The Exodus is the way out of slavery. It's the way through the wilderness, and it's the way into the land of inheritance.

Last week, we looked at how ancient Israel followed this path. They were rescued out of slavery in Egypt,

brought through the Sinai wilderness, and that leaves one last road, the road into the land of

promise. After such a long journey, you would hope that the road in would be a simple one,

the homecoming, the resolution. But in the story of the Bible, entering into the land, is not so

simple. In the land, Israel finds new traps, new tests, and new pharaohs. Consistently throughout,

the Canaanite leaders are depicted through hyperlinks on analogy to Pharaoh.

The story of entering the land is full of twists and surprises, like in the story of the

Canaanite prostitute, Rehab.

You have a woman who on the surface is portrayed as being the one of questionable character,

but in fact, she's the one rescuing this whole situation.

She's actually the faithful one, and she's the one who takes Yahweh's character and

promise seriously, and she's willing to risk

her life to do right by Yahweh. So it's the surprising inversion of who you think good guys and bad guys are.

So who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? The stories don't make this answer simple.

And that leads us to the scroll of judges, when

Israel fully breaks bad. They've totally forgotten Yahweh and start worshipping the gods of the

nations around them, which leads to their destruction. You thought the Canaanites were the

Pharaoh, and they were in Joshua, but judges just comes out of saying, no, no, no, Israel is Pharaoh.

They are their own oppressors now.

Today, Tim Mackey and I explore the road into inheritance, which, it turns out, is a complicated

and frustrating story.

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