The Perfections Of God - His Omnipresence

Bethlehem Bible Church

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May 20, 2006

00:00: Well, we want to extend our hearty welcome to Dr. Robert Raymond and his wife Shirley for coming and fellowshipping with us.
00:07: Welcome to New England. Have you been before? I have been to New England, yes. But to Shirley, have you been? Well, I'll describe, since I just got back from the
00:17: South, Dr. Raymond as a gentleman and as a scholar. Warm, kind gentleman.
00:25: I remember when I met him several years ago, he had plenty of time to talk to me about theological issues, issues of the
00:31: Lord, things that would be good for the soul, and he just has a way of stepping almost into your personal space with just a warm, gentle,
00:40: I want to know you and get to fellowship with you, and so I appreciate that about you,
00:47: Dr. Raymond. Thank you. But also, he is a very careful scholar. How many people have read any of Dr. Raymond's materials?
00:53: Plenty of things to read. Of course, you know about his Systematic Theology for the Christian Faith.
00:59: I think it's in its second edition now, yes? Yes. And I'm very thankful for this work.
01:05: It says in the back, for a brief introduction, Dr. Raymond is former dean of faculty and currently professor of Systematic Theology at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
01:15: Is it fairly warm there? It's a nice, cool day now today for you. He taught at Covenant Theological Seminary, St.
01:22: Louis, for more than 20 years and has lectured overseas widely. He holds a BA, MA, and PhD degrees from Bob Jones University and has done doctoral studies at Concordia Seminary, postdoctoral studies at Fuller, New York University, Union Seminary, Tyndale House, Cambridge, and Rutherford House, Edinburgh.
01:42: He has lectured in Korea, Japan, England, Scotland, Israel, Malawi, South Africa, and Jamaica, and as an ordained minister in the
01:49: Presbyterian Church in America, has served pastorates in Tennessee, Georgia, Missouri, and Illinois.
01:57: And I'm thankful for scholars who have been pastors because they come to the scriptures with a pastor's heart and then want to teach the people with the same.
02:05: So we are very, very thankful to have Dr. Robert Raymond come and preach to us about our great triune
02:11: God. Please come, Dr. Raymond. Thank you. Thank you so much. Doctor, you don't want me on the air, do you?
02:28: Last night, I was having some trouble with my voice and there was no water up here.
02:37: So they've remedied that this morning. I think that's enough.
02:57: Shirley and I are delighted to be here in New England with you folk. It's a special privilege to be able to say to your pastor,
03:08: Doctor. I'm sure he earned it.
03:23: And we thank God for that. Without any further ado, let us begin our series on the attributes of God.
03:33: It's a very brief series, naturally. There will be five sermons,
03:38: I guess, on the attributes of God in all. And there are more attributes of God than that.
03:45: So it's a brief series. But let's begin. As I begin this short series on the attributes of God, let me take a few minutes to explain to you the primary reason such a topic is absolutely essential for the church today.
04:06: Daniel 11 .32 informs us that the people who know their God will be strong and do exploits.
04:16: And Peter affirms that God gives us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him.
04:28: One thing is certain. No one can trust or serve or worship an unknown
04:34: God. And if you would properly trust and serve and worship the one living and true
04:41: God and do great exploits for him, then you must acquire a broad, comprehensive knowledge of him.
04:51: You see, my brothers and sisters, both scripture as well as all human experience make it clear that a person's behavior in the long run corresponds with his beliefs.
05:06: And humanly speaking is determined by his beliefs. Paul realized this is evidenced by the fact that in all of his letters, his summons to Christians to a high and holy walk were preceded by and grounded in the proclamation of sound doctrine that logically inspired and compelled that walk.
05:29: This points up the necessity for every church member to acquire a knowledge of the
05:35: God of holy scripture. Occasionally, I reminded the congregations that I pastored that historically
05:45: Presbyterian congregations unwilling to suffer theologically foolish preaching lightly have rarely called ignorant pastors to their pulpits.
05:57: And that's right and proper. But then I pointed out to them that a theologically literate ministry will never tolerate an illiterate laity either.
06:11: I expected my churches through my pulpit ministry to grow in their knowledge of their
06:17: God so that they could in turn correctly minister to others. And in this present context, this is just to say that the foundation of all true knowledge of God must be a clear mental apprehension of God's perfections as revealed in holy scripture.
06:37: I would even contend that more than any other topic in these times, pastors need to introduce their congregations to the one living and true
06:48: God of holy scripture because nothing is more needful for God's people in this day of rampant theological illiteracy than to know what their
07:00: God is actually like. For all of the problems, all of our problems and the respective solutions to them are ultimately theological.
07:10: Therefore, a true knowledge of God is indispensable to our soul's eternal health and to a sound philosophy of life here and now.
07:21: But this means that it is absolutely essential that we who desire to know what God is like should always listen carefully to God's description of himself in holy scripture alone.
07:35: Submit our hearts to that description without murmuring, endeavor to live our lives in accordance with it, and worship him in a way that befits his revealed perfections, that is, with reverence and with awe.
07:52: And speaking of worship, I want to state categorically that in my opinion, the intrusion into the contemporary church,
08:04: I think that's what it is, an intrusion into the contemporary church of the superficial, flippant worship styles that abound everywhere today with their applause for the church's performers and their sappy contemporary music is not and should never have been regarded as simply a matter of cultural preference.
08:33: Rather as an infusion of the popular culture into the church, for that is what it is, it is a symptom of what
08:42: A. W. Tozer describes in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, as quote, the loss, it's a result of the loss of the concept of the majesty of God from the popular religious mind, end of quote.
09:02: This is a dreadfully serious situation due to the fact that idolatry does not consist merely in bowing and adoration before man -made images.
09:12: The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of any thoughts about God as true that are not worthy of him.
09:22: And the major cause of this loss and its result in idolatry is the failure of preachers to preach on the biblical attributes of God, thereby allowing their people by their pulpit silence to acquire and to entertain thoughts about God that the
09:40: Bible does not endorse. The debate that rages in the church today over worship styles, whether worship should be traditional or contemporary, liturgical or non -liturgical, formal or revivalistic, and so on, all of that I think would disappear overnight if the church at large recovered her once lofty concept of the majesty of the living
10:08: God. Were that to occur, her once lofty concept, were that to occur, many worship leaders would know great shame -facedness because of their shallow, man -centered, irreverent styles of worship.
10:25: For my beloved, the triune God of Holy Scripture is an absolutely sovereign, transcendently holy, infinitely righteous, incomprehensible deity, perfections that ought to inspire awe and humility and reverence in the creature.
10:42: But he will not be known as such or served as such by a people fed with inane choruses, poorly written gospel tunes, silly unscriptural prayers, and mediocre revivalistic preaching.
11:04: God is to be worshipped with renewed minds. Faith in him requires understanding, and that understanding grows primarily in our congregations as they are nourished by the singing of the biblical psalms and doctrinally sound hymns, by serious prayers of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, and by the solid preaching of the word of our
11:33: Reformed faith. Therefore, we cannot adopt forms of worship that are theologically shallow and expect to gain or to retain a biblically sound understanding of God.
11:46: Hence, the antidote to all the problems in contemporary worship will be found in the
11:52: Church's recovery of the awesome majesty of God. As this is being accomplished, the quantity, the quality, and the content of the music in our public worship will become different.
12:07: The content of the public prayers in our public worship will become different. And the preaching in our public worship will become different.
12:17: And as a result, Christians' lives will become different. So I am praying that we will all grow spiritually as we think about the only
12:28: God who is there, who has spoken to us his word from another world into ours, and who, after all, is truly the ultimate who's who.
12:41: So covenant with God to learn all that you can about him from this sermon series and then resolve to teach what you learn to others for the improvement of the health and the equipping of God's saints for those good works that God himself has foreordained that they should do.
13:00: And while it will ever be the case that it is God alone who gives the increase, bathe your entire labor in your fervent prayer to him that you may be used both to plant his word and to water it in the souls of needy people.
13:16: Let us now invoke the blessing of God upon what we say about the attribute of God that is the subject of this morning's address.
13:26: Let us pray. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, I thank you for your precious and fallible word revelation to us concerning your divine perfections.
13:39: Grant us ears truly to hear that revelation in this conference.
13:45: Remove the scales from our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of your law and open our hearts to believe and to love your truth.
13:56: Enable me as one who professes to be a scribe in the kingdom of God to bring forth treasures both new and old from your word for the enduring blessing of these your people and for the infinitely worthy cause of Jesus Christ.
14:14: And may your people be so captivated by your glory that they will feel that theirs will be a life of woe if they do not make him known as he has revealed himself in holy scripture.
14:27: And I pray these things for the glory of Jesus and in his matchless name.
14:33: Amen. This morning I want us to consider first what
14:39: I'm calling God's infinity in being, that is his omnipresence,
14:45: God's omnipresence. Now this morning and tomorrow morning what
14:51: I will do, I will be reading a lot of scripture verses, and if you would permit me
14:57: I'm going to forego giving you the references in every case for the sake of saving time.
15:03: But if you want the references to all of the scriptures that I'm going to be reading, see me afterwards,
15:09: I'll be very happy to give you all of the references themselves. Listen now to the following short selection of verses that teach
15:19: God's omnipresence. Where can
15:24: I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
15:31: If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
15:38: If I rise on the wings of the dawn. If I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me.
15:47: Your right hand will hold me fast. The eyes of the
15:52: Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.
15:59: Am I only a God nearby and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?
16:08: Do not I fill heaven and earth? God is not far from each of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.
16:24: These verses teach that God is omnipresent. That is to say that God transcends all special, all spatial limitations and is immediately and entirely present in every square inch of his creation and therefore that everything and everybody are immediately in his presence.
16:49: Now what exactly are we saying when we say that God is omnipresent? We're saying not only that all things are immediately in God's presence, which is true enough, but also that God himself is present with his whole being in every place of his creation.
17:08: To put it as simply as I know how, God is everywhere. All things are immediately in his presence.
17:18: Never do we have any privacy. Never have you ever had a private conversation.
17:26: Think about that. Never have you ever had a private conversation with anyone.
17:36: His presence is inescapable. Everywhere there is
17:42: God. His being, his self -revelation, his sovereignty, his activities, his prerogatives, and his scrutiny.
17:55: He is in all the particulars of creation, in all of the events of providence, and in all of his works of grace.
18:07: And try as they might, even self -acclaimed atheists cannot escape him, for in their hearts they know
18:16: God. Robert Browning, in his poem Bishop Blogram's Apology, and the poem
18:23: Bishop Blogram is an atheist, poetically, powerfully states the atheist problem in this regard.
18:33: And now what are we? Unbelievers both. Today, tomorrow, and forever.
18:40: You'll guarantee me that. Not so, I think. The problem here is this. Just when we are the safest, that is in our atheism, just when we think we're the safest, there's a sunset touch.
18:59: A fancy from a flower bell. Someone's death. A chorus ending from Euripides.
19:07: And that's enough for 50 hopes and fears, as old and new at once as nature's self, to rap and knock and enter in our soul, and raise the old, perhaps, all over again.
19:23: No self -avowed atheist cannot escape God, because as Calvin writes,
19:29: God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty.
19:36: With the result that a sense of deity is inscribed in the hearts of all. A haunting awareness that self -acclaimed atheists never lose.
19:47: For however much they struggle against their own senses and wish not only to drive God fence, but also to destroy him in heaven, their stupidity never increases to the point where God does not at time bring them back to his judgment seat.
20:10: But while God is in every specific place, yet neither is he confined by any of these places.
20:17: For no matter how expansive they may be, they cannot confine him. Solomon, you will recall, declared in his temple prayer,
20:26: Heaven, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. Nor does he relate the same way to every place outside of himself, but rather he relates and acts differently depending upon the place under consideration.
20:45: Birkhoff rightly declares that God is not present in the same sense in all of his creatures.
20:54: He does not dwell on earth as he does in heaven, in animals as he does in man, in the inorganic as he does in the organic creation, in the wicked as he does in the pious, nor in the church as he does in Christ.
21:08: There is an endless variety, Birkhoff says, in the manner in which he is imminent in his creatures.
21:16: But someone might ask here, but what about hell? God is not present in hell, is he?
21:23: Is not what makes hell the place that it is, the very absence of God? And does not
21:30: Paul teach in 2 Thessalonians 1 .9 that those who suffer eternal perdition will be excluded from the presence of the
21:39: Lord? Yes, Paul says this, but I'm quite certain that he intended their exclusion to be an exclusion away from the approving presence of the
21:51: Lord and not from the presence of the Lord per se. For John informs us in Revelation 14 .10
21:58: that the impenitent will be tormented in fire in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the
22:05: Lamb forever. Paul's statement illustrates what I mean when I say that God acts differently depending upon the place of his manifested presence.
22:15: In hell, God manifests his presence only in a disapproving manner.
22:22: He is present there as a condemning judge. Throughout eternity, the impenitent sinner must always behold, as doubtless the most solemn aspect of hell itself, what
22:35: C .S. Lewis refers to somewhere as the disapproving, lidless, unblinking eye of the wrathful
22:45: God, lidless, unblinking eye of the wrathful
22:51: God staring at him. So we should affirm first that at all places of his manifested presence within the created order, at all places he is present to sustain, as in the case of Christ upholding the entire universe even as he hung upon the tree, which means that if God for even a billionth part, a nanosecond, should withhold his sustaining presence from this universe, it and everything in it would in that instant collapse and disappear.
23:27: Second, that at some places of his manifested presence within the created order, he is disapprovingly present to punish sin, as at the
23:36: Genesis flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, at Calvary, the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D.
23:44: 70, in hell and so on. And third, that at still other places of his manifested presence within the created order, and I thank
23:54: God for this, he is present to bless. Particularly in this category, present to bless, it pleased
24:02: God to dwell incarnationally in Jesus Christ for us men and for our salvation to manifest his indwelling presence in believers, in and by the person of the
24:13: Holy Spirit, and to be near his own in their times of trial and trouble.
24:20: Psalm 46 .1 tells us, God is our refuge and strength, a help in trouble found ever to be.
24:28: And his throne is a throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
24:35: He is also with us at death. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
24:41: David said, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. And God himself promised us, when you pass through the waters,
24:48: I will be with you. Yes, when you pass through the waters, they will not sweep over you. And in the place the
24:54: Bible calls a new heaven and new earth, God has chosen fully, ultimately, and finally, to manifest his approving presence to his children.
25:06: This present to bless category, dear ones, pervades scripture and is set forth in terms of virtually every preposition in the human language.
25:17: We're told by the word of God that God is with us. He is around us.
25:23: He's in us. He's in the midst of us. He is behind us.
25:29: He is underneath us. He is over us. He is near us. He is before us.
25:37: But in whatever respect he is in all of these places, he is wholly there.
25:45: He is as much in empty space as in every molecule of the solid granite mountain, that it contains no crack or fissure at all.
25:53: He is as much in the lowest hell as in the highest heaven. He is as much among the sinful hosts of demons and men as among the blissful choirs of immaculate angelic singers who never displeased him.
26:07: For in him we and all other created existences live and move and have our being.
26:15: I must now offer a word of caution, and it is this. The fact of God's omnipresence, the fact that God is everywhere, precludes our taking literally the biblical descriptions of God's ascendings and descendings, his comings and his goings.
26:41: God, being always and everywhere present as he is, does not literally come from or go to specific places.
26:52: Where such language is employed in scripture, it must be recognized for what it is.
26:58: It is metaphorical language indicating or invoking a special manifestation of God's working presence, either in judgment or in grace.
27:08: And since all that we say about God's nature per se is equally true with regard to each of the three persons of the
27:16: Godhead, this conclusion has special implications with regard to the meaning of both
27:22: God the Son's incarnation and God the Holy Spirit's coming into the world at Pentecost. Permit me to work this out a little more in detail.
27:32: Being omnipresent as God. Follow me now. Being omnipresent as God.
27:41: God the Son did not literally come into the world 2 ,000 years ago in the sense of coming to a place where he as God was not present before.
27:56: Nor should the event of the incarnation be interpreted to mean that the second person of the
28:02: Godhead divested himself of his divine attribute of omnipresence when he assumed our humanity.
28:10: On more than one occasion in my role as an invited lecturer, I have asked gatherings of evangelical pastors the following question.
28:19: Let me ask you, put yourself now in this particular mold.
28:25: Here's the question. After the incarnation had occurred, did the second person of the
28:32: Holy Trinity still possess the attribute of omnipresence? Or was he confined to the human body of Jesus?
28:45: More of them than I would like to report opted for the latter. And they argue, doesn't the very word incarnation mean in flesh?
28:59: Of course, if their choice were true, it would mean that God the Son divested himself of his attribute of being always and everywhere immediately present in the created universe.
29:13: But divine attributes, my beloved, are not characteristics of God that are separate and distinct from his essence.
29:19: That he can lay aside like one might remove a garment of clothing at the end of a busy day and still be the same being.
29:28: To hold that God the Son actually divested himself in his incarnate state of humiliation of even one divine attribute is tantamount to contending that he who enfleshed himself as Jesus of Nazareth, while perhaps more than man, more than a man, is not quite
29:49: God either. And Bishop Moore pointed out long ago that a savior, not quite
29:57: God, is a bridge broken at the farther end. We must therefore construe the event of the incarnation.
30:07: And here's the key to it. And I say this to my students all the time. You must understand that the event of the incarnation was an event of addition, not subtraction.
30:22: Without ceasing to be all that he is as God, God the
30:27: Son took into union with himself something he had never possessed before, a human nature.
30:34: Maybe I'm going to open up a can of worms here. Not a human person. He didn't take into union with himself a human person.
30:42: He took into union with himself a human nature. See me about that later if you have a question.
30:52: The event of the incarnation means to convey the fact that God the Son uniquely manifested himself to the world and to man in and by his personal presence in human flesh.
31:05: It intends to affirm that God the Son, through the instrumentality of the miraculous virginal conception, took into union with himself our human nature in such a real and vital sense that we properly declare that Jesus of Nazareth was and is not only fully human, but also fully
31:27: God manifest in the flesh. We must not for a second therefore intend to suggest that the
31:33: Son of God somehow divested himself of his omnipresence when he became a man.
31:41: Cyril of Alexandria, who led the Orthodox opposition to Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, in a letter to Nestorius wrote,
31:53: Nestorius, the eternal word, subjected himself to birth for us and came forth man from a woman without casting off that which he was.
32:04: Although he assumed flesh and blood, he remained what he was, God in essence and in truth.
32:12: Neither do we say that his flesh was changed into the nature of divinity, nor that the ineffable nature of the word of God was laid aside for the nature of the flesh, for he is unchanged and absolutely unchangeable, being the same always according to the scriptures.
32:31: For although visible and a child in swaddling clothes and even in the bosom of his virgin mother, at that very moment he filled all creation as God and was a fellow ruler with him who begat him.
32:49: For the Godhead is without quantity and dimensions with him who begat without and cannot have any limits.
32:58: John Calvin was hardly heterodox then, as the radical Lutherans of the Reformation sarcastically charged by their contemptuous term extra
33:08: Calvinisticum, that extra Calvin thing, and I'll explain that to somebody later if you'd like.
33:15: John Calvin was hardly heterodox when he wrote, another absurdity, namely that if the word of God became incarnate, he must have been confined within the narrow prison of an earthly body, his sheer impudence.
33:32: For even if the word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein.
33:42: Here is something marvelous. Get it now. The Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that without leaving heaven, he willed to be born in the virgin's womb, to go about the earth, to hang upon the cross, yet he continually filled the earth even as he had done from the beginning.
34:10: This is what we mean when we say that our Savior is fully God and at the same time fully man.
34:19: He's fully man and at the same time fully God. And the same must be said about the
34:27: Holy Spirit's coming at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit did not come into the world on the day of Pentecost in any sense that would suggest that he was absent from this world in the
34:38: Old Testament or that he left some earlier location and came to the upper room where he had not been before.
34:45: Rather, his personal presence was simply uniquely manifested in the upper room at Pentecost.
34:55: His manifested presence there intending to teach us, by the way, not something about him.
35:01: Pentecost is not about the Holy Spirit. I hope you understand that.
35:08: Pentecost is about Jesus Christ. For in Peter's sermon, he preaches a sermon and he comes to the end and he says, therefore, now here's what you should learn.
35:17: He says, therefore, you should know that God hath made Christ, made
35:23: Jesus both Lord and Christ. Who was it who just poured this out?
35:30: Who was it who just poured the Holy Spirit out upon this crowd? He says, Jesus Christ.
35:36: You should then learn something about Jesus Christ. What is that? In the simple words of C .H.
35:43: Dodd, the Holy Spirit in the church is the sign of Christ's present power and glory in heaven.
35:58: Well, dear friends, that's enough theological exposition. It's time for some practical applications of what we've said about God's omnipresence to our everyday
36:09: Christian experience. I'm convinced that we must apply, and maybe this is the one reason why pastors are not preaching on the attributes of God is they're not sure that they're applicable to Christian lives, but they are.
36:26: And I want to illustrate how these attributes can be great boons, great blessings in application to the
36:33: Christian life. I would suggest that the fact of God's omnipresence has several specific points of application to aid us as we live out our
36:44: Christian witness in and before this watching world. First, our knowledge of God's personal and immediate presence always with us should be an encouragement to us in times of trouble, in times of extraordinarily difficult duties, in times of poverty, in times of deep affliction, in times of sickness and pain and death.
37:13: When nurses and friends must, from their very weariness, leave our bedside, he remains still with us.
37:22: The psalmist rightly states, as we've just noted earlier, God is our refuge and our strength, a help in trouble found ever to be.
37:32: Such knowledge assures us that our God is a God who is near and not a
37:37: God who is far away from us, that he knows our condition and is working out his perfect will in and by it for his glory and our ultimate good, which good, by the way, is not what we may think is good, what we may think is good.
37:52: And I've said this many times to churches and to my students. We love to quote
37:58: Romans 828. God is working everything out together for good. But I've said to them, if you reserve for yourself the right to determine what you think should go into that word good, you'll always have problems with Romans 828.
38:18: Because what you will pour into that word good, such as, well,
38:24: I think it would be good for me to have half a million dollars in the bank drawing 10 or 12 percent interest, that would be good for me.
38:39: It would be good if I never got sick. It would be good for me if my children never gave me any trouble.
38:52: It would be good for me if my wife never nagged me. If I poured those kinds of things into that word good,
39:01: I'll always have a problem with Romans 828 because God has given me none of those things.
39:08: And you're thinking, what about a nagging wife? Brothers, do you know why our wives nag us?
39:16: Because they ask us to do something and we didn't do it.
39:25: And they ask us politely again a second time, maybe a third time, a fourth time.
39:30: And we've made a mental note this time, well, maybe I'll get around to doing that sometime.
39:37: And if we have nagging wives, it's because we deserve it. I got some hearty amens there, didn't
39:47: I? And there are a lot of things that we just must leave it up to God to determine what is the good that is to go into that word good for us in Romans 828.
40:03: And he tells us that what our ultimate good is in everything that he's doing in our lives is to bring about this ultimate good, namely conformity to the image of his own beloved son.
40:19: That's what our ultimate good is, and that's what God is doing in me and doing in you today.
40:26: Second, our knowledge of his personal and immediate presence always with us should be an encouragement in our prayer life.
40:37: When we pray to the omnipresent God, we don't have to shout to be heard. He's here.
40:44: He's in our prayer closets. He's in our bedrooms in the night seasons. He hears our every whisper.
40:52: Indeed, he knows the thoughts and the longings and the agonizings of our heart even before we verbalize them.
40:59: And if the object of our prayer happens to be a loved one living on the other side of this earthly globe, because we know that God is with him or her as well, because he's omnipresent, we can ask our heavenly father here.
41:16: This is better than anything that the brown truck can do for you. You can ask your
41:23: God here and immediately. He can answer the prayer over there immediately because we know that God is with him or her as well.
41:37: So we can ask our heavenly father here to care for and protect our loved one there to provide our loved ones needs there.
41:44: And we know that he is able in that very moment to do so. According to his good pleasure.
41:51: So God's omnipresent should be an encouragement in your prayer life.
41:58: Third, our knowledge of his personal and immediate presence always with us should be a restraint upon our bent to sin.
42:09: I have more than once reminded young couples from my pulpits. And I urge adults to listen in and heed my words as well, that they must not think if they park on some desolate lane on some dark, moonless night and climb into the backseat of the car, they must not think.
42:28: I say that they are alone. No, someone else is there with them, watching them and knowing their activity.
42:39: The young man and the young and the young woman who have illicit sex on that back road are committing an act that is as public to God as if they were committing it before their parents at high noon on Broad Street.
42:56: As David says in Psalm 139, if I say surely the darkness shall fall on me, even the night shall be light about me.
43:07: Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to you.
43:17: It's regrettable that David forgot this fact, for if he had taken seriously what he teaches us here, he would not have committed adultery and then tried to cover it up by murder.
43:33: Believe me, dear friends, if you and I took seriously for one day, let's try it, let's make the rest of this day this.
43:44: If you and I took seriously for the rest of this day the truth of God's omnipresence, that we are immediately in his presence and that he knows our every thought and hears our every word and observes our every action, our lives would be different.
44:04: From what they normally are, we would cease our foolish levity, our unclean mirth and silly jesting.
44:11: We would take careful heed where we went and what we did. We would make sure our recreation and our amusements were free from sin.
44:19: We would be more careful regarding what we read and what we viewed on television. Now there's a topic, what we see on television.
44:30: You know, this thing can creep up on you. When you first got that television and the first time you saw a certain scene, it shocked you and you turned it off, but then you saw it again and you saw it again.
44:49: Alexander Pope said vice is a monster of so frightful mean that to be hated needs but to be seen.
45:04: But seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.
45:19: Are you embracing now in your living room scenes that you would not have dared think you would have ever embraced five years, 10 years ago, but you've just seen it enough that you have become inured to it.
45:37: Nuff said. Right here, I must say that I suspect that many a preacher could have saved himself from the disgrace of discovered immorality and dismissal from the ministry if he had taken seriously the fact of God's personal presence in his home.
45:55: And then not fall into the tragic habit of feeding his sensual appetite by watching pornographic movies or surfing the pornographic websites on the
46:06: Internet late at night while his wife already in bed was asleep.
46:13: If we take seriously the fact that the infinite personal God is ever with us, would we dare to sin in his presence knowingly?
46:26: Would we dare to ignore his will for us? If you know he is present, then let your weaker passions dare consent to sin for God is there.
46:39: Fourth and finally, to anyone here who may be high, may be seeking to hide from God because you suspect that he does not approve of your lifestyle.
46:51: And over the years, I've known some Christians in that state of affairs. I can only say that you have to realize that it is a totally, utterly irrational, insane thinking on your part to try to hide from him.
47:05: Or to fly from him. Where can you hide? Where can you flee?
47:13: There is no place he does not see. No distant grave.
47:19: No foreign place can bar you from his searching face. You cannot be obscured by night.
47:27: His spirit pierces dark with light. You cannot escape him.
47:35: No matter where you go, no matter how hard you try to avoid confronting him, he's always there.
47:42: You have no privacy with him. And the only rational thing to do is to bow before his inescapable presence and to close with him and to make peace with him.
47:58: Well, there are some suggestions regarding this doctrine's applicatory significance.
48:06: And you can think of some others, I'm sure. But these are sufficient to make plain that God's attribute of omnipresence is not an impractical bit of revealed information and that if we would be the
48:20: Christians that God would have us be, we should know about this doctrine, both in its content and in its practical implications.
48:28: In sum, we must be able really to mean it when we sing,
48:34: Lord, thou has searched me and thus know where I rest, where I go.
48:41: Thou knowest all that I have planned and all my ways are in thy hand.
48:47: Where can I go apart from thee or whither from thy presence flee?
48:54: In heaven, it is thy dwelling fair. In death's abode, lo, thou art there.
49:02: If I the wings of mourning take and far away my dwelling make, the hand that leads me is thine and my support thy power divine.
49:11: If deepest darkness cover me and the darkness hideth not from thee, to thee both night and day are bright.
49:20: The darkness shineth as the light. Let us pray together.
49:27: Almighty God, you who are the King Eternal, the
49:34: King of kings and Lord of lords, who are invisible, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, who alone are wise, this morning we worship and adore you for your perfection of omnipresence.
49:59: We confess that we have not lived in accordance with your teaching about your omnipresence as faithfully as we should have.
50:08: We have all too often sought out many silly inventions, such as Adam did with his fig leaf apron, such as David did with murder, to hide our sin from your presence rather than to turn to you with it.
50:22: We have all too often hewn out for ourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water to satisfy our spiritual thirst.
50:33: We have all too often turned away from you who alone are the fountain of living water. We acknowledge this morning that you have made us for yourself and that our souls are ignorant and restless until you fill them with that knowledge of your presence that alone brings eternal felicity and hope and rest.
50:54: So grant us in these days together, indeed throughout the rest of our lives, that vital awareness of your presence that will keep us from sin, that will motivate us to holy living, that will encourage and console us, and that will give us hope and rest.
51:16: this we pray in Jesus' glorious name. Amen.