The Attributes Of God "O" - [Psalm 139]

Well, tonight we're going to look at the omnipresence of God. Just to start off, it's a smaller group, who can tell me what the omnipresence of God is? What is the omnipresence of God? Luke? God is everywhere.

Okay, good. Any elaboration on that? Do you know what omni and presence stands for? Okay, good. Good. Brad? Okay, good. Always present. And why is it an important doctrine? Pardon me? It determines how you live.

This is a big one. If you can understand the omnipresence of God, it's going to help you, both in the positive aspects of your life and your negative ones. Yes? What else that would fall under the umbrella of, it determines the way you live?

Because that's pretty all-encompassing. More specifically, Becky? Okay, and we'll learn tonight that darkness is not darkness to the Lord. Good. Alright, Mark Schaefer? Okay, good. I wasn't thinking about that tonight, but that's a very good insight that you have, because as God is everywhere, and he's always with us, Satan is limited in his person and his being.

Good. Anybody else? Yes, Bruce? Absolutely, and you're going to find rest in this Psalm 139 tonight. Good. Anybody else? Yes, Mr. Johanson. Okay, say it one more time. Okay, that's right. How could God be sovereign if he wasn't aware in all places and not near?

Good. Ferdie? Okay, a lot of these attributes intersect, don't they? Especially these ones that talk about his immensity. Good. Just a couple more? Yes, Vida? Good, and that's one of the things I want to talk about tonight, in terms of if you'd like help in your evangelism, if you'd like help in your prayer, if you'd like help when you have times of need that you need to get comforted, this is going to be a good message for you tonight.

It's just rich, and the way the psalmist works it, it's not just doctrinal statements. We're going to look at Psalm 139, and it's doctrine, the doctrine of the omnipresence of God in poetry. All right, I could say to you, God is sovereign, and then we could look at some of the sovereignty of God passages that Paul teaches, very didactic, very teaching, very kind of cold and steely maybe, but then you could go to a poem about the sovereignty of God, like Ecclesiastes 3.

There's a season for everything. There's a time to be born, and there's a time to die, and you learn how the sovereignty of God applies to all of life in poetry, and so that's exactly what we're going to do tonight.

Before you go to Psalm 139, though, let me just give a few introductory comments. One little boy, probably Yvonne, about your age, said, when asked the question, how many gods are there? How many gods are there?

One. That's right. How do you know that? And the boy about your age said, because there's only room for one. He fills the heavens and the earth. That's good. One Sunday morning, an instructor in a theological school was sharing a seat with a small boy on the train, says the Philadelphia Bulletin.

The boy was holding a Sunday school lesson leaflet. Do you go to Sunday school, my boy? Yes, sir. Tell me, my boy. I think he'd probably have some fun with the boy. Tell me where God is and I'll give you an apple.

Probably today you'd have to say a three-pound bag of pretzel M &Ms or something. The kid would probably say, now an apple? Tell me where God is and I'll give you an apple. The boy looked at the man and promptly replied, I will give you a whole barrel of apples if you tell me where He is not.

That's good. Well, tonight, the omnipresence of God, and I read Exodus 3, I will be with you. That is the heart of the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I think of the gospel, Christ Jesus with us.

What is God with us? Translated, God with us? Does anybody know? The Hebrew word, Emmanuel. Excellent. The omnipresence of God, or you know what I like to call it? The nearness of God, that God is near.

I think this is going to be important for us tonight because we need to have a high view of God. Is that important? Why? Let me ask you now because I see some of you are tired, maybe from all the Mother's Day festivities.

Why is a high view of God needed today? Why is it good to have a high view of God instead of a low, guttural view of God? Yes, Becky? Like I do at work? Okay, all right. That's exactly right. Okay, good.

Listen to what Tozer said, a right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well, and that's exactly what you were talking about. I believe, Tozer said, there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts of God.

So here's what we should be able to do. I should be able to look at your life and then determine what you believe. I should be able to determine your view of God by watching your life because doctrine is determined, it is fleshed out rather, it's incarnated in your duty, in your obedience, in your life.

And for me, I struggle with idolatry all the time. I want to make sure that I have God on His throne in my heart, and I read 1 John 5 .21, and it says, Little children, keep yourselves from idols. And when I get back from a country and I bring an idol, I've told you this story many times, Kim will say to me as I walk out the door, Honey, I love you.

And this is kind of a joke. This is not exactly the case, but it's almost like I say, Honey, I love you, and she said, Honey, I love you, and preach the word. We'll see you soon. And then her last words is, A taxi drives me away.

Don't bring any household idols home. And so then, of course, like a person who sees paint, and it says, Don't touch wet paint. I have to bring home the little idols. And those are idols for me that are easily perceived by me to be wrong, some little idol this big, and I don't bow down to it.

But if you think anything about God wrongly, it's idolatry. Anything you think about God that's not true of Him, revealed in Scripture, is idolatry. And so that's why studies in the attributes of God is good, because if your view of God is not omnipresent, then you have the wrong God that you're viewing.

And so this will be very helpful to you in that regard as well. Could I say everything about the omnipresence of God tonight? Obviously not, because God is infinite, and we are finite. But you will have to engage your minds tonight.

Thomas Trahern said, Nothing is more easy than to think, comma, and nothing is more difficult than to think well. And so you will need to use your minds. Let me give you a couple of definitions as we think about the infinite God and what omnipresence is.

One man said, When we say that God is infinite, we mean that He has no bounds. Whatever God is and all that God is, He is without limit. He is measureless. Can you use rulers to measure God? Can you use tape measures to measure God?

Can you use things like longitude and latitude to deal with God? No. Omnipresence is the infinitude of His being in relation to His creatures. He is equally present with all His creatures at all times and in all places.

A. A. Hodge. Hodge goes on to say, Omnipresence characterizes the relation of God to His creatures as they severally occupy their several positions in space. So people are all throughout the world. We're going to learn about God and how He deals with people in the world.

And I don't know if you... Let me just put it bluntly. When I think about the omnipresence of God and I just say, He's with us everywhere. It's not really that easy. If you have a kid... Bob Nick said it this way.

If you have a $1 ,000 bill and show it to a kid, how do you get them to appreciate how big that $1 ,000 bill is? He said, The only way I know how to do it is to take small coins like pennies and then begin to count them out.

And then they see, Wow, for a $1 ,000 bill, it takes how many pennies? 10 ,000? 100 times 1 ,000 is what? 100 ,000? Okay, good. I'm a theologian, not a mathematician. Just as a child cannot picture the worth of a coin of great value but only gain some sense of it when it is counted out in a number of smaller coins, so we too cannot possibly form a picture of the infinite fullness of God's essence unless it is displayed to us now in one relationship, then in another, and now from one angle, and then from another.

God is unlimited when it comes to space. That is the doctrine of omnipresence. He is not limited by space because why? He created the world. He was already outside of space, outside of any distance or measuring.

God is a God at hand and not a God far off. If I walked up to this and knocked on it and said, Is God in there like Hindus would? Is, in fact, God in this pulpit? The wood of this pulpit. Are you there?

As a matter of fact, some theologians have gone to India and seen Indians knocking on trees saying, Are you there? True or false? God is the heavens and the earth. No. No, He made the heavens and the earth.

He is distinct from His creatures, and so omnipresence does not mean pantheism. Pan, all, theism, God. Everything is God because He is distinct and different from His creation. And here's another one that if you don't think about it, you're going to miss.

God's being is not diffused through space. God is wholly present everywhere. That is to say, if you can imagine space is so big and then you think God then fills up the space, but then maybe part of Him is over here and part of Him is over there, that's the wrong view of omnipresence.

All of God is here right now. Do you think all of God is with us right now? But it's a big universe. What if we have to dilute Him down a little bit? He is not diffused. His whole being is in every place.

Don't think about Him in spatial dimensions or size. God existed before there was a where. How about that? God existed before there was a where. And so now even as He exists, He can exist before there was a where, during the where, in the where, and still outside the where.

True or false? Since God is everywhere, He is tainted by sin that is in the world. No, and many great reformers say that if the sun rays come down on a pile of garbage or refuse, is the sun tainted? The answer is obviously no.

Millard Erickson said, it is improper to think of God as present in space at all. All finite beings have a location. They are somewhere. This necessarily prevents their being somewhere else. With God, however, the question of where-ness or location is not applicable.

God is the one who brought space and time into being. He was there before space. He cannot be localized at a particular point. There can be no plotting of His location on a set of coordinates. In other words, God transcends where-ness.

Isn't your mind starting to burn up already? God transcends where-ness. I mean, how do we talk this way? He is active at every moment of every time, atemporally, at every point in space. True or false?

God's omnipresence only means that He fills just the space of the universe. Well, that would be false because He fills all of space beyond the universe, infinitely beyond all space. How about this one?

I just looked at some of these definitions and I thought they were just really interesting. Bonaventure. God's center is everywhere. God's circumference nowhere. I like that one. Turretin. Wherever He is, He is holy.

W-H-O-L-L-Y. Holy in all things, yet holy beyond, included in no place and excluded from none. Aren't you glad you don't have to take a seminary test on that? Let's look at four passages and then go to Psalm 139.

Passage number one, 1 Kings 20. So let's go there. Get your Bibles out. 1 Kings chapter 20. I want to show you the pagan view of their gods and how they didn't think their God was everywhere. And back in those days, you have the God who controlled this area.

He was the God of the Moabites, Chemosh. And so then if you moved into Israel, you were expected to worship the God that was there except Israel's God is transcendent over everyone. And so 1 Kings chapter 20, we see the pagan view, the Syrians worshiping a God of the valleys because they thought God, the Yahweh God, He was just the God of the mountains.

Different spots. They didn't understand the omnipresence of God. And so 1 Kings chapter 20 verse 23. By the way, my sermon tonight is sometimes in NAS, sometimes in ESV. 1 Kings 20, 23. And the servants of the king of Syria said to him, their gods are God of the hills and so they are stronger than we.

But let us fight against them in the plain and surely we will be stronger than they. Why? Because their God was the God of the plains. Their God is the God of the hills. Where do you want to fight? If their God is the God of the hills and yours is the God of the plains.

Well, don't go up to the mountains. You're going to lose. Their God is going to help them. And do this. Remove the kings each from his post and put commanders in their places. Verse 24. Verse 25. And muster an army like the army that you have lost, horse for horse and chariot for chariot.

Then we will fight against them. Where? Hey, where our mascot is, in the plain. Surely we'll be stronger than they. And they listened to their voice and did so. In the spring, Ben-Hadad mustered the Syrians, went up to Aphek to fight against Israel.

Huge army against little, dinky, tiny Israel. And the people of Israel were mustered and were provisioned and went against them. The people of Israel encamped before them like two little flocks of goats.

But the Syrians filled the country. It's going to be a slaughter, by the way. The man of God came near and said to the king of Israel, Thus says Yahweh. By the way, the Yahweh that's everywhere. Because the Syrians have said, they've got bad theology, they blaspheme me.

Because the Syrians have said, The Lord is a God of the hills, but He's not a God of the valleys. Therefore, I will give all this great multitude into your hand and you shall know that I am the Lord. They encamped opposite one another seven days.

Then on the seventh day the battle was joined and the people of Israel struck down the Syrian. 100 ,000 foot soldiers in one day. God is a God of the hills. God is a God of the mountains. God is a God of the plains.

God fills all the world and beyond. Second passage, 1 Kings 8. Flip back. This is a positive description of the omnipresence of God. Before we hone in on our main set of verses. That was a wrong view in 1 Kings 20.

Now the right view, 1 Kings 8 .27. And there I have provided a place for the ark in which is the covenant of the Lord that He made with His fathers. Wait a second. That was verse 21. Verse 27. But will God indeed dwell on the earth?

Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. That is wonderful language describing God's omnipresence. How much less this house that I have built. Isaiah 66 .1 is the third passage. I won't have you turn to it.

I'll just read it. Thus says the Lord, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What is the house that you would build for me and what is the place of my rest? If heaven is the throne of God and earth is the footstool, where is God's dwelling place?

Where is His house? It's too big. It's everywhere. And lastly, Acts 17. Turn to Acts 17. We're just looking at a few verses to put our doctrine of God's omnipresence together. Then we'll look at Psalm 139 and then we'll look at practical ramifications.

So final verse, Acts 17. Let's pick it up in verse 24. God is not partly in one place and partly in another. Part of Him in one place, part of Him in another. He is wholly in every place. But God who made the world and all things in it, Acts 17 .24, since He is the Lord of heaven and earth, He does not dwell in temples made with hands, neither is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things.

And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place. One man, verse 26, from Adam God made all mankind.

Not back to one Athenian, you Athens folks that love to think that you're the center of the universe. I know not all Greek people think that, but these particular Greek people did. Well, at least he's listening.

The exact times in God's sovereignty orchestrating all these things. Now jump down to verse 27. Here's our passage. That they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him, yet He is actually not far from each one of us.

He's not very far from us because He's omnipresent. He reveals Himself in creation. He's not hiding Himself. God is not saying, you know, some kind of Easter egg hunt and you have to try to find Him. And the passage here says that they might feel their way.

That's the same word we got from the Greek poet Homer used for Cyclops after he was blinded with a sharp stick, groping for Odysseus. Groping. He's not far because He fills all things in heaven and in earth.

Your unknown God, Athenians, makes Himself known. He's not trying to hide Himself. No, on the other hand, it's not God who's hiding Himself. It's men who are hiding themselves from God. And they hide through religion.

They hide through good deeds. All right, now let's go to Psalm 139, our fifth passage and really our main passage for tonight. Psalm 139, the beautiful theological poems, far from any kind of abstraction, far from just data, this wonderful passage that talks about God's omniscience, God's omnipresence and God's omnipotence.

Okay, Psalm 139. One of the things I like to do with this psalm is to kind of get the wow factor back. You see something wonderful and you say, wow, that is amazing. I always like to think of it as fireworks.

July 4th isn't that far away. Can you believe it's already May? July 4th and when there's that beautiful display at the end of the fireworks show, it goes on for, well, as big as your budget is, for five minutes, for 50 minutes.

And you sit there and just look at people's faces next time. They're all up there like this. Wow. You know, and there's really a big report, a big retort. Okay, I've got a question for you. A big report.

I'm tired today. When you hear those sounds, you watch people next to you and you go, wow, wasn't that good? And you look down at your kids and think, wow. It's one of those wow moments. I really think Psalm 139 is one of those wow moments and I love to go to a hospital when there's a brand new baby that's born and I love to say, isn't God good?

He just does so many good things, wonderful things. Can I just read Psalm 139 to you right now because you think about the grandeur and greatness of God. This is one of those wow moments. E .J. Young said, The emphasis of the wonder of God is drastically needed today.

The sense of awe and wonder in the presence of God has all but disappeared. Men speak of God with flippancy. His name no longer brings fear to the heart. It is well then that we pause to remember that God is our creator.

We need Him. He does not need us. He made us and He exists independent of us. We are dependent upon Him and without Him, we can do nothing. And then to watch this great God who doesn't need us deal with the psalms with all the personal pronouns that this could be David's personal God and this is our personal God.

You are going to see the psalmist and God and then I want you to see past David and God and I want you to see you with God. If you've been born again and you're redeemed and God has opened your eyes so that you have placed your faith in Christ Jesus alone, you can say this is not just David's God.

This is my God. He's a great God. In a world of everybody's great, here's a great God. I found a list. Alexander the Great. Catherine the Great. Muhammad Ali. I'm the greatest. For those of you who are older and watch Johnny Carson.

The great Kreskin. Remember Kreskin? I know Steve knows Kreskin. Do you know Kreskin? Okay, all right. The great Houdini. The greatest show on earth. And you know every one of these great people, they'll let you down.

1715, King Louis XIV of France died. 72 years he reigned. And guess what he called himself? The great. He's the one who said, I am the state. Funeral was spectacular. His body lays in a golden coffin.

The cathedral's dimly lit with only a small candle set on top of his coffin to show how great he was. Thousands waited. Bishop Massillon gets up to speak and before he does, he goes over to the candle and snuffs it out with his fingers and he says, only God is great.

I like that, Bishop. The psalm really splits up in four parts and we're only going to look at the second part. Four parts. God is all-knowing, verses 1 to 6. God is everywhere, verses 7 to 12. God is all-powerful, verses 13 to 18.

And then the holiness of God affects you the rest of the verses. And so the first section is God's knowledge, then God's presence, then God's power, then God's holiness. Pay special attention. I said it a moment ago, I want to say it again.

Intensely personal, with no K-N-O-W, with personal pronouns. Here we're going to learn about God's whole being is in every place. I will read verses 1 to 6 to catch us up though, to show us about God's knowledge.

Oh Lord, Yahweh, you have searched me and known me. Here's not personal pronouns, only me and me, but known me. And now verse 2, you know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. There's a lot of people out there that God knows and God is acquainted with. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh Lord, you know it all together.

And listen to this language. How great is this? You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. What's your response to that? David had it right. Such knowledge is too what? It's too wonderful for me.

It's high. I cannot attain it. And now David asks two rhetorical questions in this poem, in this psalm, in this musical composition. We have the lyrics, just not the music. So he asks questions. Where shall I go from your spirit?

He doesn't want to go. Some commentator said, he wants to run from God. David sinned and he wants to run from God. He's not saying that at all. He's saying if you could run from God, you can't get away from Him.

He's close to me. If you read verses 1 through 6, you don't say, that kind of God I want to get away from, unless you've got some kind of besetting sin. He's not wanting to get out of God's gaze, but he's asking the rhetorical questions.

Where shall I go from your spirit? Where could I go from your Holy Spirit? You're all encompassing. Your personal activity is everywhere. Where shall I flee from your, literally, your face, your presence?

Where shall I run from your face? If I fly off with the speed of light, God, you're still with me. And then he amplifies those rhetorical questions with some examples. And these are great examples. Let's try the vertical first.

If I ascend to heaven, up, God, you're there. I like how the ESV does it, in exclamation, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, down in the grave, down death, you are there. The highest point, you're there.

The lowest point, the abode of the dead, the place of the dead, height and depth, you're there. And by the way, you are there. You might want to underline you, because in the Hebrew, it's emphatic. It's placed there in such a way that you would underline it.

You'd make it bold. You'd put yellow font there. You are there. And by the way, it's just not that he's at the two poles, but he's in between too. So he's not just up and not just down, but he's in the middle as well.

Climb as high as you want. Descend as low as you want. God is there. How about horizontally now? Verse 9. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.

So let's work through this. Have you ever stood looking eastwardly or stood on the east coast? Sun rises from what direction? East. Okay, good. And it sets in the west. And have you ever gotten up early in the morning?

Let's say maybe you're with Bethlehem Bible Church and you are sleeping on the Sea of Galilee just two or three months ago. And I said to everybody, make sure you get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee.

Becky's shaking her head. That was a good decision you made to go, by the way. And you have your cup of coffee and you're sitting outside in your kind of lawn chair there. We were very close to the beach.

Sand and there's the Sea of Galilee. And all of a sudden it's kind of dark. It's getting a little bit lighter and a little bit lighter. And then one moment the sun isn't there and the next moment what?

The sun screams out and it flies straight up and out and over. This is language in verse 9 to express the speed of the dawn that covers the sky. The speed of the sun. One commentator said this, to rise on the wings of the dawn means to flash from east to west as fast as the dawn's early light streaks from horizon to horizon.

And it's coming from the east. By the way, how fast is the speed of light? 186 ,000 miles per second. That's pretty good. That's pretty fast. God's speed. Forget Mach 1. Maybe it's Warp 1, right? 186 ,000 miles per second.

I dwell in the remotest part of the sea. What's he talking about there? If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the remotest parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, your right hand shall hold me.

Wings of the morning, east coast, the remotest part of the sea. When you said sea, let's say you are in Israel and I said to you the sea, what would you be thinking? In what direction would that be? You'd be thinking the Mediterranean Sea and that is due what?

West. From east to west. That's the point. From north to south, up, down. God is horizontally, vertically there. And what kind of God's presence is there? As Becky said earlier, sometimes there's this scary God sees what I'm doing, but this isn't that way.

This is His comforting presence. Look at verse 10. Even there your hand shall what? Spank me. Chastise me. Find me out. No, even there your hand shall what? Lead me. And your right hand shall hold me.

Your right hand full of strength and power and sovereign care. God's there. He upholds us with His mighty right hand. Is there a way out of God's presence, I wonder? In the old days, here's the way out of God's presence.

If there's darkness, the darkness forms a magical barrier over you and so the gods can't get into where you are. Maybe that's what they were thinking here. So David says in verse 11, if I say, surely the darkness shall cover me.

God can't see through. And the light about me be night. Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as day. And again, this is all for comfort. For darkness is as light to you. True or false?

God existed in eternity before He created anything without light. There's no light in eternity. The light was for not Him. It was for us. I love to watch those Coast Guard spotting excerpts from shows or the news and they've got somebody who's floating out in the middle of the ocean and they've got some kind of maybe green and blackish kind of screen and they're searching around for some kind of heat on top of the ocean, a person floating there.

I wonder maybe even last week when the Navy SEALs went in to get Obama, I think it was in the day, but if it would have been the night... Obama, excuse me, I'm sorry. I honestly did not mean that. You can leave that in the tape.

It was a mistake, I'm sorry. Because I also try to say President Obama when I speak of him and I meant Osama. Well, God knew what I was going to say before I formed those words on my tongue, didn't He?

And He still cares for me. You try getting up here sometime and preaching after a long day. Real funny. That's why I have men in the preaching discipleship lab. They don't yuck it up anymore after they're up here a couple of times.

Steve Pru wasn't laughing. He knows it's difficult. I like this quote. You need more than darkness to run from God's love. Isn't that good? You need more than darkness to run from God's love. Can a man hide himself in hiding places?

So I do not see Him, declares the Lord, Jeremiah 23. Do I not fill the heavens and the earth, declares the Lord? It is impossible for you to ever move out of God's personal concern. It's impossible. You're out of reach.

It's impossible for you to move out of the care and concern of God the Father. Just a short time ago, we had Haley fly from Boston to Omaha, and I was going to go to a conference, and so she flew early, and she was going to fly through Midway, Chicago, and then into Omaha, and so it was the first time she flew on her own.

And she was beyond the care of her father, me, the human father. We sent her to the airport, gave her her rabbit's foot, and just, you get in a bind, just rub it. We said, you know, we can entrust you to the Lord's care, and when you get to Nebraska, give us a call.

But she was beyond our care. There's nothing I could do. I could get in the car maybe and drive there if there's a problem, but I said, if you get to Midway and your flight's canceled, then you're going to have to call me.

And I could probably, you know, do something long distance, but to think that God is close and that God cares past, present, and future. We're limited. We are limited by darkness. God's limited. Not at all.

Psalm 119 says, Thou art near, O Lord, present everywhere with this whole being all the time. I did a study. These are some English prepositions that talk about the omnipresence of God. English prepositions.

Underneath, around, in the midst of, behind, near, with, before, and in. How about that? That is excellent. All right, we don't have very much time left, so in the time I have left, let me tell you how the omnipresence of God is very practical.

Number one, the omnipresent God, the near God, should keep your personal integrity at a high level. Should keep your personal integrity at a high level. Turn with me, if you would, to Job 31. Job 31. Now, where Psalm 139 was comforting when we're having troubles and trials, Job 31 is a little more dealing with personal integrity.

And this actually ties nicely into my sermon this morning. When you, if you're a young man or an older man and see a woman, you need to say to yourself, I need to watch out for what I look at. And so, you should keep your eyes on the lady's eyes and don't let them glance your eyes on anything else or any other part of her, unless she's your wife.