“Throughout Israel’s history, God’s purpose was that Israel should know him. This one of the most moving notes in biblical theology: the transcendent Creator, the only self-existent Being in the universe, wants his creatures to know him. Why? Because only through the knowledge of him is there any hope of our reaching the possibilities for which we were created. Thus in the Exodus God says that it is all in order that they may know him. Thus it was also in the establishment of Israel in the promised land, the return from exile, in the coming of Messiah, and now here in the culmination of all things at the end of the age. What is it that God’s activity on behalf of his people will teach? That he is the Savior, the Redeemer! All creation shouts of its Creator, of his beauty, his order, his power, and his truth. But what of God when his creatures have corrupted their way and turned his beauty to ugliness, his order to chaos, his power to oppression, and his truth to lies? Will he abandon us to our well-deserved fates? No, he will not. God is not only the Creator- he is the Savior… God, the Mighty One of Jacob…reaches out to us and offers us the means in the Servant-Messiah of transcending sin, failure, guilt, and shame.” John N. Oswalt
