Dear Parents, The tabernacle was complete. God now had a place where His glory could dwell without causing the Israelites to fear death. God had given His people laws from the mountain, and He gave them more rules for living and worshiping Him in the tabernacle. These rules are recorded in the Book of Leviticus. The reasoning behind Leviticus can be found in Leviticus 19:2: “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.” In Leviticus 17:11, God set apart the blood of a creature as the means for making atonement. This answers the question, “Why did Jesus have to die?” God’s requirement for the forgiveness of sins was the shedding of ...

Read More

Dear Parents, God led His people into the wilderness, but He did not leave them there alone. The Lord was with His people. He provided meat, bread, and water. He guided them to Mount Sinai, where He met with their leader, Moses. The Lord came down on the mountain in fire, and He spoke through thunder. The Israelites could not have ignored His presence. But when Moses went up on the mountain and did not return for several weeks, the Israelites felt abandoned. They appealed to Moses’ brother, Aaron: “Come, make gods for us who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we don’t know what has ...

Read More

Dear Parents, As the rescued people of Israel traveled toward the promised land, God gave them laws to guide them in how to live and to help them understand God’s perfect holiness. God’s laws covered every part of their lives and were summed up in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments can be grouped into two categories: The first four laws deal with a person’s relationship with God and the last six laws deal with a person’s relationship with others. God did not give laws for the sake of giving laws; the laws had a purpose. Not only did they show what righteous living looks like, they were part of the covenant God made with Israel, ...

Read More

Dear Parents, Moses and the Israelites had experienced a harrowing journey from Egypt into the wilderness. They made their way toward Midian, a land familiar to Moses. As a young man, Moses had fled from Egypt to Midian after he killed an Egyptian. (See Ex. 2:11-15.) Exodus 2 describes Moses’ first interaction with Jethro (also referred to as Reuel, Ex. 2:18), the priest of Midian. Moses rescued Jethro’s seven daughters from some shepherds at a well and drew water for their sheep. Jethro invited Moses to dinner. Moses stayed with Jethro and married his daughter Zipporah. Moses and Zipporah had two sons. Moses’ family had been staying with ...

Read More

Dear Parents, The crossing of the Red Sea is an event in history that displays God’s grace, remembered for generations as God’s mighty redemptive act. God had clearly shown His power in Egypt through the plagues; now He was about to do something even greater. Instead of leading the Israelites into the wilderness, God instructed Moses to turn back so that the Egyptians would think they were lost. God purposefully hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he would pursue the Israelites. Why? “Then I will receive glory by means of Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD” (Ex. 14:4). Imagine the fear the Israel...

Read More

Dear Parents, Last week, kids learned about Moses’ birth and his calling. God had a plan to rescue the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. He chose and called Moses for the task and allowed Moses’ brother, Aaron, to help him. Moses and Aaron faced a huge obstacle in leading the Israelites out of Egypt, and his name was Pharaoh. Pharaoh did not recognize the Lord’s authority: “Who is the LORD that I should obey him by letting Israel go?” (Ex. 5:2) Pharaoh hardened his heart against the Lord, but all of this fit into God’s plan to reveal to Pharaoh—and all of Egypt—who He is. First, God sent a series of plagues that wrecked ...

Read More