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He led them out of their slavery. He did wonderful things, setting up God-signs all through Egypt, down at the Red Sea, and out in the wilderness for forty years.
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This is the Moses who said to his congregation, 'God will raise up a prophet just like me from your descendants.'
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This is the Moses who stood between the angel speaking at Sinai and your fathers assembled in the wilderness and took the life-giving words given to him and handed them over to us,
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words our fathers would have nothing to do with.
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whining to Aaron, 'Make us gods we can see and follow. This Moses who got us out here miles from nowhere - who knows what's happened to him!'
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That was the time when they made a calf-idol, brought sacrifices to it, and congratulated each other on the wonderful religious program they had put together.
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"God wasn't at all pleased; but he let them do it their way, worship every new god that came down the pike - and live with the consequences, consequences described by the prophet Amos: Did you bring me offerings of animals and grains those forty wilderness years, O Israel?
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Hardly. You were too busy building shrines to war gods, to sex goddesses, Worshiping them with all your might. That's why I put you in exile in Babylon.
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"And all this time our ancestors had a tent shrine for true worship, made to the exact specifications God provided Moses.
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They had it with them as they followed Joshua, when God cleared the land of pagans, and still had it right down to the time of David.
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David asked God for a permanent place for worship.