Sermon Tone Analysis

God’s Knowledge or Omniscience (omni [all] + science [knowledge —> science]

I. Texts, Steps, and Principles

A. Luke 11:9–13 (LEB)

And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened for you.

For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

But what father from among you, if his son will ask for a fish, instead of a fish will give him a snake?

Or also, if he will ask for an egg, will give him a scorpion?

Therefore if you, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

B. Principles and Steps

Boundaries in Recovery: Honoring and Embodying the First Three Steps and First Three Principles

Celebrate Recovery Updated Leader's Guide (Powerless)

Principle 1: Realize I’m not God.

I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.

“Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor.”

(Matthew 5:3)

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.

“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.

For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

(Romans 7:18)

Principle 2: Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.

“Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

(Matthew 5:4)

Step 2: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

“For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

(Philippians 2:13)

Principle 3: Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.

“Happy are the meek.”

(Matthew 5:5)

Step 3: We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God.

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God —this is your spiritual act of worship.”

(Romans 12:1)

II.

God’s Omniscience (God Knows All or Everything)

Omniscient (adjective)

Om - nisc - ient or Om - nisc i - ent

/ ɒm ˈnɪʃ ənt / or / ɒm ˈnɪʃ i ənt /

Omniscience (noun)

Om - nisc - (i)ence or Om - nisc i - ence

/ ɒm ˈnɪʃ əns / or / ɒm ˈnɪʃ i əns /

A. F. Leroy Forlines

Biblical Systematics: A Study of the Christian System of Life and Thought, pp.

42-43.

God is Omniscient

When we speak of God as omniscient, we mean that His knowledge is infinite.

There is nothing that has existed, does exist, or will exist outside His knowledge.

As Thiessen explains:

He knows Himself and all other things, whether they be actual or merely possible, whether they be past, present, or future, and that He knows them perfectly and from all eternity.

He knows things immediately, simultaneously, exhaustively and truly.

The scriptural support of God’s omniscience is abundant.

The following are some selected passages: 1 Kings 8:39; 1 Chronicles 28:9; Job 34:21, 22; 42:2; Psalm 44:21; 147:4, 5; Isaiah 29:15; 40:27, 28; 46:10; Acts 15:18; Hebrews 4:13.

B. Carl Henry, God, Revelation and Authority

God, Revelation and Authority, pp.

268-269

By divine omniscience we mean, as A. H. Strong states, “God’s perfect and eternal knowledge of all things which are objects of knowledge, whether they are actual or possible, past, present or future” (Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, p. 282).

While the Bible does not apply to God the specific terms “omniscient” or “omniscience,” it does everywhere depict him as all-knowing . .

.. First of all, God thoroughly knows himself; in the divine nature there are no dark and hidden recesses.

God also thoroughly knows his created universe.

“Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18).

He comprehensively knows both his inanimate creation (Ps.

147:4) and also the creaturely world (Matt.

10:29).

No aspect of our vast universe, which some space-age observers are prone to consider infinite, is concealed from God . .

.. God knows all processes and events of the universe not simply as unrelated facts but in their interrelationship with one another, and to all of reality.

God knows the motives, thoughts and purposes of all created minds.

He knows the human will (Ps.

33:13 ff.) and the human heart (Ps.

139:2; Acts 15:8).

Psychologists and psychoanalysts speak of deep areas of subconscious experience of which human beings are hardly aware.

But God knows all men thoroughgoingly . .

..

In knowing himself he eternally and exhaustively knows all objects of knowledge.

His knowledge of man and the world has its source in his self-knowledge, because God knew what he would make.

God’s knowledge of what will be is grounded in his knowledge of his eternal purpose.

Within the realm of God’s knowledge we are all as accessible to him as he is to himself.

In his knowledge as in all other aspects of his being he is sovereign and self-sufficient.

“He … calls the things that are not as though they were” (Rom.

4:17, NIV).

God’s knowledge is declared to be humanly incomprehensible (Ps.

139:6; Rom.

11:33; Eph.

3:10) because it simultaneously embraces knowledge of the past, the present and the future (Job 14:17; Ps. 56:8; Isa.

41:22–24, 44:6–8; Jer.

1:5; Hos.

13:12).

His knowledge of the past (Mal.

3:16) and of the future (Isa.

46:9 f.), including future human acts (Isa.

44:22), is both comprehensive and detailed.

But God’s knowledge is more than comprehensive; it is also eternal.

God knows from eternity (Acts 15:18).

Without sense experience, without conjectural imagination, without such mental processes as reasoning and generalization, he knows the reason for all things and the logical relationships between axioms and theorems; he foreknows even the acts of his creatures and the complex purposes that motivate their decisions and deeds (Acts 2:23).

Neither God’s mode of existence nor his mode of knowledge involves passing from one time to another.

Only God has perfect knowledge

C. God’s Omniscient /All-Knowing Passages

1 Chronicles 28:9

1 Kings 8:37–39

Acts 15:18

Ephesians 3:10

Hebrews 4:13

Isaiah 40:27–28

Isaiah 41:22–24

Isaiah 44:6–8

Isaiah 48:5–8

Isaiah 49:9–10

Jeremiah 1:5