GOD KNOWS ALL, IS EVERYWHERE, CAN DO ANYTHING
When God sends forth the Spirit amazing things happen: barriers are broken, communities are formed, opposites are reconciled, unity is established, disease is cured, addiction is broken, cities are renewed, races are reconciled, hope is established, people are blessed, and church happens. Today the Spirit of God is present and we’re going to have church.
So be ready, get ready...God is up to something... discouraged folks cheer up, dishonest folks ’fess up, sour folks sweeten up, closed folk, open up, gossipers shut up, conflicted folks make up, sleeping folks wake up, lukewarm folk, fire up, dry bones shake up, and pew potatoes stand up! But most of all, Christ the Savior of all the world is lifted up.
PRAYER: LOVING EACH OTHER; LOVING THE LOST
"The world will never know the love of God unless it can see God’s heart throbbing in the Church. It must see a unity deeper than a program, deeper than a project, deeper than a sermon, deeper even than a unity service. The Church must be a body that lives the prayer of Jesus that His disciples would be one. In the Church we are truly all for one, and we are all for the One who gave Himself for us. And we are one for all. The world has yet to see the full glory of God as revealed in Christ Jesus, the Lord of the Church. The world waits to see that there is a God big enough to overcome all that divides and destroys life. The world watches for the joy of divine communion with the One who gives Himself always to His creation, one by one. The world looks to see the Power that overcomes evil and its myriad forms of death. The world lies perishing for want of God’s love. I will do my part to see that Jesus’ prayer is answered. My prayer has become, ’God give me the strength to bear that which pains you. Give me the heart to feel your joy. Give me the grace to know what to do. What do you want me to do?’" (Sharon Clark Pearson).
1. God is all knowing is declared here. 2. It is confirmed: a. God is every where present; therefore he knows all. b. He made us, therefore he knows us. 3. How David shows how this is applied to our life today: A. May it fill us with admiration of God. B. It gives us a holy dread and disgust of sin and sinners. 3. We find a holy satisfaction in our own integrity of which we may appeal to God. God knows our hearts, and the hearts of all the children of men, if we did but mix faith with it and seriously consider it and apply it, would have a great influence upon our holiness and upon our comfort. We find here the omniscience and omnipresence of God. We also see a warning against atheism which ignores the presence of God, and so makes ruin of the soul.
I. GOD KNOWS ALL. Vs. 1-7
David here lays down this great doctrine, God’s omniscience, that the God with whom we have to do has a perfect knowledge of us, and that all the motions and actions both of our inward and of our outward man are naked and open before him. He appeals to the heart searching and rein trying God for his innocence; and, when settled on his throne, delivered it to the master of music, to make use of it on proper occasions.
A. HE KNOWS ALL. Divine truths look fully as well when they are prayed over as when they are preached over, and much better than when they are disputed over. When we speak of God to him himself we shall find ourselves concerned to speak with the utmost degree both of sincerity and reverence, which will be likely to make the impressions the deeper. If we would praise God aright we must draw the matter of our praise from him. No pretended god knows much about us; but the true God, understands us, and is intimately familiar with us in our nature and character. How well it would be for us to know God who knows us! God knows because he can examine us meticulously, and can pry in our secret corners of our person. His infallible knowledge has always existed and continues, since God does not forget that which he has once known. There never was a time in which we were unknown to God, and there never will be a moment in which we shall be beyond his observation. Think about that for a moment
B. HE KNOWS ME. The writer says "You have known me.” That is what we must consider to believe and which it will help us live in the right way. We know these things for our good as we know them for ourselves, David was a king, and his heart was not known to his people but they were not hidden to God. God has set us where we be, and beset us wherever we are. Behind us is God recording our sins, or in grace blotting out the remembrance of them; and before us is God foreknowing all our deeds, and providing for all our wants. We cannot turn back and so escape him, for he is behind; we cannot go forward and outmarch him, for he is before. He not only beholds us, but he besets us; and lest there should seem any chance of escape, or lest we should imagine that the surrounding presence is yet a distant one, it says he laid his hand on us. The prisoner marches along surrounded by a guard, and gripped by an officer. God is very near; we are wholly in his power; from that power there is no escape. It is not said that God will thus beset us and arrest us, but it is done. Shall we not say that our heavenly Father has folded his arms around us, and embraced us with his hand? It is so with those who by faith become the children of God.
C. HE KNOWS EVERYTHING. It would be said here "You know me wherever I am and whatever I am doing, me and all that belongs to me." 1. You know me and all my motions, my down-sitting to rest, my up-rising to work. You know my frame of mind when I sit down and when I rise up. You know what my soul is about in what it aims for and reaches towards. You know me when I get home, how I walk around my house, and when I go out to do errands. 2. You know all my imaginations. Nothing is more close and quick than thought; it is always unknown to others; it is often unobserved by us, and yet you understand my thoughts afar off. Though my thoughts distant from one another, you perceive them, and can make out their connection, when they slip by me. You understand them far off, even before they are in my head, and know what they were long after I have thought them. You understand them from far away. Like, from heaven you see the lowest point of my heart. 3. You know me and all my plans and events; you scope every exacting path and can distinguish between the good and evil of what I would do. God takes notice of every step we take, every right step and every by-step. He is acquainted with all our ways, intimately acquainted with them; he knows where we walk, what the end is and the company we keep. 4. You know me in my rest; you know when I lay down; when I withdrawn from company, and when I am reflecting upon the day and resting, you know what is in my heart and with what I am thinking as I go to bed. 5. You know me, and all I say. There is not a word in my tongue, a worthless one, nor a good one, but you know what it meant, from what where it came, and with what design it was voiced. There is not a word on my tongue, but you know what it is. All thoughts are words to God. 6. You know every part of me: so that, any which way I go, I am under your eye and no escape. You have laid your hand upon me, and I have no way of running away from you. Wherever we are we are always under the eye and hand of God. Like a doctor laying his hand upon his patient to feel how his pulse beats or temperature. All his saints are in his hand.
D. HE HAS ALL KNOWLEDGE. It is too wonderful and high for me. 1. You have such knowledge of me that I could not have. My own thoughts are sometimes beyond me. I do not take opinion of myself as you do. 2. I do not understand such knowledge or can describe it. That you know all things I am sure, but I do not know how. We cannot by searching find out how God searches.
DAVID IS SURE THAT GOD PERFECTLY KNOWS HIM AND ALL HIS WAYS.
He is always under his eye. If God is all knowing, he is also is every where present. Every part of the creation is under God’s influence. Vs. 7-16 These verses confirm God is all knowing. 1. NO RUNNING CAN REMOVE US OUT OF GOD’S PRESENCE. God is a Spirit, and therefore it is foolishness to think that because we cannot see him he cannot see us. Suppose I should be so foolish as to think of getting out of God’s sight, that I might shake off his wonder. Suppose I should think of revolting from my obedience, or of disowning a dependence on God. Where could I go? 1. In heaven: Heaven is a vast large place, filled with a countless creatures, and there is no escaping God’s eye in any corner or any crowd. The inhabitants of that world are dependent upon God. 2. In hell: Should we dig as deep as we can under ground, and think to hide ourselves there, we should be mistaken; When we are removed out of the sight of all living, yet we are not out of the sight of the living God; we cannot hide ourselves in the grave. 3. In the remotest corners of this world, flee upon them to the uttermost parts of the sea, or of the earth should I flee to the most distant and obscure islands, I should find you there; there shall your hand lead me, as far as I go, and thy right hand hold me, that I can go no further, that I cannot go out of your reach. The man Jonah thought he could flee from god but found him to be wherever he went.
2. NO VEIL CAN HIDE US FROM GOD’S EYE, NOT EVEN THAT OF THE THICKEST DARKNESS. When God divided between the light and darkness it was with a reservation of this privilege, that to him the darkness and the light should still be both alike. No deceitful disguise or cover up, how phony can save any person or action from appearing in a true light before God. We are the work of his hands. He that framed the engine knows all the motions of it. God made us, and therefore no doubt he knows us; he saw us when we were in the forming, and can we be hidden from him now that we are formed? It is he that has made us and not we ourselves.
What David shows us to apply to our lives from this Scripture? Vs 17-24
I. He acknowledges, with wonder and thankfulness, the care God had taken of him all his days. God, who knew him, thought of him, and his thoughts towards him were thoughts of love, thought of good, and not of evil. God’s omniscience, which might justly have watched over us to do us hurt, has been working for us, and has watched over us to do us good.
A. God thinks about us. How precious are his thoughts toward us? They cannot possibly be figured out and grasped. Providence has had a vast reach in its dispensations concerning us, and has brought things about for our good quite beyond our plan and insight. They are dear to us; we must think of them with a great deal of reverence, and yet with pleasure and thankfulness. Our thoughts concerning God must be delightful to us, above any other thoughts.
B. God’s thoughts about us are too many to number. We cannot imagine all of God’s kind counsels concerning us, how many good turns he has done us, and what variety of mercies we have received from him. If we would count them, the heads of them, much more the particulars of them, they are more in number than the sand, and yet every one great and very considerable. We cannot conceive the multitude of God’s compassions, which are all new every morning.
C. God’s thoughts are constant to us. "When I awake, every morning, I am still with you.” The eye of God is upon us, When you awake I am with you in my thoughts every day.
II. Sinners will not stand. God knows all the wickedness of the wicked, and therefore he will consider it. A. The reason why God punishes them, because they boldly offend him and treat him with disrespect and speak hard speeches against him. David resists sinners, dislikes them intensely. I hate them because I love you, and hate to see such insult and disgrace put upon your blessed name.
III. David wants God to try him that he might not be found with sinners.
A. He desires if he is in the wrong God would reveal it to him. Those that are upright can take comfort in God’s all knowing to be a witness of their honesty, and can with a humble confidence beg of him to search and try them, to determine if there is any wrong.
B. He desires that, as far as he was in the right, he might be advance in it, which he that knows the heart knows how to do effectually. The way of godliness is an everlasting way; it is everlastingly true and good, pleasing to God and profitable to us, and will end in everlasting life. All the saints desire to be kept and led in this way, that they may not miss it, turn out of it, nor tire in it. Give me a pure heart that I may see You, a humble heart that I may hear you, a heart of love that I am serve you and a heart of faith that I may abide in you.
