How Vital to know that God knows…

 

More and more the Lord directs me to Charnock’s book for devotional thoughts. This man knew God and the implications of his writing build my faith. My first choice for this year does not do that. More often that author’s doubts sound as if a finger is pointing at me for my failures rather than to God for His amazing grace. Even as He convicts me of sin, I must also be reminded of His great mercy.

Today, the topic is again the omniscience of God. He knows all, including the pressures I face. He hears my cries, but before I experience any of it, He knows when they may be usefully inflicted, and when they may be profitably removed. He knows my service and my struggles and I am never out of His mind.

… I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich)… (Revelation 2:8–9)
And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them…(Mark 6:48)

Charnock says: “Joseph may forget his brethren, and the disciples not know Christ when he walks upon the midnight waves and turbulent sea, but a lion’s den cannot obscure a Daniel from his sight, nor the depths of the whale’s belly bury Jonah from the Divine understanding He discerns Peter in his chains, and Stephen under the stones of martyrdom; he knows Lazarus under his tattered rags, and Abel wallowing in his blood. His eye and knowledge goes along with his people, when they are transplanted into foreign countries, and sold for slaves into the islands of the Grecian, “for he will raise them out of the place” (Joel 3:6, 7). He would defeat the hopes of the persecutors, and applaud the patience of his people. He knows his people in the tabernacle of life, and in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23). He knows all evils, because he commissions and directs them. He knows the instruments, because they are His sword (Psalm 17:13); and He knows his gracious sufferer because He hath his mark. He discerns Job in his anguish, and the devil in his malice. By the direction of this attribute He orders calamities, and rescues from them. (Psalm 10:14).

That is the comfort of every believer, and the ground of committing ourselves to God under all the injustice of men. He remembers we were but dust when He made us, and yet remembers we are but dust while He preserves us. This was David’s practice and comfort as he begs a mercy suitable to the glory of God’s perfection:

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23–24)

David’s desire is not that God should know him, for it would be senseless to beg of God that he should have mercy, or faithfulness, or power, or knowledge in his nature; but he desires the exercise of this attribute, in the discovery of himself to himself, in order to his sight of any wicked way he would see and confess it and live accordingly.

I can appeal to this perfection to judge me when my actions are censured by others or questioned by myself, to have a clear eye so I do not “mistake brass for gold, or counterfeit graces for true” because my ability to evaluate my own life is pitiful compared to the all-knowing power of God. He can discern what I cannot see, both defects and His working through me.

 Not only that, if God did not fully understand me, how could I have a perfect and full pardon from him? He knows all my sin, even what I don’t know myself. He knows what sins to lay upon my Savior whose pure merits I depend and whose blood has covered. His infinite understanding of what Christ has done directs him to disarm his justice. He understands what I have done and understands what Jesus has done for me. He knows — and He blots out all my guilt and applies His remedy long before I even know I need it.

PRAY: What can be said to this? My heart is filled with worship for the One who knows, who understands, and who sent Jesus Christ to die for all of it, forgiving all of it and setting me free to live for Jesus and not for myself.