Our Omniscient God
Many years ago, little Johnny Sylvester was kicked in the head by a horse and doctors were fearful that he might not make it. Johnny told his father, “I wish I could see Babe Ruth hit a homer before I die.” A telegram was sent off to the New York Yankees in St. Louis, where they were playing the Cardinals in the 1926 World Series. A few days later, Johnny received autographed balls from both the Yankees and the Cardinals, including one the Babe had inscribed with these words, “I’ll hit a home run for you in Wednesday’s game.”
Instead of hitting one homer, he hit 3! The doctors called the effect on the boy’s condition a miracle. Some months later, during spring training, an uncle of the boy approached Ruth and thanked him profusely. Babe Ruth smiled and said, “You’re very welcome.” After the uncle left, Babe turned to the reporters who were standing around and asked, “Who in the blankety-blank is Johnny Sylvester?”
Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t forget who we are? By the way, Johnny died at the ripe old age of 74!
Definition of Omniscience
Last week we learned about God’s omnipresence He is everywhere present at the same time. This morning, we’re focusing on God’s omniscience He is all-knowing. In classical theology the doctrine of God’s omniscience means that God knows all things, past, present and future, real and potential, and He knows them all at the same time. He not only knows what was, and what is, He also knows what will be. On top of that, He knows everything that could be but is not.
There are few doctrines that are so explicitly taught in Scripture as that of God’s omniscience. Let’s consider just a few:
1 Samuel 2:3: “…the Lord is a God who knows…”
1 John 3:20: “God…knows everything.”
Psalm 147:5: “Great is our Lord…His understanding has no limit.”
Proverbs 15:3: “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.”
Friends, God knows everything everything possible and everything actual; all events and all creatures, in the past, present and future. His knowledge is absolute, innate, full, complete, and free. God is perfect in knowledge. He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything, he is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything, nor does He seek information or ask questions. And He knows how everything fits together.
Think About Love
I want you right now to think about a time in your life when you felt truly loved. It may have been a moment with a parent, with a child, a friend, or your spouse or it may have been a time when you felt truly loved by God. Whatever it was, think back on it. What do you see? What made you feel loved?
While the circumstances in these love moments are different for each one of us, there are at least two common threads woven into the fabric of each one.
-We were known. Someone knew us at a level deeper than the norm. They knew things about us that no one else knew.
-We were accepted. With all that they knew about us, the one who loved us chose to come toward us and remain committed to us.
For love to be complete, we need to be both known and accepted. Both need to be there. To be accepted without being known is shallow. To be known but not accepted is terrifying. Complete love must have both.
That’s what we’re going to be talking about this morning. There is no one who knows us more thoroughly than the God of the universe and there is no one who accepts us more completely than Our Omniscient God.
We’re going to finish our three-part study of Psalm 139 this morning. Let me tell you where we’re headed:
I. God knows us completely (1-6)
II. God thinks of us constantly (17-18)
III. God searches us conclusively (23-24)
God Knows Us Completely
The first truth from Psalm 139 is that God Knows Us Completely. No one knows us more thoroughly than the God of the universe.
Let’s read Psalm 139:1-6 together:
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. 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. You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain.
David is saying, “God, you know me completely. You’ve made a detailed inquiry into my life. You know all of my actions; all of my words, all of my thoughts; you not only know what I’ve done, you know why I did it. You know it all!”
I think that most of us understand this truth about God. We really do. And yet many of us are able to operate on two levels. While we understand intellectually that God knows everything about us, on a day-to-day level, we live as if we can keep secrets from God. Maybe its because we’re afraid that if God knew everything about us, He would reject us and judge us. It’s hard for us to comprehend a God who can know the truth about us and accept us anyway.
Psalm 139:1 states that God knows us because He searches us: “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.” The Hebrew word here means, “to examine carefully or explore” and can even apply to a burglar who is searching for some valuable possessions. The word carries with it the idea of digging or scouring. David is saying that God knows him penetratingly because He has scoured and ransacked every detail of his life. Because He has carefully examined us, He knows us. Let’s take a closer look at verses 2-5 by asking the question, “What does God know about us?”
1. He knows what we do (2a). “You know when I sit and when I rise…” God knows when we sit down and when we stand up. He knows when we plop into the lazy boy and when we get up to get some more nachos and cheese. The two opposites of sitting and rising represent all of our actions throughout the day. Proverbs 5:21 says, “For a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths.” God knows every move we make.
2. He knows what we think (2b). “…You perceive my thoughts from afar.” It’s amazing and difficult to comprehend, but God knows what we think even before we think it! I can remember when Beth and I were dating that I always wanted to know what she was thinking. I can remember holding hands with her as we were walking somewhere and asking her what she was thinking about. I asked her many times to reveal her thoughts to me. As I look back on this, its obvious to me that I was very insecure I wanted to make sure she wasn’t thinking anything bad about me.
Friend, God knows everything you’re thinking and He still loves you. Jeremiah 17:10 helps us understand the depth of God’s knowledge: “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind…”
3. He knows where we go (3). “You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.” When I was growing up, my bedroom was in the basement. The coolest thing about having a room downstairs was that it had a little window that opened to the outside. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I could sneak out this window at night and do whatever I wanted to do because know no one could see me. I used this escape hatch on many occasions and was never caught. Just recently I was talking to my parents about my clever set-up confession is good for the soul, even 25 years later and I found out that they already knew all about it!
God knew all about my gig as well. The word for “discern” in verse 3 means to “sift or winnow as grain.” God knows where we go, because He can see everything, and can discern everything. He sifts through our lives, understanding what is really going on. He immediately comprehends the good and the bad things we do from the time we stumble out of the sack in the morning, to when we collapse into bed at night. He sees it all, and when we think we are making our escape, as we learned last week, He is always with us no matter where we go.
Illustration: Sifting through the sand… (Using strainer to get out impurities)
4. He knows what we say (4). “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.” If you’re at all like me, you often don’t know what’s going to come out of your mouth until you say it. God not only hears everything that we say, He knows what we’re going to say, before we can even form the words in our mouth. Someone has said that our thoughts are likes words to God He hears them and understands them completely as if we had shouted them from the rooftop.
5. He knows what we need (5). “You hem me in behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.” David is here using some imagery from war. He knew all about strategic battle plans, ambushes and how to surround a city. David felt trapped by God’s knowledge of his every thought, word, and deed. He knew that God surrounded him. He cannot turn back and try to escape because God is behind him. He cannot run forward because God is in front of him and His hand keeps David from harm.
I’ve often done this with my daughters. Even now, as Megan is learning to crawl, I put my hand on her head or her shoulder so that she doesn’t run into the fireplace. God does that for us as well His pervasive presence and His complete knowledge of us serve as protective forces in our lives.
I love verse 6. As David ponders the fact that God knows him completely, he is blown away: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” He can’t even begin to understand, much less describe, the depth of God’s personal knowledge of his every action, of his every thought, of his every trip, of his every word, and of his every need. The word “wonderful” is placed at the beginning of the sentence in Hebrew for emphasis. It should read like this: “Wonderful is God’s knowledge. It’s too lofty for me to even understand or imagine!”
Friends, when we try to understand the greatness of God’s knowledge, we will become overwhelmed, like David was. Remember this: wonder and worship are always the proper responses to the glorious attributes of God. Amazement should lead to awe, which should draw us to adoration. Paul responded in a similar way in Romans 11:33-36:
“Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen.”
God Thinks About Us Constantly
Not only does God know us completely, He also thinks about us constantly. He knows everything about us and He still likes us. We are known and our Knowable, Holy, Creative, and Ever-present God accepts us. He sees our entire life from the very beginning, even before we start growing in the womb. He knows all about our every sin and moral compromise. And yet, His heart is fixed on us and He thinks about us all the time. Wow.
Jump down to verses 17-18: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.”
1. God’s thoughts are precious. Once again, David is overwhelmed as He contemplates the greatness of God. He doesn’t understand how God could think of him all the time. The word precious refers to expensive jewels. David treasures the realization that God is thinking about him every second of every day. He is so involved with our lives that we can’t even begin to fathom how many times He thinks about us.
That leads to a second truth about God’s thoughts.
2. God’s thoughts are numerous. If we were to try to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. God’s thoughts of us are innumerable impossible to count, and impossible to understand.
One of the nicest things Beth can say to me is that she thought of me all day. That really means a lot to know that her mind was thinking of me. Now, I don’t mean to call this into question, because I think she is being sincere. But, I also know that she is our family taxi driver, head cook, counselor to our daughters, and full-time domestic engineer. As much as she would like to think about me all day, it’s impossible for anyone of us to just think of one person every second of our day.
Not so with God. He thinks about each one of us, all the time! If you were to calculate how many times His thoughts were filled with each one of us, our calculators and computers would freeze up. David compares God’s thoughts to the grains of sand on the beach.
Illustration: Trying to count the grains of sand in the big bucket…
3. God’s thoughts are constant. God thinks about us all the time. “When I awake, I am still with you.” God doesn’t forget about us when we’re sleeping. I love Psalm 121:3-4: “He will not let your foot slip He who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”
God Searches Us Conclusively
God knows us completely and thinks of us constantly. That leads to our final point this morning: God searches us conclusively. Let’s look at the last two verses of Psalm 139 as we prepare for Communion: “Search me, O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
What David mentioned in verse 1 as a matter of fact that God had searched him he now makes a matter of prayer in verses 23-24. God wants us to invite Him to search our lives. The verb search is used for digging up valuable minerals in a mine. The term test is used of examining precious metals to prove their purity.
While it is certainly a good idea to do some self-analysis, it is even better to ask God to examine you. Most of us, when examining ourselves, will arrive at the conclusion that we’re OK or at least that we’re better than our neighbor or co-worker.
In asking God to evaluate ourselves, we are really asking these 4 things from verses 23-24:
-Search me. All of me; even my darkest secrets and deeds.
-Test me. To see if I am pure and true.
-Tell me. Let me know what you find.
-Help me. Show me how to correct my ways lead me the right way.
Once we understand that God loves us, we invite His investigation. We desire Him to dig into the depths of our being. We want Him to road test our character. Why? Because not only does God know us, He knows us better than we know ourselves. And He loves us too much to allow us to keep doing the things we’ve been doing.
Illustration: Magnifying glass looking into the sand of bucket #1 and pulling out some bad things.
Brothers and sisters, don’t be afraid to ask God to point out offensive stuff in your life. Allow Him to show you things that grieve Him, or bring pain to other people. When He exposes something, own it, confess it, and yield to the God who knows you intimately and yet loves you completely. Be willingly accountable to Him. As someone has said, “A good person desires to know the worst of himself.
J.I. Packer writes this: “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…There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself.”
Because He knows us completely, thinks of us constantly, and searches us conclusively, we don’t feel spied on; we feel watched over. We feel secure. Having placed our confidence in Christ, no skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to expose our past and no character flaw can come to light that would make God turn away from us. He already knows everything about us and still loves us!
Communion
(Holding up magnifying glass)
Socrates said that the “unexamined life is not worth living.” Brothers and sisters, the unexamined life is not biblical. If we don’t spend time asking God to examine us, we will never live our lives to their full potential.
1 Corinthians 11:28 says “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.”
Remember, if you’re coasting, you’re going downhill. You cannot coast and grow at the same time.
We’re going to take a mini-quiz this morning. It covers 6 areas using the acrostic IMPACT.
-Instruction Is my love for the Bible increasing?
-Ministry Is my commitment to ministry growing as I steward my time, talents and treasures?
-Prayer Is my prayer life what it should be?
-Adoration Is my time of personal and corporate worship filled with reverence and joy?
-Caring Is my love for God’s people increasing? Is there anyone I’ve been holding hostage by my refusal to forgive? Anyone I need to ask forgiveness from?
-Telling Have I been faithful in building redemptive relationships with lost people? Have I been looking for ways to speak of Christ?
