PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2025-2026

I’m wondering if this was a difficult stretch for you all to get through. We see many, many details of what the tabernacle was supposed to look like and how it was to be built. Remember, the tabernacle was considered the house of God, not the permanent one, that would be the temple and that would come later, but a mobile house of God. You can think about glamping and a really, really nice tent that was designed and built to be moved around as the people of God moved around to make their way to the promised land.

Next we read about the vestments of Aaron and his sons who were the priests of the people, or in the parlance of our day the pastors of the Israelites. The vestments were very important for that day and age and had to be exactly as Scripture said they were to be. Tucked within the commands for the vestments was the ordination ceremony and what had to be done in order to set Aaron and his sons aside to be the priests of the people. There was an actual rite that took place and it wasn’t simply an anointing like what happens with David later on when he becomes king, but there was sacrifice and other actions that took place to ensure that Aaron and his sons were rightly ordained.

All of this was given to Moses while he is up on the mountain with Joshua and a few others with him. Those back down in the base camp were getting restless. We end our reading with what could be one of the most famous scenes in Moses’ life, the creation of the golden calf. I love Aaron’s explanation as to why and how the calf came about. The people were restless, I gathered their gold, I put in the fire, and look at that, a calf came out! The implication was that maybe it was of God because somehow magically, or miraculously a calf was created without even trying. Yeah, that was definitely not of God since after all the few commandments that now exist revolve around the one that states: there is only one God.

Moses is given a whole variety of other laws while Aaron and the other leaders are accompanying him. It is fascinating to see that the leaders of Israel are allowed to go up the mountain with him and are allowed to see his presence and have a meal with him. It is all very casual while at the same time apparently very terrifying. But then Moses once again separates himself to be with the Lord and is with him for forty days and forty nights. We will see that this will become a problem in the next few chapters. Again, it strikes me as incredible that Aaron and those with him are not able to control the people even after they saw the face of the Lord.

Psalm 6 is a great psalm to study to understand what a psalm of lament looks like. It begins with the problem: the author is in need of healing because of an unknown malady that is striking him. He laments his present situation and asks for mercy by God. It seems as if things are continuing to go south until we see in vs.8 a transition from an appeal for mercy to a declaration of deliverance by the Lord. Laments often move from, well, lament to celebration over the fact that God has listened and has delivered. The faithfulness of God is always revealed as constant.

Moses and the Israelites continue to be in the favor of God even so far as God saying in 19:5 “You shall be my treasured possession.” It is here that the Israelites become the people of God and become those chosen by God to be His people. It is from here that we get the term: people of God, which we use as a church all of the time. God follows up this designation with the ten commandments which he gives to Moses and which the people of God hear and say that they will obey. This is all before Moses disobeys God and before God punishes the Israelites and Moses by demanding that they wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the generation that escaped from Israel and were making decisions have passed away.

The 10 commandments are a flash point today in general US politics which is a bit silly. They are being made to represent something that they never represented when God gave them to Moses and the Israelites. They were never meant to be commandments for the whole world but rather for the people of God back then in Moses’ day. The Levitical laws that came along later were a compliment to the commandments and Jesus himself with his greatest commandment and his words on Matthew 5-7 (which we will look at later and which are here today as an option) reflect what we as Christians ought to follow and obey.

The people of Israel begin their trek across the wilderness toward the promised land. They are not wandering yet, because Moses hasn’t disobeyed God when he strikes the rock without God asking him to do so. That comes later. But in this reading we see the parting of the Red Sea. There have been many apologists who look for ways in which to downplay this event as something less than miraculous because they serve a weak God who cannot make this happen. I’m okay with it happening, in fact, I believe it actually did happen. Same with the manna and the quail, God provided as is God’s nature.

It does always strike me that it is the people of Israel who seem to be the antagonists in these stories. The Egyptians are the clear villains, but the people of Israel play a close second. We see them just about every single chapter described as complaining about something. First it was the Egyptians who were closing in on them, then the water then the food. Time after time Moses has to intercede for the people so that God would not become so frustrated with them that he would find an alternative to His people.

We are introduced to Joshua in this reading and he is simply described as a warrior that Moses trusted to carry out his military plans. Joshua defeated the Amalekites and so began his journey toward leading the people into the promised land. Psalm 90 has that often used phrase that one day is like a thousand years. I have often thought of that in order to put into perspective how much I don’t know about God.

We go from being introduced to Moses and him receiving a pretty weighty command of the Lord, to go set my people free, to him once again being commanded by God and given his brother Aaron as a sidekick with all of the necessary equipment needed to convince a Pharaoh, not the least of which is a staff that can do all sorts of things. These chapters contain all 10 of the plagues that fall upon the Israelites each of which is followed by the unfortunately and quixotical phrase of: “Then the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” This phrase is often used as an attempt to strip Pharaoh of any responsibility because, after all, it was God who hardened his heart against his will.

The sin which we commit is a direct hardening of our heart. God has given us free choice to be willing to follow him and to choose him, or to choose that which would be in what we understand our best interest and our selfish desires. Pharaoh did not want to let the people go because he was, after all, Pharaoh. The hardening of hearts is often associated with a desire and an innate need to pursue that which we want and that which we feel is in our best interest. The Bible is scattered with reminders of what is the most important commandment if not to love God and to love our neighbor. When our desires creep both neighbor and God lose our attention and our focus.

God’s commandments vis a vis the nation of Israel was pretty clear back in that day. These are my people and I will do everything in my power, which by the way is saying everything, to free them and to get them back into this land flowing with milk and honey that I had promised them many generation ago. They were in Egypt for over 400 years so it would have been easy to forget the promises of God and the initial covenant(s) that God had made with Abraham. Our nation is almost 150 years old and we have forgotten so much in regards to mistakes that we have made that have put us in a terrible disadvantage to carrying out God’s commandments. The truism that if we forget history we are bound to repeat it finds itself playing out every single day.

We are introduced to Moses in the book of Exodus. It begins with a reminder that Joseph really set up his family for success by moving them to Egypt and that they had been given the best of the land and they certainly did prosper and multiply, but maybe a little too much. At least according to Pharaoh they now became a people that were a bit of a nuisance. They had become so strong and powerful that Pharaoh thought that maybe another nation might entice them to join sides again Egypt and to fight against Egypt and if that happened, well because of their number, Egypt would never be able to resist them.

When a people group becomes a threat the first thing a government does is oppress them. Or, in the case of slavery within the United States, when a people group becomes slaves and then are freed the next thing to do is to oppress them so that they will never, at least not for generations, have the same opportunities as those who were the slave owners. We still find ourselves in that situation where, like the Israelites, the nation and the leadership had been built up around the premise that only certain people, and only a certain color, is able or allowed to have the most beneficial opportunities.

When Moses leaves Egypt and is on the run, it surprised me this time when I read the story that he settled with the Midianites. Clearly as time when on the Midianites were the enemies of Israel. They were clearly pagan and worshipped other gods which I would imagine would have been a problem for Moses and the Israelites. Moses marries into this culture, and yet we read, and this was new to me as well, that he takes his wife and his family back into Egypt, back into slavery as a result of God’s command through the burning bush.

It would be like someone making their way out of slavery through the underground railroad and then deciding to go back and free others who were still in captivity and slavery. That is exactly what Moses did. As a free person he brought himself and his family back into slavery so that he could free all of the people of Israel. Well, needless to say it doesn’t start out great. Moses’ greatest fears and then some come true. Not only does Pharaoh disregard his words, but he actually makes life worse for the slaves blaming Moses and his words as being an instigation to more suffering. It does get worse before it gets better, but it does get better.

The church in every generation faces controversy over certain topics that seem to consume the culture and the society in which it finds itself. Today our controversies in the church tend to revolve around sexuality. There is nothing more appealing to the masses than a little controversy that is steeped in sexuality. Back in the day of Paul, the primary controversy of the church had to do with theology. How much does someone who did not grow up Jewish, so a gentile, need to become Jewish once they accepted Jesus as Lord? That was the central question of the day.

A little about Paul, he does explain a bit about himself in Galatians. He was trained as a Pharisee and went to the best Pharisaical schools around. Once he finished school he became a Pharisee himself and was put in charge of pursuing Christians and tracking them down and bringing them to Jerusalem in order that they might be tried and killed. You see Christians in this early time period were just Jews for the most part who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. So this was an inhouse problem. Take care of your problems in house, get rid of those Jewish believers in Jesus. There was no such thing, or it was very rare, for there to be a believer in Jesus who was not Jewish, because so much of what Jesus did was bring about the completion of the prophecy of the Messiah, which was Jewish.

But when Paul is converted on the road to Damascus and becomes a believer himself, well, then things start to go sideways for those in the synagogue. Paul felt called to bring the Gospel of Jesus to the gentiles, to those who grew up secular, for those who grew up influenced by Greek thought. Once they come to know Jesus and give their life over to Jesus did they have to get circumcised and follow the law? Galatians is a long treatise by Paul in explaining his answer to that question which was simply: NO! Once a person, no matter if they are Jewish or gentile, comes to know Jesus personally as Lord and Savior they do not then need to become Jewish.

This whole matter is discussed and decided at the great apostolic convention which we find in Acts 15. Circumcision was not then required for gentile believers. While the decision was made we see even here with Paul’s letter to the Galatians that it wasn’t follower universally. There was still a vestige of people who wanted gentiles to become Jewish, or felt guilty about it, including Peter himself, whom Paul castigates.

As you read through the blessings that Joseph gives to his children do you hear the words of Joshua (made up) when God says to him: “As I was with Moses I shall also be with you.” Yes, God was with Moses in very clear and powerful ways. But the people of God still turned their back and treated him atrociously. You can almost hear Joshua say, Lord, I actually want you to be with me a little more than you were with Moses. Can you get these people to obey you and me as I lead them? Here as you read Joseph’s blessing can you almost hear his children say with a blessing like that who needs a cursing? It seems almost like each person, except for Joseph and a few others, were given castigations against what they had done and saddled for life with their mistakes that were a part of their forever profile.

Jacob, or Israel, dies after the blessing and the brothers are worried now that dad is gone that Joseph is going to turn on them. After all, did he really forgive us? Well, it turns out he really did forgive them and he repeats the most powerful part of this story which in turn becomes the most powerful part of all of our stories: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.” Genesis 50:20. What a great way to end the Joseph story, which is really the Israel story because from here the nation will be created and the people of God will find their way forward.

When Jesus walked on the face of this earth so much of what he said and did came directly from the Old Testament. It is almost as if every word that he uttered were actually Scriptures that were applicable to whatever life situation in which he found himself. In Psalm 31 we read the words: “Into your hand I commit my spirit” which is a direct quote from when Jesus was on the cross and gave up his last breath. There is tremendous overlap which is a reminder to us to view Scripture seriously and in light of what God has done for us.

It is within these scenes of the story of Jacob where we see the hand of God at work in a way that should be didactic to us. Look at 45:8 where Joseph tells his brothers it is not you who sold me here, but it was God so that a heritage could be established for my father’s house. The evil that the brothers did was turned into the deciding factor for how God was going to save His people as the years progressed. Can you imagine Joseph being able to not only forgive his brothers but to actually place them in a position where they were given the choicest land and given an opportunity to not only survive but to thrive? This is what happened.

In no way is this meant to justify sin. What the brothers did was not only sinful but also cruel and vicious. Let’s look at a real life example. The Holocaust was one of the most horrific modern day events. The cruelty and the evil that it took to allow that to happen and to make that happen is unfathomable in our eyes. But as a result of this historical evil it most probably launched the world opinion in order to create a land for the people of Israel in the modern day. The nation of Israel was created by the United Nations in large part because of the atrocities that the Jewish people experienced. It is almost like a modern day Joseph story. Joseph was able to reign over Egypt and so provide a home for his family because of the evil under which he was subjugated.

Now, unfortunately, not every people group who has experienced wrong and genocide gets their own land or is rewarded later in history. There should always be some kind of historical recompense for those who have suffered. We have our own story of suffering and subjugating people within our own country. We started with the Native Americans whose land we took. We moved on to the African whom we enslaved. All of this is not ancient history, it is our history and we have not done that which is righteous as a result, and we should. We still have time.

We find ourselves today entering the weekend with two of the most powerful and arguably most important Scriptures that we have read so far. The story of Joseph is easily applied to our everyday lives as we reflect upon how God is able to do the impossible in our lives when things seem so out of hand and out of control. Think of what Joseph had to overcome and yet each step along the way he tells anyone who would listen: it isn’t me, it is the Lord who is able to do all things. From a favored child to a brother about to be slaughtered in a pit. From a slave to the head of a household. From a prisoner long forgotten, to the head of the most powerful country in the world. The changes Joseph experiences reminds us that nothing is beyond God’s ability to redeem and transform into His purposes. What impossible situation is confronting you today? God is able to take it and make it something that works into your and His purposes. This becomes even more clear and is said in black and white later in this story as Joseph’s brothers come and the entire nation is saved because Joseph finds himself in the position in which he is because of the evil that his brothers did to him. But as a result Israel is able to be saved. It is to our advantage to follow Jesus knowing that we believe in the end of the story and so our present life will be based upon the ending which is our redemption. Then all things become possible.

The story of Jesus’ resurrection in John is filled with details and stories that none of the other Gospels have. The rehabilitation of Peter is crucial for anyone who has lived life in such a way that they think that they are beyond God’s saving. Can you think of doing anything worse than denying God right in the presence and in the face of Jesus? Now, of course God is always present, and anytime we do anything God is in our midst. But Peter denies Jesus and then goes back to fishing assuming that his journey with Jesus as a disciple and a follower is over. But Jesus returns and rehabilitates him as he does for each one of us. We are never beyond God’s redemption just as our life situation can never be beyond God’s redemption. This is the joy that we have in our salvation in Jesus.