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Apr 24, 2023 06:00am

The Bible Recap: Days 36-42

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(The following are reflections from the writer’s personal journey through The Bible Recap by Tara-Leigh Cobble – a Bible reading plan to read the Bible chronologically in one year. To learn more about The Bible Recap, visit thebiblerecap.com.)

Day 36: Read Exodus Chapters 19-21

My Takeaways:

Today, God reveals Himself in a dark cloud on Mount Sinai and delivers those famous 10 Commandments. And the first 5 all go back to relationship with him:

Don’t worship anyone or anything else.
Don’t look to or put hope into anything else other than Him. (Today, I think idols can be sports, jobs, possessions, phones, friends, relationships, etc.—whoever or whatever we put ahead of God. Many times, we don’t even realize we have “idols” until reminders like today’s reading!)
Don’t misuse God’s name. This is a big one. It’s everywhere. (I have even heard children as young as preschool and kindergarten misuse it.). I know for many, it’s habit…but, it doesn’t make it right. It’s a name that Orthodox Jews won’t even write or say out of fear (a holy respect) for God. It’s a name above all names. It’s a name that has saved us from our sins. It’s holy.
Keep the Sabbath holy by not working and trusting God will provide.
Honor your parents.

I love that we have a God who seeks our hearts first and through our relationship and then corrects our actions.

My God Shot is this: when you love someone, you will want to please them. You will want to honor them. If we give God our hearts, we will want to love according to His boundaries. Yes, we will mess up—we are fallible and and unfaithful, just like the Israelites. But, we keep trying.

We won’t be sinless, but with relationship, we can sin less.

Day 37: Read Exodus Chapters 22-24

My Takeaways:

Honest confession: when I began reading and noticed it was all about laws and ordinances, my eyes started to swim and before I knew it, I had read a page without really reading it.

So, I forced myself to go back and look for the heart of God behind these laws—it really did help me! You guys, God’s laws are all about protecting those who are weaker or can’t provide for themselves, they are all about justice and doing the right thing, and they are all about boundaries and consequences.

I loved this one:

“If you see the donkey of someone who hates you lying helpless under its load, and you want to refrain from helping it, you must help with it.”

Translation: be better than what you want to be!

A few more God Shots:

God commands them to party and celebrate His goodness! I love a God who commands us to get together, share faith, eat, and remember the reason behind the party!
I love God’s promises to His people—He wants to bless His people for their love and loyalty…all the while knowing they will struggle being faithful to Him. He’s after their hearts.
My last one: Moses and other elders dined with God. Like what?! That blows my mind.

(Sneak peak: Keep your eye on a guy named Joshua—he’ll be a key guy in the future.)

Want an example of trusting God to provide? Work the land hard for 6 years and take the 7th year off. That, friends, is a “walk by faith, not by sight” year!

Day 38: Read Exodus Chapters 25-27

My Takeaways:

Details, details, details! This day, God gave Moses all the details for building a tabernacle. If you got lost in all the metals and measurements, step away and look at the bigger picture: this is God’s dwelling place among them on earth. And God’s dwelling place is a place of mercy. It’s a place of holiness and reverence.

This was God’s plan to be among His people in the Old Testament…but in the New Testament, Jesus came and His death opened up a new way for God to abide among us: in our hearts. We are the tabernacles! God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, is God in us! He is our fire and our cloudy pillar that guides us in life.

My God Shot: God is in the details! Everything He does is intentional and sets us up to experience Him in a deeper way. I am learning how so much in the Old Testament points to Jesus in the New Testament!

Day 39: Read Exodus Chapters 28-29

Today is one of those days that can be challenging. Like Tara-Leigh says, don’t try to remember all the details, but look for the overall idea. That is what I did!

I had two God Shots:

Aaron and his sons come from the tribe of Levi, who had murdered the men of Shechem! Oh, this is redemption! Isn’t it cool how God can bring good from the bad?!
The manner of detail that went into consecrating Aaron and his sons to go to God and to meet with Him shows me how important holiness is to God.

Now, we don’t have to do anything compared to what Aaron and his sons had to do to go to God on behalf of the Israelites, but I do feel that there is something very important that we need to do every time we meet with God in His Word and in prayer: confess sin.

The Bible compares unconfessed sin like bricks in a wall…the more unconfessed sin that we have in our life, the more bricks we are adding to our wall between us and God. Taking down that wall includes a couple of things:

Accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Confessing sin… whether we say it or do it, we must agree with God that is does not line up with His standard of living for us. I think it’s so easy to lose perspective when we go to God in our prayers… so many times, we can pour out our hearts to Him with what we need in our lives, but we forget to take that introspective look at ourselves—our words and actions.

Confessing that sin and agreeing with God on it can take down those bricks in our wall, especially when we are willing to grow from it, and not keep falling into the same sin pattern. God is after a repentant heart—a heart that is willing to turn away from that sin that trips us up and to Him for help with it. It’s a heart change!

On the other hand, if we keep adding bricks to our wall of sin, that wall is going to collapse (Isaiah 30:13). We get busted. We get caught. We come face-to-face with our own decisions. I like to call this a come-to-Jesus moment! Oh, I have had many of these! These are not fun…but God will use these moments to change our hearts to turn back to Him.

Day 40: Read Exodus Chapters 30-32

My Takeaways:

We have more directions for God’s tabernacle today – the incense altar, the atonement money, the bronze basin, the anointing oil, and the sacred incense. More specifications in preparing objects to be holy, people to be holy approaching a holy God. It’s all about the set apartness of God—a reminder of who God is and the attitude the people needed to have to approach Him, reverent and purified.

In this reading, God doesn’t just give instructions for His tabernacle, He inspires workers with wisdom and understanding and ability to carry out these directions! What I love about this is that He can do the same thing with us today—He can inspire us to be creative, wise, and skillful!

The last part, we end on the story of the golden calf. I love what Tara-Leigh said for her God Shot—if you haven’t read it, check it out! It’s so true!

Here’s my God Shot: Aaron, our priest, the one God is setting apart to serve Him and for him to be holy, gave way to peer pressure and created an idol. Not only that, he gave a party to worship it. And when Moses busts him, he lies.

But, you know what? God doesn’t fire Aaron. He doesn’t have him killed, like 3,000 others. He is not done with him. God will continue to use him as priest of His people to serve Him.

If you have ever thought you have made too many mistakes that God can’t use you, let this story of Aaron show you that is not how our God works! Maybe this mistake of Aaron’s exposed some doubts in his heart. Maybe it showed some pride. Whatever it was, God uses it to refine him and turn him back to Him wholeheartedly.

That is our God, you guys. Your worst mistake could be your best mistake if it changed your heart, turning you back to God.

Day 41: Read Exodus Chapters 33-35

My Takeaways:

Oh my, today was a day for the heart! What grabbed your heart today?

Was it…

the tent of meeting where God and Moses meet and talk?
Moses begging God for His favor and presence with the Israelites?
Moses asking to see God’s glory?
God passing before Moses declaring who He is?
God repeating the covenant He made with His people? His promise to drive our nations in the promised land?
Moses’ face radiating with the glory of God?
the free will offerings of the people?
or the holy inspiration of two men to do God’s work?

What was your God Shot in these intimate moments?!

Mine was this: When was the last time we asked God to see His glory? This moment with Moses reminds me that maybe my prayers are too small. Moses asked something that hadn’t been asked before! And the beauty of it was this: he just wanted God and His presence in their lives.

When is the last time we asked God to experience His presence in a big way?! Eeeek! Convicting…but a great reminder. His presence is enough. He is enough.

Day 42: Read Exodus Chapters 36-38

My Takeaways:

42 feet long, 6 feet wide, 50 loops, Gold clasps, 45 feet long, 27 inches wide, Blue curtains, Acacia wood, Pure gold, Cherubim, Crossbars…

And many, many more details!

Friends, don’t let all these detailed days bog you down! If your eyes started to swim with all the measurements and materials, then read the Recap to help you focus more. That is what I needed for today!

Today, Bezalel, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is constructing the tabernacle and all the holy objects that go in it and around it. And the cool things is this: all the materials came from the Israelites (really, the Egyptians—oh, the irony of God!) who gave from their hearts! They had more than enough!

Honestly, I got lost in all the details. I needed Tara-Leigh’s Recap to help me see something I missed…and it did not disappoint! I absolutely loved what she said about the symbolism of these objects!

What were your thoughts about today’s reading? What objects’ symbolism stood out to you?! For me, it was the arrangement of the furniture in the shape of the cross. I had no idea how much Jesus was foreshadowed in the OT until doing this study!