God Is Omnipresent
God Is…Omnipresent
(Psalm 139)
Jason Procopio
When I was a child I had the good fortune to travel all over the United States. We moved a lot, and my dad would take me to conferences he attended, so by the time I was an adult I had visited all but four of the fifty states.
I was always fascinated with that moment when we’d drive out of one state and into another. There’s always a sign which says, “Welcome to” whatever state you happen to be entering. I’d always hold my breath when we crossed borders because I knew that, for a split second, I was halfway in one state and halfway in another.
Then when I was nine years old I saw something that took that feeling to a whole new level.
We were moving from Oklahoma (in the south) to Washington State (in the northwest), and we drove the whole way there, through some of the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. My mother was very pregnant with my youngest brother, so we took it slow. We drove through Death Valley, visited the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park.
But my favorite of the sites we visited was the Four Corners Monument. It’s just a big plaque on the ground with two intersecting lines making a cross. But this monument actually stands at the corner of four states—Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. There’s a game tourists always play here: you walk on the monument and sprawl out over the intersecting lines, in order to be, for that brief time, in four states at once.
We humans can’t be present everywhere, but at the Four Corners Monument, we can at least be present in several places at once.
And our desire to do that—to be present in several places at once—tells us a good deal about us, and about our God.
We are in the third week of our annual series entitled simply, “God Is...”, in which we look at some of the attributes of God. And in case you haven’t guessed it yet, today we’ll be looking at the fact that our God is omnipresent—meaning, he is present everywhere.
There are several places we could go to in Scripture to see this reality, but my favorite is Psalm 139.
God Is Omnipresent
A lot of people understand Psalm 139 as being about us. We use this psalm to talk about the dignity of human life, about how God created human beings with honor and care, and so we should treat one another with the same honor and the same care.
And while that’s valid, it’s not what this psalm is mainly about. This psalm has much more to say about God than it does about us. Or to put it another way, this psalm is mainly about God’s transcendence. God’s transcendence means simply that God is infinitely great and exists above his creation.
And David explains God’s transcendence primarily by speaking about his omnipresence. It’s not the only thing he says, but it’s the main point he keeps coming back to.
Let’s start at v. 1:
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
Depending on who you are, these verses will either be comforting or unsettling. Some of us like the idea that God sees everything we do, that he knows us perfectly, that he sees all of our acts and knows all of our thoughts. Others think more unsettling thoughts of God sitting in a big office in the sky with millions of TV monitors in front of him, watching his creation on closed-circuit security cameras.
But that is not how God knows all that he knows about the actions of human beings. He doesn’t just see everything from afar. He sees everything we do because he is with us when we do it.
V. 5:
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
God is transcendent. He is not a part of creation, so he is not bound by creation. He’s not a physical being like us. Jesus says that “God is spirit” (John 4.24), so he is not limited to a physical place and time.
But he is not a spirit like other spirits; he is the Creator of all things, including other spirits. Which means that he is totally apart from and above creation.
A lot us will imagine that God’s transcendence would bring God far away from us. But Scripture affirms that although God transcendent, he is not far from his creation. He doesn’t separate himself from it, but rather, because he is transcendent, God fills all things.
Paul says in Ephesians 4.6:
[There is] one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 23.23-24:
23 “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? 24 Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.
The theological word for this is immanence. God is transcendent, but he is also immanent. He is outside of his creation, but at the same time he fills creation; he is above his creation, but he is involved in his creation.
(We see this most supremely in Jesus Christ, who, although he is God, took on a human nature, and in this human nature, was limited to one place, at one time, just like us.)
David explains God’s involvement in the most minute details of creation by speaking of God’s presence and activity in his own mother’s womb (v. 13-16):
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
God is everywhere—he is present in all places—and in every place he is present, he is also active. There is not an embryo which forms in a mother’s womb which God is not in the process of forming. There is not a cell in the universe which God is not acting upon.
And David shows that this reality is much more far-reaching than we imagine. It’s not just a question of place—of God being present in his mother’s womb—but of time as well. The image David gives is that of a book, in which every moment of every day of David’s life are written long before his birth.
This image (and others like it), in addition to describing God’s care for human life even at conception, also suggests God’s omnipresence not only in space, but in time.
Theologians have long agreed that God is not only present everywhere, but every when.
God knows all of our days, not only because he is omniscient (he knows everything), because he is actually there with us in all of our days.
We experience time as a linear thing, but God is transcendent—he is not limited by time—so even while he is present with us right now, he is also present with the disciples watching Jesus multiply the loaves and fish. Right now, he is present at the fall of the Berlin Wall. He is present at the exodus from Egypt.
He is omnipresent—not only in space, but in time as well.
Think about that for a moment. Just as an example, think about all the times in which you or people you know have prayed for someone for a very long time.
I grew up in church, but I didn’t become a Christian until I was twenty-one. My parents prayed for me for years, and for a very long time I was clearly lost, so they must have felt like their prayers simply weren’t getting anywhere.
But from God’s perspective, that isn’t true. They prayed for years, every day—and every day, when they prayed that God would save me, he responded, “Yes.” Because as they were praying, our omnipresent God was right there with me at the moment of my conversion, regenerating my heart and awakening faith in me.
Most of you know I was out last week because my grandmother died; I flew to Oklahoma for the funeral, so Gethin replaced me last Sunday. She was born on July 27, 1936, and she died on January 15, 2020. At the moment of her birth, God was with her. He was also with her on the day she met my grandfather as a seventeen-year-old girl. He was also with her on the day my mother was born. He was also with her the first time she held me as a baby. He was also with her on the day my grandfather died, over a decade ago. He was also with her at the moment the doctors told her there were no treatment options left for her cancer, and gave her two to eight weeks to live. He was with her a little more than two days later, when she passed out of this life. And he was with her at the moment she finally found herself in the presence of Christ, after leaving this life.
All of this, every moment of her life, God saw simultaneously, because he was always there.
God is omnipresent in a way which is so total, so complete, that it boggles the mind.
He is everywhere, all the time. Which means that he sees everything that happens, at all times. Every sickness. Every time we stub our toes. Every meal. Every cup of coffee. Every sin. Every change. Every time anyone does anything, God is right there.
And that reality causes David to react in three specific ways.
Firstly, David simply reacts in worship (v. 17-18):
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
David is amazed by the thoughts of God, which are infinitely vast because God is always totally and completely present and active, everywhere. He’s completely engaged with everything happening in every place he is. Everything that has ever happened or will ever happened—from the greatest to the smallest—God is totally focused on it right now.
David’s simply amazed by that fact; and not only is he amazed, he cherishes the thought. He loves the reality that God is everywhere and thinks about all he sees; he cherishes it to such an extent that when he gets up in the morning, God’s power and might and perfect will are the first things on his mind.
Secondly, David reacts in hatred toward sin (v. 19-22):
19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
Now there’s a good deal of cultural and historical baggage here. The “enemies” in this text are the pagan nations surrounding Israel, who actively oppose the God of the Israelites. Why? Because for every culture at this time in history—including Israel’s—religion and politics were inseparable. So essentially, an enemy of your religion was an enemy of your nation.
What we need to keep in mind is that this changed when Christ came, because after Christ’s ministry, and the beginning of the church, God opened up his covenant with his people, and made it available to all nations. Which was of course the plan all along. (A huge portion of Paul’s letter to the Galatians deals with that reality.)
And the big shock of this new context which arose was that you could no longer say that if you were an enemy of the nation of Israel, you were by definition an enemy of God.
No, the truth was actually more dire than that—as the apostle James reminds us (James 4.4), whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
We all do that. We’re born with that inclination. In our sinful nature, we are all God’s enemies. Every single human being.
And just as God chose the nation of Israel to be his people before Christ, God chooses men and women to be adopted into this people. Paul said in Romans 5.8,
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
So how are we supposed to read verses 19-22 of Psalm 139 (or other passages like it)?
Well, we are to understand that God’s judgment against sin is a good thing; it is a desirable thing. God’s judgment against sin is the validation of his perfect justice—he wouldn’t be a just God if he didn’t judge sin.
After that, we are to understand that if we have faith in Christ, our sin has already been judged. God took our sin and placed it on Jesus Christ, and Christ was judged in our place, for our sin. Or to put it another it way, God perfectly answered David’s prayer in these verses, when he punished Christ on the cross for us.
And once we understand that, here’s the question we should ask: How should we see our sin, when we see the wrath God poured out against it when he punished Christ? If God hated our sin that much, how badly should we feel that same hatred?
The only right reaction to the reality of God’s hatred toward our sin is that we hate our sin just as much, and that we work to put our sin to death in our lives.
Lastly, David reacts to God’s omnipresence by asking God to lead him in righteousness (v. 23-24):
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
God is with us at every moment, from the moment of our conception to the moment of our death. Even if he weren’t omniscient (even if he didn’t know all things), just through his powers of observation, he’d know us better than anyone.
So because he knows us, because he searches our hearts and knows our thoughts, he is the only being who can perfectly show us the habits, the thoughts, the attitudes and the actions that are out of line with his character, and lead us to change.
Limited by Space and Time
So that’s the doctrine of God’s omnipresence: he is present in every place, at every time, everywhere.
How badly we wish this were true for us!
You only need to take a quick look around to see it. I moved to France sixteen years ago. Loanne and I had been married for a year, and I had never lived far away from my family. In 2004, Facebook was still two years away. Skype didn’t exist. FaceTime didn’t exist. When you moved away from your family, you did not see them except in photos.
But now, if I want to see my parents, I just have to pull out my phone and Skype with them. When I take pictures of my kids, I don’t have to wait to go to the photo place and have them developed and print doubles and send them through the mail to my parents; I can send them photos of my kids literally seconds after I take them.
There’s a lot of good that comes from this. I can be here with my family in France, and simultaneously be at least sort of present with my family in America. We can work more efficiently, stay more in touch with the people we love, be more informed on what is happening in other places around the world (even if a lot of that information isn’t always true).
But there’s a downside to all of this as well. When we try to be present everywhere, we’re rarely fully present anywhere.
How many times have we tried to follow the news somewhere else, or look at photos of our friends’ vacations on Instagram, while all the time our kids are at our knees trying to get our attention, and we say, “Will you please stop? I’m trying to do something”?
How many times have we tried to listen to a podcast of a speech or a teaching we missed, and been so immersed in what we were listening to that we ignored the homeless man we pass on the street, or the person seated next to us on the train, to whom we could have talked about Jesus?
How many times have we found ourselves obsessing over the past—going over photos and remembering good times…all the while oblivious to whatever is happening right now, which we never see because our minds and hearts are still occupied with ten years ago?
When we try to be somewhere else, we’re never fully present where we are.
In addition, because we aren’t omnipresent, we can only control what’s directly in front of us—and even then, our control is very limited. I can be at work and get a message from one of my brothers saying he’s having a hard day for some reason or another, and I can do absolutely nothing to change it, outside of encouraging him and telling him I’m praying for him.
Since I’m here where I am, I can’t always be with my loved ones where they are.
And that fact carries with it a fair degree of worry.
People sometimes say that having kids is like having one of your organs stuck outside of your body—and it really feels that way. They’re a part of you, and yet for a large portion of the time (at least once they start school), you can do nothing to protect them. Finding out our kids are having a hard time at school, or being bullied by another child, is almost unbearably painful, because I can’t always be with them to protect them from harm.
Our Response
And the first response this truth of God’s omnipresence calls us to have is a response to that reality. God expects us to take comfort in his omnipresence, as David does. He says (v. 5):
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
We are meant to take comfort in the reality that God is everywhere at all times, because that means he is always with us. He is always leading us (whether we see him or not). He is always guiding us (whether we feel like it or not). There is nowhere we can go which is too far for him to reach us, because he has already preceded us there, and he is with us there, and he follows us there.
And that’s true for everyone, no matter who we are or where we go.
So I don’t have to worry about the things I can’t control. I don’t have to worry about the loved ones I can’t protect. Because wherever I’m not, God is, and he is controlling things and protecting his own far better than I ever could. We are comforted by God’s omnipresence.
The second call of this truth of God’s omnipresence is simple, but very easily forgotten: God expects us to be where we are. To not have our minds and our hopes in one place and our bodies in another. He expects us to be fully present wherever we happen to find ourselves.
This can seem like a secondary detail, but it really isn’t.
Because if David is right—if God has ordained every day of our lives for us, and sovereignly planned where he would bring us and when—then that means that at any given moment, God has brought us exactly where we are for a REASON.
Paul says in Ephesians 2.10:
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
How often do we find ourselves actively wanting to be somewhere else? How often do we find ourselves dissatisfied with where we are?
That dissatisfaction actually betrays a pretty huge lack of trust in God’s wisdom and sovereignty and plan for our lives. Remember the simplicity of God—all of God’s attributes are always at work together. So at every moment, he is not only omnipresent: his sovereignty and his providence and his wisdom and his goodness are always at work, in every place, in every time.
So as Christians, who believe that God doesn’t just save us for heaven, but that he saves us so that we might walk in the good works he has prepared for us today, we shouldn’t take our time and place for granted.
Wherever we find ourselves, at whatever time, we should always be asking ourselves, “Why has God brought me here? What is there about this place and this moment in particular that holds out opportunities for me to glorify God?”
Which simply means that he knows perfectly well where he has brought us, and why. God does nothing arbitrarily. He does nothing for no reason. So wherever we are, at whatever time, we can actually be there.
And he expects us to be. He expects us to be fully present, wherever we are—in our cities, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our families, and in our church.
Thirdly, this truth of God’s omnipresence calls us, quite simply, to obey God today.
This is an extension of what we just said; God’s omnipresence reminds us that we are limited to wherever and whenever we happen to be. And God has brought us here for a reason.
But despite that fact, we spend so much time thinking about where we aren’t that we don’t allow God to be with us and guide us where we are.
Our church has grown, so there are a lot of you whom I don’t know. But I do know a lot of you fairly well, and I’ve had enough conversations with you to know that there are questions which a good number of you ask.
And one of those questions—particularly if you’re young, which many or most of you are—is, “What is God’s will for my life? Where does he want me to live? What profession does he want me to pursue?”
God has a plan for your life and your career and your kids—that’s true. But a lot of people will try to convince you that if you pray hard enough, or if you ask God long enough, or if you have enough faith in God, he will absolutely reveal that plan to you ahead of time. So a lot of you find yourselves in a kind of holding pattern: you’re waiting on God to reveal his plan for your life, and because he hasn’t done that, you’re not doing anything.
That’s wrong. There is nothing in the Bible which promises that God will actually tell you ahead of time what he has planned for you concerning where you should live or what job you should do or how many kids you’re going to have.
But here’s the thing: the Bible does give you a very specific answer to the question of what God’s will for your life is. And the answer is simple: Obey God today.
It doesn’t take a genius to read the Bible and to get a good idea of which attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors, are pleasing to him, and which are displeasing to him. It’s not hard to read the Bible and to see that God has given us commandments, which reveal to us the things that are important to him, and to see that he expects us to obey.
Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4.3-7:
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. 7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.
So plan for the future—absolutely. Think about the gifts God has given you, and the ways in which you can move forward in those gifts to glorify God.
But don’t you dare let your plans for the future take up all of your time, all of your energy, all of your mental space. Because wherever you are, at whatever time, God is there with you, calling you to act. Calling you to obey him. Not in ten years, or whenever you have the right number of boxes checked, but now, before any of those things happen. Obey God today.
Lastly. What if you’re not a Christian this morning? I don’t know everyone here. It is very possible that you don’t know Christ, you aren’t following Christ, you’re not even sure if you believe any of this stuff.
And that’s fine. But you need to keep in mind that God’s omnipresence has implications for you as well.
Quite simply, the omnipresent God has been with you since your conception. He has been with you at every moment of your life. And he was with you, bringing you to this specific place at this specific time. No matter what you may feel, it is no accident that you are here today.
Our church—and every faithful church—exists to call people to faith and trust in Jesus Christ. As I said before, we are all naturally enemies of God—we have all rebelled against him and are, by our sinful nature, separated from him.
So our omnipresent God became a human being—who, in his human nature, was limited to one place, at one time.
Jesus Christ, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, came to live our life and die our death so that we might be reconciled to him. He calls us to repent of our rebellion and to place our faith in Christ and to trust him to give us everything we need to live this life for him, and to take pleasure in eternal life with him.
That is the message of the gospel, and since the moment of your conception, God was with you at every moment, knowing full well that he would bring you here, to this place, at this time, where you would hear the gospel. It’s no accident that you are here.
So I’ll invite you to make the most of the time God has given you here.
In just a minute we’re going to take Communion, during which we’ll remember together what Christ did for us. We’ll take the bread (which represents his body) and we’ll take the cup (which represents his blood) to remember and to remind each other of God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ.
This moment is for believers. It is a way for us to renew our commitment and covenant with God in Christ as often as we gather together.
So if you’re not a believer, I’ll ask you not to take the bread and the cup. Instead, I’ll put two prayers on the scr. The first is a prayer for those seeking the truth, and the second is a prayer of faith, for those who want to follow Christ but who don’t know where to start. I’ll invite you, during this time, to pray one of these prayers, and to ask the God who has always been with you (whether you know it or not) to convince you of the truth of the gospel, to help you repent of your sins and place your faith in him, and to bring you into his family.
