God is omnipresent, which means he exists in all places at all times. His existence is unlimited, undivided, undiluted, and unconfined. And as David shows us in Psalm 139, that’s not just a deep doctrine, it’s a real comfort for God’s people. God’s presence means present care, present control, and present conviction.1
In this post:
- What Does It Mean That God Is Omnipresent?
- What Does the Bible Say About God Being Everywhere?
- Why Does It Matter That God Is Everywhere?
Do you recognize this verse from the Bible? “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8; see also Exodus 34:6).
I think many of you will have heard that. Some of you could point me to where it is, and I would guess that some of you even have that verse memorized. It’s a precious and sweet verse that tells us something about our God. He is merciful and gracious and loving.
Those attributes of his are so meaningful to us. For one thing, they have something to do with us. He is merciful toward us, gracious with us, and loving of us.
For another thing, those are attributes that we can more easily wrap our minds around. We have a frame of reference for mercy because we’ve been shown mercy and we’ve shown mercy to others. We have a frame of understanding in our minds of love because we’ve loved people and we’ve been loved by people. God has let us experience and partake in some of his divine attributes, like mercy, grace, and love. We have a real partaking in them, though God’s love and mercy are not on the level of our love and mercy.
The thing is, there are other attributes of God that we have less of a frame of reference for. There are things that are harder for us to wrap our minds around, like God’s eternality. I remember being a kid and it blowing my mind that God has existed forever, that there was never a time when he was not. It still blows my mind to this day to think about how God has always been and always will be. That is just something that I, as a creature confined by time, have no frame of reference for.
Omnipresence is one of those attributes. It’s not easy to fully grasp, but it will blow your mind if you get even an ounce of understanding of it. That’s what I hope to give you here: an ounce of understanding that gives you some worshipful awe of just how great your omnipresent God is.
First, I’ll give you a biblical definition of omnipresence that I think will help it fit in our minds better. Then I’ll do what the biblical authors do: connect it to our experience in life, with our sin, our struggles, our suffering, and the evil around us.
What Does It Mean That God Is Omnipresent?
All the preaching textbooks tell you that you have to find a way to make truth real to people. You have to have stories, analogies, illustrations, and examples because we’re experiential people. We live life, and we need to be able to connect truth to real life so it stays in our minds and hearts.
I want to give you some real-world analogies to help you understand this big theological category of God’s omnipresence, but there’s nothing and no one like God in this way. The difference between being omnipresent and not being omnipresent is the difference between Creator and creature, between God and everything else. There is nothing like God in this respect: no angel, no person, no created thing.
So, I asked myself this question: How do I define this deep, philosophical, theological, and biblical truth in a way that is connected to the life that we live? Here’s the answer I’ve come up with: I’m going to do the opposite.
I’ll give you a simple definition, and then I’m going to give you four ways that God’s omnipresence is unlike anything else. It is in a category all on its own.
Here’s the simple definition: God exists in all places at all times. His existence is unlimited, undivided, undiluted, and unconfined. Those are the four qualities of his omnipresent existence that no one and nothing else shares.
Let’s walk through them.
Unlimited
You can only exist where you are. You can’t be in two places at once. This is not only a limitation on your physical body; it’s a limitation on your soul as a creature. You are limited by time and space. By nature, you can’t exist outside of them. Nor can any angels, demons, animals, or anything else. Except for God. His existence and presence are unlimited. He can be in all places at all times.
This is why God is called I Am (Exodus 3:14). Only God can always be I Am. In every place and at every time, you might be an I was or an I will be, but God never is. He is the great I Am.
Undivided
Imagine the universe were a single room, so you have 100 square feet of space in the universe, and you say God is present in all of them. Say you put a wall up in the middle of the room. Did you just divide the presence of God in half? You could say, “God is 50% present over here and 50% present over there. He’s still in all places. We’re not dividing his nature, but we are dividing his presence. He is present here, but it’s a 50% presence, and here it’s a 50% presence.”
No. God’s existence and nature are undivided. He is fully present wherever he is, and the fact that he’s present in two places, or throughout all of creation, does not limit the fullness of his presence in any particular place. The fact that God is listening to the prayers of people in Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, and South America does not mean he’s giving less attention or is any less present with you as you pray at church. Or in your home.
Undiluted
In every place, God exists in the fullness of his presence in a way that could never be watered down. Right where you are, God exists in all of his fullness.
What if you zoomed in on one square foot of that room? You’re looking at 1% of the universe at that point. What percentage of God’s presence would you say is in that square? The answer is 100%. The fullness of God exists in that square. God is as much in the room where you’re sitting as he is everywhere. God is as much in you, if you are in Christ, as he is in all the heavens and the earth. His presence is potent everywhere, indivisible and unable to be watered down. You have with you at all times the fullness of the presence of God, the full potency of his power, the full strength of his care.
Unconfined
And his presence is unconfined. If you stood up right now and started running as fast as you can toward the back of the room you’re in, it would take you about three seconds before you ran into a wall. When you leave a building and the doors are locked behind you, you will no longer be able to get in without breaking the walls, windows, or doors, because there are physical structures that limit us.
We haven’t come close to finding where the universe ends, but there is an end to the created universe. And even that does not confine God.
The Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs writes this:
…God is as much beyond every place as He is in every place. He is as much beyond the circumference of the heavens and the earth as He is in them; yea, if God should make ten thousand worlds more, He would fill all those as well as He does this one, without any motion at all. He would not move from one place to another to fill up ten thousand worlds (if there were so many new ones made), but in the same instant in which they were all made, that immense being of His would fill up all. Surely God is a most excellent being than above all other things whatsoever.
Jeremiah Burroughs2
I love that last sentence. Contemplating such great things, Jeremiah Burroughs is just led to worship. And it’s not just him.
What Does the Bible Say About God Being Everywhere?
Throughout the Bible, God’s omnipresence is not just an implicit truth. It’s not just this undergirding reality that you can see if you really peel back the curtain of theology. It is taught from the beginning of the book to the end of the book, certainly, but the saints in the Bible also worship God for being omnipresent. For them, that doctrine was a comfort, an assurance, a hope, and it changed how they saw the world.
I tell you, God’s omnipresence is a practical and life-changing thing to understand.
King David had learned that in his life, and so he wrote Psalm 139. Nowhere in the Bible is God worshiped for his omnipresence like he is in Psalm 139. This is one of the most beautiful psalms in the Bible. Let’s walk through it and highlight three ways David connects God’s omnipresence to his life: present care, present control, and present conviction.
Present Care
Starting in verse 1:
O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, 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. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.
Psalm 139:1–12
God’s presence is a sweet thing to a saint. Asaph ends Psalm 73 by saying, “But for me it is good to be near God” (Psalm 73:28). David spends so much of Psalm 139 delighting in the fact that he cannot escape God.
The reason that’s delightful to me and to you is that we have a sinful propensity to try to escape from God. We are runners, sinners who are stupidly running away from that which is good for us, often knowingly running from that which is good for us.
Have you ever gone to sin knowing this is just going to make you feel terrible? That’s what we do. The first thing that Adam and Eve did after sinning was to run from God (Genesis 3:8). It was stupid of Adam and Eve to flee from God, not only because God saw anyway, but because their only hope in God’s world was God.
God’s presence is not disconnected from the verse we started with: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” God’s presence is vitally connected to his mercy and grace and love.
His presence means mercy. His presence means grace. His presence means love. God’s presence is a comfort to his people. That’s what David finds out and writes, not only here but in Psalm 23, when he says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” (Psalm 23:6).
If you think that you have fled from the love of God and escaped it, if you think you’re far from the goodness and mercy of God, you’re wrong. You can’t escape. You cannot go to Sheol, you cannot go to heaven, you can’t fly as high as the birds or take a submarine to the bottom of the ocean and escape from the love of God.
No matter where you are, if you are in Christ, even there your God upholds you in his care and love. God’s omnipresence means present care.
Present Control
Continuing in verse 13:
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:13–16
God is Lord over all creation. His lordship and presence are joined together inseparably. Wherever God is, God rules, and wherever God rules, God is.
If there were a place in this world where God was not, there would be a place in this world where God does not rule. If there were a speck of dust in the universe that God did not rule over, it would be the single speck in the universe where God’s presence was not. That’s a mere hypothetical, because God is omnipresent. He is in control of everything. His presence means that he is not just powerful enough to rule over creation; his presence means that he is actively ruling over all of creation.
There is a star billions of light-years away that is only shining because God is ruling over it and is present with it. If God were not actively present, that star would not only not shine, it would not exist. He’s Lord over it, and so he’s present with it. He’s present with it, and so he is Lord over it.
So it is with your life.
I remember in a Q&A someone asking R.C. Sproul how he could say that God was sovereign over cancer. How could we say God is Lord over that kind of suffering? Sproul’s answer was this, to paraphrase: If you were to remove the sovereignty of God, the control of God, the presence of God from that suffering, you would also be removing any hope for that suffering. You would be removing any meaning in that suffering. But because God is there, he’s in control.
God’s lordship and presence go hand in hand. That’s a hopeful thing.
Present Conviction
Continuing in verse 17:
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Psalm 139:17–24
God’s presence means that God sees all things.
It’s also a comfort to know that no evil in this world goes unnoticed. You have never been sinned against without your Father noticing. You have never been the recipient of injustice without the just God of the universe taking note. He has never turned a blind eye to wickedness, whether it’s against you or anyone else. Vengeance belongs to him, and there will be no ultimate injustice left in this world. There will be no crooked lines that are not made straight, because the omnipresent God sees and convicts the world regarding sin.
It also means there is no darkness in which we can hide our wicked acts. As Adam and Eve found out, there’s no tree to hide behind when God seeks to enact justice. There are no secret sins. You may have a sin that is secret from everyone else around you, but you have no sin that is secret from God Almighty.
You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
Psalm 90:8
All that we do, we do with the eye of God on us. Now that’s convicting personally. That’s why David ends the psalm with, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
He’s saying, “God, you know all of my sin, and so it is a grace to be known. I want to be known.” It’s not a bad thing that God is present everywhere. It is not a bad thing to live before the face of God. We want that conviction.
It is a great mercy and grace that we cannot run from conviction, because that is the means by which we are made more holy and so more happy. Like David, we need to turn the knowledge of God’s omnipresence into the desire to do all things for the glory of God.
We have an audience for every word that we speak, every thought that we think, and everything that we do. The audience is God, the Almighty. In all of our thoughts, words, and deeds, our goal should be to bring glory to the omnipresent God, the One who sees.
Why Does It Matter That God Is Everywhere?
Theology matters! It’s all connected to real life.
His presence is an astounding theological truth, a deep philosophical and doctrinal reality. It’s connected to our lives because it is by and through his omnipresence that he cares for us, that he comforts us, that he controls all things for our good, and that he convicts us to make us eternally happy and holy.
Brothers and sisters, one thing I will leave you with is this: theology matters. Many people are looking for solutions to the problems of their heart and mind and soul. They look under every nook and cranny in this world, to every kind of person and expert in this world, to every kind of substance that they could get their hands on. A true knowledge of and confidence in doctrines like the omnipresence of God would go a long way to set our minds, hearts, and souls right. This kind of theology is connected to real life.
Take up and read the word. Think about what it means that God is with you all the time. “I feel like God is far from me.” But he’s not. “I need mercy.” God is present and ready to give mercy. “I’ve sinned.” God sees and knows. “I’m suffering.” God is with me to make my suffering meaningful.
Theology matters. Remind yourself this week, as often as you can, that God is with you. How sweet is that? So sweet that it’s the promise Jesus left for us: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). That promise is a comfort, and it’s for you. Take it this week. Pray it. Let it nourish your soul.
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