Foundational Stories - updated, Part 1

Loving the Old Testament

After completing our four-part series (available here) with Doug Woodward, “Heavenly Signs and Gospel Truths,” I was compelled to read the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, straight through and study each book in detail.

I spent a lot of time reading and studying the Book of Genesis last year (in 2022), but I have never read the other 4 books straight through. Oh, probably like most of you, I’ve read passages here and there, but I wanted to read all five books together as a full story. Here is a summary of what I joyfully found!

Book of Exodus

Exodus is filled with many of the Bible stories we’ve known from childhood: The story of the flight from Egypt - the 10 plagues, the Passover, and the thunderous escape through the Red Sea as God held back the water. Shortly after their amazing rescue, the Israelites turned their back on God, built a Golden Calf, and returned to the worship of Ba’al because they grew weary of waiting for Moses to return from the mountaintop as he communed with God.

Many of you may be old enough to remember Cecil DeMille’s epic 1956 movie, The Ten Commandments. Based on several older books but primarily scripted from the Book of Exodus, the movie brought to the Big Screen the story of Moses, from his early life as an adopted Egyptian prince to leading the Hebrews out of 400 years of captivity and slavery. In the movie, Moses, played by Charlton Heston, led them to Mount Sinai where he received the Ten Commandments directly from God.

Scenes from this movie and the massiveness of the film (for the time) filled my memories. Reading the entire account directly from the Bible filled in some important gaps that I don’t recall being in the film, such as how exasperated God became with the Israelites and that He wanted to wipe them out. Moses stood in the gap and through intercessory pleading, saved the people - more than once!

FYI: Other Biblical films by DeMille you may have seen include: The King of Kings (1927), a biography of Jesus; The Sign of the Cross (1932) said to be the first sound film to integrate all aspects of cinematic technique. Cleopatra (1934), and Samson and Delilah (1949).

Book of Leviticus

After completing the Book of Exodus, I honestly wanted to skip over, or at least just skim through, the next book, Leviticus. I thought it was just filled with a bunch of rules that only applied to the early Israelites regarding the dos and don’ts of certain foods, temple worship, lists of what animals were to be sacrificed for which types of sin, and the establishment of festivals and sacred days.

But Leviticus represents so much more than that!

The Israelites were about to enter the Valley of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Canaanites. Even though they had been slaves, the Israelites had a certain standard of living while in Egypt. But after leaving Egypt, they had proven to be an unruly and undisciplined group of people. They were about to enter a land they didn’t know, a land filled with heathens who had unclean practices regarding how they lived and what they ate. And they had a pervasive set of sexual perversions.

Taken as a whole, Leviticus details God’s preparation of His chosen people, giving them His guidelines on how to live in the world but not be of the world.

Book of Numbers

As I moved on to the Book of Numbers, I again thought this was going to be a dry tale of ‘counting heads.’ God gave Moses and Aaron these tasks to keep each tribe in siloed regiments before moving into the promised land of milk and honey. But beyond the rather boring census of naming the person and the leaders in each tribe, God established the way He wanted to be worshiped. This included repeating the intricate details of temple design given in Leviticus and assigning temple duties to specific tribes and clans. I discovered surprising things I didn’t know came from the Book of Numbers:

• Numbers 6:22-26 - This is the blessing that we have heard so many times in church; I thought it just came from seminary training: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn His face to you and give you peace.”

• Numbers 18:26 - This is in reference to tithing, that 10% of what you bring in should be gifted to the Lord, not just in gratitude, but as a duty.

• Numbers 11:18-20 - This section literally made me laugh out loud. The Israelites had been whining about nearly everything since they were brought out of Egypt. In fact, they began whining within two weeks after crossing the Red Sea. This led God to give them manna every morning, their ‘daily bread.’ Manna was delicious, filling, and freely available every morning. It reportedly tasted like fresh coriander and had a lot of cooking versatility. But again, they began to wail to Moses, “If only we had meat! We miss our fish, cucumbers, onions, and garlic. We are sick of eating this manna. We want meat!”

  When Moses told this to the Lord, I could literally see Him roll His eyes in exasperation! Oy ve! He said to Moses, “Go tell the people, ok, I hear you. You want meat? I’ll give you meat! You’ll not only eat meat for one day, or two days, or twenty days but for the whole month - until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it!”

  And then (vs 11) “A great wind blew in from the sea and drove in quail that covered the land 2 cubits deep (about 36 inches!) all around the camp and as far as a day’s walk in any direction.”

  

This made me wonder about how many times we whine to the Lord about what He has given us. We don’t like the tasks; we don’t want to ‘bloom where we are planted’. We don’t see the good in it or any long-term reason for doing it. We want something different, something bigger, something better, something He doesn’t have in mind for us. So because we are whining, like the Israelites, about staying on track with what He wants us to do, He finally shrugs and gives us what WE want…and we get buried in “it”, just like the Israelites were literally buried in quail!

Book of Deuteronomy

When the spies were sent to scout the land, they saw the Anakite giants (Chp1:28) and the Amorites, they were afraid and convinced the Israelites not to go in and possess the land. The Lord solemnly swore that “no one from the generation except Caleb and Joshua would enter the Promised Land. After the Israelites had wandered 40 years in the wilderness, the Lord told them to break camp and advance into the land given to Abraham’s descendants.

In Chapter 5, Moses reiterated the Ten Commandments, first recorded in Exodus 20:1-27, and he expanded upon them, admonishing the People to walk in obedience, having nothing to do with idols or idolaters, so that they may live long and prosper.

But of course, the People rebelled, intermarried, and worshipped the foreign gods. Even though generations of leaders and prophets have repeatedly warned the People to walk in God’s commandments,the cycles of falling away, repentance, restoration, and once again falling away continue through the ages.

When Moses was 120 years old, he climbed to the top of Mount Nebo, where the Lord allowed him to see all of the Promised Land that had been promised to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The leadership of the people was passed on to Joshua.

Today’s Prayer

Dear Lord, we pray that You hear us. We pray that we will not be buried in our stuff (our quail) but we will stay on task with Your plans for us. We are grateful for the options You give us and the free will to choose. But we pray we will hear Your voice and listen to Your guidance so we will make the correct choice. Teach us to understand that no matter how “deep” our problems are, we will lean in and trust in Your solutions. Thank you, Lord, for our daily bread. What You give us is enough. In Jesus’ name, Amen.