Small Steps with God

Flag before publishing: the raw transcript cites "Exodus 28" for the Ten Commandments passage, that's actually Exodus 20. I've corrected it in the cleaned transcript and the notes below, but worth double-checking your script. I grew up with a rules-heavy version of Sabbath, the kind where you couldn't turn a light switch on or even turn the pages of a book. This episode is me tracing how Sabbath actually got started in Genesis, how it became a command, and how it turned into the exhausting rulebook I remember from childhood, and what Jesus was actually restoring when He pushed back on it. REST BUILT INTO CREATION, NOT A FIX FOR THE FALL Genesis 2:2–3 shows God resting on the seventh day, not because He was tired, but as part of the original design. Rest predates sin. It was never a patch for human weakness. A TEST BEFORE IT WAS A COMMAND In Exodus 16, Sabbath shows up first as a trust exercise with the manna. Can Israel believe God provided enough on day six that they don't have to keep grinding on day seven? It's a test of trust before it's ever written down as a rule. TWO REASONS FOR THE SAME COMMAND Exodus 20 ties Sabbath to creation. Deuteronomy 5 ties it to being rescued from slavery in Egypt. Both reasons are valid, and Deuteronomy adds that the rest extends to servants, animals, and foreigners, not just the head of the household. HOW A TRUST EXERCISE BECAME 39 CATEGORIES After the exile, when Nehemiah found people back to ignoring Sabbath, the guardrails got tighter and tighter, eventually landing on 39 categories of forbidden labor drawn from the tabernacle-building instructions sitting next to the Sabbath command in Exodus. WHAT JESUS WAS ACTUALLY RESTORING When Jesus heals on the Sabbath and lets His disciples pick grain, He's not throwing out the command. He's restoring its purpose: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Mercy had gotten buried under the fence built to protect it. REST AS TRUST, NOT A RULEBOOK Paul in Colossians 2 and Hebrews 4 point past the day itself to the rest Jesus makes possible. The takeaway isn't a new list of do's and don'ts. It's trusting that six days of work is enough, and actually stopping. I still don't have this fully figured out for myself, and I say that honestly in the episode. But the invitation is the same for me as it is for you: not a rulebook, an actual rest. If Sabbath means something different to you now than it used to, I'd love to hear about it. Email me at [email protected], or find everything at jillfromthenorthwoods.com.Jill’s Linkshttps://jillfromthenorthwoods.com/ - Find my podcasts, videos, downloads and ways to contact mehttps://www.youtube.com/@smallstepswithgodhttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/smallstepspodhttps://x.com/NorthWoodsJillEmail the podcast at [email protected]“Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.”Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.“The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® http://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved”.Bible Maps and images used with permission from https://www.bible.ca/maps/ or https://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/bj-ot-world/Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software. Free for non-commercial use by individuals or organizations. May be presented before live audiences; may be posted on social media; may be re-distributed. May not be used commercially. May not be modified or included in published works without permission; contact [email protected]. Attribute as: “Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software ()”.By choosing to watch this video or listen to this podcast, you acknowledge that you are doing so of your own free will. The content shared here reflects personal study, faith perspective, and opinions and is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I am not a licensed pastor, seminary-trained theologian, or biblical scholar. Any scriptural interpretation, commentary, or reflections offered should not be considered a substitute for guidance from your own pastor, church body, or faith community. Theological understanding is a lifelong journey — I encourage you to study alongside your own tradition and trusted spiritual leaders. You are solely responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on this content.

I've been sitting with an uncomfortable question this week: if I really believe every person carries the image of God, does that change who I'm willing to be patient with? This episode doesn't tie up neatly, and I don't think it's supposed to. **The King's Statue, Reimagined** In the ancient world, a king would set up a statue of himself in places he ruled but couldn't personally live in. That statue wasn't decoration. It stood in for him. Genesis borrows that exact idea to describe what it means for us to be made in God's image, and it changes what "image bearer" actually means. **No One Is Exempt** Genesis doesn't reserve the image of God for kings, scholars, or any special class. It's everyone, which was radical for its time. Every person you interact with today, including the ones who are difficult on purpose, carries that same standing. **You Were Never a Mistake** Even if you grew up hearing you were an accident or a burden, every soul was known before the beginning. That's not just a nice thought about self-worth. It's meant to hold up under the hardest version of that question. **Jesus and the People We'd Rather Skip** Jesus tied this directly to how we treat the people we're most tempted to walk past, the same idea behind the Good Samaritan story. It's not a vague spiritual metaphor. It's aimed at specific people in your specific life. **Mercy That Doesn't Excuse the Wrong** Believing someone carries the image of God doesn't mean their actions get erased or that consequences disappear. I try to untangle that balance carefully here, because it's easy to swing too far in either direction. The takeaway I keep coming back to: the next person you interact with today is carrying something that isn't yours to dismiss, and neither are you. Small steps, but not small stakes. You can find everything I do at jillfromthenorthwoods.com, and you can reach me directly at [email protected]’s Linkshttps://jillfromthenorthwoods.com/ - Find my podcasts, videos, downloads and ways to contact mehttps://www.youtube.com/@smallstepswithgodhttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/smallstepspodhttps://x.com/NorthWoodsJillEmail the podcast at [email protected]“Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.”Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.“The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® http://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved”.Bible Maps and images used with permission from https://www.bible.ca/maps/ or https://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/bj-ot-world/Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software. Free for non-commercial use by individuals or organizations. May be presented before live audiences; may be posted on social media; may be re-distributed. May not be used commercially. May not be modified or included in published works without permission; contact [email protected]. Attribute as: “Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software ()”.By choosing to watch this video or listen to this podcast, you acknowledge that you are doing so of your own free will. The content shared here reflects personal study, faith perspective, and opinions and is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I am not a licensed pastor, seminary-trained theologian, or biblical scholar. Any scriptural interpretation, commentary, or reflections offered should not be considered a substitute for guidance from your own pastor, church body, or faith community. Theological understanding is a lifelong journey — I encourage you to study alongside your own tradition and trusted spiritual leaders. You are solely responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on this content.

We just closed the entire New Testament with the last word of Revelation, and now we’re doing something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: starting the Old Testament. But we’re not doing it the same way. Instead of walking chapter by chapter the way we did through the Gospels and the epistles, we’re going story by story, because that’s how the Old Testament is actually built. Here’s what’s ahead as we open Genesis.Why story by story instead of verse by verse. The New Testament gave us clear letters written to clear audiences at clear moments. The Old Testament doesn’t work that way. So as we move through Genesis and beyond, we’ll follow people, places, and events, and take however many episodes each story needs, whether that’s Moses at the Red Sea or the golden calf at Sinai.Who wrote Genesis, and when. I hold to Mosaic authorship. Genesis never names its author, but Scripture consistently points to Moses across all five books, and Jesus himself quotes Genesis as Mosaic. I also address the documentary hypothesis (the J, E, D, P theory) and why I don’t find it persuasive against the coherence of the text itself.The toledot structure. Genesis is built around a repeated Hebrew phrase, toledot, “these are the generations,” that shows up roughly ten times and marks each transition to a new family line. It’s the skeleton of the whole book, not a patchwork of unrelated old stories.Why the timing matters. Moses wasn’t writing ancient history for its own sake. He was writing to a specific generation, camped on the edge of a land they hadn’t entered yet, freshly out of 400 years of slavery and trying to become a nation for the first time. Genesis answers the question hanging over that whole camp: why us, and why this land?Two audiences, not one. The obvious audience is the Exodus generation and their children. But the first eleven chapters, creation, the fall, the flood, Babel, aren’t about Israel at all. They’re about humanity as a whole, and that matters because Israel needed to understand the condition of the whole human race before they could understand why they were chosen out of it.Where we’re headed. From here we’ll walk through creation, Eden, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Babel, and then the four generations of promise: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Every step narrows from the whole universe down to one family, and every step is God working out the same promise: descendants, land, blessing, and eventually a Messiah.If there’s one question this whole book is answering, it’s “who.” Who made everything. Who made the rescue plan. Who kept every promise. Genesis 1 starts next time.Jill’s Linkshttps://jillfromthenorthwoods.com/ - Find my podcasts, videos, downloads and ways to contact mehttps://www.youtube.com/@smallstepswithgodhttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/smallstepspodhttps://x.com/NorthWoodsJillEmail the podcast at [email protected]“Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.”Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.“The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® http://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved”.Bible Maps and images used with permission from https://www.bible.ca/maps/ or https://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/bj-ot-world/Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software. Free for non-commercial use by individuals or organizations. May be presented before live audiences; may be posted on social media; may be re-distributed. May not be used commercially. May not be modified or included in published works without permission; contact [email protected]. Attribute as: “Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software ()”.By choosing to watch this video or listen to this podcast, you acknowledge that you are doing so of your own free will. The content shared here reflects personal study, faith perspective, and opinions and is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I am not a licensed pastor, seminary-trained theologian, or biblical scholar. Any scriptural interpretation, commentary, or reflections offered should not be considered a substitute for guidance from your own pastor, church body, or faith community. Theological understanding is a lifelong journey — I encourage you to study alongside your own tradition and trusted spiritual leaders. You are solely responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on this content.

Thirty-nine books, more than thirty authors, a thousand years of history, and somehow it’s one story. If you handed that pile of material to anyone cold, you’d expect a mess. Instead you get the Old Testament: one God, one promise made early and kept slowly across kings, shepherds, prophets, and exiles who mostly never knew each other. Before we start Genesis in September, I wanted to step back and show you the shape of the whole thing, because once you see the shape, every individual story sits inside it a lot more clearly.The Old Testament moves in four distinct movements, not just 39 random books. The Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) lays the foundation: who God is, who we are, and how one family was chosen to carry His promise forward. The History (Joshua through Esther) shows that covenant getting lived out messily in real time, through conquest, failure, monarchy, exile, and eventually return.Wisdom and Poetry steps outside the timeline entirely. Job wrestles with suffering that doesn’t make sense, Psalms gives you a vocabulary for praise and lament alike, Proverbs hands you practical daily wisdom, and Song of Songs uses marriage as an image for Israel’s relationship with God — a thread that runs through both testaments.The Prophets are God’s covenant lawyers, seventeen books calling His people back from drifting, warning honestly about judgment, and always leaving the door open with a promise of restoration and a coming Messiah. “Major” and “minor” prophets refers only to the length of the book, not its importance.The through-line across all four sections is promise and faithfulness. God makes the promise in Genesis, humanity keeps failing to keep its end, and God keeps showing up anyway. That’s not a New Testament idea grafted backward — it’s the entire architecture the New Testament completes.Most of us live our own faith the way we read the Old Testament with no sense of its shape: one isolated day at a time, wondering why our own history feels more like the cycle of Judges than a straight line to victory. It was never supposed to be a straight line. Wherever you’re at right now, whether it feels like a Law season, a History season, a Wisdom season, or a Prophets season, that’s the most biblical place to be.Starting in September, we begin Genesis, story by story instead of chapter by chapter, so the pieces stay connected instead of getting scattered.Jill’s Linkshttps://jillfromthenorthwoods.com/ - Find my podcasts, videos, downloads and ways to contact mehttps://www.youtube.com/@smallstepswithgodhttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/smallstepspodhttps://x.com/NorthWoodsJillEmail the podcast at [email protected]“Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.”Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.“The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® http://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved”.Bible Maps and images used with permission from https://www.bible.ca/maps/ or https://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/bj-ot-world/Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software. Free for non-commercial use by individuals or organizations. May be presented before live audiences; may be posted on social media; may be re-distributed. May not be used commercially. May not be modified or included in published works without permission; contact [email protected]. Attribute as: “Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software ()”.By choosing to watch this video or listen to this podcast, you acknowledge that you are doing so of your own free will. The content shared here reflects personal study, faith perspective, and opinions and is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I am not a licensed pastor, seminary-trained theologian, or biblical scholar. Any scriptural interpretation, commentary, or reflections offered should not be considered a substitute for guidance from your own pastor, church body, or faith community. Theological understanding is a lifelong journey — I encourage you to study alongside your own tradition and trusted spiritual leaders. You are solely responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on this content.

Twenty-seven books, written by eight different men, fishermen, a doctor, a tax collector, a rabbi-turned-church-planter, and the half brother of Jesus who didn’t even believe in him until after the resurrection, across fifty years and three continents, without any of them meeting to compare notes. If I told you that somehow adds up to one unified story, you’d think I was exaggerating. I’m not. As we close out our walk through the New Testament and get ready to start Genesis, this episode is a birds-eye flight over everything we’ve covered: the shape of the books, the ground the story covers, and why we’re heading back to the beginning next.The Shape: Four ActsThe New Testament moves through four acts: the Gospels, showing four different angles on who Jesus is; Acts, the single book of pure narrative history describing a terrified handful of disciples becoming a movement that crossed the Roman Empire in one generation; the Epistles, twenty-two real letters to real churches with real problems, thirteen of them from Paul alone; and Revelation, the apocalyptic close that tells persecuted churches one thing above all, Christ wins.Paul, the Unlikely Author of Half the New TestamentPaul wrote roughly thirteen of the twenty-seven books by himself, meaning half the New Testament came from a man who spent the first part of his life trying to destroy the church before spending the second part building it.The Ground: From Bethlehem to RomeThe story starts in Bethlehem, a village so small the prophet Micah had to point it out by name, moves through Galilee, the backwoods fishing region nobody expected much from, and lands in Jerusalem for the trials, the cross, and the empty tomb. After Acts, the map blows wide open as the apostles carry the gospel to Antioch, Cyprus, Galatia, Macedonia, Greece, and Rome, and church tradition carries some of them even further, to India, England, and Spain.Mercy Before JudgmentThe two threads that stood out to me most as we finished Revelation: every day we’re given is God’s mercy, one more opportunity to come back to Christ before that door closes, and Revelation shows plainly what happens once it does.Why We’re Going Back to GenesisNone of what we’ve just walked through makes sense without the Old Testament. The king in Matthew was promised in Isaiah, the suffering servant in Mark was already there, the Lamb in Revelation was pictured on the altar in Leviticus, and the very first covenant was made the night God covered Adam and Eve’s shame. Starting after Labor Day, we head into Genesis, moving story by story instead of chapter by chapter.The New Testament answers two questions: what does God require of us, and what has God done because we can’t meet it. Now we go back to where the answer to both first began to unfold.Jill’s Linkshttps://jillfromthenorthwoods.com/ - Find my podcasts, videos, downloads and ways to contact mehttps://www.youtube.com/@smallstepswithgodhttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/smallstepspodhttps://x.com/NorthWoodsJillEmail the podcast at [email protected]“Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.”Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.“The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® http://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved”.Bible Maps and images used with permission from https://www.bible.ca/maps/ or https://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/bj-ot-world/Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software. Free for non-commercial use by individuals or organizations. May be presented before live audiences; may be posted on social media; may be re-distributed. May not be used commercially. May not be modified or included in published works without permission; contact [email protected]. Attribute as: “Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software ()”.By choosing to watch this video or listen to this podcast, you acknowledge that you are doing so of your own free will. The content shared here reflects personal experiences, faith journey, and opinions and is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I am not a licensed pastor, theologian, or counselor. Any spiritual reflections, devotional thoughts, or suggestions offered should not be considered a substitute for guidance from your own pastor, faith community, or professional mental health provider. You are solely responsible for any decisions or actions you take based on this content.