Theological term
Omniscience
42 sermons · All terms
The Arrest of Jesus
John 18:1–12 records the arrest of Jesus, and the passage confronts the reader with a Savior who is not a hapless victim but the sovereign I AM who initiates, controls, and willingly enters every step of His own arrest. The sermon works through three movements: the betrayal by Judas and the convergence of internal, external, and spiritual threats upon Jesus; the glory of Christ displayed in His divine self-declaration that drives His captors to the ground; and the arrest itself, where the cup of divine wrath — not Peter's sword — is shown to be the true focus of the scene. The controlling application is that Christ's covenantal resoluteness in going to the cross for the salvation of His people is the proper ground for approaching the Lord's Supper with joy.
The Courage of the Righteous One
Psalm 11 presents the righteous man — supremely the Lord Jesus Christ — facing the temptation to abdicate his calling when wicked enemies ready their arrows and the foundations of moral order appear destroyed. The sermon expounds two movements: the temptation to flee (vv. 1–3) and the fortification found in contemplating God's sovereignty, omniscience, and justice (vv. 4–7). Because Christ steadfastly set his face toward Jerusalem and drank the cup of divine wrath to its dregs in the place of his people, believers have every reason to resist the same temptation to cowardice and unbelief, and to stand firm in the Lord.
Life in the Wilderness and Canaan
Deuteronomy 8 sets the wilderness generation of Israel before the land of Canaan with a threefold movement: a reminder of God's providential humbling in the wilderness (vv. 1–5), a promise of abundant blessing in the land (vv. 6–10), and a solemn warning against the pride and forgetfulness that prosperity tends to generate (vv. 11–20). The wilderness was not divine cruelty but divine chastening — designed to produce dependence on God rather than self-sufficiency — a pattern the New Testament applies both to the believer's ongoing trials and to the person of Christ, who as the true Israel recapitulates the exodus, wilderness, and restoration that old covenant Israel failed to embody faithfully. The sermon closes by calling hearers to combat forgetfulness of God through regular remembrance of his word, his covenant, and his redemptive acts, recognising that the danger is never prosperity itself but the pride that severs gratitude from grace.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
Psalm 139:13–16 declares that the formation of every human being in the womb is an act of God's immediate, intimate providence — the divine Weaver knitting together image-bearers for His own glory. The sermon argues that human dignity is grounded not in sentiment or politics but in divine authorship: God knows each person's substance before conception, fashions every inward part, and has decreed their days in His eternal book. The Incarnation deepens rather than evacuates this ethical claim, for the Son of God assumed embryonic and fetal life, passing through every stage of human existence to redeem a multitude of sinners. The congregation is called to tremble before the God who sees in secret, to defend the sanctity of life from conception to death, and to rest in the omnipotent providence of the One who has numbered both our members and our days.
The Glory of Christ's Departure, Part 2
John 16:29–33 closes the Upper Room Discourse with two movements: the disciples' partial yet progressing confession of Christ's omniscience, authority, and divine origin, and Christ's triumphant declaration that he has overcome the world. The disciples' imperfect understanding — soon to be perfected on the day of Pentecost through the Spirit's coming — is met not with rebuke but with Christ's desire for their peace, even as he foreknows their abandonment of him at the cross. The sermon grounds Christian courage in the face of tribulation not in human resolve but in the objective, accomplished victory of the enthroned Christ, whose current session at the Father's right hand is the only sufficient foundation for the church's advance through suffering.
The Nature of the Holy Spirit
How does Jesus comfort his disciples in the upper room by pointing them to the Holy Spirit, and what does that reveal about who God is? Expounding John 14:16–18, this sermon works through four aspects of the Spirit's nature drawn from the text: the distinction of persons in the Godhead, the unity of the Godhead, the world's ignorance of the Spirit, and the believer's knowledge of him. The eternal processions — the Father unbegotten, the Son eternally begotten, the Spirit proceeding from Father and Son — ground the temporal missions in which the Father sends the Son and the Father and Son send the Spirit for the salvation of God's people. The congregation is called to hold fast to the Trinitarian guardrails of the creeds and the 1689 confession, to resist the modalism and Arianism that perennially distort who God is, and to rest in the gospel of free and sovereign grace through faith in the one who declared 'I am.'
The Priority in the Believer's Life
Jesus prohibits anxiety over material provision in Matthew 6:25–34, grounding that prohibition in the sovereign care of a Father who already knows what His people need. The passage is expounded under two heads: the repeated prohibition against worry concerning life, body, and tomorrow (vv. 25–32), and the governing principle that believers are to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (vv. 33–34). The sermon argues that chronic anxiety about temporal things is functionally Gentile thinking — a failure to translate sound doctrine of divine sovereignty and providence into the ordinary rhythms of daily life. The remedy is not mere willpower but a rightly ordered theology: what a man truly believes about God will determine whether he lives as a kingdom-seeking servant or as one paralyzed by the concerns of this world.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 2
The deity of Jesus Christ is not a late ecclesiastical imposition but the irreducible confession of Scripture, the early church, and the Reformed confessional tradition. This lesson, the second in a series through 2LCF Chapter 8, opens by reading paragraphs 1–2 of the confession before working through both what the orthodox doctrine of Christ's deity does NOT mean — rejecting polytheism, social trinitarianism, homoiousian subordinationism, modalism, and kenoticism — and what it positively asserts: that Christ is very and eternal God, of one substance with Father and Spirit, equal to the Father, personally distinct within the Godhead, and unchanging in deity through the incarnation. The biblical witness is then marshalled under five categories — explicit statements, Christ's self-witness, NT application of OT divine texts, divine perfections predicated of Christ, and divine works ascribed to Him — to demonstrate that the deity of Christ is axiomatic rather than argued in Scripture itself.
Sunday School Confession Study - 2LCF 2.2
God's external relations to the created order — his independence, omniscience, holiness, and the creature's obligation to him — are the subject of 2LCF Chapter 2, Paragraph 2. The confession's insistence that God is entirely self-sufficient and derives no glory from creatures corrects any notion that God created the world out of need or incompleteness. The omniscience of God is infinite, infallible, and independent of the creature, so that nothing is contingent or uncertain to him. The study closes by grounding the creature's obligation of worship, service, and obedience in what God is — holy in all his counsels, works, and commands.
The Resurrection and the Life, Part 3
John 11:28–37 confronts the reader with the full weight of Christ's hypostatic union: the same person who will momentarily command a dead man to walk is here groaning in anger and weeping at the graveside. This passage presses the question of the Savior's true humanity — that he assumed human nature with all its essential properties and common infirmities, yet without sin — as the indispensable ground of redemption. The sermon traces Mary's complaint, the Lord's outrage at the ravages of sin and death, and his tears as expressions of genuine human emotion consistent with immutability in the divine nature, drawing on the Westminster Larger Catechism's answers on why the Mediator must be both God and man. The hearer is finally confronted with the same question Jesus put to Martha: 'Do you believe this?'
The Resurrection and the Life, Part 1
What does it mean that Jesus delayed coming to Lazarus while professing love for him? John 11:1–16 opens the account of the resurrection of Lazarus by pressing the question of how dark providence coexists with the love of Christ. The death of Lazarus is shown to serve a purpose higher than the welfare of one family: the glorification of God through the display of the Son's omniscience and omnipotence. The passage calls every hearer to reckon with what makes Jesus glad — the belief of sinners — and to confess with Martha that he is the Christ, the Son of God.
The Meeting with the Samaritan Woman, Part 1
John 4:1–15 presents Jesus passing through Samaria not merely as a geographical necessity but as a divine appointment rooted in his mission to save sinners without distinction of race, sex, or moral standing. The sermon examines the two natures of Christ as the theological ground for understanding why Jesus is both weary at the well according to his humanity and omnisciently aware of the woman's sin according to his divinity. The offer of living water is traced through its Old Testament antecedents — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah — and shown to signify the whole grace of salvation freely given, not earned, and never revoked. Hearers are pressed to see in the Samaritan woman's partial interest an indictment of those who have heard the gospel repeatedly yet remain indifferent, and are called to cry out to Christ for the living water he is willing to give.
The Antitype of the Temple
John 2:18–25 presents Jesus as the antitype of the Old Testament temple — the reality to which the type pointed and in which it finds its fulfillment and realization. The Jews' demand for a sign of his authority after the temple cleansing is answered by the one definitive sign: the death and resurrection of Christ, which the apostle John interprets for the reader in verses 21–22. The sermon also treats the omniscience of Christ as evidence of his divinity, demonstrated in his refusal to entrust himself to those whose belief was superficial and temporary. Hearers are called to flee to Christ in genuine faith and repentance, receiving both forgiveness of sin and the imputed righteousness of Christ that avails before the Father.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity
What does Scripture reveal about God's relationship to his creation, and how does that shape the creature's obligation to the Creator? Working through paragraphs two and three of Chapter 2 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, this study expounds three perfections of God in his external relations: his aseity (independence and self-sufficiency), his omniscience, and his holiness. From Acts 17, 1 Kings 8, Psalm 113, Psalm 115, Daniel 4, Ephesians 1, and Romans 9, the instructor demonstrates that God is the sole fountain of all being, exercises most sovereign dominion over all creatures, and is morally pure in all his counsels, works, and commands — and that these perfections ground the creature's comprehensive obligation of worship, service, and obedience to the Creator.
The First Disciples of Jesus
John 1:35–51 records the calling of the first disciples of Jesus — Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip, and Nathanael — and the passage frames their coming to Christ as the inevitable fruit of John the Baptist's preparatory ministry and the sovereign grace of God. The sermon traces how each disciple is drawn to Christ, how each immediately brings another, and how the accumulating titles given to Jesus in this section — Lamb of God, Rabbi, Messiah, Son of God, King of Israel, Son of Man — build a Christological portrait that mirrors the prologue's declaration that the Word was God. Christ's omniscience in knowing Nathanael and his royal authority in renaming Simon Peter underscore that these disciples are not choosing a teacher but being conquered by a divine Savior. The pattern of Andrew fetching Peter and Philip fetching Nathanael becomes the sermon's model for evangelism: those saved by sovereign grace become, without coercion or manipulation, propagators of that same grace.
The Problem Worse than Paralysis
The healing of the paralytic in Matthew 9:1–8 exposes a problem far deeper than physical disability: the guilt of sin before a holy God. Jesus pronounces forgiveness before He commands the man to rise, revealing that the greater miracle is not restored limbs but a cleansed soul — and that the Son of Man possesses divine authority on earth to forgive sins. The physical healing serves as demonstrable evidence of the greater, invisible reality: that Christ accomplished what His name declared He would do, saving His people from their sins. The right response to such power is not mere wonder but the fear-and-joy that drives genuine worship and sustains the believer's cheer through every temporal affliction.
Stewards of the Mystery
1 Corinthians 4:1–5 presents ministers of Christ not as celebrities or gurus but as servants and stewards entrusted with the mystery of the gospel — a role demanding faithfulness, not worldly success. Against the backdrop of the factionalism at Corinth, where worldly wisdom had infiltrated the church's evaluation of apostles, Paul asserts that the only judge competent to assess a steward's motives is the Lord himself. The sermon traces three movements: the nature of the steward's calling, the irrelevance of human verdict, and the eschatological praise that awaits the faithful at Christ's return.
Psalm 46
Psalm 46 presents God as the impenetrable refuge and omnipotent strength of His people in the midst of natural catastrophe, national upheaval, and personal affliction. The study works through four heads: the assurance of God's presence (vv. 1, 7, 11), the demonstration of God's power (vv. 2–6), the invitation to behold God's works (vv. 8–9), and the command to rest in God's sovereignty (v. 10). Covenant theology is not merely a theoretical construct but the very ground of the believer's comfort — the God of Jacob is a covenant-keeping God whose purposes cannot be frustrated by any earthly power. The congregation is called to the practical discipline of theology proper: to know God deeply so that the soul is stabilized, not paralyzed, in times of trouble.
Genesis 22:1-24
Genesis 22 presents the testing of Abraham's faith as the pinnacle of the patriarch's walk with God — a command so severe that it required Abraham to march three days to Mount Moriah to offer up Isaac, the son of promise. The narrative is read as dense with typological significance: Abraham foreshadows the Father who gives his only Son, Isaac prefigures Christ who carries his own wood and submits as a willing victim, and the substitutionary ram points forward to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The obedience of Abraham is shown not to establish his righteousness before God but to manifest the validity of the faith already credited to him as righteousness in Genesis 15, consistent with James 2 rightly read against any Roman Catholic scheme of initial faith sustained by subsequent merit. The sermon closes with a call to faithful perseverance under trial, grounded in the confidence that God provides and that Christ has borne what no angel stayed.
The Proper Motivation in Prayer
The proper motivation and manner of prayer stand at the heart of Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6:5–13. Drawing a sustained parallel between the false prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18 and the hypocrites and heathen Jesus condemns, this sermon argues that prayer is corrupted whenever it is reduced to a technique for manipulating God or impressing men. True prayer flows from faith in a sovereign, omniscient God who is not domesticated, not coercible, and not indifferent — and the Lord's Prayer is not a formula to be rattled off but a framework that reorients the believer's priorities toward God's name, kingdom, and will before personal need. The sermon calls hearers to abandon both performative religion and mercenary devotion, and to seek the face of God alone in the secret place, trusting that He hears and rewards those who draw near to Him in faith.
Free Grace Baptist Church - November 20, 2016 PM
Micah 5:2–5a announces the coming Christ in the midst of righteous covenantal judgment, and this sermon traces four features of that messianic promise: the royalty that emerges from obscurity, the eternality of the ruler who is God Most High, the divinely ordered timing of his advent, and the character of his reign as shepherd-king, universal sovereign, and bringer of true peace. The sermon sets these themes against the backdrop of Micah's announcements of doom upon disobedient Israel and Judah, demonstrating that promise and judgment are never separated in the biblical witness. Hearers are called to marvel at the wisdom of God, to exercise patience under his providential timing, and — if outside of Christ — to reckon honestly that enmity with God can only be resolved through the one who is himself peace.
The Salvation of Zacchaeus
Luke 19:1–10 presents Zacchaeus — a wealthy, corrupt chief tax collector — as a demonstration of the divine power described just verses earlier in Luke 18, where Christ declared it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. The salvation of Zacchaeus is therefore not merely a warm story of hospitality but a proof of omnipotent, sovereign grace: the effectual call goes forth, the dead sinner descends from the tree, confesses Christ as Lord, and manifests genuine repentance in the only currency that could prove a rich man's heart-change. The sermon closes with the mission statement of Luke 19:10 — 'the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost' — as the ground for evangelical confidence, joyful worship, and hope for any who have not yet come down from their own sycamore tree.
The Deity of Christ
Who is Jesus Christ, and what does Scripture mean when it confesses that He is God? This Bible study on John 1:14–18 opens a series on Christology by examining the deity of Christ from three angles: its precise meaning, the breadth of its biblical testimony, and the doctrinal affirmations necessary for confessing it rightly. The study moves from definitional clarity—ruling out Arian, adoptionist, and Mormon distortions—through exegetical survey of Christ's self-identification, apostolic statements, Old Testament Yahweh texts applied to Christ, and divine attributes predicated of Him, before concluding with four essential affirmations: His essential identity with the Father, His personal eternal distinction as the eternally begotten Son, His unchanging post-incarnation deity, and the specific role His divine nature plays in assuming, personalizing, and sustaining His human nature.
The Risen Lord and a Doubting Disciple
Thomas's demand to physically verify Christ's resurrection before believing exposes the human tendency to place conditions upon God — the creature setting terms for the Creator. This sermon works through John 20:24–31, examining Thomas's obstinacy, the patient grace of Christ who meets Thomas on his own stated terms, and the lofty confession that follows: 'My Lord and my God.' The passage closes with John's stated purpose in writing the fourth gospel — that readers would believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and so have life in his name — a purpose the risen Lord underscores in his final beatitude: blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
The Payment of the Temple Tax
Matthew 17:24–27 records a miracle found only in Matthew's Gospel, in which Jesus instructs Peter to pay the temple tax from a coin found in a fish's mouth. The passage is not incidental: it is anchored between Jesus's second passion announcement (vv. 22–23) and the teaching on offense in chapter 18, connecting the temple tax — rooted in the ransom and atonement language of Exodus 30 — to the atoning work Christ will accomplish at the cross. Jesus's exemption from the tax declares his unique divine sonship ('the sons are free'), while his willingness to pay nonetheless teaches a principle of self-denying deference that Paul draws on explicitly in 1 Corinthians 8–9. The sermon calls hearers to behold Christ as sovereign Lord over nature, as the fulfillment of every Old Testament ransom-type, and as the one who paid a debt he did not owe for sinners who could not pay it.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 3
What role did the Holy Spirit play in the earthly ministry of Christ, and why does it matter for the doctrine of salvation? Expounding 2LCF Chapter 8, Paragraph 3, this session traces the Spirit's work across every stage of the Mediator's mission: the virginal conception, the public ministry, the cross, and the resurrection. Because Christ executed his mediatorial office in his human nature — not merely by the immediate operation of his divine nature — the Father's gift of the Spirit without measure to the man Christ Jesus is essential to orthodox Christology and to the assurance that a genuinely human Mediator has met every demand of the covenant on behalf of the elect.
Hannah's Prayer: A Meditation on God's Attributes
Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2:1–10 moves from personal thanksgiving for the birth of Samuel to a theologically rich confession of God's holiness, immutability, omniscience, and sovereignty. The prayer parallels Mary's Magnificat in Luke 1 and Psalm 113, demonstrating a consistent biblical pattern of rejoicing in the Giver rather than the gift, grounding praise in the attributes of God, and culminating in prophetic expectation of the Messiah's kingdom. The study draws out six responses the prayer demands of the believer: joy in God's presence, confidence in his rule, admiration of his attributes, humility before his omniscience, security in his immutability, and submission to his government.
Divine Simplicity 2 - Of God and the Holy Trinity (2LCF 2.1-3)
What does it mean to say God is 'without parts,' and why does it matter for every other divine attribute? This second session on divine simplicity (2LCF 2.1–3) continues an expository study of the Second London Baptist Confession's opening chapter on God, working through the classical doctrine that God is not composed of physical, metaphysical, or logical parts — a doctrine historically attested from the church fathers through the Reformation and represented in every major Reformed confession. The session focuses especially on God's pure actuality (the denial of act-and-potency composition), the inseparability of God as knower, knowing, and things known, and the impossibility of God being both agent and patient — showing that divine simplicity is the ontological foundation for God's immutability, independence, absoluteness, unity, and infinite love.
The Prayer of the Early Church, Part 2
Acts 4:29–31 presents the early church's prayer as a model for Christian supplication: addressed to the sovereign Creator, Revelator, and Governor of all things, and shaped by three specific requests — the administration of justice against gospel opposition, boldness to proclaim Christ regardless of human threat, and continued confirmation of apostolic preaching through the miraculous. The sermon then traces God's threefold response: an indication of his presence in the shaking of the place, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and the provision of courage that immediately issued in bold gospel proclamation. The chief application is that Christians must follow this pattern — coming to God in humble recognition of who he is, praying for justice, courage, and vindication of the word, and trusting that God gives strength and boldness to his people rather than stirring up those things from within themselves.
The Lord's Prayer, Part 4
Matthew 6:10 — 'Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven' — is not a passive resignation but a twofold petition: that God's people would actively obey His revealed, preceptive will as disclosed in Scripture, and that they would submit patiently to His secret, decretive will even when it brings hardship and trial. The study distinguishes the decretive will (God's eternal, all-encompassing decree, which cannot be altered) from the preceptive will (the commandments and precepts God requires of His creatures), drawing on the Westminster Larger Catechism, John Owen, Thomas Watson, and Thomas Manton. Four practical applications follow for the individual — recognizing God's right to command, knowing His revealed will, obeying it, and submitting patiently to His providential ordering — together with applications for the church and for society.