Nobody
likes a know-it-all—someone who acts like they know everything. That’s why such
people are so annoying—because their attitude is only an act, and everyone
knows it but them. However, I believe everyone desires the sense of security
that comes from knowing that someone really does know it all!
This
morning as we study God’s attributes or characteristics, we will see that God is
the one, true know-it-all! According to the Bible, God knows everything that
can be known. The big, fancy word for this attribute is “omniscience,” a word
that comes into English from Latin. I want to answer a couple of general
questions this morning about what God knows and how He came to know it, then we
will talk about some comforting and challenging implications of this attribute
of God.
1. What does God know?
A. He knows all factual
knowledge about the past, present, and future (1 John 3:20; John 21:17)
This claim
will become obvious as we go on this morning, but the Bible does include a
couple of short but direct statements to this effect. In 1 John 3:20, John
writes about how God’s knowledge is greater than ours, and he concludes the
verse by simply writing, “God knows everything.”
Also, in John 21:17, Jesus is having a conversation with the apostle Peter in
which Jesus repeatedly asks Peter about Peter’s love for him. Finally, Peter
simply says, “Lord, you know everything; you know that
I love you.” Peter was affirming that Jesus is God, and as God, He knows
everything. So God knows everything that has happened in the past, He knows
everything that is happening now, and He knows everything that will happen in
the future. But not only does He know what did
happen in the past…
B. He knows what would have
happened in the past if circumstances had been different (Matt. 11:20-24)
In Matthew
11, Jesus speaks out against the people of certain cities who refused to
believe in Him. In v. 21 he says, “Woe to you,
Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been
done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and
ashes.” Tyre and Sidon were cities that were frequently criticized in
the Old Testament for their idolatry, but here Jesus says that they would have
repented if they had seen the mighty works that He was performing! This is a
fascinating statement because it tells us that God knows all of the various
courses that history could have taken. So for
example, He knows how the US would be different if the South had won the Civil
War, or if Germany had won World War II. Sometimes when I was on vacation as a
child, my dad would ask me how I thought my life might be different if I had
grown up in our vacation town rather than my hometown. That was always
interesting to imagine, but God doesn’t have to imagine it because He actually
knows!
C. He knows my very thoughts
(Ps. 139:1-4; Gen. 6:5)
God not
only knows what we actually do—He knows the thoughts that lie behind our
actions and the thoughts upon which we never choose to act. In Psalm 139:1-4,
King David wrote, “O Lord, you have searched me and
known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts
from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all
my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it
altogether.”
Also, just
before the global flood in the Book of Genesis, we read this: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the
earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually (Gen. 6:5).” The Lord not only saw the people’s wicked acts,
He understood their thoughts as well. And not only does God know the thoughts
of my heart…
D. He knows my heart more
accurately than I do (Jer. 17:9-10; Ps. 139:23-24)
It is very
easy for us to act a certain way and tell ourselves that our motives were good
and noble when in reality they were anything but. But God is not fooled by our
mind games. Jeremiah 17:9-10 says, “The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the
Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his
ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Now this
idea of self-deception is a little disturbing, because we may think, “How will
I ever know if I’m deceiving myself?” Well, we can pray the same prayer that
King David prayed at the end of Psalm 139: “Search me,
O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any
grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Ps. 139:23-24)!” David
is admitting that even he doesn’t understand his own heart the way that God
does, so he asks God to search him and then lead him. That is the same prayer
that we should pray as well.
Well, we have seen now the basics of what God knows, now let’s answer the
question…
2. How did He come to know it?
A. Not through the instruction
of anyone else (Is. 40:13-14; Rom. 11:34)
In Isaiah
40:13-14, Isaiah asks some rhetorical questions about God. He writes, “Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows
him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught
him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of
understanding?” Since these are rhetorical questions, the obvious answer
is—no one! He has not consulted with anyone to acquire His knowledge; no one
has taught Him anything. He just simply knows what He knows! This reality is
true largely because…
B. He knows the future because
He has planned the future (Eph. 1:11;
Is. 46:9-11)
From the
moment that God created the world, He had a plan in mind that He is now
carrying out. Ephesians 1:11 says, “God works all
things according to the counsel of His will.” When the Apostle Paul
wrote those words, He may have had a passage like Isaiah 46:9-11 in mind, which
says, “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring
the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying,
‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird
of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken,
and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.”
According to these verses, why is God able to declare the end from the
beginning? Because He has a purpose or a plan that He is able to carry out.
I used this illustration a few weeks ago, but it bears
repeating here. When God tells us about the future in the Bible, He is like an
architect giving someone a tour of a job site. The architect is able to tell
you what the final product will look like because he has already planned it,
and now he is just carrying out his plan.
God’s
knowledge operates the same way. Now, this does not mean that you and I are
merely puppets or robots who don’t make any real choices. The Bible always
speaks to us as creatures who make real choices for which we are responsible. I’m
afraid we’ll just have to wait for God to explain all of this to us someday,
but suffice it to say that God’s knowledge comes from His plan for all things.
Let’s conclude this morning by thinking about a
few comforting and challenging implications of the fact that God knows all
things.
3. Some comforting and
challenging implications
A. God knows my needs even
before I ask Him to meet them (Matt. 6:7-8)
Jesus
specifically makes this point in Matthew 6:8. This thought is very comforting
because we have many daily needs about which we simply forget to ask! For
example, when is the last time you asked God to protect you while you sleep? We
don’t think about that often around Montezuma, but it’s a real need!
We also
never need to worry that we’ve failed to give God enough information about our
needs. We never need to think, “Oh no! I forgot to tell God when that bill is
due! How will He ever know?”
We also
have needs come up that can drastically change our lives, like medical problems
or a death in our family. Sometimes we’re unprepared to deal with the needs
that come during these times, but God was not caught off guard! He knows His
plan to help us before we even know we need help!
B. God’s knowledge about my life
is first-hand knowledge
God doesn’t
learn about us through some heavenly game of “Telephone” where one angel talks
to another angel who talks to another angel until the news finally reaches God.
He doesn’t need to rely on anyone else for His knowledge about us.
Sometimes
people treat us unfairly because they received bad information about us.
Friends may pull away because they’ve heard some rumor about us, or they may
assume that we’ve had bad motives for some decision that we’ve made. But we
don’t have to worry about unfair treatment from God! We will never hear Him
say, “Rumor has it…!”
C. God knew about all of my
future sins when He gave me the gift of salvation
This is a
very comforting thought. In our series on eternal security, we learned that
when God grants me forgiveness for my sins, God as my Judge is declaring that
my “debt to society” (so to speak) has been fully paid. When He rendered that
verdict, He did so not only with knowledge of all my past sins, but with
knowledge of all my future sins as well, and He declared that all of them had
been paid for by the blood of Christ.
So you can
rest assured that there is no skeleton in your closet that will cause God to re-open
the case against you! There is no new evidence against you that will come to
light because God already knew about all of the evidence. This thought gives us
the confidence and reassurance that we need to thrive spiritually because we
never have to wonder if God will change His mind about adopting us into His
family.
D. I cannot hide anything from
God (Heb. 4:12-13)
God knows
me inside and out, so consequently, I can never fool Him! I could be two-faced
and live a double life for a long time, and its possible that my secrets might
never get out. But no matter how many people I fooled, I would never have
fooled God for a single moment.
This
thought is very sobering. It means that my life is an open book to God. Hebrews
4:12-13 states, “For the word of God is living and
active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and
of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions
of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and
exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” I think the
author of Hebrews may have had Genesis 3 in mind when he wrote that last
sentence. After Adam and Eve sinned against God, the Bible says that they sewed
some fig leaves together to hide their nakedness, because now all of a sudden
they were embarrassed and ashamed. But God wasn’t fooled by a few fig leaves,
and He’s not fooled by our attempts to hide our sins today. He’s not fooled
when we delete the browsing history on the computer; He’s not fooled when we
say hurtful things and then try to pass it off as a joke. Its just fig leaves!
King David’s prayer is worth repeated here: “Search me,
O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any
grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting (Ps. 139:23-24)!”
May we be
corrected today by understanding the depths of God’s knowledge, and encouraged
by basking in His greatness. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 11:33, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways
(NASB)!”
No comments:
Post a Comment