How does God change his people? That’s a question to reflect on as you read the first eight books of the Bible this year:
Genesis: He changes us from bad lawyers like Adam and Eve, trying to shift the blame for the inexcusable to anyone besides themselves, or to God Himself, into sinners offering no excuses who throw themselves on the endless mercy of God.
Exodus: He changes us from slaves to our own sin, longing for a deliverance we can neither imagine nor pursue, to being a new people, named for Him, and on the way to a glorious rest. Freedom only comes from God.
Leviticus: He changes us from those determined to prove ourselves right to those who care about what God thinks about how to live and what life even is. Seeing the uniqueness and wonder of God changes us.
Numbers: He takes us from being a failed people who squandered our opportunities and potential to being those for whom he will fulfill all of his good promises. God doesn’t rescue with second best.
Deuteronomy: He makes us who have disregarded, failed, and disobeyed him into those blessed and protected by His law and our relationship to Him. His words don’t limit us; they create us.
Joshua: He takes us from being discouraged by our history, unsettled by change, and facing terrible odds to overwhelming victory. Obedience is powerful, not because we are, but because God is.
Judges: He changes our hearts from choosing self-destructive plans to accepting an unlikely deliverer of God’s choosing. Unlike the dreary sameness and repetition of our sin, God’s rescue never seems to look the same as we expect but is exactly what we need.
Ruth: He takes the despondent sufferer and bereft outsider and makes the place that isn’t home into a home and strangers into family. God does things we can’t understand at the time, bringing us through tragedy into joy.