Omniscience - God Knows All About Me

Your boss’s words echo in your mind as he leaves your office. “We appreciate all you’ve done for the company but unfortunately, in this latest round of downsizing, your position has been eliminated. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to let you go, effective the end of this month.”

Part of you is numb with shock. The other part of you is overcome with a feeling of panic. “How long will I be out of a job? And what kind of a job will I end up with? How will we pay the bills? Does anybody know how awful this feels? Does anybody care? Does anybody understand?”

God does.

You dab at the tears and fight back the lump in your throat. You’ve just tried to tell your husband exactly how you feel about your marriage, and it hasn’t gone well. Now he’s just staring off into space with one of those “I’ll never understand women” looks. And you think “Does anybody know how I feel? Does anybody understand me?”

God knows.

God knows, because God knows everything. He knows how many grains of sand there are on all the beaches in the world. He knows the exact position of every star in the universe. He just heard the sound of a sleeping baby’s sigh in Argentina, and he knows that a bull elephant in Africa has just had a run-in with a pride of lions on the Serengeti Plain.

God knows every fact there is to know. He knows how many atoms there are in this podium. He knows how many raindrops fell on Canada last year. He knows how many hairs are on your head. (For some of us, that’s not a large number!)

The Bible teaches us that God knows all things perfectly. The word “omniscience” means to have all knowledge—to know everything there is to know about everything.

Psalm 147:5 tells us that “his understanding has no limit.”

As human beings, so much of our lives is taken up with learning; with acquiring knowledge and information. You wake up in the morning and turn on the radio to find out the weather. You grab the phone book to look up a phone number. You consult a cookbook to prepare a recipe. You read a map to learn directions. We’re always learning and absorbing new information.

But God never learns—He never has learned and never will learn anything, because he already knows it all. He never wonders; he is never surprised or amazed by anything. If God ever came across something that was new to him, it would mean that he wasn’t omniscient. Isaiah 40:13–14 tells us that the Lord doesn’t need anybody to be his teacher:

Isaiah 40:13-14 Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?

Perhaps the greatest single collection of information in the world today is the U.S. Library of Congress. It contains over 80 million volumes and is staffed by 4,600 people. Yet when it comes to knowledge, the whole Library of Congress is like a drop in the bucket compared to what God knows.

In Romans 11, Paul writes “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! “

You see, God not only knows all things that are—he knows all things that might be, or could be. He not only knows all the facts; he knows all the possibilities, too.

Software developers have taught computers how to play chess. A computer is able to analyze every move on the chess board in terms of where it might lead. The computer rapidly calculates the possibilities. If I move my Queen from this square to this square, what will that mean five moves from now in light of all of the possible combinations of moves that could happen between now and then? There are only 64 squares on a chess board. But even when limited to those 64 squares, you run into a stupendous number of possibilities.

Just think of how many possibilities there are in a living universe populated by at least 6 billion human beings. God knows all the possibilities. How would history have been different if Napoleon had parted his hair on the other side? Only God knows.

There’s something else God knows perfectly: God knows Himself perfectly.

Have you ever had cause to ask questions about yourself? You do something foolish, and then you say “What must I have been thinking?” Or you misplace something, and you say “Now where did I put that?”

God never has cause to question himself. He knows and understands himself perfectly. He’s the only one in the universe who does.

1 Corinthians 2:10 The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

The Bible tells us that there is an intimate knowledge and communication among the members of the Trinity. The Father knows the Son, who knows the Father intimately. And each knows the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 11:27 All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

So God knows himself perfectly. There is no self-doubt or inconsistency or indecisiveness in the Godhead.

Thirdly, God knows me perfectly.

From time to time, you’ll read in the newspaper of a crime being committed by some person who seemed to be an upstanding member of the community. And invariably, that person’s neighbors and relatives will say “We never dreamt that he would do such a thing.”

They thought they knew him, but they didn’t. Maybe you have had a friendship like that. You thought you knew all about your friend, but then one day, she said or did something that made you think “I don’t really know this person.”

The truth is that we really don’t know much about each other. Even couples who have been married for fifty or sixty years are still discovering new things about each other. We don’t know the hidden thoughts and motives of the heart. But God does, because He knows me perfectly and completely.

Proverbs 15:3 The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.

In that great Psalm we read earlier, Psalm 139, David says “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.”

The word “know” that is used there in the Hebrew is the word “yada”. It is a word that means more than just factual knowledge. It means intimate knowledge, interpersonal knowledge. It means knowing what a person is thinking, how they feel, how they will react in certain situations. It is much fuller and richer than simply factual knowledge.

And that is how God knows me. He knows me perfectly. He knows my thoughts, my motives, he knows my attitudes, my tendencies, my hopes, my dreams. He knows the good in me, but he also knows the bad in me; my character flaws, my sinful nature, my weaknesses and bad habits.

Psalm 90 says “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.” There isn’t anything about us that God does not know.

So that means that no one can tell God anything about you that He doesn’t already know. No unsuspected character flaw can be revealed. No forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of a closet. God knows you through and through. Good and bad. The whole package.

That leads us to several practical implications.

1. I cannot hide from God.

Once upon a time, there was a very wealthy old man who had a large family. He had many grandchildren who often visited him at his mansion. This elderly gentleman was very hard of hearing; in fact, he was going deaf. But one day, unbeknownst to his children or his grandchildren, he bought himself a hearing aid.

A few weeks later, he was telling a friend just how well this hearing aid worked. Now he could pick up conversations quite easily, even in the next room. The friend said “I’m sure your family must be very happy to know that you can hear so much better now.”

But the elderly man replied “Well, actually, I haven’t told them about my hearing aid yet. I’ve just been sitting around listening to them talk—and you know what? I’ve already changed my will three times.”

There are many times in our lives when we think that God is like that old grandfather. He can’t hear us, and he can’t see us. We ignore the truth of his omniscience. And we assume that we can hide from him.

Hebrews 4:13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, one of the things they lost sight of is that God is omniscient. After they had sinned, Genesis 3:8 says “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

One of the lies of the devil is that you can do things that God won’t find out about. You can sin secretly when God’s back is turned. But listen to the words of Job in chapter 13 as he rebukes his friends. His friends had been swift to judge Job for his failings, but they had been acting as though they had no faults of their own. And Job says:

“Would it turn out well if he examined you? Could you deceive him as you might deceive men?”

God is not deceived by any spiritual show we might put on to cover up our sinful thoughts and actions. He sees us as we really are—we cannot hide from God.

So let’s be honest with God about ourselves. Let’s be like David, who said at the end of Psalm 139 “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.”

The first step in any authentic relationship is to be honest with each other, and quit trying to put up false fronts. Are you willing, in light of God’s omniscience, to be honest with God about yourself?

There is a second implication to the omniscience of God. It is that God invites me to know Him the way that He knows me. I can know the God who knows me.

We’ve seen that God knows us personally, thoroughly, and intimately. But the most amazing thing is that God wants us to know Him in the same way. In fact, this is the greatest message of the Bible—that we can know God personally. We can be a friend of God.

The Gospel isn’t primarily about how to get to heaven when you die. The Gospel is about how you can know God. In fact, Jesus defined eternal life for us in John 17. He defined it in terms of knowing God. He said “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

Eternal life isn’t about time, it’s about a relationship. A relationship with God.

And the word “know” that Jesus used there in Greek is the functional equivalent of the word “yada” in Hebrew. It means to know personally, intimately, face to face.

So here is what the Bible is saying— God—the Creator of the universe; the one who is infinite; the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End; the Holy One who dwells on high—wants me to know him. He wants me to be his friend!

The Bible says that this is what we were created for—to know God; to be friends of God. And we can find no satisfaction in life short of that. There is nothing in life that can replace the joy of knowing God. We have a yearning deep within our souls that can never be satisfied with cheap substitutes for knowing God.

The reason that so many people are disillusioned with life—so many people find life to be boring or empty—is that they don’t know God. Marie Antoinette, a woman who had everything that her world could offer made this observation about her life—she said “Nothing tastes.” LIfe, for her, was empty because she didn’t know God.

The greatest glory, the greatest honor that a man or a woman can ever achieve is to know God. God said in Jer. 9:23:

“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me…”

Do you know God this morning? Are you a friend of God? When you think of God, do you think of him as a friend? Or is he someone out there to be feared and avoided?

The way to know God is to receive Jesus Christ and to become his follower. Remember, Jesus said “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” And when we receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we begin to know God.

The Apostle John said in 1 John 2 “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

Do you want to know God, this morning? Receive Jesus as your Savior.

There is one more practical implication about the omniscience of God. I can be confident in His omniscience.

Back in the book of Genesis, God promised Abraham that he would become the father of many nations. But Abraham didn’t have any children. And his wife Sarah was unable to conceive. So Sarah did what was culturally acceptable at that time—she gave her maid Hagar to her husband in the hopes that Hagar would conceive. Then any child that resulted from that union would be considered Abraham’s offspring, and Sarah’s child by proxy.

So that is what happened. Abraham slept with Hagar and she conceived. But human solutions to divine problems always leave a bad taste in everybody’s mouth. And that’s what happened here. Sarah began to despise Hagar. She was very bitter that it was Hagar who was pregnant, and not her. So she drove Hagar out of the house.

And Hagar fled into the desert of Shur, a homeless, pregnant young woman without any resources. And that’s where the Angel of the Lord found her in Genesis 16. And the Lord encouraged her. He said “The Lord has heard of your misery.”

He told her to go home and he gave her a promise. He told her that she would have a great family—many descendants. He gave her hope in the midst of her hopelessness.

And Hagar responded in Genesis 16:13 “You are the God who sees me, I have now seen the One who sees me.”

God’s omniscience means that we are never out of His sight. He is the God who sees me. He is the God who knows my situation. I can be confident in God’s omniscience.

Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 10 “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

A little while ago, I had to phone my credit card company because there was a mix-up on my bill. They hadn’t properly recorded a payment that I had made. And in the course of trying to get through to talk to a customer service representative, I was put on hold. For about 15 minutes! I came close to giving up, thinking that nobody knew I was there, and nobody cared about my problem.

Have you ever been tempted to think of God this way? You’ve got a problem, but he’s put you on hold and he’s off doing something more important? Maybe he’s forgotten about you?

But the doctrine of God’s omniscience says that God’s attention to you is never distracted. He is 100% focused on you all the time. You are always in his thoughts—you are never on the “back burner” with him; you are always on the “front burner” of his mind.

He knows all about your situation, he knows exactly how you feel, and what you are thinking moment by moment. He understands your doubts and fears. He knows that answer to all your problems. And he knows all your possibilities, too.

Sometimes we wonder why things work out the way they do. Recently I read a story about Dr. James Gray, who was the President of Moody Bible Institute many years ago. Dr. Gray was convalescing after a severe illness. His doctor thought that a change of scenery might be beneficial, so he suggested an ocean voyage.

So Dr. Gray made all the arrangements, and was on the verge of leaving for the trip, when he suffered a serious setback in his condition that made it impossible for him to travel.

He was very disappointed, because he had been looking forward to this trip for many months. He wondered why God had allowed this new bout of illness to come into his life.

About a week later, he picked up a newspaper in Chicago. On the front page was the tragic account of the sinking of the very ship that he was to have been on. There were no survivors. God knew what was going to happen, and protected him.

We can be confident in the omniscience of God! We can say with the Psalmist in Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the hills— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. 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.

The Lord watches over you—the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

Do you want to know God this morning?

Prayer of Invitation