Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Welcome to our May Reflections and Corrections episode. Let's start with the reflections.

We recently finished our 12th book of the Bible, and we're currently

working our way through three others. So let's get the 30,000th of 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

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 a man named Abraham

to be the patriarch of the family,

and he gives this family a name, the Israelites. They're a busted bunch of 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 spent enslaved in Egypt. God sends a man named

Moses to demonstrate his power to the Egyptian ruler who reluctantly agrees to let the Israelite

slaves go. They flee to the desert, led by God and his servant Moses, and then 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. There are 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.

More than anything, he wants them to remember who he is to them, the God who rescued them out

...