Knowing the God Who Knows You - Part B

If God's ability transcends my reality, it's best to bow to His immensity. My God, you are so unfathomable, so transcendent, so above me, so far beyond me, so high I can't attain to it.

So, I'm going to yield completely to you. God's knowledge is vast. He knows everything. But did you know that also means He knows everything about you?

Stay on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Skip shares how you can be comforted and encouraged by God's infinite knowledge. Before we begin, here's a resource that will take your prayer life to a new level. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, said, It is possible to move men through God by prayer alone. Ian Bounds, who authored nine books on prayer, said, God shapes the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be. And Billy Graham said, To get nations back on their feet, we must first get down on our knees.

Here's Skip Heitzig. You know, the Bible says that we will experience God's peace when we pray, and it tells us to pray about everything. We want to help you know how and what to pray and what to expect. That's why we're offering Lord Teach Me to Pray in 28 Days by Kay Arthur. When you give to support this ministry, prayer is meant to up the game of peace and joy in our hearts. Lord Teach Me to Pray is our thanks when you give $25 or more today to help keep this ministry on the air, connecting you and others to God's word.

Call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. OK, let's get into today's teaching. We're in Psalm 139 as we begin our study with Skip Heitzig. 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 bolstered. So, God's knowledge is immeasurable, God's knowledge is instructional. Now, let's move on to a third feature of God's knowledge. God's knowledge is individual.

It's not just general. It's not that God just knows future events generally. God's knowledge is personal and individual. Let's look back at our psalm. I'm going to notice now with you, emphasize something else. O Lord, you have searched me, David writes, 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. I won't go through it all, but I counted 13 personal pronouns in verses 1 through 6. 13 personal pronouns and adjectives. Why do I bring this up? Because David is not dealing with God's knowledge in some abstract, theological, academic way. He is looking at God's knowledge in a personal way. He's taking this personally.

He's personalizing it. Now, what David does with this attribute of God, with this truth of God, God is omniscient. What David does with it is exactly what you and I should be doing every time we crack open the Bible. Every time we listen to a sermon at church. Every time we do our daily devotions. We should personalize it. We should individualize it. Because otherwise, Bible knowledge is useless.

Unless it affects us. You see, whenever you've studied the scripture, you probably, a lot of you already know this. That there are stages that you go through. Observation is the first stage. Then interpretation is the second.

Then application is the third. So first you read it and you observe it. What is this text saying?

That's the question you ask in observation. What is it saying? Once you discover by observation what the text is saying, then you move to the second stage, which is interpretation. What does the text mean? What did it mean to the original recipients? What did the original author or speaker intend it to mean?

What are the historical exigencies around it? What does the language that is employed mean, etc. So I discover what it says. I discover what it means.

But the third, the most important, is the application. What does the text mean to me personally? That's what David does with this attribute. The knowledge of God isn't something that he theologizes or philosophizes, but he personalizes it. I'm going to give you a quote by J.I.

Packer who incidentally went to heaven two days ago. On Friday he went into heaven and he's 93 years of age, great theologian, but he wrote these words, If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it's bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited. The very greatness of the subject matter will intoxicate us. Listen, I've met drunk theologians, drunk pastors, drunk Christians. What I mean is drunk on their own knowledge. I know eschatology. In fact, aren't you impressed that I even know the word eschatology? They just love their own accumulation of theological truth. But you might know stuff, but it might not change you. Some of these same people can have rotten marriages, shallow personal worship. It's when truth becomes personal that it becomes profitable. So look what he says in verse 2. This is how individual it is. He says, God knows my every movement in verse 2. You know my sitting down and my rising up. Who cares about that?

These are mundane activity. Evidently, God knows. God has studied this. God watches this. And God cares about it. In fact, look down at verse 17.

Let's just sort of Skip ahead. Sometimes these truths overlap. David says in verse 17, How precious are your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with you. Here is David realizing this know-it-all God not only knows everything about everything I do, but he cares about everything I do.

Like Peter wrote, casting all your care upon him because he cares for you. The latest count of world population as of today is 7.8 billion. There are 7.8 billion people alive on planet earth. Not only does God know everything about you and your actions, but God individually knows all those 7.8 billion people.

Staggering to think that way. Proverbs 5 puts it this way, The ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all of his paths. He knows it all, and he knows all the individual details. So David says, God knows my every movement, verse 2. Also in the same verse, not only does God know my every movement, God knows my every motive. For he says, you understand my thought afar off. Now this term afar off refers to time, not space.

He's not saying afar off spatially, but chronologically. In other words, you know my thought before I think my thought. So while I'm going through the thought processes to form the first word, you already know the end of the sentence.

Before the electrical and chemical signal is transmitted at the synapse of the neuron, you know where I'm going with this thing. You understand my every motive. Now in one sense, dealing with this kind of a God could be for some, unsettling. Because I've discovered people have a basic fear of being exposed. Not only are we discovering that we're in this crazy COVID age, that nobody thought was possible, but here we are. But we're being surveilled. There are surveillance cameras virtually everywhere, bugging devices are possible.

There are tracers that can be put on your phone to track your every movement. So we are discovering we're living in a world where there are no secrets. That bothers us. You know what it feels like perhaps if you discover you're in line at a store or you're sitting in a restaurant. You have to think back now always for you to be able to sit in a restaurant.

You will one day, hopefully. But when you discover that somebody's been staring at you across the room, it just makes you feel creepy. It's like that person's staring at me.

They are invading my space visually. We don't even like that. So David is coming to grips personally with a God who has that kind of awareness of him personally. He knows everything. Or as the writer of Hebrews summed it up in Hebrews 4-13, there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. What this means in short is you cannot pull the wool over God's eyes.

So why bother trying to? Why not just be honest before God? Don't try to sell God on how good you are, cool you are. Who would I really meant God? God knows. Be you.

Be honest. By the way, before we move on from this, the reason that God's assessment of things and God's ultimate judgment of things is better than everyone else's is because he has this attribute. You know people, how can a God of love judge and how will he judge? You're dealing with somebody who has an attribute known only to him called omniscience.

He knows everything. You put a person before a human judge in a modern courtroom setting and witnesses come forward and I saw this person do that, then he did that. And so we get information, the judge listens to the testimonies, then there are lawyers that countermand and counteract and the judge will make a decision based on very limited knowledge. God will make a judgment based on all the facts, all the motives. So God's statements, God's assessments, God's judgments are always much better than anybody else, yours included, mine included. So God's knowledge is immeasurable, it is instructional, it is individual. Finally, David tells us here that God's knowledge is inspirational.

What I mean by that is it motivates us to do something. When I discover this God who knows everything, it should lead me somewhere. Let's see where it leads David. I want you to drill down with me a little bit in verse 5. Look at what he says, You, says to God, you have hedged me behind and before, or in the back and in the front, you have hedged me in the back and in the front and laid your hand upon me. The word hedged, the Hebrew word tzur, means to bind, to encircle, or to lay siege to.

It was used of an army laying siege or sieging a city. So David, you might translate this as saying, I'm hemmed in by you like a city under siege. That's what it's saying.

That's the observation. Now let's move to the interpretation. What does he mean by that?

Well, some think that he means nestled, protected, you nestle me, you protect me. Others think that he is talking more fatalistically, like he's saying, I feel trapped. Follow my thinking here.

They interpret that David is saying, look, if you know everything before it happens, then I'm a prisoner of fate. It's going to happen. I have no choice in the matter. I'm sort of hemmed in that way.

I'm trapped. I'm hedged in. Now, I don't think it means that. I actually think it means the first. I think he means I'm surrounded by God, because when he says you've laid your hand on me, it means you've cupped your hands around me. And that's a protective measure.

So, yeah, I'm hedged in, I'm hemmed in, I'm protected by your hand. And so I think that's true, because look what he says in verse 6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. He wouldn't call it wonderful if he fell trapped. And again, verse 17, how precious are your thoughts to me. He wouldn't call those thoughts precious if he felt trapped.

How great is the sum of them. So David isn't saying I'm a prisoner of fate. He's saying I'm protected by the Father.

That's what he's saying. Now, this leads him somewhere. This motivates him. This inspires him to do something. Take you now to the very end of this psalm. Verse 23.

Now he makes it a prayer. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, or test me, and know my anxieties, and see if there is any wicked way in me. Have at it, God. You're all knowing. Examine my life.

And when you find bad stuff, tell me what it is. But look how he ends the psalm. And lead me in the way everlasting. Let me sum it up this way. Look, if I try to figure you, God, out, I'll blow a fuse.

Your knowledge is so high I can't attain to it. So I'll just yield to you. I'll just submit to you. I'll just surrender to you. That's the motivation.

That's the inspiration. He is inspired to fully surrender and submit to God. So now let me give you the whole psalm in a nutshell as ended here by David. Since God's ability transcends my reality, it is best to bow to his immensity. Once again, if God's ability transcends my reality, it's best to bow to his immensity. God, you are so unfathomable, so transcended, so above me, so far beyond me, so high I can't attain to it. So I'm going to yield completely to you and trust and have confidence in you. You see, if God were big enough for your mind, he wouldn't be big enough for your needs. If you can fit them all in the confines of your little brain and have them all figured out, you have nothing to trust in or to appeal to. So that is Psalm 139 verses 1 through 6. That's how David renders this beautiful quality of God's knowledge. Let me give us three things to walk away with, three practical application points. Number one, since God knows everything, that means he knows the worst about us.

This is good news. Because in human relationships, when a person gets to know another person, there's a fear that once that person really knows who I am, they're not going to like me anymore. And I'm not going to have that person's love. I will be rejected by that person once they really discover who I am. So what happens is people in their relationships resort to hiding, putting their best face on, their best foot forward.

And they don't have the freedom to be the real them. But God already knows the truth about you and loves you anyway. So if God knows everything, then he already knows the worst about you when he called you. A second takeaway, since God knows everything, he knows the best about us.

I'll tell you why this is good news. Because how many times do you do your best, but your best isn't good enough for some people? You fail at doing your best.

And when you fail, even with the right motivations, people are critical of you doing your best. Well, you can take confidence in the fact that God knows the real scoop. God knows the motive of your heart.

God knows what was behind your best effort that you failed at. So, for example, when Peter denied the Lord and failed Jesus, Jesus met him after the resurrection. Remember what Jesus asked him? He said, Peter, do you love me?

Ask him that three times. Because Peter said, yes, Lord, I love you. Again, Jesus said, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Peter, do you love me?

Three times. Peter ended that little discourse by saying, Lord, you know all things. You know all things. And you know that I love you.

That's where he left it. He appealed to the knowledge of Jesus. You know the worst about us. You know the best about us.

Even when we fail at our best. I love what John says, 1 John 3. Even if our own heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. So since God knows everything, He knows the worst about us. He knows the best about us. And third takeaway is since God knows everything, He knows the potential in us. Oh, yes, He sees all of your imperfections. But God also sees the finished product.

He knows what you're going to become. The Bible says we are His workmanship, His work of art. And you know how an artist is. An artist begins the painting or the sculptor with the finished product in his or her mind.

It's already done. I see what it's going to become. And so you might just see a blob of green or yellow on a canvas, but the artist sees the whole finished product. He knows the stages it will take to get you there. We all know Romans 8.28, right? It's one of our favorite verses.

We know that God, all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. One of the most famous verses in the Bible. Romans 8.28. I encourage you to make the very next verse as important as Romans 8.28. Romans 8.29 says this, For those that God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son.

Did you get that? God knowing everything in advance has purpose that you end up looking just like Jesus. That's why it takes so long and so many trials to get there and you won't even be cooked until you get to heaven.

You won't be done until you're in His presence. But that is His goal. That is His aim. For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. And those He predestined, He also called.

Those He called, He also justified. Those He justified, listen, He also glorified. Now God is adding something that hasn't happened yet to your resume. Glorified. You're not glorified yet. You're not glorified yet. You're nice, but you ain't glorified yet. Your brothers and sisters, not glorified. I'm not glorified yet, but God says the future is as true to me as the past. I justified you. I'm going to glorify you. I'm going to state it this way. You're glorified.

It's a done deal. That's God's knowledge. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the Series 2020. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep these messages going strong to connect more people to God's love. The Bible is full of promises by a promise-keeping God, and our goal is to share all those promises with friends like you to encourage and strengthen you in your faith. That's why we make these Bible teachings available to you, but we rely on listener support to make that possible. So if this ministry has blessed you, I'd like to invite you to be a partner in keeping these messages coming to you and others.

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