In His Omniscience we have the assurance that He sees us.

Darkest hour, Divinest comfort. Omniscience, it is the fact that God knows everything, all knowledge belongs to God. God has attributes, and when we study the attributes of God, it strengthens our faith, it deepens our trust, and we are able to take action based on his character rather than our chances. We make decisions in life based on that. 

Omniscience means that God knows everything. Things actual, things possible, things plausible, and he knows this effortlessly, and he knows it equally well. Like if there were six books, he knows all six books thoroughly. You get what I'm saying? He knows all knowledge, he has all knowledge. He even has all knowledge about that knowledge. There isn't any iota of knowledge that he's missing, no page torn out of his book. Everything to know about, he knows. There is nothing he doesn't already know across time, across dimensions and across all thoughts, God knows everything. All knowledge is not only his and with him, but all knowledge is also his property. He is proprietor of all knowledge. Let that sink in for just a minute. There is one person who has absolute knowledge, not just absolute power, but absolute knowledge. So what is future to you is his present, and what is coming, he already knows, and what it's going to be like, he already knows. What you're going to go through, he already knows. What you're going to go through, he's already there and he already knows. If it's a hospital situation, if it's a crisis situation, if it's a breakup situation, if it's a difficult situation, if it's a joyful situation, not only does he know that it's coming, he's already there. So there's nobody more equipped and prepared than God. There's nobody who's more ready for my life than God, and he is wholly, devoted to me, wholly devoted to my welfare, provided I'm living for his purposes. What he knows will happen by his omniscience, he sees happening by his omnipresence. So let's pause and reflect the magnitude of his attribute and responsibility.

So when the band comes out and they lead us in worship, that's what we should be focusing on. Worship is not focusing on how I feel about God. Worship is focusing on who he is .Worship is never about feelings, how I feel about God, how God feels about me, nothing. It's about who he is. So when I sing a song, I need to be focusing on the words of that song and say, Lord, you are like this. Lord, you are like this. I thank you because you are like this. I thank you because you never change about being like this. So you pause to reflect the magnitude of this attribute and responsibility. Then you praise God that he and only he has those attributes. He's all knowledgeable. Thank him that he has not shared this attribute with us or anybody else. I could not handle all the information and all that knowledge. Even about me, I could not handle that knowledge. If I knew everything that was going to happen to me, that would not be good for me. I could not handle that. 

So let’s begin to understand God's omniscience. God's character, is what our life is built on. And then I want to talk about how our anxiety and God's omniscience collide. 

God knows everything already. Acts 15: 18- He knows his works. That means everything he's ever created, every file he's ever opened, every project he's ever started, everything he's ever spoken into existence, spoken out of existence. He knows his works from the very inception of time. 

Psalm 147: 4- He numbers and names the stars. So every excel sheet, every inventory is God's knowledge personally. He has personal knowledge of everything that is his. What about you and me? Psalm 139:16- From birth to eternity, from your conception, he knows you all the way through to eternity. He knows your beginning, he knows your end. Psalm 139, one of my favourite psalms, probably yours as well- Oh Lord, you have searched me and you have known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar off. You know what I'm thinking from afar off. You're not even reading my micro expressions. You don't even have to be near me to know what I'm thinking. You know what I'm thinking from afar off. You're sitting on the throne of God and you know what this heart's all about. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar off. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. My daily habits. You're acquainted with the way I do my life. 

Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.  You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. You put a border around me. You put a hedge around me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high. I cannot attain it.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance, in your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.  So even before they could take an x-ray, before they could take a picture of my little being there in my smallest state, you already saw me in your book. Before I could see day one, God had seen all my days. Say that to yourself, maybe you need to hear this today- Before I could live day one, God had already seen all my days, and my future is his present. There isn't a problematic day, there isn't a hard day, there isn't a situational day that God has not already seen, entered and left his fingerprints of provision. Hallelujah. Isn't that amazing? Nothing new will ever come to light in a believer's life, nothing new will surprise God or cause him to cast me out. No tale bearer is going to come up in the future and say, hey, God, you didn't know this, but let me tell you this about Jeremy. 

I love the way David says, God, you are the one who vindicates me. I don't stand in court saying I'm innocent. You're the one who vindicates me. No forgotten skeleton is going to come out of some closet and expose us to God. God already knows everything and he knows everything before I knew anything. I love that. So when I find out anything or realize anything later, even when I am confessing my sin, he already knows it. So nothing is going to change his heart toward you. If your heart is moulded, steered by knowledge, he has all the knowledge needed to already make up his mind about you. And God has made up his mind about you. He's made up his mind to love you. He's made up his mind to forgive you. He's made up his mind to cover you with mercy long before you needed that mercy.

I would tell you about how not to take that for granted. I would tell you about how to not abuse that or take that whimsically. I could tell you how not to take advantage of that and live how you please and then just come back. I could tell you that, but I'm not talking about you, I'm focusing on the attribute of God. 

No unexpected weakness in my character can turn away God from us. Since he knew us before we knew him, he called us to salvation with the full knowledge that that's how bad I was going to be all the way to my dying day. And because he knew how bad I was going to be and there was no way in hell I could ever save myself, he saved me. He swooped in, he saved me. 

Now God not only has omniscience, that is the knowledge of everything and the knowledge about the knowledge about everything, but God also warns us out of his omniscience. God warns us from his omniscience, but he also comforts us. That's a shepherd thing. It's a father thing. God also comforts us from his omniscience because he knows something's going to happen. Knowing what you're going to go through, he then comforts us out of his omniscience. He knows what actually happened and what could have happened and he knows what ultimately led to good and what glory will come from that. So he cannot remove circumstances. He wants to let you go through those circumstances, but he allows and provides the comfort to carry you through those circumstances without changing those circumstances.

If God changed all my circumstances to smoothen my life for me, I'd just be a spoiled brat. In fact, I'm a spoiled brat even without him changing my circumstances. Imagine what I'd be if he kept making things easy for me. But, instead, my subject of attention goes from what I am like to who he is like. And then my life is a study. My life is an experience of the character of God through my circumstances rather than an experience of who I am through the power of his changing all my circumstances. 

God sees us through his omniscience. Let me give you three stories that are very typical and very closely connected to the seeing nature of God. 

The story of Hagar in Genesis 16 speaks of mistreatment and suffering. Young lady taken in as a slave. Hagar was a slave to Abraham's wife. As Sarah and Abraham didn't have children, Sarah comes up with this plan, Hagar to conceive with Abraham so that the family line continues. When Abraham agreed, Hagar became his wife too. Now she's an inheritor. Now she's equal. She becomes pregnant, causes Sarah to look at her with contempt. So she begins to badly mistreat her. Hagar runs away, ends up by a spring in the desert where the angel of the Lord told her to go back right to Abraham and Sarah. And he promised Hagar and her descendants that they would be too numerous to count and that he was to to bless her and her offspring anyway. And in that moment, Hagar responds to God by one of his names- El Roy. It means you are the God who sees. And then she says, I have now seen the one who sees. 

So Elroy is one of the names of God in the Hebrew Bible. It is commonly translated as the God who sees. So this angel of the Lord says to Hagar, go back there. So just think about this.  God just needed her to trust his goodness. Thank God he doesn't share all the information. Thank God he doesn't explain everything to us. Because I'd have a counter-argument for everything he had to say. But thank God he doesn't share everything. The angel of the Lord just says go back there. She's going through a rough time. She's out in the desert. She has a little baby and she's seen by God. She meets the God who sees her. 

In our darkest hours, we feel unseen. We feel obscure. We feel like we've disappeared into the busyness of the crowds of the city .We feel lost in life, lost in a crowd, lost in our workplace. We see people just looking right through us. We feel like our applications aren't answered. Our prayers aren't answered. We feel invisible. We feel like nobody has made me the priority of their life. Nobody has laid their love on me. Nobody has focused their attention, affection on me. One of the biggest things that we go through psychologically and emotionally during our darkest hour is we feel unseen. We feel invisible. And that hurts. This is not just a gender thing. Women feel this. Men feel this. Younger people feel this. Older people feel this. In fact, the older you get, the more invisible you feel. That's why we crave for position, don't we? We crave for limelight. We crave for power. Why? I want to be seen. Why? Because by being seen, I feel valued. Why? Because if I feel valued, I get a sense of who I am and what I need to do. Otherwise, what's the point? 

So, I am here to tell you- You are seen. He does see. And his silence is not evidence that he's not seen. El Roy, the God who sees. 

Another person from the Bible- Joseph, great guy, smart fellow. The brothers were jealous. Joseph was beloved son of Israel. He was falsely accused, thrown in prison, Pharaoh's dungeons. Year after year after year… he may have wondered- man, what's the point of being so talented? What's the point of all those studies, the Master's and the Bachelor’s? I did all of that. And here I am, in this dump of a job. Here I am. Nobody sees me. Nobody remembers how good, how talented I am. Back in college, I was the bomb. But now nobody sees me. I have to compete for every day, for every position, for every project. I have to compete. I have to keep up my game. Here I am sitting in a dungeon. Not two days, not two months, two years… And some of you have been going for a month or two months or five months. No answer to prayer. No, nothing's happening. Jobs not opening up. Things not happening. And you're thinking, nobody's seeing me. Healing not coming. You're saying nobody's seeing me.  Joseph chucked in prison was not just any guy. This is not just someone who's trying to make it big. He was big. And now he's in prison. This is the dungeon in Pharaoh's kingdom. Two years wasting away. And then the Bible says God saw him. And you may turn back to God and say, yes, yes, you saw him. But two years, two years! So you've got to learn something the whole idea of God's omniscience and time. God doesn't seem to bother with time. Sometimes in a day, sometimes momentarily he'll heal. And sometimes it'll take years and years and years. And you just can't understand because you are swinging in time. You're evaluating life by the clock. Every day is just passing by, and you think my life is going to the pot. What is going on? God, move! Do something! And God just seems to... Because God's constantly thinking about eternity and you're constantly thinking about today. God saw him and he knew what his plan was. And he needed Joseph to trust his goodness. He needed Hagar to trust his goodness. 

I don't know if you've heard of a guy called Nathaniel. Nathaniel, was one of the guys who came across Jesus for real. So in John 1: 47- Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, Behold an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. This guy is coming toward Jesus and he hasn't met him. And Jesus points to him and gives him a credit report. He immediately gives him a reference right there to everybody standing around. He says, here's an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. What you see is what you get. God already knew that his character would count. God knew and God had already affirmed his character. Nathaniel said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 

So Jesus told him that he was there all the way from conception. Nathaniel answers, Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! 

For a Jew to say that, do you understand what that means? He's blaspheming. A Christian is someone to whom God has revealed supernaturally the information and the belief, both the knowledge and the acknowledgement that Jesus Christ is the son of the living God. You can stand on the street and argue. You can present it beautifully. You can make arguments. You can compare him to prophet, priest and king. But the knowledge and the belief that Jesus is the Son of the Living God gets downloaded straight from the throne of God. And if God doesn't tell you, nobody else is going to get you that knowledge. Focussing back here we are pondering on the character of God saying, he knew Nathanael, he knew Hagar, he could see Joseph, he could see Nathanael. 

In this omniscience, we have the assurance that he sees us. Every single one of you needs to hear this sermon. But there are some of you that particularly need to hear it now. 

Psalm 33: 18- Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love. So you put your hope and faith in God, God puts his eye on you. That means you've got his attention. Whatever I'm looking at, that's where your attention is. That's why your mom will ask you to look at her while she is talking  because sometimes that's the attention aspect.

1 Peter 3: 12. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. 

Brothers and sisters, friends, God's omniscience allows him to know me inside out and love me right side up. He sees my hidden guilt. He sees my hidden fears. He sees my hidden pain. Visible pain is easy to bear, but hidden pain, that hurts. 

So I'm not invisible. He sees me. 

I'm not unknown. He knows me. 

I'm not forgotten. He remembers me.

I'm not alone. He carries me. 

I'm not a number. He calls me. 

I'm not another. He owns me.

I'm not down under. He lives with me. 

Father in heaven, to the one who really needs to hear this today, to your people, give this assurance. While we feel unseen, God has always, always been looking. And the issue isn't if we're forgotten or not. The issue is how long, Lord? How long? It's not you that lack the character. It's we that lack the character. Give us patience to wait on your goodness. Give us stamina to last out your trial, your testing. Give us elasticity, stickability, because just over the border is the goodness and the answers and the relief and the deliverance and the healing and the restoration of God. 

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He even restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His sake. Even if I was scared to death because of the valley experience, He walks right through with me. In fact, He sets a table in the face of my enemies. He sets a table and He dines with me. My cup runs over. And I'm certain, job or no job, healing or no healing, answer or no answer, certainty or no certainty, I'm assured of this one thing. Your goodness and your mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord. Behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. Amen.