Why does God ask questions if He is omniscient?

Accordingly then, on the day when the sons of God, the angels, came to present themselves before Jehovah, Satan came also among them. "And Jehovah said to Satan, Whence comest thou?" He would bring it out. It could not be, of course, that God did not know; but, as in Genesis so here, we are in the atmosphere of those early days when God dealt as with children, and brought out things plainly for those who needed the plainest truth. Hence therefore we see Him elsewhere coming down to look after man. He knew perfectly well without calling after him in the garden of Eden; but it is for us that He reveals it thus. And so it grieved Him at His heart when He saw man's wickedness great in the earth. Further, if it is a city and a tower that they unite to build in the land of Shinar; if the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, He comes down to see whether things are really so bad as they seem. All things are naked and open to His eyes; but God would give us the grave lesson of never being precipitate in the judgment of evil; He knows right well how hasty we often are. Even God Himself will go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come to Him; and if not, He will know. Appearances deceive men at least, and God would teach us how to guard against mistake. He loves patience in judgment. His word implies the utmost possible care. It is the same God who afterwards ordained that the priest should judge in a suspected case of leprosy; but what waiting, and what shutting up again and again, unless there could be no mistake! What cherishings of the least hope of good! of any diminution in the evil! But what solemn sentence of judgment when the evil was all out! It is the same God everywhere; but what varied lessons on lessons for us!

It should be a great help to all who seek to shepherd the Lord's people, to those who are pastors by a divine gift, to notice the method of the Lord's dealing with these two erring saints. He Himself knew all their thoughts and the cause of their trouble, and yet He elicits by His questions what was in their minds. In other words, He led them to empty their hearts before He speaks a single word. He might have said at once, "Here am I, as risen from the dead"; but He sought first to bring them into a right state of soul for the apprehension of the truth of His resurrection.

This apparent distance, however, but gives the greater freedom for access to the disciples in the most effectual way. They had a lesson to learn which, reverently be it said, was even more necessary than any that His visible manifestation could impart. Many deeply interesting thoughts press here, which we must leave for individual study. But how exceedingly natural it all is! The Lord does not make use of His divine knowledge of what is in their hearts, but seeks to draw it out, even as God at the beginning would ask our father Adam: "Where art thou?" though surely knowing where he was.

We are told that when our Lord "asked for information, it was because He wanted it" (Matt. 15:34, John 11:34), implying thereby that He was ignorant of what He asked about. The first reference is to the feeding of the four thousand when the Master said to His disciples, "How many loaves have ye" (Matt. 15:34)? On turning to John 6:5-6, the unworthy inference is entirely and expressly exploded. There the Lord on a similar occasion said to Philip, "Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this He said to prove Him; for He Himself knew what He would do." In the other reference (John 11:34) we have the question concerning the grave of Lazarus "Where have ye laid him"? And we are asked to conclude from it that, though the Lord became aware of the death of Lazarus without human intervention and came to awake him out of sleep (John 11:11), He was yet unaware of the whereabouts of the sepulchre! We prefer to believe that as the weeping displayed His human sympathy, so the question indicated that human interest in the departed so precious to sorrowing hearts at such moments. It is, therefore, denied that there is any ground in scripture for the assertion that when He "asked for information, it was because He wanted it," that is, because of His own ignorance. It needs no study of Socrates to know that a question may be put for the sake of the questioned. Luke 24:18-19 furnishes a sufficient illustration. When Cleopas said to the Unknown One, "Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?" The Unknown One, Who was none other than the Lord Jesus, said, "What things?" not assuredly because He was ignorant of His own recent sufferings, but with a view exclusively to the instruction of the two disciples.

The answer surely is this: His ways and judgments are always right, yet He so acts as to manifest their rightness before His intelligent creation. Being omniscient, He knew that all nine plagues would not subdue the stubborn heart of Pharaoh; but the angelic principalities and powers in heavenly places are not omniscient, nor are men upon earth. So by testing Pharaoh, and giving space for repentance as plague succeeded plague with increasing severity, no one could rightly question the final stroke when it came. The same thing may be said as to the judgments of seals, trumpets and vials of the Book of Revelation, preceding the final destruction of the power of the adversaries at the glorious appearing of Christ.

Here notice, ere passing on, how solemnly precise and personal the questions are. Not, "My creatures, where are you?" but, "Adam, where art thou?" He had but one companion in sin; but this question completely isolates him, places him singly before God, and compels him to answer for himself. "I heard;" "I was afraid;" "I hid myself." Equally direct is the next inquiry. "Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?" I and thou, God and the sinner — the sinner and his sin confronting each other! And is not this still the effect of God's word, when it is felt to be His living voice? A man may be but one of a crowd, undistinguishable from his fellows in any eye but the eye of God; but when the word comes home, how does it isolate him, and make him feel as though none were present but God and he, and as though there were nothing for him to gaze upon under the eye of God but the sin on which that eye rests, and the conviction of which is being forced home on the conscience! "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." "Come, see a man who told me all that ever I did."

Remark also the two solemn questions of God: "Where art thou?" — man's own state apart from God — intercourse with Him lost; and, "What hast thou done?" — sin committed in that state; of which the consummation and full witness is in the rejection and death of the Lord.

Genesis 3:9. What a question for Adam to have to answer! How it intimated that he was not where he had been wont to be! Why the difference? Why not meet, as he had been accustomed to meet, the One who deigned thus to visit the creatures of His power and love? No change had taken place with Him. What had befallen Adam, that he should hide himself at His approach? How wondrous the ways of God! Our first parents had rebelled — had sought by their own devices to hide their shame — and now were attempting to hide themselves from God. And yet He approaches — He speaks — not to accuse or to upbraid, but to inquire. There is nothing unusual in His approach; the change was in those who flee and hide themselves, instead of adoringly welcoming His condescension, as in moments past; and it is for them to account for the change. "Adam, where art thou?"

But, blessed be God, there is something beside the conscience of what I am. There is the revelation of what He is; and this latter the fall of man really brought out. God had not revealed Himself, fully, in creation: He had shown "His eternal power and Godhead," Theiotes but He had not told out all the deep secrets of His nature and character. Wherefore Satan made a grand mistake in coming to meddle with God's creation. He only proved to be the instrument of his own eternal defeat, and confusion, and "his violent dealing" shall for ever "come down upon his own pate." His lie Only gave occasion for the displays of the full 'truth in reference to God. Creation never could have brought out what God was. There was infinitely more in Him than power and wisdom. There was love, mercy, holiness, righteousness, goodness, tenderness, long-suffering. Where could all these be displayed, in a world of sinners? God, at the first, came to create; and, then, when the serpent presumed to meddle with creation, God came down to save. This brought out in the first words uttered by the Lord God, after man's fall. "And the Lord God called to Adam, and said to him, Where art thou?" This question proved two things. It proved that man was lost, and that God had come to seek. It proved man's sin, and God's grace. "Where art thou?" Amazing faithfulness? Amazing grace Faithfulness, to disclose, in the very question itself, the truth as to man's condition: grace, to bring out, in the very fact of God's asking such a question, the truth as to His character and attitude, in reference to fallen man. Man was lost; but God had come down to look for him — to bring him out of his hiding place, behind the trees of the garden, in order that, in the happy confidence of faith, he might find a hiding place in Himself. This was grace. To create man out of the dust of the ground was power; but to seek man in his lost estate was grace. But who can utter all that is wrapped up in the idea of God's being a seeker? God seeking a sinner? What could the Blessed One have seen in man, to lead Him to seek for him? Just what the shepherd saw in the lost sheep; or what the woman saw in the lost piece of silver; or what the father saw in the lost son. The sinner is valuable to God; but why he should be so eternity alone will unfold.

The questions which are put to man by God are very remarkable, as shewing the position in which man was, whether in the first Adam, or when put by Jesus in the second - for it is this difference which is the wonder. First, God says, "Adam, where art thou?" - he was away from God - He had to ask where he was, i.e., to put his real state to Adam's conscience. Adam had hid himself; he was naked, and could not, dared not appear. Away from God, naked - but the question said he was separated from God, and that by his own conscience. Terrible, horrible condition! Such was what the first question brought out.