God's Omniscience is Awesome

The past few weeks I have had the privilege of leading the students in my church's youth group in a book study of The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer.  I've mentioned before that it is one of my favorite books and I've been very excited to teach on it because Tozer spends time looking at the attributes of God, which blow my mind.

This week one of the attributes we looked at was the divine omniscience.  When we say that God is omniscient we mean that He knows everything.  God knows everything that can be known because He is the author and creator of everything.  As Tozer puts it, "God perfectly knows Himself, and being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known."  God also knows everything that was, is and is yet to come because He is outside of time and isn't bound by future or past.

This means that God cannot learn and has never learned.  God has always just known.  For, if He gained knowledge that would mean He was less than perfect before gaining that knowledge.  God never discovers anything and cannot be surprised.

This is all very cool and mind blowing to say the least.  However, I'm sure you're wondering what difference it makes in your life that God is omniscient.

One of the first things that people think of when they hear that God is omniscient is this: "If God knows everything make sure you don't commit a hidden sin because He'll know about it even if no one else does.  Or don't even think about sinning because God even knows you're thinking about it."  This is true, but not all that beneficial.  It does inspire fear and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but I find this way of thinking bogs us down with guilt and paralyzing fear.

Here a much better reason of why it matters that God is omniscient.  Read this quote from A. W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy:

"No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick; no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past; no unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us, since He know us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us."

This is AWESOME!  God knew us fully, knows us fully and will know us fully.  He knows our deepest, darkest secrets and dirtiest inner thoughts; yet He still chose to love us with His infinite love!  God in His perfect knowledge looked at us and deemed us lovable.  He saw us and desired for us to be His bride to be His children.  Wow!

This should inspire us to live a life worthy of this calling even though He chose us when we were unworthy of the calling.  This causes us to live a much holier life than simply the fear that God sees us and will judges us.  God sees us and will love us.

Also, if God looks at your deepest, darkest secrets and dirtiest thoughts and loves you, then you have no right to hate yourself.  You can't call unworthy and unlovable what the Author and Creator of Life, the King of Kings has already pronounced lovable and worthy.  You can't hate what Jesus died for.

God is omniscient.  He knows everything.  He knows you at your worst and chose to love you with His infinite, unfailing, unmatchable, perfect love.  This is the Gospel friends.  Praise God for His omniscience today.