Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Welcome to our October Reflections and Corrections episode. Let's start with the

reflections. We recently started in the New Testament and are currently working our

way through four books, so let's get the 30,000 foot view on where we are in the chronological timeline of the Bible's overall meta-narrative.

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 God calls the Israelites.

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

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

One of the long story lines of consequence is of the 400 years

they spend enslaved in Egypt. God sends Moses to set the Israelites free from slavery.

They flee to the desert, where little by little, God gives these people 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

...