FREED TO BE GOD’S FAMILY

THE BOOK OF EXODUS

TRANSFORMATIVE WORD

MARK R. GLANVILLE

Series Editors

Craig G. Bartholomew &

David J. H. Beldman

Freed to Be God’s Family: The Book of Exodus

Transformative Word

Copyright 2021 Mark R. Glanville

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225 LexhamPress.com

All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at permissions@lexhampress.com.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Print ISBN 9781683594468

Digital ISBN 9781683594475

Library of Congress Control Number 2020946392

Series Editors: Craig G. Bartholomew and David Beldman

Lexham Editorial: David Bomar, Abigail Stocker, Elliot Ritzema, Kelsey Matthews

Cover Design: Kristen Cork

To the leaders at

Tregear Presbyterian Church, NSW Australia,

who first called me and ordained me as a pastor (2007),

and who then partnered shoulder to shoulder with me

in the tender work of the gospel in that particular place,

enduring patiently my passion and my mistakes.

Russell and Steph Baker, Ash and Des Davies, Dan and

Ali OpdeVeigh, David, George, and Emma Newmarch,

Di Scott, John Grant, Sally and Ray Davis, Bob and Joan

Blundell, Andrew and Amanda Malin, and others.

“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you”

—Philippians 1:3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1: A Community Shaped for Mission

2: The Exodus:

A New King and a New Community

3: The Law Collection

4: Ten Commandments

5: Moses and the Women Who Tricked Pharaoh

6: Learning Trust in the Wilderness

7: The Tabernacle:

God’s Dwelling Place in the Midst of the People

8: Judgment

9: God

10: Conclusion

Suggested Reading

INTRODUCTION

The book of Exodus is all about community. It is the real story of a society that was being reshaped as “family,” under the lordship of Yahweh. At the opening of the book of Exodus, the Israelites were enslaved brick-workers in Egypt—before Yahweh intervened. In Egypt, human relationships were deeply fractured. The beating of a Hebrew slave and the destruction of male babies had become permanent symbols of the atrocity of slavery (Exod 1:15–22; 2:11–15). Yahweh emancipated Israel from slavery in Egypt and brought the nation to Mount Sinai so that they might be established in covenant relationship with God. God’s laws shaped Israel to operate the way that God had always intended for communities to operate: in love, as kindred. The book of Exodus is all about the formation of this renewed community that lives together before the face of God. It shows us the joy, the freshness, the hope, and the imagination that a community can experience when it is transformed by the love of God.

While this book is the ancient story of an ancient community that encounters ...