In an ark.

In an ark.

And that baby floats into Pharaoh's household, who's ordering, you know, destruction of all of the Israelite boys, and that boy thrown in the river floats into his house and becomes Pharaoh's downfall.

So confrontation, 10 plagues, all that kind of stuff.

But God met with Moses on Mount Sinai right before that happened, and the burning bush is a key moment.

And what God tells Moses is, "Go confront Pharaoh.

Liberate my people.

Okay.

[laughs]

Um, I also, uh, had one pretty irresponsible moment when, uh, I was shooting targets in the ba- in the backyard.

And the back fence, uh, you know, a year or two in was just, like, riddled with embedded bi- like, BB pellets that had just stuck into the wood.

And then when it would rain, uh, they began to rust and have these weird rust spots.

So I just...

I ruined the back fence.

And w- it started to rain, and I, when I was shooting at targets, and so I just did what any 11-year-old does, [laughs] which is, like, drop it and leave it in the grass and go inside, and promptly forget about it for a really long time.

Seven.

Right.

Um, which is not to kill us.

It's actually to let us kill him.

And so holding together the Jesus res- as God's response ultimately to evil with these portraits of God, um, as decreator in the Old Testament, it's a genuine tension.

It will never go away.

Every generation of followers of Jesus from the second century onward have struggled to hold those two pictures together in one collection of scriptures.

But I also keep experiencing that tension personally as productive, as generative.

If there's anything you'd want to add to it, please feel free to, to jump in.

Tim, your thoughts?

Yeah.

That's a super important question.

Like, I, I really resonate with it, and, um, it was my question for a lot, a lot of years too.

So, uh, I'll, I'll try my best to narrate how I'm at a, how I conceive of that question and then how I k- got there.

Um, again, I think if you're introduced to the Bible as, um, a divine word kinda dropped out of heaven as a reference book to tell me what I'm supposed to believe or how I'm s- supposed to behave, um, if that's kinda my basic conception or my beginning point, then I really resonate with Gabriel's question.

This is where, for me, understanding the historical origins of the Bible, which is actually more complicated than that claim, um, it's more, [laughs] it's more messy, but it's also more realistic, and I have found it's actually g- given me more confidence and trust.

So Tim, go ahead.

All of which brings us to God's long, slow play to redeem all wrong and renew all of creation through love.

Mm-hmm.

And it is that long, slow play-Of redemption, uh, that we really wanna focus on tonight because that promise begins with something that God said back in page three when he was informing Adam and Eve of the sad consequences of their foolish choice.

And the, the promise of redemption that he gave was that from Adam and Eve would come a child who would overcome evil at its source.

The image is of the seed of the woman crushing the head of that deceptive snake.

But that victory is gonna cost something because what we're told is that in the very act of crushing the snake, this snake crusher will himself be crushed by the snake in this, like, bite that's done in return.

And it's a riddle on purpose, uh, and its meaning is very dense, and you're just supposed to hold it in your mind as you encounter all of the stories to come throughout the rest of scripture.

He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the possessions they'd accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

So maybe looking at those first few chapters, what do you see there that might tell us about the origins and the origins of evil and violence and where the Bible says that these kinds of kinds of things originate from?

Yes.

Wow.

Okay.

How long do we have? For me, in approaching that question, which is super important, and I'll give my reflections, but I don't think it's adequate to just give an account of evil or violence or sin without seeing what it's a negation of or what is the opposite of, which is how the story actually begins.

So it begins with two narratives.

They're set right alongside each other about the origins of our world.

yes

Let's do it.

Great.

[gentle music] Fifth command reads like this in its Exodus version.

Honor your father and your mother so that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your Elohim gives you.

Hmm.

And something about that reciprocation of care results in prolonged days in the land.

[gentle music] Honor your father and your mother so that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh, your Elohim, gives you.

So this long life in the land-

Yeah.

Well, they heard, "I am Yahweh, your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

There will not be for you any other Elohim before Me.

You will not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in the skies above or the land beneath or in the waters under the land.

You will not worship them.

You will not serve them, because I, Yahweh, your Elohim, am a passionate Elohim, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the threes and the fours for those who hate Me, but showing loyal love to thousands for those who love Me and keep My commands."

[gentle music]

So I am Yahweh, your Elohim.

Hmm

... of like a communal reading that had all this cool conversation afterwards.

And I was like, "That would not have happened if I just sat down to read it by myself." So I definitely feel like that's what we are.

We're a small Bible reading community, and if we can model that and then invite people along, that's for the win.

I also feel like if that is something that can help people learn how to read the Bible on its own terms, it produces humans who are encountering God's wisdom through scripture in community, and that it actually makes people into more faithful images of God.

And I hope it produces good in the world through people loving their neighbor.

Yeah.

We did almost a year's worth of walking through the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

Hmm.

"You didn't treat me as holy." So I, I'm with you in terms of for many years I had the same reaction of like, "What's the big deal?" [laughs] But the design of this story, the two parallel stories that are hyperlinked, are meant to slowly help us focus on the moment that Moses did the opposite of what God told him to do.

And you remember how we kind of had this feeling back in Leviticus when the sons of Aaron take the incense, you know, and waltz into the tent like it's their area to waltz into, and, and the narrator said, "They did what Yahweh had not commanded them to do." And these are the people selected out of the tribe of Levi who were selected out of the Israelites to be the image-of-God representatives on behalf of all the people.

So the stakes are higher.

The closer you operate to the tent, the stakes are higher.

And so there's a severe, um, consequence for Moses and Aaron because of the position that God has elevated them to.

And so I think those are all factors that are really there in the text that are highlighting why Moses gets this severe consequence.

Mm-hmm.