Bible Challenge - Week Four

Welcome to week four of the St. Paul's Bible Challenge

This week we are reading the end of the book of Exodus and the beginning of the book of Leviticus

The end of the book of Exodus is a weird combination of instructions and regulations and the people of Israel messing up.

Much of the section of Exodus (and all of the sections of Leviticus we have this week) are instructions of how to build the tabernacle of the Lord and what the offerings are to be made of and how they are to be done.

But, in the middle of the rules and diagrams, we have the people of Israel.  Moses goes up on the mountain to get God's commandments for the people and in the short time he is gone the people of Israel give up - they ask Aaron to make them an idol - and the part that still gets me - Aaron does.

They worship the idol and have a large party or a small orgy - it's hard to tell from the Hebrew.

That however sets the stage for one of my favorite conversations with God - God says to Moses, "Your people are messing up - go and fix it"  Up to this point they have been God's people - but now suddenly they are Moses' people.

It makes God sound like an exasperated parent - you know - "Your son crashed the car".  I love those places in Scripture where God sounds like a fed up human - it reminds me that God - while being all powerful and all knowing and all everything - can also be fed up.