Holy spirit omnipresence

HOLY SPIRIT OMNIPRESENCE
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
PSALM 139:7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Omnipresence A FearAnd A Satisfaction
Psalm139:7-10
R. Tuck
Calvin says, "The word'Spirit' is not put here simply for the power of God, as
commonly in the Scriptures, but for his mind and understanding." Milton, as
a young man, traveled much abroad. Years afterwards he thus expressed
himself: "I again take Godto witness that in all places where so many things
are consideredlawful, I lived sound and untouched from all profligacyand
vice, having this thought perpetually with me - that though I might escape the
eyes of men, I certainly could not the eyes of God."
I. OMNIPRESENCEA FEAR. This term is not here used in a sense that
applies to the ungodly man. Indeed, such a man will in no way apprehend or
encourage the idea of God's omnipresence;it has no practicalreality to him.
The omnipresence of God is a religious man's idea, and we have to think of its
influence upon him. It fills him with a holy fear, which is a mingling of awe
and reverence and anxiety. That presence brings the perpetual call to
worship; it keeps before us the claims of obedience;and it shows us
continually the model of righteousness. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father in heaven is perfect." It has been said that a "Christian should go
nowhere if he cannottake God with him;" but that presence wouldmake him
afraid to go to many places where he does go;and it is a weaknessofChristian
life that the holy fear of the sense of God's presence is not more worthily
realized. The fear to offend or grieve is a holy force working for righteousness.
II. OMNIPRESENCEA SATISFACTION. Whenwe really love a person, and
are quite sure of their response to our love, we want to be always with them.

Separationis pain; presence is rest and satisfaction. And it is in the fullest
sense thus with God. "We love him because he first loved us." And since there
is this responsive love, we cannotbe happy awayfrom him; and we are
permitted to think that he cannot be happy awayfrom us. And so the psalmist
says, "I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever, to behold the beauty of
the Lord." And the Lord Jesus satisfies the longing of his people with his
promise, "Lo, I am with you all the days." - R.T.
Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit?
Psalm139:7-10
The omnipresence of God
Bishop Hopkins.
: —
I. LAY DOWN SOME POSITIONS.
1. God is intimately and essentiallyin all parts and places of the world. One of
the heathen, being askedto give a description of what God was, tells us most
admirably, "God is a sphere, whose centre is every-where, and whose
circumference is nowhere":a raisedapprehension of the Divine nature in a
heathen! And another, being demanded what God was, made answer, that
"Godis an Infinite Point";than which nothing canbe said more (almost) or
truer, to declare this omnipresence ofGod. It is reported of Heraclitus the
philosopher, when his friend came to visit him, being in an old rotten hovel,
"Come in, come in," saith he, "for God is here." God is in the meanestcottage
as well as in the stateliestpalace;for Godis everywhere presentand sees all
things.
2. God is not only present in the world, but He is infinitely existent also
without the world, and beyond all things but Himself (1 Kings 8:27; Isaiah
66:1, 2).
3. As God exists everywhere, so all and whole God exists everywhere, because
God is indivisible.
II. RATIONAL DEMONSTRATIONS.
1. God is present everywhere.
(1)From His unchangeableness.
(2)From His preservationof all things in their beings.
2. But God exists not only in the world, but infinitely beyond the world also.

(1)From the infiniteness of His nature and essence.
(2)From the infiniteness of His perfections.
(3)From His almighty power.
(4)From His eternity.
III. ANSWER SOME OBJECTIONS.
1. These places whichspeak ofgoing to, and departing from, places, seemto
oppose God's ubiquity, because motionis inconsistentwith God's
omnipresence (Genesis 18:21;Habakkuk 3:3). I answer:These and the like
Scriptures are not to be taken literally, but as accommodate to cur capacity
and conception, evenas parents, when they speak to their little children, will
sometimes lisp and babble in their language;so God oftentimes condescends
to us in speaking our language for the declaring of those things which are far
above cur reach.
2. The Scripture tells us that hereafterin heaven we shall see Godas He is:
but is not that impossible? I answer, Such Scriptures are not to be understood
as if the capacities ofangels, much less of men, are, or ever shall be, wide and
capacious enoughto containthe infinite greatnessofGod. No, His
omnipresence is not comprehended by angels themselves, norshall be by man
for ever; but it must be understood comparatively. Our vision and sight of
God here is but through a glass darkly; but in heaven it shall be with so much
more brightness and clearnessthat, in comparisonof the obscure and
glimmering way whereby we know God here, it may be calleda seeing of Him
face to face, and knowing Him as we are knownby Him.
3. It may seemno small disparagementto Godto be everywhere present.
What! for the glorious majestyof God to be present in such vile and filthy
places as are here upon earth? To this I answer —(1) God doth not think it
any disparagementto Him, nor think it unworthy of Him, to know and make
all these which we call vile and filthy places;why, then, should we think it
unworthy of Him to be present there?(2)God is a Spirit, and is not capable of
any pollution or defilement from any vile or filthy things. The sunbeams are
no more tainted by shining on a dunghill than they are by shining on a bed of
spices.(3)The vilest things that are have still a being that is goodin their own
kind, and as well pleasing to God as those things which we put a greatervalue
and esteemupon.(4) It reflects no more dishonour upon God to be present
with the vilest creatures than to be presentwith the noblest and highest,
because the angels are at an infinite distance from God. There is a greater
disproportion betweenGod and the angels than there is betweenthe vilest
worm and an angel;all are at an infinite distance to His glory and majesty.

IV. APPLICATION.
1. Is God thus infinitely present everywhere, and thus in and with all His
creatures, then what an encouragementis here unto prayer. The voice in
prayer is necessary —(1)As it is that which God requires should be employed
in His service, for this is the greatend why our tongues were given to us, that
by them we might bless and serve God (James 3:9).(2) When in private it may
be a help and means to raise up our own affections and devotions, then the
voice is requisite, keeping it still within the bounds of decencyor privacy.(3)
In our joining also with others, it is a help likewise to raise and quicken their
affections;otherwise, were it not for these three reasons, the voice is no more
necessaryto make known our wants to God than it is to make them known to
our own hearts;for God is always in us and with us, and knows what we have
need of before we ask it.
2. As the considerationofGod's omnipresence should encourage us in prayer,
as knowing that God certainly hears us, so it should affectus with a holy awe
and reverence ofGod in all our prayers and duties, and in the whole course of
our lives and conversations. Certainlyit is an excellentmeditation to prepare
our hearts to duty, and to compose them in duty, to be much pondering the
omnipresence of God, to think that I am with God, He is present in the room
with me, even in the congregationwith me, and likewise in my closet, and in
all my converse and dealings in the world. How canit be possible for that man
to be frothy and vain that keeps this thought alive in his heart?
(Bishop Hopkins.)
Omnipresence of God
Expository Outlines.
: —
I. THE IMPORTANT TRUTHWHICH IS HERE SET FORTH.
II. THE STRIKING AND EMPHATIC MANNER IN WHICH THIS GREAT
TRUTH IS HERE PRESENTED(ver. 7).
III. THE EFFECTSWHICH THE CONTEMPLATIONOF THIS SUBLIME
THEME SHOULD PRODUCE.
1. Let the believer draw from it the consolationwhichit is so peculiarly
adapted to impart. "Fearnot, for I am with you."
2. The omnipresence of God is adapted also to admonish.
3. This subjectis full of terror to the ungodly.

(Expository Outlines.)
The encompassing, all-pervading God
J. O. Greenhough, M. A.
: — This psalm is as near an approach to Pantheism as the Bible ever gets;yet
it is wholly distinct from Pantheism. It does not make everything a part of
God, but insists that Godis in everything and every place. The writer feels
Him in every movement of the circling air, and hears Him in every sound.
God is here, and there, and everywhere, in the heights and in the depths, in
the darkness and the light, filling all star-lit spaces andsearching eachhuman
heart.
I. THE SPIRIT AND PRESENCEWHICH NO MAN CAN ESCAPE. It is a
bit of his own story. He had not always found peace and joy in the
overshadowing ofDivine love. There had been a load upon his conscience, and
torturing guilt in his heart. He had endeavoured to run awayfrom the wrath
which his sin had provoked, from the unsleeping justice which pursued him,
from the witness of God in his own reproaching conscience. He had tried to
silence the rebuking voice, to quiet the disturbing fears, to forgethis own
thoughts and hide himself from himself. And the effort had been vain,
impotent, impossible. Everywhere he heard the still small voice, and felt the
Unseen Presence. Everywhere Godmakes Himself felt by men, in kindness, if
possible, and if not, then in wrath. Men must believe in Him; they cannot help
it. Kill their religiona hundred times, and it has a hundred resurrections. It is
in all men. It is the fire which never goes quite out. Atheism is never more
than a wave on the sea of humanity, which rises, falls, and quickly disappears.
God will not let Himself be denied and forgotten. He speaks in too many
voices for that; through nature and conscience, sins, penalties, and guilty
terrors; through life's changes, uncertainties, sorrows, andmisfortunes;
through pain, and death, and human gladness, andhuman mystery; through
returning seasons andunerring laws;through the works of righteousness and
the wagesofiniquity, He is ever about us. His presence is in every heart, and
He laughs at the folly which thinks to escape Him.
II. REST AND CONFIDENCEAND JOY WHICH HIS SPIRIT AND
PRESENCE GIVE to those who recognize Him every-where, and walk in His
light and love. If a man aspires after goodness,he will wish to be always near
the one Source of goodness.If he is making a brave fight againsthis sins, he
will always wantto feelthe mighty hand upon him from which alone comes
victory; and if he is worn and worried with the dark problems and mysteries

of life, nothing will satisfy him but the thought that Divine light and wisdom
are moving and working in all that darkness. Getto feelthat His light and
wisdom are everywhere, that His love, pity, and forbearance are everywhere,
that His providential care is everywhere, that His earis everywhere open to
your prayers, and His mercy is everywhere on the wing to bring you answers,
and then your remotestthought will be how you canescape Him. Your every-
day cry will be, "Come nearer, make Thyself felt. Compass me about, hold me
fast." It is the all-pervading presence of Godthat makes life bearable to him,
and the one thing which makes the Christian life possible. If God were not in
your place of business your hearts would grow hard as nails. If God were not
in your homes your sweetestaffections wouldbecome stale and sour. If God
were not in your places of temptation you would never enter them without
falling. If the Spirit of God did not visit you in the thronging streets and the
giddy world you would degenerate into coarse worldliness. If He were not
everywhere, painting Himself afreshon your hearts and minds, you would
lose all sense of His beauty. If He were absent from your scenes ofsorrow, if
you did not feel His hand holding yours in hours of pain, and by the death-bed
side, you would be overcome with fear or die of heart-break. We live because
He lives everywhere. We hope because He revives His promises in us
everywhere.
(J. O. Greenhough, M. A.)
The cry of the sage, the sinner, and the saint
Homilist.
: — Look at this language as used —
I. By the SAGE The philosopher has askeda thousand times, is God
everywhere? Or is there a district in immensity where He is not? Taking the
language as his question, he assumes —
1. That He has a "presence," a personalexistence:that He is as distinct from
the universe as the musician from his music, as the painter from his pictures,
as the soul from the body.
2. That His presence is detectedas far as his observations extend. He discovers
Him far up as the most powerful telescope canreach, and down in the most
infinitesimal forms of life: and he concludes that He is presentwhere the eye
has never reached, and where the imagination has never travelled.
II. By the SINNER. In the mouth of the sinner this language means —

1. Thy presence is an evil. His presence makes the hell of the damned. The
rays of His effulgent purity are the flames in which corrupt spirits burn and
writhe.
2. Escape fromThy presence is an impossibility.
III. By the SAINT. In the impossibility of escape I rejoice;for "In Thy
presence there is fulness of joy," etc.
(Homilist.)
The omnipresent God
A. Mackennal, D. D.
I. GOD IN ALL MODES OF PERSONALEXISTENCE. Theseare all
coveredby the contrastbetweenheaven and hell, than which no words would
suggesta completercontrastto every thoughtful Hebrew. Heaven was the
scene ofthe highest personalactivity; it was the abode of Him with whom was
"the fountain of life"; there dwelt cherubim and seraphim, angels and
archangels, allrejoicing in the highest exercise ofthought and the noblest
powers of service. Hell — or the grave, the place of the dead — was the end of
thought, the cessationof employment, the abode of silence and corruption.
And yet, dark and lonesome as was the thought of dying, there was this one
ray of comfort in the prospect — that death was of God's appointment; as
much as the heaven of His own abode, it was beneaththe rule of God. There
are times when to us, too, there is unspeakable restin the assurancethat God
is in the appointment of death as truly, though not as clearly, as He is in His
own heaven. How many who dreaded the desolationof bereavementhave
found that God is there. They are not alone, for the Father, the Saviour, the
Comforter, is with them; the discipline of bereavementis as Divine as the
sweetertraining of companionship. Did we but see whatnoble issues have
been wrought for men by death; how it has refined affectionand chastened
passion, and given scope to patience, and cultured hope; how it has
surrounded men's pathway with angels, andbreathed a saintlier spirit into
common lives; we should gain a nobler vision than before of the presence and
meaning of God in death.
II. GOD IN THE YET UNTRODDENWAYS OF HUMAN HISTORY. The
ninth verse gives us an image of the psalmist, standing by the sea-shore,
watching as the rising sun broadens the horizon, and brings into view an islet
here and there, which, by catching the sight, serves but to lengthen still more
the indefinite expanse beyond. The fancy is suggested, halfof longing, half of

dread, what would it be to fly until he reachedthe point where now the
farthest ray is resting, to gaze upon a sea still shoreless, orto land in an
unknown region and find himself a solitary there? But he is not daunted by
the vision; one presence wouldstill be with him. Vast as the world may be, it is
containedwithin the vasterGod; his fancy cannot wanderwhere he would be
unguarded and unled. He still could worship; he still could rest. How
wonderfully history confirms faith. The lands towards which the psalmist
strained his wondering vision have come at length into the recordof
civilization. Even while he was musing God was preparing the countries in
which, in due time, the Gospelwas to develop, and the races by whom it
should be spread. Could he now take the wings of the morning, and dwell in
the uttermost parts of the sea, he would find God here, revealedin the
progress ofChristendom, and the force of Westerncivilization. When Christ
sent the apostles on their untrodden wayHe gave them a blank page on which
to write their history. He did not revealto them "the times and the seasons";
He only assuredthem that wherever they went He was with them. All was
obscure excepttheir faith that, as seedwill grow, and leaven will spread, so
the kingdom of God should advance. The presence ofGod in human history
meant the reign of Christ in human history; where have the faithful gone and
not found their God?
III. GOD IN THE PERPLEXITIES OF OUR EXPERIENCE.Mostmen
probably look on spiritual conflict at first as a necessaryevil; something
which it were wellif we could avoid, but which, since we cannot avoid it, we
must go through with what heart we may; and they look to God to keep, and,
in due time, to deliver them. But when, in the review of their struggles, they
perceive what progress they have made by reasonof it; how it has enriched
their character, not only strengthening their piety, but also enlarging its scope
and adding to their graces;when they find what a wise and benignant
influence it has enabled them to exercise;what powerof comfort it has given
them, they begin to see that the conflict itself was of Divine appointment, and
to cherish a larger, nobler view of God's purpose and of man's discipline.
They perceive that the obscurity, equally with the clearness,ofa spiritual
experience is ordained of God.
(A. Mackennal, D. D.)
The present God
A. P. Peabody, D. D.

: — There was something almost to be envied in the simple, easy, undoubting
faith in the ever-presentSpirit of God that breathes in the devotional portions
of the Old Testament. Sciencehadnot begun to be. Men saw and felt
circumambient force on every side, and with the instinctive wisdom of their
ignorance this force was to them the varied yet immutable God, Himself
unchanged, yet in manifestation ever new. We think ourselves, in point of
intelligence, at a heaven-wide distance in advance of them. But has not our
ignorance grownfasterthan our knowledge — as every new field that we
explore in part abuts upon regions which we cannot explore, and every solved
problem starts others which cannot be solved? If science has everbeen
antagonistic to faith, it has not been by superseding it, or even by interfering
with it, but simply because the new knowledge ofnature that has flashed with
such suddenness and rapidity upon our generationhas so filled and taskedthe
minds of not a few, that they have ignored for the time the regions where light
still fails and faith is the only guide. But there are among the grand
generalizations ofrecent science those thathelp our faith, and furnish
analogies thatare almostdemonstrations for some of the most sacredtruths of
religion. Among these truths is that suggestedby our text — the presence of
the Divine Spirit with and in the human soul. Now, to the soul of man, bathed
in this omnipresence, receiving all thought and knowledge throughits
mediation, living, moving, and having its being in it, what canbe more easily
conceivable than that there should also be conveyedto it thoughts,
impressions, intimations, that flow directly from the Fatherof our spirits? It
has been virtually the faith of greatand goodmen in all time. They have felt
and owneda prompting, a motive power, from beyond their own souls, and
from above the ranks of their fellow-men. Inspiration has been a universal
idea under every form of culture, has been believed, sought, recognized,
obeyed. At all other points there has been divergence;as to this, but one mind
and one voice. You could translate the language of Socratesconcerning his
demon into the most orthodox Christian phraseologywithout adding or
omitting a single trait, and not even St. Paul was more confident than he of
being led by the Spirit. But there is no need of citing authorities. Who of us is
there that has not had thoughts borne in upon him which he could not trace to
any associationorinfluence on his own plane, seedling thoughts, perhaps,
which have yielded harvest for the angel-reapers, strengthequal to the day in
the conflictwith temptation, comfort in sorrow, visions of heaven lifted for the
moment above the horizon like a mirage in the desert? These experienceshave
been multiplied in proportion to our receptivity. As the messageonthe wires
is lost if there be none to watchor listen at the terminus, so at the terminus of
the spirit-wire there must be the listening soul, the inward voice, "Speak,

Lord, for Thy servant heareth." But while we thus acknowledgeGodin the
depths of our ownconsciousness, canwe not equally feel His presence in the
glory, beauty, joy-giving ministry of His works? Are they net richer to our
eyes every year? Has it not happened to us, overand over again, to say,
"Spring, or summer, was never so beautiful before"? This is true every year
to the recipient soul. Notthat there is any added physical charm or visible
glory; but it is the Spirit of our Father that glows and beams upon us, that
pours itself into our souls;and if we have grownby His nurture, there is in us
more and more of spiritual life that canbe irradiated, gladdened, lifted in
praise and love, with every recurring phase of the outward world. Is not this
ordained, that the vision of Him in whom are all the archetypes of beauty, and
whose embodied thought is in its every phase, may be kept ever fresh and
vivid — that there may be over new stimulants to adoration and praise — that
with the changing garb of nature the soul may renew her garment of grateful
joy, her singing robes of thanksgiving to Him who has made everything
beautiful in its time? But God is still nearerto us than in the world around us.
"In Him we live, and move, and have our being." When I reflect on the
mysteries of my own being, on the complex organism, not one of whose
numberless members or processescanbe derangedwithout suffering or peril;
when I considermy own confessedpowerlessnessas to the greaterpart of this
earthly tabernacle in which I dwell, and the narrow limits of my seeming
poweras to the part of it which I can control; when I see the gates and pitfalls
of death by and over which I am daily led in safety; when I resign all charge of
myself every night, and no earthly watch is kept over my unconscious repose
— oh, I know that omnipotence alone can be my keeper, that the
unslumbering Shepherd guides my waking and guards my sleeping hours —
that His life feeds mine, courses in my veins, renews my wasting strength, rolls
back the death-shadows as day by day they gatherover me. Equally, in the
exercise ofthought and emotion, must I ownHis presence and providence.
(A. P. Peabody, D. D.)
Universal presence of God:
R. Venting.
The laws and forms of nature are only the methods of God's agency, the
habits of His existence and the turns of His thought. Eachdewdrop holds an
oracle, eachbud a revelation, and everything we see is a signalof His
presence, presentbut out of sight. Every colour of the dawning or the dying
light; every aspectof the changing seasons and all the mysteries of electricity

make us feelthe eternalpresence of God. "Shores," says one, "onwhich man
has never yet landed lie paved with shells;fields never trod are carpetedwith
flowers;seas where man has never dived are inlaid with pearls; caverns never
mined are radiant with gems of finest forms and purest lustre. But still God is
there,"
(R. Venting.)
The Biblical Illustrator
Verses 7-10
Psalms 139:7-10
Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit?
The omnipresence of God
I. Lay down some positions.
1. God is intimately and essentiallyin all parts and places of the world. One of
the heathen, being askedto give a description of what God was, tells us most
admirably, “God is a sphere, whose centre is every-where, and whose
circumference is nowhere”:a raisedapprehension of the Divine nature in a
heathen! And another, being demanded what God was, made answer, that
“Godis an Infinite Point”;than which nothing can be said more (almost) or
truer, to declare this omnipresence ofGod. It is reported of Heraclitus the
philosopher, when his friend came to visit him, being in an old rotten hovel,
“Come in, come in,” saith he, “for God is here.” God is in the meanestcottage
as well as in the stateliestpalace;for Godis everywhere presentand sees all
things.
2. God is not only present in the world, but He is infinitely existent also
without the world, and beyond all things but Himself (1 Kings 8:27; Isaiah
66:1-2).
3. As God exists everywhere, so all and whole God exists everywhere, because
God is indivisible.
II. Rationaldemonstrations.
1. God is present everywhere.

2. But God exists not only in the world, but infinitely beyond the world also.
III. Answer some objections.
1. These places whichspeak ofgoing to, and departing from, places, seemto
oppose God’s ubiquity, because motion is inconsistentwith God’s
omnipresence (Genesis 18:21;Habakkuk 3:3). I answer:These and the like
Scriptures are not to be taken literally, but as accommodate to cur capacity
and conception, evenas parents, when they speak to their little children, will
sometimes lisp and babble in their language;so God oftentimes condescends
to us in speaking our language for the declaring of those things which are far
above cur reach.
2. The Scripture tells us that hereafterin heaven we shall see Godas He is:
but is not that impossible? I answer, Such Scriptures are not to be understood
as if the capacities ofangels, much less of men, are, or ever shall be, wide and
capacious enoughto containthe infinite greatnessofGod. No, His
omnipresence is not comprehended by angels themselves, norshall be by man
for ever; but it must be understood comparatively. Our vision and sight of
God here is but through a glass darkly; but in heaven it shall be with so much
more brightness and clearnessthat, in comparisonof the obscure and
glimmering way whereby we know God here, it may be calleda seeing of Him
face to face, and knowing Him as we are knownby Him.
3. It may seemno small disparagementto Godto be everywhere present.
What! for the glorious majestyof God to be present in such vile and filthy
places as are here upon earth? To this I answer--
IV. Application.
1. Is God thus infinitely present everywhere, and thus in and with all His
creatures, then what an encouragementis here unto prayer. The voice in
prayer is necessary--
2. As the considerationofGod’s omnipresence should encourage us in prayer,
as knowing that God certainly hears us, so it should affectus with a holy awe
and reverence ofGod in all our prayers and duties, and in the whole course of
our lives and conversations. Certainlyit is an excellentmeditation to prepare
our hearts to duty, and to compose them in duty, to be much pondering the
omnipresence of God, to think that I am with God, He is present in the room
with me, even in the congregationwith me, and likewise in my closet, and in
all my converse and dealings in the world. How canit be possible for that man

to be frothy and vain that keeps this thought alive in his heart? (Bishop
Hopkins.)
Omnipresence of God
I. The important truth which is here setforth.
II. The striking and emphatic manner in which this greattruth is here
presented(verse 7).
III. The effects which the contemplation of this sublime theme should
produce.
1. Let the believer draw from it the consolationwhichit is so peculiarly
adapted to impart. “Fearnot, for I am with you.”
2. The omnipresence of God is adapted also to admonish.
3. This subjectis full of terror to the ungodly. (Expository Outlines.)
The encompassing, all-pervading God
This psalm is as near an approach to Pantheismas the Bible evergets;yet it is
wholly distinct from Pantheism. It does not make everything a part of God,
but insists that God is in everything and every place. The writer feels Him in
every movement of the circling air, and hears Him in every sound. God is
here, and there, and everywhere, in the heights and in the depths, in the
darkness and the light, filling all star-lit spacesand searching eachhuman
heart.
I. The spirit and presence which no man can escape. Itis a bit of his own
story. He had not always found peace and joy in the overshadowing ofDivine
love. There had been a load upon his conscience, andtorturing guilt in his
heart. He had endeavoured to run away from the wrath which his sin had
provoked, from the unsleeping justice which pursued him, from the witness of
God in his own reproaching conscience.He had tried to silence the rebuking
voice, to quiet the disturbing fears, to forget his own thoughts and hide
himself from himself. And the effort had been vain, impotent, impossible.
Everywhere he heard the still small voice, and felt the Unseen Presence.
Everywhere God makes Himself felt by men, in kindness, if possible, and if
not, then in wrath. Men must believe in Him; they cannothelp it. Kill their

religion a hundred times, and it has a hundred resurrections. It is in all men.
It is the fire which never goes quite out. Atheism is never more than a wave on
the sea ofhumanity, which rises, falls, and quickly disappears. Godwill not let
Himself be denied and forgotten. He speaks in too many voices for that;
through nature and conscience, sins, penalties, and guilty terrors; through
life’s changes, uncertainties, sorrows, andmisfortunes; through pain, and
death, and human gladness, and human mystery; through returning seasons
and unerring laws;through the works ofrighteousness and the wages of
iniquity, He is ever about us. His presence is in every heart, and He laughs at
the folly which thinks to escape Him.
II. Restand confidence and joy which His Spirit and presence give to those
who recognize Him every-where, and walk in His light and love. If a man
aspires after goodness, he will wish to be always near the one Source of
goodness.If he is making a brave fight againsthis sins, he will always wantto
feel the mighty hand upon him from which alone comes victory; and if he is
worn and worried with the dark problems and mysteries of life, nothing will
satisfy him but the thought that Divine light and wisdom are moving and
working in all that darkness. Getto feel that His light and wisdom are
everywhere, that His love, pity, and forbearance are everywhere, that His
providential care is everywhere, that His ear is everywhere open to your
prayers, and His mercy is everywhere on the wing to bring you answers, and
then your remotestthought will be how you canescape Him. Your every-day
cry will be, “Come nearer, make Thyself felt. Compass me about, hold me
fast.” It is the all-pervading presence ofGod that makes life bearable to him,
and the one thing which makes the Christian life possible. If God were not in
your place of business your hearts would grow hard as nails. If God were not
in your homes your sweetestaffections wouldbecome stale and sour. If God
were not in your places of temptation you would never enter them without
falling. If the Spirit of God did not visit you in the thronging streets and the
giddy world you would degenerate into coarse worldliness. If He were not
everywhere, painting Himself afreshon your hearts and minds, you would
lose all sense of His beauty. If He were absent from your scenes ofsorrow, if
you did not feel His hand holding yours in hours of pain, and by the death-bed
side, you would be overcome with fear or die of heart-break. We live because
He lives everywhere. We hope because He revives His promises in us
everywhere. (J. O. Greenhough, M. A.)
The cry of the sage, the sinner, and the saint
Look at this language as used--

I. By the sage The philosopherhas askeda thousand times, is God
everywhere? Or is there a district in immensity where He is not? Taking the
language as his question, he assumes--
1. That He has a “presence,” a personalexistence:that He is as distinct from
the universe as the musician from his music, as the painter from his pictures,
as the soul from the body.
2. That His presence is detectedas far as his observations extend. He discovers
Him far up as the most powerful telescope canreach, and down in the most
infinitesimal forms of life: and he concludes that He is presentwhere the eye
has never reached, and where the imagination has never travelled.
II. By the sinner. In the mouth of the sinner this language means--
1. Thy presence is an evil. His presence makes the hell of the damned. The
rays of His effulgent purity are the flames in which corrupt spirits burn and
writhe.
2. Escape fromThy presence is an impossibility.
III. By the saint. In the impossibility of escape I rejoice;for “In Thy presence
there is fulness of joy,” etc. (Homilist.)
The omnipresent God
I. God in all modes of personalexistence. These are allcoveredby the contrast
betweenheaven and hell, than which no words would suggesta completer
contrastto every thoughtful Hebrew. Heaven was the scene ofthe highest
personalactivity; it was the abode of Him with whom was “the fountain of
life”; there dwelt cherubim and seraphim, angels and archangels, allrejoicing
in the highest exercise ofthought and the noblest powers of service. Hell--or
the grave, the place of the dead--was the end of thought, the cessationof
employment, the abode of silence and corruption. And yet, dark and lonesome
as was the thought of dying, there was this one ray of comfort in the prospect-
-that death was of God’s appointment; as much as the heaven of His own
abode, it was beneath the rule of God. There are times when to us, too, there is
unspeakable restin the assurance thatGod is in the appointment of death as
truly, though not as clearly, as He is in His own heaven. How many who
dreaded the desolationofbereavement have found that God is there. They are

not alone, for the Father, the Saviour, the Comforter, is with them; the
discipline of bereavementis as Divine as the sweetertraining of
companionship. Did we but see whatnoble issues have been wrought for men
by death; how it has refined affectionand chastenedpassion, and given scope
to patience, and cultured hope; how it has surrounded men’s pathway with
angels, and breathed a saintlier spirit into common lives; we should gain a
nobler vision than before of the presence and meaning of Godin death.
II. God in the yet untrodden ways of human history. The ninth verse gives us
an image of the psalmist, standing by the sea-shore, watching as the rising sun
broadens the horizon, and brings into view an islet here and there, which, by
catching the sight, serves but to lengthen still more the indefinite expanse
beyond. The fancy is suggested, half of longing, half of dread, what would it be
to fly until he reachedthe point where now the farthestray is resting, to gaze
upon a sea still shoreless, orto land in an unknown regionand find himself a
solitary there? But he is not daunted by the vision; one presence would still be
with him. Vast as the world may be, it is containedwithin the vaster God; his
fancy cannot wander where he would be unguarded and unled. He still could
worship; he still could rest. How wonderfully history confirms faith. The lands
towards which the psalmist strained his wondering vision have come at length
into the record of civilization. Even while he was musing God was preparing
the countries in which, in due time, the Gospelwas to develop, and the races
by whom it should be spread. Could he now take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, he would find God here, revealed
in the progress ofChristendom, and the force of Westerncivilization. When
Christ sentthe apostles ontheir untrodden way He gave them a blank page on
which to write their history. He did not revealto them “the times and the
seasons”;He only assuredthem that whereverthey went He was with them.
All was obscure excepttheir faith that, as seedwill grow, and leavenwill
spread, so the kingdom of God should advance. The presence ofGod in
human history meant the reign of Christ in human history; where have the
faithful gone and not found their God?
III. God in the perplexities of our experience. Mostmen probably look on
spiritual conflict at first as a necessaryevil; something which it were well if we
could avoid, but which, since we cannot avoid it, we must go through with
what heart we may; and they look to God to keep, and, in due time, to deliver
them. But when, in the review of their struggles, they perceive what progress
they have made by reasonofit; how it has enriched their character, not only

strengthening their piety, but also enlarging its scope and adding to their
graces;when they find what a wise and benignant influence it has enabled
them to exercise;what powerof comfort it has given them, they begin to see
that the conflict itself was of Divine appointment, and to cherish a larger,
nobler view of God’s purpose and of man’s discipline. They perceive that the
obscurity, equally with the clearness, ofa spiritual experience is ordained of
God. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)
The present God
There was something almostto be envied in the simple, easy, undoubting faith
in the ever-presentSpirit of God that breathes in the devotional portions of
the Old Testament. Science hadnot begun to be. Men saw and felt
circumambient force on every side, and with the instinctive wisdom of their
ignorance this force was to them the varied yet immutable God, Himself
unchanged, yet in manifestation ever new. We think ourselves, in point of
intelligence, at a heaven-wide distance in advance of them. But has not our
ignorance grownfasterthan our knowledge--aseverynew field that we
explore in part abuts upon regions which we cannot explore, and every solved
problem starts others which cannot be solved? If science has everbeen
antagonistic to faith, it has not been by superseding it, or even by interfering
with it, but simply because the new knowledge ofnature that has flashed with
such suddenness and rapidity upon our generationhas so filled and taskedthe
minds of not a few, that they have ignored for the time the regions where light
still fails and faith is the only guide. But there are among the grand
generalizations ofrecent science those thathelp our faith, and furnish
analogies thatare almostdemonstrations for some of the most sacredtruths of
religion. Among these truths is that suggestedby our text--the presence of the
Divine Spirit with and in the human soul. Now, to the soul of man, bathed in
this omnipresence, receiving all thought and knowledge through its mediation,
living, moving, and having its being in it, what canbe more easilyconceivable
than that there should also be conveyedto it thoughts, impressions,
intimations, that flow directly from the Fatherof our spirits? It has been
virtually the faith of greatand goodmen in all time. They have felt and owned
a prompting, a motive power, from beyond their own souls, and from above
the ranks of their fellow-men. Inspiration has been a universal idea under
every form of culture, has been believed, sought, recognized, obeyed. At all
other points there has been divergence;as to this, but one mind and one voice.
You could translate the language ofSocrates concerning his demon into the
most orthodox Christian phraseologywithout adding or omitting a single
trait, and not even St. Paul was more confident than he of being led by the

Spirit. But there is no need of citing authorities. Who of us is there that has
not had thoughts borne in upon him which he could not trace to any
associationorinfluence on his own plane, seedling thoughts, perhaps, which
have yielded harvest for the angel-reapers,strengthequal to the day in the
conflict with temptation, comfort in sorrow, visions of heavenlifted for the
moment above the horizon like a mirage in the desert? These experienceshave
been multiplied in proportion to our receptivity. As the messageonthe wires
is lost if there be none to watchor listen at the terminus, so at the terminus of
the spirit-wire there must be the listening soul, the inward voice, “Speak,
Lord, for Thy servant heareth.” But while we thus acknowledgeGodin the
depths of our ownconsciousness, canwe not equally feel His presence in the
glory, beauty, joy-giving ministry of His works? Are they net richer to our
eyes every year? Has it not happened to us, overand over again, to say,
“Spring, or summer, was never so beautiful before”? This is true every yearto
the recipient soul. Not that there is any added physical charm or visible glory;
but it is the Spirit of our Fatherthat glows and beams upon us, that pours
itself into our souls;and if we have grown by His nurture, there is in us more
and more of spiritual life that canbe irradiated, gladdened, lifted in praise
and love, with every recurring phase of the outward world. Is not this
ordained, that the vision of Him in whom are all the archetypes of beauty, and
whose embodied thought is in its every phase, may be kept ever fresh and
vivid--that there may be over new stimulants to adorationand praise--that
with the changing garb of nature the soul may renew her garment of grateful
joy, her singing robes of thanksgiving to Him who has made everything
beautiful in its time? But God is still nearerto us than in the world around us.
“In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” When I reflect on the
mysteries of my own being, on the complex organism, not one of whose
numberless members or processescanbe derangedwithout suffering or peril;
when I considermy own confessedpowerlessnessas to the greaterpart of this
earthly tabernacle in which I dwell, and the narrow limits of my seeming
poweras to the part of it which I can control; when I see the gates and pitfalls
of death by and over which I am daily led in safety; when I resign all charge of
myself every night, and no earthly watch is kept over my unconscious repose--
oh, I know that omnipotence alone canbe my keeper, that the unslumbering
Shepherd guides my waking and guards my sleeping hours--that His life feeds
mine, courses in my veins, renews my wasting strength, rolls back the death-
shadows as day by day they gather over me. Equally, in the exercise of
thought and emotion, must I own His presence and providence. (A. P.
Peabody, D. D.)

Universal presence of God
The laws and forms of nature are only the methods of God’s agency, the
habits of His existence and the turns of His thought. Eachdewdrop holds an
oracle, eachbud a revelation, and everything we see is a signalof His
presence, presentbut out of sight. Every colour of the dawning or the dying
light; every aspectof the changing seasons and all the mysteries of electricity
make us feelthe eternalpresence of God. “Shores,” says one, “onwhich man
has never yet landed lie paved with shells;fields never trod are carpetedwith
flowers;seas where man has never dived are inlaid with pearls; caverns never
mined are radiant with gems of finest forms and purest lustre. But still God is
there,” (R. Venting.)
Verse 8
Psalms 139:8
If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.
God’s presence in the under-world
We are told that the Jew had no knowledge ofa heaven for the soul, that the
only future he knew was that of a mysterious under-world where the spirits of
the dead reposed. It is this under-world which the psalmist here designatesby
the word translated“hell”; it is the universal Old Testamentname for the
place of the dead. But, in the hands of this writer, the under-world becomes
well-nigh as fair as the upper; it receives the very glory of heaven. What is the
glory of heaven? Is it not the fact that to depart is to be with God? The heaven
of Christianity is not beautiful to its votaries by reasonof its pearly streets
and goldengates;it is beautiful because it is conceivedto be the home of God.
Now, this is the thought which the psalmist makes his own. He, too, recognizes
that the joy of heaven is the joy of being with God; but, to him, God is
everywhere. To say that at death the souldoes not ascendis not necessarilyto
say that it is banished from heaven. God is in the under as well as in the upper
world; and the pure soul will find Him there as in all places. Deathcannotrob
a goodman of his God; whither can he flee from His presence? Thatpresence
will follow him equally whether he ascendup into heaven or whether he make
his bed in the unknown under-world. However unknown it may be, it is not
outside of Him; and whateveris not outside of Him may be the heavenof the
soul. Such is the thought of the psalmist, a thought which flashes a ray of glory

around the Jewishvision of death and throws back its light on the Jewish
doctrine of immortality. We see that the Judaic faith in God had enclosed
within itself a hope of eternal life. The Jew did not, like the Greek, conjure up
the images ofa locality which the disembodied soulwould inhabit after death;
he had no figure in his imagination wherewithto body forth his conceptionof
the dark vale. But he knew of a Presencethat belongedalike to his own world
and the under-world, the Being of the Eternal God; and, in that knowledge,
death itself ceasedto be a foreign land. It lost much of its strangeness.It held
something which the earth held, and that the source ofall that is in earth or
heaven, the very life of the universe. (G. Matheson, D. D.)
God’s omnipresence
If you were calledto take some such awful journey as Virgil and Dante have
fabled in their poems when their heroes descendedinto the dread Avernus,
you need not tremble, though it were said of you, as of them:--
“Along the illuminated shade,
Darkening and lone, their way they made.”
If, I say, you were bound to traverse the sepulchral vaults, and all the gloomy
dungeons of Hades, yet you need not fear, for “underneath are the everlasting
arms.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Verse 9-10
Psalms 139:9-10
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.
Christianity the universal religion
The traveller who passes fromone quarter of the globe to another feels that
the encircling sky which girdles in the oceanis but a type of the unseen power
that surrounds us all. It is the expressionof the same truth as that which drew
from the first navigator who, from the shores of England, reachedthe shores
of America, “Heavenis as near to us on the sea as on the land.” The
philanthropist whose wide charity embraces within its grasp the savage and
the civilized man--the white man and the negro--feels that the hand of God is
with him in his enterprises, becausein the face of all his fellow-menhe
recognizes, howeverfaintly and feebly expressed, the image of the likeness of
God. The philosopher who endeavours to trace out the unity of mankind, and

the unity of all createdthings, consciouslyorunconsciously, expresses the
same truth--namely, that the Divine eye saw our substance yet being
imperfect, and that in His book were all our members written, which day by
day were fashionedand evolved, while as yet there were none of them--while
all was as yet rudimental and undeveloped, alike in the individual and in the
race. The heart-stricken, lonely, suffering, or doubting soul, who sees onlya
step before him, who canbut pray, “Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling
gloom”--he, too, canecho the old psalmist: “The darkness is no darkness to
Thee;the darkness and light to Thee are both alike. Though He slay me, yet
will I trust in Him.” But in the especialform of the words of the text there is a
peculiar force, which it is my purpose to bring before you . . . The psalmist
wishes to indicate that Godcould be found in those regions of the earth into
which it was leastlikely that any Divine influence should penetrate, and he
expresses itby saying, If I were to take the wings of the morning; if I were to
mount on the outspreading radiance which, in the easternheavens, precedes
the rise of dawn, if I were to follow the sun on his onward course and pass
with him over land and ocean, till I reachthe uttermost parts of the sea, far
awayin the distant and unknown west, eventhere, also, strange as it may
seem, the hand of God will lead me, the right hand of God will hold me; even
there, also, beyond the shadows ofthe setting of the sun; even there, beyond
the furthest horizon, the furthest westof the furthest sea, will be found the
Presence whichleaps over the most impassable barriers. That which seemed
to him so portentous as to be almost incredible, has become one of the
familiar, we might almost say one of the fundamental, truths of our religious
and socialexistence.Notonly in the East, so we may venture to give his words
their fullest and widest meaning--not only in the East, consecratedby
patriarchal tradition and usage, but in the unknown and distant islands and
seas ofthe West, the powerof God shall be felt as a sustaining help and
guiding hand.
I. The contrastbetweenthe Eastand the Westis one of the most vivid which
strikes the mind of man. Of the greatgeographicalimpressions lefton the
most casualobserver, none is deeperthan that which is produced when a child
of the Westerncivilization sets footon the shores of the Easternworld. And so
in history, two distinct streams of human interest have followedalways the
race of Shem and the race of Japhet; and the turning-points, the critical
moments of their history, have been when the two streams have crossedeach
other and met--as on a few greatoccasions--inconflictor in union.” It is the
very image which is presentedto us in the splendid vision of the evangelical

prophet in Isaiah 60:8-9. “Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves
to their windows?” Theyare the “isles”;that is, the isles, and coasts, and
promontories, and creeks,and bays of the Mediterraneanand Atlantic shores.
“The isles shall wait for Him, and the ships of Tarshishfirst.” Tarshish--that
is, the West--with all its vessels ofwar and its vessels ofmerchandise. The
ships of Tarshish first, and of Venetia, and Carthage, and Spain--these first
brought the shores ofCornwall, the name of Britain, within the range of the
old civilized world. All these, with their energy and activity, were to build up
the walls and pour their wealththrough the gates ofthe Heavenly Jerusalem.
And so, in fact, it has been. Christianity, born in the East, has become the
religion of the Westeven more than the religion of the East. Only by travelling
from its early home has it grownto its full stature. The more it has adapted
itself to the wants of the new-born nation which it embraces, the more it has
resembled the first teaching and characterof its Founder and of its followers.
Judaism, as a supreme religion, expired when its localsanctuary was
destroyed. Mohammedanism, after its first burst of conquest, withdrew itself
almost entirely within the limits of the East. But Christianity has found not
only its shelter and refuge, but its throne and home, in countries which,
humanly speaking, it could hardly have been expectedto reachat all. The
Christian religion rose on the “wings of the morning”; but it has remained in
the “uttermostparts of the sea,” becausethe hand of God was with it, and the
right hand of God was upholding it.
II. Considerwhat were the peculiar points of Christianity which have enabled
it to combine these two worlds of thought, eachso different from the other. In
its full development, in its earliestand most authentic representation, we see
gatheredthe completion of those gifts and graces whichEastand West
possesses separately, andwhich eachof us is bound, in his measure, to
appropriate and imitate. And, first, observe, on the one hand, in the Gospel
history, the awe, the reverence, the profound resignationto the Divine will,
the calm, untroubled repose which are the very qualities which the Eastern
religions possessed, ata time when, to the West, they were almostwholly
unknown, and which, even now, are more remarkably exhibited in Eastern
nations than amongstourselves. Christhas taught us how to be reverential,
and serious, and composed. He has taught as no less how to be active, and
stirring, and manly, and courageous. The activity of the Westhas been
incorporatedinto Christianity, because it belongs to the original character
and genius of its Founder, no less than its awe and its reverence. Again, in
every Easternreligion, even in that which Moses proclaimedfrom Mount

Sinai, there was darkness, a mystery, a veil, as the apostle expressedit--a veil
on the prophet’s face, a veil on the people’s heart-a blind submissionto
absolute authority. There was darkness aroundthe throne of God; there was
darkness within the Temple wall; there was in the Holy of Holies a darkness
never broken. To a greatextent this darkness and exclusiveness must prevail
always, till the time comes when we shall see no longer through a glass darkly.
This we have in Christianity, in common with all the East;but yet, so far as
the veil can be withdrawn, it has been withdrawn by Jesus Christand by His
true disciples. He is the Light of the world. In Him we behold the open face,
the glory of the Father. Again; there was in all Easternreligions, whether we
look Godwardor manward, a sternness and separationfrom the common
feelings and interests of mankind. We see it, as regards man, in the hardness
and harshness of the Easternlaws. We see it, as regards God, in the profound
prostration of the soul of man, displayed first in the peculiarities of Jewish
worship, and to this day in the prayers of devout Mussulmans. And this, also,
enters in its measure into the life of Christ and the life of Christendom. The
invisible, eternal, irreproachable Deity, the sublime elevation of the Founder
of our religion above all the turmoils of earthly passionand of localprejudice-
-that is the link of Christianity with the East. And, on the other hand, there
was another side of the truth which, until Christ appeared, had been hardly
revealedat all to the children of the older covenant. In Christ we see how the
Divine Word could become flesh, and yet the Fatherof all remain invisible
and inconceivable. In Christ we see not merely, as in the Levitical system of
Christianity, man sacrificing his choicestgifts to God; but God, if one may so
say, sacrificing His owndear Son for the goodof man.
III. What do we learn from this? Surely, the mere statement of the factis an
almost constraining proof that the religion which thus unites both divisions of
the human race, was, indeed, of an origin above them both; that the light
which thus shines on both sides, so to speak, of the image of humanity is,
indeed, the light that lighteth every man. There is no monopoly, no sameness,
no one-sidedness, no narrowness here. The variety, the complexity, the
diversity, the breadth of the characterof Christ and of His religion is, indeed,
an expressionof the universal omnipresence of God. It is for us to bear in
mind that this many-sidedness of Christianity is a constantencouragementto
hold fast those particles of it we already possess,and to reachforward to
whateverelements of it are still beyond us. Say not that Christianity has been
exhausted; saynot that the hopes of Christianity have failed, nor yet that they
have been entirely fulfilled. In our Father’s house are many mansions. In one

or other of its many mansions eachwandering soul may at last find its place,
here or hereafter. (Dean Stanley.)
PastorStevenJ. Cole FlagstaffChristianFellowship123 S. BeaverSt.
Flagstaff, AZ 86001 www.fcfonline.org
NO ESCAPE FROM GOD
Psalm139
By
Steven J. Cole
October31, 1993
Copyright, 1993
1
October31, 1993 Psalms:Lesson25
No Escape FromGod Psalm 139
One of the greatesttruths in life which we all know, but which we all must
come to learn, is that there is no escape fromGod. Like fugitives, we may run,
but we cannot ultimately hide from the God who penetrates eventhe darkness
with the gaze of His light. If we manage to dodge Him in this life, we must still
stand exposedbefore Him on that fearful day of judgment. There is no place
to hide from God. Happily, once we give up our flight and allow ourselves to
be found by this relentless “Hound of Heaven” (as Francis Thompson
describedHim in his poem), we discoverthat His intention is not to harm but
to bless us. He formed us even in our mother’s womb for His purpose and
ordained all of our days before we ever saw the light of day. With David we
must exclaim, “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!” (v. 17).
In coming to know Him, we come to know ourselves. In the blinding light of
His holiness, we recognize instantly the desperate needwe have for inner
purity. Since we cannotescape from this all-knowing, all-present, all-wise
Creator, we cannot escape fromthe need for holiness. That is the messageof
the beautifully-crafted Psalm139. It’s not a generic psalm; it’s intensely
personal, betweenDavid and God (note the frequent “I” & “me”). Thus I
want to express its main messageandpoints in the first personsingular: Since
I cannot escapefrom God, I must commit myself to holiness.

The psalm falls into four stanzas. The first three deal with different attributes
of this inescapable Godas they relate to the individual: His omniscience (vv.
1-6); His omnipresence (vv. 7-12);and, His omnipotence as the sovereign
Creator(vv. 13-18). The final stanza (vv. 19-24)sets forth the inescapable
response to the inescapable God:personalholiness. 1. I can’t escape God’s
knowledge ofme (139:1-6).
2
God knows absolutelyeverything about me! He knows my actions:When I sit
down and when I get up (v. 2); when I go somewhere and when I lie down (v.
3). He is intimately acquainted with all my ways!He knows my words:in fact,
He even knows what I am going to say before I say it (v. 4)! He even knows my
thoughts from afar (v. 2b). Like a cagedbird, He’s got me surrounded, with
His hand upon me (v. 5). There is no escape from His thorough, penetrating
knowledge. So Davidexclaims (v. 6): “Suchknowledge is too wonderful for
me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.” The closestwe cangetto knowing
another human being ought to take place in the marriage relationship. As a
man and woman live togetherin that lifelong commitment, they grow to know
one another’s actions, words, and--to the degree that they openly
communicate--thoughts and feelings. The Bible uses the verb “to know” to
describe the sexualrelationship in marriage (Gen. 4:1). But even so, you can
be married for years and still discovernew things about your mate. Even the
closesthuman relationships fall short of total knowledge.In fact, we can’t
even know ourselves thoroughly. Life is a process ofcoming to know
ourselves. But, as Jeremiah17:9 says, “The heart is more deceitful than all
else and is desperatelywicked;who can understand it?” We can’t know our
own motives and inner drives apart from God’s revealing it to us through His
Word. God alone knows us thoroughly. He sees through us. Your first
reactionto that thought is probably, “Where can I run to hide?” It seems to
have been David’s thought (v. 7). Since the human race fell into sin, that kind
of total intimacy has been threatening to every person. Before the fall, Adam
and Eve enjoyedopen intimacy with God and with one another. They were
nakedand not ashamedin eachother’s presence (Gen. 2:25). But as soonas
they sinned, they tried to hide from God and they sewedfig leaves to hide
their nakedness from one another. We have a longing to know and be known,
but only within safe limits. We fear being totally exposed. But the amazing
thing is, this God who knows us so thoroughly, who knows every awful
thought we ever have, desires to have a relationship with us. Becauseofour
sin and God’s holiness, something had to be done to remove that barrier to
our relation

3
ship with Him. With the first couple, God performed an object lessonthat
pointed aheadto His ultimate solution. Their fig leaves were not adequate;
God slaughteredan animal and clothed them with its skin, showing them that
they could not be restoredto fellowship with a holy God without the shedding
of blood. Although the Bible doesn’t specify, I believe God slaughtereda lamb
and explained to Adam and Eve the coming Lamb of God who would take
awaythe sin of the world. Can you imagine their shock atseeing death for the
first time as they watchedthe blood spurt and the animal writhe as its life-
blood drained from it? It showedthem in a graphic way that God takes sin
seriously. It must be paid for through death. But it also showedthem that in
His grace, Godwould provide the substitute so that no sinner need be
separatedfrom Godor pay the penalty for his or her own sin. Christianity is
not following a setof rules or going through a bunch of religious rituals. It is
at its heart a personalrelationship with the living God who knows you
thoroughly. You enter that relationship when you put your trust in the
substitute He provided, the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty for your
sin with His death on the cross. The threat of being knownso intimately by
God provokes the reaction, “Where canI go to hide?” David pursues that
thought in the secondstanza:2. I can’t escape God’s presence(139:7-12).
Where do you plan to run? Heaven (v. 8)? God is there! The first Soviet
cosmonauts irreverently jokedthat they didn’t see Godfrom their spaceship.
But God saw them! He is there! Do you want to escape Godin the place of the
dead (Sheol)? He’s there, too! Do you want to head east(“wings of the dawn,”
v. 9) or west(“remotestpart of the sea”)?You won’t dodge God (v. 10)! You
can hide in the dark, but God is light and He will find you out (vv. 11-12).
Since God is everywhere, you can’t getawayfrom Him. Again, David is
intensely personalabout it: God isn’t just everywhere;everywhere I go, He
lays hold of me (v. 10)! A college student fancied himself to be a ladies’man.
One evening the phone rang. Picking up the receiver, he murmured in a
4
low, sexy voice, “Talk to me, baby ....” Suddenly he flushed bright red. He said
weakly, “Oh, hi, Mom” (Reader’s Digest[6/84], p. 32). A mother’s presence,
even over the phone, has a way of straightening out wrong behavior! How
much more would we live uprightly if we constantly kept in mind that God is
present with us everywhere we go! 3. I can’t escape God’s powerand
sovereignty(139:13-18). The thought that darkness doesn’thide us from God
leads David to considerthat God formed him in his mother’s womb. Though
hidden from human eyes in that day before sonograms,Davidwas not hidden

from God’s eyes (v. 16). And not only did Godmake me through His creative
power, but also He ordained all of my days before any of them came into
being (v. 16)! Considering how fearfully and wonderfully we are made should
cause us to break forth in thanksgiving to God (v. 14). Augustine observed,
“Mengo abroadto wonderat the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of
the sea, atthe long courses ofthe rivers, at the vast compass ofthe ocean, at
the circularmotions of the stars; and they pass by themselves without
wondering” (in Reader’s Digest[1/92], p. 9). Every person has in his or her
body sufficient proof that Godexists. To ignore that kind of evidence renders
a person without excuse (Rom. 1:18-23). To say that something as finely
balancedand complex as the human body is the result of sheerchance plus
time is nothing short of ludicrous! Considerthe miracle of the human body:
Every secondmore than 100,000chemicalreactionstake place in your brain.
It has 10 billion nerve cells to record what you see and hear. That information
comes to your brain through the miracle of the eye, which has 100 million
receptorcells (rods and cones)in eacheye. Your retina also has four other
layers of nerve cells. Altogetherthe systemmakes the equivalent of 10 billion
calculations a second before an image even gets to the optic nerve. Once it
reaches your brain, the cerebralcortex has more than a dozen separate vision
centers in which to process it. Your tear ducts supply a bacteria-fighting fluid
to protect your eyes from infection. The tears that fight irritants differ from
the tears of sadness, whichcontain 24 percent more proteins. That’s not to
mention the miracle of the ear and how it
5
translates sound waves into meaningful speechand sounds; or of touch, taste,
and smell. Part of your brain regulates voluntary matters, such as muscle
coordinationand thought processes.Otherparts of the brain control
involuntary processes,suchas digestion, glandular secretions,the rate at
which your heart beats, etc. How did it accidentallyhappen that your body
could speed up your heart rate to the proper speed to meet increasedoxygen
demand when you exercise and slow it down when that need is met? One
square inch of your skin has about 625 sweatglands, 19 feetof blood vessels,
and 19,000sensorycells. Working in coordinationwith your brain, it
maintains your body at a steady98.6 degrees under all weatherconditions.
Your stomachhas 35 million glands which secrete the right amounts of juices
to allow your body to digestfood and convert it into storedenergy for your
muscles. To avoid digesting itself, your stomachproduces a new lining every
three days. Your body is an efficient machine: to ride a bicycle for an hour at
ten miles per hour requires only 350 calories, the energy equivalent of only

three tablespoons ofgasoline. You have more than 200 bones, eachshaped for
its function, connectedintricately to one another through lubricated joints
that cannotbe perfectly duplicated by modern science. More than 500 muscles
connectto these bones. Some obey willful commands; others perform their
duty in response to unconscious commands from the brain. They all work
togetherto keepus alive. The heart muscle itself beats over 103,000 times each
day, pumping your blood cells a distance of 168 million miles. Coupled with
that, your lungs automaticallybreathe in the right amount of life-giving
oxygen (about 438 cubic feet eachday), which just happens to be mixed in the
right proportions (about 20% oxygen, 80% nitrogen) in our atmosphere. Each
of the other vital organs and glands in your body works in complex
conjunction with the others to sustain life, which science can’texplain or
create. I haven’t even mentioned the complexity of human cells. Listen to this:
A single human chromosome (DNA molecule)contains 20 billion bits of
information. How much is that? What would be its equivalent, if it were
written down in an ordinary printed book
6
in modern human language? Twentybillion bits are the equivalent of about
three billion letters. If there are approximately six letters in an average word,
the information contentof a human chromosome corresponds to about 500
million words. If there are about 300 words on an ordinary page of printed
type, this corresponds to about two million pages. If a typical book contains
500 such pages, the information content of a single human chromosome
corresponds to some 4,000 volumes. “Itis clear, then, that the sequence of
rungs on our DNA ladders represents an enormous library of information. It
is equally clearthat so rich a library is required to specify as exquisitely
constructedand intricately functioning an objectas a human being.” That
information, incredibly, comes from the astronomer, Carl Sagan, who thinks
it all happened by chance (The Dragons ofEden, Speculations on the
Evolution of Human Intelligence [Ballentine Books], pp. 23-25)!He points out
that the Viking landers that put down on Mars in 1976, eachhad instructions
in their computers amounting to a few million bits, slightly more than a
bacterium, but significantly less than an alga. Yet he thinks that life on this
planet evolved by chance!Would he saythat the Viking spacecraftcould
evolve, given enough time? Who, I ask, has more faith--the creationistor the
evolutionist? When David says (in v. 18), “When I awake, Iam still with
You,” he may be referring to the factthat eachmorning the thoughts of God’s
omniscience, omnipresence,and omnipotence are still with him, so that he
can’t escape the overwhelming fact of God in relation to himself. Or, he may

be referring poeticallyto God’s presence afterdeath, in the resurrection. In
that case, Davidwould be referring to God’s hand on his life from conception
through eternity. But in any case, the awesome thought that God skillfully
made me and ordained the days of my life ought to make me see that I can’t
escape from His power and sovereignty. By the way, even if you suffer from
birth defects, Goddeclares that He made you. When Moses complainedto
God that he couldn’t speak eloquently enough to lead Israelout of Egypt, God
said, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him dumb or deaf, or
seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Exod. 4:11).
7
That means that God has fashionedand has a purpose in this fallen world
even for those whose bodies or minds are not perfectly formed. That God
creates andordains the days of eachhuman life gives significance and value to
eachlife and it strongly confronts the abortion of any baby, even if it is
supposedly “defective.” So Davidis saying that you can’t escapefrom God. He
knows everything about you; He is with you whereveryou go;He has created
you and ordained the days of your life. So what’s the bottom line? What do
you do with a God like this? In the final stanza, David shows that ... 4.
Therefore, I must commit myself to holiness (139:19-24). The inescapable
conclusionof the factthat we can’t escape fromthe living God is an
inescapable commitment to holiness. As David thinks about God’s searching
knowledge, His ubiquitous presence, andHis infinite wisdom as seenin his
own body, he is led first to cry out to God to destroy the wicked, affirming his
own abhorrence of them (vv. 19-22);and then quickly to add a prayer that the
God who had searchedhim (v. 1) would continue the process, so thatif any sin
still lurked in the dark corners of his own life, David could rootit out and
walk in God’s everlasting way. This shows us two aspects ofholiness which we
must develop: A. Holiness means living apart from the wicked(vv. 19-22).
Does the thought of “perfecthatred” strike you as odd? Does it seemlike a
vice rather than a virtue? We have a syrupy, sentimental notion of love in our
day. We wrongly think that Christians should not hate anything. But to fear
God is to hate evil (Prov. 8:13). We can’t love God properly and be
complacentabout sin. I know what you’re thinking: “I was just making a little
progress in learning to love my enemies and now this guy Cole comes along
and tells me I’m supposedto hate them with a perfect hatred! How can I love
them and hate them at the same time?” C. H. Spurgeon helpfully explains the
balance:To love all men with benevolence is our duty; but to love any wicked
man with complacencywould be a crime. To hate a man for his own sake, or

for any evil done to us, would be wrong; but to hate a man because he is the
foe of all goodness
8
and the enemy of all righteousness, is nothing more nor less than an
obligation. The more we love God the more indignant shall we grow with
those who refuse him their affection(The Treasury of David [Baker],
VII:229). R. C. Sproul explains along the same lines: If there is such a thing as
perfect hatred it would mirror and reflect the righteousness ofGod. It would
be perfect to the extent that it excluded sinful attitudes of malice, envy,
bitterness, and other attitudes we normally associate withhuman hatred. In
this sense a perfect hatred could be deemed compatible with a love for one’s
enemies. One who hates his enemy with a perfecthatred is still calledto act in
a loving and righteous manner towardhim (“Tabletalk” [11/91], p. 9). Jude
22-23 reflects the fine line betweenloving sinners but hating their sin: “And
have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the
fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by
the flesh.” Holiness means living apart from the wickedand staying undefiled
from their sin, but reaching out to them with the messageofsalvation. B.
Holiness means living openly before God (vv. 23-24). David no sooner
mentions the wickedand his hatred for their irreverence than he quickly
realizes his own need for God’s cleansing. This is not so much a prayer that
God may know him (which He already does, v. 1), but rather that David might
know himself through God’s purifying, refining fire. There are two elements
to a holy life in these verses:First, I must constantly expose my inner life to
God. “Searchme, try me ....” David is inviting God to shine His pure light into
the inner recessesofhis thought life, where all sin originates. If you want to be
holy, not just outwardly, where you can fake it, but inwardly, you must
constantly confront your thought life with God’s Word. Second, I must
constantly yield my whole life to God. “Leadme ....” When God’s Word
exposes where I’m wrong, I must submit to the Lord and walk in His way.
Knowledge without obedience leads to deceptionand pride. I must become a
doer of the Word, not just a hearer who deludes myself (James 1:22).
9
ConclusionJohn Calvin wiselywrote, “It is certainthat man never achieves a
clearknowledge ofhimself unless he has first lookedupon God’s face, and
then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself” (Institutes of the
Christian Religion[Westminster Press], edited by John T. McNeill, 1:1:2).
That’s what David is saying here: Look upon God: He knows you thoroughly;
He is with you everywhere you go; He has wondrously createdyou and

sovereignlyordained the days of your life. Then, scrutinize yourself by
inviting the searchlightof God’s Word into your innermost thoughts and
feelings and by yielding yourself to be obedient to God’s ways. Since you can’t
escape from God, you must commit yourself to holiness.
DiscussionQuestions 1. Why are we afraid to be known thoroughly? How
vulnerable should we be? What principles guide how much we share with
others? 2. How can a person develop a sense ofGod’s unshakable presence, so
as not to sin? 3. Is theistic evolution a viable option for Christians? What do
we lose when we negate Godas Creator? 4. Does Godlove everyone equally
(Ps. 5:5-6)? Must we (Ps. 139:21-22)?Whatdoes this mean practically?
Copyright 1993, StevenJ. Cole, All Rights Reserved.
DAVID LEGGE
God is as present as the air - that is the fact - He is all around us
Our text this morning, and our passageofscripture, is Psalm139. A very
famous Psalmto do with God in general, and there are many attributes of
God that are found listed within this Psalm - but we're going to just read the
stanzas that refer to the omnipresence of God as we study this subject
togetherthis morning.
Let me say that - last week I think it was - we had a watch, now we have a key
and a watch!So if you are less of a key or a watch, please do come up here
and I'll leave them sitting up here for you to take.
Psalm139 and verse 7, David expressing this greatdoctrine of the attribute of
God's omnipresence says:"Whither", where, "shallI go from thy spirit? Or
whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascendup into heaven, thou art
there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of
the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;Even there shall thy
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness
shall coverme; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness
hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the
light are both alike to thee".
One Sunday morning a lecturer in a theologicalcollege was sharing a seaton
a train with a small boy as he went to church. This was recordedin the
Philadelphia Bulletin, if you want to look it up - if you have a Philadelphia
Bulletin - but you'll have to believe me and take my word for it! The boy was

holding in his hand his Sunday Schoollessonleaflet, The lecturer sitting
beside him was interested, and asked - in a friendly way - a question of the
young boy. He said: 'Can I ask you a question?'. 'Yes sir, you can'. 'Tell me
my boy', continued the man - thinking to have some fun with the lad - 'Where
is God? If you can tell me where God is, I'll give you an apple!'. The boy
lookedup at the theologicallecturersharply, and promptly replied: 'I'll give
you a whole barrel of apples if you can tell me where God is not'. Isn't that
right? The child had more wisdom!
As A.W. Tozersaid: 'The notion that there is a God, but that He is
comfortably far away, is not embodied in the doctrinal statementof the
Christian church'. We do not believe that God is in heaven alone, that God is
separatedfrom us, that we are far from God in a geographicalsense. Thatis
why I want us to first of all ponder the presence of God, as we begin our study
this morning in His omnipresence. Thensecondly, I want us to learn that we
need to practise the presence ofGod within our lives.
So let us look, first of all, at this factthat we must ponder the presence of God.
Now, let's dissectthis theologicalword'omnipresence'. The last word, you will
recognise,comes fromthe root 'to be present' - and that simply means 'to be
close'. We cansay that God is here, and that to bless us with the Spirit's
quickening power. It means that He is here among us at this moment, literally
He is next to us, He is present. Now when we put the prefix 'omni' in front of
it, the Latin word that means 'all', we getthe universality of it. God is
omnipresent, God is 'all with us' - all of Him is with us, all of the time, in every
single place - He is close to everything, He is next to everyone. Literally, in the
Latin, it means 'to be at hand'.
Now, that's a sermon in itself, isn't it? That our Almighty God, the
transcendentGod, the Godof love, the God of grace, the God of mercy, the
God of justice and holiness, is always at hand - always!This fact of the
omnipresence of God is taught with great clarity right throughout the word of
God - and it would take a lot of effort to misunderstand its teaching there. It's
very clearthat God is round about us, always, in all senses, allof the time.
Now if we're pondering the presence of God, the first place, perhaps, that we
will find it is in creation. I want to quote to you part of a sermon by a man
calledGilfillen (sp?) - now, I don't know him, but what he has to sayis very
good. Listen to this, speaking ofthe Hebrew mind with regard to the
omnipresence of God in creation, he says this: 'To the Hebrews the external
universe is just a black screenconcealing God. All things are full of, yet all
distinct from, Him. The cloud on the mountain is His covering, the muttering
from the chambers of the thunder is His voice, that sound on the top of the

mulberry trees is His going away. In that wind which bends the forest, or
curls the clouds, He is walking - that sun is His still commanding eye, whither
can they go from His spirit, whither can they flee from His presence. At every
step, in every circumstance, they feel themselves God-enclosed, God-filled,
God-breathing men with a spiritual presence lowering, orsmiling, on them
from the sky, sounding in a wild tempest, or creeping in panickedstillness
across the surface of the earth. If they turn within, lo, it is there also - an eye
hung in the central darkness oftheir own hearts'.
We've learnt that God is eternal, now that means that if God is infinite, God
cannot be restrictedto any area of geography, any space ofland - there is no
limit to God's presence
God is as present as the air - that is the fact - He is all around us. As Ralph
Waldo Emersonsaid: 'Nature is too thin a screen, the glory of the
omnipresent God bursts through it everywhere!'. All around us we can see
that, if we have eyes to see, that God is around us in creation - we can see Him.
As the Psalmistsaid, there is no place in heaven, earth, or hell, where men
may hide themselves from God's presence. Godis in His creation, Godis here
in His universe, He is present, He is not detached - 'From a distance God is
watching us'? No! God is here!
Now, we must be careful, as we ponder this fact of God in creation, that we
avoid the error of pantheism. Pantheismsimply believes that not only is God
omnipresent, but God is in everything. In other words, God is in this pulpit,
He is in the carpet, He is in the trees - that God is not a personality, but God is
omnipresent. But we don't believe that: we believe that God is omnipresent,
and God is an undeniable person, transcendent - although He is here, He is far
removed from simple material things. This is why people can bow to wooden
gods, bow to the trees, and the wind, and the sea, and the mountains, and
worship them as gods - but that is not the God that we have. God, in scripture,
is clearly setforth and testified as a personalGod. God in three persons,
blessedTrinity.
So, we see clearly- I hope - that God's presence canbe pondered in creation.
But secondly, God's presence is pondered in His ownattributes, God's
attributes that we've been meditating on these ten weeks orso. We've learnt
that God is eternal, now that means that if God is infinite, God cannotbe
restrictedto any area of geography, any space ofland - there is no limit to
God's presence. So if you put it like an equation: God's eternality plus His
person, equals omnipresence. If God is eternal, He must equal omnipresence,
He must be everywhere if He is an infinite God. William Newton-Clarke said:

'If God is not everywhere, He is not true God anywhere' - isn't that right? If
God is God, He must be everywhere!
Now there are two ways that I want to bring this to you this morning, how
God is omnipresent in His attributes. The first is: He is creation's
environment. Now we've touched upon creation, but this is taking it a little
further. It means this: that the finite creationdoes not contain God, like the
pantheist believes - this desk contains God - but God is far greater, far bigger,
who contains His creationwithin Him - and there is a difference. You see,
there is no place beyond God for Him to be, there's nothing that exists beyond
God. Everything that exists dwells within God - if I can illustrate it to you like
this: just as the sea is the environment of the fish; and the air, the atmosphere,
is the environment of the bird; God is the environment of His creation.
I'll quote another man, Hilbert of Lavarden (sp?) wrote this many hundreds
of years ago:'God is overall things, God is under all things, outside all things,
within - but not enclosed, without - but not excluded, above - but not raised
up, below - but not depressed. Wholly above, presiding. Wholly beneath,
sustaining. Wholly within, filling'. Now we cannot understand that - and the
moment we do understand it, we have understood God and He has ceasedto
be God. This is God's omnipresence - and to put it plainly in the words of a
little child who was asked:'Why is there but one God?', he said: 'BecauseGod
fills every place and there's no room for anotherone'. Isn't that it in simple
terms? There is no room for another God, because Godfills the heavens and
the earth, for the heavenand the earth are within Him.
But secondly, we see His omnipresence in His attributes because He's
creation's environment, but also He is equally present everywhere. Now this is
very important for us to understand, God is equally present everywhere in the
whole universe. This God of ours transcends all spatial and geographical
limitations. Yet the paradox is He is present in every single part of the
universe with His whole being. Now, I am here, and in half an hour or so I will
be over there - but God is here and over there at the same time, in the same
capacity, in all of His being! You don't understand it? Well, that's what makes
Him God. Now, yes, the manifestations of His glory may vary at times, and He
may present Himself in different ways, in different spots, in different eras of
time - I'm not disputing that. But the fact is this: God is omnipresent, and as
Jeremiahsaid [in] 23:24:'Can any hide himself in secretplaces that I shall not
see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heavenand earth? saith the Lord'.
The sadthing is that our world runs from God, and maybe you're here in our
meeting now and you're running from God - well, here's the news for you: you
can't run from God

He's not simply filling the heaven and the earth with His knowledge, orwith
His influence, He is filling all of creationwith His very essence,equally,
everywhere. That means this: there is not a place in the universe that we can
imagine that is deprived of God's presence. Boy, that's a comfort, isn't it?
We'll see in a few moments the great comfort that it is. It was a comfort to the
Psalmistin 139 that we have been reading, if you look down at it, this is a
greatPsalm - as I have already said- on the nature of God. The 24 verses that
you read here are divided into four stanzas, with six verses in eachstanza. The
first stanza tells us Godis omniscient, He sees everything: 'Lord, thou hast
searchedme, and known me'. The secondstanza we read from verse 7 to 12
tells us God is omnipresent, He is everywhere:'Whither shall I go from thy
spirit?'. Then the next stanza tells us God is omnipotent, God is powerful, all-
powerful in fact. The laststanza tells us that God is omni-righteous, in other
words all-righteous, there is no unrighteousness or blemish in Him.
Now, the Psalmistwriting: 'Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I
flee from thy presence?' - it wasn't that he was running awayfrom God, don't
get that into your head! But what he was saying is: 'If I tried to run away
from God, I couldn't! Becauseyou can't run away from God'. What the
Psalmistis saying - now getthis, and really try to grapple with this - God is in
heaven, God is on the earth, and God is in hell! We find that difficult to
understand, but this is what the Psalmistis telling us: you can't even take
refuge in darkness, becausethere is no difference betweendarkness and light
to God - in fact the darkness is light to God. If you're going to hide in it, He'll
show you up, don't you worry about that - the light of His glorious presence
will expel all darkness!In heaven there is the presence ofGod's glory, in hell
there is the presence ofGod's wrath.
The sadthing is that our world runs from God, and maybe you're here in our
meeting now and you're running from God - well, here's the news for you: you
can't run from God. Can't run from Him! You can't even escape Godin hell,
for it's God's hell! How different is the God of the Bible from the gods of this
world, the idolatries that we see from day-to-day? You see the difference is
that unbelievers in our world, and religious systems, don't know where their
god is, do they? They can't tell you where [their] godis, they can take you to
show you their god. You can see this illustrated in the Old Testamentin 1
Kings 18, the prophets of Baalcalled upon their god and there was no reply.
You remember they cut themselves, and they shouted for their godto come
and revealhimself - Baal!'And Elijah mockedthem, saying, Cry aloud: for he
is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or

peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked' - and they did cry aloud, they
did shout, but there was no response.
Now, that's not like our God - praise Him, He's not like that! You don't need
to behave the way the Baalites behaved, you don't need to cry for God's
presence in the sense ofHim being here - God is here! He is beside us! We
should never believe that God is far removed in any shape or form, we should
never behave in our lives as if He is not near us in a geographicalsense.That
is what the apostle was trying to getacross to the Greek mind, when he saidin
Acts 17:'In him we live, and move, and we have our being'. Like the goldfish
in the bowl, our existence - our great world that we think it to be, all of
creation- exists in God. To sum it all up, Augustine was right when he said
this: 'God is not partly here, or partly there, but He is totally present at every
point of the universe'. Thomas Brooks, the puritan: 'God is an infinite circle
whose centre is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere'. Though
heaven be God's palace, yet it is not His prison - it's amazing, isn't it? God is
neither shut in anywhere, or shut out of everywhere - He is omnipresent. Ah,
that's a blessing!
But thirdly, His omnipresence is seenin creation, it is seenin His own
attributes, and thirdly it is seenin the Gospel - the gospelofGod's grace. Now,
you cansee it a little bit in Jonah, the book of Jonah, because youremember
that Jonahwas foolish enoughto think that he could flee from the presence of
God. He askedthe question: 'Whither shall I flee from Thy presence?' - and
he thought: 'Well, I'll geton this boat, and go across the ocean, and I'll flee
from His presence'. He attempted the impossible: to run awayfrom God -
which teaches us that you can't run awayfrom God in a location. You can't
hide anywhere in God's universe from Him! Now, I think that Jonahknew
better than this - I really believe that he believed that God was an
omnipresent God, but I'll tell you what I also believe: that his disobedient sin
had warped him so much that he couldn't judge right from wrong. Isn't that
what happens? Sin gets in and lets us forgetwhat God is like. It dupes us into
thinking that we can escape God, that we canhide from God, and that we can
hide our dirty hands that we committed the sin with. But Jonahsoonfound
out, in the belly of a whale, that he couldn't escapeGod - not even in that
belly.
Thinking men throughout all the ages - philosophers, and theologians, andall
sorts of academics - have concernedthemselves with the greatquestion of
what kind of world this is. The materialist believes that it's simply material,
all that exists, and all that you see, that's all of reality - there's nothing beyond
that. They believe that the source oflife is within itself, in other words if you

can't see the source of life, it doesn't exist. Evolution, the big-bang, and then
there is creation- and creationhas within it the capacityto bring life, and to
take life away, and it's all found within its own self, there is no spiritual realm,
there is no greaterpoweror One who determines anything. But, you see, the
omnipresence of God answers allthese questions, doesn't it? It declares and
imparts the supreme value of men to God, that God is willing that His
presence should dwell with men! God is present to man, God is near to man,
God sees him and knows man through and through - and that's the beginning
of faith. That's the beginning of realising the origin of the species,that's what
it is - faith! Being able to see the evidence of things not seen!It's beginning to
realise that God is, and God is here! When you lay that foundation, you throw
out all the nonsense ofDarwinism, and all the spiritual evolution that some
theologians believe in, that God used these things. God is the supreme life,
God is above all things, God is the Creator, Godis everywhere, God is, and
God is here!
Martyn Lloyd-Jones said: 'The fundamental thing, the most serious thing of
all, about God's omnipresence is that we are always in the presence ofGod'
Now, if you lay that foundation, you understand the book of Hebrews which
says this - this is faith, he that cometh to God must believe that He is. Christ
said, John 14 and 1: 'Believe in God', we could leave it there in the sense of
what He's trying to say - you must start at this point: 'Believe in God, and
then believe also in me'. Believing in God is the foundation of believing in
Christ, and Romans tells us now in the gospel, in the preachedword of the
logos:'The word is nigh thee' - isn't that it? The omnipresence ofGod in His
gospel. James Cabbett(sp?) said this - and listen, unbeliever, if you're in this
meeting, backsliddenchild of God: 'We cannot getawayfrom God, though we
can ignore Him'. C. S. Lewis said: 'We may ignore, but we can nowhere
evade, the presence ofGod - the world is crowdedwith Him'!
Canon W.G.H. Holmes of India tells of a story of seeing a Hindu worshipper -
and we've seenmany of them on our televisionscreen. 'We see them tapping
on trees', he said, 'on the mission field, tapping on stones, and lifting them and
whispering: 'Are you there? Are you there?'to the god that they hope to find
within it'. Isn't that what some believe? But the Christian can say: 'God is
indeed here, God is everywhere, but He is not confined to stones or to trees,
but He is free in His universe, He is near to everything, He is next to everyone
- and the miracle of the Gospelis that, through Jesus Christ His Son, He is
immediately accessible to every heart'. Isn't that wonderful? This is the
foundational thing, as Martyn Lloyd-Jones said: 'The fundamental thing, the
most serious thing of all, about God's omnipresence is that we are always in

the presence ofGod'. What would our lives be like if we believed that there
was not a moment in existence that we were outside His presence?William
Seekersaidit well: 'A man may hide God from himself, and yet he cannot
hide himself from God'. One moment, you're in this meeting and you're
hiding Godfrom you - you don't want to know His word, you don't want to
know His gospel. You've been hearing home truths, maybe from this pulpit, or
from another mouth, and it's coming home and you want to hide God - you
can't! He is the omnipresent God.
So, we have pondered His omnipresence in creation, in His own attributes,
and in His gospel. But let's look in the secondhalf of our message,that we
must practise the presence ofGod. Augustine it was who once was accostedby
a heathen who showedhim his idol, his god made of wood, and said to
Augustine: 'Here is my god, where is thine?'. Augustine replied: 'I cannot
show you my God, not because there is no God to show, but because youhave
no eyes to see Him'. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that the truth? You need eyes
to see Him, and although Henry Amelial (sp?) says:'From every point of
earth we are equally near to heaven and the infinite', yet many in our world
do not see Him! Perhaps we could go a step further and say: 'They will not see
Him!'. They look to creation, they look to God in His attributes, they look in
the gospel, andthey see nothing that they should desire Him. You see, you
need eyes to see the presence of Almighty God.
Now, I want to address the believers in this in two ways. First of all: we must
practise the presence ofGod in communion with God. Secondly:we must
practise the presence ofGod in receiving comfort and strength from God.
Let's look at our first: in communion with God. Now, I believe this was the
vision of that old French monk, Brother Lawrence in the 1600's -and let me
advise you, please, if you canget your hands on his book: 'Practising the
Presence ofGod', do so!It is before the Reformation, so there may be one or
two things that you will find hard to swallow, but that man knew God more
than any of us, I would dare to say, in this place. He wished, and this is his
desire, that at all times he would be conscious ofthe divine presence. Thatwas
his one goalin life, he was a cook in the monastery, that's all he did - cut up
carrots, and peel potatoes, andclean floors - but his desire was a greater
desire than many, to always, in everything, seek the glory of God and look for
His glory in all that we do and say.
I believe the little man was right: that this is the holiest of all occupations. Let
me quote him: 'Our life is to find joy in God's divine company, and to make it
a habit of life. We should apply ourselves continually so that, without
exception, all our actions become small occasions offellowship with God'. I

said to you before in the Bible Reading that he said: 'If I can pick a carrot off
the kitchenfloor for the love of God, I will do it'. That's practising the
presence ofGod - in communion with God! One of the most infamous 'free
thinkers' of England was a man called Anthony Collins, he died in 1726 and
he was the author of the well-knownbook 'Discourse In Free Thinking'. One
day he was walking down the street, and he met a poor working-classman on
his wayto church, and he stopped him and he said: 'Where are you going?'.
He said: 'I'm going to church, sir'. Collins, thinking he was clever, said: 'Is
your God a greatGod or a little God?'. He was attempting to confuse the
simple fellow, and the church-goerturned and gave him the perfect answer,
he said: 'He is so great, sir, that the heavenof heavens cannotcontain Him,
and so little that He can dwell in my heart'. Collins later admitted that this
simple, but sublime, answerof an uneducated man had more effectupon his
mind than all the volumes of argument that he had ever read in any book of
religious apologetics!Isn't that it?
Your God, Christian, dwells and inhabits and fills the heaven of heavens - yet
He's in your heart
Your God, Christian, dwells and inhabits and fills the heaven of heavens - yet
He's in your heart. If you could graspthat, that God dwells around us, yes,
that God is in everything and around everything, and everything has its
existence within Him - but the miracle is that He is in us! That He canfill us
by His Spirit, and we can know communion with God in the holy of holies of
our spirit. If you could picture yourself standing on a ship in the mid-ocean,
and the sun is setting, and you - on the deck of that greatship, in the great
Atlantic, perhaps - cansee the reflection of that sun on the great wide ocean,
can't you? But then if you're transported to the mountain top, and you see a
greatmountain lake, and the sun is setting at the same time - it's a lot smaller
than the greatocean, but still you cansee that reflectionin the mountain lake.
If you were lifted to a little spring trickling down from the top of the
mountain, still you would see that reflection of the sun - isn't that right? My
friend, the wonder of God's omnipresence is this: that no matter who we are,
no matter how greatwe believe ourselves to be, or how small we are in
insignificance - the reflectionof God's omnipresence canbe seenin all! All of
us - miracle of Ephesians - canbe filled with all the fullness of God. The
possibility of your life, my friend, being filled to capacitywith the
omnipresent.
So, we see it in communion with God, we must practise it there. But secondly,
we must practise it also in receiving comfort and strength from God. Now, if
this hasn't already been a comfort and strength to your soul there's something

Holy spirit omnipresence

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