Our God is Omniscient (Part 2)

And God knows all men, and obviously these overlap, right? A man is a creature, man is part of everything, so right. We know that, but the Lord puts it in particulars for a reason. And then lastly, last week we saw that God knows man’s substance, man’s substance, Psalm 139, 15 and Matthew 10, 30. And so what we’re gonna do is we are going to pick up there, and we have a few other points in our list, and we have, let’s see, we have one, two, three, four, five, six points we wanna get to today if we can.

And I think some interesting things to meditate upon, some interesting characteristics and attributes of God. So let’s pray to begin, and then we’ll begin in Job 31. Our Father, we give you thanks for how great you are. Lord, you are a great God and a great King above all gods. There is none like you. And every time we read and we study a new attribute, we are more and more convinced that you absolutely stand alone, and there’s none similar.

Those that are called gods are nothing but the works of men’s imaginations and men’s hands, and you alone stand as the Almighty. And Lord, help us to stand in awe of who you are and how you are. Lord, help us to understand better, not only your attributes, but what they mean to us as your creatures. And so Lord, we look to you now, open our hearts, help us to be tender and receptive, help us to put aside the things that serve to distract us and divert our attention even inwardly from you today, Lord, because there is no greater thought that we have than our thought upon our God and the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so Lord, help us as we study your word, help us to profit and grow, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen. Job 31, what I wanna show you in this point is this, God knows the doings of men, all right? God knows the doings of men. Job 31, if you’ll look at that, verse number four, this is Job speaking now. The Bible says this, “’Doth not he see my ways and count all my steps?’ “’Doth not he see my ways and count all my steps?’’ Now you’re gonna see this repeated, two things.

What is a metaphor, if you will, or an analogy that is used often to describe God’s omniscience that we saw last week? Anybody remember? It’s a body part, the eyes, right? And so sight is a metaphor. Of course, we know the Lord doesn’t have, outside of Christ himself, we know the Lord doesn’t have human eyes, eyes of flesh, but he uses that terminology to help us to understand that what he sees is what he knows, obviously, right?

And so when the Bible says that he sees something, that means he knows it, right? He observes it, okay. But notice the second thing in verse four is, it says, “’All my steps.’” Now this is, as we go through these, make note of that kind of all-inclusive term and language because that’s speaking of omniscience. The omni of omniscience means all. You see this in scripture over and over.

So not only does God know our steps, he knows all of them. He knows the big ones, he knows the small ones. He knows the important ones and the insignificant ones in our walk, all right? Look at Proverbs chapter five.

Proverbs chapter five. Down to verse number 21. The Bible says this, “’For the ways of man,’ that term, “’ways of man,’ that’s the broadest way possible, “’speaking of mankind and everyone in it, “’for the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, “’and he pondereth all the things that are before him, “’and he pondereth all the things that are before him, “’all,’ there it is again, “’his goings, all his goings.’” So what you see in this verse, Job said in chapter 31, he said that God sees all of his steps, right?

In this case, but that’s just one man. In this case, this is saying that God knows all of the goings of all of mankind. So that kind of broadens it out a little bit. All right, look at chapter 15. But let me say one more thing about chapter five, if you will. Verse 21 begins with the word for, which is a conjunction, a connector to the previous verse.

And what’s in the previous verse is the warning about the strange woman, right? And so on the heels of the Lord’s warning saying, watch out for the strange woman, he says, God knows all of your steps. So the context matters. In other words, to a man, right? Obviously, that’s what this is talking about. But to a man, the way that you give the warning is you say, remember, God knows all of your steps.

He knows all the websites you visit. He knows all the people you talk to. He knows all that you do, right? He knows why you go that way versus this way. He knows all of those things, right? And that’s the warning in the context, that’s the attribute of God in the context of the warning against the strange woman. All right, look at chapter 15, if you would.

Verse number, verse number three. This perhaps broadens it out a little bit further. Chapter 15, verse three. The eyes of the Lord, there it is again, eyes, are in every place, see that absolute? Every place, beholding the evil and the good. Beholding the evil and the good. Jeremiah, chapter 16, look at that, if you would. Jeremiah 16.

Look, if you would, down at verse number verse 17, Jeremiah 16, verse 17. The Lord speaking here says, “’For mine eyes are upon all their ways.’” You see it again, all, all, every, every. “’Upon all their ways they are not hid from my face. “’Neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes.’” Have you ever had a situation in your life, maybe there might be someone in here that has experienced PTSD.

Maybe you had a car accident or some tragedy or something. Maybe it’s a personal, social thing or something like that. And one of the aspects of PTSD is that you have nightmares and daydreams about that. And what is being described here, just to make a comparison, is in some way similar to that. Here’s what I mean. So if a person has PTSD and they have those recurring nightmares or recurring thoughts, it’s very hard for that person to deal with because no matter what they do, they can’t get the thing that troubles them out from in front of their eyes.

That troubles, they can’t escape it. Okay, now think about this with the Lord. Look at verse 17 again. “’They are not hid from my face. “’Neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes.’” So when anybody sins or rebels against God and violates his law, it is not just that God sees it in a moment, it’s that it never escapes his mind. And you combine that with the reality that God is eternal.

And so he sees everything, and this is the way we describe it as we’ve studied already, he sees everything in one constant eternal now, right? That’s how people describe it. Is that accurate? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s the way we think about it anyway. Imagine our sin being before the Lord’s face all the time and it can never be hid from him. That’s what it says. Okay, so you can understand then why, you know, you think about for a person that has experienced PTSD, how troubling that is, and as a human thing, right?

But for the Lord, imagine that with his righteous anger, right? What that brings into focus is God’s long suffering and patience and mercy, that he doesn’t act though it is in front of him all the time. Not only that, it also reminds us that this is exactly why we must have an intercessor, a bloody intercessor having died for us standing at all times continually before God, because our sin otherwise would be right in his face all the time, right?

So we think of it in terms of time, like the Lord died on the cross and he offered his blood as a, you know, propitiation, and that’s all right, because that’s the only way we can think of it, but the Bible says he ever liveth to make intercession for us, well, that’s because the nature of sin is, it is always before God’s eyes if it’s not atoned for.

So hopefully that kind of gives us a better kind of understanding of why that’s important, that the Lord Jesus is standing, or is living to make intercession for us. So this is the Lord saying he knows all of the doings of men, the next one, the Lord knows all of the words of men, Psalm 139, if you’ll look at that, Psalm 139, Psalm 139, verse four says this, Psalm 139 verse four, for there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it, here’s that absolute word, altogether, altogether, knows all the words, whether we speak them loudly or quietly, whether only one person hears them or no person hears them, whether we say them inwardly or say them outwardly, whether we say them to ourselves or say them to another, God knows it altogether, altogether.

And as we’ll see in just a minute, not only does he know the words we speak, he knows the force behind the words we speak, the motives behind the words we speak. Look at Matthew 12, Matthew chapter 12, Matthew 12, verse number 36, Matthew 12, verse number 36, Jesus speaking here says, but I say unto you that every, there’s that absolute word again, every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

Now we’ll talk about judgment in a little bit, but every idle word, what that tells us is, in order for the Lord Jesus to judge every idle word, he must hear and know and understand every word to determine which is idle and which is not, and therefore he must, that is all inclusive of all words. That’s how he can judge. So, and I’m kind of showing my hand a little bit, but judgment itself, the concept of judgment, God’s judgment, is built upon omniscience.

Without omniscience, judgment doesn’t mean anything. It requires omniscience. And so, in the activity or the counsels of the Lord, the basis of judgment is omniscience. All right, next is the thoughts of men. So, so far we’ve covered, if you’re writing this down, God knows the doings of men, God knows the words of men, next God knows the thoughts of men. Some good verses here, first chronicles, first chronicles, good memory verses, first chronicles, 28, verse number nine, And thou, Solomon, my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind.

So think about what David is saying to Solomon. He’s saying, now, you, Solomon, need to know God and serve him with a perfect heart and a willing mind. Now, he says, he follows that up by saying, for the Lord searcheth all hearts and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts. In other words, you need to serve God, not just outwardly, but you need to serve him inwardly and with all that you are inwardly because he is looking at the thoughts of your heart.

He sees them. All right, you might wanna just put a little tab there because we’re gonna come back to this verse in just a minute, but right now, go to Psalm 94, Psalm 94, Psalm 94, verse 11.

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity. The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity. Now, Hebrews, chapter four. Verse 12. Hebrews four, verse 12, for the word of God is quick and easy to understand. The Lord knows the thoughts of man that they are vanity. Now, Hebrews, chapter four.

And powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. If the word of God can discern the thoughts of the heart, then that means that God knows the thoughts of the heart, right? This is one thing that, we’re gonna go back to 1 Chronicles now, the same verse, 28 and nine.

This is one thing that sometimes surprises people. Now, listen, if you go to a church that’s just like, it’s just formal, and I don’t mean the way the service is ordered, but what I mean is it’s just a religious show, right? It’s just, you just show up, and people aren’t actually converted, and there’s no spirit of God there. Churches, I mean, are there not churches like that all over the world, including in our country and where we live to?

So the church is, the church, the meeting of the church is supposed to be where the spirit of God is, right? Because he’s supposed to be in the believers who are all there together, that’s the idea, right? But in a lot of churches, it’s basically full of lost people, and that sounds awfully critical, doesn’t it? I think it’s just true, I think it’s biblically true. I think it’s biblically a fact.

Many shall say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we, I mean, that tells me a bunch of people are gonna be like that. So you go into a, you go into a church like that, I’m losing my train of thought here, somebody help me.

That didn’t help, I’m sorry. Ah, I remember, thank you. You know, this directly relates to what I’m gonna say this morning. You’ll understand in about 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Anyway, so in a church where, if someone has been to a church where it’s just a form, it’s just to show there’s no actual salvation, there’s no Holy Spirit, there’s no activity of God at all, right? It’s church without God.

And then they come to a church where God is present, His Spirit is here, right? The Word of God goes forth in the power of the Spirit of God. One thing they note, and I’ve heard this testimony and you have too, one thing they note is how the Word of God, and there’s no glory to the preacher, but the Word of God by means of the preacher examines their thoughts.

That, in other words, the Lord nails the very thing they’re thinking inwardly. And they, and you’ve heard, this is a real thing, this actually happens, but every once in a while somebody will say to the preacher, to the teacher, they’ll say, like, did somebody talk to you? And the truth is, of everybody in the congregation, the preacher is usually the most ignorant of all the goings on in people’s lives.

I mean, that’s just the way it is. So when that happens, that’s one of the things you see in 1 Corinthians, you see it in other places in the Bible, but that effect of the Word of God discerning, naming, calling out the thoughts that nobody knows, that is one of the evidences and one of the indicators with the work of the Spirit of God, is that He’s working because nobody knows what you’re thinking, except Him.

And so when the Lord does that, it’s like, wake up, right, wake up, I’m talking to you. All right, so let’s go to the next one, this is the hearts of men. So we’ve got, God knows the doings of men, the words of men, the thoughts of men, now the hearts of men, 1 Chronicles 28 and nine says this, and thou, Solomon, my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind for the Lord searcheth all hearts and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts.

Now are the thoughts and heart different? I would say the thoughts come from the heart, but I’m not gonna make a big deal of that, but these verses include both thoughts and heart. Look at 2 Chronicles chapter six, verse number 30.

2 Chronicles 6, 30, this is the dedication of the temple now, this is Solomon’s prayer, verse 30 says this, then hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render unto every man according unto all his ways, whose heart thou knowest. Now notice this, notice, so we know God knows the hearts of all men, right, but notice the next, the part in the parentheses, for thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men.

You know what that tells us, that narrows it down. There’s only a single individual, if we can call it that, there’s only a single individual that knows the hearts of men, only one, only one. God is the only person that knows the hearts of men. Now that is significant, I won’t go, you could write down Luke 16, 15, where the Bible says that God knows the hearts of men further, but for time’s sake we’ll just skip that.

But think about the implications of that, that there’s only God that knows the hearts of men. Number one, be careful, beware, you do not know what people are thinking, neither do I. And do we not, do we not draw such quick conclusions based upon the sight of our eyes and what we see, and even what people say, and we draw conclusions upon what is inside of their heart, and you say, well didn’t Jesus say, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh?

Well that’s true, but the Lord knows both sides of that. That’s not just, that’s not designed for us to stand in judgment over someone’s heart. We do not judge over someone’s thoughts or heart, because that’s God’s prerogative. He is the only, that’s what that verse says, He is the only one that knows that.

So we have to be very careful, and this gets into what is, what we talked about in the school of scripture about judgment, in Matthew 7, 1, which is improper judgment. We do not have the prerogative to judge another person’s heart. We, because you know why? Because judgment is based upon omniscience, and that’s something we don’t have. We can judge their actions. Now if they say this is in my heart, well we can judge that all day long, because they said it.

But to presume upon the thoughts of a person is outside of our purview. We don’t have that power, because we don’t have that knowledge. All right? So we have to be very careful about that, and this gives us a good opportunity. Listen, when we don’t know someone’s motivations, we don’t know their heart, and we should be aware about judging, judging that part, not. Now pause a second.

I’m not saying that we do not judge evil when it is manifested. You have to judge evil when it’s manifested. Sometimes judgment, not judging the heart, is just an excuse to avoid judging evil, which is outward and evident. Okay, so I’m not doing that. I’m just talking about the heart. So if we should be very careful about that, about judging people’s motivations because we can’t see their heart, this gives us an opportunity to exercise grace and mercy, and to give people the benefit of the doubt on that part, because we don’t know their heart.

And so if someone does something or says something, and it makes you wonder, and all of you know what I’m talking about. All of you have heard crosswords, all of you have heard even good words, and we talked about flattery recently, right? Even good words, right? But when you hear those words, you don’t know the motivation, neither do I. And so we have a choice. How do we view what’s underneath the words or the action?

Well, you have a choice. You can take it in the best possible light, because you don’t know, or you can assume the worst possible light, right? You see, 1 Corinthians chapter 13 tells us that on the principle of Christian love, charity, we should, in the absence of knowledge, assume the best, and not think evil of someone’s motivation until we have solid proof of their motivation. See, that’s the default.

That’s the default. Sadly, it is true that sometimes we’re proven wrong, but it’s better to be proven wrong when you assumed good than it is to be proven wrong when you assumed evil, right? You see, so even this aspect of our limited knowledge and God being the only one that has this knowledge can be instructive to us. The second thing, the secrets of the heart, because it is something known only to God, it tells us that not even Satan has this power to know what is in the hearts of man, because the verse says, in verse 30, for thou only knowest the hearts of the church, thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men.

Satan, I would argue from this verse that Satan also does not have the power to know the hearts. Now, the good thing is, or I say good, let me rephrase that. The thing we must be mindful of is that Satan is an expert observer, and Satan does have access to everything in the physical world. We know that. He sees and observes. So listen, we could tell a lie, and Satan might not be able to tell us, and might not be able to tell our heart what’s in our hearts for motivation, according to this verse, but he can tell if our heart beats faster, the same way that a polygraph test would indicate a lie.

Obviously, he knows the circumstance, too. But he is not omniscient in that way. This is one of the ways, that’s a question that sometimes people ask. Does the devil know everything? Well, no. There’s two things in particular and I’ll get to one later, but this one is one. He doesn’t know the hearts of men. But man, he has so figured out the way men tick. It’s almost like he doesn’t even need to know.

Here’s another evidence of that. Do you remember Job? At the beginning of the book of Job, there was a kind of a bet, if you will, a wager between the devil and the Lord, and it was the Lord’s idea. The Lord said, “’Hast thou considered my servant Job?’ Twice he said that.

And the Lord said, “’You can touch his, take everything that he has away, “’and then you can touch his body, but not his life.’ Remember that? Two different occasions. And the devil said, “’You just watch. “’I’ll do those things and he will curse you “’to curse you to your face.’” You see, there’s two things that the devil did not know. Number one, he did not know the future.

That’s why I said that. He assumed he could get Job to do it. The difference was that God did know the future, and the Lord knew that that was not going to happen. Okay, that’s number one. Number two is the devil did not know Job’s heart. And the reason why God knew it wouldn’t happen, he wouldn’t curse God, is because he knew Job’s heart, and the devil did not.

You see, the devil applied to Job the same logic and temptation, method, strategy, that had worked gazillions of times prior. If I touch everything he has and I touch his body, he will curse God. And you know, it had worked. Worked tons and tons of times before, because most people’s faith and their heart is superficial, you know, dealing with all of humanity. But here’s one guy, here’s one guy who had a heart that was different, and God knew it.

And so the devil was wrong. So he showed that he’s not omniscient, but God is omniscient. All right? All right. Okay, we’re just gonna have to get into, let me open it up. Does anybody have a commentary question on it? On what we’ve talked about so far? Yeah. I would say, you are in here. But assumptions is one of the greatest good points that you’ve brought into it.

Well, I just assumed you know about that. But we don’t have that great knowledge, do we? And that’s where so many problems come into you, in church, in the middle of life, in relationships.

Now, that one principle has the power, because I mean, listen, every one of us lives, you know, it’s just like, we live in a world where we’re constantly bumping into each other, you know, socially. You know, we’re constantly saying things, doing things, and all of those things have the power to upset each other, right? I mean, if you’re married, you know, I mean, you live with someone that close, it’s going to happen.

And it happens pretty regularly, because you’re always bumping into each other. Well, that one principle of just saying, just remembering that you don’t know things, right? And then assuming the best when you don’t know them, man, you can avoid so many problems. Because listen, if half of the problems, okay, just say there’s a conflict with someone, something they did or said with someone else. Just say the other person as an example.

If half of those conflicts come from just a pure motive, it wasn’t nefarious at all, and you assume the good, because you don’t know the motivation, you don’t know the heart, well, that’s half of the problems just kind of taken away. Now, you do have the other half where there might have been a bad motive that you got to deal with, but that’s better than, I mean, I don’t know.

50 is better than 100 in that kind of situation, is it not? So that’s why assumptions, assuming good, assuming good. It is not godly, it is not holy, it is not righteous, it is not religious, sanctified, or any other positive word to assume evil with a critical attitude all the time. That is not godly, it’s carnal. So, because the Lord tells us to do the opposite, to assume the good.

Yeah, yeah, anybody else? No, I thought somebody was gonna wax eloquent with some philosophical, oh, here, see, you walked into that one. I was just standing on, I was actually thinking about on the way through this one, is how do you say that righteous faith is telling us to do that, even though you’ve spoken on the first now, and you’re telling us to do that as well, it means that for us, we have to say, well, we don’t know all things, but we just try to have a conversation and have to practice because of the knowledge that you know, but I’ve heard in that, that we in this life often don’t know.

What do you, we are waiting on a time when we will forget so otherwise actually, sometimes we get to the problem that someone told you. Sometimes you never know. Like, in this life, you’ll not know. Let me show you one more verse that just came to my mind. Look at 2 Corinthians, if you would.

Let me see if I can find it fairly quickly. I want to look this up. I think it’ll be a help to you. It touches right on what we’ve been talking about. I didn’t write it down previously. First Corinthians, I apologize. First Corinthians chapter 4. I just misremembered the passage. First Corinthians 4 verse 5, or look at verse 4 as a matter of fact. I know nothing, so we’re talking about knowledge.

I know nothing by myself, yet am I not hereby justified, but he that judgeth me is the Lord. So here’s the thing. God knows your heart better than you know your heart. Ouch. Man, if you’ve ever been in a place where you absolutely thought your motivation was pure only to find out later that it wasn’t, and you thought it was, oh that’s so painful. Because that does happen.

Notice verse 5. Therefore, judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts, and then shall every man have praise of God. That’s righteous judgment. That’s withholding judgment on matters of the heart because the Lord’s going to bring all that out. That’s what Brother Burgess and Sam were talking about there.

All right. Well, we’ll knock off there and pick up next time. Let’s pray.