Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: The true and living God who has no limits of any kind to His being, who is infinite and who is great, the creator, the sustainer of all things—He can't be contained by little temples like the idols of the world. No, He is truly present in all parts of His creation.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. I'm Steve Hiller, glad you're here as we continue our series, "Who is Like Our God?" Today, we look at another one of these Bible theological terms, the omnipresent God, meaning that God is everywhere?

Jonathan Griffiths: There is nowhere in His creation, there is nowhere in the universe that we could go where God is not. That is a wonderfully comforting truth for the believer, that we're never beyond the reach of His care and His concern. I think it's also a chastening thought for those who might think they are going to run away from God for a while or keep Him at a distance. That's not going to be a possibility. You can never outrun God, and you can ultimately never escape the reach of His judgment as well.

That's one sobering truth that the Scriptures want to draw out for us. Again, this is part of a big view of God that we're wanting to paint in faithfulness to the Scriptures. It's a profoundly comforting and chastening thought that He is omnipresent.

Steve Hiller: What a great reminder as you talk about the fact that there's no way we can run from God and that we cannot escape His presence and His power and His chastening. Jonah comes to mind as a great example right there.

Jonathan Griffiths: Absolutely. Jonah is a very vivid example of this, particularly applying to the believer where, in a season of life, one might be disinclined to obey and to follow the Lord's leading. Jonah ran from the Lord even to the depths of the sea, but there the Lord reached him and called him back and, in grace, re-established him in service. That's a wonderfully encouraging story, and there are so many others, of course.

Steve Hiller: We're going to begin our message together today. It's called "The Omnipresent God." Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: One of our greatest limitations as human beings is our inability to be in two different places at once. We can't be at the school play and the business meeting at the same time. We can't be at the supermarket and the doctor's office at the same moment. We can't be still in bed, yet present at the gym first thing in the morning, much as we would like to be. Unless we're employed as lifeguards, we can't be both at work and at the beach at the very same time, much as we might like to be on these glorious summer days that we're having from time to time. Essential to our humanity is our limitation, our finitude when it comes to space.

But not so with God. Essential to His divinity is His remarkable ability to be in all places at once, fully present everywhere there is to be. Our God, the Scriptures teach us, is omnipresent. We're going to begin this morning by setting out the basic contours of this truth, this doctrine. Once we've laid a couple of foundations, I'd like to think together about the practical implications, for there are practical implications of this great truth for each one of us.

First, we begin with this core reality that God is fully present everywhere. When Paul was in Athens in Acts 17, he saw all the idol worship going on throughout the city. He saw the little idols up in their little huts, and he used the opportunity of seeing all that idolatry to open up a conversation on the nature of the true and the living God. I'd like to read this quite familiar passage. We've come to it before in this series, but it is an important one. This is Acts 17, reading from verse 22.

Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: 'To an Unknown God.' Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you. 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. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, 'We are His offspring.'"

The true and living God, who has no limits of any kind to His being, who is infinite and who is great, the creator, the sustainer of all things—He can't be contained by little temples like the idols of the world. No, He is truly present in all parts of His creation. It's wonderful having the blessing of cell phone technology, our phone and with it your email and your Facebook. They follow you wherever you may go, so that you're never cut off, never unplugged from your social networks. Never, that is, until you hit a cell dead zone. Suddenly, you realize that the signal has its limits; it only goes so far.

If you look at a cell coverage map for Canada, you quickly see that vast portions of our very vast country are totally unreached by cellular signal. Perhaps you've learned that lesson the hard way. You've had that uncomfortable experience of needing to make contact with someone, maybe just needing to call the CAA because your car has broken down, needing to call a loved one in a time of emergency, and discovering that you have no signal, no means of making that call. Suddenly, we can go from feeling very connected to terribly alone.

"Where can I go from your Spirit?" asks David in Psalm 139. "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. 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, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, 'Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,' even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you."

There is nowhere in all the creation where we could flee the Lord's own presence. There is no dead zone in His map of the universe. He is there, quite literally everywhere. In Jeremiah 23, the Lord asks this question: "'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?' declares the Lord. 'Do I not fill heaven and earth?' declares the Lord."

As human beings, you and I struggle to be fully present in every respect, even if we are physically present in a particular place. The distracted parent on email on the smartphone at home, oblivious while chaos is unfolding all around. The distracted student daydreaming about the upcoming vacation during the physics lecture. The distracted churchgoer glancing at Facebook during the sermon. We all know that we can be physically present but mentally pretty absent from time to time. But when God is present, which He always is, He is fully present, not limited in any way by distraction or frailty of any kind.

When we imagine God somehow being everywhere and filling the universe, we could imagine that somehow He stretches Himself out or dilutes Himself to make Himself be present in all places. But the infinite God, He's not limited in any kind of a way. In fact, if we find ourselves even wondering how it is that God could stretch Himself to fill all things, it may actually reveal that our view of God is a little too small. Solomon had it right when he prayed in the dedication of the temple, saying, "Will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!"

The infinite God, He can't be contained. He is immense, He is unlimited. So, where God is, He is fully there. I understand that for certain medical specialties, a hospital here in Ottawa will be the designated center to service some very far-flung communities in the far North of Canada, thousands of kilometers away. If there's an urgent need for a particular type of surgery, a doctor on call here in Ottawa at the weekend will be the on-call doctor for that specialty for towns and villages literally thousands of kilometers away.

The patient in urgent need in the far North might rightly ask, "Is there a doctor on call? Is there a doctor available who can help me with this need?" The answer would be, "Oh yes, there's a doctor on call. The doctor, he's available, he's on call, he's willing in principle to see you. He covers this area; this is his patch. You can consult with him on the phone, but it will be a five-hour flight to actually get to him." The doctor's on call, oh yes, but he isn't exactly there.

When it comes to the God who governs and upholds the entire universe, He is fully present throughout His vast domain, all the time, in every place.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths and a message called "The Omnipresent God," part of our series "Who is Like Our God?" We're going to pause right here, but we'll get back to the message in just a moment. If you've ever want to find out more about Encounter the Truth, I hope you'll stop by our website. In addition to just learning more about the ministry, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter, you can check out our e-devotional, and you'll find links there to social media. Check it all out at encounterthetruth.org. Let's get back to the message. Again, here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: When it comes to the God who governs and upholds the entire universe, He is fully present throughout His vast domain, all the time, in every place. Now, that's the foundation of this truth that we need to understand at the outset. But at the very same time, in order to rightly understand this truth of God's omnipresence in light of all the biblical teaching on it, we need also to see that God is present in different ways in different situations. That is, the experience of God's presence in different situations and in different places for different people varies in their experience.

There are parallels of this, of course. The presence of a police officer is experienced quite differently by a violent criminal being cuffed and put into the back of a patrol car than the experience of that police officer's presence is felt by the officer's child when he or she gets home at night. Same person, same presence in a way, but very different experience of that presence. Or think of a famous performer or politician among a great crowd of people. The person is encountered in one way distantly, from afar, but then the person goes backstage and talks with her close coworkers or friends, and the experience now is different. Same person, different experience.

God is present everywhere, in all places, but He is present to different people in different situations at different times and in different ways. To get our heads around this, we need just to think about the shape of the whole Bible story, the story of the whole world itself. When God created the world and created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, they began in a state of enjoying the presence of God in a very, very intimate way, in an open way. They enjoyed fellowship and even friendship with Him right from the start of the creation.

They lived in a garden that was, in a very real sense, a sanctuary. God came down, and we're told He walked with Adam in the cool of the day. There was openness, there was relationship, there was access, and with all that came the fullness of the blessing of God Himself. That's how it was at the beginning. But that happy state of affairs didn't last very long. We know that if we know the story of the Bible. Adam and Eve rebelled, and they were defiled by their own sin, no longer fit for the presence of a holy God. They were thrown out of the garden. Cherubim with flashing swords were put in place to guard the way back in.

Outside the garden, where we all live now, God was still present in the world. He still oversaw what His created people were doing day to day, but it wasn't the same as that intimate experience of fellowship and friendship and access in the garden. Things had changed. Nevertheless, God wasn't done with this idea of enjoying friendship and closeness with His people. That was really at the heart of His design for Israel, which was to be a people, a nation, a community with the presence of God at its very heart.

The tabernacle in the wilderness, the temple in Jerusalem, it was going to be a place where God's presence would dwell in a very special way, reminiscent even of how things were in the garden. To be sure, access would be limited and sacrifice would be involved, along with a priesthood and ritual and so on. But the intention is there, and it's symbolized by the tent and then by the building. Promises throughout the Old Testament point forward to a time when God's presence would spill out beyond the temple building and be more widely available.

We zoom forward to the arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ. As He comes on the scene, several statements in the New Testament tell us that His arrival is all about bringing the presence of God to His people. We remember Matthew 1:23, where we're told that Jesus will be called Emmanuel, which means "God with us." In John 1:14, speaking of Jesus, John says, "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us." Quite literally, it says He tabernacled among us, pitched His tent among us, was among us as the tabernacle. "We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

The Lord Jesus Christ, He is the full embodiment of the divine presence now here among us. As He dies on the cross to pay the price of our guilt and to deal with the problem of our awful separation from the blessings of God, the Gospel writers tell us that while that's happening, the curtain in the temple is torn in two, opening up the sanctuary itself, declaring that the building is no longer needed as this meeting place with God. God has now come to us in this very personal way in Jesus.

As Jesus returns to heaven at the end of His earthly ministry, He promises to leave us with His Holy Spirit, so that all those who belong to Him and believe in Him now become His temple, as His Spirit lives within us. So now, as His people, we can truly say that God is with us, with us in this gracious way, this intimate way, this life-giving way. God's presence is a gracious gift for the blessing of His people through His tabernacle, through His temple, through the person of His Son, through the gift of His Spirit. The gracious presence of God brings blessing to the people of God.

Equally though, God's presence can be experienced in a very different way as He comes near to do the work of judgment. Talking of the judgment to come, the Lord says this through the prophet Malachi in chapter 3, verse 5: "So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who oppress the widows and the fatherless and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty."

Without going into the history and details of that text, Malachi 3:5 tells us that the work of judging sin is not something that God outsources. Just as you and I might like to outsource some of the more unpleasant or difficult tasks that we have to do around the home, God actively deals with sin and He deals with sinners. That reality stretches to its natural outworking—perhaps a surprising outworking, but a natural one nonetheless—and that is this: that God's omnipresence extends even to the place of judgment itself.

Revelation 14:9: "A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: 'If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he too will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever.'" The everlasting punishment spoken of there is the awful punishment of hell itself. But notice that all this happens in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb Himself.

If the Lord is truly present everywhere in the universe, then it shouldn't surprise us that the Lord is present in this work even of judgment. I think we often tend to think of hell as an exclusion from the presence of the Lord, and we sometimes speak of it in that way. There's some good reason for that. We read in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 that those who don't respond to the gospel will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of His power.

If the omnipresent God is active in judgment even in hell, but at the same time the wicked are shut out from His presence, aren't we into a bit of a contradiction here? That's a tricky question. The answer is no. Scripture takes it for granted that God is truly present everywhere in His universe, but He is present to different people in different situations in different ways. God is present to judge the wicked, even in the place of ultimate punishment. But His presence there is not to bring blessing and it's not to bring light. No, those who are judged are entirely cut off from His blessing and the life that He gives. In that sense, He is absent from them.

R.C. Sproul writes this on the frightening doctrine of hell: "A breath of relief is usually heard when someone declares, 'Hell is a symbol for the separation from God.' To be separated from God for eternity is no great threat to the impenitent person. The ungodly want nothing more than to be separated from God. Their problem in hell will not be separation from God; it will be the presence of God that will torment them."

The Puritan Stephen Charnock, who wrote a great tome on the attributes of God, summarized the dynamics of the presence of God in different places in this way: "God is in heaven in regard of the manifestation of His glory; in hell by the expression of His justice; in earth by the discoveries of His wisdom, power, patience, and compassion; in His people by the monuments of His grace; and in all in regard of His substance. He fills hell with His severity, heaven with His glory, His people with His grace."

That's a lot to take in, I think. But that's the great truth that we're considering. God is fully present everywhere in His universe, truly omnipresent. But He's present in different situations in different ways. That's the big picture, but let's take it down now to the practical level. How does our doctrine of the omnipresence of God impact our thinking and our living?

A number of points here. In the first place, God's omnipresence comforts us in our trials. There's hardly anything worse than being alone, than feeling abandoned. We all value solitude sometimes, some of us maybe more than others. But to be really isolated, without friends, company, companions, helpers—it's a terrifying thing. We're social creatures, God made us that way. We're created for relationship. That's why, by the way, solitary confinement as a punishment is a particularly agonizing thing and particularly to be feared. Those who spend months or even years in solitary confinement inevitably feel something of their humanity slipping away and being sapped.

In a recent report on the practice of solitary confinement in the state of Virginia, the Washington Post comments in this way: "People who enter solitary confinement healthy are prone to come out disturbed. Those with mental illness are at high risk of getting much worse. Human beings are social beings. Interaction with other people is not a luxury. It is a mental health requirement."

Being truly alone is a dreadful thing for us. But whether locked in a cell or not, there are occasions in life, there are those times of trial where we can feel terribly isolated for one reason or another. Many will know something of that experience in a time of deep trial. But for those who know and love the Lord Jesus, we have the assurance that His presence is always with us—not in some general or abstract sense, not in the broad sense that we believe in the doctrine of omnipresence in some kind of vague way, but in the specific sense that He is with us to minister His grace to us, to help us, to comfort us, to uphold us.

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths here on Encounter the Truth and a message called "Who is Like Our God?" We have to pause right here, but we'll get back to the message on our next broadcast, so I hope you'll make it a point to tune in. Encounter the Truth is a listener-supported ministry. It is your generosity that sustains this program and this ministry. As you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you Jonathan's brand-new book. It's called "Wisdom and Knowledge." Jonathan, what is this book about?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well Steve, this book is a study of the life of Solomon from the book of 1 Kings in the Old Testament. But it's more than just a study of a particular life of an Old Testament figure. This is a study of the grace of God shown to someone who trusted Him, followed Him, received tremendous gifts from Him, but stumbled and fell as well. We learn here huge lessons about faith, about sin, about redemption, about the grace of God, lessons that are very contemporary for you and for me. I found this to be such a rich study personally, and I'm so thrilled we're able to make it available this month.

Steve Hiller: We'd love to send you a copy of this book as our way of saying thank you for your financial support. You can give online at encounterthetruth.org or when you call 1-833-99-TRUTH. That's 1-833-998-7884 or encounterthetruth.org. For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer, Mark Bretta, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.