Today we want to stammer a little bit about God's immutability and God's knowledge. Immutability and knowledge. Immutability is the last incommunicable attribute of God that we have to discuss, and knowledge then will be the first of the many communicable attributes. By saying God is immutable, we are saying God is changeless. God is changeless. It picks up on the whole concept of God's faithfulness. That's why I read to you Malachi 3, I'm the Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. So Jehovah God is not limited by alteration. He's an unchangeable Father. He's an unchangeable Son in His second person. He's an unchangeable Spirit. He never undergoes mutation or ceases to be what He is. He is the I am, who is the I was, and who is the I shall be. He cannot age or decay. Psalm 102, verse 25 says, and Hebrews 1, 10 through 12, His very being, His faculties are immutable. Isaiah 40, verse 28. His infinite moral virtues are immutable. Hebrews 6, 17 and 18. All that He is, all that He was, all that He forever shall be is the same. is I am." Well, what do we really mean then when we talk about this whole glorious attribute of immutability? It certainly raises a number of questions, and we need to fine-tune what we actually understand this to be. Let me begin here by giving you three basic aspects, summary aspects, of God's immutability. Three basic summary aspects of God's immutability. The first is God's absolute immutability. This means that the Supreme Being is immutably ideal, self-existent, infinite, unchangeable. It's connected with God's simplicity. He immutably is what He is. You can see this attribute as a foundational attribute because it is so absolute. That's why John Gill, for example, begins with God's immutability in his dogmatics. Or you can see it as a summary attribute that is really the summary of all God's incommunicable attributes. That's why James Henry Thornwell ends with immutability when he discusses the incommunicable attributes, just as we are doing here. And that's true also for W. G. T. Shedd, Charles Hodge, and A. A. Hodge. Well, what I've given you so far really is all focused on this, God's absolute immutability, that he just does not change in any aspect of his personality or being or attributes. The second is God's relative, God's relative immutability. That is to say, God's immutability or unchangeableness applies not only to what He is within Himself, but also to those works that go outside of Himself. That is to say, First of all, God is immutable in His eternal decree. Psalm 33, verse 11, the counsel of Jehovah stands fast forever. His thoughts of His heart are to all generations. God's eternal decree. is inviolable by men and irreversible by God, because God is immutable. So having determined His will from eternity, His decree, that decree now is irreversible. No one can annul it. No one can revise it. But also, God's purposes shall stand with respect to his original creation. Psalm 102 verses 26 and 27 compares the immutable creator with his mutable creation. It says that the creature shall perish, they shall be changed, but thou art the same. So the heavens and earth are corruptible, Psalm 102 goes on to say, but our God is incorruptible, not subject to decay or deterioration or dissolution. And this is true also with regard to redemption. Here I point you again to Malachi 3, verse 6. Because of God's unchangeable moral perfection, Because he swears allegiance to his covenantal relationship with his people, he can never break his sworn fidelity. God is incapable of defection. He's incapable of changing. We could call this the doctrine of God's indefectibility. And then third, we can speak of God's mediatorial immutability, not only His absolute immutability within Himself and His relative immutability to His purposes outside of Himself, but also His mediatorial immutability. Scripture discloses that God the Son became human. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus Christ is God incarnate. And scripture features God's immutability in terms of this incarnation of God the Son. Scripture says of the Son of God that He's the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13, verse 8. But that doesn't mean, you see, that the Son doesn't take human nature. to his immutable divine nature, his human nature, knew many, many changes. But that human nature is taken to the divine so that his divine person remains immutable. And thus, his mediatorial ship becomes a permanent mediatorial ship. He's become man, and now being resurrected man, he's immutable at God's right hand as a glorified God-man redeemer. So the stress here on mediatorial immutability rests on the fact that none of his divine attributes were altered when he became human. They are all permanently divine. It is very wrong to say, therefore, that when Jesus became man, he left his throne, if we mean to say he left his deity. He didn't leave his deity. His deity continued on unabated. Now, this raises a host of questions and I want to deal with those now. I'm calling this next section, qualifications, important qualifications of God's immutability. And I've got six or seven of them, I believe. Many people misunderstand and misrepresent God's immutability. There are pits and traps that surround this concept and ensnare the careless. So we've got to watch our step here. It's like we're walking through a minefield. And we've got to avoid a variety of traps. The first qualification is this. God is immutable but not inactive or inanimate. God is immutable, but not inactive. His immutability is not to be confused with immobility. God does move. God is a living being. He acts, he speaks, he works. He makes things which didn't exist before He made them. And yet, He doesn't change. The creation changes. But thou art the same. Psalm 102. So, it's critical to understand this, that God has an inter-Trinitarian ontological relationship that is unchangeable between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He's unchangeable in his counsel, but he's not a robot. As Bavinck says, though immutable in himself, God, as it were, lives the life of His creatures and participates in all of their changing states. I love that statement. Though immutable in Himself, God, as it were, lives the life of His creatures and participates in all their changing states. Of course, He does that through His Son. So my point is simply that as we deal with these attributes, we can allow ourselves to become enmeshed in a dilemma which arises from abstract definitions of what immutability must entail. But we must think concretely and scripturally in terms of the logic of God's relationship to his covenant people. God is not a statute. God controls. God rules. God redeems men. God becomes angry when they revert to their old ways. And yet, in tender mercy, God does something about the sin problem. He repents of the evil He intended. He sends forth His Son in the fullness of time. God is an active God. And we can't just simply say that God is speaking anthropomorphically in all these things. These ideas, these words I just gave you, they say something truly about God. And yet God is immutable in the core of his being with regard to himself. And I think that's what's important to recognize here. Secondly, God is immutable, but not impersonal. God is immutable, but not impersonal. He's not antisocial. We see that, of course, in the Lord Jesus. Jesus was a people person. He loved people. He loved babies. old people. He loved sick people. He even extended mercies to prostitutes and all kinds of rejects. God is at the one and same time the God who says, I am the Lord, I change not. But He's also the God who then adds, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. God's no recluse He's not in a monastery. He's not incommunicative. He interacts. He interacts personally with angels and with men. He speaks things in history that he's never said before. He progressively discloses himself and his purposes in scripture. So his verbal communication, his self-disclosure, his personal interactions, verbal communication, self-disclosure, personal interactions, make him not a changeable God or a mutable God, but a living and a personal God. And I think this is what's often forgotten, sometimes even in Calvinism, unfortunately. It's a distortion of Calvinism. say that Calvin, or the Calvinists, make an impersonal God. That's the caricature of Calvinism. Actually, the great Scottish divine, which we call, he's nicknamed, you know, Rabbi John Duncan, but he wasn't a rabbi, they just called him rabbi because he was so knowledgeable in Hebrew. But John Duncan, basically said this, that if we're going to locate a center of Calvinism at all, it's got to be not just the bare, capricious, immutable sovereignty of God, but it's the fatherly sovereignty of God. It's the personal, warm sovereignty of God. You can't think of God as just an unmoved mover. God is a three-fold person. He's warm. He's fatherly in His glorious sovereignty. And in my recent book, Living for the Glory of God, I've tried to establish that when I talk about, I think the chapter is called either the marrow or the heart of Calvinism. how that is so and how that alters our thinking about what Calvinism is all about when we understand that this is not an impersonal sovereignty. Number three, God is immutable but not apathetic or impassive. God is immutable, but not apathetic or impassive, impassive in the sense that God knows no emotion. God doesn't only act and interact, but he also reacts. He reacts with his faculties to historical events. to individual people. He responds. He responds emotively. He responds volitionally. He responds intellectually, to good, but also to evil. He responds to events that have never happened before. He responds with grief to the suffering of his people. So whatever else the Westminster Divines meant by God has no passions, they obviously didn't mean that God is not a responsive God, who is emotion-free. I mean, that would be ludicrous for them to say that. The whole Bible is full of God's emotive responses. Genesis 6, 5 and 6, that God, the repentant God, that He had made man on the earth, grieved him at his heart. Judges 2, 18, 1 Samuel, 11, rather, 15, 1 Samuel 15, verse 11 and 29. Yes, God's decrees are irreversible, but he doesn't fulfill them with a stoic impassivity. He grieves over Saul's inauguration as king. Now, the impassibility of God in the Westminster Confession does need to be addressed. We do need to ask, what did they mean when they said that not only is God without body parts, without hands and feet, as immutable, but He's also not capable of change and therefore is impassable. That is, not capable of passions. The impossibility of God in Westminster raises the question, how can God have feelings or emotions? Because feelings and emotions indicate change, do they not? One moment we feel this way, the next moment we feel that way, and we change. And consequently, do not our actions change under the impulse and directions of our altered feelings? And so how can God have feelings and emotions if God doesn't change? This whole question has stirred a great debate in ages past. And for a while, there were a number of periodicals in England in particular that engaged in this debate last century. And some have argued in such a way that when you come to a statement like, Jesus wept, they simply say that all that meant is that Jesus was a man weeping. And so they said, God is without a body. God cannot actually weep. Others responded and said, well, there's a problem here. Doesn't God share those thoughts which cause the Savior to weep? Thoughts cannot be divorced from emotions. And our being fearfully and wonderfully made bears a resemblance to God's uncreated being. We were made with emotions. Well, I believe there's only one way out of this dilemma. And that is, we must remember that there's a difference between emotions and what the Westminster divines meant by passions. And this is vital. Historically, the word passion meant something that controls you. In other words, something that makes you out of control. We still use it somewhat that way, don't we? To say, I was so passionate, I couldn't control my anger. That's what the divines meant when they spoke about God is without passions. An emotion is something that we channel and we direct. So if we're prone to fits of anger, we watch out. We control our emotion. But if our passion flares up and it takes hold of us, well, we take cover. We don't want to come to terms with this new situation, this altered person. And then, quite suddenly, unexpectedly, before you've even mastered the situation, your temper is abated, the anger is gone, we're soon up and we're soon down. Now that's passion, not emotion. Here's the point. Though our language today has almost confused, almost made these two terms synonymous, there is a distinction. God does not have passions. Passions would control Him. God doesn't lose control. Even when God is angry, He's like a wise father whose anger is perfectly controlled, perfectly designed for that situation. So God never sins through this lack of control. And that's at the bottom of this. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the early church fathers, says that God has no passions that are conducive to sin. And I think that's what the impassibility of God is getting at. Because if God had passions that were conducive to sin. It would change the fundamental character of God. So, God doesn't have passions, but He does have emotions and feelings. He is love, is He not? And that love, we can conceive of it as an emotionless love. What kind of love is an emotionless love? So when God says in Genesis 6 that the wickedness of man was so great on the earth that it grieved him at his heart, we recognize, of course, first of all, that he doesn't have a heart like you and I have because he doesn't have a body. But that doesn't mean that he didn't feel real grief. It repented him that he made man. He changed his dealings. If the casualty of an emphasis on fun is the loss of seriousness, the casualty of a lack of emphasis on feeling is that God becomes less personal, less than personal. He loses something. If we say he has no emotion, he loses his sensibility, his ability to feel. So here we come to the truth, the bottom of it, I believe, as far as we can understand. Of course, there's much we cannot understand. But the truth is that God is emotional, but all His emotions are controlled by His will, His unchangeable will. So His emotions always are exercised in line with His eternal decree and consistency with His eternal, unchangeable being. So we can look each other straight in the eye and say, yes, God is not subject to fits and passions. He cannot suffer physically. His son did in his human nature. And yet God has profound feelings and emotions. There is an affective, emotional aspect to his being. God is not just mind and action. He has a heart, speaking metaphorically. Now, a fifth thing that we need to look at, or was that That was number three, wasn't it? Number four, then, is God is immutable but not implacable. Immutable but not implacable. Immutability does not mean that he's incapable of relenting. God is not obstinate. He's not callous. He's not hard-hearted. He's not intransigent. He will not always chide, because He is very merciful. When men repent, He, quote, repents him, end quote, of the evil which he threatened and even pronounced against them. Now people often stumble over this as well. They say a God who relents upon his threats, Even in the face of man's repentance cannot be an immutable God. But scripture says the opposite. Several places. Jeremiah 26, at least three places in that chapter. Joel 2, verse 13. Jonah 3 verse 9 and 10 is a classic one. God saw their works that they turned from their evil way. God repented of the evil that he said he'd do unto them and he did it not. These are not the acts of a wishy-washy God who vacillates in unprincipled sentiment. But these are the acts of the immutable God of impeccable integrity, who acts in strict accord with his own principled virtues of justice and kindness." And all of this was in accord with God's eternal decree. So this is the character of God, the unchangeable God. He invariably shows mercy to the penitent. And he invariably brings evil upon presumptuous and apostate people. Jeremiah 18, verses 9 and 10. So if conditions change, the immutable God responds to those changed conditions, and he responds appropriately and consistently with his own character. Fifthly, God is immutable but not unapproachable. These two people sometimes get mixed up on. They think because God is immutable that somehow He's unreachable. I'll never forget in my first congregation getting a phone call that one of the farmers in our church His barn was on fire. And so I flew over there, or drove over there, as fast as I could. And sure enough, I could see it a long ways away, this barn with the flames were just leaping out of the barn. And I got there in time and the farmer was just stoic. And how strange how stoic he was. And I mentioned to him that God could help him and turn to God in prayer. Oh, he said, these are just all material things. There's no need to pray about this. No need to pray about this. God is utterly sovereign. This is his sovereign will, he said. And so God's too holy, too sovereign to be bothered with our piddly physical concerns here on earth. That's what he said in so many words. Maybe not quite that orderly. But I was stunned. What he was saying was God is unapproachable with things that are not spiritual. So I mentioned to him the text of Proverbs 3, but he just brushed it off, you know, acknowledge me in all thy ways, and I will direct all thy paths. To him it was just for spiritual things. So he had a God who was immutable, and there was something good about his doctrine of sovereignty, that he recognized the sovereignty of God in the loss of his barn, but it was a distorted sovereignty, because it was an impersonal, unapproachable sovereignty. The God who ordains the end is the God who ordains the means. And in His decree, in His wise decree from eternity, He ordained prayer as a means that would prevail with Him, not because we pray, but upon prayer. That means would prevail with him and that means also was taken up into his decree, so that prayer becomes a means by which he fulfills his decree. He decrees to give us prayer, he decrees to hear prayer, and he decrees to answer that prayer. He's an approachable God. Charles Haddon Spurgeon has a wonderful sermon and I think it's John 15 verse 2 where it says, then drew all the publicans and sinners near to Jesus for to hear him. You know what the title of the sermon is? The Approachable. God. So whatever we do, In preaching God's sovereignty and God's immutability and God's majesty and God's holiness, let us never preach them in a way that makes God unapproachable. To preach an unapproachable God is to deny the Lord Jesus Christ and Saviorhood. This is why Jesus came to earth. so that he would become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh and that the holy, righteous, sovereign, most high God would become approachable. If God is not approachable, we might as well join Islam. That's what Islam is all about. The unapproachable God. The totally, capriciously, unfathomably sovereign God. Who can save you today and damn you tomorrow and save you the next day and damn you the following day. And so in Islam, as many Islamic people will tell you, and books will tell you, but they themselves will tell you, when they pray, what is it, five times a day, there's nothing personal in those prayers. They don't have a relationship with God. Allah is too far away for that. They just pray as a duty, hoping that somehow They might please this capriciously sovereign God to see this as part of their duties fulfilled and maybe be part of their way to merit heaven. Sixthly, God's immutability does not preclude developing covenant with his people. Because he's immutable, God's moral law, the Decalogue, and the gospel method of salvation, the covenant of grace, are permanent and unchanging. Both law and gospel and covenant are part of His immutable, revealed will for sinners. They define what He expects and what He requires and what he promises, sinners who enter into covenant with him. Now, it's in God's immutable will that he doesn't reveal all the aspects of that covenant to mankind right away. God didn't tell Adam everything in Genesis 3. And because God progressively reveals In a series of historical covenants, he has rich covenant of grace with his people. And even in Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34, assures us of change and development in this covenantal commitment. For the new covenant is a better covenant, which is enacted on better promises, Hebrews 8, verse 6. That doesn't mean God himself changes as a person. It just means that he unfolds things bit by bit. I had an unchangeable plan a few weeks ago to surprise my wife for her 50th birthday party. I had it all laid out in my mind. But I didn't go to her and I didn't go to the children and tell them everything right away. I progressively unveiled that plan to certain people and tried to keep it secret in some ways from some people and then tried to reveal bits and parts of it. It doesn't mean I changed my plan at all. So God doesn't have to reveal everything at once. We shouldn't have trouble understanding that. God incarnate has immutable deity, but not immutable humanity. I've already said that, but I want to make that a separate point because this is an objection often raised. The immutable God, the Son, remained what he was, but became what he was not. He became human. We read that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and knowledge of favor with God and men. His body grew, grew in size, grew in coordination, grew in strength. His human soul developed. He increased in wisdom. He gained experience. So his human nature is obviously mutable. And this brings us to an unfathomable mystery we cannot fully grasp of mutable humanity joined to immutable deity in one person without confusion or composition. Immutable deity and mutable humanity in one person without confusion or composition. We will never be able to explain that mystery, yet we can never deny that mystery. Now, that leads us then to some practical conclusions about God's immutability. And let me give you several of those. Number one, the practical application of God's absolute immutability is that it is a bedrock for stability in life, a bedrock for stability in life. Edward Lee said the practical use of God's immutability is fourfold. Number one, it is terrible to wicked men because they know they're on their way to curse and damnation if they don't repent. Number two, it comforts the godly to whom God has made many promises. Number three, It teaches us we should imitate God's immutability in a gracious way, not that it's communicable to us, but we should be constant in our love to God and to men, constant in our promises, constant in our good purposes, constant in our prayers. We should encourage constancy in our own lives, in other words. That's what he's getting at. And number four, we should admire the glorious nature of God. that he's in control of all things, and that he's unchangeable. Hugh Binning put it this way, when we think on his unchangeableness, let us consider our own vanity, whose glory and perfection is like a summer flower, to be one thing and then another thing is a property of sinful and wretched man. Therefore, we ought not to put our ultimate trust in finite things, but in God, who changeth not." So, the fact that we serve an unchangeable God is a great comfort. For God's people, it's a solid bedrock of stability. God's not going to grow fickle on us, the way people often do. Number two, practical application. of God's immutability as sovereign. There are several here. First, I'll just give them to you, list them for you, you can look them up and study them. It shows the futility of trying to ruin God's people. Numbers 23, verse 19, that's a story about Balaam. It's futile. to try to destroy the apple of God's eye because God is sovereign and He will protect them and you're just playing with fire when you try to do that. Number two, it shows the futility of trying to defeat God's Word. God's Word, 1 Samuel 15 verse 29, Saul, when he took matters into his own hands, was acting futilely. In futility, when he said, well, I thought I would sacrifice rather than obey. Number three, it calls us to submit to God and His decisions about our lives. Job 23, verses 13 and 14. In other words, God's immutability as the Sovereign Lord leads us to places in our lives experientially where we say, this is God's will for me. It's not what I would have chosen, but I bow under this now because this is God's will. He's made it clear as the Sovereign Lord. Number four, it calls us to set our hopes on what He promises to do. We can plead His promises, Psalm 33, verse 11, and know that He will fulfill them. And number five, it teaches us to commit our plans and our cause to Him. He's in control. Proverbs 19 verse 21. So there you have some practical applications from His absolute immutability, from His immutability as sovereign. Thirdly, two applications from His immutability as creator. One, it calls us to place our trust in Him as our Creator rather than in His creation. Psalm 102, verse 27. And number two, as physical beings, it calls us never to think that He's forgotten our problems. Isaiah 40, verse 28. And Philippians 4.19, My God shall supply all your need according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus. And then a couple of applications from His immutability as Redeemer. If He's immutable as Redeemer, number one, it assures us He will never turn against us. He doesn't determine to save us one day and damn us the next. He's not Allah. He's the God of Malachi 3, verse 6. Therefore, you sons of Jacob, are not consumed. I am the Lord, and you see the covenant name, in Christ. Number two, it encourages us confidently to expect eternal blessings. Hebrews 6, 17 and 18. And number three, that certifies he will always do us good and preserve us when we trust in him. James 1, 16 to 18. May God help us too. glean these applications for our daily lives. Our entire life could well be different if we really believed in the warm personal immutability of God. All right, that brings us to the end of the incommunicable attributes section. And we're ready to begin the communicable attributes, but let me open it for any questions you have with regard to immutability. Yes, Tim. when I think of how people are described, they're generally known by their passions. You know, if this person's really passionate for the environment, he's known as an environmental person. So that, it seems that when you talk about people, that is their passion. Yeah, I recognize that the word has altered a little bit. Like I said, it's become more of a synonym with emotions. Neutral passions. than it was, I think, in the 17th century. I think at that time, passions was more intimately connected with uncontrolled anger, and there was that implication, as I read, of course that was even earlier, of the quote of Gregory of Nyssa, that when he tended to use the word passions, there was the idea of something connected with sin, something uncontrolled. So I think that's precisely my point, that when we think of passions, in 17th century language. I would never say God is without passions in a 21st century document without a long footnote of explanation. I'd use a different word. I'd say God is without uncontrolled passions, maybe you could say. But that's the point today, is that people often think to be uncontrollably angry is alright, and it's not alright, it's sinful. But God has none of those inclinations. So what they meant to do, I think, was to reassure believers that God's not into mood swings. In that sense, God is not emotional. He's not into mood swings where He's going to, you did this to me, now I'm going to do this to you out of a gut reaction. Everything is controlled in God by His character, by His being. I think once we understand that, we begin to get a handle on this whole problem. Any other questions? All right, we're probably entering now into the longest section of the course, the communicable attributes of God. And there are many of them. And I hope that you look forward to learning more about your God. By and large, we're going to follow the kind of order that the Shorter Catechism did, a bit, roughly, I would say. God, question four, is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being. We've spoken about that. And then it says, in wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Only we'll be adding a few more, and we'll be subdividing the communicable attributes sort of in the way, generally, Abraham Kuyper suggests that we do. Kuyper takes the view that since we as creatures are created after the image of God as prophets, priests, and king, the best way to develop the communicable attributes of God is to subdivide them into the intellectual attributes, which refer more to the prophetical insights, the ethical aspects, which refer more to the priestly insights, and the dynamic attributes, which refer more to the kingly aspects of the image of God. Let me repeat that, because this is important for your outline. Kuyper says, we are God's image as prophet, priest, and king. Therefore, you could expect to find in us, in these communicable attributes that God has in common with man, although they're supreme in God and they're inferior in man, but man has something of them. You could expect that these attributes should be able to be classified, generally speaking, under prophetic, priestly, and kingly dimensions. And by prophetic he identifies that with intellectual, priestly with ethical, and kingly with dynamic. So we want to begin then with some of the prophetic attributes of God. First of all, with what is called knowledge. Knowledge. Now the other word, of course, for the for the attribute of knowledge is omniscience. Omni, meaning everything, and science, the old word for knowledge, all knowing, all knowing, everything knowing. Omniscience is the more proper term. Knowledge is basic, understood, so we kind of use that more than we use omniscience. I would suggest that on the pulpit you use knowledge probably more than omniscience, but if you do use omniscience the first couple of times, explain it to your congregation. They should be able to grasp terms like omniscience and omnipresence. These are basic things about God. You need to explain them, of course, but that should be something they should be familiar with. The science part of the word comes from the Latin word scientia. And scientia means knowledge. So omniscience describes God as the all-knowing one. And the scriptures use a rich variety of terms and expressions to present to us God's supreme mind. God is the only all-knowing one. There are many, many texts you could study here. I'm not going to give them all to you. Let me just give you one from the Old Testament and the New Testament. I'll give you a few references you can look up. One of the best ones from the Old Testament is Isaiah 55, verses 8 and 9. My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither thy ways, saith the Lord. But as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. You see, God is in a category by himself when it comes to his thinking, his knowledge. And of course, then in the New Testament, You have that same thought in an even more poignant way expressed by Paul at the end of his long doctrinal section in the middle of the Book of Romans. He says, In Romans 11, 33, and 34 is his doxological conclusion, or at least part of it. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor." So, God is far, far above us in terms of knowledge and wisdom. That's what he's saying. Now, we might define God's omniscience this way. God's supreme capacity God's supreme capacity to comprehend and perceive, comma, God's supreme capacity to comprehend and perceive, comma, whereby He knows all things. That's all things divine, all things possible, all things actual. all things past, present, and future whereby he knows all things and has supreme capability to use what he knows both to devise his plans and to execute them Now this definition says really three important things about the knowledge of God. It says first of all that the fountain of the knowledge of God is God's supreme mind. God's supreme mind. We begin with God's supreme mind. God's supreme capacity to comprehend and perceive. God is a rational being. His thoughts and our thoughts do not coincide. He thinks supremely. He understands everything. There's no searching of His understanding, Isaiah 40 says. Isaiah 40, verse 28. No searching of His understanding. God's faculty of mind is so far above us that he has total comprehension, universal perception. The Bible says he is perfect in knowledge. Job 37 verse 16. And Peter says to Jesus, doesn't he, Lord thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee. He appeals to the omniscience of Jesus, John 21, 17. And we're also told in Hebrews 4, verse 13, that there's no creature that is not manifest in God's sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. God has unlimited capacity. You can't hide anything from God. He's got a supreme mind. Number two, its focus is God's supreme knowledge. God's supreme knowledge. God knows all things, we said in our definition. All things divine, all things possible, all things actual, all things past, present, and future. So God knows everything about Himself. He knows everything divine. He completely understands Himself. He knows what could exist or happen. He knows all things possible. Matthew 11, 21 and 23. And he knows all things actual. Ephesians 1 verse 11. And he knows everything historical, all things past, present and future. And then we have to notice its fruition. Its fruition really is God's supreme wisdom. Wisdom and knowledge are closely related. We'll talk more about wisdom later, but suffice it to say right here that it's God's wisdom to know how to use his supreme knowledge so as to accomplish his designs. And so the Bible everywhere talks about how God implements his decree wisely. In terms of his works of creation, Proverbs 3, verses 19 to 22. In terms of his works of providence, Ecclesiastes 8, verse 17. And in terms of his works of redemption, 1 Corinthians 1, 18-24. Now let's look a little bit, just very briefly, at some of the characteristics of God's knowledge. How is it characterized? What makes it unique? Well, first of all, it's infallible. God's knowledge is perfect. He cannot err. Job 37 verse 16, God never makes mistakes. His infallible knowledge of all that exists and everything that happens is in control. Now that is a wonderful, wonderful comfort. Our missionary in South Africa right now. One of our missionaries in South Africa is just coming out of a very, very life-threatening, serious ICU type of sickness. And this morning he's doing a lot better. So we're just overwhelmed with gratitude to God for pulling him from the brink of the Jordan. But three or four days ago, when I was, I've been calling his wife every day in South Africa, three or four days ago, she was weeping on the phone and saying, this all makes no sense to me. I'm not bitter against God, but it makes no sense to me. It's as if he doesn't know our circumstances. Yeah, I know he does, she said, but it just makes no sense. And then this is what I said to her. without knowing I was going to lecture on it the following week, or without thinking about it at the time. God's knowledge is always wise, my dear. It's always wise. So whenever you're tempted to think about God in the midst of all this, remember God won't make any mistakes in the next few days of your husband's critical condition. And then I said this. What if God were to bring your husband to the borders of the Jordan, and then suddenly pull him back in the next few days, and teach him lifelong lessons, and change his ministry for good through this terrible, terrible sickness, and it would impact you and your children, and you would live more for the glory of God for the rest of your life, because you'd be marked by this experience. And she paused and I could tell her tears stopped flowing and she said, oh, that would be so wonderful. And basically this morning, less than 72 hours later, when she wrote her generic email, this is basically what she wrote in her email. that her husband's coming out of it, he's got much spiritual benefit out of it now, and she as well, and they hope they would never forget these lessons that they've learned, and so on. God is wise. Hebrews 12, verse 11. No affliction for the present seems to be joyous, but nevertheless afterwards, afterwards, we reap the profitable fruit of righteousness when we are exercised by it. So you see how comforting this is, that God's knowledge is infallible. He knows exactly what He's doing with you at every moment of every day. And so, there sits Zach Hall, his wife just had a baby. In his case, God wasn't pleased to send that baby, A couple weeks early, but a couple weeks late. He had to exercise patience. I'm sure there were times when he and his wife were thinking, will this baby ever come? What is God doing? Where is this baby? And then his wife goes in the hospital, she gets induced, and the baby still doesn't come. Oh God! Our nature is, don't you know what we're into? Don't you know what's going on? God says, I know. Sometimes I want to test you so you can grow." Right, Zach? And in the end, he made things wonderfully well. And now you look back and you say, it was all wise. He knew exactly what he was doing. Afterward, you look back. See, what God wants us to do is He wants us to be able, more and more as we grow in spiritual maturity, to look at Him in the affliction and to walk by faith in it. and not by sight and say and that's maturity while I'm in it to say I trust God will make all things well because my God is all-knowing my God knows exactly where I am my God is wise my God won't put anything on my shoulders heavier than I can bear so the infallibility of the knowledge of God is a tremendous comfort because When our lives seem to spin out of control, I use it as an example as a canoe. I say sometimes my life is like a canoe that's spinning out of control. You know what it's like, you all know what it's like to be too busy sometimes. I seem to have a way of tailspinning into that problem rather readily. And I sometimes feel like my canoe is just bouncing around and I don't know where it's going to land next. It's just overwhelming. I can't make it. I can't do it. And I stop and say, wait a minute. God knows everything. Just take one thing at a time. Trust in God. He knows exactly what you have to do. He'll help you through. Because He's in control of every detail of my life, the waves then become calm. And I can proceed. I'm just as busy as before, but I can proceed. and go forward because the canoe then is calm when I trust in my God. So there's all kinds of applications of this, you see. That God is all-knowing is a tremendous comfort. And this is precisely the difference between a believer and an unbeliever. When you talk with an unbeliever, three days ago in that situation in South Africa, they would have been desperate, okay? that dear woman I spoke with was not desperate. She said, I don't understand God's ways. But beneath it, she was still trusting Him. She said, I understand, but she was still trusting Him. Because I know, I know God's in control. So she was still clinging to that. So even in times of desperate situations, believers, it's not that they don't feel the pain, it's not that they're not concerned, but deep down they know that God's in control of all that happens. Infallibly knowledgeable. Secondly, God's knowledge is independent. He knows everything. Independent of everyone else. So He doesn't depend on outside sources or second-hand information. He doesn't require a team of researchers to help him acquire his knowledge. Now, this is awesome. This is amazing, actually. Let me give you an example from my own life for a moment. When I first became a minister, I was the only English-speaking minister in the denomination I served. Well, the only one that grew up in America. I mean, they spoke some English. But all the other ministers really had their heart in the Netherlands. I mean, they were getting the Netherlands newspapers and they knew all the Dutch books, but they didn't know the English books. And I had to start from scratch. You won't believe, when I was 23 years old, I mean, I knew something about books because I'd been reading for about eight years, but I knew about Banner to Trust, but that was about it. I didn't know even the basics of where to turn to theologically. And so I had to discover the entire book world by myself. We were very isolated from everyone else. There were no other students in the school. I was the only one. And my teacher was very Dutch. And so I embarked on this discovery mission. which took me hundreds, thousands of hours to work on to really understand the English-speaking book world. In fact, when I went to Westminster Seminary, I literally, literally went through every single book on the shelf. They tell me I'm the only student in the history of the school that's done that. I think there's close to a million books. Well, I don't know how many, 400, 500,000. I touched every single book. I took them all, I looked at it. Oh, that's okay. I don't really, I understand that book now a little bit by the title and by the author. I don't, it's not my area of interest. Maybe I'll put it back. Any book that I was interested in, I would take off, I'd check it out. By the time my four years was done there, I mean, the knowledge that I had, compared to when I entered at least, still you never know the book world, but it was phenomenal, the difference. But I was a pioneer in my denomination in that regard because my goal now was how do I communicate all this to other people? Now, when you have a whole bunch of students and you can share, you say, oh yeah, John Murray, you know, John Murray, Principles of Conduct, that's a great book. You tell one another, and you know, that's a foundational book in the whole area of ethics. Man, you learn it just like that. It's far different if you have to go to the shelf and you have to look at the book yourself and study it and say, oh, man, this is a pretty important book. But it takes so much longer. So we get knowledge from one another. Like Calvin said, we're constrained to borrow our knowledge from one another to build up our knowledge in the school of Christ, which is wonderful. I believe in the communion of saints. But do you realize how tedious, how tedious my experience was? Not having dozens of other students around me to tell me this book's good, that book's not good. I would have given anything. I would have given you tens of thousands of dollars to have someone give me a course like the course offered here, Reformed Theological Research, where we walk through the library and tell you what's good and what's bad and why. But that just didn't exist. But now think of God. God's got this independent knowledge that he doesn't acquire along the way through constant study, but he has all knowledge embedded in himself from all eternity, and he's the resource we can go to for all that we need to know. That is absolutely amazing. And the more we know, the more we know how little we know, which ought to drive us all the more to God's knowledge. and find in him the omniscient one. So the fact that God is independently omniscient, and he's the great pioneer from all eternity in the very core of his being, the fact that he even set up the whole fabric of the thing we call knowledge, and gave knowledge on the earth, is absolutely stunning. God knows everything all by himself. And you or I never helped him at all. And it didn't take him any time. He didn't have to go to a library and pull out book after book. He had it all within his character. Hallelujah, praise Jehovah. He knows everything independently. So I can go to him for counsel. every area of my life. That's so reassuring. Providing we want to walk in His ways. If we want to be... Apart from God, it's very troubling because He knows me. He knows my insides. He knows my down settings. He knows my uprisings. He understands my thoughts afar off. That's rather unsettling for an unconverted person. That doesn't want a relationship with God. But God then becomes for us like this huge, far better, far bigger, may I say it reverently, this huge, huge library. And all these books I went through at Westminster, they're just a drop in the bucket compared to the knowledge of God. And you can go to Him 24-7. You can pour out your heart and you can search in His Word where He's revealed this knowledge. So we've got so much to learn from the hand of this independently knowledgeable God. That's glorious. And so when we go to Him, yes, we spread out our case before Him, as if He knew nothing about us, because we like to unburden ourselves before Him. But even as we do that, we know He knows everything about us. We don't have to tell Him a thing. In fact, He knows what we need before we ask. So the knowledge of God is wonderfully comforting. Thirdly, since God is infinite in all his attributes, he knows all things intuitively. He doesn't need a lengthy process of investigation and deduction like I needed at Westminster Library. But he knows everything inherently and comprehensively and immediately. No hesitation. So if you as a person learn something very quickly, people will say of you, wow, he's really intuitive. He picks up things in no time. And yet it's not no time. It is time. Comparatively speaking, you pick up things quicker than other people, but God really is the intuitive one. He does pick up things in no time. In fact, He gives all knowledge to the earth. So, we, at very best, can get our knowledge quickly if we have a pocket calculator or a blackberry, we might press a few buttons and there's an answer almost immediately, or we can get in contact with someone almost immediately. We say it's almost intuitive knowledge, and yet there's a mechanical process that's involved to get that knowledge. But God has it all within Himself. It's not derived. It's totally, fully intuitive. In fact, He is the source of all our derived knowledge. And then fourthly, God knows things innately. Innately. His knowledge had no beginning. It always was. God was never ignorant. God never had a lack of knowledge about anything. Acts 15, verse 18 says it so beautifully, known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. And finally, God knows all things incessantly. His mental faculty never deteriorates with time. He never forgets anything. He never needs a refresher course. Everything He knows is always at His fingertips. He never has to check anything out in the library. So God's knowledge, though it's communicable to us, that is, it's in common with us that we have knowledge to some degree. God's knowledge is actually unique, ultimately, because it's infallible, it's independent, it's intuitive, it's innate, and it's incessant. Now, why is this so? What's the cause? Well, the answer is obvious. I can give that to you very briefly. Number one, God always knew everything that would exist and happen because he decreed everything. This is just common sense, isn't it? David says, you knew me. You knew me in my unformed substance. You knew me even in my body parts before I existed. Paul says that God works all things, Ephesians 1 verse 11, all things after the counsel of His own will. Luke says that even Jesus was delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. You see, God decreed all, so He is all-knowing. Secondly, God knows all that exists because God made all that exists. God is the author, the creator of everything. God comprehends every created entity. He knows all its properties, its capabilities, its functions, its intricacies. He designed everything. He constructed everything. And third, God knows all that happens in history because He is everywhere. No event has ever escaped Him. I went hunting with my son last night, near the end of the hunting time. He said, sit still, don't move, don't move. He was like six feet above me. I'm looking around for this deer. I couldn't find it. About ten minutes later, I moved about an inch. He said, don't move, don't move, don't move. I said, where is this deer, this crazy deer? My eyes are about to jump out of my head. Where is this thing? Ten minutes later, I move. Don't move. Don't move. What? Am I blind? Okay. And all that time, there was a deer just behind one branch that was in my vision. He was sitting right there. And he was just waiting to come out. But he didn't come out for me. And then he went the other way. Behind him came this huge, beautiful, eight-point buck. better than my son has ever shot anything in his whole life. I never even saw the buck, because I was six feet below. I just saw him suddenly pulling back. I thought, what's he doing pulling back? Suddenly, he gives his little grunt, and apparently the buck stuck his head up, and he, wham, got him. I hear this huge noise. Where'd that buck come from? I didn't see a thing. My knowledge was very limited. But he saw it clearly because he was six feet higher. Six feet made the difference. Do you realize how puny we creatures are? Just a little branch keeps it. God saw the deer, God saw the bug, God saw everything. God knows everything. We are so finite. God is so infinite. He's everywhere. And so Jeremiah says, can anyone hide himself in secret places that the Lord shall not see him? Do not I fill the heavens and the earth, saith the Lord. Jeremiah 23 verse 24. Do you realize what that means for your daily life? That when you can't see things, and there's all kinds of things you can't see, that God sees it all and you can say to him, Lord, you know everything, you see everything, I can trust you. That is powerful stuff for daily living. I'm the all-knowing, I'm the all-seeing, saith the Lord. Put the reins of your life in my hand, you can trust me in Jesus Christ. So you see, these attributes are not just doctrinal things. These are practical things. And you can use them. And you can resort to them. Every day. Every day. You can wake up in the morning and say, the Lord knows the end of my day from the beginning. Help me to glorify thee today. Help me to understand that you're in control, Lord, today. You can approach that day with confidence and joy, knowing that you get to live to the glory of God today. And ask God to help you to do that. That's the way to live. Trusting in the omniscience of God. All right, any closing questions? Yes, Seth. To this knowledge, what type of knowledge is it? I'm talking about as humans. Is it just facts, figures, or is it that type of knowledge, righteousness and holiness? And the second question is, is this knowledge limited then only to believers, or is there two types of knowledge? That's a wonderful question because you're anticipating exactly where I'm going to go on Thursday. Look at the next part of the outline. It's kinds of knowledge. You're one step ahead of me. Yes? Yeah, and a lot of these attributes I could do that with. You could take it from either side of the coin. It would be nice to have another I in there, right? But I'm trying not to duplicate myself too much, but that's a good point. All right, who will close with prayer?