We can know that God is not only omnipresent [all-present], but also He’s omniscient [all-knowing]. He KNOWS all things. Has anybody ever informed Him? No, Job 40:2 and 1 Corinthians 2:16. He knows all about us! There isn’t anything He DOESN’T know about us, Hebrews 4:12.

We can also know that God is all-powerful—omnipotent. Is He really? The critic, the atheist, the skeptic asks such questions as these: If God can do everything, can He make a rock so big that He can’t lift it? Can He make two mountains without a valley between? Can He make unfrozen ice? Can He make a four-sided triangle? Can He make a thing to be, and not be, at the same time?

Power has to do with what is possible. God can do anything that is possible, but it was God HIMSELF Who made some things IMPOSSIBLE! It was God Who made a triangle with three sides and, in doing so, it was God Who made it IMPOSSIBLE to have a four-sided triangle, because it would no longer be a triangle! That’s the way God made it! And God so made it so that you couldn’t have two mountains without a valley between them. That’s the way He made it! And He made it so you can’t have a thing to be, and not to be, at the same time. And He made it so that you can’t have unfrozen ice. That’s the way He made it! So Jeremiah 32:27 asks the question, “Is there anything too hard for God?” Well, the question was answered 10 verses before in Jeremiah 32:17, when he said, “With God, nothing is too hard.”

When God announced to Mary, that peasant girl from Nazareth, probably in her late teens, that, of all women in the world, SHE had been chosen to become the mother of the Messiah, you can imagine what must have run through that young girl’s mind! She KNEW there had never been anything like this before. But in her puzzlement, here was the angel’s answer, Luke 1:37: “With God nothing is impossible.” How could God SPEAK a world into existence? There’s the answer—“With God nothing is impossible.” How could the Christ be born of a virgin—an earthly child with a heavenly Father, a heavenly child with the earthly mother? There’s the answer—“With God nothing is impossible.” How can He “make all things work together for good to them that love God,” Romans 8:28? The answer? “With God nothing is impossible!”

In Isaiah 28:21, we’re told that God has some strange instruments, and you just think about some of the strange instruments that God has used. He could cause an iron head to swim, 2 Kings 6:6. We can’t do that. He could cause the sun to stand still, Joshua 10:12-13. We can’t do that. He could cause a donkey to speak, Numbers 22:28. He could cause Aaron’s rod to bud, Numbers 17:8. He could cause several hundred thousand people to go across the mighty sea on dry ground, Exodus 14:22. He called Moab, “My washpot,” and yet Moab was His enemy, Psalms 60:8. He said He raised up Pharaoh, another enemy, to show off all His power, Exodus 9:16. Three times, old Nebuchadnezzar, one of the most wicked tyrants that ever lived, but THREE TIMES He called him, “My servant,” Jeremiah 25:9, 27:6, and 43:10. God called that wicked tyrant, “My servant,” not, “My follower,” but, “My servant.” He called Babylon an “enemy”—and remember the Babylonian captivity that followed—but, He also called Babylon, “a golden cup in the Lord’s hand,” Jeremiah 51:7. And in Jeremiah 51:20, He called Babylon, “My battle-ax,” and He made use of it!

In Proverbs 21:1, the Bible said, “The heart of a king is in the hand of the Lord; He directs it like a watercourse wherever He pleases.” If you’re familiar with irrigation, not the sprinkler kind of the modern day, but of the trench kind, you could just dam up an irrigation trench, let it fill up, then open up a channel where you wanted, wherever you wanted, and for however long you wanted. You could just move, or direct, that channel wherever you wanted; and the heart of a king is like that in the hand of the Lord. And yet, He never did THINK for a King. He didn’t do Nebuchadnezzar’s thinking. He didn’t do Belshazzar’s thinking. He let old Hitler do his own thinking. But somehow, some way—and its marvelous to us, we don’t understand it— He can take the thinking of a King, that was diametrically opposed to His Will, and somehow, some way, make it work for His Own good.

In fact, He can even take the works of the devil and make them work for His Own good. For instance, Joseph (one of the 12 sons of Jacob) was the object of envy, and yet envy is from the devil. Solomon said, “Envy is the rottenness of the bones,” Proverbs 14:30. He also said that envy is “as cruel as the grave,” Song of Solomon [Song of Songs] 8:6. And, “where envy is there is evil work,” James 3:16. Paul says envy is “carnality,” 1 Corinthians 3, verses 1 and 4. Envy is of the devil? The devil BROUGHT envy! And yet, had Joseph not been the object of envy, the story would have been different. God didn’t bring that envy. The devil did! But God could take even the works of the devil and make them links in the chain of Divine Providence. Isn’t that marvelous?!? And then again, Joseph was mistreated by his brothers, and that is the work of the devil. He was sold by his own brothers! That’s certainly the work of the devil. He was thrown into prison, he was envied, he was falsely accused, and he was forgotten. All of those are the works of the devil. But in Romans 8:28 (which if I had a favorite passage, this would be it), Paul said, “We KNOW,”—not “we think,”— the Bible doesn’t deal in guesswork, it doesn’t deal in speculation; it deals in certainties—“we know ALL”—not some things, but ALL things! bad things! the worst things! ALL things, even the work of the devil—“ALL THINGS”—no exceptions— “work together.” He didn’t say all things are good. All things AREN’T good. Envy isn’t good, mistreatment isn’t good, lying isn’t good; but He could make all things, regardless of their nature, work together FOR good. Now, the Lord took 22 long years in Joseph’s case, but sure enough, all of those things, even the worst of things, even the most trying times—He made them all “work together for good to them that love God.” In Psalms 119:71, the Psalmist [David] said, “It’s been good that I’ve been afflicted that I may learn Thy testimonies.”