The All-Knowing God

[0:00] Today I want to talk about the all-knowing God. If you were here with us last week, I introduced kind of the trilogy of the Omni teachings.

[0:18] And if you don't know what Omni means, it's from the Latin, which means all. And this word is used by theologians to denote three attributes of God which stand Him apart from every other God.

[0:37] The God who is all-present, which we call God's omnipresence, which we learned about last week. There's God's omnipotence, God's all-power.

[0:49] And today we're going to look at what God's omniscience means. God being all-knowing. If you have your Bibles, please take them out and turn to Psalm 139.

[1:07] We read Psalm 139 in all its entirety last week. But I want us to focus in on the beginning of the Psalm.

[1:17] For in it comes great wisdom and understanding of how God presents Himself to be before us.

[1:31] Dear Lord, Heavenly Father, just as I come to speak on this topic, I pray that my voice would be clear, be understood, and that your Spirit would use it to encourage us, make us fearful of you perhaps, but ultimately to bring us to a point of rendering all worship.

[2:03] So Father, let that be our prayer today, to be moved by just how incredible you are.

[2:14] In your name, amen. So let's take a look at Psalm 139. I'm just going to read the first six verses, and then I'm going to come back to it later. But it begins, It says, Of all of God's attributes, This is probably the one we wrestle with the least.

[3:20] It's just kind of a given that God knows all. We accept that a God must be knowing. But it's also an attribute which we struggle to understand at the same time.

[3:37] We kind of get it, But I'm not sure if we understand the complete complexity of what it is. The prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 40.13 says, Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel?

[3:58] Who did he consult? And who made him understand? The obvious answer to those questions is nobody. That God is without counsel.

[4:10] He is without counselor. There is no mentors for God. There's no tutors for God. There's no one who came before. Paul records in 1 Corinthians 2.16, For who has understood the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct him?

[4:32] The problem with any study on the attributes of God is we begin with barely a smidgen of the comprehension of who he is.

[4:45] What's interesting, most theologians talk about the problem when we talk about God is we can't give greater understanding.

[4:56] And what I mean is we usually speak in negatives. And what I mean by this is it's hard to explain what it means for God to have a beginning.

[5:08] It's actually easier for me to say God has no beginning. God has no limitations. God does not change.

[5:21] So often it's very helpful to use negatives, opposites, but using the opposite sometimes doesn't fill us into the marvelous color and understanding that exists on the positive.

[5:38] Malachi 3.6 says simply, For I am the Lord, I change not. So to help us understand, I want to look at what it means for God to be all-knowing with eight different statements.

[6:01] So if you're taking notes, you can put down one to eight. And we're going to look at these eight statements. And I'm hoping to come at this attribute from eight different angles that will, Lord willing, give us a greater, better, deeper understanding of what God's omniscience is.

[6:25] And ultimately my desire is, as we see this, that we worship him even more, that our hearts would be tuned more to who he is.

[6:41] Now, before I go any further, and I've talked a little bit about this, the way of my study is I'm doing what's called a systematic approach to understanding God, which means I'm systematizing the verses that speak to God.

[6:59] And there's books that are created. They're called Systematic Theologies, which list all the major theologies, and they provide you with all the verses on that subject.

[7:16] And there's several of those theologies that I use. Many of the people here are familiar with Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. There's John MacArthur's Biblical Doctrine, which I would highly recommend as well.

[7:29] But there's also some amazing books on the subject. And I've actually ordered them for our book table. There's A.W. Pink's The Attributes of God. A.W. Tozer, he wrote the book The Knowledge of the Holy.

[7:44] But the big boy on the block is actually a book by Stephen Charnock, which is called The Existence and Attributes of God. It's a thick read.

[7:56] It's one of those books where he is contemplating and opening up so much of scripture that, as one of my friends says, I feel like I need to lie down and sleep every time I read a page.

[8:07] But these are the type of books that I use. And I also use outlines that some of my mentors and professors have provided me. So I take all this information, I read it on the subject, I study it, I pray over it, and I meditate.

[8:23] And every time it leads me to a depth of worship that sometimes I haven't even thought of before. I have also found during this sermon series that I am far more passionate about the gospel than I ever have, just as I am seeing how amazingly good, wise, perfect, and all his magnificent is.

[8:49] And I truly believe the words of Jeremiah when he simply says in Jeremiah 9, 23-24, Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom.

[9:00] Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not the rich man boast in his riches. But let him know who boasts in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.

[9:23] For in these I delight, declares the Lord. I am convinced without a doubt during these chaotic times to try to understand the horizontal and what's going around us is impossible without us understanding the vertical, the God who created us.

[9:51] When we know the story of God, through knowing him, we understand man's plight, his sin nature, which gives us wisdom and understanding what is about us, the confusion that man is in without God.

[10:12] I am convinced without a doubt that all the secrets of this life are found in this understanding of God. And this is why I preach these attributes.

[10:24] So today I want to look at eight declarations. They're not, there's different levels, different intensities of these declarations. But I pray that each declaration will give you a greater understanding of who God is.

[10:38] So the first declaration is, God has perfect self-knowledge. God has perfect self-knowledge. And what this means is that God has perfect knowledge of himself.

[10:53] He understands every motive of himself. He understands every emotion of himself. He knows himself ultimately perfectly. Let me ask you a question.

[11:06] Can you say the same? I have a good friend of mine actually has a business based on helping you know yourself. So if any of you guys are unsure of who you are and what you want to do, I got the guy for you.

[11:20] But we're usually lost in what we want, what our desires are, what we're good at, what we're bad at. We can't figure ourselves out. God doesn't have that problem.

[11:31] He doesn't do something and then question himself later. The Bible teaches us that the three persons of the Trinity know each other fully.

[11:44] The Father knows the Son perfectly and the Son knows the Father perfectly. In fact, Jesus Christ himself said in Matthew 11, 27, No one knows the Son except the Father.

[11:58] And no one knows the Father except the Son. So not only does he know himself perfectly, the only people who know God perfectly is God, the Trinity.

[12:12] The perfect knowledge speaks to the perfect unity of the Trinity, of how they are in one mind, one motivation. John 10, 15 says, Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.

[12:27] As any husband knows, the greatest failings that we have is sometimes we forget to tell our wives stuff. And let's be honest, wives forget to tell their husbands stuff.

[12:40] How many times have I gone to the grocery store, picked up some groceries, come back, and my wife says, Did you get the milk? Totally didn't know we had no milk. Look, that's not a problem with the Trinity.

[12:51] Right? That's a man problem. That's not a God problem. So when the Spirit is working, or Jesus Christ is working, or God is working, they're not working independently of one another.

[13:04] Spouses don't tell their other spouse that they invited someone over and forgot to tell them. That doesn't happen with God. God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ are totally in sync with one another perfectly all the time.

[13:28] They are perfect in harmony, and they are perfect in unity. They are perfectly together in every way possible, and their knowledge of one another is perfect.

[13:45] So the first point to understanding the knowledge of God is that God's self-knowledge of who He is, His motivations, His means, His methods, are all perfect, and He perfectly knows them.

[13:59] So that's the first angle that we come at God. The second one is to understand that God has what's called perfect knowledge.

[14:09] Perfect knowledge. Not only does God know Himself perfectly, He knows all things outside of Himself perfectly. God knows all things accurately as they truly are.

[14:27] There is no other side to the story. There's no misconceptions. There's no other points of view. And how many of us have been convinced of the reality of the truth of an instance, and someone has a completely different side of the story just because they saw it differently or experienced differently, and they're both true.

[14:57] It's interesting, when I was with the government, and we were going to approach an asset, and my role was to get double agents, people to work for us, and before I approached them, we would sit in a room, and there'd be psychiatrists.

[15:18] There would be experts on the culture, the language. There would be, if we could find someone from that person's town, just to make sure that every word that I used was perfectly understood by that person.

[15:38] We tried to gather as much information as possible. We would, whether they had money, no money, what was the quality, who were their kids, the quality of their marriage, what was his history, his background, military training, non-military training, what was his schooling?

[15:57] And often we weren't perfect. God knows all those things. Absolutely perfect. He doesn't need to ask. He doesn't need to consult. He knows. Job 37, 16 speaks of God being perfect in knowledge.

[16:14] Psalm 147, 6 simply states that God's knowledge is infinite. His knowledge is infinite. What that means is God never learns anything.

[16:32] Nothing new enters his mind. You know how you and I, we're working on something and we have a new idea or we figure something out?

[16:45] That's not God. There is no eureka moment, I got it moment. God gets it all the time, forever.

[16:56] God is never caught off guard. Because he knows things, all things at all times. In God's perfect knowledge, he knows the past perfectly, the present perfectly, and the future perfectly.

[17:19] In fact, not only does God not learn, God cannot learn. For if God needed to learn, he would be incomplete and not God.

[17:35] Then ultimately the question is, if God had to learn, who would teach him? Us? Who would be his counsel? What I think is, think about what this means for us when we come to the Lord God in prayer.

[18:00] We make our requests to him, our supplications. We do so, sometimes with broken hearts, desperate desires, incomplete knowledge.

[18:15] And we make our petition, and we might believe that all things are good for us, and all things will be the best for us. But God, in his perfect knowledge, often says no to us.

[18:33] We find ourselves, whether it be an hour later, a day later, or even years later, saying thank you, God, for having perfect knowledge.

[18:49] Because God takes everything into account in his love for us, and knows these things, and he protects us.

[19:00] This is something that we need to give praise to God for. So we understand that God has perfect knowledge of himself. God has perfect knowledge.

[19:14] But God also has what's called eternal knowledge. Eternal knowledge. And everything, what that means is, everything that God knows, he has known for eternity.

[19:30] He has always known it. He has never not known it. You and I, when we grow up, we learn experientially. Our school system is based on giving us new knowledge every year.

[19:44] We start in kindergarten, socialization, grade one, start doing a few little math equations. Grade two, everything becomes a little bit more complex. We're learning more things.

[19:54] It's not like that with God. God always was, and had, perfect knowledge for all eternity. Let's be honest, you and I often forget more than we know.

[20:09] We let things slide. We can't remember. Remember. Just looking at a math problem now. I was talking to, I forget who it was, but it was a father trying to help one of the family kids, and he said, I forgot how to do long division.

[20:24] Who does long division anymore, right? We got iPhones. We got calculators with us. But we forget things. We always have to constantly remind ourselves about what we need to remember.

[20:37] Remember. The prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 46, 9, 10, tells us, remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other.

[20:54] I am God, and there is none like me. And he explains what sets him apart.

[21:06] In verse 10 of Isaiah 46, he says, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.

[21:25] What that means is, even in the ancient of days, in time eternal, before the earth was formed, God's counsel was true. And God's counsel, his understanding, his knowledge, will be forever.

[21:43] And he will accomplish his purposes. God knows all things from beginning to the end. And everything will be done to accomplish his purposes.

[21:59] And what this means for us is, we can be confident in God. Many of you might not understand or know, but in the 80s, there was a theology that arose called open theism.

[22:16] And it is basically, it's a heretical doctrine that believes in man's free will so much that God, in his desire to honor man's free will, doesn't know what's happening tomorrow because he doesn't know what we're going to do.

[22:38] So they talk about how he loves us so much that he's kind of in it with us. But because tomorrow hasn't come, he doesn't know what's really happening because we haven't chosen yet.

[22:54] And God respects our free will so much. That's a really messed up view of God. I get, yes, we have free will to the extent that God allows us to have free will or a will, but not to destroy God's purposes, to disrupt God's plans.

[23:19] Everything that God has done and planned since the beginning of time comes about in perfect accordance. So even what we see around us today, we've never lived in a time like 2020.

[23:36] But this, God's got this. He knows this. This is no surprise to him. This is just a manifestation of man's heart trying to declare that they are God and God is not.

[23:51] So we understand that God's knowledge has been forever. The fourth angle I want to look at God's knowledge is God's knowledge is immediate.

[24:03] God has immediate knowledge. What that means is God knows everything at once. God doesn't do like our government does and does this projective modeling of what's going to happen to the virus and make decisions as they go.

[24:21] You and I may live in the fog of life, but God does not. He knows, always has, incomplete fullness. The beginning, the end.

[24:31] God even knows the means by which the, of what he has purposes to get us to the end. God does not know some things better than other things.

[24:44] God never needs anyone to instruct him or counsel. If you're a student of history and you study war, it's interesting how many battles are lost because of simply poor communication.

[24:59] And to the victor wins because of superior communication on the battlefield. The army that can pivot in a second's notice of communication can avoid disaster and strike a winning blow against the enemy.

[25:15] Think of the angels for a second. We understand angels to be messengers of God. Notice the angels bring messages from God.

[25:29] They never bring messages to God. Nobody at any time informs God about what's going on anywhere in the world.

[25:46] God already knows. If I were used to the analogy of a battlefront with communication, there's always people on the front line relaying back to the general, letting him know what's going on and what battle.

[26:02] That doesn't happen with God. God knows fully everything at all times. We turn to Isaiah 40, 13, 14.

[26:15] Who has measured the spirit of the Lord and what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice and taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding?

[26:35] What does that mean for us? It means that you and I can fully trust God with the affairs of our lives.

[26:48] Have you ever thought about how funny our prayers must be to God? often when we come to God, we're describing the events around the circumstances that we're praying about as if we're informing God of the reality, right?

[27:12] God, you may not know this, but, you know, my Aunt Berta, you know, who lives on Mulberry Street, who dog got away and chewed up the neighbor's garden, and we don't actually need to pray that to the Lord.

[27:26] The Lord already knows. God's calling us to submit our hearts in worship, in praise, but when we come to him with prayer, we want to align ourselves with his will, not ours.

[27:44] God knows what reality is. He does not need to be informed by us. So that's God's immediate knowledge. The next two are pretty quick because the last two, I think, are the most significant aspects of God's knowledge that we need to understand.

[28:02] One, the fifth one is God has knowledge of the future. And I've already touched on this. God knows the future because he has perfectly foreordained the future.

[28:15] Everything is going to come to pass as he has designed it to do so. in God's perfect knowledge, in his perfect wisdom, and in his perfect knowledge, power.

[28:27] You see, the knowledge of the future is what distinguished our God from every false God in the Old Testament. Time and time again, the prophets foretold the future, yet the people followed their gods of stone and wood who were mute.

[28:46] To follow a false idol was to follow darkness, to have no knowledge at all. We looked at Isaiah 46, 8, 10 about God's eternal knowledge.

[29:01] But notice how he says, I am God, there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning. that he declared what the end would be from the very beginning.

[29:19] So we see that God has future knowledge. The sixth aspect of God's knowledge is that God has knowledge of all possible outcomes.

[29:34] God has perfect knowledge of all possible outcomes. Now what that means is, I'm not talking about parallel universes or anything like that, but God not only knows the truth of a reality, but he also knows what he could be.

[29:53] If you take a look at Matthew 11, verses 21 to 23, I'll read you these verses. And Jesus simply says, Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

[30:22] But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon then for you. Now what Jesus is telling these people is, if the works that I had done there, the teachings that I had taught, would be done in those cities, there would have been mass revival, mass repentance.

[30:45] But apparently that wasn't in God's sovereign plan. But he's talking to these people, what I had done to you, you remain unrepentant of.

[30:56] So not only does God know perfect knowledge of reality here, but he also has perfect knowledge of other realities.

[31:10] Now these last two are the first, the last big two. And these are the ones that concern ourselves with the most. Point seven, God's knowledge is exhaustive.

[31:24] God's knowledge is exhaustive. How exhaustive is God's knowledge? God knows everything. God knows the smallest detail.

[31:36] If you know me and my management style, I'm a macro manager. I don't need to know the details of what everybody's doing, but I like to know the gist of what's going on.

[31:48] Some people know what a micromanager is. The micromanager needs to know in detail everything else that everyone else is doing. Well, God is a micro-knower.

[32:03] Psalm 147.4, he determines the number of the stars he gives to all of them, their names. There is not a star in this galaxy that is unnamed by God.

[32:21] Matthew 10.29.30, are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father.

[32:34] But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are more value than many sparrows.

[32:49] Not only are the stars named and known, but even the number of hairs on our head. You see, God knows the unseen details of our lives.

[33:03] God even knows the motivations that we have that we do not even know about. He knows the works we have done. He knows the paths we have followed, and he perfectly sees it all.

[33:19] A.W. Tozer simply said, God knows all that can be known. He knows all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feelings, all desires, and every unuttered secret.

[33:38] God has knowledge of them. All things visible, invisible, visible, and invisible in earth, and in heaven. God knows them perfectly.

[33:52] God is never surprised, and he's never amazed, because he knows all.

[34:03] Psalm 33, 13, the Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of man. From where he sits enthroned, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.

[34:19] He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds. How many of us understand our deeds?

[34:31] We may know them, we don't understand them, but God does. He understands our works. He understands our motives. He actually has right understanding of our own heart's motivations.

[34:48] Psalm 147, 4, God determines the number of the stars, like I said, and he gives to them all their names. Proverbs 15, 3, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.

[35:05] Now, this is what's amazing about God's exhaustive knowledge.

[35:18] God's knowledge of us is both comforting as well as it is convicting. God knows our heart.

[35:32] Man doesn't. how many times have we been misunderstood or improperly misaligned? False accusations given against us.

[35:47] We can be comforted in the knowledge that God really knows our motivations. We can have peace with that because God knows the truth.

[36:01] on the flip side of that, it's convicting for us when people give us accolades or even think more highly of us than they ought to.

[36:21] Even sometimes someone has cast a dispersion against us. How easy it is for us to say, boy, if they only really knew the truth. Right?

[36:35] It convicts us because God truly knows who we are. And this is what leads me to the eighth and final point, which is probably the most frightening point of all.

[36:55] God has what is known as penetrating knowledge. knowledge. God has penetrating knowledge. The reality is God's knowledge penetrates the depths of the human heart.

[37:15] God sees what no man can see. God sees through walls. God sees through our masks.

[37:26] God sees the things we do in darkness. God sees through the disruption that we may attempt to do to bring unclarity to others.

[37:44] God sees clearly. The fact is you and I are experts at hiding things from others, but there is no one who hides things from God.

[37:59] 1 Samuel 16 7 for the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

[38:13] You see, we can't hide from God. There is no secret sin from God. There is no secret crime that is hidden from God. There is no acceptable, you know those flimsy excuses that we use that gives us the pretext to do what we did.

[38:32] God knows how thin that is. God knows how broken that is. In fact, the doctrine of God's penetrating knowledge is that God sees all, he knows all, and he sees and knows everything perfectly.

[38:50] Now, let me ask you a question. Does this cause you to fear God, or does this cause you to worship God?

[39:06] To know that God has perfect knowledge of you. Ezekiel 11, 5 says, for I know the things that came into your mind.

[39:23] Our thoughts, we're not just talking about our actions, sins, but our thoughts are known to God. Remember the first sin that happened here on earth.

[39:40] Adam and Eve tried to cover it up with a fig leaf. That God had to call out his name. And Adam and Eve acted in a way that there was nothing wrong.

[39:58] Cain thought he killed his brother in secret. Genesis 18 has this incredible story about how God comes to Abraham.

[40:12] And he's explaining the promises in that he will give, he will have a son, right? Isaac. And Sarah is listening into this.

[40:26] And Sarah actually laughs to herself at the thought of someone at her age bearing a child.

[40:41] And the Lord actually asked Abraham, referring to Sarah, is anything too hard for the Lord.

[40:53] God knew her secret laugh to herself. See, the reality is God knows us more intimately than we know ourselves.

[41:05] Let's take a look at Psalm 139 again. I want you to pay attention. It says, O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

[41:16] That word search that is used there, is not the type of search is when someone asks, when I lose my keys and I'm looking all over for my keys. That's not what the word search means there.

[41:28] It's almost the type of word that a scientist would use as he searches for truth. He wants to understand something. So he's examining it.

[41:41] And he's looking at a cell. He's examining. I'm sure all the scientists in the world as they look at COVID and how that virus works. They're looking at it. They're studying it.

[41:51] They're poking and prodding it with different chemicals and medicines and whatever doctor type scientists do in order to understand the virus.

[42:03] That's what it means by the search here. To analyze, to seek knowledge for the understanding. So he's saying, oh Lord, you have searched me, you've examined me, you've analyzed me, you've poked, you've prodded, you've put me in these different situations.

[42:22] And he simply says, and you know me. This word known is not like we've read a Wikipedia article about something.

[42:35] It's not a casual acquaintance. It's an experiential knowledge that keep comes from a deep abiding relationship.

[42:49] In fact, the same word to know is the word that is used often in the Old Testament to explain the relationships between a husband and wife.

[43:00] Not only do they know themselves physically like no other person does, but they know intimately, emotionally. They know their spouses. They know how they act.

[43:11] So God, as he's analyzed, watched us, examined us, knows us intimately. God knows the best about us.

[43:29] God knows the absolute worst about us. Whether it be our sins, our fears, our ego. God knows the most amazing thing about us is that God has placed his eternal love upon us.

[43:45] You see, even though God is fully acquainted with the depth of our sin and our depravity, he does not withhold his love or forgiveness from us.

[43:56] Solomon wrote that God's love is like flashes of fire that many waters cannot drown out.

[44:07] What an amazing imagery that is of the passion of God's love. God knows us up close. He knows the entirety of our lives. Even from the throne room of God, he knows us.

[44:20] He has all insight on us. He has all knowledge of us. Now take a look at verse 3. It says, you search out my path.

[44:32] Now this is a different search. This means to sift out like wheat and tare. You know, a farmer would throw the grain into the air and the chaff would blow away because the grain would be heavier.

[44:49] Or if you were panning for a goal, you would allow the sand to fall out, but the thicker gold metal would be left on top. He's searching us.

[45:04] He's discerning us. He has specific information. He knows the facts. He knows our reasons. He knows our excuses.

[45:15] He knows our wrong motives. He knows our horribly wrong, sinful wretched motives. He knows the good and the bad, the temporal and the eternal.

[45:29] Verse 3 concludes, and are acquainted with all my ways. In fact, verse 2 says, you know when I sit down and when I rise up, is an idiom for you know my life.

[45:44] the entirety of my life. When we think of this depth of knowledge of someone having against us, it is utterly frightening.

[46:04] If you knew a person had this type of knowledge of you, you'd run for the hills. We do not want to be exposed like that.

[46:18] Many of us have these stories of people who were friends or family members who were entrusted with a secret or an understanding of us and used it against us to bring harm, shame, hurt.

[46:42] In fact, one of the most sad marriage counseling situations I know of is a man and a woman started dating, started liking each other.

[46:53] They lived in different cities and the lady moved to the same city, left her career, started a new career just so they could get to know the families and they went to their church and started going to counseling and before she came to know the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, she did unchristian things and in that process of marriage counseling, the man rejected her.

[47:23] I remember her calling and asking me, why is God like this? And I had to simply explain God is not like this.

[47:37] God cast our sins once forgiven to the deepest part of the ocean as far as the east from the west. That sadly man, it is not God.

[47:53] My friends, we learned that God doesn't love us because we are all shiny and respectable and good, does he? In fact, his love is not based on you and I at all.

[48:05] If you've been with us in Ephesians, you would know that God's love is based on his great love for us, his mercy on us. In our brokenness, in our sin, in our problem-filled world that he sees perfectly, God has mercy on us.

[48:27] We are broken, wretched fools. every thought of doubt is forgiven.

[48:40] Every action that's done to malign someone is forgiven. God loved us when we were the worst of the worst.

[48:55] So the reality is, do you and I have a reason to fear God? The Bible teaches us that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

[49:07] It's to understand who God is and understand who we are. If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as your own Lord and Savior, I am going to tell you right now, you have much to fear for.

[49:24] For God has stated that he has prepared a place for you in hell. hell is a place of torment, of wickedness for those who reject God.

[49:41] There is no innocent that go to God. God has spoken clearly in his nature and in his Bible of who he is. It's a horrible place.

[49:54] God has to praise him. For those who know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, this is the teaching that drives us to worship him.

[50:07] This is the teaching that drives us to praise him. As Psalm 139 says, God hems you in and lays his hand upon you.

[50:19] God has to accept God as our Lord and Savior, we are blessed, we are loved, and we are identified as a child of God.

[50:33] You see, the knowledge that God knows us intimately, I pray, will be a reason to drive you to worship him and not fear him.

[50:45] for only those who've experienced the love and forgiveness of God can come to God for perfect refuge, who can come to God in the sweetness that God knows us perfectly and loves us.

[51:11] And there's nothing, anything, or anyone can say to take away the love of God in what he has for us.

[51:24] Let us pray. Dear Lord, Heavenly Father, it is a staggering thought that you know every thought, every desire, every action, motive for those actions that we have.

[51:41] Father, we have every reason to be ashamed. Forgive us, O Lord. Forgive us for every stupid thought we've had, every rebellious action that we've done.

[52:04] Father, I thank you that you put your great love upon us, that you sent your son to die in our place, that you would send a righteous man to die for unrighteous men and women.

[52:30] Only you can be God. And Father, I pray that our confidence of faith would grow, our worship would grow with this knowledge that you are all knowledgeable, that this attribute of you being all-knowing, everything we do, both good and bad, is known by you.

[52:56] Despite ourselves, you continue to love us and forgive us, and you grow us in the likeness of you. We thank you for the maturity that you bring us, the trials of life that cause us to draw closer to you.

[53:12] Father, may we be never negligent in throwing away an opportunity to be made more like you. We ask these things in your great and glorious and all-knowing name.

[53:28] Amen.