Attributes of God - Omnipresence

Adapted from "The Lord Is With Us” by Richard L. Strauss

Have you ever felt as if you wanted to run away from God? Maybe you thought the responsibilities of the Christian life were too heavy for you, or you just could not be the person you were supposed to be and do the things God was asking you to do. If you could just get away from Him for awhile, go someplace where He could not see you, then everything would be all right.

That is exactly what the prophet Jonah thought. God told him to go to the city of Nineveh and preach against its wickedness, but that was the last thing in the world Jonah wanted to do. “But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD” (Jonah 1:3). It is mentioned twice in that verse that Jonah wanted to get away from God’s presence, and it seems Jonah thought that Tarshish would be a good place to do this! Jonah should have known better. As a prophet in Israel he was certainly familiar with the Psalms of David:

Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Thy hand will lead me, And Thy right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,” Even the darkness is not dark to Thee, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to Thee (Psalm 139:7-12).

Omnipresence means that God is all-present. He is unlimited by space or time. He is everywhere present at all times. He is present universally and simultaneously in all the universe, always. Omnipresence also involves immensity which means that God is present even beyond space. In His omnipresence He fills all things, but in His immensity of being, God is not limited to or by space. God is above and beyond space. Finite space depends upon Him for existence.

A. W. Tozer comments about God’s omnipresence:
“Few other truths are taught in the Scriptures with as great clarity as the doctrine of the divine omnipresence. Those passages supporting this truth are so plain that it would take considerable effort to misunderstand them. They declare that God is imminent in His creation, that there is no place in heaven or earth or hell where men may hide from His presence. They teach that God is at once far off and near, and that in Him men move and live and have their being.”

What Bible-believing Christian would challenge the truth that God is omnipresent? And yet I fear that while we believe this doctrine to be true to Scripture, we do not sense it to be true to life, a truth which applies to the way we live. But it does affect our daily lives!

This attribute of God is one of the most difficult for us to grasp with our finite minds. We can understand to some degree that God has infinite power and that He knows everything. But how can He be everywhere at once? The inability of the human mind to comprehend this doctrine may be one reason why so many people choose to worship some lesser being. They suspect that to be everywhere may really mean He is nowhere, and they want to worship a god who is somewhere, so they turn to a finite being or to an idol.

While I do not fully understand it, there is no question but that God claims omnipresence for Himself in His Word. David assured us that there was absolutely no place he could go to escape the presence of God, even if he wanted to.

Jeremiah proclaimed the same truth to the people of his day. The land was filled with dishonesty, profanity, and immorality, and the false prophets of the day were not only condoning it but actually participating in it (Jeremiah 23:11, 14). They assured the people that God would not judge them for their sin (verse 17). That is when God spoke through Jeremiah: Am I a God who is near, declares the LORD, And not a God far off? (verse 23) Those false prophets thought God did not know what they were doing and saying, that He was limited to one place at a time, that if He were near somebody else He could not be near them. Not so! Can a man hide himself in hiding places, So I do not see him? declares the LORD. Do I not fill the heavens and the earth? declares the LORD (verse 24).

He fills Heaven and earth, just as fully present in one place as another. There is no conceivable place where God is not completely present in the totality of His essence. If there were any place where God was not present He could hardly have said that he fills Heaven and earth. But He said it and He meant it. Through Isaiah He said, “Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool” (Isaiah 66:1). There is no place to hide from His presence.

Solomon mentioned God’s omnipresence on the day that the temple was dedicated. It was a beautiful building where God would place His name, where He would personally dwell, and where He would meet with His people. But in Solomon’s majestic prayer of dedication he revealed a truth that we still misunderstand today. “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Thee, how much less this house which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27) God would dwell in that temple but He would not be restricted to it. We cannot limit God to a building. We cannot even limit Him to a universe. God is everywhere. The Athenians ridiculed Paul on Mars Hill for daring to suggest the same thing. He had said, “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” (Acts 17:24). He cannot be locked in a building. Since He is everywhere, He is not far from any one of us (verse 27). In fact, we live and move and exist in Him (verse 28). Each of us, believer and unbeliever alike, lives in God’s sphere and in God’s presence every minute. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said: 'The fundamental thing, the most serious thing of all, about God's omnipresence is that we are always in the presence of God'.

Philosophers since Paul’s day have not liked this doctrine any more than those on Mars Hill. They have devised interesting ways to pervert the truth. The pantheists have overemphasized God’s immanence. To them God is merely the impersonal forces and laws of nature. He is to be identified with the material universe, and consequently ends up being the trees, mountains, rivers, and sky rather than a personal, omnipresent being. The deists on the other hand, overemphasize God’s transcendence. For them, God is present in His creation only by His power, not in His being and nature. While He made the world He is not actively involved in governing it. He has left it to itself. The truth is that God is both immanent and transcendent. He is distinct from His creation yet present in every part of it, both in His power and in His essential being. God is everywhere! Augustine was right when he said this: “God is not partly here, or partly there, but He is totally present at every point of the universe”.

Yet the Bible will not let us suppose that God is present in exactly the same sense everywhere. For example, He does not dwell on earth in the same sense that He dwells in Heaven (Matthew 6:9). He did not dwell in Gentile nations in the same sense He dwelled with His ancient people Israel (Exodus 25:8; 40:34). He did not dwell with the Old Testament Jew in the same sense that He dwells with the New Testament Christian (John 14:17). He does not dwell with the unbeliever in the same sense He dwells with the believer (John 14:23). And He does not dwell with the believer now in the same sense He will dwell with him in eternity (Revelation 21:3).

Jonah soon found out that David, the psalmist, was right all along. God is everywhere, and there is no way that we can hide from His presence. He went down into the hold of the ship, and God was there. He was thrown into the raging sea, and God was there. He was swallowed by a great fish, and he discovered that along with the tangled seaweed, stifling heat, and burning acids, God was there. Then he was vomited out on dry land and found that God was there. He finally decided that the smartest thing would be to obey a God who was everywhere. He would have saved himself a great deal of grief had he remembered that truth from the very beginning.

That seems to be one of our great weaknesses too. We hear these truths and believe them, but we tend to forget them when we need them. We become oblivious to God’s presence and begin to live our lives as though He were nowhere around. Jacob had that problem. He was running from his brother’s wrath when he stopped for a night’s rest at Bethel. During the night he had a dream about a ladder. The Lord stood above it and said, “And behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you” (Genesis 28:15). God was with Jacob and would not leave him, but he did not realize it. The record states, “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it’” (verse 16).

Isn’t that just like us? The eternal, changeless, all-powerful, all-knowing, sovereign God of the universe is with us and we are not even aware of it. We ignore Him. Let’s remind ourselves of some of the places God specifically promised to go with us, then begin to acknowledge His presence in those situations, and learn to share them with Him. Thomas Brooks, the puritan said: “God is an infinite circle whose centre is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere”.

Other Scriptures which illustrate the fact of God’s omnipresence are listed below:

Where two or three gather in the name of the Lord, His presence is there (Matt 18:20; 28:18-20)

The whole earth is full of the glory of the Lord (Is. 6:3)

God fills all things. “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church) which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way" (Eph. 1:22-23).

God’s presence is with all believers everywhere (Ex. 3:12; 33:14; Is. 43:2)

Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God (2 Chron. 6:18; 1 Kings 8:27; Is. 66:1; 2 Chron. 2:6)

Wherever man would seek to go from God, be it heaven, earth, or Sheol, God’s presence will fill them. ( Amos 9:2-4)

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17).