Knowing the God Who Knows You - Part A

Imagine knowing somebody who knows everything about you.

Now imagine somebody who knows everything about you and loves you anyway. In this age of information, we think we know a lot of things, but it's nothing compared to God's comprehensive knowledge. Connect with Skip Heitzig today as he shares with you how God's omniscience can be inspiring rather than intimidating. But before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that will help you experience the joys and rewards of a steadfast prayer life. Recent research has found that Google searches for the word prayer have surged worldwide alongside the spread of the novel coronavirus. In fact, Google Trends data shows that the search intensity for prayer doubles for every 8000 COVID-19 cases. But is there a right way or a more effective way to pray?

Here's bestselling author Kay Arthur. Where the battles raging were to be on the front lines, on the front lines on our knees, on the front lines standing in the full armor of God. Kay's book, Lord, Teach Me to Pray in 28 Days offers simple but powerful instruction on how and what to pray and what to expect when you do. And it's our way to say thank you when you give a gift of $25 or more today to help keep this ministry on the air.

Give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. OK, we'll be in Psalm 139 for today's study. So let's join Skip Hitek. The world's store of knowledge is growing at an increasing rate of speed and we all have access to it. I could say something and you could quickly get your phone out and Google it to see if what I am saying is accurate or not. And so it's possible to get knowledge instantaneously so much so that you don't even need to know anything anymore.

All you have to know is where to get the information. There's a funny story told about Albert Einstein that one of his colleagues asked for his telephone number. So Einstein took a telephone directory to look up his telephone number.

And his colleague said, you're kidding, right? You don't even remember your own telephone number? To which the genius replied, why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book? You know, why should we know something when we can go to our phone or tablet or computer and instantaneously get the information?

It's so readily available. I remember being a kid and in my house my parents had a set of encyclopedias and a couple of dictionaries and I was that weird kid who liked to read the dictionary. And I'd look up words and find out what they mean or I'd read an entry from the encyclopedia. And I remember this little section of bookshelf and I think, man, I have such knowledge at my fingertips.

I can look it up right here. But I noticed that as the years went by that encyclopedia sets and dictionaries grew larger, thicker. There were more entries in them simply because we are learning more and because we learn more we make more at people's disposals. We make knowledge available. Today we can fit, we can store more on a silicone chip than the entire contents of the famous ancient library of Alexandria, Egypt.

It had two buildings that housed between 200,000 and 700,000 volumes. We can fit more information than that on a single silicone chip. It is estimated that until the year 1900 human knowledge doubled every century. Every 100 years cumulative human knowledge doubled. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years. By 2013 knowledge was doubling every 12 months. Today it is estimated that knowledge, human knowledge doubles every single day.

By the end of this year, by the end of 2020 knowledge will be doubling at the rate of every 12 hours. Now on an individual level somebody that has knowledge, a lot of knowledge can be intimidating, even annoying. You know, you're around that person, you bring up a subject and they know a lot about it. You bring up another subject, they know even more. It's like, of course, you're the know-it-all.

You know everything. It can be a little disconcerting to be around people like that. I imagine that for the disciples of Jesus it felt a little bit like that when they were around Jesus when they discovered, hey, this guy like knows everything. So, for example, when Philip found Nathanael and said, hey, we have discovered the one that Moses and the prophets said would come, Jesus of Nazareth, to which Nathanael said, Nazareth, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said, well, come check it out.

Come and see. So when Nathanael was approaching Jesus, Jesus spotted him and said, there's an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. Nathanael said, how do you know me? And Jesus said, even before you were under the fig tree I saw you. At which Nathanael said, rabbi, truly you are the son of God, you are the king of Israel. Whatever was happening under that little fig tree must have been some private little prayer that he thought only God knows about Jesus knew about.

And he discovered I'm dealing with somebody that has immense knowledge. Or there was the time when our Lord healed a paralyzed man and he said these words. He said, man, your sins are forgiven. Be of good cheer. And the enemies of Jesus, the Pharisees, were thinking in their minds, this guy's blaspheming.

Nobody can forgive sins except God. They were just thinking that. The Bible says Jesus turned to them and knowing their thoughts said, why are you thinking evil in your hearts?

We read that on a couple of occasions. Jesus actually knew what people were thinking. Imagine knowing somebody who knows everything about you.

Now imagine somebody who knows everything about you and loves you anyway. That's what we're dealing with when we deal with the knowledge of God. Sir Francis Bacon was the one who said, knowledge is power.

You probably heard that statement, knowledge is power. If that statement is true, then God is all powerful because God has all knowledge. We look at Psalm 139, we read the first six verses together. But you ought to know that this single Psalm penned by King David, highlights not one but four different attributes of God. God's knowledge, God's presence, God's power, and God's holiness. Or as theologians like to rename these attributes, God's omniscience, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, and his impeccability. Leave it to a theologian to complicate things.

Make things harder to say. But Psalm 139 is not a lecture on theology. It's really the personal devotional meditation of a man in love with God and musing on these qualities of this great God. It's what David has come to know about God. And it's important because whatever we think about God governs what we think about everything else. What we know to be true about God, how we view him, determines how we view us, the world, what happens in the world.

As A.W. Tozer put it, what a person thinks about God is the most important thing about that person. So we discover what not only David thinks about God but what the Scripture declares God to be. So in these six verses what I'm going to do with you is go through them and sort of drill down.

I like to squeeze every drop out of the lemon, get a lot out of it. So I'm going to be emphasizing different words in this text as we go along. Because what I noticed is four attributes or four aspects, four features of God's knowledge. And the first is that his knowledge is immeasurable.

Notice some of these descriptive words that David uses. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down.

You are acquainted with all my ways. All of these words are used by David to describe a being that is omniscient, all knowing. Omniscient is a Latin term.

It comes from two words, omni, all, and sciencia, knowledge. Simply put, God is unlimited in what he knows. God, by nature, is without the need to learn anything.

He doesn't have to cram for an exam. He is the ultimate knower. God knows every field of knowledge more than any expert in that field. So God knows more about astronomy than the astronomer, more about biology than the best biologist, more about theology than the most advanced theologian.

And more about the coronavirus than Dr. Fauci. God is an expert on everything. I remember a woman telling me, and I've heard this several times since in counseling sessions, women saying, I just don't understand men.

That's a common thing I've heard. I've also heard many men say, I'll never understand a woman. God understands both men and women.

And God even understands teenagers. Now, compare that with our knowledge, human knowledge, vastly different. Human knowledge is accumulated knowledge. It is the product of tedious learning, painstaking research, long experience. God's knowledge is immediate.

It is comprehensive and without deterioration. God doesn't have to research a subject. God doesn't have to string one logical premise on top of another to come up to a conclusion.

God never had to go to school. God never has to be informed about anything. Isaiah the prophet in chapter 40 said, who has understood the mind of the Lord or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him? Who taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?

The answer is no one has. So that means that there are certain words that God never says. God never says, wow. God doesn't look at him and go, wow.

Like he's just been enlightened. God never goes, huh, like he's been informed or I never knew that. Elihu in Job chapter 37 called God him who is perfect in knowledge. Perfect in knowledge. You can never tell God something he doesn't know.

The initials TMI don't apply to him. He has all the information. And God never forgets stuff. Think of all the things we forget. You really pick up on this when you have young children and you send them to school. They could be third or fourth grade and they bring assignments home and they want your help. You are the adult. They're the third grader and you look at their assignment and you go, I don't remember that stuff.

It's been so long. So the first aspect of God's knowledge is it is immeasurable. He is omniscient.

He has total knowledge of everything, past, present and future. Now the reason I'm underscoring this is because not everybody believes this. Not every so-called Christian believes this. There are many churches or people in churches that do not believe that God is all knowing. There is a doctrine called open theism, open theism or the doctrine of the limited knowledge of God. And it's the belief that God has made a universe in which the future is not entirely knowable, even for God. So this particular group will say, God is learning new things every day as he's watching the universe unfold. It's like, well I didn't know that.

Well that's nice to know that. So God is in the process of growing and expanding and learning. It's called open theism. Well, that's what they say, but that is not a simple and plain reading of the text of Scripture. That would not make God omniscient, would it? That would make God omniscient, or microniscient, or partniscient. When the Bible seems to reveal that God is omniscient, as John the Apostle put it plainly in 1 John 3 verse 20, God knows all things. So first aspect of God's knowledge, God's knowledge is immeasurable.

Second is that God's knowledge is instructional. Now I'm gonna read a few of these verses with you and I'm gonna emphasize the way it's written in the Hebrew text. In the Hebrew text there are certain words that are emphasized or put in the emphatic position and it is the word you, the pronoun for God here. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.

That's how it's written in the Hebrew. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. There's not a word on my tongue, but behold, oh Lord, you know it all together.

Now the reason it is emphasized in the Hebrew or put in the emphatic place is because David is saying, you and no one else has this particular attribute. You are very unique in the fact that you know what nobody else knows. When I was a little kid, I swore that God was snitching on me because my mom seemed to know stuff that I thought, how could she know that? Like she knew where I was hiding. She just knew right where I was.

Or I would whisper something in the next room. I heard that. How is that possible? God must be telling her. No, only God has this particular attribute of all knowledge. And look at verse six. Such knowledge or this unique knowledge that only you have is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it.

It's unreachable. And then in verse six, David is comparing himself to God. He's saying, there's no way I could ever know what you know unless you reveal it to me. And that's what I mean by the knowledge of God is instructional because there are certain things known only to God that God has decided to reveal to us. It was Socrates who said, knowledge is the only good and ignorance the only evil. Now if that statement were true then God is supremely good and we are supremely not good. Because in comparison to God, we are very limited in what we know. But this section of scripture tells us about the God that we are dealing with. His knowledge is complete. His knowledge is unlimited. And because his knowledge and awareness extends to all times past, present, and future as indicated here by David, it means that God knows what will happen just as much as he knows what has happened.

I want you to understand that. Prophecy to God is just as easy as history. So for us, we look back on history because it's already happened. We go, well that happened, that happened, that happened.

Here's the facts. To God prophecy is just like history because he is all knowing the future is as clear to him as the past. And by the way, that is the basis of biblical prophecy. One fourth of your Bible is prophetic. Speaks about future events.

One fourth of it is prophecy. So it is God instructing us on the future. Here's God, he has all knowledge. We have very limited knowledge. God says, I'm going to let you in on what's going to happen in the future. That would never happen unless God instructed us. So for example, and I'll just give you three.

There are hundreds, thousands. God announced that King Cyrus would deliver the Jews and he is named in Isaiah chapter 45, Cyrus. That prediction is made 150 years before Cyrus was ever born. That's God using his unlimited knowledge to instruct us on a future event. Daniel, in chapter 2 of Daniel and chapter 7 of Daniel predicted the rise and fall of subsequent world governing empires from Babylon to Medo-Persia to the Greek empire to the Roman empire.

In Zechariah chapter 9, Zechariah predicts Jesus Christ the Messiah riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. So God is making the future known, instructing us with prophecy even before the events occur. Anybody can predict the future.

Weathermen do it all the time. But they're not always right. You see, anybody can make a prediction but to have those things fulfilled is quite another category. Especially when you add details to your prediction. So if you predict something and then you add detail and detail and detail you eventually enter the realm of what is called compound probability. And if those things would ever take place they become exponentially decreased in the probability of that. So for example, let's say I have in my pocket 10 pennies.

This is an example I always like to use. I have 10 pennies in my pocket, I really don't. But let's say I did and I marked them 1 through 10. And they're in my pocket and I say, I'm not going to look but I'm going to reach in my pocket and I make the prediction that I'm going to select penny marked number 1. Now, what are my odds? 1 out of 10 because there's 10 pennies. But if I pull it out and you clap and go, oh, it's a good trick, you did it. 1 out of 10 chance and you got it.

But it was good luck. But then I say, ladies and gentlemen, I'm now going to reach in my pocket and select penny marked number 2. Now my odds are not 1 in 10 or 1 in 9.

They decrease exponentially. Now it's 1 in 100 that I can do that. And if I say now I'm going to do number 3, number 4 and I say I'm going to reach in and sequentially pick out all 10 pennies in order, my odds significantly decrease exponentially. So by the end of it, it's 1 in 10 billion that I could pull that off. Do you know that there are over 300 predictions about Jesus Christ written in the Old Testament? Where you would be born, what tribe you would be from, things about his family, things about his friends, about his accusers, betrayers, death. Over 300 predictions in the Old Testament. It is estimated that in 100 billion years, there is no chance that those prophecies that Jesus fulfilled could ever be fulfilled.

There's not enough time without God. See, when you really look at it, you discover that biblical prophecy isn't just a good guess because it always has multiple contingencies that cannot be known or cannot be controlled. That shows us, gives us proof that this Bible is of divine origin, not human origin. Now, when God all knowingly predicts a future event and it comes to pass, you know what that does for us? It increases our faith, right? It's like, wow, God said it would happen.

It happened! And it should cause you to place more confidence in him. That's what Jesus said should happen. This is Jesus speaking in John chapter 14 verse 29. And now I have told you before it comes so that when it does come to pass, you may believe. Fulfilled prophecy increases faith. There's just no other way to explain the Bible's ability to predict the future unless we see God as its author because the precision is undeniable. So God's knowledge is immeasurable but it's also instructional because God lets us in on what is going to happen.

So what have we learned so far? First of all, God knows it all, knows everything. And when he uses prophecy, he's showing off in a good way. He's showing what he alone is able to do because other books of Scripture, other religions that have their Scripture do not have predictive prophecy.

The Bible does. So when he does that, he instructs us in the future and our faith grows. It is bolstering.

That's Skip Hyten with a message from his series 2020. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep this broadcast going strong, connecting more people like you to the Bible. God knows every single thing about you.

Your actions and your thoughts. And he loves you so deeply, as one person put it, and he loves you anyway. We want the world to know about his love as well. You can be a part of that important mission as you keep these teachings coming to you and to many others. Your gift today will help do exactly that. Keep listening to hear how you can partner in this work today. Give us a call at 800-922-1888 to give a gift.

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So thank you for giving generously. Did you know there's a great biblical resource available right at your fingertips through your mobile device? Skip has several Bible reading plans available in the YouVersion Bible app.

You can dive deeper into several books of the Bible to gain new insights. Just search Skip Heitzig and the YouVersion Bible app. And real quick, did you know you can catch Connect with Skip Heitzig on the Hillsong Channel on Saturdays at 4.30 p.m. Mountain or watch it on TV and on Sundays at 5.30 a.m. Eastern? Check your local listings and be sure to come back again next week as Skip Heitzig shares how you can be comforted and encouraged by God's infinite knowledge. You don't want to miss that. Make a connection Make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word Make a connection Connection Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.