This week we were considering God’s omniscience – that He is all knowing. This is an necessary reality if God is truly God, but it is also a staggering one. Listen to David in Psalm 139:1-5,
1 O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
3 You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
5 You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
This is staggering, stretching our mind to the limits of comprehension only to fall so far short of understanding – and with David we cannot help but say
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it.
Yet, in a time of change, in a time like ours in which building hopes are dashed and dreams shattered, yet again, it is a truth that brings may well confuse many of God’s people. We were hoping to have half of the regular congregation gathering in worship tomorrow, but now as a result of the climbing number of covid-19 cases that has all changed, again.
Even so in this we surely ought to find great comfort and help as we continue to look to the Lord and rejoice in His gracious and wisdom and love. Indeed David as he draws the Psalm to a close declares in this heart-felt song of wonder and praise:
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.
Notice the word “precious” – how is it precious? Well we learn that nothing escapes His glance, not even our secret sins, but equally not our troubles and frustrations – and that He does so as One who knows me personally. Believing that God sees and knows everything comforts us because He therefore knows our needs and can supply them.
It may help you to see the preciousness of the Lord ‘all knowing’ to reflect with C H Spurgeon on Psalm 139:17
God is always thinking about us, never turns His mind from us, always has us before His eyes; and this is precisely how we would want it, because it would be dreadful to exist for a moment outside the observation of our heavenly Father. His thoughts are always tender, loving, wise, prudent, far-reaching, and they bring countless benefits to us: It is consequently a supreme delight to remember them. The Lord always thought about His people: hence their election and the covenant of grace by which their salvation is secured. He will always think upon them: hence their final perseverance by which they shall be brought safely to their final rest.
In all our wanderings the watchful glance of the Eternal Watcher is constantly fixed upon us—we never roam beyond the Shepherd’s eye. In our sorrows He observes us incessantly, and not a painful emotion escapes Him; in our toils He notices all our weariness, and He writes all the struggles of His faithful ones in His book. These thoughts of the Lord encompass us in all our paths and penetrate the innermost region of our being. Not a nerve or tissue, valve or vessel of our bodily frame is uncared for; all the details of our little world are thought upon by the great God.
If the Lord thinks upon us, all is well, and we may rejoice evermore.
In this confidence and joy in the Lord may we gather before the Lord in worship tomorrow. The disappointments, pains and struggles are real – And for some very heavy – burdens we are called upon to bear – but as we wake each day, as we wake tomorrow morning the reality is “I am still with You” – we wake into His presence, in the care of His gracious knowledge and efficacious love.