Sunday, October 29, 2017

****WHO IS YOUR GOD? (part 5. The Omnipresence of God)

Who’s your GOD? 
A brief description of the Attributes of God.

We can know nothing about God, except that, and ONLY that, which He has revealed to us.  And those attributes are found in Scripture.  If the god you worship is less than, more than or different from the ONE TRUE GOD of the Bible, then your God doesn’t exist.
Ralph M. Petersen


THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD

In part 2, we caught a brief glimpse of this attribute; because He is Spirit, God is not confined to a physical body in time and space. 

Here, I want to reemphasize that God is present everywhere always.  There is no place anywhere, past, present or future, in the entire universe of His creation, where He is not.

Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 

If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.  If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.    Psalm 139:7-10

People often question or doubt God’s presence during times of catastrophes or griefs or losses, about God being absent or negligent.  But they are wrong; God is there. 

Where was God during the 9-11-2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York?  He was in the cockpits with the pilots, He was in the towers when they began to collapse, and He was under the rubble with hundreds of people as they were being crushed to death.  God was there. 

“If God be infinite, He is omnipresent.  Suppose Him infinite, and then suppose there is anything besides Himself, and His presence with that thing, wherever it be, doth necessarily follow; for if He be so bounded as to be in His essence distant from anything, He is not infinite.”  John Owen

“Does the Lord turn Himself unto our prayer only after long delay?  Is not He omnipresent?  Is not every whispered and stammering prayer know to Him before there is yet a word in the tongue?”  Abraham Kuyper

Most people, to some degree, imagine that God is transcendent; He inhabits and rules from Heaven.   According to scripture, The Lord is enthroned in the heavens (Psalm 23:1).  He is exalted over all other rulers and authorities on earth (Psalm 97:9).  His throne is high and lifted up (Isa. 6:1) and His throne room is in Heaven (Rev. 4:1-2).

But He is also, always immanently present; He is with us in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4).  He is ever present on earth and in heaven (Deut. 4:39).  He dwells in the high places and with the humble and lowly (Isa. 57:15).  He will be with His children to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20) and He will never leave them or forsake them (Heb. 13:5).

There is no place where God is not.  We often talk about the eternal existence of the lost in hell as being isolated from the presence of God but that idea is not supported in Scripture.  God is the one who actively and eternally administers His divine wrath in hell.  Rev. 14:10 describes that eternal (never-ending) punishment occurring “…in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.”

Many will rightfully argue that God cannot look on sin; that He will turn His countenance away from sinners.  But this is a part of His righteous vengeance and wrath on the unjust.     

Whenever I treat my wife poorly or inconsiderately, sometimes I get to the point where she suddenly turns her face away from me; “she gives me the cold shoulder.”  And then she gives me the silent treatment.  And that is not a fun place to be.  Nothing is right or happy in our relationship until I apologize.  I need her forgiveness and I can’t imagine what it would be like if she never forgave me.

In hell, God will turn His face away and there will never be any reconciliation, forever, for the inhabitants of hell.  They will exist eternally, in their sin.  And in the presence of the God whom they spurned, forever without any hope of forgiveness.




(Some material presented here has been quoted from "The Attributes of God" as published by Ligonier Ministries and influenced by the companion lectures of Steven Lawson)


2 comments:

Paul G said...

Hi Ralph, you didn’t exactly tell us who your God is ?
After all that is the title of this post.

As for me, there is only ONE God and that is the Lord Jesus Christ and apart from Him is NO OTHER God.
He alone is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last and beside Him is no other entity who is God and neither does He share deity with two others.

hymns that preach said...


Hi Paul, Thanks for leaving a comment. I try to publish ALL comments whether or not I agree with them.

You have commented on part 5 of an abbreviated series describing the attributes of God. I titled the series as an attention trigger because I have encountered scores of nominal Christians who claim to know a God who is completely different from the One who is self-described in His Word. And I stand by my opening statement; “If the god you worship is less than, more than or different from the ONE TRUE GOD of the Bible, then your God doesn’t exist.”

So I would presume that most people would understand that I believe in the God who is what He says He is in His revelation to us. There is probably much more but there certainly cannot be less or anything different than what He has revealed.

I appreciate your comment but, by your ending sentence, I am presuming that you are a Unitarian. And I presume that the purpose of your comment is to refute any notion of a triune God.

And I would disagree with you. I believe in a triune God because He has revealed Himself as a triune God. And I have written about that doctrine in at least two other posts.

In case you are interested, you can locate them by these titles: (https://notallowed2laff.blogspot.com/2016/01/stupid-analogies-lead-to-heretical.html) and (https://notallowed2laff.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-father-word-and-spirit-these-three.html).