Omniscience (2)
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· 35 viewsGod fully knows himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act.
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Believe it or not, I have been accused of being a know-it-all before. A lot, actually. To the point where I stopped speaking up in class. When I was growing up, and this especially happened in church but to a lesser degree at school, if nobody would speak up or knew the answer, I would always get called on. And I would typically know the answer. And people didn’t like that. Or at least, they liked to tease me about it.
ICEBREAKER: What are you most looking forward to this summer?
Of course, it also didn’t help that I didn’t like people saying wrong things around me. I had this weird urge to correct people when they said things that were wrong. And people didn’t like that either. They would always say “Blake you don’t always have to be, right.” And I would say, “I know I don’t HAVE to always be right! It’s not my fault I just always AM right!” And people didn’t like that either.
But being a know-it-all did have its advantages. I’m about to admit something to y’all that I don’t normally tell people. In high school, I was a part of two academic competition teams. I was all-state in Quiz Bowl, and we won a state championship. Yeah, I know. And I was a part of a thing called A.C.E., where we finished 3rd, 2nd, and 1st my 3 years on the team. And we got money for winning those.
So as much as I was or am, an annoying know-it-all. I don’t know it all. As much as I can pretend to know it all, I don’t really know it all. But, God does.
I don’t alwa
We are in the OMNI series, looking at the theology of God. The study of God. And we are looking at three characteristics that separate and distinguish God from the rest of us. Last week we saw that God is omnipresence, which means that God is everywhere. He is present in all places at all times. This week, our theology word is omniscience.
Omniscience. Omni. Science. Omni, as we learned last week, means all. Science, which you learned in your science class, means to know or knowledge. So we put it together, and God has all knowledge. He knows all things. So our big God word last week was omnipresence. God is everywhere. This week, omniscience. God knows all things.
Do you know how God directs his clouds
or makes their lightning flash?
Do you understand how the clouds float,
those wonderful works of him who has perfect knowledge?
This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows all things.
1 John 3:19-21-
God has perfect knowledge. God knows all things. Clear as day. God is omniscient.
And here’s our working definition of God’s omniscience:
God fully knows himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act.
God fully knows himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act.
Explain omniscience in your own words. What is the definition that Blake gave? (God fully knows himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act.)
I want to start with the end of this statement. That God knows it all in one simple and eternal act. What exactly does that mean? It means that God knows all things at all times without having to “think.” If you were able to have a conversation with God and ask him, “How many grains of sand are there in the world?” He would have to consider the question. He would not have to try to remember the answer. He knows it all at once. If you were to ask God, “Who was the King of England in 1532?” God doesn’t have to think about it. He immediately knows. Everything that God knows, he knows in one simple and eternal act. So as we start going through the Scripture and looking at all the different ways that God knows everything, keep that in mind. He simultaneously knows it all. This is why the Bible has verses like this:
Can you fathom the depths of God
or discover the limits of the Almighty?
They are higher than the heavens—what can you do?
They are deeper than Sheol—what can you know?
Their measure is longer than the earth
and wider than the sea.
Thinking about all that God knows makes your heard hurt. It is unfathomable. His limits are boundless. It is a mystery that we can never fully comprehend. We can know that God knows all things in one, undivided act. We can know that God knows all things at all times, but we can never truly comprehend and fathom what that means. It is a beautiful mystery.
So if God knows all things, then he first must fully know himself.
God fully knows himself
God fully knows himself
Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except his spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
Now this is a little more of a head scratcher than it first appears.
Nobody in this room knows what’s going on in your head and in your heart except for you. Right? There is not a person in this room who can look into your soul and know all your emotions and thoughts. You could be hiding something. You could be masking an emotion. You could be here, but be worried all night about a final you have coming up. The only person in here who truly knows what all is going on inside your head, is you.
What does it mean that God fully knows himself?
And the Bible says it is the exact same way with God. The only person who can know and search the depths of God and the thoughts of God is the Spirit of God. This seems pretty obvious, but its actually much more of a head scratcher than we first realize. God is an infinite being. He has no beginning, no end, and is not controlled or limited by time and space. He is fully present everywhere, yet nothing can fully contain him. And when we say God is present everywhere, we do not just mean heaven and earth. God is the one who sustains the entire universe. The vast expanse of the solar systems, stars, and galaxies.
God is infinite, yet he can fully know himself. His knowledge of himself is infinite. Stretching from beginning to end, not limited by time or space. Only infinite knowledge could understand an infinite God. So while I may not know what is going on in your head, I can understand it because I know what having those similar thoughts are like. I understand what its like to hide emotions. I understand what its like to have a conversation with yourself about whether or not to mention that the person you’re talking to has food in their mouth and not hear a single word they say. I understand the thoughts of people because I have the thoughts of people. But I don’t understand the thoughts of God because I can’t have those thoughts. I can’t have infinite knowledge of all things. I can’t have infinite knowledge of an infinite God.
Not only does God know himself, but God fully knows the past, present, and future.
God fully knows the past, present, and future
God fully knows the past, present, and future
And remember, he knows all three of these in one simple act.
Remember what happened long ago,
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and no one is like me.
I declare the end from the beginning,
and from long ago what is not yet done,
saying: my plan will take place,
and I will do all my will.
Psalm 139:16
Your eyes saw me when I was formless;
all my days were written in your book and planned
before a single one of them began.
God is not ever surprised by what is going. It didn’t surprise him when you broke your arm. It didn’t surprise him that Obama was President, and then Trump was President. It didn’t surprise him that your parents ended up getting divorced. It didn’t surprise him that you got all A’s. It didn’t surprise him that you failed 1st grade. And it won’t surprise him on what day you end up getting married, or that you don’t get married. You won’t surprise him on the day your first child is born, and you won’t surprise him on the day you day. God knows. Before the world began, God knows. You could not throw a surprise birthday party for God. One of these days in the future in heaven somebody is gonna try to throw a surprise birthday party for Jesus on Dec 23, but its not gonna work.
When you think of God knowing your future, how does that affect how you relate to God?
I want to go back and look at the last line of the verse from Isaiah, though. God says, “my plan will take place, and I will do all my will.”
Here is something that we need to really understand. There are the things that God allows to happen, and then there are things that God causes to happen. And we need to make sure that we understand there are both. Just because God knows everything that is going to happen does not mean that all of those things were the will of God. In his sovereignty, God has given us people the freedom to make choices. And a lot of bad things happen in the world because of the evil choices that people make. And we make. And God knows that will happen. It doesn’t surprise him. But, he doesn’t will that.
But, there are the things that God wills to happen. And if God wills for it to happen, there is no way that it can be stopped. And here’s the basic outline of what we know for sure God has willed. Jesus will be the way to salvation. And God is going to win. God knows that he is going to win. God knows that he will defeat evil. He will defeat Satan and cast him into Hell forever. God knows the future, and he knows that it will happen, and he has shared that knowledge with us. So we can have comfort knowing that God has told us the future, and the future is that he wins. Now next week Miss Vickie is going to up here, and she will be teaching about the power that God has to make all that be true. But for now, God knows it will happen, and he has shared it with us.
God fully knows what could happen
God fully knows what could happen
And now we take God’s knowledge one step further. Not only does God know everything that will happen and has happened and is happening, but God knows everything that COULD happen.
Will the citizens of Keilah hand me over to him? Will Saul come down as your servant has heard? Lord God of Israel, please tell your servant.”
The Lord answered, “He will come down.”
Then David asked, “Will the citizens of Keilah hand me and my men over to Saul?”
“They will,” the Lord responded.
So David and his men, numbering about six hundred, left Keilah at once and moved from place to place. When it was reported to Saul that David had escaped from Keilah, he called off the expedition.
David is asking God what will happen to me if I stay here, and God says Saul will find you and these people will turn you over to him. This is what is going to happen. So David leaves that place, and it doesn’t happen!
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes long ago.
Jesus here talks about how these cities would have repented if they had been in these same circumstances!
This puts a whole new spin on God’s infinite knowledge! If he knows what would have happened to all people based on all the choices they could have made, plus all the choices God could have made, then your mind would probably explode. Omniscience. Is. Crazy.
Objections
Objections
Now if you remember last week I showed you some verses that some people try to use to combat omnipresence, so I’m going to do the same the omniscience. Some people say that God can’t be omniscient because God can’t remember sins that he has forgiven people for.
“I—I sweep away your transgressions
for my own sake
and remember your sins no more.
If God doesn’t remember your sins, then God can’t actually know everything. God forgets about it, Men in Black style, I guess.
show Men in Black gif
The thing is, this does not mean that God literally forgets your sin. It’s more of God saying, “forget about it.” And I don’t understand why people think this means that God literally forgets because when you think about it for 5 seconds it doesn’t make sense. Because if God has forgotten about the sins that he has forgiven people for, how did the Bible get written? How could God have inspired the story of David and Bathsheeba to be written? How could God have inspired the story of Peter denying Jesus three times to be written? So it’s not that God literally forgets, but God does not remember the sins to hold them against us.
Does God literally forget our sins? What do you think that verse is teaching? (See Psalm 103:12)
A second objection comes from
They have built the high places of Topheth in Ben Hinnom Valley in order to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, a thing I did not command; I never entertained the thought.
Other translations say, “It did not come to my mind.” How can God be omniscient if a thought had never entered his mind? I guess he didn’t know everything! Got you! Once again, this is turning figurative language into literal statements. And the more literal translation would be that it never entered my heart, meaning that I have never even had a positive thought about it. And how do we know that God had thought about it before? Well 800 years prior to Jeremiah he had forbidden child sacrifice in Leviticus, and 100 years earlier God had chastised Israel for participating in child sacrifices like their neighboring countries. Once again, this did not surprise God. He was just trying to get the point across how awful and atrocious child sacrifice is.
God fully knows you
God fully knows you
And here is how I want to close our time on omniscience. God knows all things. He fully knows himself, the past, present, and future, and all possible scenarios. But what I think is the greatest part of God’s omniscience: he fully knows you.
1 Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I stand up; you understand my thoughts from far away.
3 You observe my travels and my rest; you are aware of all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue, you know all about it, Lord.
Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.
God you know my thoughts. You know where I’m going. You know where I will go. You know what I will say. You intimately and intricately know me. Just like there is no place that I can hide from God, there is no thought or sin that I can hide from God. This is why in the sermon on the mount that Jesus says that hating your brother is murder and lusting is adultery. Because God knows and sees our heart and our thoughts.
Are there times when you try to hide things from God? How does that work?
God knows us personally.
30 But even the hairs of your head have all been counted.
Jesus is telling us that God knows even the tiniest of details about you. And he knows what we need and what we desire.
8 Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.
With all of the millions of other things that God knows, we don’t get lost in the shuffle. We don’t get put on the back burner. We aren’t forgotten. We are loved by a God who knows. This is a God who knows everything evil we have thought. Knows every secret we have kept. Knows everything we have ever done. He is a God who knows all, yet he still loves us so much that he would die for us.
How does God’s omniscience affect your relationship with God and others?
Challenge: Create a reminder for yourself, whether it is written or a certain bracelet or something you carry, that reminds you that all of your thoughts are heard by God.