From antiquity, humans across the globe have reasoned their way to the conclusion that there is a being operating behind the universe: wildly powerful, bodiless, transcendent.  For most of these philosophers, this being could be inferred through arguments, but never truly known.  This kind of being is of such a kind that it can never be truly approached.  How can we know something that transcends all categories, something that exists outside of the chain of cause and effect?  What means could we use to touch what has no body?  It was for this reason that Aristotle referred to this entity in entirely impersonal terms: the unmoved Mover.  Another philosopher, John Hick, refers to it, with some changes, merely as The Real.

Christians would agree with the philosophers that such a being exists, and that the chasm between us cannot be crossed by us.  But in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures we encounter the scandalous possibility that the Real, the One, the Mover could cross the chasm himself.  We cannot find out the things of God, but he can make them known.  He can even, as the self-determining Creator, give us his Name.

Exodus is the story of God bridging the chasm.  It is the story of one nation's encounter with the living Spirit who exists behind all things.  It is the story of God's gracious choice to give himself to a people who will know him and worship him and bring the knowledge of him to the nations.  It is the story of the God of redemption, the God who brings together a people, and the God who dwells with us.  

This fall, join us as we come together around a survey of Exodus, to worship God for all he is, and to lift up the Name of the Lord as those who have been given mercy to know his Name.  May we grow as his people and bring his Name to the nations.