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Word in the Wild is a one year Bible adventure with friends. Join from anywhere and enjoy a fun, rewarding, and doable 12-month journey through the Bible where you read it from cover to cover and understand it. It’s not a devotional or recap. It’s a guide by your side through God’s Word. With support from a weekly podcast and an online community of fellow travelers, this is the year when you finally explore the Bible in its own words and on its own terms for yourself.
INTRO
This is Word and the Wild...a one year Bible adventure with friends. My name is Owen. I'm your host and your guide, and together we are on a 12 month journey as a podcast plus community...where we read the Bible for ourselves, but not by ourselves.
This is WEEK SIX, my friend. We have crossed over the one-month mark...as we are crossing the desert with Moses and the Israelites.
Exodus is where God gets personal. We learn his name. We see his heart. We get a peak into his motivations. And... when we push in for that close up, the image we see is intimidating, to say the least.
So... hello and welcome in. And, a special welcome to our Word and the Wild PLUS community members. Their support of this non-profit endeavor is making space for all of us on this Bible reading adventure... In fact... I have a special invitation to you. If you're not yet part of our Word and the Wild PLUS community, I have a way for you to join.
Yeah, one of our community members is having a blast with us and believes in what we're doing. So much so, that his individual has made a very generous gift to make room for you to join in. This week, I've got six spaces that have been opened up because of this gift.
Interested? Here's what to do. Go to wordandthewild.com and sign up for our email list. Friday, I am going to send an email with all the details on how you can claim one of those seats on this one year Bible adventure.
You'll enjoy other member benefits like our daily reading tracker, background articles, and other bonus content. All theWord and the Wild PLUS community benefits. So, sign up for the email updates over at wordandthewild.com
Now with that... let's jump into the conversation about Exodus. It all starts with these magnetic toys I have in my hand right here....
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I want to invite you into a little thought experiment with me, ok? It involves these little magnetic toys I hold in my hand.
My son loves these things. He's the kind of kid who is all about action figures and stories so these toys are right up his alley. You can use them to build your own monsters. The parts are magnetic and interchangeable. So, you snap them together in all kinds of combinations.
I just gave this little guy a one-eyed purple head... two body segments give him four orange arms...and there's a couple of green feet and a dinosaur kind of tail. All kinds of combinations.
So, here's my little thought experiment: When you, yourself, slow down and think about it... How do you put God together from all the things we know about him? Imagine that all the attributes and characteristics you know about God are like these little magnetic monster toys. How do you snap them together to create your idea of God?
See, one of the complaints / concerns I get from people pretty often in this stretch of the story is that the God they know is different from the God they see in Exodus and in the upcoming stretch of the Old Testament.
And they don't like different. But, I'd say that you aren't looking at a different God. I'd say that your selection of parts you've been using to build your idea of God have been limited.
If your idea of God has been constructed with a box of parts handed to you by worship music, YouTube teachers, pop psychology sermons, how-to books, and a few well-worn pages of the New Testament, then your idea of God is limited, too.
You get a God who fights your battles. Walks your path. Accommodates your wishes. You don't get a God who chooses who, where, and why he fights.
You get a God who comes to meet with you at your whim. You don't get a God who walks you through the wilderness to bring you to a holy mountain to come and meet with him.
Before you know it, your idea of God and your relationship with him takes the shape of a monster of your own making. Built out of the parts of his attributes and personality that you like.
And rather than coming to the mountain to encounter and serve the real God, your toy monster becomes a just another way to serve yourself.
Exodus challenges this small and self-focused view of God.
But here's the thing. If you love the idea of God you get from Jesus and the New Testament, then you have to appreciate what we see in Exodus.
Exodus is where God gets personal. We learn his name. We see his heart. We get a peak into his motivations.
Exodus is where God's response to the tragic events of Genesis 3 and Adam and Eve's fateful taste of the forbidden fruit really starts to take shape.
If you want an idea of God that includes salvation, rescue, and redemption, then you need Exodus. Exodus is where all these ideas enter the plot.
Exodus is where God makes bold moves to carve his people out from among the nations of the world in a miraculous way and setting them on a very different path. And, let's be honest. It's a wild path. Through oppression and enslavement... through plagues and through the Sea... through the wilderness... and through amazing and frightening encounters with a fierce Creator God of compassion and accountability.
In Exodus we see that rescue and redemption...
It's a violent affair. You don't just walk out of Egypt. It's fire and hail and blood. To free captives and redeem an enslaved people is not done in a boardroom. It's done on a battlefield. Salvation is savage. And God has not qualms with flexing his muscle on behalf of a people that cry out to him for help.
And as much as God is a God of Love.... He is also a God of War.
As much as the polytheistic religion of the Egyptians tries to separate the attributes and power of Creator God into a myriad of little gods with limited capabilities...and build their little toy monsters... YHWH... the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob permits no such division of powers. Fire. Water. Land. Sea. Calamity. Compassion. It's all his. Every space. Every venue. He owns this world. He wants to be known, but when you approach, you best be ready.
This is the Exodus.
And that's not just an Old Testament idea of God.
Jesus himself quotes Exodus to teach the religious leaders of his day a lesson about God and himself.
If you think that the Exodus God is different from the "Baby Born in a Manger" God.... You could not be more wrong.
And as we see in Exodus and beyond... to be wrong about God either by opposing him or by approaching him on your own terms... to be wrong about God is to put yourself at great risk.
To know the real God as he truly is... that's the only safe bet.
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After the crazy chaos of life after Eden that we see in Genesis... and the detour through the Jungle of Job where we discovered God's highest good is for Job -- and us -- to leave behind secondhand hearsay about God and to experience him for ourselves....
Now we step into Exodus where God moves in to re-assert his complete control of creation.... Recenter the story where it belongs -- on him as the source of the good life.
Rescue... Redeem... Reestablish the relationship with a humanity who walked away from him and took its own path.
God's move to deliver the Israelites from Egypt sets a pivot point in the plot of our story. Not only does it change the course of history for the Israelites, we get a look into God's motives in a way that sets up major, major themes in his interaction with people going forward.
I see four key "why's" behind God's moves in the Exodus story
1. To keep his promise to Abraham...(2:23)
2. To respond to his people's cries for help (2:23; 3:7-10)
3. To show his power and spread his fame through his enemies (9:13-18)
4. To let everyone know that, from his point of view, there are two kinds of people in this world – his people and everyone else. (11:7) And, God leaves no doubt that being one of his people is where you want to be.
These major themes mark God's moves through the rest of the Bible's story. God does what he does to... keep his promises, respond to cries for justice and freedom, to use his enemies to show his power, and to remind everyone that the only safe place to be is to be with him as one of his people.
God often takes his people down tough and surprising roads. But, if you are with him, you are in a good place.
That's the story of Exodus...and that's, in many ways, the story itself.
In fact, while it was the blood of a lamb that signaled safety on the night of that 10th and final plague... Many years from now we will see another sacrifice who will provide shelter from God’s anger under the cover of his blood... another who will make a way for anyone become one of God’s people and to move from God’s enemy to God’s friend…
And like this Exodus story, that Exodus will all start after a long silence …with baby…. Placed by his mother somewhere you would never expect to find him. And that baby will grow up to lead God’s people to freedom.
But, that time has not yet come.
For now, it’s Moses who leads God’s people from the Red Sea across the desert by any unexpected way toward a sacred mountain.
We’ve been there with Moses before…. At the burning bush where he encountered God. Holy ground where Moses took off his shoes…. And God revealed somethings deeply personal about himself.
His name.
YHWH
That time, Moses was alone. Now, he brings a million Israelites with him.
And once again, God will meet him there.
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OUTRO
Word and the Wild is a one year Bible adventure with friends.
All you Word and the Wild PLUS community members, I'll be seeing you in THE WILD... our private online community space. Everyone else, don't be a stranger. Subscribe to this podcast and follow Word and the Wild on Facebook for some interaction there.
Word and the Wild is a LineHouse Community. It's part of the LineHouse Community Network, a nonprofit organization with a mission to bring neighbors together to promote awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the Bible.
Because friendship and God's Word change lives and change cities.
And... presented by the LumaVoz podcast network.
And with that, we're out. I'm Owen, I'm your host and your guide. Until next time, I'll see you out there... in the Word and the Wild.