Today's passage of Scripture is Joshua 23:3 which reads: "And ye have seen all that the Lord your God hath done unto all these nations because of you; for the Lord your God is he that hath fought for you."

Today's words from a theologian are from Stanley Hauerwas. He said: "To be a Christian means you become a part of the most significant story the world has ever heard. You don't become part of that without an ongoing questioning of what it means to become part of that."

In addition to being all-powerful and everywhere-present, God is all-knowing, an attribute known as omniscience. This means he has perfect and eternal knowledge of all things. He cannot learn anything because he has always known everything. He also knows all things that could have happened but did not. An interesting biblical illustration is in 1 Samuel 23:10-13, where God tells David what would happen if King Saul came to a certain city looking for David. As it turns out, Saul never came and those things never happened. God knows what would have happened if ... (you had married so-and-so!).

...

When Jacob, his sons, and their families descended into Egypt, it was a large family that was migrating to Egypt; however, as the book of Exodus opens, the family of Jacob has grown into a nation. This nation will be the key instrument of God's revelation to humanity. When the Hyksos people and later the Egyptians oppressed Israel, God determined to bring the Israelites out of bondage. In Exodus 12, at the climax of the plagues, God sent the death angel through Egypt. Whoever had applied lamb's blood to the doorposts and above the doorways of their houses was redeemed—it took an act of faith to apply the blood to the house. This great act of delivering Israel from Egypt foreshadowed a greater act of redemption that God would accomplish through a descendant of Jacob—the Messiah. God led redeemed Israel down to Sinai, where He entered into a covenant with the nation. He was setting the Israelites apart as a special people for Himself. Israel became the mediator of God's theocratic kingdom on earth through the Mosaic covenant.

...