Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast,
where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.
In this podcast series, we're going to be looking into biblical
words that have great significance to our faith.
The name of this series is called the Word of the Week, where
once a week we will dive deeper into these words that we are
familiar with in Scripture.
So come along with me.
Let's study the Word of the week.
Pastor Josh here.
The Word of the Week is omniscient.
We have started a study last week on the attributes of God.
We talked about the attributes of God that we can mirror in our
own lives and live out to a degree in our own lives.
Obviously not to perfection, but to some degree follow.
But then we also talked about the attributes, the incommunicable
attributes of God in which we cannot obtain.
And one of those would be what we talked about last week.
Omnipotence.
God's all powerful nature.
No limitations.
He is all powerful.
This week we're going to be studying the word omniscient, which
means all knowing.
It means that God knows everything.
He has complete knowledge of past, present and future.
He knows what we think.
He knows our intentions.
He knows the answer to every question.
Ultimately, we know that God is not limited in his strength, but
God is not limited in his knowledge.
All of us to some degree, are limited.
Some know more things than others about different topics.
But all of us are limited in the concept of knowing different
ideas or solutions or even facts.
And so we can see in Scripture that it talks about God not just
being wise.
God is more than just wise, and he's more than just being of
knowledge, but he is the God of all knowledge.
Over and over again in Scripture, we see that God knows
everything.
I think of the passage of Scripture in Matthew, chapter 10,
verses 29, 30.
Obviously, the Lord's talking here about individuals that are worried
or there's some anxiety about the unknown.
And Jesus is talking about the understanding that God he knows even
when the sparrows fall.
He says, are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father,
but the very hairs of your head are numbered.
And so there's this beautiful thought about the fact that God knows
everything about us.
And if he cares about the future of a sparrow, we know that
he cares about our own life.
And so he's talking here about this understanding that God knows
everything about us.
He knows the hair on our heads.
He knows the thoughts in our heart.
And so we can know that God knows about our struggles.
He knows about our needs.
We don't even have to tell him now.
He wants us to tell Him.
In that relationship of a father and child, he wants us to
tell him.
But he knows all of our needs.
The Bible says in First John, chapter three, verse 20.
For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and
he knoweth all things.
So there's another statement here of the understanding that God
knows all things.
He knows our heart, he knows our thoughts.
And even In Isaiah, chapter 46, it says this in verse nine, Remember
the former things of old, for I am God and there is none else.
I am God and there is none like me.
Declaring the end from the beginning, from the ancient times,
the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand,
and I will do all my pleasure.
So God knows everything in the moment, but God also knows everything
about the past.
He knows everything about the future.
He knows what's going to happen in our life.
Now that doesn't mean that we.
We are without choice and that we're forced to do things.
It just is God's living outside of space and time and he
knows our decisions.
And so as, as a Christian, we can take comfort in that, that God
knows our heart, he knows our failures, he knows our struggles,
but yet he still loves us.
And we have a God who cares about us.
We'll talk more about his attribute of love later on in the
study.
But ultimately it's a.
It's a wonderful thing to know that God knows where we are.
He understands our struggles, even if we don't even know what our
struggles completely are.
He knows what's coming in our future, and he's preparing us for
that.
I think of Psalm 139, 4.
In this verse, we see that he knows our very thoughts even before
we speak it out.
Psalm 134, verse.
Excuse me.
Psalm 139, verse 4.
For there is not a word in my tongue but lo, O Lord, thou knowest
it all together.
And so what we can tell from this passage is that God knows what
we're going to say even before we say it.
He knows our hearts from a distance.
He knows our wants, our, and more importantly, our needs.
And he provides for our needs.
And so this is just one element of God's perfect character,
is that he is all knowing.
And we even see this in the life of Jesus, in His Deity on this
earth.
I mean, there are times where he understands the thoughts of people.
He discerns their hearts.
And that's not just Him.
Feeling it.
That's him knowing it.
And we know that God, even in the case of.
In John chapter 1, Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and saith
unto him, behold, an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile.
Nathaniel said unto him, whence knowest thou me?
And Jesus answered and said unto him, before that Philip called
thee.
When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.
And so Jesus is exercising his omniscience by saying, hey, I knew
you before you knew me.
I saw you under the fig tree.
And there's a lot of speculation on what that means.
Most people believe, most commentators believe that Nathaniel
was probably having some kind of moment where he was calling out
to God and seeking after him and trying to struggle through something.
And what Jesus essentially tells Nathaniel is, I saw you there.
I saw you in your deepest, darkest moment.
I saw you thinking through those things and contemplating and
asking God.
And so this is a beautiful reminder that God knows all.
Now, for some people, depending on where you stand before
him, the fact that God knows all can maybe even be a fearful thing.
Because if we're hiding iniquity in our hearts, if we're
harboring sin in our lives, or maybe we are trying to hide something
from somebody else, or trying to hide something for God, what we
can tell through this attribute is that we can't hide anything
from God.
We might be able to hide it from others around us.
We might even be able to lie to ourselves, but the truth is that
there's nothing that we can hide from God.
And so instead of trying to run away from him, instead of trying
to hide things from Him, I think that this truth brings us to
a place of authenticity before him, transparency before Him.
And I think that this can, like I said before, if this is a
truth that makes you uncomfortable, it might be time for
us to inspect our own lives, to say, what am I trying to hide
from God?
Is there something in my life that I'm ashamed of?
If so, the Beauty is that first John 1, chapter 9 tells us
that if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive
us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And so Jesus knows our thoughts.
And so therefore, and this is another beautiful thing, that if
you think back to Romans chapter 5, verse 8, it says, but
God commendeth or demonstrate his love towards us.
And that while we were at sinners, Christ died for us.
So the beauty here is that the Lord knew our thoughts, Jesus knew
that we would rebel, but nonetheless, he died on the cross.
For our sins because of his love for us.
So God loves us so much he sent his only begotten Son, knowing
that we would fail, knowing the future, knowing that we would
sin, but yet still because of his love, he shows his grace in sending
Jesus for us.
And so that plays all into the understanding of God's omniscience.
He knows all.
He knows everything in this world.
He knows what is done in private.
He knows what's done obviously in public.
And so he knows not only the smallest details of our life, but
those that are surrounding our life.
He knows what people have done to us.
He knows what's going to happen tomorrow.
He knows the outcome of, you know, elections, he knows the outcome
of sicknesses.
And he knows all of these things.
But yet still we as Christians sometimes struggle with the unknown.
And understandably so, because we are humans and so we don't know
the future.
But I think what we can do with this is with many of the attributes
of God rely on faith to know that God has it under control, to
rely in faith in God, that He knows my needs and will provide my
needs in the midst of the loss, in the midst of brokenness,
in the midst of confusion.
And so we humbly have to seek after the Lord in this.
And to know God's omniscient nature is to know that we have a
God who is not limited by circumstance.
I can tell you that there are many times in my life where I come
to a scenario and I don't know what to do.
I don't know what the right decision is.
And even if I sometimes know that, hey, this decision here is
going to go this way, or this decision here might go this way,
ultimately I am limited in my wisdom because ultimately I'm not
God.
And what I have to understand that as a Christian is when there
are times in my life when I don't know what to do.
The Bible actually tells us what we should do, and that's found
in the book of James.
I have a sermon entitled what to do when you don't know what to
do.
And there's going to be times in our life where we have hit our
wall as a human, we have hit our wall as a finite, limited creation
of God where we don't know what to do.
And in James chapter one, verse, verse five, it says, if any
of you lack wisdom, right?
So if any of you lack wisdom, which for me that happens quite frequently,
he gives us what we are to do, what we are to do when we don't know
what to Do.
He says, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally
and abradeth not, meaning he doesn't get upset with us when we
do this, and it shall be given him, but let him ask in faith, nothing
wavering, for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven
with the wind and tossed.
And so what the Bible tells us here is that when we do lack wisdom,
when we don't know the answers, we go to the one who does
know the answers.
And the Bible says, let him.
When we ask in faith, let him ask of God that giveth to all men
liberally, meaning giveth wisdom liberally.
God pours that out to us as generously, and he doesn't hold it
against us.
When we go back, and we go back and we go back, we can go as
many times as we want for that wisdom that well does not run dry.
The Bible says when we do that, he will give it to us at the
end of that verse, in verse 5, and it shall be given him.
But it does tell us that we have to ask in faith, and that's
what we mentioned before.
Knowing that God is omniscient leads us to a place of faith, leads
us to a place of trust.
Like, if he knows what he's doing, okay, if God knows what he's
doing, which we must believe that he does, then we can trust in
Him.
Through this process, I recently had an opportunity to ride
in a Tesla car.
Now, I don't know what your opinions are on these electric cars
these days, but one of the.
One of the things that the car does is actually automatic driving.
Now, you got to pay attention.
You can't sleep at the wheel or read a book at the wheel.
Your eyes have to be up on the road.
But I had to get in the car, and the person that was taking me
on the ride said, okay, you just got to trust it.
And so I didn't have my hand on the steering wheel, didn't have
my feet on the gas.
And it was very interesting because everything in me wanted to
step on the brake.
Everything in me wanted to turn the wheel.
But the way that the car was designed, it handled it itself, and
that took a lot of trust.
I had to trust the person that designed that car.
And whether that trust was in the right place or not, I don't know.
I ended up safe at the end.
But the truth is that sometimes, as Christians, we have
to trust our designer.
We have to trust our creator to go through that process and to
say, lord, you know better than me.
So therefore I'm not going to question, I'm not going to doubt,
I'm not going to try to figure this out on my own.
Like so many other folks in scripture, we see that God tells
them something, tells them to trust him, but yet they try to figure
out on their own, try to make it their own way.
Obviously a great example of that would be Abraham.
But you know what?
I have been Abraham in my life.
When God has told me to go through something, or at least allowed
me to go through something, I've not trusted in Him.
I've tried to figure it out on my own in my limited knowledge, my
limited wisdom.
And so therefore the lesson of God's omniscient nature is this.
I can trust in him because he knows the outcome, he knows the answer.
He knows what's best for me, even when I don't know what's best.
And so what an amazing truth it is to know that God is all knowing
that he sent his only begotten Son for us.
Knowing yes, that we would sin, but knowing that love is this
amazing, amazing character trait of God.
And we will talk about his love later on.
But this lesson today was about his omniscient nature.
So I encourage you to rest in that wonderful truth of his omnipotence,
his all powerful nature and then today his omniscience, his all
knowing nature.
We're going to come back next week and look at his omnipresence,
which means he's everywhere all at once.
And these omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent attributes
all tie in together into his attributes and his character.
So looking forward to studying that with you next week.
Thank you for listening this week.
Remember, God is omniscient.
He knows all.
And that is a beautiful truth that we can take in our lives.
And to go to him according to James Chapter one and ask him for
that wisdom that he has and he will give that to us with no limit.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
Thank you for listening to the podcast.
We look forward to talking to you next week on another Word of
the Week episode.
God bless you.
Take care.
We'll talk to you soon.
Hey, I really appreciate that you listen to the Word of the Week
podcast.
If you have any questions about the podcast or about our church,
Middletown Baptist Church, you can find more information about us
on Facebook or YouTube or you can find the podcast on NBCpodcast.org
you can contact me directly at Josh Massaro at Middletown Baptist
Church dot org.
Stay tuned for future Word of the Week episodes where we dive deeper
into words that impact our life according to scripture.
Thank you so much.
God bless.
We'll talk to you soon.