In the first garden Adam and Eve by their actions said to God, in effect, Not what You will but what we will and brought upon all humanity a reign of sin and death. In Gethsemane, the second garden, Jesus prays Not what I will but what You will, reversing the pattern of rebellion and setting in motion a sequence of events to defeat death itself!

Whatever story you believe about the world shapes the way you live in the world. Jesus’ death on the cross gives us a new story to shape our lives in this world.

Even though we live in a morally relativistic culture, the problem of evil is still a problem. What do we do with that? Does God have a solution? The wilderness temptation of Jesus shows us.

There’s something about life in this world that always leaves us wanting more, but we feel cut off from it. Why is that, and what do we do with it? The big story of the Bible explains why we feel cut off and what God does about it.

We can find life and hope under the reign of the one true King.

God led Israel in the wilderness for 40 years. Why? Because the wilderness is a place of suffering. And suffering is one of the main ways, if not the main way, you meet God.

It’s easy to think of God’s law as an arbitrary set of rules we must obey to get God to love us. But this passage shows us it’s actually a picture of what it looks like to live inside the story of what God is already doing in our lives and the world.

Whatever story you believe about the world shapes your life in the world. The Bible gives us a story that sets us free and transforms us. The Exodus story shows us how.