Ultimate Discussions 4

The Ultimate Knowledge: God's Omniscience
Please see Ultimate Discussions 1 below for introductory material.



Saturday morning, February 1, 2003, I picked up my one year old son. While holding him in my arms, I grabbed the remote control and clicked on the television. The screen showed a clear blue day with a bright streak of light careening across the sky. It was the space shuttle Columbia breaking apart right before our nation’s eyes. Later that day, President Bush made a radio address at 2:04 EST. I had driven to Oak Ridge, Tennessee by that time to run an errand. I listened to his speech just before stepping out of the car. His comments were short, but I will never forget how he closed them.

He said, “In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, ‘Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these. He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.’ The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today.”

Those comforting words were based on Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 26. Isaiah was a major prophet of the Old Testament. The passage teaches us that God knows the names of each and every star. Just two verses after, Isaiah goes on to write, “Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of His understanding.”

God’s knowledge is infinite and complete. We use the word omniscience to describe God’s knowledge. A.W. Tozer put it this way: “To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn.”¹ That’s a powerful statement, but it makes sense. Since God has all knowledge, He does not need to learn anything. One of the New Testament writers put it plainly, “...He knows everything.”² Jesus told us that God knows the number of the hairs on our head.³

Obviously, this means that God is not like we are. We feel the limitations of our knowledge and assume that God may be like us. But, just as God’s power is displayed without effort, God knows all things at once without effort. If there were one shred of knowledge that God did not know, He would not be God at all. But He knows everything at once and forever. This is a divine characteristic. We are nowhere close to being in His league. Nobody is. He’s God!
Now, what does this mean for you and me? It means several things at once:


1. God’s judgment is based on complete knowledge. He will be just.
2. God’s love is unconditional. He knows everything about us--that means everything. And He still loves us.
3. God’s care is perfect. He knows everything we need before we ask Him.
4. God is worthy of worship. Who else is like Him?
5. God cannot be fooled. Why should we even try?


Let me close by going back to A.W. Tozer. He said, “In the divine omniscience we see set forth against each other the terror and the fascination of the Godhead.”⁴ That’s well stated. Anyone who knows all the stars by name--and all the humans that would like to explore them--deserves our awe-stricken respect.

------------------------------
¹ A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco, Harper and Rowe Publishers, 1961), 90.
² 1 John 3:20
³ Matthew 10:30
⁴ Tozer, 93.