Day 9: The Divine Omniscience

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’  ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” – Romans 11:33-36

“To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and has no need to learn. But it is more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn.” – A.W. Tozer

There is nothing that God has never known.

Nothing has ever occurred to Him. He has never received new information. No one has ever broken news to Him. He has never been taught, instructed, or discipled by another. He knows all because He is all. There is nothing that he has never known. He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). He knows the number of the stars and He calls them by name (Psalm 147:4). He knows every single word in every single language in every single book that has been written or will be written in all of history, because He knows all things (1 John 3:20). 

But the God who knows all of history before it happens; the God who knows the movement of every subatomic particle in the universe; the God who knows the exact number of the grains of sand on the seashore; is also the God who deeply, personally, and intimately knows us. He knows when we sit down and when we rise (Psalm 139:1). He knows the number of the hairs on our head (Luke 12:7). He knows the number of tears we have ever cried and the number of nights we could not sleep (Psalm 56:8).

More soberingly, He knows our secret sins and our hidden faults (Psalm 19:12). He knows the thing about us that no one else knows. He knows every idle word we have ever spoken. There is no secret He does not know, because all are naked and exposed before Him and nothing is hidden from His sight (Hebrews 4:12). 

But mercifully, the God who knows all of our sins is also the God who knows our frame and remembers that we are dust, and with Him there is forgiveness (Psalm 103). And for those whose sins have been forgiven by Jesus Christ, the omniscient God who knows all of our sin promises to remember our sins no more (Hebrews 8:12). Because our sin was imputed to Christ and Christ’s righteousness was imputed to us (2 Cor. 5:21), the omniscient God who knows our sins chooses to know us instead as the righteousness of Christ.

Prayer:

Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising and art acquainted with all my ways. I can inform Thee of nothing and it is vain to try to hide anything from Thee. In the light of Thy perfect knowledge I would be as artless as a little child. Help me to put away all care, for Thou knowest the way that I take and when Thou hast tried me I shall come forth as gold. Amen.    – A.W. Tozer

Response:

Read Psalm 139. What does this Psalm teach us about God’s knowledge of us?

Pray the words of Psalm 139:23-24. Ask the Lord to search you, to try you, and to know your thoughts. Ask Him to reveal any hidden patterns of sin, and to lead you in His everlasting way.