God sees what no man can see. God sees through walls. God sees through the outward facade. God sees through the mass that we wear. God sees the things that are done in darkness. God sees into the depths of the human heart. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind.
I'm Lee Webb. We're studying what theologians call the incommunicable attributes of God, those aspects of His being which we as humans do not possess. For example, God is omnipresent.
There is no place where we can hide from Him. He is omnipotent, all-powerful. And the Scriptures tell us He is acquainted with all our ways and even numbers the hairs on our head. Let's learn more about the fact that the God we worship is omniscient. He's all-knowing. This is another staggering truth about God that makes Him incomprehensible to us, really. I mean, we understand what this means, but the magnitude of this is overwhelming to us that there is nothing that God does not know. And by this truth, we mean that God possesses all knowledge in His mind.
He possesses infinite knowledge of the past, the present, and the future. God never learns anything. He certainly never learns anything from us. Nothing new ever enters God's mind. Nothing ever suddenly dawns on God. Nothing ever catches Him off guard.
God never has a eureka moment. He knows all things in advance. He knows what we will say before we even say it. He knows all things eternally, perfectly, immediately, comprehensively. This is the omniscience of God. Now, as we consider this, I want to lay this out in eight headings. Don't faint. Eight headings.
They'll be short. But we want to consider something of the height and the depth and the breadth and the length of the omniscience of God. First of all, when we say the omniscience of God, He has perfect self-knowledge. God knows Himself perfectly.
He knows Himself intimately. And within the Godhead, the Father knows the Son, and the Son knows the Father perfectly. In Matthew 11 verse 27, Jesus says, No one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Within the Trinity, there is this perfect knowledge one of the other, and it speaks to the unity, the perfect unity that exists within the Godhead.
In John 10 verse 15, Jesus makes this simple statement, The Father knows Me, and I know the Father. There are no gaps in their understanding of each other. Sometimes I fail to say things to my wife that I should communicate but don't, and there can be gaps of information. Sometimes I know something that I haven't told her.
She knows something that she has not told me, and therefore we can at times pull against one another in making plans, little realizing what we're doing. But the Father knows the Son, and the Son knows the Father, and it speaks to the perfect harmony and unity that exists as they carry out their administration over all of the affairs of providence. There are no gaps in their understanding with what one is doing while the other is doing this in their distinction of roles. 1 Corinthians 2 verse 11 says, The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. No one really knows the depths of what God knows except the Spirit and except the Son. So we begin at this very profound entry level into omniscience, that they know each other perfectly.
Second, they have perfect knowledge. And not only does God know Himself perfectly, but He knows all things outside of Himself perfectly. God knows everything accurately as it really is. God never misreads a situation. There's never a misperception with God. Job 37 verse 16 speaks of God as perfect in knowledge.
Did you get that? Perfect in knowledge. Psalm 147 verse 5, His understanding is infinite. There is no limit to the understanding, the perfection of God's understanding. He knows everything perfectly, infinitely. 1 John 1 5, God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. One, that speaks to His holiness.
Two, that also speaks to His omniscience, for light is a metaphor used in the Scripture of knowledge. There is no darkness in the knowledge of God. What a comfort this should be to us as we trust God with the affairs of our lives, that God knows what's around the corner. God sees what I don't see. God knows the best answer to the prayers that I bring before Him. God takes everything into account as I lay before Him my petitions and my requests. We can even say praise God for unanswered prayer.
Think about the prayers that you and I have prayed, little realizing what God knows and what lies around the corner. But God knew, and God protected us from ourselves because He has perfect knowledge. Third, He has eternal knowledge. That is to say, everything that God knows, which is everything, He has known from before the foundation of the world.
There has not been a succession of acquired knowledge by God along the way. You and I started off in kindergarten. We received some knowledge. Then we moved up to first grade, received a little more knowledge. Second, third, it built.
It kept escalating upward. Not with God. God has always known everything from before the foundation of the world. Isaiah 46 verses 9 through 10, I've already read it in an earlier session, but so many of these verses speak to various attributes of God, and it shows how overlapping many of these character qualities of God are.
Remember the former things long past. For I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me. Now, what defines God as saying there is no one like me? What sets God apart as God, that there is no one like Him? Well, there's a sense in which each of these attributes set God apart, that there is no one like Him. But what follows now in the next verse, specifically in this context, sets God apart from us as being totally different from what we are.
I am God and there is no one like me. Now, here it is, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times, those things which have not been done. God can stand at the beginning and does stand at the beginning and has stood at the beginning, and looks all the way to the end, to the very end, and declares what the end will be, and by implication in everything in between. If you can declare the end, you know everything that leads up to the end, and all of this from the beginning, all of this from ancient times.
What confidence we should have in our God, that He has known all that He knows from eternity past. Fourth, it is immediate knowledge. By that, we mean that God knows everything simultaneously. He knows everything immediately, or He knows everything at once.
He never has to calculate something to discover the bottom line. He already knows the bottom line. He already knows everything. He knows the whole process. He knows the end. He knows the means to the end, and He knows the end all at once. He never forgets something and then remembers. He never adds to His knowledge. There is nothing ever subtracted from His knowledge.
He does not know some things better than other things. He knows everything perfectly, immediately, eternally. Romans 11, verses 33 and following, we keep citing this text.
It's kind of a one-size-fits-all text. It addresses virtually every attribute of God, seems to, one way or another. I love verses like this. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. It's a bottomless depth, the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments, unfathomable in His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord?
It's another rhetorical question. The answer is not you or me, not anyone. Or who became His counselor? Who knew something that God didn't know that needed to instruct God, that needed to counsel God, that needed to give God insight into something that God did not previously have? The answer is no one. Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again?
The answer is no one. No one has ever been God's informant. No one has ever brought a report to the throne of grace that He needed to receive this information that He did not already have. God is a know-it-all. God knows everything.
Isaiah 40, verse 13, who has directed the Spirit of the Lord? Or has His counselor informed Him? With whom did He consult? And who gave Him understanding?
Again these are all rhetorical questions, begging the answer, no one. And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge? Who taught Him knowledge and informed Him of the way of understanding? This will revolutionize our prayer life. When we pray to God, we're not informing Him of what's going on down here as though He did not know.
He's been preoccupied with some other matters and now He's ready to attend to us. This is our moment to come before the throne of grace and we are giving insider information now to God. No, we don't have to pray that way because God already knows it all. Fifth, it's exhaustive knowledge, which is to say God knows everything down to the smallest detail. God numbers and names all of the stars, the number of which is incalculable. He numbers every hair upon our heads.
Not even a sparrow falls apart from the Lord's knowledge. He sees all the actions of men in every place. He views all the paths that we trod, the works that we accomplish. God sees it all. I've quoted A.W.
Tozier a couple of times. Let me quote him one more time. God knows all that can be known. God knows all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret because God knows all things perfectly. He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything. He is never surprised. He is never amazed by what he learns because he never learns. He already knows.
You can't learn what you already know, despite what your wife may tell you. Psalm 33, beginning in verse 13, the Lord looks from heaven. He sees all the sons of men. From his dwelling place he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. He who fashions the hearts of them all. He who understands all their works. He understands their works. He understands their heart and their motives and their ambitions behind their works. He sees it all. Psalm 147, verse 4, he counts the number of the stars. He gives names to all of them.
That's impossible for us. Proverbs 5, 21, for the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord. He watches all his paths. Psalm 15, verse 3, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good. How exhaustive is the knowledge of God?
Every minute detail. Again, this is comforting. It is convicting. It is comforting in that he knows me and my heart, and even when others misunderstand me and there is a mistaken perception about me, God knows the truth.
That is encouraging. But that's also very convicting as well, because other times men think more highly of us than we ought to think. God knows the truth. Sixth, his knowledge is penetrating. God sees what no man can see. God sees through walls. God sees through the outward facade.
God sees through the mass that we wear. God sees the things that are done in darkness. God sees into the depths of the human heart.
God knows the motives. God knows what is truly there. Of course, 1 Samuel 16, 7, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. Now God does see the outward appearance, but God plunges yet deeper. God sees into the secret places of our heart. God sees it all.
He knows it all. In fact, it could be said, not only does he see into us, he sees through us. He sees us so perfectly. Perhaps the signature text of all of this is Psalm 139, a psalm which we've already quoted. It's one of these Omni Psalms, but the first four verses, they just so stand out.
Listen to these verses. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. This word searched was used of the spies going into the promised land to search it out firsthand, to have their hands upon the terrain and to look and to come back and to give a report. So God has explored every little niche within us. This word search means to spy out. It means to dig deeply into a matter.
The idea is to explore a country, for example. God has searched me and known me. This also speaks highly of his love for us in that he knows the worst about us and still loves us. Sometimes when I'm criticized as a pastor, yes, sometimes that does happen in the ministry, I really have the thought, I'm glad they don't know anymore. If they knew anymore, they would really be upset with me.
I'm glad that's as far as you go, okay? But God has searched us out. He knows the worst about us. He knows our secret thoughts. He knows our selfishness. He knows our ego.
And yet, he has set his eternal love upon us and it is blazing and it will never be extinguished and many waters shall not drown it out. You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down. This word for know means to know intimately. It's the word that's used really of the relationship between a husband and a wife and their intimate physical relationship.
It's as intimate and close as it can possibly be. The psalmist David says, you know, you know me intimately and personally up close when I sit down and when I rise up. Now, that's a figure of speech, a way of saying the entirety of my life. When I sit down and when I rise up, that's like saying preach the word in season and out of season. Well, there's no other season. I mean, that just means to always preach the word of God in season and out of season.
There's not another category, is there? You know me perfectly when I sit down and when I rise up. You know the whole of my life.
You understand my thought from afar. God, even upon your throne in heaven, you peer with penetrating insight and knowledge into the depths of my soul and my life. He goes on to say, you scrutinize my path.
This word scrutinize is the word that means to sift through something, to separate out, to sift through and separate out the wheat from the tares, the good from the bad, the temporal from the eternal. God is able to sift through and scrutinize the entirety of my life. He says you scrutinize my path and my lying down, when I sit down, when I rise up, when I lie down.
I think that covers all the categories unless we can fly. And you are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, Lord, you know it all.
It's an amazing thing. Nobody knows me like this. I would be uncomfortable for anyone to know me like this.
You would love me from afar, but if you got too close, there's plenty of flaws within me. This would make any of us uncomfortable to be known like this by another person on the earth, yet this is exactly how God knows us perfectly. Psalm 139 verse 12, even the darkness is not dark to you, and the night is as bright as the day. God can see even in the dark.
That's pretty good. I just need to give you the last two categories. He knows the future. He has future knowledge.
You would understand that, of course. The entire second half of the book of Isaiah is just to compare the dumb idols who know nothing and God who sees the future. And the test of the one true God is that He can predict the future and knows the future. And the reason God knows the future is because God has foreordained the future.
And then finally, possible knowledge. God even knows what possibly could happen if another path had been taken. And the text I want you to hear is Matthew 11, 21 and 23. It says, woe unto you, Chorazin, woe unto you, Bethsaida, for if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon had occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Process that verse. If the miracles that happened over there that had happened here, they would have repented long ago. But it was not God's sovereign will that they happen over there. God knows not only the reality of what there is, but also the possibility of other things.
I need to bring this to a close. Our God is all-knowing, vastly more so than what any of us can comprehend. That's Dr. Stephen Lawson teaching on God's omniscience. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Tuesday. Thank you for being with us.
I'm Lee Webb. You know, I continue to be fascinated by the Apollo 11 mission, the fact that more than 51 years ago, Neil Armstrong took one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind. It took some smart people to figure out how to make that happen. But one thing is clear. There were plenty of failures before there was success.
But think about this. When God created the universe, there were no failures. He didn't have to go back to the drawing board. That's because God is all-knowing.
His design was perfect. This and other aspects of God's being cause us to stand in awe of Him, to worship Him. That's why we'd like to send you Dr. Lawson's series, The Attributes of God. In 16 messages, he shows us how God has revealed Himself to us in Scripture. Dr. Lawson's latest book is also part of this offer. It's titled Show Me Your Glory, Understanding the Majestic Splendor of God. We'll send you both resources when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries.
You can find us online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. Well, earlier I mentioned that God's perfect design for the universe reflects His omniscience. When He created it, we read that He spoke the world into existence, proof that He is all-powerful. God's omnipotence will be our focus tomorrow on Renewing Your Mind, and we hope you'll join us.
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