We come now to Your Word and ask that You would open our hearts to learn more about You. And I pray that what we learned this morning would change us, make us more like Christ, and draw us closer to You this week. And we ask it because of Him. Amen. Well, as we continue our study of the attributes of God, we're learning that the primary source of knowing the nature and character of God as the Scriptures. Although we saw last week from Romans 1, 19 and 20 that we can know a lot about God from His creation, we desperately need God's Word to fully enlighten us to what He has revealed about Himself to us. And this is why we study the Scriptures so diligently to know Him. Paul prayed for this for his churches to know God to come to the knowledge of God. That was really his primary prayer. He prayed for the Ephesians in Ephesians 1.17 that God may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. He prayed for the Colossians in Colossians 1.10 to increase in the knowledge of God. And Peter prayed the same in 2 Peter 1, 2, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God. So from an apostle's standpoint, this was primary in their prayers. This is why we study the Bible. This is why, as a pastor, I pray for you at least once a week for this, among other things, but that God would grow you in the knowledge of Him, because when we know more about God, we know more about ourselves, and we can have a properly aligned relationship at that point, at least as properly as we can make it. We want to know God so we can know ourselves in light of who He is. And this week we want to focus on God's omniscience, the attribute of omniscience, His all-knowingness. The doctrine of omniscience is a foundational attribute of God. It refers to His ability to know all things that can be known, both actual and possible. Whatever knowledge there ever has been, whatever knowledge there is, whatever knowledge there will be, can be, or possibly be known in our universe or even beyond it, God has this knowledge. This is omniscience. Omni, it means all. Science, it means knowledge. All knowledge. This attribute is crucial because without it, God could not exercise His other attributes. I mean, that's just common sense. I mean, for example, God could not act in judgment or mercy or hatred or love without omniscience because without perfect knowledge, He would not know which attribute to exercise or to what extent to exercise it in any given situation at any time. Nor could God save anyone because if He does not know the heart of every individual who professes Christ, how could He know if the profession is genuine or not? He would be guessing in the most important matter concerning sinners. Nor could God be sovereign over all things if He didn't know the standing of all things to be sovereign over. And I could cite endless examples So omniscience really stands at the head of God's attributes, not necessarily in importance, but in sequence. God has to know before He acts. He has to know how to exercise his other attributes in his universe. So, to begin with this morning, I want us to look at, first of all, because I want to bring this down to a personal level, not just a theological level. First, David's understanding of God's knowledge, and I'd like us to go to Psalm 139, a very familiar psalm to us. And here in the first six verses, we're introduced to the incomprehensible subject of God's omniscience, Psalm 139. And in this Psalm, David himself was overwhelmed as he contemplated the glory of this divine attribute. As he meditated on it, he didn't do it in respect to God's knowledge of his entire creation. but only in respect to his knowledge of himself or David personally. For David, God's omniscience was a personal issue, not just a cosmic issue, or not just a theological issue. And David's argument in these verses is that if God knew him intimately as an individual and as man, the highest and most complex of God's creation, and if God knew things about David that David himself didn't even know, nor could know about himself, and if God knows everything of every individual he created, then how much more does God fully know the rest of his creation? In verses 1 to 6, David clearly and powerfully lays down the doctrine of God's omniscience. I'll go ahead and read those to you. "'O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it." Notice how many times he uses the word know or the root of the word know. David's second proof that God knows all things is in, or in verse 7 to 12, he gives us the first proof of God's ability to know all things, and that is because God is everywhere present at all times. Now, God can know everything without being present at all times. He can know it intuitively. But secondarily, he knows it because he's everywhere at all times. And this is what David says in verses 7 to 12. Where can I go from your spirit or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall fall on me, even the night shall be light around me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to you." So God can know everything because He's everywhere present at all times. His second proof is in verses 13 to 16, because God knew all things about David before He created him. This is how David knows that God knows all things. And God even recorded David's entire life in a book before He ever formed David in his mother's womb. Verse 13. For you have formed my inward parts. You have covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance yet being unformed, and in your book they were all written. the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." God knew all of these things before He even created David. And then David goes on in verses 17 and 18. letting us know what this incomprehensive knowledge of God had on him personally. It overwhelmed his thoughts. How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God. How great is the sum of them. If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand when I awake. I am still with you. David is overwhelmed by how much God knows about him, God's thoughts toward him based on the knowledge that he has of David. He's completely overwhelmed by this. But in verses 23 to 24, God's infinite knowledge of David also drove him to hate his own sin and cry out to God. to search him in the deepest recesses of his own soul, reveal to him what his sins were, and then lead him away from those sins in the paths of everlasting righteousness. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties, and see if there's any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." And based on God's knowledge, in verses 19 to 22, David asked God to deal with his enemies. He says that you would slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me. Therefore, you bloodthirsty men, depart from me. For they speak against you wickedly. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. So based on God's knowledge of everything, David calls on God to deal with his enemies. So David understood that God's knowledge of him was more than David had of himself. But secondly, Let's take a look at a broader Old Testament understanding of God's knowledge. This is David's personal knowledge. Let's go to some others and see what they said about God's omniscience, His knowing all things. The early church, as well as the Old Testament saints, have always embraced the teaching that God knows all things. I mean, this is really axiomatic to Christianity. It's really axiomatic to many world religions that whatever your God is, that God knows all things. Not every religion believes that, but several do. From an Old Testament standpoint, I was thinking about Hannah. So number one, Hannah in 1 Samuel 2 verses 2 and 3, in her great prayer of thanksgiving for Samuel, she rebukes everyone who thinks that they can compare their knowledge to God's. She says, There is none besides you, nor is there any rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly. Let no arrogance come from your mouth. For the Lord is the God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed. There's nobody on earth that compares in knowledge to God. We're talking the difference between finite and infinite here. And this is what Hannah is stressing. Because God knows all things, He can act perfectly in all things, and His omniscience should silence anyone who proudly thinks he knows more than God. Number two, Job. In Job 21, 22, Job asked the question, can anyone teach God knowledge? This is a rhetorical question. It's ridiculous to even think that. I'm slipping here, sorry. Is that better? Okay. No one can teach anything to God. I mean, that's crazy. God possesses all knowledge. Number three, the psalmist in Psalm 94, 8 to 10. Rather, he says that when God looks over the sons of men, he sees nothing but foolishness and ignorance, not knowledge. God says, understand you senseless among the people and you fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the year, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall he not see? He who instructs the nations, shall he not correct? He who teaches man knowledge? God is the source of knowledge. I mean, if He created hearing, He hears everything. If He created sight, He sees everything. This is just basic. Instead of men thinking that God is deaf and blind and knows nothing, they need to abandon their foolishness and remember that He is the All-Knowing One who is the dispenser of all knowledge to men. Number four is Isaiah. I thought about Isaiah in Isaiah 40, verse 28, where he asks, "'Have you not known, have you not heard, the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator, the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary? His understanding is unsearchable.'" Unsearchable here means infinite. It means without number. Clearly, Isaiah understood that God's knowledge is infinite. Number five, the sons of Korah in Psalm 44, 21. The psalmist says here that if there is sin in his heart, would not God search this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart. Only God can know that. If He knows the secrets of the heart that are hidden, He knows everything you can see. God's knowledge is so far reaching that He knows the secrets of every person's heart. But I want us to think about or look for a moment at the church's current understanding of God's knowledge. The church's current understanding. today. As I said, the church has always believed that God knows the past and the future as well as He knows the present. That He knows all things that are actual as well as possible. And this is important for us to consider, especially in light of the fact that many today don't accept the Orthodox doctrine of God's omniscience. Now, first of all, the liberals deny God's omniscience. I mean, that goes without saying. It's not news for us. They've always embraced the idea that God is not all-knowing, that He does not know all things, that He especially doesn't know the future concerning about what man will do next. This is a liberal view. Process theology. has purported for years that God knows no more about the future than you and I know. That he's waiting to see what will happen next in the same way that you and I wait to see what happens next. But liberals also deny the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture. They deny the deity and resurrection of Christ and that salvation is not only by grace through faith. So the liberals holding to the erroneous belief that God doesn't know if one country will be at war with another country tomorrow, whether I will choose to serve God today or not, that shouldn't be surprising to any of us. As a matter of fact, we expect this from liberals if they're to be consistent with everything else they believe. But number two, and this is what's concerning, some evangelicals or so-called evangelicals deny God's omniscience. It's not the liberals we should be concerned about. Those who are claiming to be evangelicals are also denying that God knows everything. This denial of God's omniscience is what has been labeled in the past several years by those who espouse it, open theism. open theism. This simply means that the future is open to God, just like it's open to us. Some who call themselves evangelicals are saying that God doesn't know the future any more than we do. In his most disturbing book, The First Moved Mover, Clark Pinnock who was once a very solid evangelical, has changed his views on several of God's attributes, the foremost being omniscience. He openly denies God's omniscience, and the reason he denies it is because he doesn't believe God can be intimate with His people if He fully knows the future. Now this is completely rational. It's not scripturally based. And you'll see it in a second. Instead of beginning with a clear and careful exegesis of biblical passages describing God's omniscience, Pinnock rationally argues from the starting point of God's love And his logic runs like this. Since God is a loving God, he cannot fully know the future, because if he did know it, he would have to control it. Hello? Which would mean that people would not be free agents, and consequently, they would not be able to make free choices. And in Pinnock's mind, an unloving God would never do that. Therefore, God cannot fully know the future, particularly the free acts of men in relation to their moral choices. Pinnock says this, the future is not something fixed in God's mind in meticulous detail. Well, that's scary. Some things can go one way or the other. to God in His mind, the future is still in the making and open to God as yet unrealized possibilities. How exciting is that? I mean, God must really be excited to know that there's all kinds of possibilities out there, and He's just waiting to see which one's going to happen. concerning the future, he says this, God is certain about some aspects of it and uncertain about other aspects. He's certain about what He has decided to do and what will inevitably happen, but less certain about what creatures may freely do. So He knows what He's going to do, but He doesn't know what we're going to do. How does that work? Unfortunately, Pinnock's faulty logic of using God's love as a starting point and placing it above all his other attributes has forced him to deny other orthodox doctrines as well. For example, he also denies God's sovereignty. He says God does not get everything that he wants in every situation. It sounds like the 2016 campaign, you don't always get what you want. Well, this is God. This is Pinnock's theology. That is the plight of a lover. God's sovereignty is general sovereignty, not specific sovereignty, because He has set up a world order in which creatures have input into what happens. This creates a situation of risk for God, but it is also the context where God's love can flourish. Boy, we're thankful for that. So we see that Pinnock redefined sovereignty as a non-absolute. Now we can have partial sovereignty. Well, if you're going to do that, why not say, why don't you define death as a non-absolute, or pregnancy as a non-absolute, or a hundred other things that are absolute that are no longer absolute. I can't imagine a woman walking into a gynecologist's office and telling her, you're partially pregnant. Really? What does that mean? Pinnock also says that God is not necessarily eternal, immutable, and a purely spiritual being. Further, God may have a body. Another doctrine he adamantly opposes is the doctrine of human depravity. I mean, you can see how this just goes right down a slippery slope. And this is not just an academic exercise for Pinnock and others, such as Greg Boyd and John Sanders. They're not only writing at a scholarly level for theological journals, they're pushing their poison in the local bookstores for the average Christian. And this is what's so disturbing. The evangelical bookstores are promoting outright heresy. These men are out to change evangelical Christianity by winning students in the seminaries, pastors in the pulpits, and Christians in the pews. That's their goal, is to change Orthodox Christianity inside evangelicalism. changing what they believe about God's attributes. If you get it wrong about who God is and what he's like, everything else is wrong. You're going to get wrong everything about man. You're going to get everything about creation. Everything's going to go down the drain if you get wrong what is true about God. But when you depart from an orthodox view of God's omniscience, you reduce Him to nothing more than a spiritual cheerleader for His people, concerned for everyone, but able to help no one. And if we have an impotent God, we're going to have an impotent faith. I mean, even the pagans understand the omniscience of God better than many evangelicals. I mean, after all, why was any religion started in the first place? Even though the heathen don't know the true God, they still believe their gods see and know more than they do. What sane man would lift up his eyes to heaven and his temple or even to an idol of stone if he believed his God knew no more than he did? I mean, that doesn't make any sense. Even false religions are based on some form of an all-knowing God or gods. Just one example, because of time, the Egyptians. Although they didn't believe in the true God, they represented their God by an eye at the top of a scepter because they believed this God was all-eye and could be ignorant of nothing. I mean, these are the pagan Egyptians, believed in an omniscient God. We can't even get people in evangelicalism to believe in an omniscient God. Egyptians even made replicas of eyes and ears and hung them in their temples because they believed that their God saw and heard everything. But even though there are more and more in Christendom today who deny God's attribute of omniscience, we believe that the scriptures are clear. God is not blind and ignorant. He knows all things, past, present, and future. All things actual as well as possible. And this knowledge is not God's general knowledge, but a very specific, omniscient knowledge. And you know what? God is omniscient in all three persons. Not only does the Bible teach, and this is fourth, the Trinitarian understanding of God's knowledge. Not only does the Bible teach that God is an all-knowing God, it teaches us that all three persons of the Trinity are equally all-knowing. Number one, the Father is omniscient. Psalm 147.5 says, Great is our Lord and mighty in power. His understanding is infinite. That's pretty clear. Luke 16, 15, Jesus said to the Pharisees who thought that they could hide their hypocrisy from God, you are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. Acts 15, 18, concerning God's knowledge of all things about His creation. Peter says, known to God from eternity are all His works. I'm baffled by someone who claims to be a scholar in Scripture, can't even go to basic passages to see what they say. 1 John 3.20 says, God knows all things. So there's no question from Scripture that God, the first person of the Trinity, knows all things. Number two, the Son is omniscient. I can remember a few years ago when I was doing an evangelistic Bible study, one pastor of the largest and fastest growing church in the area where I live said in one of our studies that Jesus didn't know everything. Well, after I took him through just a brief tour of the Gospels, and showed him and everyone else at the study what the Gospels said about Jesus' omniscience, he never came back. It's right here. Just read it. The Gospels clearly show that in the days of Christ's ministry, he knew all things. Matthew 9.4 says that when Jesus healed the paralytic and the scribes said in their hearts that he was blaspheming, Matthew says, but Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, why do you think evil in your hearts? Only God can know that, right? John 2, 24 and 25, when many in Jerusalem said they believed in Jesus, John tells us that Jesus would not commit Himself to them. Why? Jesus did not commit Himself to them because He knew all men. and had no need that anyone should testify a man, for he knew what was in man." Every man. That's omniscience. He could read their hearts. He knew that they had a false faith. John 21, 17 says that after Peter denied Jesus three times, Jesus restored him before the other disciples by asking him three times if he loved him. One time for each denial. And the Bible says, Peter was grieved because Jesus said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. Peter knew that Jesus could see into his heart. Peter has seen a multitude of times Jesus' omniscience. That's why he said, you know all things. I'm not gonna be able to hide my heart from you. If you know the hearts of every man, one man's not gonna be able to hide it from you. Colossians 2.3 says that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Christ is the source of knowledge. That's where knowledge comes from. It's not that just he studied up on it to the point that he knew everything. He's the one that invented it. He's the one that dispenses it. The Holy Spirit, number three, he's omniscient. Revelation 5, 6 says, John speaking. And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders stood a lamb, as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth." John is describing the Holy Spirit's omniscience. The seven Spirits of God with the seven eyes describe the omniscient nature of the Holy Spirit. Seven being the number of perfection in His knowledge. Seven eyes, seven spirits. The perfection of omniscience. As if omniscience can be perfected. I mean, omniscience is infinite. The Spirit of God goes out into all the earth and seas and knows all things. 1 Corinthians 2.11, Paul says that no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Do you know that the Spirit of God knows everything that the Father knows? That's why I said to introduce this part of the study, it's equal among the Trinity. It doesn't matter if it's the Father, Son, or Spirit. Each person is equally omniscient. Whatever the Father knows, the Son knows. Whatever the Son and Father know, the Spirit knows. 2 Corinthians 3.17, Paul tells us that the Lord is the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God. And if God knows everything, the Spirit knows everything. So far from denying the omniscience of God, we affirm it, not because we want to believe it, but because that's what the Bible says. And I want to believe what the Bible says. clear. And not only do we affirm it generally, we affirm it specifically with each member of the Trinity. But let's consider fifth, the personal understanding of God's knowledge. If God is omniscient, and He is, what should that produce in us who know Christ as Savior? Well, number one, A belief in God's omniscience should produce awe and wonder in us. I'm going back to Psalm 139 with David. After he contemplated all that God knew about him, he broke out in awe and wonder equal to very few portions of Scripture. He said in verse 6, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. What he's saying here is, He can't comprehend the idea of God knowing everything. It's beyond his comprehension. It's too high for him to fully comprehend that. He says in verse 17, how precious also are your thoughts to me, O God, speaking of God's knowledge of David, how great is the sum of them. He's overwhelmed by omniscience. He said that the thoughts of God's infinite knowledge were precious or valuable or costly. That means they were worth something to David. They had a value to him. This word, yakar, is used in the Old Testament to refer to the value of gold or jewels. Imagine the doctrine, contrary to what many believe in the church today, could be so important that it was as precious to David as gold or fine jewels. As I said earlier, this was very personal to David, the omniscience of God. It's not just a theological abstract idea. It actually changed the way he lived. and how he saw his God. And while the church is jettisoning doctrine because of its supposed irrelevance, David was holding on to it because it motivated his entire relationship to God. It governed his intimacy with God to know that God knew everything about him. Without the doctrine of omniscience, David's relationship with God would have been severely hindered. And yet we have some today telling us that God's not omniscient. What kind of a God does that leave you with? David was in awe and wonder because God knew everything about him. Verse 1 says that he had searched him. The word means to dig. God had dug into David's heart and saw everything about him. Verse 16 says that God knew everything about David before he was born. Every step of his life was known by God because every step of his life was fashioned by God. It was planned by God before the foundation of the world. Verse 2 says that God knew everything about David's public life. His sitting down and his rising up. And verse 3 says God knew everything about David's private life. His lying down behind closed doors where no one else could see him, God knew publicly and privately. He knew everything. Verse 4 says that God knew David's words before he ever spoke them. Verse 5 says that God's knowledge hedged him in like an army besieging a city where no one could escape. David knew he could hide nothing from God because God's eye saw everything. And the result in verse six, too wonderful. It exceeded his wonder and awe because David took time to meditate on it. Meditation on biblical doctrine was of utmost importance to David because he knew that's how we know God intimately and how we grow spiritually. It's a dynamic relationship. Meditating on the truths of the Word of God concerning God is going to grow us and draw us intimately in with our God. We've lost the biblical priority of meditation. We're too busy, particularly on biblical doctrine. And that might be one reason why the church is so anemic today. may be why there's so little awe and wonder concerning our great God. But number two, a belief in God's omniscience should produce praise in us. Praise. Not just meditation, but praise. There are many places in the Bible that speak of God's omniscience, but none so practical as Psalm 147. First few verses here, Psalm 147. Verse one, praise the Lord, for it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant and praise is beautiful. The Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He counts the number of the stars. He calls them all by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power. His understanding is infinite. Omniscience should marshal in us praise to God, as it did with the psalmist. The psalmist is giving a double praise because of God's infinite knowledge of His people. they are aware that He knows all their ways. And here he's recounting how the Lord sets up a hedge of protection around His people, how He gathers the outcasts, those who are of no value to anyone, how He heals the brokenhearted when no one else cares about them, how He alone binds up their wounds from their enemies that only He can heal, verse three. And it's no wonder that God can gather together all those who are forgotten by men, the nameless, the worthless, and the useless, because if He counts the billions of stars and knows each one by name, how much more does He know the forgotten name of man, of His people? It's for the Lord's infinite knowledge that the psalmist in verse 5 praises God. The word infinite here is mispar. It's prefaced by the adverb nothing or without. It means mispar is number. The preposition is nothing. It means without number. His understanding is without number. It's infinite. no limit, no boundaries. God's knowledge can no more be measured than the hours and minutes of eternity. And because His knowledge extends too intimately, knowing us as His children, it should drive us to praise Him as it did the psalmist. If his understanding is infinite, then he knows what we need to live and what we need when things are difficult, when things are unsure, when things are terrifying, when things are confusing. You know, when we go through those tough times, we need to meditate on the attributes of God. We need to meditate on his omniscience. God knows more than we do. We don't know the end of this thing. God already knows the end of this thing. And because He is all-knowing, He can then direct His omnipotent and beneficent hand to meet our needs in every time of difficulty. Psalm 1-6 says, the Lord knows the way of the righteous. You know, when Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh were falsely accused of departing from the Lord, you remember that in Joshua 22? Joshua 22, 22 says, the Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods, He knows, He knows our hearts. 2 Timothy 2, 19 says, the Lord knows those who are His. There's not one of his children who is so despised in man's eyes that he is not known and precious in God's eyes. God's children may be forgotten in the world, but they are not forgotten in heaven. God's infinite knowledge tags each one of us who know him as his own possession. You know, it was said of Cyrus, the great king of Persia, that he knew the name of every soldier in his army. even soldiers in other nations under His rule. Now, if a man can have this much knowledge of his people, how much more does God have knowledge of His people? Who not only knows their names, but their inward beings. Well, number three, a belief in God's omniscience should produce confession in us. Because we don't think God sees all, we have a tendency not to confess all. That's pretty simple. And by not confessing all of our sin, we actually sin against Him by practically denying what He already knows. 1 John 1 verse 9 says, if we confess our sins, God forgives us. The word confesses samaligeo, it means to say the same thing about our sin that God says. So if God's going to forgive us, prerequisite is we have to say the same thing about our sin that He says. You just can't rush into the throne of God, I sinned today, please forgive me. I'm not sure that qualifies for 1 John 1, 9. You've got to say the same thing about your sin that God does. When we make a partial confession, we are really saying that we don't believe God knows the extent of our sin. Like we're informing God what we did. And you know, God is saying back, well, boy, I'm glad you told me that. I didn't catch it. I mean, that's kind of how the confession can go, right? Consequently, we're not forgiven and end up deceiving ourselves into thinking that everything between us and God is fine when it really isn't. I mean, it's kind of like with your kids. I mean, they make a half-confession or a half-hearted confession, and they think everything's okay, but you're saying, you know, he didn't do it right. She didn't do it right. We've still got some issues here. When Achan made a full confession of his sin in Joshua 7, 19, Joshua said, it gave glory to the God of Israel when he made a full confession. The full confession of our sin in all its detail and extent is really what brings true forgiveness. I wonder why we can't overcome a sin. I wonder if we tell God the whole story. Because when He forgives us, He also cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Why am I not cleansed from that sin? Why do I keep doing it? Maybe I didn't make a full confession. It also acknowledges God's omniscience. A partial confession denies it. You see, theologically we know that God sees everything, but practically when we sin, we can act as if He sees nothing. We say He's omniscient, but much of the time we live as if He didn't see anything. We say He's all-eye, but we live as if He's all-blind. Though God is invisible to us, we must always remember that we're not invisible to Him. We saw Jonah hiding at the bottom of the ship. God saw Sarah laughing when she heard she would have a child. God saw Achan's gold hidden under the tent. He knew that the woman of Samaria had five husbands, and the one she was living with was not her husband. He saw the heart of Ananias and Sapphira's hearts when they lied to him." I mean, what does God know about you? What does He know about me? He knows everything. We can hide nothing from Him. He sees all, He knows all. Well, number four. A belief in God's omniscience should produce comfort in us. Comfort. God's omniscience should instill a healthy fear in us when we sin, but it should also bring us comfort when we are striving for holiness. God's omniscience should comfort us when our enemies are against us. I mean, this is devastating. I mean, when you know that somebody's after you, that can take you out of the game. Trust me, it doesn't matter how strong of a Christian you think you are. I mean, Peter was taken out by a servant girl, right? It should be a great comfort to us to know that God fully knows who is against us. David said in Psalm 69, 19, My adversaries are all before you. The first thing we think about when somebody is after us is God doesn't know this. He's not paying attention. No. God brought that into your life for a reason, maybe to throw you on Him. more trust. If God knows all, He will not allow our enemies to go one step beyond what He's permitted them to do as He did with Satan who wanted to destroy Job." That's it. That's our theology. God is not going to allow anyone to do to us any more than what He's permitted, regardless of how bad it is. And that goes for diseases and infirmities or anything else. Everything that happens to us is because God brought it into our life for a reason. He brought it. He ordained it. He planned it. And it's all for us and our growth to become more like Christ. He knew when Satan wanted to sift Peter like wheat. He knew what was going to happen. He allowed it to happen. He brought it into Peter's life to humble him. He does the same with us. God's omniscience should comfort us when we're truly sorry for our sins. It's a great comfort to know that God fully knows our broken hearts because when He sees our broken hearts, that's when He grants us forgiveness. Broken and contrite heart. That should be a comfort. If we truly have a broken and contrite heart, we can be absolutely sure that God has forgiven us. It's either that or the Bible's a lie. If He really didn't know if we were sincere or not, how could He be able to forgive us? Based on the standard that He's laid down. This is what David experienced in Psalm 38, 8, and 9, when he says, I am feeble and severely broken. I groan because of the turmoil of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before You, and my sighing is not hidden from You. God's omniscience should comfort us when we pray. If God didn't fully know our hearts, our prayers would be in vain. How would He know when to have mercy on us if He didn't know the depths of our groanings and sighings of our hearts in prayer? When we're pouring our hearts out to Him, there are many times where no human being would understand our prayers. I mean, sometimes we don't even understand our prayers. There are many times we can't even utter our troubles and despondencies clearly to God. Just lay in bed and agonize. But He sifts through those prayers as the Holy Spirit reroutes them through the blood of Christ into the presence of the Father. And He fully knows our hearts because He's omniscient. David said in Psalm 5 verse 1, Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my groaning. When Hannah prayed, Eli thought she was drunk, but God heard everything she said. When Israel was under affliction in Egypt, God told Moses in Exodus 3-7, I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry. Though millions of prayers may be prayed to God all at the same time, he hears them all as if you were the only one praying. It's amazing. God can multitask in prayer. He understands your heart. He understands a prayer better than you do. And it's in times like these that God's omniscience is a great comfort to his people. Well, let's close with this one. God's omniscience should comfort us when we have unknown sins. We began with Psalm 139, we'll close there, in verses 23 to 24. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. See if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. David didn't want anything to get in his way, in the way of his relationship with God. He had such an intimate relationship with God, so much so that even unknown sins to him, he wanted God to search out so he could deal with those sins. I mean, he was a fanatic about this. You know, for most of us, somebody's got to beat us over the head to get us to confess our sins. I mean, David wanted to confess sins he didn't even know about. I think I got them all, God, but please keep looking because there's got to be more in there. It was a great comfort to David that God knew the corruptions of his heart and that some things David didn't know. He just didn't know. Too much time had gone by. He forgot. He had done things against the law that he didn't even know he did. And if you read the law of Moses, I mean, you couldn't take three steps without sinning. How do you keep track of all that? You can't. So David says, God keeps track of it, reveal them to me. He leaned on God's omniscience to search him out and purge him from these corruptions. It was David's love for God and desire for holiness that called on God's omniscience to move him further in his sanctification so he could live a more pleasing life to God. And for us, God's omniscience should be a great comfort because he can see things in our hearts that we can't see. And He can bring them to light like the sun at noonday. And when He does, then we can kill those sins, right? By His Spirit. According to Romans 8. So the omniscience of God is not some dry, irrelevant doctrine, but a doctrine that is vital for our spiritual survival in the Christian life. And I hope that from now on, we will take time to meditate on it just like David did. Thank you, Lord, for this time and for your beautiful people and how much they love you, how much they want to learn and grow. And I thank you for your word, and I pray that you would drive it deep into our hearts. We thank you for the perfect example you gave us. You just didn't give us the written word. You gave us the living word, the Lord Jesus. to show us how to live and how He, even in the days of His flesh, relied on you, in pleasing you, in obedience. And I pray that we would do the same, Lord. I pray that You would search us and know us after we have confessed all that we know. And I pray that you would bring even those hidden things to light so that we can deal with those and have sweeter fellowship with you. And we ask it because of Jesus. Amen.