We are at that time of years, we particularly remember those things, but I hope that they never are far from us, our awareness, and that it always causes us to tremble with a mixture of reverence and joy as we consider what our Lord has done on our behalf. I hope you got an outline as you came in tonight. We are going to this evening continue this study that we initiated some time ago regarding what God is like. We are looking particularly at the omniscience of God this evening.
There are several characteristics of God or attributes of God that we use in connection with this word omni, which simply means all. We speak of God's omniscience and it refers to His knowing everything. All knowledge is God's. We have already talked about some of the essentials of His nature, His spirituality that God is Spirit, His personality that He has the characteristics of a person, His tri-unity. God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and His eternity.
Tonight we begin another aspect of His description as we talk about these attributes of God. We want to talk first about the explanation of omniscience. We have briefly defined it as God's perfect knowledge of all things. We see that a number of places in the scriptures. Let me just read some verses to you that you need not look up, but you may want to jot down the references for future use sometime. Isaiah 40 verse 28 includes this statement, there is no searching of His understanding.
In other words, God has complete understanding of everything. It is impossible for man to search out God's understanding. The most dedicated and skilled theologian of all of history has only skimmed the surface of what God knows. Job 37 verse 16 quotes Elihu as saying this, the wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge. Psalm 147 verse 5, His understanding is infinite. First John 3 verse 20, God knows all things.
Then Romans 11 verse 33, how unsearchable are His judgments and ways past finding out. We see throughout the Bible illustrations of the omniscience that is spoken of in these verses. We see it illustrated for example in the activities of men. In Proverbs 15 verse 3, it says the eyes of the Lord are in every place keeping watch upon the evil and the good. God does not actually have eyes as we have eyes because He is spirit.
And yet God describes His knowledge in those terms so we can try to understand what it means that God sees everything. The eyes of the Lord are in every place keeping watch. And in Proverbs 5 verse 21, for the ways of men are before the eyes of the Lord and He pondereth all His going. It is impossible for us to hide from God. We may hide our activities from the eyes of men but we cannot hide our activities from God. Even our secret sins are known to Him.
Those things about us which no one else in all the world knows and we all have some of those, God knows. God's omniscience is also illustrated by His knowledge of all nature. In Luke 12.6 for example, it says, are not five sparrows sold for two farthings and not one of them is forgotten by God? God even knows the sparrows, those lowly little creatures. It says, He telleth the number of the stars, He calleth them all by their names.
So whether we talk about inanimate or animate aspects of nature, God knows all about both. Of course that's because He is the creator of it all. His omniscience is further seen and illustrated in human experience and thought. I would ask you to turn with me to Psalm 139 which is one of the great theological Psalms. In fact several aspects of God are revealed here in this Psalm, several attributes are revealed. We'll read the first six verses.
Psalm 139, oh Lord you have searched me and you know me. Well that's an amazing statement. God has searched us and God knows us. There's great comfort in that. There's a two edged sword, there's not only great comfort, there can be great fear in that depending upon what there is to know about us. Verse two, 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.
And look at this, before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, oh Lord. Before we can transfer our thoughts from our brains to our tongues, God already knows what we're going to say. He says, you hem me in behind before. You have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. In other words, it causes wonder. He says it is too lofty for me to attain.
So we see the perfect knowledge of God in human experience, even in the simple things like sitting down and standing up, and we see God's knowledge of every aspect of our thinking process. In 1 Kings 8, 39, it says, thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men. I don't even know my own heart very well sometimes, let alone the hearts of those close to me. But God knows the full heart of every person who has ever lived. He knows what you're thinking about right now.
He knows what it is that is troubling you. He perceives your thoughts. He knows the experiences that you've been through this week. God knows the experiences that haunt you from your past. He knows all about them. Those greatest joys, those experiences that come once in a lifetime that you've enjoyed, God knows those. Because God knows everything about human thought and human experience.
Thus saith the Lord. Thus have you said, O house of Israel, for I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them. Even the thoughts that we don't like to acknowledge to ourselves, God knows them. And then God's omniscience is also illustrated in human history. For example, in Acts 15 verse 18, known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the ages. Someone has said history is his story. History is the outworking of the purposes of God.
There is very little freedom within the channel that God has chartered for history. God has determined where it began. He determines where it's going. He determines its destiny. All of human history is known to God. And finally, I'd like to say that his omniscience is illustrated by his knowledge of the future. In Isaiah 46 verses 9 and 10, it says this, and I'm leaving out part of that. I am God, declaring the end from the beginning.
It's hard for us to understand, isn't it, how God can know the future? We can perceive how he might know the present, how he might know the past, because we know a little bit about the present and a little bit about the past, though God has perfect knowledge of both. It's difficult for human beings to understand how God knows the future. How does he know the future? Well, God is timeless, and this is where his attributes complement one another. God's eternity we've already talked about.
He is timeless, and thus he looks at all of time as though it's already all fulfilled. God's knowledge is perfect of the future. Thus we have prophecy in the Bible. For example, in Daniel chapter 2, do you remember the statue, the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw and Daniel described? There we go. The image was gold in his head and then silver in his chest and arms. The belly and thighs of it was bronze, and then iron in the legs, and finally the feet made of a mixture of clay and iron.
Nebuchadnezzar pondered over the meaning of that. What could be the significance of that vision? He inquired of all of his wisest men. None of them could give him an answer, but Daniel knew the answer. He explained it all to Nebuchadnezzar, and finally he says, God has showed you this. What it was was an outline of Gentile world history, an outline that we're still participating in today by extension.
It was the prophecy of the kingdom of Babylon and the Medes and the Persians and the Greeks and the Roman Empire. All that is made very clear. The best part of the whole vision was that little stone that caused the whole image to come crashing down. That stone, Daniel says, is Christ. He will establish a kingdom which will destroy all the Gentile powers and kingdoms, and his kingdom will last forever. That is God's omniscience, revealing the future and what's going to take place.
Let's think about some of the implications of what we've said about God's omniscience. The first implication I'd like to mention is that God does not reason or compute. We do, don't we? But God does not have to think through things. He knows all things intuitively. God did not go to class somewhere to learn to be deity. God did not study what it means to be God. He did not have to observe and draw conclusions as we do. But God knows everything all the time.
I've heard some people compare God's knowledge to computer, and even that is faulty, because a computer only knows what it's been told. The old saying is garbage in and what? Garbage out. Computer just knows what it's been told, and it's able to assimilate those facts and arrange them and draw certain conclusions out of them, but it takes time for the computer to do that. It doesn't take time for God to do anything. He just knows it. It's all right there. Everything. So God doesn't reason.
He knows. Another implication is that God knows what would have happened if something had happened which did not happen. Got that? In other words, God has knowledge of all the possibilities of things. He knows how our lives would have been different if we had made other decisions than the ones we did make. How many decisions do we make in life? Well, I hate to think about it. And God knows how every decision would have affected us differently and what the outcome of that would have been.
Just as an example of how God knows all possibilities, turn to Matthew chapter 11 for a minute and notice one of the statements that Jesus makes. Matthew chapter 11 verse 23. Jesus pronounces judgment here upon some of the cities around the Sea of Galilee which had rejected His message. And He says in verse 23, And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? And you will go down to the depths. The word really there is Hades in the Greek.
He says, If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. You see what He says there? He says, If Sodom and Gomorrah had had the privilege that you've had to hear the message you've heard and to see the works that you've heard to have known Me, then it would have repented and remained to this day. The knowledge of possibilities. There are many other passages. Let me just suggest a couple to you. First Samuel 23, 12. Isaiah 48 verse 18.
Psalm 81 verses 13 and following. There are a few of the passages that talk about God's knowledge of all possibilities. Someone has asked, Well what about prayer then? If God knows everything that's going to take place, why do we have to pray about things? If God knows a person is going to be saved or isn't going to be saved, why should I pray for him? If God knows a person is going to live or die, why should I pray for that person? How do our prayers relate to God's omniscience?
That's an excellent question and one that we really can't answer in its fullness. The two do relate and I think Richard DeHaan has a good statement in his book The Living God which I'd like to read to you. He says, Since He is aware of everything from and into all eternity, God knows ahead of time about our prayers. And knowing that we would pray under certain circumstances, He has woven our prayers into the fabric of the universe. That's an interesting statement.
Even as the mother of a sick and feverish child anticipates the need of her little one during the night and has all the medication in readiness, so God has framed history in the expectation of our intercession. As our Heavenly Father, He has looked ahead to our prayers and has already made provisions for the answers. I think that paragraph pretty well summarizes about the best answer that can be given to this matter of how our prayer works together with God's omniscience.
And God has perfect knowledge too of our hearts. Even when we cannot express our thoughts in prayer, God knows our thoughts. Isaiah 65, 24, And it should come to pass that before they call, I will answer. And while they are yet speaking, I will hear. Have you ever gotten to the place that you simply did not know how to pray? Well, in those times, the Spirit Himself intercedes for us according to Romans chapter 8, according to the will of God. He helps us in our weakness, in our infirmities.
You see, there are times when we cannot form the words to express the burdens on our hearts, yet God reads the burden and knows it. I hesitate to mention this lest it be misunderstood, but I will say it. I don't know how to explain it except just to tell you the experience and perhaps some of you have shared in it. There are times when I'm going down a prayer list that I maintain. But I'm able to enter into it and I'm able to know needs that people have. And those are very fulfilling times.
And yet there are other times when I'm going down the same prayer list, perhaps. And perhaps time is short and I don't have time to really think through the needs of each individual there. Have you ever experienced God just reading your mind? So that instead of you even having to say the name out loud or even fully explain the request, as that thought passes through your mind, you're aware of the fact that God has picked that up. God knows our thoughts in prayer.
And even when we may not know how to express or the time limits us from fully expressing our thoughts, as those things pass through our mind much more quickly than we could ever say them, God reads them and knows them. Perhaps one of the greatest disciplines that can be undertaken by any of us is the discipline of silent prayer, of praying in our thoughts.
Tonight I'm going to include in this matter of God's omniscience another omni, which we don't often hear about, but it's called omnisapience, which means that God is all wise. He is perfect in the display and in the exercise of his knowledge. He not only knows all the facts, but as he uses those to accomplish his purposes, God is all wise in so doing. That's omnisapience.
That's why in Romans 11, 33 the apostle says, Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. In Ephesians 1, 8, according to the riches of his grace, in which he has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, or intelligence or knowledge. So God is not only all knowing, he is all wise as he uses that knowledge to accomplish his own purposes.
Now let's talk about some application of this doctrine to our lives and then we will go to the Lord's Supper. I'll just mention several quickly. One application is this, that nothing can befall me which surprises God. Things can happen that surprise me, that's for sure. That nothing ever takes God off guard because he knows all things. As Job said, he knows the way that I take. I'm glad for that.
Another application that I see is that he is better able to direct my life than I am myself because he has all knowledge. I don't. Jeremiah said, Oh Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. The psalmist said, For he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust. We don't know our own frame sometimes and we make some pretty stupid decisions that would break us.
But God knows our frames and if we will listen to him, he will direct our lives. I know some people think that there is a special glory to the person who burns out for Jesus. I'd like to say to you that nowhere in the Bible we are told to burn out, we are told to live out. I remember as a teenager in the Vangels who got up and said, We either rust out or burn out.
No. God's purpose is that we live out and we can only live out our lives to the fullest as we allow him to give us direction and wisdom in the use of our time. Then a third application that I would point out is that he knows the truth about me even when others fail to understand. Have you ever been in a situation where you've been misunderstood and consequently people have heaped coals of persecution and derision upon you? I think all of us have.
There have been times when everybody else has misunderstood what we've tried to do. Our blessed comfort is that God knows. He knows the truth about me. I think Peter reflected that in that time when he had a discourse with the Lord and Jesus said, Feed my sheep, and remember that? He kept saying, Peter, do you love me? Do you love me? And finally Peter said, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. You see, Peter had blown it not too long before that. He had denied the Lord.
And the disciples around would have said, Well, Peter says he loves the Lord, but you know what happened. Peter says, Lord, you know all things, you know that I really do love you. A fourth application is that I cannot hide from God. Adam and Eve tried it. God found them. David tried to hide from God and after a period of time, God uncovered his sin when Nathan came and said, You are the man.
Hagar gave up and went into the wilderness and God found it there and her response was, Thou God seest me. You see, we can't hide from God. We can try to get so involved in work that we think somehow we're putting layers between ourselves and God and we cut off consciousness of Him. But even though He may be out of our consciousness, we are not out of His consciousness.
We can't escape God. And then there's a fifth application that brings hope to us and that is that every prophecy is certain and every promise is sure. Because God's purposes, as we've already said, are intertwined with His knowledge. In Proverbs it says, There are many devices in a man's heart. Nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand. Men devise all kinds of things, don't they? We do.
We make plans and we decide we're going to do this or that, but what God purposes always comes to pass, while ours often falls short. An example of that would be our Lord's crucifixion. It is sometimes asked, Who killed Jesus? And there are those that point the finger at the Jews, and that's true. They did reject Him and put Him on the cross. There are others that say, No, it was the Romans, because Pilate allowed Him to be crucified, and that's true. It was the Romans.
Pilate did make that decision. He died on a Roman cross. Others say, No, it was you and me. We sinners, it was our sin that put Him there, and that's true. We crucified Him. We made His death necessary. But the greatest truth of all is not that the Jews killed Jesus, that the Romans did it, but that the truth is that God gave His Son. As Isaiah put it in Isaiah 53, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. It was the plan of God.
Turn with me to Acts chapter 2 as we see another verse that relates to this. We're going to look here at the sermon of Peter, the day of Pentecost. He talks here about Jesus Christ, obviously. And frankly, Peter doesn't mince many words. In verse 36, he says, Therefore let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. That's one aspect of it.
The thing I want to point out is verse 23, where it says, This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge. And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead. Amazing statement there. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge. The idea of foreknowledge, by the way, is not just that God knows something ahead of time. That's involved.
But the language here suggests that God's foreknowledge includes a predetermination of things. And so it was the predetermination of God that by His foreknowledge He purposed Christ to be crucified for the sins of the world. An amazing truth. What we celebrate this evening in the Lord's Supper is not a celebration of something that got out of hand. It's not an accident that God brought out for good, but it is the very purpose of God that we celebrate here tonight.
It is the offering up of the body and blood of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world. It is a blessed truth that although God knows everything, there are some things that God chooses to forget. Specifically, I refer to our sins and iniquities. Because in the book of Hebrews it says regarding those who belong to Him under the new covenant in Christ's blood, their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
It's not that God carelessly forgets, but it's that God chooses to forget your sins and mine when we trust Jesus Christ as our Savior. The offering up of His body, the shedding of His blood makes that possible, else God could never forget our sins. They would always be held to our account, but because of what Jesus did on our behalf, by God's own purpose He is able to forget our sins, to put them under the blood.
There is not one of us here tonight who could not stand up and name even heinous sins that we have committed, if not enacted in thought. Things that we would not want anyone to know about is a blessed truth, folks, that no one will ever know about those sins because God has chosen that they be set aside and forgiven. The very records of heaven have been wiped clean so that those sins are gone.
Remember the children's chorus, gone, gone, gone, gone, yes, my sins are gone, buried in the deepest sea. What's the next phrase? I've forgotten. Yes, that's good enough for me. I hope that's good enough for you. So often we confess our sins and then we allow those things to come back into our memories and the devil gets them out of our minds and forms a whip out of them and begins to flog us with sins that we remember and God's long forgotten.
I may be speaking to someone tonight who is just burdened and depressed because of sins that you've committed and they seem to come back and haunt you. Will you please forgive yourself as God has forgiven you for Christ's sake? And will you then claim your forgiveness and cleanness in the sight of God and allow those sins to be permanently put away, buried in the deepest sea? Yes, that's good enough for me.
As we come to the Lord's table tonight, it's a normal time, a natural time for us to examine ourselves. We are commanded in fact in Corinthians that we should do that and ask God to reveal to us, to search our hearts according to His perfect knowledge of us, to show us what is on the inside that needs to be confessed. And then of course having confessed and to claim cleanness and forgiveness. It's appropriate for us to bow together as we come to the Lord's table and to search out our hearts.
I'd like for us to do that now. As we come to this table, it is the Lord's table and not the table of grace church. If you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ and you are walking in obedience to Him and fellowship with Him, we invite you, even though you may not be a regular part of our fellowship, to share with us in partaking of these elements. What we are doing is not adding grace to us.
We are not somehow becoming more saved or gaining favor with God by doing this, but in obedience to our Lord who has saved us by His grace. We tonight want to remember. As we do that, let's first examine our hearts so that we partake of this Lord's table in a worthy manner. Let's pray. Father, we thank you tonight for the provision that you have made for our forgiveness. We confess before you our sins.
I am sure that there are some things in our lives that we do not even recognize as being sinful which are an offense to you. Forgive us even of those careless things. Reclaim your promise in 1 John 1-9 if we confess our sins, that you are faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
As we come to this table tonight, if there is sin that is in the conscience of each one of us or any one of us, I pray that we will be honest and humble to bring that up right now and confess it before you. We do so in faith, we do so in obedience, we do so with sorrow, but we also do it with joy because we know we find forgiveness because of Jesus. I would like for us to sing the chorus, His name is wonderful, Jesus my Lord. I think it is number 65 in the hymnal if you need it.
I think most of you probably know it. Let's sing it together, His name is wonderful. As we sing that I am going to ask our men to come as we prepare to observe the Lord's Supper. His name is wonderful, His name is wonderful, His name is wonderful. Jesus my Lord, Jesus my Lord. He is my King, Master of everything, His name is wonderful, Jesus my Lord. He is the great shepherd, the rock of all ages, Almighty God is he.
All around before him, above him the glory, His name is wonderful, Jesus my Lord. Our Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread and gave thanks for it. I would like for us to bow together in thanking God for the bread that we are about to eat, a symbol of Christ's body broken on our behalf. Lord, we remember the words in Hebrews that tell us that you have come to do the will of God as you offer up your body.
How we rejoice tonight in the truth of the Incarnation, that you as God Almighty became flesh, that you lived among us for a little while with the express purpose of tasting death for every man, that you might take those who believe to glory. As we partake this evening of this bread, we do so in humility and with deepest thanks for your sinless body offered up on our behalf. Amen.