Our God is Omnipresent (Part 1)

For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day, and the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

For thou hast possessed my reigns, thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Let’s continue to verse number 16. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being un-perfect.

And in thy book are all my members written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee. Notice how it ends, this passage. It kind of pivots a little bit in verse number 19, but notice it starts and kind of ends with the idea of God being with us.

That’s a key concept when it comes to God’s omnipresence. So let’s pray together. Our Father in heaven, we thank you, Lord, that you are God who is near. As we study this topic in your word, we pray that you would guide our study, not only as we look at the scriptures, but as we think and meditate upon these truths, not only the but also the implications of these truths to our practical life.

Lord help us and guide us in our study. Bless our study. Lord, we want to know more about you. We want to stand in awe of our great God because there is none like you. There’s none similar. And Lord, you stand alone and we praise you for that. And so bless our study, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen. Now omnipresence, here’s all that means. This is all that means.

Omnipresence means all present. Means God is near or God is here. And so that means that God by His Spirit is in all places simultaneously. And of course this obviously refers to, primarily refers to God’s creation because you think before God created the world, before He created the universe, was there such thing as a place to begin with? Did God create a place? And you say, well God was in heaven before He created the universe and that’s true, but as far as we know that was the only place.

There was no place outside of that place, if you can call it that. So we’re getting kind of in the weeds a little bit philosophically, but God’s omnipresence means that God is in all places all at once. Now you’ll notice in verses 1 through 4, notice the number of times we’ve already actually covered this and I think we’ve actually looked at these verses as well, but it says, Thou assertest me and known me.

Notice it says, known me. Verse 2 says this, Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising. Verse 2 continues, Thou understandest my thought afar off. It says, art acquainted, verse 3, with all my ways. There’s not a word in my tongue, verse 4, but lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. So what do you have here? The first four verses are actually describing omniscience, right? Omniscience, which we’ve already studied.

God knows us. God knows our down-sitting. He understands our thoughts. He’s acquainted with our ways. He knows our words and that’s all of our previous study. Now, when you get, but when you get to verse number 3, you can see something that’s a little bit different, which is, Thou compassest, compassest. So what does the word compass mean? Compass, that’s a very common Bible word. What does it mean?

It means to surround, exactly, to surround, to encircle, or we might say, encompass is the word we use, to encompass, to surround something. And so what verse 3 says is that God, the psalmist here, David says, God is surrounding my path and my lying down. What’s interesting is sometimes we might get the impression we shouldn’t, we might get the impression that God is only concerned with the major events of our life, but verse 2 says the exact opposite.

It says, Thou knowest my down-sitting and my uprising. Verse 3, my lying down. And so the ideas of, you know, you think about, are there things less important in your life than when you sit down and when you stand up? I mean, those are just trivia, just absolute trivia. We don’t give any thought to it altogether. But God gives thought to it. We don’t think about that.

And how many things in our lives do we not think about that we do? We don’t give it any thought prior nor after. We just do it without thought. But there is nothing that we do that is true of God. Whether it’s just menial things, whether it’s mundane things, the Lord is, the Lord knows it. He knows our down-sitting and our uprising. Now verse 3, thou compassest my path and my lying down.

Now the difference between knowing something, which is what we see in verses 1 through 4, and the introduction of the word compassest is location. And that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about omnipresence, the presence of God, where God is. And in these verses what it’s saying is, God surrounds us. Now the idea of God’s omni-presence is related to his omniscience. Now we’ve talked about the omniscience of God as God knows all things, especially when you think about God knows the past, God knows the present, and God knows the future.

So remember we talked about this, slight review. God knows the past, the present, and the future, and that then is related to what attribute of his. Yeah, well that’s his omniscience, but what is that built upon? His eternality, remember? The reason God knows the past is because he was there. He existed in the past, in eternity, same as the present and same in the future. To God all these things are done.

So because God existed outside of time, he then knows all of these things. So in relation to time, omniscience is related to time, omniscience is related to time and eternity, and omni-presence is also related to omniscience, but instead of relating it to time, it relates it to location. Okay, let me explain to you what I mean. God knows the future because he exists in the future, he exists outside of time.

But God knows he has omniscience also because he is in every place, he exists in every location. So there’s no location where anyone or anything can go where God is not, and for that reason God is also omniscient. So in this way, omni-presence and omniscience are closely related. God knows because he is there. God knows because he is there. That’s what we see in verse number three, thou compassest my path.

He knows the way that I take because he is surrounding me, he surrounds me. Now if we go down to verse number five, notice what this says. Now this is where it gets into the core, the meat of omni-presence. Verse five says this, thou hast beset me behind and before. What does the word beset mean? We think of the first thing that probably comes to most of our minds is a besetting sin.

But that’s not the same as in this case, beset. And I’m using this as kind of a case study because this is a word we are familiar with. In other words, we’ve heard the word and many, many times when we study the Bible, when we read the Bible, we come across words that we’ve heard many, many, many, many times before. But here’s the thing, you’ve got to be careful that when you do that, that you consciously think what does this word mean because it says thou hast beset me behind and before.

So we might read the word and not really fully understand and just keep going. So when we don’t know what the word means, we should stop. And beset is a good example of that. Alright, so what does the word beset mean? Yes sir? Okay. Positioned? Anybody else? Huh? Known him. Known him, okay. Did you have one, Ms. Lynn? Ever with me? Anybody else? Okay. You see this when I hear all three of you give your kind of guinea pigs, give your kind of your stab at what exactly it means and you’re very close.

Like you’re kind of, you’re on the target, you’re close, you’re over the target, but this is just a good example. Of course I’m not chiding you because honestly I didn’t know what it meant before I looked it up. So I mean that’s, again, I fall into the same trap. So here’s the thing, whenever you come across a word that you don’t know, if you don’t know for certain from experience what that word means because you’ve had experience with it or looked it up, you should stop and look it up.

So just use this as a good kind of lesson. Alright, here’s what beset means, to surround. It’s the same as compass and that’s not something we would readily know, it just means to compass. And you can kind of see it in the context, thou hast beset me behind and before, but again here’s the thing with beset is we’re talking about God’s location, God’s location. We’re using human terms to describe it.

So if God had beset David in front of him and behind him, if God had encompassed him, right, surrounded him, then God’s probably too occupied with doing that with me, right, because he’s doing it with David. So God’s busy at David’s address so he can’t be at my address. No, the teaching is that God encompassed David, surrounded David, and God also surrounds me and every other person.

That’s what’s being taught here. Okay, now notice, we’ll keep going in verse 5, thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. What’s interesting with that is this. Remember, when we talk about omnipresence, we’re talking about God’s location. God is close enough to touch me. Now this is a truth that we’re going to see later. God is close enough to touch me. He laid his hand upon me.

Now for a believer, man, what a comfort. Even though this is a matter by faith, we have to accept it by faith, but the comfort is that God is near. He’s close enough to touch me all the time, all the time. Verse number 6, he says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. Verse 7, now here’s a rhetorical question.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? And the answer to verse number 7 is simply absolutely nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. And that’s what he’s, that’s what David is saying here. Now look if you would at Jonah, the book of Jonah. We’re going to come back to the psalm here, but look at Jonah chapter 1. Jonah chapter 1. Look if you would at verse number 1.

The Bible says, Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa. And he found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

Now when you see Jonah here, notice that Jonah is attempting to flee God’s presence. Now we know from Psalm 139, and Jonah knew this too, just in his heart. We’re going to come back to that in a second. Jonah is attempting to run away from God who is in all places. Now the question is this, why did Jonah and then why do people attempt to do things that they know are impossible?

Yeah? Because we’re guilty and we wanted to serve God, and we just wanted to have a good life. And you said we could walk out on the truth. Ms. Lynn, you should not be so judgy. But you’re right. I’m right now. Exactly. You are right. You are right. But you see, okay, and here’s the disconnect. We have cognitive dissonance. Anybody know what that means? That’s what this is.

Theologically, we know God is omnipresent and he is everywhere. So on a doctrinal statement, we would sign our initials. I believe that God is omnipresent. But in practice, we live like he’s not. And we act as if he’s not. Is that not where Jonah is? Jonah knew. Jonah was a prophet. He knew God. I mean, disobedient or not, he knew God. He knew that he could not escape God’s presence.

But yet, here’s what the writer of Jonah, I don’t know if it’s Jonah or somebody else, but the writer of Jonah says twice in verse 3 that Jonah’s motive in his travel down to Joppa and then on the ship to Tarshish, which is Spain, is believed to be somewhere in Spain, which is a long ways away. That was all done with the motivation to get away from God.

So here you have a man who knows, doctrinally and theologically, that God is omnipresent, trying to run away from God. Yeah. So that doesn’t mirror the fact that our ability to be is that kind of thing. It’s like choosing to be up in his final conscious. Yeah. But to be honest though, I don’t even know if when, and I’m not going to say we, that when we do contrary things like that, what we do, the opposite of what our theology tells us, I don’t even know that we’re using our brain anymore.

I don’t even know that it’s intellectual anymore because we’re doing exactly the opposite of what our intellect should tell us. Yeah. You can forget him on purpose. Yeah. Yeah. Now, exactly. You’re getting ahead of me. You have to stop. All right. So let’s put Jonah aside for a minute. We do this just on a practical level, and I know I’m jumping ahead because normally our outline is theology, practice, Jesus Christ gospel in these attributes of God.

Okay. But we’re getting ahead a little bit, but that’s okay. The problem is that we know that God is omnipresent. We know that God is omnipresent. We know that God is omnipresent. The problem is that we know that God is omnipresent. We know that he is everywhere. But what do we do in practice as a New Testament 21st century Christian? What do we do? When we find ourselves on the wrong end of God’s will, okay, what we will often do, maybe we’re at a fellowship with God.

Maybe we’ve been offended. Maybe we have fallen. Maybe we’ve sinned in some way. What we often do is we attempt in practice, knowing full well God is omnipresent, we attempt in practice to distance ourselves not so much from God, because that’s illogical, but from everything that is associated with God. Think about this. Jonah was a prophet, right? Now I know Jonah was a prophet to the Gentile nations primarily, but think about when he left Israel, what was he creating distance between?

Himself and the nation? Himself and the land that God had promised Israel? Himself and the temple? Himself and the altar? It wasn’t just that he was creating distance, but when Jonah left, he was actually physically leaving, of course he wasn’t leaving the Lord, although that was his motivation, we see that in verse 3, but he was actually creating physical distance from everything that was related to and associated with God, and that is precisely what happens to us.

Whenever you and I are at a fellowship with God, in our head we know God knows, we know that he is near us, he can touch us, we know that, but we start to create distance between God and prayer, that’s usually the first thing that goes. Whenever someone is at a fellowship with God, the very first thing that goes is the private devotion, always, always, right? Have you found that to be true in your experience?

You can hang on to the public image a little bit longer, to save face in front of other people, but the first thing that goes when you and I are at a fellowship with God is our private devotion. We create distance between ourselves and God in prayer, we create distance between ourselves and God’s Word, the Bible, it remains untouched, unopened, unread, and then once it progresses we create distance between ourselves and the people of God, we don’t want to see them in the store, we won’t come to the church meetings, we create distance.

And even Christians that we know maybe that aren’t in our church, we avoid them, we don’t want to talk to them, what is that? That is a behavior that is betraying the same thing that Jonah is doing, which is trying to run away from everything that is associated with God, because we know we can’t run away from God himself, so whatever it is that we associate with God, that’s what we run away from.

And this is why, and again, on the outside, you all have probably seen and observed people that do that, or have done that. It’s a very sad process, but it’s also a very visible process, because what happens is you start to see, like a shoreline, a tsunami, you start to see the ocean withdraw, and you feel helpless, because you can’t help that person, because it’s a spiritual problem, when they start to become aloof to everything associated with God.

And listen, it’s really, really, we shouldn’t so much, although it is something you can observe outside of yourself, and if you’re in a place of spiritual leadership or oversight, in your family, in the church, among others, maybe a school setting, or something like that, you should pay attention to that. When people start to become aloof, things are going wrong. When they start to become aloof from the things of God, something is happening that’s not good.

And it’s this principle. And so, I’ll get to you in just a second. And so, the way that we should most readily think about this, though, is ourselves. Because when we start to cool off in our relationship to God, and when we are kind of teetering on the outside of God’s will, and we’re not where we should be, we also find that desire to be among things associated with the Lord to dwindle also.

And that’s why we recede, that’s why we withdraw. That’s our tendency. Everybody does it, and the only people that don’t do it are the gross hypocrites. And that’s another issue, that’s another question. But that’s a good way that you can kind of examine your own heart and where you’re at. Do you want God’s Word, or do you create distance? Do you want to pray, or do you create distance?

Do you want to be at church, or is it a hassle, and you’re looking for excuses? Do you want to be among God’s people? You see what I’m saying? It goes back to the omnipresence of God. It’s this principle here. Yeah.

If you find somebody who is willing to admit aloofness, but remember, the aloofness that I’m describing, the receding, the withdrawal that I’m describing from the things associated with the Lord, that is something that is a secondary effect of a primary cause. Why did Jonah flee from the presence of the Lord? It’s because the problem was not the temple, the land, and all these things. Jonah’s first and primary problem was he wasn’t right with God and did not want to do God’s will.

He was in a state of rebellion. His fleeing was a secondary effect of that state. Okay, so to Devin’s question, how do you deal with that? One thing you can’t do is attempt to treat the secondary effect as if it is the primary cause. You have to go to the cause. And so if I’m talking to someone who’s aloof, the thing I’m going to be asking about is where they stand with God.

What is their relationship to God like? Because I know that if Jonah got his heart right with God and finally yielded to God’s and was no longer in rebellion, where is he going to be? He’s not going to be on the ship to Tarshish. He’s going to be back where he’s supposed to be doing the will of God. So if you treat the cause, the effect will solve itself.

So here’s the thing. When you see somebody who’s aloof, and this is a very common thing in the South especially because there used to be more but still maybe lingers a little bit of this kind of cult expectation that you’re supposed to go to church. That’s kind of a Southern understanding. But when you have somebody who is withdrawing from the church as an example, you can beat yourself to death trying to get this person to come to church.

Get this person. If you just come to church. But here’s the danger. The danger is in thinking, if I can just get them to come to church, everything will be better. That’s a secondary result. The primary cause is their relationship to God. It’s funny, they could get right with God at home somewhere and all of a sudden you wouldn’t have to invite them, you wouldn’t have to pressure them or urge them to come to church at all.

They would be there. Why? Because the primary cause has been dealt with. So that’s why you’ve got to be careful in an effort to just, if I can just get them to church. That’s good, but recognize that that’s just an effect. The thing that must be dealt with is where they are with the Lord. Because the two are related. What I don’t mean to say, and I want to be careful and make sure I clarify this, what I don’t want to say is that everybody who sits in church is right with God.

That’s not what I mean. Because that’s not true. In other words, you can’t take the reverse as a fact, but the principle still stands of that distance principle. Ms. Lynn, did you have something you want to say?

I mean, especially if you’re not in your own world. Even in your own daily life, you could know what the cause is. Or in your own self you could know what the cause is. And you have to just keep crying out to God and say, God, please help me with this. You have to get outside of yourself and say, I keep doing this, but I don’t want to do it however I want to.

Because of something that’s wrong. you’re either offended, or angry, or a god, or somebody else, or bitterness is a bad thing because you get, you might be bitter legitimately at someone, it really is something that happens, but then you can start to be bitter at your best friend, or at your spouse, or it just ignores. When you’re dealing with another person who you know there’s an issue, there’s two things you can do scripturally, there’s really only two things you can do scripturally. You can go to that person and confront them lovingly, kindly, directly, but confront them about that issue and try to get them to talk about it. It might not be something that you can confront them with in the setting of church discipline, but where you bring up the issue and try to help them through it, or try to, that’s one thing. And the other thing is prayer, because remember, ultimately it is a matter between that person and God, and really prayer is where you, your confrontation with that person might not yield any good fruit at all. But when you go to God and you intercede for that person, what you’re asking God to do is to reveal his power in that matter, and to bring that person to the place where whatever that thing is, they are no longer willing to do that anymore. They’re willing to abandon it.

And when that happens, all the other stuff will start to get fixed.