The sermon delivered by Al Burke focuses on the omniscience of God, one of three divine attributes prefixed with 'Omni', which also include omnipresence and omnipotence. The speaker uses the analogy of an 'Omni antenna' that broadcasts signals in all directions to explain God's all-encompassing knowledge. God's omniscience is defined as infinite awareness, understanding, and insight, supported by scriptural references from Hebrews, Psalms, and Jeremiah. Human knowledge is limited and finite, as illustrated by comparisons to the complexity of the human brain and the vastness of published books. God, unlike humans, cannot learn or be surprised and knows past, present, and future events in intricate detail. The sermon highlights the importance of the fear of the Lord and the comfort in God's omniscience for believers. It also issues a call to repentance for non-believers, emphasizing that God knows all sins and that salvation is only through Jesus Christ.

Thank you Josh. Appreciate you opening with that very appropriate hymn for this topic. This afternoon we're discussing the omniscience of God. This is one of three of God's attributes that start with the prefix Omni. And anytime I hear the prefix Omni, I'm taking back some 25 years to when I was a young cellular engineer.

And I was tasked with the job of building brand new cell sites. Now cellular was very new at that time. Very few people had a phone and they were very expensive. Some of you may remember the fear of roaming and the excessive charges you would be charged for that. And you only pulled that phone out during emergencies.

But when I built a site, my goal was to get as much coverage for that as I could because there was no other cellular service. So I would find some land and buy a tower and find a person to build a big foundation and I'd build a 400 foot tower and then I would select an antenna for the top. And more often than not I chose an Omni antenna. Because an Omni antenna would blast the maximum amount of service in all directions. It covered everywhere.

That signal was indiscriminate. It went all places. Now today we lower those towers and beam those signals straight into that little place we want to cover because there's so many users. But back then we wanted the Omni. So I think of that when I think of these attributes of God that begin with Omni.

Omniscient. It means all knowing. God knows everything. It sounds like a couple other attributes omni-present God is everywhere omni-present God is all-powerful. We'll hear more about those in the coming weeks when some other brothers discuss those So all-knowing omniscient quality of God the state of knowing literally everything.

The adjective is omniscient, the noun is omniscience, it is having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight that is universal, complete, absolute, perfect knowledge. Noah Webster, when he wrote his dictionary in 1828 with a very distinctive Christian worldview, he said it was having universal knowledge or knowledge of all things, infinitely knowing, all seeing as the omniscient God. He quotes that, he mentions the omniscient God right in the definition. We often say flippantly, well God knows, God knows all things, He's aware of that, and I'm sure He's aware of this and that. But if we take a minute to ponder what this really means, this is an amazing thing that really our mind somewhat staggers under the reality of our limited human perspective.

In many ways when I thought about talking about this topic, it'd be easier to come up and say I'm just gonna do the opposite. I'm gonna talk about everything God doesn't know. I would come up here and stand silently for a while, and then I would close. Because he knows everything. For you mathematicians that would be the empty set.

That's what he doesn't know is the empty set, right? So God literally doesn't know and he knows everything. So we're gonna give this an attempt to approach this topic with its immensity and try and bring some thought to what this actually means. As a creative being, as creatures, we're going to discuss the Creator, the omniscient God. He has no limitations.

A.W. Tozer, famous preacher that lived in the early part of the 20th century, I think he died in the 1960s, had a quote on this and he said the following, that God is omniscient is not only taught in scriptures, it must be inferred also from all else that is taught concerning Him. God perfectly knows Himself and, being the source and author of all things, it follows He knows all that can be known. And this he knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn. God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter of all matters, all mind of every mind, all spirit of all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures every plurality and all pluralities all law and every law all relations all causes all thoughts all mysteries all enigmas all feeling all desires every unuttered secret all thrones and dominions all personalities all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth motion space time life death good evil heaven and hell that's pretty comprehensive Human knowledge kneels and pays homage to the divine revelation of God, which does include the declaration of his omniscience.

Also, our second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, which we're all well acquainted with, has this same truth in it. It's buried in chapter 2 paragraph 2 where it says among other things, in his sight all things are open and manifest, his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain. Let's look at some of the scriptures that point us to God's omniscience. If we go to Hebrews 4 13 And There is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eye of him to whom we must give account. Psalms 147.5 says, Great is our Lord, and mighty in power.

His understanding is infinite. Now I know many of you are homeschooled so you know what infinite means. Infinite means without bounds. We don't have anything here on earth that easily allows us to conceive of infinity. I guess the closest thing might be the national debt at 22 trillion.

You take it and divide it by the US population of 320 million, that's $69, 000 for each of you. Yikes, that's $894, 000 for my family of 13. That is scary. But that's not infinite, That's still a finite number. Psalm 139, 1-6 is David.

David wrote this Psalm. And David was talking about the intimacy with which God knew him because God created him. He said the following, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought of far off.

You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways and there is not a word on my tongue but behold oh Lord you know it altogether you have hedged me behind and before and laid your hand upon me Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it." So David admits God knows all about him, not only him, but every person, and that it is such an awesome thing that David can't attain this knowledge himself, appropriately said I think. In Psalm 319 we hear, the Lord by wisdom founded the earth by understanding he established the heavens. In Jeremiah 10-12, he has made the earth by his power, he has established the world by his wisdom, and has stretched out the heavens at his discretion.

So man is made in God's image And God has given us a brain. And the brain is amazing. Let's talk about the brain for a second. The brain weighs about 3.3 pounds. It's about 2% of your body weight.

It generates 23 watts of power when you're awake. And the blood vessels in your brain stretch 100, 000 miles. There are a hundred billion neurons in your brain and when God forms a baby in the womb, he forms them at a rate of a quarter million neurons per minute. A recent lecture at Harvard University by a neuroscientist there, he estimated that in order to index the human brain on a computer, it would take several billion petabytes. Now in contrast, since a petabyte is a thousand terabytes and that's a million gigabytes and a billion megabytes, the internet is only 5, 000 petabytes.

So we have the human brain several billion petabytes, the internet a mere 5, 000 petabytes. And by the way, of that 5, 000 petabytes that the internet consists of, Google's cataloged about .2 petabytes, 200 terabytes. This points to the amazing complexity of the human brain, God's creation, man who's much less than God, but made in the image of God, and still, our knowledge and intellect is very tiny compared to God. We really don't know much, right? We must learn everything once born.

We don't come out of the womb saying, you know what, I know the speed of light at 6.02 times 10 to 23 meters per second, if my memory's right back from school. I did that for you Adam by the way. But you know, we have to learn. We have to use sight, sound. Those are the main ones we learn by but also taste and touch and smell And we acquire some measure of knowledge and sometimes we get haughty and we think we know a lot Right, that's the nature of our pride that we fight with.

But I have found, and I believe these are true statements, I would challenge anybody who thinks they're not, no one knows something about everything. Okay, some people think they might. No one knows everything about anything. You can be the foremost leading authority on a particular thing. You can always learn something new.

Somebody else knew something you didn't or perhaps something gets discovered that wasn't revealed by God to man at that time. God knows everything about everything without exception. No exceptions whatsoever. The human being reads at about 200-250 words a minute. Some of you are faster, some are slower.

It's interesting to note that this speed doesn't change with time. So a hundred years ago, people read at the same speed even before that. So I was curious, how many books have ever been published since the, I guess, Gutenberg's printing press would be kind of a turning point when that ramped up. Google says, now I don't know if Google's right, there's just shy of 130 million books that have ever been published. So I calculated if you were born, the day you were born, you start reading at 250 words a minute and we'll give you eight hours to sleep and eat and stuff.

So 16 hours a day. By the time your life ended, you would have time to read just more than one word in each book. That's all you have. You can't read the entirety of the books that man has published on various subjects. So man knows very little, any one of us knows just a teeny portion.

If you know the famous physicist Sir Isaac Newton that came up with the three laws of motion, you guys may have heard of these right an object in motion remains in motion until a force acts against it and so on I may have misquoted that it's been a while since I've been in school Newton said this I do not know what I may appear to the world but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." So Newton, who is obviously considered a very knowledgeable person, is saying, I got a handful of seashells here I found on the beach, they look pretty cool, but there's a whole ocean and a beach that extends as far as I can see, so I really don't know anything in the vastness of the knowledge of God. So if we look at the categories of God's knowledge, the first one that comes to mind is his creation. God created everything and therefore he has intimate knowledge on all of it.

Right? He knows the earth. He knows the stars. In fact, Psalm 147-4 reminds us he counts the number of the stars, he calls them by name. Not surprising.

He created them, right? He knows the number of grains of sand on the earth. Think of that number, that is a huge number. It's not infinite, it's very big. He knows the state of every tide, whatever clam is, every oyster, every barnacle.

Have you guys been to the, you've seen the barnacles down the, that go down the pilings or perhaps they're on the boat. But I remember as a boy I would see the barnacles down, down in the salt water in the Pacific Northwest and when the tide comes in the barnacles, you know their little thing comes out and they suck in food or whatever. There's millions and billions of them all over the place and they're absolutely dependent on that tide that God put there. God knows every animal, A sparrow does not fall to the ground without God's knowledge. We hear that in Matthew 10-29 where it says, Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin, and not one of them falls to the ground apart from the Father's will?

So this verse is talking about how valuable people are to God and he's saying even sparrows which are little smaller and more trivial not one falls to the ground without the Father's knowledge. So we also read in Scripture that God knows you Luke 12 7 but the very hairs on your head are all numbered do not fear therefore You are more valued than many sparrows Now the average human has somewhere between 90, 000 and 150, 000 hairs on their head. They're all numbered. God knows where number 62, 226 hair is. He knows if it fell out.

He knows if all the rest fell out. Fortunately, a few of you guys do have beards and mustaches to even that back out. But, you know, the point here is God knows you. Every molecule. Luke 12, oh, I read Luke 12, sorry.

What else does God know? God knows history perfectly. We like to put the spin on it, you know? Have you ever had two kids come to you and say, he hit me. Well I didn't hit him, I bumped him.

It was, you know, there's a totally different story for the same event you know we see this in politics too we history is redefined you know not with God he's got an absolute perfect record of every detail and by the way no human can keep a perfect record we forget things we forget details we see things wrong not with God no details go unnoticed by God no nothing's forgotten by God God also has intimate knowledge of the present, the current state of everything, of every person, of every thought of every person, of every intention, whether good or bad. He sees every deed, good or bad, whether noticed or unnoticed by other people. He hears every prayer, even though I'm sure there are many people in the world praying at the same time. He's never caught off guard, he's never distracted, he's never working on a problem in China. While you've got a big thing going on over here that he misses, That doesn't happen with God.

He's never sleeping. By contrast, humans, if you guys are in the corporate world, you know this. I'm going to let you know a little secret if you're not. We multitask. We're on that conference call.

It's a little boring. We're behind on the email. Let's check an email. Let's knock a couple out and you know do some of that. And then what happens?

Somebody says something on the comfort call and they say, what do you think Alan? I'm thinking, I have no idea what they just said. So then I have to decide do I just say yeah, I agree Or do I say, excuse me, could you repeat the question? It's kind of embarrassing. We're really bad multitaskers.

Some people are better at faking it than others, so I'll tell you that. I've seen some good fakers in my day. God also knows the future. This is abundantly clear in Scripture. God knows what will happen in the next second, the next minute, the next hour, the next day, week, month, decade.

I could say score, but nobody used that term anymore for 20 years. Century, millennia. God knows it in intricate detail. He knows who will be saved, who will come to Christ, who will not, who will be a faker, a professor, as Brother Paul brought out this morning, who will be a possessor. He knows it all.

He knows the day you were born, which you know also, hopefully. He knows when you come to Christ. He knows the day of your death. And A.W. Tozer says He knows the name of your hearse driver And I would say he knows the name of the hearse drivers hearse driver.

He knows it all We see in the life of Joseph You know Joseph later on his life after he you guys are well familiar with the story Joseph's brothers sell them into slavery and later on he rises of power and his brothers come in fear and Joseph says in Genesis 50 20 but as for you you meant evil against me but God meant it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive. God obviously knew the future in order for Joseph to say, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good. So God uses all these things to achieve his purposes but he obviously has intimate knowledge of the future. We see Cyrus was mentioned this morning. We see Cyrus prophesied in Isaiah.

God knows the future. In fact all the prophets when they prophesy they're talking about future events that God has let them know about. So God, some facts about God. God cannot learn or be taught. He already knows it.

Isaiah said, rhetorically I think in Isaiah 40, 14, and this was in the hymn as well, with whom did he being God take counsel? Who instructed him and taught him in the path of justice? Who taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding? Obviously no one. God already knew it.

God is never surprised. He knows every thought, every intention. He never asked to go to plan B because plan A didn't work out. You know humans do that all the time. Plan A didn't work, let's go to B or C.

Not with God, it's always Plan A. Nothing but God is omniscient, and especially no person is omniscient. God knew that Christ would be crucified. He had foreknowledge of that. He knew Judas would betray him.

This is clear in Scripture and brother Paul talked about this in his sermon. See, I listened. Jonah. When Jonah decided, you know, I don't really want to go preach to Nineveh, I'm just going to run and hide, God knew that would happen. Jonah couldn't hide from God, and I know this is treading on the omnipresence, But these are not surprises to God.

What should a believer's response be to the fact that God knows everything? First of all, we were clearly taught in scripture that we should have the fear of the Lord, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. Said different places, different ways. But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge for us. Psalm 111, 111, 10.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, good understanding. Have all those who do his commandments and praise endures forever. Proverbs 1, 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, good understanding. Have all those who do His commandments and praise endures forever.

Proverbs 1-7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Proverbs 9-10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. God knows us entirely. He is always with us.

Christians are not forgotten. Romans 8, 29 and 30. I actually see yes, well I'll start with 28. 828. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose, for whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called. To whom he called, these he also justified. And whom he justified, these he also glorified." So we can take great comfort in knowing that God is always near us. When we're in a difficult trial, this is not by surprise for God. It's for our own good.

And we can take amazing comfort and satisfaction in knowing that God's in control and with us being fully aware of everything we're experiencing, feeling, pain, so on. He knows. Response to the unbelievers should be somewhat different. God knows that you're not a follower of Christ. He knows every thing that's happened in your life.

He knows you have sin that hasn't been atoned for. Sin must be dealt with. Since God is sinless and holy, you cannot coexist with sin. Sin is never forgotten, and account must be given for it. No things are hidden from God.

This is a call to repent. If you don't know Christ, You should run to Him. Seek forgiveness for your sins. Ask Him to be your Savior. Run to Christ.

2 Corinthians 5-10 says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done whether good or bad. God's record is perfect. Christ must atone for your sins for you to have forgiveness, repent now. And ask God to forgive your sins through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Will you join me in prayer?

Lord God, our finite minds, as amazing as you created them and amazing things we can do with them. Lord, first we're thankful for them. But we can't comprehend fully omniscience. Knowing everything, past, present, future, outside of time, in fact you are. Lord God, we can just fall on our knees and say, Lord, I run to you, Lord God, and we can rest in faith that you're our God.

Lord God, we thank you for holding the universe together, for being with us at all times, Lord. We thank you for the trials, as tough as they can be, and for all things you do for us. We thank you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.