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

Welcome to our March R&C 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. There are 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

...