God Is Everywhere

                                                         God Is Everywhere
 
Psalm 139:7-12
7. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, 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 fall on me,” Even the night shall be light about me;
12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
 
God is unlike anything we know or experience. God is infinite. God is not subject to space and time. This is one of God’s “omni” attributes. The word omnipresent is easy to understand. Omni means “all.” Presence has to do with locally. The Omnipresence of God means that there is no place in creation where God does not exist. It will take a while to wrap our mind around that thought.
 
We can only be one place at one time, and there are some places where we cannot be. God alone can be all places at all times. God transcends the limitations of space and is present in all places at all times.
 
Some picture God as a faraway being who lives in heaven and, occasionally, breaks into the world to do some miracle. Not so. God is right here with us right now. Our God, the God of love, the God of grace, the God of mercy, is always near to our hearts and minds and souls.
 
God’s presence is like the air we breathe. Air is odorless, tasteless and invisible so it goes unnoticed, but it’s there. Let me qualify that a bit. Everyone here this afternoon has been in or lived in place where there is pollution, sometimes the air smelled terrible, it tasted bad and you could actually see it (pollution). But most of the time we do not even think about the air we breathe, yet we depend on it for our very existence. Likewise, God’s presence is all around us, and if it were withdrawn, none of us could survive for even one moment.
 
Another aspect of God's infinity in terms of space is that there is no place where He cannot be found. (We are here facing the tension between the immanence of God (he is every-where) and the transcendence (he is not anywhere) Nowhere within the creation is God inaccessible.
 
Jeremiah 23:23-24
23 “Am I a God near at hand,” says the Lord, “And not a God afar off?
24 Can anyone hide himself in secret places, So I shall not see him?” says the Lord;
“Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the Lord
In our passage today in Psalm 139:7-12, we hear the Psalmist David declare that God is omnipresent. O the wondrous comfort the sense of God's omnipresence gives. The Psalmist first takes the thought into his own heart, then flies with it to the farthest reaches of the universe and then into the darkest places of being.
 
God is omnipresent. He is everywhere. The Psalmist came to the conclusion that nothing can hide us from God and that to escape from His presence is utterly impossible. He illustrates that fact three ways:
 
I. DEATH CANNOT HIDE US FROM GOD, 7-8.
 
II. DISTANCE CANNOT HIDE US FROM GOD, 9-10.
 
III. DARKNESS CANNOT HIDE US FROM GOD, 11-12.
 
David declares that there is nowhere that we can hide from God. Wherever we go, the presence of God will be there. Listen to the very important question David raises a in Psalm 139:7 when he asks, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?”
 
139:7-8
7. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
 
The theme here is the omnipresence of God. The Psalmist does not want to go (or flee) from God or even to avoid the presence of the Almighty. He asks this (hypothetical) question to set forth the fact that no one can escape from the all-pervading Being or from the observation of the Invisible “Spirit.” From the sight of God we cannot be hidden, but that is not all, from the actual constant presence of God, We cannot be removed.
 
The obvious answer to “where can I flee from your presence” is nowhere. God is everywhere. Now the presence and the manifestation of the presence are not the same thing. When Jacob was in the wilderness he said "Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not.” God dwells with His creation and is everywhere invisibly present among all His works. He is here even when we are totally unaware of Him. In order to experience His presence, we must surrender fully and continually to the Spirit of God.
 
The sense of God's presence is due to RELATIONSHIP CLOSENESS. A man may say that he feels closer to his son since he has grown older. The fact may be that he has lived next door all these years. What the father means is that relationally they experience each other more and better now.
Barriers have disappeared and they are more intimate and have a deeper understanding of each other. If we would develop intimate relationship with God, we would find Him closer than our most secret thoughts.
 
King David knew he could not flee from God’s presence. We can sense His presence everywhere. It may be through the patience of a spouse, or the warm embrace of a friend when we expected to be shunned. But God is there.
 
It’s tiring to run from God. Perhaps you sense that He’s pursuing you. If you do, it’s time to stop running. Relentless love will never let us go. No matter how far you’ve run from God, He’s only a prayer away.
 
Remember the story of JONAH? The prophet JONAH found out the hard way that you cannot out-run God. We read in chapter one of the book of Jonah that the prophet was commissioned by God to preach to Nineveh. He was to tell them about how wicked they were. Jonah did not like his mission because he knew that God would show the Ninevites mercy. These people were the mortal enemies of Israel and Jonah wanted no part of God’s redemptive plan for these barbarians.
 
So… he tried to flee from the presence of God. He fled in the opposite direction than God wanted him to go. He ran from God and got on a ship and went down below. Like most people in ancient times, Jonah did not believe in the omnipresence of God. He believed that God was localized and tied to a certain land or people. He believed that the God of Israel had no power or presence outside Israel.
 
Jonah 1:1-3
1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” 3 But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
 
He headed toward Tarshish, in what is now Spain, trying to get as far away from Nineveh, and as far from God as he could. How did that turn out for him?
 
He breathed a sigh of relief when the ship sailed away from the shore. He thought he had got to a place where God was not, but what Jonah found out was that God was with him on the ship. Everyone knows that he got thrown into the ocean and a big fish swallowed him up and he spent three days in solitary in the belly of a fish! Yet God was with him even in the belly of the whale or fish.
But, even there in that fish God saw what he was doing and knew what he said. When he repented and was ready to do what God wanted him to then, up he came onto the beach. Jonah learned the hard way that he couldn’t out-run God. Relentless love will never let us go. No matter how far you’ve run from God, He’s only a prayer away
 
David continues to enumerate hypothetical avenues of escape from the all-pervading presence (face) of the omnipresent God in verse 8. “If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.”
 
David now addresses what he would find if he went to the farthest corners of the universe. Even in the remotest parts of the universe, God is there. It isn’t that God gets there ahead of us, but that God is there at the same time He is here with us.
 
By heaven, David means the upper region of the world, with reference to a state of blessedness. By “sheol” or the most opposite to heaven, the lower parts of the earth, the grave or the abode of the dead is meant. Sheol also referred to the place of departed spirits, both of the righteous (Gen. 37:35) and wicked (Prov. 9:18).
 
Genesis 37:35 (ESV)
35 All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept for him.
 
This is the story of Joseph, being sold by his brothers. Its when Jacob had thought that his son Joseph was killed by a wild beast, this was his statement.
 
And also…
 
Proverbs 9:18 (ESV)
18 But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.
 
It was the place of waiting for final judgment. Distance does not separate from God. The unsaved discover that as well. If you can rise to the highest heaven or descend to the lowest earth, you cannot escape the presence of the all-present God. He will be with you wherever life takes you. Let us not the mistake that is “purgatory”, “Sheol” is a place where the dead waits for their final judgement. Judgement where God has already made. “Purgatory”, is taught to be a place where on can be cleansed, and eventually go to heaven. We can learn more about this topic on our Bible study of Revelation.
 
 
 
God doesn’t promise we won’t go through difficult circumstances, but that He will be with us through them. The all-present God will be with you where-ever life takes you. He will lead you in the right direction for the right purpose. Thank God for the assurance of His guiding hand through life.
 
Moving On: II. DISTANCE CANNOT HIDE US FROM GOD, 9-10.
 
Psalm 139:9-10
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.
 
In verse 9 the Psalmist proposes the fastest of flights to the most far away of places to flee from the scrutinizing presence of God. “If I take the wings of the morning, If I dwell in the uttermost part of the sea.”
 
The wings of the morning [shachar] is a dynamic metaphor for the light of the sun flying over the horizon. The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second or 299,790 kilometer/second. The inconceivable speed of light would utterly fail if employed in flying from God. If I put the wings of light on my back and flew with it scattering darkness before me God would still be with me.
 
Light, so sudden and instantaneous that it prevents the observation of the eye…but does not prevent God's observation or leave His presence behind. If we could fly with all swiftness and find habitation where space probes have not yet been, I could not reach the boundaries of the divine presence. If we went into the uncharted regions of space, or the great sea, we would find God's presence already there waiting for us. He who will save to the utmost is with us to the outermost.
 
The psalmist reminds us that if we follow God, God is everywhere. This means that wherever you are, He has already been there and can lovingly guide you. He will lead you in the right direction for the right purpose. Thank God for the assurance of His guiding hand through our life.
 
Verse 10 is a strong affirmation that wherever we may go, God is there to lead us and to hold us. “Even there Your hand shall lead me, And Your right hand shall hold me”.
 
What a surprise. After you try fleeing from God you would expect a reprimand. Instead God acts graciously. He guides and hold us together which indicates providential guidance and protection. These actions evidence divine pursue and loyalty. We can only fly from God by the power He grants us. Even then our Lord is leading, covering, preserving, and sustaining us even while we are fugitives from Him.
 
The word David used for “hold” is interesting. The verb in Hebrew means is “to hold, grasp,” in the positive sense of helping or sustaining, not in the negative sense of seizing or arresting. Its like a parent holding the hands of child in protection. (Crossing the street. Walking in a crowded place, or unknown) Its…God holding on to us, as to say, “you are very valuable to Me, I will protect you”.
 
[YOUR HAND IN HIS] Life holds no surprises for God. No path is unknown to Him--no circumstance unsettling. Because the future is perfectly clear to our Father, the Christian has the full assurance that he/she, can follow where God leads, whether the way is marked by calm or storm.
 
God forgives the past, controls the present, and holds the future. Put your hand in His hand. Think of the implications for those in Christ from…
 
Isaiah 41:10
Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’
 
If the palmist cannot escape geographically, perhaps he can try to hide in the darkness. This doesn’t work either. God is always with us. Death Cannot Hide Us from God. Distance Cannot Hide Us from God.
 
And lastly:
 
III. DARKNESS CANNOT HIDE US FROM GOD, 11-12.
 
Psalm 139:11-12
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” Even the night shall be light about me;
12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
 
David has said that no matter where I go, I run into You Lord. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. In verses 11-12 the psalmist uses the figures of darkness and light to show how impossible it is to hide from Yahweh. But this is good news to the psalmist, because he goes on to say that God shines forth in the darkness. “Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You.”
 
 
 
 
Short Story:
 
One sweltering hot night in July 1977 New York's POWER SUPPLY BROKE DOWN. Immediately tens of thousands of people poured from their tenements to loot and burn the city. Roving bands of men, women, and children pulled down steel shutters and grills from storefronts, shattered plate glass windows, and hauled away everything they could carry. Some of them even rented trucks to haul off the loot. Fires were started. Firemen fought over one thousand of them and received seventeen hundred false alarms to decoy them and the police away from the looting.
 
Thieves even robbed each other. One teenage girl complained to friends that some boys had offered to help her carry some clothes and radios she had stolen and then made off with them. "That's not right," she said. "They shouldn't have done that." Only a fraction of the looters were arrested. Over two thousand stores were plundered or damaged at the cost of $1 billion. Most of those arrested thought society owed them this windfall and showed no regret except at having been caught. One young woman told a reporter: "It's really sort of beautiful. Everybody is out on the streets together. It's like being at a party." One boy said, "This is better than going to Macy's."
 
All this because it was dark--as though God could not see in the dark! But darkness does not hide from Him. God is omnipresent. He was there on the dark streets of New York that night. No matter where we are, or may go in the world, God sees me--this is a blessed thought to those of us who live in this dark world and who know Him as Father and Friend.
 
Isaiah 50:10
“Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of His Servant?
Who walks in darkness And has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord
And rely upon his God.
 
Verse 12 teaches us that we cannot hide in the darkest of night nor in the darkest of evil from God. Even the darkness is not dark to Thee, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to Thee.”
 
The darkness veils nothing. It is not a medium of concealment in any degree what-so-ever. Night is but another form of day to God. This will either fill one with joyful praise that we cannot be hidden from God or with anger that He cannot be shaken.
 
Have you ever taken a look at your behavior or deeds that you do in day and in night? Do the type of actions or activities you are involved in change? If your manner or demeanor change, you have been living for man and not God.
He is everywhere, and He will personally pursue us, wherever we go. We will run into Him at every turn. We cannot escape Him in the darkness, even the darkness of our own souls. He is a jealous lover, and His love will not be denied.
 
No place is beyond the presence, guidance and protection of God. Let any man turn to God in earnest and the presence of God will become manifested to him, it matters not where he is, in the jungles of Asia or concrete jungle of Memphis. Turn to God and He will develop in you a capacity for spiritual receptivity through trust and obedience. You will find character development in a way that will exceed anything hoped for outside of Jesus Christ. We have the opportunity to relate to Him in any place under any circumstances if we will but respond to His leading.
 
God desires to walk with us and guide us, because He wants the very best for us. Why should we run away and hide? Adam and Eve tried and failed (Gen. 3:8). So did Jonah the prophet, who only went from bad to worse. We need God’s presence with us if we want to enjoy His love and fulfill His purposes (Isa. 43:1-7).