Day 41: Guidelines and Gaps

Today we read Exodus 21-22, Leviticus 15, and Psalms 76. This is a story about God’s guidelines towards more justice and care to represent Him well and flourish as individuals and in community. This is a story about the gap between where we have drifted to post-Genesis 2 and what is necessary to be a place where a holy God can dwell with us. Post-Genesis 2, God has responded to our alienation, dislocation, and drift into darkness with a flood, dispersion, fire, a family covenant and circumcision, an exodus with a passover, and now instruction, guidelines towards restoration. The story is not where God sends a flood, fire, or plagues, to start over and to free His people. In this story, God is starting right where the people are and leaning into the messiness and complexity of increasing justice and fairness, restoring the way His people rule, work, care, and subdue in the culture and community they have created. It’s a new type of project and it requires a careful look. The laws begin to highlight God’s character where He is seeking to reduce human exploitation and regulate less than ideal situations. God is seeking to protect the more vulnerable and limit the oppressive application of power. Yet, it is so interesting that God did not deconstruct and reconstruct the entire culture with more than 613 laws. Instead, He gives just the amount He wants where 80% are designed to lift up the poor, the widows, orphans, slaves, and women who were the most vulnerable in the patriarchal ancient culture of the Israelites. The laws are best understood in and through their relationship with the New Testament and what Jesus did and said in relation to the Old Testament. It’s so cool.

Resources:

Dr. Carmen Imes, Exodus Class - Exodus 1-40, (14 hours) Bible Project. https://bibleproject.com/classroom/overview/exodus-overview/ 

Dr. Carmen Imes (2019). Bearing God’s Name, Why Sinai Still Matters? InterVarsity Press

Credits:

Podcast music by Stockaudios from Pixabay. Speaker, Dr. Rachel Bodell. Podcast Sound Engineer, Alan Darling. Podcast Artwork, Will Gerard.