Sermon Tone Analysis

A well-known English deist, Anthony Collins of the seventeenth century, was walking one day when he crossed paths with a commoner.

“Where are you going?” asked Collins.

“To church, sir.”

“What are you going to do there?”

“To worship God, sir.”

“Is your God a great or a little God?” asked Collins.

“He is both, sir.”

“How can He be both?”

“He is so great, sir, that the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him; and so little that He can dwell in my heart.”

Collins later said that this simple answer had more effect on his mind than all the volumes he had ever read about God, and all the lectures he had ever heard.

[Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed.

(Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 353.]

The God whose greatness cannot be contained by the heavens — the God who is everywhere all the time — has condescended to place His very Spirit within the hearts of those who believe in His Son, Jesus Christ.

God

It’s a fantastic thing, when you think about it.

But just as with the danger associated with God’s holiness, this presence of God within us — and the omnipresence of the holy and righteous God within His creation — is a thing that should cause us all to stop and consider our ways.

David, the Israelite king whom God had said was a man after His own heart, had been richly blessed by God.

He had been given victory over all his adversaries.

He had been raised from a lowly shepherd boy to the position of king over a great nation.

He had been forgiven much and had seen God’s boundless grace and mercy in his own life and in the life of Israel.

1 Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed.

(Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 353.

And one day, while David was in his own house, he told the prophet Nathan that he wanted to build a house for the ark of the covenant, the very symbol of God’s presence with His people.

David wanted to build a temple, and Nathan, without consulting God on the matter, responded that David should go and do all that was in his heart to do for the Lord.

But then God spoke to Nathan that night and set him straight.

2 Sam 7:6

God had been with the people of Israel in the tabernacle — the tent — that had been erected and dismantled as they were moving through the wilderness and then after they had settled in the Promised Land.

He had been with them in the pillar of cloud that had led them through the days of their wandering and in the pillar of fire that had led them by night.

He had been with them in the battles that they won — in fact, it was not they who won their battles, but the Lord himself.

He had been with them when He delivered them from slavery in Egypt, sending His plagues and finally bringing death upon all the firstborn in Egypt who did not have the blood of a lamb smeared on their lintels.

He had been with them as He parted first the Red Sea to give them escape from the pursuing Egyptians and then the Jordan River to give them entrance into Canaan, the Promised Land.

God had been with His people always and everywhere.

But David wanted to give God a special place, a holy place, where His presence could be especially honored.

God would not allow David to build this temple, but He did allow David’s son, Solomon, to do so.

And when it came time to dedicate this grand temple, Solomon prayed that God would bless this place, but he recognized that God was not to be thought of as having been confined to the temple.

Ever since that first temple in Jerusalem, God’s people have sought to honor Him with glorious structures where they worship Him.

From the Sistine Chapel to the great cathedrals of Europe to Crystal Cathedral in California, these magnificent structures have attracted countless generations of humanity to come searching for God.

And many of them — including, probably, most of us here today — have been found by God within such structures.

But God does not dwell within this place, nor in any of the other

He is, indeed, here today.

And He will be here on Monday, as well.

God’s attribute of omnipresence means that He is completely present in all places and at all times.

His presence here today does not diminish His presence at Southside Baptist Church down the road or at the Sistine Chapel or, for that matter in a prison cell at the regional jail or even in a mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

God is surely present in all of those places.

He was present at the dedication of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.

He was present with the disobedient prophet Jonah in the belly of a whale.

He was present when the Jews were being led into exile in Babylon.

He was present in the Nazi concentration camps.

He was present when your first child was born, and He was present when your mother or your father or your grandmother or grandfather took their last breath.

He was present in the World Trade Center when the planes flew into them on 9/11.

He was even present in the caves of Afghanistan, when the attack was planned.

This does not mean that He is ethically present at all places, which explains how Scripture describes Him as being absent from non-believers or out of communion with believers who are in unrepentant sin.

But for believers in fellowship with Him, God is present in an even fuller sense.

He has a special spiritual and moral presence with them through the Holy Spirit.

When He is present with me, He is completely present with me, but at the same time, He is completely present with you, as well, if you have become His children through faith in Christ.

His mercy for me at any given moment is undiminished by His mercy for you.

And because He is present within believers through the Holy Spirit that dwells within them, He is with believers in every circumstance of their lives.

When Jesus gave His disciples the Great Commission, he reminded them of this fact.

Matt 28

In fact, Jesus had told them at the Last Supper that His departure from the earth would usher in a time in which God would extend His presence to His people in a way they had never experienced before.

7

Having set aside the divine attribute of omnipresence to come and dwell among us as a man, Jesus was confined to one place at a time, just as we are.

But in sending the Holy Spirit, Jesus made something entirely new to take place.

Prior to the Jesus’ birth, God’s dwelling among His people was in the temple.

He could only be approached by the priests, and even then He was separated from them by a veil.

Only the high priest could go inside the veiled Holy of Holies, and even then only once a year.

Then Jesus came, and God lived as a man among us, and we crucified Him.

But when the resurrected Jesus returned to Heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father, He sent the Holy Spirit, and now, for those who follow Jesus, there is nothing that separates us from God’s presence.

While the world experiences the presence of God in a philosophical way, if at all, we experience it in the reality of the Holy Spirit, who convicts us of sin, who guides us in truth, who enables our understanding and who prays on our behalf when we do not even know how to pray for ourselves.

Understand this: God does not dwell in this place.

The only ones who might FIND God here are those who are lost.

For those of us who are saved, we have already BEEN found BY Him.

We may come here to worship Him, but even our worship should not be confined to this place.

We may come here to enjoy the spirit of community with other believers, but even that spirit should not be confined to this place.

We may come here to learn more about Him, but even our learning should not be confined to this place.

Because God is always everywhere — and especially because He resides within us through the Holy Spirit — we should always be looking for Him everywhere.

We look for God in church on Sundays, and we miss Him in the line on Walmart on Saturday as He ministers to the single mother of four who has no idea how she will pay for this cartful of groceries but has absolute faith that God will meet her needs.

We look for God in church on Sundays, and we miss Him as He gives us the opportunity to personally minister in His name to the illegal alien who represents so much more to God than a political cause.

We look for God in church on Sundays, and then we ignore Him on Mondays, when we go back to work and pretend He’s not there.

I submit to you that if we had a proper understanding of God’s omnipresence, we often would be utterly ashamed of ourselves.

The things that we do in private, the way that we treat those who hold different values and ideals from us, the way that we handle frustration, the very thoughts we allow to shape our actions — all of it is exposed to God.

But even as Christians we tend to go through our lives as though He is neither all-knowing nor ever-present.

Speaking of the false prophets who were leading the exiled people of Judah further astray by telling them that their Babylonian captivity would be brief, God said through the prophet Jeremiah that nothing escapes His attention.

Jonah could not escape God while on a boat headed the wrong direction, while in the sea or while in the belly of the whale.

David wrote that God scrutinized his path and his lying down and that God was intimately acquainted with all his ways.

And he recognized that his great sins jeopardized his fellowship with God and begged God not to cast him away from God’s presence and not to take the Holy Spirit from him.

We act in folly when we act as if the God of all righteousness does not see our sins.

But our omniscient and omnipresent God is not just the righteous God who sees all of our sins.

He is also the merciful God who knows how we suffer.

Through the prophet Isaiah, He tells us:

Now this verse is not a challenge to go and walk across hot coals.

It was a poetic reminder that God was with the people of Israel through every hardship they had faced.

He had brought the nation through them all, and He would bring them through whatever came next.

“Do not fear, for I am with you,” He says later in this chapter.

He says the same thing today, and He has been saying it over and again to generations of His people.

To Abram, God had said, “Do not fear, for I am a shield to you.”

To Isaac, God had said, “Do not fear, for I am with you.”

To Jacob, God had said “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.”

To the frightened young Jeremiah, called to be a prophet to a people who did not want to hear from God, the Lord had said, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”

To the people of Israel being taken into exile by the Babylonians, God had said, “Do not be dismayed, O Israel … For I am with you.”

To the remnant of Israel that had returned to Jerusalem from exile, God said through the prophet Haggai, “Take courage and work, for I am with you.”