The Omniscience of God
- an older man once summoned his courage, and asked an older lady to marry him
- he was thrilled when she answered, "Yes"
- the next morning, however, he had to phone her
- "I remember asking you to marry me," he said, "but for the life of me, I can't remember what you said"
- "I'm so glad you called," she replied. "I remember saying yes to you, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember the question!"
- human knowledge and memory is very limited indeed
- last week, someone reminded us that we forget 95% of what we hear after 72 hours
- I'm going to illustrate how limited our knowledge is by giving you a little quiz
- and don't worry - it doesn't have to do with last week's sermon!
- let me give you a series of letters and numbers, and ask you to remember and repeat them after a few seconds:
- I'll go slowly: W P C 4 F T G I C W T 5
- okay, can anyone here repeat the twelve letters and numbers I just gave you?
- psychologists tell us that at a given time, we are only able to load and store seven items in our memory, give or take two
- I think you'll agree that a memory capacity of five to nine items is a very limited memory capacity indeed!
- we also have problems with retrieval
- have you ever experienced "the tip of the tongue" phenomenon?
- and in this age of information explosion, we all recognize that no single person is capable of knowing even a small percentage of all there is to know
- we're often forced to rely on someone else's knowledge
- for instance, when you go to get a prescription filled, you depend on the fact that the pharmacist knows what he's doing and that he doesn't confuse medicines
- we wouldn't know
- when we get on an airplane, we're trusting that the pilot knows how to fly a plane - or else we're in trouble
- we're banking our lives on someone else's knowledge, because ours is so limited
- and that's where God comes in
- we've already looked at God's omnipotence (his unlimited power) and God's omnipresence (God's presence everywhere), and now it's time to look at God's omniscience (his unlimited knowledge)
- let me tell you: God knows all things
- there is absolutely nothing that God does not know
- there is no database or library outside of God's knowledge
- and God never has to rely on anyone but himself for knowledge
- I'd like to tell you four things about God's omniscience
- if we understand these four things, we will have a greater sense of confidence as we live
- the first thing is this:
- GOD'S OMNISCIENCE IS UNLEARNED
- it's intuitive
- in Isaiah 40:13-14, the prophet reminds us of a crucial piece of information:
- (Isaiah 40:13) Who has understood the mind of the LORD, or instructed him as his counselor?
- (Isaiah 40:14) Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?
- let me say it plain: where did God go to school?
- nowhere!
- God never had to read, study, and analyze
- God never had to learn what he knows
- God's omniscience is unlearned!
- you're looking at someone who's attended school for twenty years of his life
- the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know
- but with God, everything that can be known, everything that has ever been known, and everything that will ever be known, God already knows
- God's knowledge never changes or grows
- if God ever had to learn something new, it would mean that he wasn't omniscient before
- from all eternity, God knew everything
- Tony Evans writes:
- "All the information in all the libraries of the world; all the data on all the computer chips in the world, including all the chips that have not yet been made; all of this data, God knows completely right now. Because he is infinite, 'His understanding is infinite' (Psalm 147:5)"
- not only is God's omniscience intuitive or unlearned,
- GOD'S OMNISCIENCE IS COMPREHENSIVE
- the writer of Hebrews said this:
- (Hebrews 4:13) Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
- one of the things that amazes me about God is that God fully knows himself
- nobody knows themselves completely, except for God
- this is especially remarkable, because God's own being is infinite or unlimited
- it takes unlimited knowledge to fully know an unlimited being
- Paul writes to the Corinthians:
- (1 Corinthians 2:10) but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
- (1 Corinthians 2:11) For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
- God knows every detail
- Matthew 10:30 tells us:
- (Matthew 10:30) And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
- for some people, that's an easy count
- but think about it: if God knows something as trivial as your hair count, he also knows your feelings, desires, personality
- he knows everything about you comprehensively
- (Proverbs 15:3) The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.
- as we noticed last week, God is in every place, and he sees everything that goes on
- there is nothing hidden from God
- Jesus also tells us in Matthew 10:29
- (Matthew 10:29) Are not two sparrows sold for a penny ? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.
- a preacher once said, "God is the only one who attends a sparrow's funeral"
- according to Psalm 50:11, God knows every bird and creature
- that's unlimited knowledge!
- Psalm 147:4 says that every star in every galaxy has been numbered and named by God
- Psalm 139:12 says that day and night are alike to God - he sees all
- Psalm 90:8 reminds us that our secret sins - those sins we try to keep hidden from others - are known to God
- nothing is hidden from his presence or knowledge
- in the beautiful "omni-psalm" of David (Psalm 139: the psalm that mentions both God's omnipresence and omniscience), David writes:
- (Psalms 139:1) For the director of music. Of David. A psalm. O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
- (Psalms 139:2) You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
- God examines our hearts
- he knows everything about us: our true personalities, our secret fantasies, our hidden motives
- he knows something so small as when you sit, and when you get up
- and here's something that really amazes me
- God knows what could have been!
- a few times in Scripture, God reveals his knowledge of not only things that had been, but things that could have been
- for instance, Jesus said in Matthew 11:21 that Tyre and Sidon would have repented if Jesus' own miracles had been done there
- theologian Wayne Grudem writes:
- "God has made an incredibly complex and vast universe. But there are thousands upon thousands of other variations or kinds of things that God could have created but did not. God's infinite knowledge includes detailed knowledge of what each of those other possible creations would have been like and what would have happened in each of them!"
- God knows everything that was, and everything that could have been
- someone has speculated that if General Stonewall Jackson had not been killed early in the Civil War, he might have led the Confederacy to victory
- another has said that if Adolf Hitler had only listened to the Jewish scientists in Germany, he would have had the atomic bomb first and ruled the world
- we'll never know these things, but God knows
- God knows about your potential history: what if you had been born at a different time, at a different place?
- what if you had married differently?
- God knows what could have been - a great comfort since we know that what did happen, out of all that could have happened, took place according to his will
- here's a third fact about God's knowledge:
- GOD'S OMNISCIENCE IS INSTANTANEOUS
- God is always fully aware of everything
- God's infinite knowledge is never taxed by all that's going on; God's knowledge is not like ours
- he is forever aware of all things
- he doesn't have to access information, like a computer retrieves a file
- all knowledge is directly before God
- if God should wish to tell us the number of grains of sand in the world, or the number of stars in the universe, he wouldn't have to count them all quickly, nor would he have to recall the number to mind
- rather, God knows all things at once
- everything God knows - every fact - is always fully present in his consciousness
- let me tell you one last thing about God's omniscience
- GOD'S OMNISCIENCE IS PERSONAL
- God knows us personally
- as we saw earlier, God knows when we sit down, and when we get up
- he knows the number of hairs on your head
- he knows your personality, and everything there is to know about you
- (Psalms 139:3) You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
- (Psalms 139:4) Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
- one day, Jesus said:
- (John 1:47) When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false."
- (1 Samuel 16:7) The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.
- God knows your motives; he knows your heart
- for the unbeliever, what a terror!
- people can't hide from God
- their sins are exposed
- there's no act that we can commit, no thought we can think, in any corner of the universe, that God won't know about!
- God is the perfect judge, because he knows all the facts
- God knows all the evidence
- Psalm 73:8-11 says that people don't want an omniscient God for this very reason - they don't want God to see all their sin!
- for the believer, what a joy to know that God knows all your sin, yet has chosen to forgive you
- there's nothing that will surprise God in the future - he knows everything
- you can have that forgiveness this morning
- have you cried recently?
- Psalm 56:8 tells us that God bottles up our tears
- he knows every tear you've shed, every situation that has caused you pain
- God's knowledge is personal in another way
- you were created by a God whose knowledge is infinite, and who had an infinite number of options to choose from
- he knew exactly what he was doing when he created you
- you're no accident
- nothing about you is an afterthought
- as David says:
- (Psalms 139:6) Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
- God knows you
- he knows everything about you
- does that give you confidence?
Adapted in part from Our God is Awesome by Tony Evans