Family provides community, identity, and shared values.
In the book of Exodus, God frees Israel from slavery to Egypt. But they are not left as orphans. Rather, the redeemed are made into a new family—God’s family. In Freed to be God’s Family, Mark R. Glanville argues that the central motif of Exodus is community. God wants a healthy, dynamic relationship with the redeemed. As family members, Israel is called to learn God’s ways and reflect God’s character to the world.
Freed to be God’s Family is a concise and accessible guide to the message and themes of Exodus. Each chapter keeps the big picture central and provides probing questions for reflection and discussion.
Glanville examines Exodus’s call to believers to form “kingdom communities” that restore neighborhoods. Freed to Be God’s Family explores biblical leadership models that empower the marginalized. Readers will discover how God’s holiness includes social justice and community-building. Glanville’s passion for discipleship and neighborhood investment shines through on every page. This study provides excellent resources for churches to impact their neighborhoods for God’s kingdom.
–Lynn Cohick, Provost, Northern Seminary
Forget about Charlton Heston. Mark Glanville shows how Exodus is about more than just Israel’s escape from Egypt. It is a radical narrative about the creation of a completely different kind of society, declaring their allegiance to a whole new kind of King. Mark’s excellent analysis of the biblical text will help shape the missional imagination of your church and equip you to live as a sign to God’s magnificent reign.
–Michael Frost, Founding Director of the Tinsley Institute, Morling College
Mark Glanville brings together everything you want in a biblical interpreter: he is scholarly, passionate, churchly, justice-hungry, wise and kind, at home equally in the classroom, the pulpit, and the streets. This book made Exodus sing for me again.
–Jason Byassee, Butler Chair in Homiletics and Biblical Interpretation, Vancouver School of Theology
It is always refreshing to look at a familiar biblical book through different lenses. Mark Glanville helps us enter creatively into the foundational epic of Israel’s emergence out of dehumanising slavery into a community of covenant kinship—the family of God—with all the blessings and responsibilities of that identity. And since their story is our story, it is a book with powerful lessons for us who claim the same identity in the Messiah Jesus, and thus inherit the same missional challenge.
–Christopher J.H. Wright, author of Exodus: The Story of God Bible Commentary
God’s Word is transformative. It is this conviction which gives the Transformative Word series its name and its unique character. Series Editor Craig G. Bartholomew has worked alongside authors from around the world to identify a key theme in each book of the Bible, and each volume provides careful Biblical exegesis centered on that gripping theme. The result is an engaging, accessible thematic exploration of a biblical book, poised to offer you new and refreshing insights.
Learn more about the other titles in this series.
Mark R. Glanville, is associate professor of pastoral theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and author of Adopting the Stranger as Kindred in Deuteronomy. Mark has also pastored for over a decade in Canada and Australia.