‘Behold, the Lamb of God’s
ide o amnos tou
theou
College Study
23rd teaching
2.4.2013
The ‘Omni’ Doctrines:
“God’s Omnipresence”
Turn to Psalm
139:1-12.
Our subject tonight is God’s Omnipresence, which
is also the title of this study.
One of the themes of the previous psalm is the
Omnipresence of the Lord. The psalmist indicated that the presence of God is
inescapable. God is everywhere. Certainly, we often think of God’s presence as
being in heaven and even on earth, but shockingly, the psalmist even writes
that the presence of God so permeates Creation, that He is present even in
hell. From one end of the universe to the other, God is ever-present.
This is known as God’s ubiquity, that God is present
everywhere. We know this doctrine more commonly as God’s Omnipresence.
God’s Omnipresence is a classic doctrine which
serves to differentiate the true God from the false gods, and a good grasp of
the meaning of Omnipresence will help us steer clear of heresies like pantheism
and panentheism. Like many of the other classic doctrines of God, there’s great
confusion about the clear meaning of Omnipresence. Does it mean that God is in everything, or that everything is a part of God? What does it mean?
So, to give us clarity, tonight we’re going to cover three points:
1.
What Omnipresence is
2.
What Omnipresence is not
3.
The Personal Value of
Omnipresence
1.
What Omnipresence is
Omnipresence, like Omnipotence that we studied last week,
comes from Latin. The Latin word is omnipraesentia.
It literally means all-present.
What’s wrong with this picture (omnipresent-map). If it was
really a map showing omnipresence, there would be no dots, but the map would be
totally marked. This is what it means to be omnipresent, all-present,
everywhere at once.
Perhaps some analogy will help us better understand the
concept of Omnipresence. Let’s consider a good analogy and a bad one. First, a
bad analogy:
A. Omnipresence is like air
filling a room. This is a bad analogy because air breaks down into parts,
oxygen, nitrogen, particles, molecules, and so on. So air in a room has
different air molecules in one place and other molecules in another place. Whereas,
God does not have parts. All of God is everywhere, since He is all-present.
A better analogy:
B. Omnipresence is like beauty
present in a work of art. Take the painting on my wall. Which part of it has
the beauty in it? Where exactly is the beauty located, focused or centralized
in it? Could you grade how much of the beauty is in this part or that part? No,
because the whole painting has beauty. So too, God, all of God, is present
everywhere in the universe.
*Logically, God must be all-present if we claim that He is
infinite. If God has no limits to His Being, then certainly He has all-power,
or infinite power. If God has no limits, then certainly He has all-knowledge,
or infinite knowledge. If God has no limits, then certainly He has unending
Life, or immortality. So too, God’s infinity is the basis for God’s
Omnipresence. For if God is infinite and without limit, then it follows that
God’s presence is infinite and without limit.
This is why God is present both in heaven and hell, both on
earth and in space, everywhere, because He is without limit even in His
presence. If there were anywhere where God was not present, then He would be
limited in His presence and could not be Omnipresent. But God cannot be
limited. God is infinite. So the claim of Omnipresent is truly that God is
unlimited, that He is absolutely everywhere. God is everywhere at once and
therefore nowhere absent.
Turn 1 Kings 8:27.
In the context of this passage, King Solomon of Israel, the son of King David,
is about to pray to dedicate the Temple he has built for the LORD. (begin
reading in v.22-27).
Solomon realizes that no building, however grand, can
contain God. He declares that not even heaven can contain God’s limitless
presence. God is present everywhere within the universe. Before it was all
made, there was nothing but God’s presence. Even after Creation, the universe
exists only within and upon the basis of God’s presence. God’s presence
permeates the universe because when He made it, the universe was created within
His limitless presence.
At work a while ago, a friend and I were discussing the
spatial extent of the universe. Is the universe infinite or does it have a
limit? Astronomers and physicists are still trying to figure it out. Even
Einstein took a stab at the question.
He said “Two things are infinite: the universe and human
stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
What’s beyond all the stars and the planets and the
galaxies and the nebula and the matter and the particles and the light of it
all? What’s beyond the universe? Is there a wall at the end of it? Is there a
great, devouring black hole at the end of it? What is beyond it?
The answer is: God’s presence. God’s presence is the only thing
which, in relation to space, we know to be infinite.
And throwing around these words can sometimes sound
meaningless. It is easy to say that God is infinitely more, or that He is
bigger than the universe. But what a unspeakably huge statement. Infinity is a
concept we can barely encompass.
Gustave Flaubert, a writer from the 1800s, suggested “The
more you approach infinity, the deeper you penetrate terror”. Infinity as a
concept is one of the most alien, inhuman and horrific concepts we can attempt
to imagine. Compared to infinity, our lives are nothing. We occupy 0% of
infinity.
And when we speak of the universe, we’re talking about
something which is immensely huge. I mean, it’s big.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says “Space is big.
Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it
is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but
that’s just peanuts to space.”
How big is space? The region visible from Earth, according
to Wikipedia, is some 47 billion light years across. The universe itself is
believed to be at least 93 billion
light years in diameter. Now that’s just words. It’s hard to grasp what that
much space is like.
One single light year, or the distance that light travels
in one year, is approximately 6 trillion miles. It’s almost 100 miles from here
to Disney Land.
But the universe, then, is at least… at least… 93 billion light years in diameter. That’s 6 trillion x
10 to the twenty-third power. Someone estimated its size as this number:
546337955400000000000000 miles.
That’s ridiculously huge. Now let’s place that number in
the context of God’s Omnipresence. If God is infinite, then even 93 billion
light years is 0% to God.
The Bible doesn’t exaggerate when it says in Isaiah 40:17, “All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted by Him less
than nothing and worthless”. Is that God being snooty? Is that God being
arrogant? No, that’s God being realistic. If the vast spaces of the universe,
if 93 billion light years at least is
0% to God’s infinity, then surely the nations of the Earth are even less than
that.
There’s an old hymn that goes “O what matchless
condescension the eternal God displays”. Condescension isn’t even a strong
enough word to reference the fact that God even notices that you’re alive right
now. The comparison of size between your mortality and His infinity is less
than miniscule. If you think a study of the universe will make a man feel
small, how much more should a study of the eternal God?
*So, now we know what Omnipresence is. In summary, it is a
doctrine of God which states that God is present everywhere. This doctrine
follows from God’s infinite nature. Since God is infinite and without limit, so
too His presence is infinite and without limit.
2. What Omnipresence
is not
Earlier I had mentioned two worldviews, pantheism and
panentheism. These may sound familiar to those of you who have been with us
since the beginning of our study.
We know now what Omnipresence means, but it will be helpful
to further clarify our definition by comparing it to what Omnipresence is not.
Omnipresence does not mean pantheism or panentheism.
Pantheism is the worldview of the Hindu and the Buddhist
and the New Age believer. Pantheism literally means All-God. Pantheism states
that there is no Creator, rather that Creator and Creation are two different
ways of viewing one reality. In other words, Pantheism states that Creation is
God, or that God is Everything. Therefore, the universe and nature are
identical to divinity. Pantheism is a nature-centered spirituality, where all
of the universe is a part of God.
Panentheism, on the other hand, literally means All-In-God.
Panentheism states that the relationship between God and the universe is the
same as the relationship between the mind and the body. The universe is God’s
body, and God is in it as a mind is in a body. Therefore, the tree has a
spirit, the rock and the river have spirits. These are divine parts of nature,
claiming that deity is inside of them.
Now Omnipresence, the actual spiritual truth, does not
claim to be pantheism or panentheism. And this is where many people, even
Christians, get confused.
Omnipresence does not mean that God is creation just because He is present within it. Omnipresence does
not mean pantheism. God and the universe are not one and the same simply
because God permeates the universe with His presence. God made the universe. He
is separate from Creation.
Even trickier, Omnipresence does not mean God is in the universe in the same way that
panentheism claims. God is not physically in space because He is nonspatial as
a Spirit. God is not bound to time because He is nontemporal. God is not inside
of matter because God is immaterial as a Spirit. God is not inside of a tree or
a rock or a river but He is present everywhere at once.
Norman Geisler said: “As the indivisible Being, God does
not have one part here and another part there, for He has no parts. God is
present to but not part of creation. God is everywhere, but He is not any
thing… He is at every point in space, but He is not of any point in space.”
In addition to this, we must realize that Omnipresence does
not mean that God is always present everywhere in exactly the same way. For
example, the Bible says in Psalm 16:11,
“In Your presence is fullness of joy…”
Does this mean that the entire universe is full of joy? One brief survey of the
residents of planet Earth would prove otherwise.
Or what about in Matthew
18:20, where we’re told: “where two
or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst”? Why ask for
God’s presence or be concerned with God’s presence in a congregation of
Christians if He is already present everywhere anyway?
The answer is that God is present in different ways at
different times, even though His basic immaterial presence is everywhere all
the time. God may be present for a specific purpose, to bless and to guide and
to encourage. A special kind or state of God’s presence occurs when there is a
gathering of God’s people together in His name. Also, consider that God’s Spirit
indwells believers in a very different way than He is present elsewhere among
nonbelievers.
So God’s presence is always there, but He can be present in
different ways.
*In summary: God is not everything, nor is He in everything, although He is present everywhere.
There is a fine difference here, but it is the difference between truth and
heresy.
3. The Personal
Value of Omnipresence
In Revelation
3:20, Jesus says “Behold, I stand at
the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in
to him and dine with him, and he with me.”
To those of us who have responded to the gospel of Christ,
we have opened the doors of our hearts and of our lives, of ourselves, to Jesus
and allowed Him in. He has become both Savior and Lord. He has come in.
But have you left Jesus lounging in the dining room?
Is Jesus a guest in your life that stays in the parlor,
never going into the bedroom or through your closets? Let’s stretch this
metaphor. Christ has come into our lives, pictured in Him standing at the door
of our hearts and entering. Now, do you let Christ just sit in the dining room,
or does He go through your DVD collection? How about your computer files and
internet history folder? What about your favorite TV channels, does He get to
see those? Can He rummage through your garbage, your cupboards, your hiding
places? Does He get to inspect every closet, every drawer, every nook and
cranny of this so-called home, the domain of your heart and your mind?
We sang earlier “All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I
surrender all”. But have we? Have we, indeed?
The doctrines of Omnipotence and Omnipresence and
Omniscience are dreadful doctrines for the unbeliever, for they say that a man
opposed to God is powerless against Him, that a man in rebellion against God is
rebelled against One Who is everywhere, and that this God against whom such a
man is sinning knows everything there is to know about that sinner: his heart,
his mind and his soul.
But we’re not talking about these Omni- doctrines being
dreadful to the unbeliever. We’re talking about these Omni- doctrines,
specifically Omnipresence, being invasive to the believer.
Does God indwell your heart or is He an invader there? Have
you given free-reign to the One whose glory demands that He have free-reign?
God is present everywhere. We’ve learned that tonight. But
is God present in every part of your life? Or are there parts of you that
you’re holding back, whether it’s thoughts or dreams or passions or
relationships or habits or sins.
Of committing sin in the face of an Omnipresent God, the
preacher Charles Spurgeon says “For we offend the Almighty to His face, and
commit acts of treason at the very foot of his throne. Go from him, or flee
from him we cannot: neither by patient travel or by hasty flight can we
withdraw from the all-surrounding Deity. His mind is in our mind; himself
within ourselves. His spirit is over our spirit; our presence is ever in his
presence.”
We often think of sinning against a distant God-in-heaven,
not against the indwelling Spirit near to our very souls. He is not only a God
who looks down from heaven, but One who looks out from the throne of our
hearts.
Jeremiah 23:23-24,
“‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the
LORD, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I
cannot see him?,,, Do I not fill heaven and earth?”
The ever-presence of God makes a sinner squirm but it ought
even to render a Christian uncomfortable, should that Christian think that he
or she can hide some part of their life, some deep closet, some hidden
compartment, some dark drawer away from the sight of God.
God touches all of the universe with His presence. Does He
touch all of you? Ladies and gentlemen, let us not have the disrespect or the
ignorance to presume that we can hide anything from the God who is there. We
will have utterly fooled no one but ourselves if we think we can keep things
from Him. He must be present in every part of our lives. We cannot live with
compartmentalized Christianity.
Let me close with the following quote by Andrew Murray, who
was a Christian writer and pastor in South Africa, and author of the book Absolute Surrender. He said “Just as a
servant knows that he must first obey his master in all things, so the
surrender to an implicit and unquestionable obedience must become the essential
characteristic of our lives.”
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