The Omniscience of God
Big Idea: God knows everything—past, present, future, and possible—perfectly and personally, offering wisdom, justice, and deep care for us.
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! Please remember and repeat the following sequence: 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 say we can hold about seven items in our memory at once, plus or minus 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? In today's information age, it's clear that no one can know even a small fraction of everything there is to learn. We're often forced to rely on someone else's knowledge. When getting a prescription filled, you rely on the pharmacist's expertise to avoid medicine mix-ups. 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 discussed God's omnipotence (unlimited power) and omnipresence (being present everywhere), and now we will examine God's omniscience (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.
Four Facts About God's Omniscience
I'd like to tell you four facts about God's omniscience. If we understand these four facts, we will have a greater sense of confidence as we live.
The first fact is this:
God's omniscience is unlearned.
In Isaiah 40:13-14, the prophet reminds us of a crucial piece of information:
Who has understood the mind of the LORD, or instructed him as his counselor? 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? (Isaiah 40:13-14)
Let me say it plainly: 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 has attended school for twenty years of his life. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. With God, all knowledge—past, present, and future—is already known. 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)
God's omniscience is unlearned. Here's a second fact about God's omniscience:
God's omniscience is comprehensive.
The writer of Hebrews said this:
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. (Hebrews 4:13)
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:
< ...but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 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. (1 Corinthians 2:10-11)
God knows everything. Matthew 10:30 tells us: "And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered" (Matthew 10:30). For some people, that's an easy count. If God knows something as small as your hair count, he also understands your feelings, desires, and personality. He knows everything about you comprehensively.
"The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good" (Proverbs 15:3). 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: "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:
For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.
O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. (Psalms 139:1-2)
God looks into 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. In Matthew 11:21, Jesus mentioned that Tyre and Sidon would have repented if they had witnessed his miracles.
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. Some believe that if General Stonewall Jackson had not died early in the Civil War, he could have helped the Confederacy win. It has been suggested that if Adolf Hitler had listened to Jewish scientists in Germany, he could have developed the atomic bomb first and taken over 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.
God's omniscience is unlearned and comprehensive. Here's a third fact about God's omniscience:
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.
God's omniscience is unlearned, comprehensive, and instantaneious. Let me tell you one last thing about God's omniscience:
God's omniscience is personal.
God knows us individually. 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.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. (Psalms 139:3-4)
One day, Jesus said: When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false." (John 1:47)
The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)
God knows your motives; he knows your heart. For the unbeliever, what a terror! People can't hide from God. Their sins are revealed. 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 an all-knowing God who had limitless choices. He knew exactly what he was doing when he created you. You're no accident. Nothing about you is an afterthought.
As David says: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain" (Psalms 139:6).
God knows you. He knows everything about you. Does that give you confidence?
Adapted in part from Our God is Awesome by Tony Evans
