Omniscience of Christ

Driving home: God does not know by deduction. He doesn't put facts together. He knows by an immediate contact with all reality.

Mom looks at the muddy shoes, sees the trail across the rug, looks out at the children playing in the mud, and concludes who tracked it in. That's deduction. God doesn't know that way.

Maybe your mother will come in someday and say, Now I know that you traipsed the mud through the living room floor. Now how does she know that? Well, she's done some deduction. She looked at your shoes.

8:53 - 9:03 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He is revealed to us not so much in abstract discourse, but Jesus can say, 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'

Nathanael had been somewhere private under a fig tree where Christ had not been physically present. Christ's matter-of-fact 'when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee' undid Nathanael, who confessed Him as Son of God.

Thou shalt see greater things than these. Here is one of the most wonderful demonstrations of the omniscience of Christ. Philip as he is encouraged to come I'm sorry Nathaniel as he is encouraged to come and behold Jesus because Philip and others have found him and believed him to be the Messiah is concerned because he has not been led to believe that any good thing with reference to messianic hope can come out of Nazareth and so they encourage him well, if you won't take it on our testimony, at least come and see. Give him the opportunity to demonstrate who he is.

14:37 - 15:23 Read in full sermon

The point: When you read of prophets receiving knowledge by revelation, recognize that Christ's knowledge is different in kind — it flows from His own being.

Peter knew Ananias and Sapphira's deception by direct divine revelation — but it was given to him from outside. Christ's omniscience flows from His own being, not from a borrowed disclosure.

There's a prophet somewhere. You see, God gave this kind of what we would call God-like knowledge in specific instances to prophets. He gave it to Peter. You remember when Ananias and Sapphira came before him?

22:29 - 22:41 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not be deceived by external religious enthusiasm — Christ is not deceived. He knows what is in man.

Christ in Revelation 2 takes the very words of Jehovah from Jeremiah 17 and applies them to Himself: 'I am He that searcheth the reins and hearts' — a self-identification with the searcher-God.

Most of us are quite familiar with Jeremiah 17, 9, one of the most humbling statements in all of the Old Testament concerning the state of a man's heart by nature. Jeremiah 17, in verse 9, The heart is deceitful above all things and exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? Where is the being that can plumb the depths of the corruption of the human heart?

29:45 - 30:12 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He's making a double claim to identity with Godhead.

Martin's friend Paul Emmerich the computer scientist could fully know a computer he himself built — but the computer could never know Paul. The Creator always stands above the creature, illustrating Matthew 11:27.

Some of you remember Paul Emmerich, our brilliant computer scientist who's now out in Arizona. And when Paul would get talking about computers, he'd make my head swim. And he would actually be asked to go in and set up the computer systems in some of these big companies. He did it for a section of Exxon, and now he's doing it with American Express out there in Phoenix.

38:35 - 38:55 Read in full sermon

The point: Take the omniscience of Christ as a comfort when sin in your life misrepresents your love for Him to the watching world — He sees the heart.

After Peter's denial, Christ asks 'Lovest thou me?' Peter appeals to omniscience: 'Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.' What others saw was the cursing; only the omniscient Lord saw the love beneath.

And what does Peter say? He says, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. Now all the other people may have seen, Lord, was my denial.

44:31 - 44:45 Read in full sermon

The point: When you are dallying with sin, remember that Christ walks among His people searching hearts — there is no hidden corner where you escape His gaze.

Martin pictures Christ walking up and down the aisles of the congregation, gaining no knowledge by deduction but reading every heart directly — what does He see this morning?

And he moves, if I may speak in human language, he moves up and down these aisles and between the seats. And what is he doing? He is not gaining knowledge by deduction and observation. He knows perfectly the state of your heart.

47:03 - 47:19 Read in full sermon

The point: When you are dallying with sin, remember that Christ walks among His people searching hearts — there is no hidden corner where you escape His gaze.

Christ may behold in some hearts a field overgrown with nettles, briars, and thistles — and only one little scrubby plant of love for Him struggling among the weeds.

But as He behold in that heart, that which could be likened to a field grown over with nettles and briars and thorns and thistles,

47:38 - 47:50 Read in full sermon