it is good to be back in the land of the Bible and I look forward to all that we will see and experience together.

But the reason that we have come together around the global campfire today is to do what we do together every day.

Take the next step forward and the next step forward leads us back into the book of Exodus.

We are around Mount Sinai. God has come to meet with the people. It has terrified the people.

So much so that they've told Moses like, look, you go talk to God. God can't talk directly to us. We'll die. You talk to God and tell us what he says and then we'll obey you.

And then God has begun to offer the instructions and statutes that will form this people together cohesively as a people.

The terms under which they will live together and how they will behave toward one another and we will notice that throughout all of this giving of the law that we will see that although there are very practical things going on, everything that's being instituted into this culture is aiming them back to God.

And it's aiming them back to who they are and where they've come from and who rescued them, who God is.

And so we pick up the story there. Exodus chapter 23 verse 14 through 25 verse 40 today.

For seven days you shall lead bread without yeast as I commanded you. At the appointed time in the month of a bib, for that month you came out from Egypt. No one is to appear before me empty handed.

Next, observe the festival of reaping by presenting the first ripe produce of your labors which you sow in the field. Finally, observe the festival of in-gathering. At the end of the year when you pick the fruits of your labors from the fields,

three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord God. You shall not offer any bread made with yeast together with the blood of my sacrifices.

None of the fat from my festival shall remain until morning. The very first produce from your soil you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.

You shall not boil a baby goat in its mother's milk. Look, I will send an angel before you to guard you on your way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.

Pay attention to him. Listen to his voice. Do not provoke him because he will not pardon your disobedience. For my name is in him.

But if you carefully listen to his voice and carry out all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.

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