Omnipresence - God is Everywhere I Go

A political milestone was celebrated on October 1 that has significance for more people than any other political event on earth. Do you know what it was? It was the 50th anniversary of the Communist Revolution in China and it affected 1.3 billion Chinese people. On Oct. 1, 1949 Mao Tse-Tung and the Communist Party took over the government of China. And China’s history since has not always been pleasant.

Come with me to Shanghai, China. The year is 1967. The Red Guards are running amuck in the streets of the city, chanting the slogans of Chairman Mao and terrorizing the people. It is the beginning of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and it ushers in years of nightmare for the Chinese people.

A woman named Nien Cheng lives in Shanghai. She is well-to-do, having owned her own business before the Communists took over. One day she hears a loud pounding on her door. The Red Guards burst in and arrest her. They carry her away and throw her into a dank prison cell. Her crime? She is a Christian; a follower of Jesus Christ.

Nien Cheng is held in solitary confinement in that bare prison cell for the next 6 1/2 years. Her only human contact is with the brutal prison guards, who literally throw her food at her twice a day. During that 6 1/2 years, Nien Cheng’s beautiful teenaged daughter is murdered by the Red Guards. Nien Cheng doesn’t even know about out this until she is released from prison.

What power sustained Nien Cheng through that nightmare? What enabled her to face each terrifying new day? What was it that kept her from losing her mind or her will to live?

Let me quote to you what she says from her book “Life and Death in Shanghai”.

“I was in solitary confinement the whole time, and in a sense, that was good, because I was able to pray. If I had had a cellmate, then I wouldn’t have been able to pray like I did. And I depended on prayer to give me encouragement and sustain me and I just prayed always.

I aked the Lord to give me the intellect, the ability to cope with the situation. I never prayed “O Lord, get me out of this place!” I felt like it was up to me to fight the battle. But the Lord would be with me. Then I could do a better job than if I did it on my own. I could, through prayer, feel the Lord in the cell with me. I felt the love of God. I knew the Lord is merciful and full of love for me. So, I never felt abandoned.”

It was the presence of God that kept Nien Cheng going through that ordeal. She knew that God was with her in that cold, damp prison cell, and that knowledge literally kept her alive.

We have been studying the attributes of God because we desire to know God better. We want to develop a passion for God. We have considered His eternity - that he lives outside of time; His immutability - that he never changes; His self-sufficiency - that he doesn’t need us, but he chooses to be involved with us. Today we come to his omnipresence - the fact that God is everywhere; there is no place that He cannot go.

Let’s go from the city of Shanghai to the city of Jerusalem. In the city of Jerusalem there is a hill called the Temple Mount. On top of that hill, there is a Muslim mosque known as the Dome of the Rock. Inside the golden dome of that mosque there is a rock called As-Sahkrah. The Muslims believe that this rock is the place where the prophet Mohammed ascended into heaven. So this is a sacred place for the Muslims.

This is also a sacred place for the Jews, because they believe this rock to be the summit of Mount Moriah, where Abraham placed Isaac on the altar of sacrifice.

Even more importantly, it is the exact place where the Jewish Temple was located. In that Temple was a room called the Holy of Holies—the dwelling place of God’s presence. Although the Jews believed that God was present everywhere in the universe, he was particularly present there, in the Holy of Holies of the Temple.

But they had trouble holding that idea in balance. And the trouble they had is the same trouble we have when we come to the subject of God’s omnipresence. We have difficulty coming up with a good answer to the question “Where is God?”

The word omnipresence is not in the Bible. It is a word made up by theologians to describe the fact that the Bible teaches that God is everywhere. In Psalm 139, David says “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” God is everywhere I go.

That means that right this moment, we are surrounded by the presence of God. When you drive your car, when you go to sleep at night, you are in his presence.

You see, God is a spirit. He is not a physical being. He is not limited by time and space as we are. And because he is an infinite being, he can be everywhere at once. The peasant in East Timor, the goldminer in South Africa, and the business executive in Toronto are all equally in the presence of God.

If you look at your sermon study sheet this morning, you’ll notice that I have divided our study into four parts:

1. the CHARACTER of God’s presence

There are two aspects that we need to understand about the character of God’s presence: his immanence, and his transcendence.

Immanence refers to God’s nearness. The Bible teaches that God is always right next to us.

In Acts 17, Paul was debating with the philosophers of Athens. He had walked around the city of Athens and had seen that there were many idols and temples to the various gods and goddesses that they worshiped.

The Athenians felt that they had a fairly good understanding of where their gods were located—their presence was localized in certain temples, or in certain images made out of stone or wood or metal. For example, if you wanted to pray to the god Zeus, you’d go to the temple of Zeus, because that’s where you’d find the presence of Zeus.

When it comes to God, many people think the same way nowadays. They think that God lives at church. If you want to experience the presence of God, you go to church.

And that was the problem that developed with the Jews in the OT. They began to think that God dwelt in their Temple. As long as the Temple was there, God was there with them. And if God was dwelling in the Temple, then the Temple would always be there—God would never let his house be destroyed. Imagine their shock in 586 BC when the Babylonians tore the Temple down!

But getting back to Acts 17, Paul noticed that the Athenians had erected an altar to an unknown god. (Maybe they were trying to make sure that they had all their bases covered.) But they didn’t know who that God was, or where he was. They didn’t know anything about him.

So in Acts 17, Paul used that as his starting point and said “Look, I want to tell you about this God you don’t know anything about, and I want to tell you where you can find him.” Look at what he says in Acts 17:24…

Acts 17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.

He’s not localized. You can’t pin him down to one address. But that doesn’t mean that he’s way out there, distant and inaccessible. Far from it! He’s right here with us. We can find him if we reach out and seek him. He’s near to us—so near, that in him we live and move and have our being (v. 28). Every breath we take, we are in the presence of God. God is immanent.

But the Bible balances the truth of God’s immanence with the truth of God’s transcendence. When we talk about God’s transcendence, we’re talking about the fact that He is infinitely far above us, and beyond us. He’s not locked in to the universe as we are. He freely exists outside the universe, beyond his creation.

You see, there’s a problem with taking either of these ideas too far. If you take the idea of God’s immanence too far, you end up locking God into the universe. You end up like the Hindus, who see God’s presence in every rock, or tree, or animal. You end up so closely identifying God with creation that you become a pantheist.

So that’s why we have to remember that God is a transcendent God. Look at Psalm 113:4-6…

Psalm 113:4-6 The Lord is exalted over all the nations, his glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?

And throughout the Bible, we are reminded that God is above creation; that he is outside it.

But if we take the idea of transcendence too far, we end up with a God who is so far away, He has no contact with us. This is what a deist believes. He believes that there is a God somewhere out there, but that God has no contact with us. At creation, God wound up the universe like a clock and then went away to take care of other business and left us to ourselves. No contact. No closeness. No personal interaction. A transcendent God, but a God who is infinitely remote.

So when we talk about the presence of God, we have to keep these two truths—his immanence and his transcendence—in balance. We must always remember Isaiah 57:15

Isaiah 57:15 For this is what the high and lofty One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

2. The COMFORT of God’s Presence.

If there is one overriding fact about the presence of God that is repeated in the Bible, it would have to be that God’s presence brings blessing. “In the presence of God there is fullness of joy.” “Where theSpirit of the Lord is, there is peace.”

God’s presence is a comfort to us in at least three ways - in prayer, in pressure, and in His purpose for us.

We have seen that we are always in the presence of God. But when we pray, there is a sense in which we realize and feel his presence in a special way. His presence becomes more real to us. Nien Cheng discovered that in her prison cell. The Psalmist says in Psalm 145:18 “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”

In Deuteronomy 4:7, Moses said to the people of Israel: “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?”

When we pray, we experience God’s immanence. We can talk to him as a friend and companion who is near to us, close by us, right next to us.

God’s presence is a comfort to us in times of pressure. Throughout the Scriptures, God reminded people of his presence as they walked through deep waters. In the 23rd Psalm, David says “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me”

David went through many harrowing experiences. He was near death many times. Yet God’s presence sustained him.

In Psalm 46:1, the Psalmist says “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”

As you look at your own life, when have you felt closest to God? Was it not the times when you were going through trials, or pain, or sorrow? God delights to make his presence known to us in our problems. And we need to realize that the greatest blessing we can ever have as we go through difficult times is not the ending of the problem; it is the presence of God in the midst of it. You see, God’s greatest gift to us is Himself.

God has also promised us the comfort of his presence as we live according to His purpose for us. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus gave us the Great Commission.

Matthew 28:19-20 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Jesus tied his presence with us to his purpose for us. As we become involved in Great Commission ministry—sharing our faith, seeing people come to the Lord, making disciples—we are going to experience the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in new and fresh ways.

3. The CAUTION of God’s presence

The fact that God is omnipresent—that He’s always with us—should serve as a source of warning and restraint on our evil desires. Look at Jeremiah 23:24…

Jeremiah 23:24 Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord.

One of our inborn tendencies is to try to cover up our wickedness; to hide our sin. But God’s omnipresence makes that impossible.

In Amos 9:2-4, the prophet Amos pronounced judgment on the wickedness of the people of Israel. And he said that there would be no possibility of escape from God’s wrath. God says…

Amos 9:2-4 Though they dig down to the depths of the grave, from there my hand will take them. Though they climb up to the heavens, from there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, there I will hunt them down and seize them. Though they hide from me at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them. Though they are driven into exile by their enemies, there I will command the sword to slay them. I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good.

As a sinner, you cannot hide from presence of God. Adam and Eve tried it in the Garden of Eden and failed. People have been trying it ever since. But God is omnipresent, and he will be there to judge our sin. This truth should caution us to live our lives with purity and integrity because every moment we are living in his presence.

4. The CERTAINTY of God’s presence.

If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you can count on God’s continuing presence in your life. The Lord said to us in Hebrews 13:5-6 “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”

That NT promise is based on an OT promise that God made to Joshua in Deuteronomy 31:6-8, as they stood on the threshold of the Promised Land…

Deuteronomy 31:7-8 Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the Lord swore to their forefathers to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance. The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

You may find yourself in situations where it seems like you are all alone, and facing severe opposition. But you are not alone. The Lord is with you. And he is saying to you what he said to Isaiah, in chapter 41:10…

Isaiah 41:10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

The doctrine of God’s omnipresence has an especially personal dimension to it for a Christian. In John 14, Jesus’ disciples were troubled that he was going away. They thought that it meant that the presence of God would no longer be with them. But Jesus assured them in verses 16-17…

John 14:16-17 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

So that means that God is not only next to us, close to us, and near to us. It means that God has come to live in us, in the person of His Holy Spirit. Paul said to the Corinthian believers in 1 Cor. 6:19…

1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?

2 Corinthians 1:21 He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

So in a very real sense, you might say that, as Christians, we are the “People of the Presence”. Wherever we go, God goes. And if, as it says in Psalm 16, “in the presence of God there is fullness of joy” then that means that wherever we go, we’re going to take that joy and that peace and that love with us.