Imagine that you and the President of the United States are close friends. Better than that … he or she is your twin brother or sister. Now … I don’t want you to get lost here. I’m not talking about a particular person or president. I just want you to imagine “the” President … you can imagine them being whomever your want.
My point is this … imagine that your twin sister or twin brother is the most powerful person on the face of the earth. You’re tight. You’re family. They call you first thing every morning … go over your day with you to see what you need and how they can help. At night, they position guards around your house or apartment and have a surveillance satellite positioned right over your bed while you sleep. Any problem you have, they can handle it. They have the resources of the entire United States government at their beck and call. The FBI … the CIA … the most powerful, well-trained, well-equipped army in the world. Would you fee safe? Protected?
Well … as powerful as the President of the United States may be, he or she is but a mere flea on the surface of Jupiter … a mere molecule of water compared to the ocean … compared to the power of God. Jesus told His Disciples: “I tell you, my friends … do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after than can do no more” (Luke 12:4). The President’s power is limited to this world … the physical world. “But I will show you whom you should fear,” Jesus explains. “Fear the One” – capital O – who, after you have been killed, has power to throw you in to hell” (Luke 12:5).
Jesus is, of course, speaking about His Father, whose power extends far beyond the limits of our intellect or imagination. He is omnipotent … He has power over all the universe. He is omnipresent … He is present throughout the universe. And He is omniscient … He has knowledge of the entire universe. Or, as Pastor Tony Evans puts it: “God knows what needs to be done – that’s omniscience. God has the power to do what needs to be done – that’s omnipotence. And God is always wherever He needs to be to do whatever needs to be done – that’s omnipresence.”
Omniscient … All-Knowing …
He knows all things … past, present, future … real or potential. He knows them all at the same time. He not only knows what was and what is, He knows what will be. He not only knows what will be but everything that could be but is not.
O-M-N-I .. “Omni” … means “all.” If you take the prefix off of “omniscience,” guess what word you have? “Science.” “Science” is an old medieval term that means “what is known.” “Omni” … “science” … “all that is known.” Our God is omniscient … all-knowing. He possesses total, boundless, absolute, universal, unlimited, comprehensive knowledge.
Every bit of God’s knowledge is always fully present in His mind. It never grows dim … like it does for me ... nor does it fade into the subconscious. It is always equally present in His conscious mind. God knows instantly every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists … or that could exist … anywhere in the universe … at any time in the past … or that may ever exist anytime in the ages to come. The omniscience of God means that He not only knows everything that is actual, He knows everything that is possible. There are no hypothetical questions for Him. He knows how every contingency will resolve itself were it implemented.
Author and pastor Robert J. Morgan put it this way: “God knows the temperature of every star … the composition of every planet … the size of every galaxy … and the course of every comet. He knows the shape of every snowflake … and the design of every shell. He understands the mysteries of the depths below and the heights above. He knows what lies beyond the galaxies and beyond the grave. His wisdom is as high as the heavens … as deep as the oceans … as broad as the cosmos … and as long as eternity.”
No one … not your mother, not your father, not your brother or sister, not your husband or wife, not ever your twin, if you have one, know you better, more thoroughly, more intimately than the omniscient God of the universe. And no one has expressed that truth more beautifully and poetically than David, the man who sought out the very heart of God.
“O Lord, You have searched me and you know me,” writes David. The Hebrew word that David uses for “search” literally means “to examine carefully or explore.” It describes the action that a bugler takes when they search someone’s house for valuable possessions. The image is that of a bugler taking his time, meticulously going through everything in your house … turning everything over … going through every drawer or closet … scouring every corner … leaving no stone unturned as we would say today. And if you think that a greedy thief is pretty thorough, as we shall see in verses 2 through 5, it can’t compare to the depth and thoroughness of God’s searching.
God knows when we sit down … and He knows when we get up and begin moving around. These two opposite actions of sitting down and getting up represent all our actions throughout the day … suggesting that God knows our every physical action. God knows every more we make. He now only knows every move we make but every thought we have … like: “I’m going to get out of this chair during these commercials and get me some more ice cream.” The poet for Psalm 139 suggests that God not only knows our thoughts but that He knows them “from afar” (v. 2). “Afar” suggests distance … a visual reference. It means that God “sees” our thoughts before we “see” or think them. As one commentator put it: “Our thoughts are like words to God. He hears them and understands them completely as if we had shouted them from the rooftop.”
Notice the rhythm of David’s poem. Verse 2 speaks about God seeing our physical activities and then speaks of God being able to see the inner motives of our hearts and minds. As God said through His prophet Jeremiah: “I the Lord search the heart” (the body) “and examine the mind” (thought) (Jeremiah 17:10).
And we see this back and forth … this going from body to mind, body and heart … in verse 3 too. “You discern my going out and my lying down’ You are familiar with all my ways” (v. 3). The word that David uses for “discern” means “to sift or winnow as grain” … again suggesting the determination and perseverance of God’s searching. The image of our getting up and lying down again suggests that God sees all our physical activities during the day but it also suggests … to me anyway … that He sees what we do when we’re lying down, when we’re sleeping … and I’m not talking about snoring or tossing and turning … but that He sees our dreams just like He can “see” or hear our thoughts. He is familiar with ALL our ways … whether we’re awake or asleep … thinking or dreaming.
I love verse 4 because it combines two kinds of activity or action at once. “Before a word is on my tongue You know it completely, O Lord” (v. 4). Here, David has blipped the process … from physical activity that leads to thought to thought that leads to physical activity. Before we can speak … which is a physical action involving movement of the tongue and jaw … before a word is on our tongue and our mouths being to move … we have to what? You have to have something to say! And, in order to have something to say, you have to first do what? You have to think it … which ties us back to David’s claim in verse 2 … that God knows our thoughts from afar.
In verse 1, David says that the Lord has searched us and knows us. In verses 2 through 4, he tells us what God knows about us because He’s searched us. And verse 5 tells us that God does with the knowledge that He has of us. “You hem me in, behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me” (v. 5). David uses soldiering images here. David was very familiar with military tactics … how to gather intelligence, scout the enemy … how to hem them in and besiege them … how to surround an enemy or a city and wait for their surrender. And God has done the same to David … hemmed Him in … surrounded him behind and before so that he can’t retreat and he can’t move forward. The only choice he has is to surrender. The key to winning a battle or defeating an enemy is to know everything you possibly can about them, amen? Their strengths … their weaknesses. God had searched David and knows everything ... absolutely everything … there is to know about David … all of his weaknesses … all of his strengths. What chance does David have against God, who is omniscient? Who not only knows David’s strengths and weaknesses but his thoughts, his plans, his past victories, and his past defeats? Who knows David better than David knows himself.
And like David, God knows YOU better than you know yourself. He knows the status of your health … the temperatures of your emotions … the level of your faith … the purity of your thoughts … the maturity of your soul … the hurts that are holding you back …. The fear that is clouding your future. He knows what you’re going to say tomorrow. He knows every word you’ll ever speak in every conversation you’ll ever have in your entire life. He knows when you come and go, when you sit and stand, when you rise and fall. He has you hemmed in behind and before. How, then, should that make us feel?
Well … it could be quite terrifying ... or it could, as it did for David, inspire awe and wonder. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain” (v. 6). David is overwhelmed as he ponders God’s knowledge of him … knowledge that goes beyond even when David was born. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made … my frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret … your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed” (v. 14-16). Every day of David’s life was laid out before God … recorded in God’s book … “All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be” (v. 16).
Instead of fear and trepidation, this knowledge, this concept, this understanding led David to wonder and worship. “How precious are your thoughts about me, O God,” he exclaims. “They cannot be numbered. I can’t even count them … they outnumber the grains of sand.” And here’s the beautiful part. When we sit … when we rise … when we lie down at night and get up in the morning … no matter what we’re doing … no matter where we go … whether it’s to the top of the highest mountain or the deepest part of the sea … guess what? God is there! Holding us fast … guiding us … on the way everlasting.
Author J.I. Packer put it this way: “I am never out of God’s mind. There is no moment when His eye is off me or His attention distracted from me … no moment when His care falters.” Parker goes on to say: “There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love for me is utterly realistic … based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst of me … so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me in the way that I am so often disillusioned about myself.”
Think about what David and J.I. Packer are saying. God knows us. God really knows us. God knows everything about us. And yet … here’s the good part. Are you ready for this? God knows you … God really, really knows you … everything about you … and yet God still loves you! God still loves you very, very much. His love and His omniscience are both infinite, which means He can never know us better or love us less. There are no hidden skeletons in your closet that will deflect His love from you. God already knows you just as you are and He not only still loves you … He’s incredibly, wildly, madly in love with you. Can you imagine? God knows you with endless knowledge and He loves you with an everlasting love. No tale bearer … no gossip … could ever give God information about you that He doesn’t already know.
“Did You hear about what Gordon did?”
“Yep!”
“Well, did You hear what he said?”
“Yep!”
“Well, did You know that at one time …”
“Yep! Saw the whole thing.”
“And yet You still love him?”
“Yep!”
One time my brother Ron found out about a little mischief I had done and used it to blackmail me. I quickly got tired of him threatening to tell parents every time I didn’t do what he wanted or give into his demands. So, I went and told my parents the truth. The next time he threatened to tell my parents what I had done, I said, “Go ahead!” I wish I had a camera to capture the look on his face when my parents not only told him that they already knew but that he was in trouble for blackmailing me.
No enemy can make a false accusation stick against you because God already knows the truth. There is no unsuspected weakness in your character that can be discovered by God that will change His mind or His attitude towards you. Why? Because He already knows.
See how comforting that is? With God … and with God alone … we are fully transparent and totally intimate. Such knowledge should lead to wonder … then to awe … then to adoration and worship.
How wonderful it is to have a friend from whom nothing is hidden. We can go to Him again and again … seeking His counsel, confessing our sins, embracing His promises, and singing His praises. There is nothing that God does not know … no secrets or secret thoughts … no secret longings … no secret fears. Every thought that flashes through our minds, God knows instantly. The flimsiness of all our excuses will vanish before the throne of God because He sees the reality and the totality of who we are and what we’ve done.
That’s why Jesus Christ came to earth, lived a perfectly openly righteous life, died publicly before the entire world, and rose again in victory. When we realize that we cannot hide from God or conceal our sins from His all-knowing eyes, it leads to confession and … through Christ … to forgiveness because, when it comes to our flaws, our sin, our imperfections and shame, the Lord truly doesn’t see them anymore … not when we’re in Christ. He makes us whiter than snow. Though He knows everything we have ever done in disobedience and folly, He also knows that we are accepted by His beloved. He knows that we have been declared righteous through the blood of Jesus Christ. He knows that we stand as holy ones in His sight. That’s why we can approach His throne with confidence and enjoy His fellowship with thanksgiving.
“If there were no final, ultimate judgment day,” explains R.C. Sproul, “then God’s total knowledge of my life would not be so threatening; or if He knew all things about me were not all-powerful, I might be less intimidated; or even if He were omniscient and omnipotent but not altogether holy, I might have a chance to negotiate a few things. However,” Sproul concludes, “He is all these things and unchangeably so.”
There is nothing that God doesn’t know and that is why we can approach His throne with confidence and it also why we can follow David’s example and ask God to search us and to know our hearts … to test us and to know our anxious thoughts … to see if there is any offense in us … so that our all-powerful and omniscient God can lead us in the way everlasting (V. 23-24).
In verse 1, David proclaimed that God had searched him and knew him. IF God has searched him and knows him, then why would David ask Him to search him again at the end of his poem? You see … God already knows everything about David but David doesn’t know everything about David. He doesn’t know what God knows about David. The poet wants God to show him what He knows about David so that David can grow in his walk and in his understanding of God.
David did not lightly or arrogantly ask God to search him … daring God to find anything wrong … on the contrary, David knew that God would find wicked ways in his heart. He could count on it. But he wanted to be made clean. David wanted to be purified … not only from his conscious sins but from his secret sins and faults that only God could find and identify.
The Hebrew verb that David used for “search” here is different from the one he used in verse 1. Remember … the word he used in verse 1 was one used to describe the work of a serious, unwelcome, intent bugler breaking into someone’s house uninvited. Here, David invited God to come into his heart and search him like a welcome miner searching for precious metals and rare jewels. He wants God to dig up the treasures of his heart like a miner digs up treasure in a mine. Not every rock is a jewel … not all gold is pure. Some gold is fool’s gold … only gold in color … which is why he asks God to test what he finds.
Once we understand that God loves us … loves us deeply … beyond our comprehension … then we do not need to fear or be afraid to invite Him to search our hearts and to test our thoughts, our intentions. We will want to pray for Him to dig deep … to reach into the depths of our being … to find the treasure that is there … and to find the trash and the garbage that is there as well … things that grieve Him, the things that bring pain to other people, the things that the devil can use to hurt us or to lead us off the righteous path, the way everlasting. And when He finds treasure and precious metals and rare jewels that we didn’t know were there, we praise Him, we thank Him, and we offer them up to Him. And when He finds garbage and sin, we own it, we confess it, we offer it up to Him, and we ask Him to “take out the trash.” As it has been said: “A good person desires to know the worst of himself.” Socrates said that an “unexamined life is not worth living.”
Brothers and sisters, the unexamined life is also not Biblical. We should routinely examine our lives … but more importantly, we should ask God to examine our lives … well, He’s already examined them … examined them and knows everything about you before you were born. What we need to do is ask God to show us where our examination matches His … or doesn’t match His … or fails to reveal what He already knows … and then ask Him to make changes accordingly. If we don’t, then we’ll never live our lives to their full, God-give potential that was woven into us when God created us in the depths of time and space.
All-mighty God is an all-knowing friend … one who sticks closer than a brother or a sister or a twin and knows every pulse of our hearts. We are not omniscient but God is … and, in the final analysis, that is enough!
As Dr. T. Dewitt Talmage once preached: “When omniscience has lost its eye sight and omnipotence falls back impotent and Jehovah is driven from His throne, then the church of Jesus Christ can afford to be despondent … but never until them. Despots may plan, and armies may march and the congresses of nations may seen to think they are adjusting all the affairs of the world,” Dr. Talmage explains, but the mighty men of earth are only the dust of the chariot wheels of God’s provision.”
We have an all-knowing God and because He’s omniscient, we needn’t lean on our own understanding but on Him who is immortal, invisible … our only wise God. Amen?
Let’s pray …
