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GOD KNOWS
2-6-11
You may heard the old legend about Albert Einstein years ago doing a lecture tour
He gave the same lecture at numerous locations and it got old
Not only did he get tired of hearing it but his chauffer got tired of hearing it
One day as they were traveling to a speaking engagement Einstein commented:
“You’ve heard this lecture so many times I bet you could give it.”
His driver responded: “I know I could.”
“Well,” Einstein responded, “this next college is pretty obscure and I doubt many there
even know what I look like.
So let’s make things interesting.
Why don’t you give the lecture?”
“Okay you’re on,” his driver said.
And so when they arrived Einstien sat at the back of the auditorium
and his driver delivered his lecture almost perfectly.
But at the end of the lecture the professor hosting the event said:
“Dr. Einstien I wonder if you would be so gracious as to answer a few questions.”
Well the driver looked stunned but didn’t know how to graciously get out of this and so he agreed.
And sure enough the first person to ask a question, was a engineering graduate student.
He went on and on about all of this technical stuff and the driver had no clue
what in the world he was even talking about
But finally he came up for air and asked his question
Well this driver was no dummy and he had an immediate comeback:
“Well I’m shocked that a graduate student at any university would ever ask such an elementary question.
I tell you what. Is that the best kinds of questions you students are going to come up with?
That’s such a simple question that I’m going to have my driver come up and answer it
as well as the rest of your questions!”
Education has been defined as the process of taking us from cocksure arrogance
to thoughtful uncertainity
Toddlers have all the questions
Teenagers have all the answers and the rest of us if we’re honest are pretty clueless
Spanky McFarland said it best: “You can fool some of the people some of the time
but you can’t fool Mom!”
AND we can’t fool God
Because God knows everything
Theologians have used the term omniscience to summarize this truth
Omni means all or universal
Science means knowledge
God is all knowing
God is omniscient
1) God’s Revelation of His Omniscience
“To God all things in the past, present and future are at all times fully known.
God knows everything that ever was, everything that now is and everything that is to be;
all that is actual and all that is possible.
Therefore God knows in advance all the free acts of all free creatures.”
(cited by Millard Erickson in “God, Foreknowledge, Bethel and the BGC”)
So John Edgren, the founder of the Bethel Seminary in Minneapolis, defined omniscience
I purposely cite Edgren because for two thousand years almost all Christians have assumed
a defintion like this of God’s omniscience
But in the last two decades a new movement has arisen, amazingly within evangelicalism,
to redefine how much or what and when God knows
Probably no denomination has been more impacted by this than the Baptist General Conference
One of its leading Pastors and a former professor at Bethel University is the foremost spokesperson
for those who believe the future is totally open and unknown to God
God knows a lot and can guess at the future better than anyone
but God cannot know the future because the future does not yet exist
Thus even God can make mistaken predictions about the future
Now because this movement has caused a lot of conflict and controversy within the contemporary church
we’re going to examine the movement next hour in our connection group
We’re going to take one week off from the Truth Project today
and examine the claims of the Open or New Theists
But for our worship service we are going to survey what the Bible says about God’s omniscience
and how we should respond to His omniscience
a) God’s knows everything exhaustively (Ps. 139:1-6; 147:5; 1 Chr. 28:9; Job
37:16; Is. 40:28; Jer. 17:10; Matt. 10:29-30; Heb. 4:13; 1 John 3:20)
“His understanding has no limit.” (Ps. 147:5b)
“The LORD searches every desire and every thought.” (1 Chr. 28:9)
“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.
Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to Whom
we must give account.” (Heb. 4:13)
Jesus says in Matthew 10(29-30) that God knows the numbers of hairs on our head
and when every sparrow falls to the ground
1 John 3:20 says directly God “knows everything.”
But probably the most familiar passage in all the Word of God regarding God’s omniscience
is the one Austin read to us this morning in Ps. 139:
1 You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.
Nobody knows us better than God
God knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thought from afar.
God knows our every action and attitude
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.
Mates or parents or children are sometimes guilty of saying:
“I knew you were going to say that.”
But God really does and He always gets it right
God knows exactly what we are going to say before the thought inspiring our words ever occurs to us
Sometimes we blurt something out and say: “Where did that come from?
I can’t believe I said that!”
But God knew what we were going to say even if we didn’t
We suprise ourselves, but we don’t surprise God
Our every idea, emotion, motive is known to God before it is known to us
5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
We cannot turn back to run away from Him
We cannot run ahead to try to out run Him
There is no escaping God’s knowledge
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
The vastness, the infinity of God’s knowlege is incomprehensible to our puny minds
We live in a day when the average copy of the N.Y. Times has more information in it
than the average person in 17th century England encountered in their entire life
We have gathered more information the last 3 decades than we did in all of prior human history
Printed knowlege doubles every 8 years
More than 1,000 new books are published every day
No wonder I can’t keep up!
I go to a bookstore or get on Amazon and I always go from delight to despair
because there are more books worth reading than I will ever have any hope of reading
And the internet ... oh the internet
Blessing or curse? Both!
Our problem today is not lack of information we are drowning in information
We are like thirsty people who have been condemned to drink with a thimble from fire hoses
(all the above from Richard Wurman, Information Anxiety, pp. 6-35)
The amount of knowledge available to us thrills me and terrifies me
But it never overwhelms God
God knows it all and never blinks an eye over it
God has never learned anything!
God’s knowledge has always been and will always be perfect.
God is never shocked
God is never surprised
God knows everything exhaustively including, despite the claims of the open theists,
b) God knows the future (Is. 7:14; 9:6-7; 41:22-23; 42:9; 44:7; 45:21; 46:8-11;
Dan. 9:24-27; Mic. 5:2; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34; John 2:19-21; Acts 2:23; Rom.
8:29-30;)
There are about 100 verses Open Theists use to claim that God does not know the future
But there are more than 4700 verses which directly state or imply that He does know the future
(cf. Bruce Ware, God’s Lesser Glory, p. 100; Steven Roy, How Much Does God Foreknow?)
Walter Kaiser estimates that 27% of the Bible involves predictive prophecy
(The Messiah in the Old Testament, p. 235)
Steven Roy has listed 4,017 predictive prophesies in the Bible (How Much Does God Foreknow? p. 34)
Now how in the world can God make more than 4,000 prophesies in the Bible?
How can Jesus fulfill more than 300 O.T. messianic prophesies if God can’t know the future?
Isaiah 40-48 is an extended discourse demonstrating God’s unique superiority
to all other supposed gods because He can predict the future
God challenges all of the pagan’s supposed gods to show their ability to predict the future
For example, Is. 41:22-23 - “Tell us, you idols, what is going to happen.
Tell us what the former things were so that we may consider them and know their final outcome.
Or declare to us the things to come, 23 tell us what the future holds,
so we may know that you are gods.
On the other hand God says of Himself:
“See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare;
before they spring into being I announce them to you.” (Is. 42:9)
We have cited many times the prophesies God the Father made about the Messiah
which Jesus fulfilled
God predicted that the Messiah would be a descendent of Abraham, then of Isaac,
then of Jacob, then of Judah, then of David
God predicted that the Messiah would be born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem
and even the time of His birth
God predicted that the Messiah would be crucified for His people
Now how in the world could God have predicted all of these things if He doesn’t know the future?
Jesus predicted His own death several times
Jesus predicted the betrayals of Peter and Judas
Both the Father and Son make numerous predictions about the end times
How can God make such predictions if He does not know the future?
The Open or New Theists of course go to great efforts to try to explain that God
is merely good at predicting but can theoretically get things wrong
God can get things wrong because it is logically impossible for anyone, including God to know
the future when it has not yet happened or to know the outcome of choices that have not yet been made
And yet the Bible not only repeatedly affirms that God knows the future
but that He knows
c) God knows future choices (1 Sam. 23:11; 2 Kgs. 13:19; Ps. 139:16;
Matt. 26:2,20-25,33-35; John 2:23-25; 13:18-26; Acts 2:23)
Did God know that Judas would betray Jesus?
Jesus clearly did
For example the gospel of John tells us that at the Last Supper Jesus said:
21 After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you,
one of you is going to betray me.”
22 His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant.
23 One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him.
24 Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”
25 Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”
26 Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.”
Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.
In Judas’ experience he chose to betray Jesus
but Jesus knew beforehand that He was going to make this choice
Jesus also told Peter that he was going to betray Jesus
Such a thought horrified Peter and he declared that he would never betray Jesus
and yet Peter did chose to betray Jesus as Jesus knew He would
We’ll explain more next hour the thinking and motivations of the Open Theists
in their denying that God knows the future
But one of their motivations is that for choices to truly be choices they must be absolutely free
However the Bible actually presents what many theologians call compatible freedom
rather than absolute freedom
That is human choices are not absolutely free but compatible with human nature
and God’s sovereignty
Technically not even God has absolute freedom because God only does what is compatible
with His nature
The compatability of God’s choices and our choices is illustrated on virtually every page of the Bible
but the passage that perhaps spells it out better than any other is Acts 2:23 (NAS)
In the first sermon of church history when Peter explains how and why Jesus’ crucifixion
has occurred he says:
this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God,
you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.
Jesus was crucified according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God
The worst crime of history was part of God’s plan to ultimately most glorify Himself
But those who committed the worst crime of history were not mindless robots
whom God forced to crucify Jesus
They were normal, natural human beings who acted according to or compatible with
human nature and God’s plan
The Bible says that no human being naturally seeks God (Rom. 3:10-11; 1 Cor. 2:14)
Without the work of God’s Spirit since the Fall in Genesis 3 we are all born sons of Satan (John 8:44)
We are all born as part of Satan’s family not God’s family
We are all born as cosmic rebels who want our will to be done rather than God’s will
We have to be born again to become part of God’s family (John 1:12; 3)
So those who killed Jesus only did what all human beings naturally do: resist God
They acted compatabily with their nature and God’s predetermined plan
God did not make them kill Jesus
God left them to their natural desires which fulfilled His eternal plan
He knew beforehand what they would do but He did not force them against their will to do it
God knows everything exhaustively
He knows not only everything in the past and present but in the future
He even knows beforehand choices that are truly choices but have not yet been made
God is eternal and while He can act in time He is also beyond time
He sees everything as an eternal now and so seeing the future is no challenge for Him
But how is it that we should respond to knowing that God knows everything?
Well basically there are two possible responses
Either we can rejoice in God’s knowledge or try to run from it
Either it can scare us or make us feel safe
Either it is a source of grave concern to us or a source of great comfort
It all depends on how we are relating to God
2) Our Response to His Omniscience
If we are running from God, if we are rebelling against Him,
If we are moving away from Him then we will not be comforted by His knowledge but concerned by it
a) Grave concern if moving away from God (Num. 32:23; Heb. 12:5-11)
That God knows our every attitude and act should scare us if we’re doing our will
rather than His will
Because the Bible teaches that we reap what we sow
Gal. 6:7 says:
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked;
for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”
The Bible thus says that sooner or later our sin will always out us:
“.. be sure your sin will find you out.” (Num. 32:23)
I asked earlier whether the internet is a blessing or a curse
It’s a blessing if we use it for God glorifying purposes
But it’s a curse or at least a potential source of great temptation if we choose to misuse it
How many men have confessed to me struggles with pornography?
How many men have I seen go from looking at porn on the net to falling into sin
with much greater consequences?
Men who everyone thought were godly who have lost jobs, marriages, ministries and on and on
because they yielded to temptation and sooner or later we reap what we sow, our sin finds us
We can fool most of the people most of the time but we can’t fool God
Bill Hybels tells a story that most of us can relate to
When he was a boy growing up in Michigan his father’s produce company purchased a farm
just outside of Kalamazoo
Hybels says that every day he waited for his father to come home from work
and then he would acost him:
“Dad, Dad can we go to the farm and you teach me how to drive the tractor?”
Well finally his Dad taught him how to drive it
And he told him that there was one cardinal rule:
“Never put gas in a hot tractor.
If the tractor runs out of gas get off it and take a walk, a nap, or whatever
but never, ever put gas in a hot tractor.”
“No problem,” Bill assured his Dad, “I get it.”
And for weeks every afternoon after school Bill rode his bike to the farm so he could
do chores on the tractor
However one day he was determined to impress his Dad by having everything done
he was supposed to do before his Dad got to the farm
But ... he ran out of gas
And that created a dilemma
He knew that if he waited for the tractor to cool then he would not be able to complete his goal
But he also remembered his Dad cardinal rule: “Never fill a hot tractor with gas!”
But Bill reasoned: “Dad will never know. I want to get this done.”
And so he decided not to wait on the tractor to cool
He in fact got so determined to get the job done that he did not even bother to turn the tractor off
Instead he climbed off it and left it running and got a step ladder and started pouring gas
into the tank (which was right over the hot engine)
And sure enough while he was pouring the gasoline he slipped off the ladder
and poured gas all over the engine
Immediately a ball of fire shot up from the tractor and then it exploded
and literally pushed him backwards
And he stood and watched as flames engulfed his Dad’s tractor
and melted its tires
“I’m a dead man!” Hybels told himself.
But he got on his bike and made the longest ride home he ever made
When he got home he was relieved to see that his Dad’s car was not yet there
And when he went in and asked his mom when his Dad would get home
she informed him that he had left town for a few days
At first Bill thought, “I must be the luckiest kid in Michigan.”
But the wait for his Dad’s return became excruciating
He couldn’t get it off his mind and fantasized about all the awful things his Dad might say or do
The punishments he imagined just got worse and worse
Finally his Dad returned
But Bill didn’t have the courage to say anything
For weeks he had hardly talked about anything other than the tractor
Now he couldn’t dare mention it
Now the thought of the tractor made him feel like he’d break out in hives
Bill decided that he would not mention the tractor and wait on his Dad to bring it up
“Maybe,” he deludedly reasoned, “he won’t notice it.”
So the silence went on for a couple more days until after dinner his Dad started scooping
ice cream and he gave everyone in the family two scoops except for Bill
Bill only got one scoop
Bill looked at his ice cream and looked at his Dad and thought: “He knows.”
He says he started eating the ice cream and sweating at the same time
“I’ve got to tell him,” he thought.
“He’s knows. I’ve got nothing to gain by keeping silent.”
And so finally after everyone finished their dessert Bill blurted out:
“Dad I blew it!
I filled the gas tank to the tractor while it was still running and burned it all up.
If you want me to spend the rest of my life paying for the tractor I will.”
“Come over here Son,” his Dad responded.
Bill slowly got up and walked over to his Dad and his Dad took him gently into his arms and said:
“Son I gave you the directions I gave you because I didn’t want you to get hurt.
You’ll listen better next time won’t you?
Don’t worry about the tractor. It’s insured and we’ve already got another one coming.
Just go back to work with the new tractor Monday.”
Hybels said he learned a lot of theology that day about confession and forgiveness
There’s no point in worrying about whether God will find out, He already knows
There’s no point in worrying about whether our sin will find us out, it will
BUT if we quit running from Him and trying to hide our sin but rather go to Him with humility
and repentance than He will gladly restore us
And the more we then pursue pleasing Him then the more His knowledge will become for us a
b) Great comfort if moving toward Him (Ps. 139:23-24; Matt. 6:25-34; 10:28-31;
1 Cor. 10:13)
After praising God’s omniscience in verses 1-6 of Psalm 139
David concludes his Psalm by saying:
“Search me, God and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (23-24)
David has learned the truth
There’s no point in running from God
He knows us better than we know ourselves
And rather than run from God, since He knows it all anyway,
why not run to Him?
Why not ask Him to show us our blind spots?
To show us our sin?
We may be able to fool ourselves to some degree, but we can’t fool God
and why would we want to?
David knows that God has our best interests in mind
David knows that life is about knowing God
But we can’t know Him if we’re moving away from Him rather than toward Him
Search me O God and show me my heart is a very scary thing to pray on one level
But it is the most honest and important thing we can pray
God knows our strengths and weakness better than we do
God knows our struggles, our temptations, our predispositions
God knows everything about us and yet still loves us
I can imagine Bill Hybels’ father saying: “Son I can buy another tractor.
But I can’t buy another son.”
And God says to us: “Yes you’ve failed. Yes you’ve worshipped false gods.
But you’re only hurting yourself and our relationship.
I want you to know Me like I know you.
The better You know Me the less you’ll be tempted to run from Me.
The better You know Me the more you will want to run to Me.
The better You know Me the more you’ll realize that I really do love you
and really do always want what’s best for you.
So don’t let trivialities come between us.
Don’t try to fool yourself that you can fool Me.
Be honest.
Come to Me and we’ll work things out and you’ll get to know Me better.”