The Bible teaches that all of God is present all the time everywhere. That’s what the doctrine of God’s Omnipresence means. So, what does that mean for us practically? That’s the question Brian seeks to answer in this teaching.
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The Omnipresence of God
So far in our study of God, we have found a few answers to the question, “Who is God?” We have discovered that the Bible answers that question by telling us He is self-existent, self-sufficient, eternal, triune, and immutable.
Well, this morning, we are going to come at our subject from a different angle. This morning the question is, “Where is God?” What does the Bible say about God’s presence?
This morning our approach will be very simple? We will examine clear Biblical statements that will help us to understand God’s presence. Then, we will apply the truth that we learn to various aspects of our lives.
1. Biblical Statements About The Presence Of God
Psalm 139:7-10, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.”
David’s conclusion is that there was no place in all the world, or heaven, or the netherworld that he could go to escape the presence of God. God is in heaven, in Sheol, and in the remotest part of the sea. He is inescapable, because His presence is everywhere.
Jeremiah 23:24, “Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him?” declares the Lord. “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the Lord.
According to God, He fills not just the earth, but also the heavens. What a silly thing it is to think a person could possibly hide from Him!
1 Kings 8:27, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You; how much less this house which I have built!”
When Solomon considered the presence of God, his conclusion was that heaven and the highest heaven couldn’t contain Him, much less the temple he had built. With that in mind, how silly it is to think that God’s presence is confined to a church building on Sunday morning!
So, in summary, what have we discovered from the Bible about the presence of God? We’ve seen that wherever you go on earth or in heaven, God is there. He fills heaven and earth, and even the heaven and the highest heaven can’t contain Him. In short, the Bible teaches that God is omnipresent. That is, God is present everywhere at the same time in His fullness. All of God is present in all places at all times.
What this means, really, is that God is not bounded by space, just as He is not bounded by time. God existed before He created space. We shouldn’t think of God as having spatial dimensions. Sometimes, we consider the universe and say, “God is so big!” Yet, big is a spatial term, in which we compare one thing that takes up space to another. You can’t measure God in spatial measurements. He is not a bigger space surrounding the universe.
We should also not think that God is equal to any part of the creation or to all of it. Pantheists do this very thing. They believe that God is the universe and the universe is God. Not so. God is present everywhere in His creation, but is distinct from it. His relationship to the universe may be a little like a sponge soaked with water. The water is everywhere present in the sponge, but it is not the sponge.
So, with this Biblical understanding of the presence of God, how does it impact our lives practically? Let’s look at several ways.
2. Practical Implications from the Presence of God
Believers
- It Should Encourage You to Expect the Blessing of God
For the believer, the presence of God brings the blessing of God. This comes out very clearly in the story of Joseph. Joseph went through all kinds of difficult and painful trials. His brothers were jealous of his special relationship with his father, and out of hatred, captured and sold him into slavery to some Midianites traveling down to Egypt. When they arrived, they sold Joseph to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s officer, the captain of the bodyguard. Genesis 39:2 says, “The Lord was with Joseph, so he became a successful man.” Eventually, Joseph found favor in the sight of his master and was made the overseer over his entire house. That was great, until Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph. Even though Joseph fled the scene, she made up a lie about how he had tried to rape her. That got Joseph locked up in prison. However, the very same thing happened again. Genesis 39:21-22 says, “But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him, and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer. The chief jailer committed to Joseph’s charge all the prisoners who were in the jail; so that whatever was done there, he was responsible for it.” In both situations, because the Lord was with Joseph, blessing came into his life. He was promoted and given greater responsibility.
My friends, the omnipresence of God means that God is with you. And, if God is with you, His blessing is with you. That doesn’t mean, of course, that you won’t face trials. But it does mean that God will be with you in the midst of the trials, and He will grant you favor and blessing as you go through the trials. If God is with you, you can’t help but experience His blessings and favor in your life. Peter tells us as much in 1 Peter 4:14, “If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” Expect God’s blessing, even in great trials!
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It Should Encourage You To Commune With God
Friend, if you are a Christian, you are never alone. Of course, we all feel alone at times. We all experience times of loneliness. But your feelings are not the truth. The truth is that you are never alone.
Notice the words of Jesus in John 14:21,23, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him… If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him.” There are two beautiful promises given to the one who loves Jesus. Jesus will disclose Himself to him, and Jesus and His Father will make their abode with him. Now, to make an abode is talking about being at home with you. The Father and the Son are going to move into your soul. That is where they are going to live. That is their home. Thus, wherever you are, communion can take place, because that’s where Christ is.
Therefore, my friends, the omnipresence of God is the greatest encouragement for you to commune with God wherever you are, at any time of night or day. Do not feel like you must wait for your devotions to commune with God. Paul taught us that we are to pray without ceasing. Practice the presence of God in your life. When you are studying, pause to talk to God about your studies. When you are finding satisfaction in your work, tell the Lord about it and thank Him. When you are eating something you really enjoy, give God praise and thanks. Talk to the Lord about everything, big and small. You might as well, for He is your roommate. He and the His Father and are living in the house of your soul.
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An Encouragement to Find Your Satisfaction in God
This application comes from Hebrews 13:5-6, Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,” so that we confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?”
So, what is the logic here? The author tells us to be content with what we have, and not to be greedy or to love money. Then he says, “For…” So here is the reason that we can be content with what we have – The Lord will never desert us nor ever forsake us. In other words, God will always be present with us. The logic is, if we have the Lord, we don’t need to fear not having money. The Lord’s presence will be sufficient. He is better than money. Even if we have no money, but we have the Lord, we have everything! Even if man tries to rob us of everything we have, the Lord is our helper, and we don’t need to be afraid.
So, I guess the real question this morning is where is your true satisfaction? Is it in how much money you have in the bank, or in food, or drink, or sex, or a hobby? Sure, we derive pleasure and enjoyment from many things in life. But our ultimate and greatest satisfaction must be dwelling in the presence of the Lord. If we have that, we can lose anything else and still have everything. But if we lose the presence of the Lord and have everything else we have nothing!
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An Encouragement to Serve God
When God called Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh, Moses protested. He said in Exodus 4:10, “Please Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. The Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say.”
Moses complained that He couldn’t serve the Lord because he was not eloquent. God’s answer was that none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was that God would be with his mouth and teach him what he was to say. Maybe you feel like you can’t serve the Lord because you don’t have the gifts or talent or energy or devotion. But actually, none of that matters. If God is with you, He will equip you to do His will. Do you see how encouraging this truth is? God’s omnipresence should encourage you to serve Him and do His will, whatever that happens to be.
We see the same truth in Matthew 28:18-20 where Jesus is about to ascend to heaven and leaves His disciples with some final instructions: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Here Jesus gives His 11 disciples a colossal task – make disciples of all the nations. Go into all the world and make disciples. Go to India and the far east. Go to Africa. Go to all the regions of Palestine. Go to South Asia. Go to Rome and to Spain. And wherever you go, make disciples. I imagine the eleven might have felt like throwing up their hands in despair and saying, “Lord this is way more than we are able to do! How can we possibly obey this gigantic command?” But the secret is right there in the command – “lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” The omnipresence of God is the answer. I am with you always. Do you see that in order for you to serve God effectively all you really need is His presence, and He has promised that to you!
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An Encouragement to Worship God
This truth means that wherever you are, God is with you. And if God is with you, it is only right to worship Him. In the Old Testament, the children of Israel were accustomed to think that God dwelt in the tabernacle and then in the temple, and it was there that He should be worshiped The Samaritans believed that Mt. Gerazim was a holy place, and that God should be worshiped there. Jesus told the woman of Samaria in John 4:21, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father… But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” In other words, there are no holy places. There are no sacred spots on planet earth where God must be worshiped over other places. All places are holy, because God is there. Therefore, you can worship God while you are working, or driving in your car, or walking around the block, or singing in your prayer closet, or playing with your kids, or when ministering in China or Belarus or Mexico or Vietnam. Because He is with you wherever you go, all times and all places are suitable for worshiping the Most High God.
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An Encouragement to Pursue Obedience to God
Proverbs 15:3 says, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good.” Folks, when we sin it’s as if we walk into heaven up to the throne of God and commit that sin before His face! We must learn to live our lives as if they are lived in the presence of God, because they are! This one doctrine could be the greatest motivator to holiness that you and I will ever learn! If you were always aware that God is with you and sees you, how much sin would you allow? There are certain things we would never do if we knew others were watching us. Would a husband look at a porn site if he knew his wife was looking over his shoulder? Would a man rob a store if he knew the police were watching? This truth should provide a restraint to sin. Do we care more about people’s opinions than God’s? We need to learn to cultivate the practice of the presence of God. We need to be constantly aware that we are in God’s presence. If we were, we would pray without ceasing, meditate night and day, and set our mind on the things above. I think this is abiding in Christ and the only way to produce fruit for God.
Unbelievers:
This Truth Teaches You That You Can Never Escape From God!
My friend, if you are not saved there will come a day when you will wish you could escape the presence of God. Revelation 6:15-17 says, “Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” Hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!!! My non-Christian friend, hear those words, for you will be screaming them one day if you are not saved. The omnipresence of God is not a source of comfort and encouragement to the unsaved. It is a source of terror!
The really sobering thing is that even when unbelievers die and are cast into Hell, they will still be in the presence of God – not His gracious presence, but His wrathful presence! Listen to the words of Revelation 14:9-11, “Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” Did you really hear those words? They will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. My unconverted friend, you will never escape the presence of God! Not in this life, nor in the life to come. Come and make your peace with God. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish in the way, For His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him! Amen.
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