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! *Living in Light of God’s Omnipresence – Psalm 139:7-12*
 
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
\\ 8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
\\ 9 If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, \\ 10 Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
\\ 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,” \\ 12 Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You. \\ \\
The story is told of Donald Grey Barnhouse, early in his well-known ministry in the mid-20th century at the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in downtown Philadelphia.
[Below as told by Lawson, /Made in Our Image, /75-76]
            ‘An alumnus of Princeton Theological Seminary, early in his ministry he was invited back to campus to preach in Miller Chapel.
As Barnhouse stood to preach, Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, one of the renowned professors at Princeton and a brilliant scholar, took his seat in the front row, which the young preacher found somewhat intimidating.
Understandably, Barnhouse felt fear and trepidation about teaching the Scriptures to those who had taught him.
At the close of the message, Dr. Wilson approached Barnhouse and announced, “If you come back again, I will /not /come to hear you preach.”
Barnhouse collapsed on the inside.
How had he failed?
Was his theology wrong?
Was his use of the original languages improper?
With all the courage he could muster, the young preacher asked the aged professor, “Where did I fail?”
            “Fail?” Wilson replied.
“Oh, you didn’t fail.
I only come to hear a former student once.
I only want to know if he is a big-Godder or a little-Godder, and then I know how his ministry will be.”
When his former student asked for an explanation, Wilson answered, “Some men have a little God, and they are always in trouble with Him … He doesn’t intervene on behalf of His people.
They have a little God and I call them little-Godders.”
“There are others who have a great God,” Wilson continued.
“He speaks, and it is done.
He commands, and it stands fast.
He knows how to show Himself strong on behalf of them that fear Him.
You are a big-Godder, and He will bless your ministry.”
He paused a moment, smiled, and walked out.
What a lesson for Barnhouse!
What a lesson for us!’
As we’ve seen in our series on God’s attributes, Isaiah had a big God, Jeremiah had a big God, Job had a big God, Paul had a big God, and King David had a big God.
And the Lord blessed their life and ministry because of it, and we want the same view of God and His attributes that
David wrote about in Psalm 139 to dominate our lives as well.
*Ps 139:7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?*
The answer is nowhere.
There is nowhere we can be where God’s presence and Spirit is not.
Omnipresent means all-present, God is everywhere in the universe at the same time, although he is not limited by space or time, there is no space or time where God is absent.
It’s not just a part of God that’s everywhere; God Himself is everywhere – God is spirit, John 4 says, and we must worship Him in spirit and truth.
Omnipresnece is different than pantheism, which says God is the trees and the forest, etc.
The Bible doesn’t say God /is /the world, it says He made the world, and He is in it without being of it, there is always a distinction between creation and Creator.
Where can I go, where can I flee?
Jonah tried to flee from God. Adam and Eve tried to hide from God after sinning.
Their son Cain didn’t do much better, when he tried to hide his murdered brother and pretended he didn’t know.
DEFINE
 
Types of God’s presence:
1.      Universal or general (Ps 139)
2.      Special manifest presence
 
Matt 18:20 “where two or three come together in my name, *there am I with them”*
* *
God’s manifest presence is not the same as his general omnipresence.
Don’t confuse the location of God (everywhere) with His relation to his people
3.      Relational presence (ex: indwelling of believers)
 
Grudem: ‘God … is present at every point of space with his whole being, yet God acts differently in different places’ (/Systematic Theology, /173).
He points out that the usual mention of God’s presence means “present to bless” – biblical statements about God being far from sinners means He is not present to bless, or we could say He is not present in a relational sense.
Herman Bavinck quotes the following:
            ‘When you wish to do something evil, you retire from the public into your house where no enemy can see you; from those places of your house which are open and visible to the eyes of men you remove yourself into the room; even in your room you fear some witness from another quarter; you retire into your hearts, there you meditate: he is more inward that your heart.
Wherever, therefore, you shall have fled, there he is.
From yourself, whither will you flee?
Will you not follow yourself wherever you shall flee?
But since there is One more inward even than yourself, there is no place where you may flee from God angry but to God reconciled.
There is no place at all whither you may flee.
Will you flee from him?
Flee unto him.’
(/Doctrine of God, /164)
 
 
            Q: If God is everywhere, what about verses like “our Father who is in heaven” and the fact that in the OT, God’s presence was in the temple in the Holy of Holies?
Turn to I Kings 8 – read v. 30, then read v. 27
Biblical writers saw no contradiction, God is purely present in heaven apart from sin, but we also recognize that He is present throughout the universe, in fact His immensity and presence is greater than the universe which cannot contain His fulness.
It’s true that God’s /Shekinah /glory and presence did manifest itself  between the wings of the cherubim at the top of the mercy seat, but we know from verse 27 that Solomon understood that was only a symbol of His presence, not the full essence of it.
The temple was to be a nearby and constant reminder of God’s presence and holiness, but we don’t have to pray facing Mecca or Jerusalem or the Wailing Wall, because God is omnipresent
Paul explained it this way on Mars Hill to the philosophers: "/“The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands //… /[he goes on to say we should seek God] /though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being /" (Acts 17:24, 27-28)
God is near to us and even unbelievers in and through God are living, moving, and existing in His presence whether they admit or recognize it or not.
The theologian Bette Midler once sang “God is watching us … from a distance” but the Bible says that God is watching us closely, even to the details of the number of hairs on our head
 
Sometimes I hear well-meaning Christians talk about how all of America’s problems are because we have “taken God out of schools” – but the point of Psalm 139 is that you can’t take God out of anything, He is and always will be in schools, He’s there whether or not we pledge allegiance to Him, He’s in the courtroom even if the Ten Commandments monument is taken down, He is at every atheist meeting, and Romans 1 says that deep down inside, even the most ardent skeptic knows of the God of the Bible and His attributes, and no matter how hard he tries, man cannot fully suppress the truth or the presence of God – revelation and also our conscience bears witness of God’s presence  
 
We need to be careful not to think of church as “God’s house” for worship.
God is not /more/ present at Grace Church than He is when you pray alone at home
The woman at the well said to Jesus in John 4:/“Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.//”
/
/Jesus said to her, //“Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father //…  an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
/" (John 4:20-23)
Remember what happened in the temple when Jesus died?  (veil ripped)
What was the significance of that?
What about you?
Is your communion with God restricted to a certain place and time?
Or do you enjoy fellowship with Him as a way of life?
(MacArthur, /Awesome God, /67)
 
            Q: If God is everywhere, is He in unbelievers?
The Bible does say the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, not just believers.
But there is a different sense of personal relationship only for believers where God’s Spirit indwells and fills in a special way.
But even with believers it a matter of degree and different than the fulness of God in Christ when He walked this earth.
Colossians 2:9 says  it was only “in Christ [where] all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily”
 
 
 
I.
DEATH WILL NOT SEPARATE US FROM GOD
*Ps 139:8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.*
As an infinite being, He is bigger and beyond the universe – even the universe cannot contain Him.
 
1 Kings 8:27 “The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you”
 
Q: If God is everywhere, is God present in hell?  (NKJV says “hell” here)
4.      He is present as judge
5.      contrary to many jokes or comics, Satan is not the ruler of hell, God is and He created it especially to punish Satan and his angels
6.      God’s /relational/ presence is not there, but the presence of His wrath
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