A Word in Season: God Knows (Job 37:16)

Media Gratiae

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Just before God speaks to Job from the whirlwind in Job chapter 38, one of Job's friends, the last and the youngest and perhaps the wisest of them, has been speaking.

00:12

In chapter 37 and verse 16, he asks, Now this man,

00:24

Elihu or Elihu, he is speaking about God's work in creation.

00:30

He's looking at God's wondrous works and he's drawing out from that the truth that God is perfect in knowledge.

00:39

But he doesn't stop with natural phenomena. He goes on from there. He extrapolates from there to the fact that there is nothing that God does not know.

00:48

He's emphasizing our lack of understanding and the completeness and the perfection of the knowledge of God himself.

00:57

There is nothing missing from God's knowledge and there is nothing flawed in God's knowledge.

01:03

It is perfect. It is complete. It is entire. It is thorough.

01:08

Every single thing is known to God. The same kind of confidence characterizes the chronicler or Zechariah when they speak of God and his eyes scanning to and fro in the world.

01:24

The same is true in the New Testament. Even Christ himself is described as knowing all things.

01:30

And the constant testimony is that the Lord God in heaven and his beloved son, that they see all things, that their eyes penetrate, that there is nothing hidden from the sight of the

01:44

Almighty, that the Father, the Son and the Spirit, each in their proper way, are entirely apprised of everything that takes place in the world that God has made.

01:57

That's just not true of me or you. We look at the world around us.

02:03

We look at the words and deeds of men and women. Perhaps even we look into our own hearts and we are forced to acknowledge that we are far from perfect in knowledge, that we just don't understand or see what is taking place, that our knowledge is not complete in the sense that it does not extend to all things and that our knowledge is not accurate in that we do not always grasp all the truth.

02:29

Sometimes we not only don't see it all but we don't understand even what we do see.

02:35

We are so prone to error, so prone to confusion. Our ignorance ought to be proverbial.

02:42

And yet we are dealing here with a God who is perfect in knowledge. And that ought to comfort our hearts, even as it challenges our perceptions, because the

02:53

Lord God of heaven knows. He knows what is happening in the world at large.

02:59

Nothing is hidden from his sight. He knows what takes place in the secret places, because nothing is hidden from his sight.

03:07

He knows what takes place in the very depths of my heart and of yours, because nothing is hidden from his sight.

03:13

And that's a comfort to God's people in a world full of confusion and with so many claims and counterclaims being made, characterized by so -called false news, where we often wonder whether or not we can know anything to be truly true.

03:30

But when God speaks, he who is perfect in knowledge must speak with perfect truth and accuracy.

03:38

We can rest upon him and his word when we can rest upon nothing else. And yet there is also fear in this, a holy fear, because there's a recognition that God does indeed see and know all things.

03:53

And so we need to understand that because of our ignorance we ought to be slow to speak.

04:00

We need to appreciate that there is a great danger in us to assert things that we do not know to be true.

04:08

And there are times when we simply need to hold our peace and to rest upon the fact that God knows and that we don't.

04:16

And so as we look at a world that is full of confusion, as perhaps we deal with situations that utterly bewilder us, as we have to contend perhaps with the dangerous deceptions of our own hearts, we need to remember humbly and confidently that we are dealing with one who is perfect in knowledge.

04:36

And that means that whatever is now hidden, whatever is now confusing, whatever is now difficult, whatever is now bewildering,

04:45

God knows it through and through, absolutely, entirely, and perfectly.

04:51

And that God who is just and right will deal with things as they truly are for the glory of his great name.