DM 620482

Remain standing for the reading of the Word of God. Jonah 1, read the first three verses for you. Now the word of Yahweh came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. Yet Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, and paid its fare, and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh.

You may be seated. That's the reading of God's holy word. Last week we went through some passages, particularly Psalm 139, where we delved a little deeper into the concept of omnipresence. So omni being the word, the prefix meaning all, and then presence meaning where you happen to be, where you're present. And so the idea of omnipresence is that God has all presence.

He is everywhere, all the time, he's at every point, in every place, at every time in fact, which is a separate dimension actually to think through. God is not composed of parts, so it's not like part of God is in one place and part of God is in another place. God is everywhere. the doctrine of the omnipresence of God I tried to introduce last week as something important to study and contemplate and as Jason pointed out God's attributes are on display in Psalm 145 which we read before the service and really the whole Bible his attributes or his perfections which is the preferred reformed term to describe God, His perfections are maybe not always specifically discussed or pointed at, but they're always assumed.

So whenever you read any passage of Scripture, you always have underlying it that God is who He is, essentially, at all times. And in that passage of Scripture, God remained and remains who He is at all times. And so that is one of the reasons why the doctrine of God and understanding this level of theology is important, because you cannot understand Scripture if you don't understand God.

Now, when I say understand God, I don't mean you'll ever comprehend Him fully. God is incomprehensible to all but Himself. But, to rephrase things, if you have a wrong understanding of the doctrine of God and His perfections, that will inevitably lead you to interpret a scripture wrongly, which will then cause you potentially to do what some have done and made a complete shipwreck of their faith.

And so we always need to temper our understanding of any passage of scripture, particularly passages that describe God in creaturely terms. We need to temper that with the understanding of who God is essentially as not a creature. But we're creatures, and the only way we can understand anything is by thinking about created things. We really don't have any way of understanding beyond that.

We are not like God. And so God condescends to describe himself a number of different ways in Scripture that we need to understand how to interpret properly in light of his essential attributes. The omnipresence of God, I specifically looked at because Jonah said he was fleeing the presence of God. So I apologize if you're excited about Jonah. We're not going to get into Jonah much yet this week.

We're just talking about the presence of God still, which is coming from Jonah. And next week, Lord willing, we're going to be talking about prophecy and the word that came to Jonah. And so we're not going to get out of verse 3 for a while. But the omnipresence of God comes with it, his infinite knowledge and his utter omniscience. So omniscience, omni-science, the prefix omni again meaning all.

So you guys heard of omnivores. Those are the ones that eat meat, carne, right? Carnivores. And they also eat herbs. So an herbivore eats plants. Carnivore eats meat and omnivore eats both.

And so we're mostly omnivores, I think, in this room, actually. But omniscience is all knowledge. So science is the word that means knowledge. It's really just translated that way. That's just what the word means. So when we say God has omniscience, or omniscience is the way you might pronounce it based on how it's spelled, what we're saying is God has all knowledge.

He knows everything. Well, this is a natural conclusion. It's a natural implication of the fact that he's everywhere. So the idea that somehow God could be everywhere, which we believe Scripture teaches, and somehow not know something is completely foreign to the mind of the writers of Scripture. I bring that up because I think they go together really nicely.

And I think that it's always implied that God's knowledge of everything is accompanied with his presence. It would be somewhat meaningless for me to make a big deal about Jonah trying to flee the presence of God if God could somehow be everywhere but not know everything So I going to kind of talk about them a little bit interchangeably They are distinct in their definite meaning, but they work together just like all of God's attributes that we talk about separately, all of His perfections that we discuss as separate concepts because that's how we think of things. They're always really just one in God.

And it's his infinite perfection that we are witnessing. Stephen Charnock, who wrote a large volume about the attributes of God, said about omnipresence, how much is this attribute of God forgotten or contemned? He says, we pretend to believe him to be present everywhere, and yet many live as if he were present nowhere. So the argument he's making is if you believe God's present everywhere and I would add if you understand the clear implication of that that thus God sees everything and knows everything then some of the things that you do in the dark some of the things you do when you think no one's looking or not a lot of people are looking you're functionally atheistic at the time because you're functionally acting as if there is no God.

Truly speaking, every time we sin there's some aspect of us in that moment that's denying the truth of the necessity of the fear of God and that we always live in his presence and in his view. Another way to think about his omnipresence is through what's called in the doctrine of God, sometimes it's called the via negativa, just the negative path. So since I cannot positively explain to you what it means to be omnipresent because I'm a creature, I don't have language that can actually describe the incomprehensible.

I have finite language, and I'm trying to describe something that's infinite. Another way to explain God to people is by saying what he is not. All right, so we take concepts people understand, and then we say, well, God is not like this. And so think about this. There's nothing that could be known that could not be known by God. So I can't tell you what it's like to know everything.

But what I can tell you is that if there was something that could be known, I cannot conceive of a God that wouldn't know it. Does that make sense? If it's knowable, God knows it. Similarly with omnipresence. There's no place, no physical location, we'll say, that could exist where God isn't or where He doesn't fill it. So if you just in your mind for a moment posit some area of the universe, some area of this room, I don't care.

It could be the farthest away place you can imagine. And if you just for a moment in your mind think that's a place where God isn't. How is there possibly a created place when the creator didn't create it and then fill it? So it's impossible for these things to even exist that God wouldn't fill or know about. Why is this so difficult? Turn to Genesis 3.

I think that God's omnipresence and God's omniscience, his being everywhere and his knowing everything, I think that these perfections of God are actually ascertainable by humankind through what's called natural theology. So anyone who has the ability to use reasoning, who is blessed with just rational thinking skills that God has provided to most people who have ever lived, without scripture, could arrive at these conclusions that God must be everywhere and he must be all-knowing. If they can propose a God who's not, then we can say safely, well, that's just not even a God at this point.

So why, if something is so obvious, that even a person that doesn't have the benefit of Scripture, doesn't have the benefit of church, doesn't have the benefit of parents teaching them the Scripture, doesn't go to a Christian school, isn't homeschooled with a Christian curriculum, why, if this is so obvious, that I would say you're actually condemned for not believing in the God that displays Himself through nature these ways perfectly, why is it so hard for us to believe? Well, the same reason why everything's hard for us, because of our sin. And our sin, to quote a friend of mine, our sin makes us stupid.

So if you don't like that, I was just quoting someone else. But our sin causes us to do foolish things. It causes us to not think straight. And so we will deny the truth that we actually can see plainly before us to justify our sin. Look at Genesis 3.10. the very first man whoever existed the first human Adam knew God prior to the fall so you have to have some idea that although knowledge of God was not incomprehensible or comprehensive because God is incomprehensible although Adam's knowledge of God was not comprehensive Adam knew God in a way that none of us have yet in some sense.

We don know the details of it but I think you just have to imagine for a moment that a sinless man had some understanding that God was omnipresent and omniscient If I just argued for you that even people in remote jungles around this world are held accountable for these obvious facts. and yet when Adam sinned and God asked him where he was in verse 9 in Genesis 3.10 Adam said I heard the sound of you in the garden he says and I was afraid because I was naked and then this is the last part so I hid we all follow our father Adam one of the very first mistakes Adam makes here after sinning was somehow imagining he could escape the presence of God Jonah wasn't the first guy who God spoke to and thought he was going to hide Adam hid, he hid from God our sin causes us to think wrong things about God Thinking wrong things about God inevitably leads to bad interpretation of scriptures. These bad interpretations of scriptures inevitably lead to bad behavior or ultimately sinful. So this is why you know people who profess to be Christians.

Who actually look at scripture and will say things about the same scripture that you may be reading. that you totally disagree with. And one of the reasons a lot of times you discover is, well, they're looking at it from the perspective of a God who's not omniscient. So it's just an obvious one. It's like the open theists, the Arminian type people. They will say, oh, well, you know, when God says he chooses his elect, what it means is he looks down the halls of time and he sees who would choose him and then he calls them his elect.

And what they have is they have a God who has learned something. They have a God who didn't decree everything that would come to pass himself. And so although they use a bunch of scriptures to explain this, and their arguments may sound plausible, because in some sense we can always twist whatever words we have in front of us to mean something it doesn't, you have to go back to the basic doctrine of God that God doesn't learn. it's one of the neat things about God here's a fun one for you when people say well God can do anything you can say no he can't no they'll say God's omnipotent he can do anything no he can't what's something God can't do well God can't learn God can't sin God can't get better God can't get worse God can't change God cannot become basically He cannot become anything he isn't already.

God cannot do evil. There's a lot of things God can't do. When we say he's omnipotent, all-powerful, what we mean is he can do all his holy will. And his holy will will always be perfect. And thus he will enact all his holy will. So anything unholy or that changes who he is is not considered part of God.

Turn to Job 22. We've had a problem with understanding God's omnipresence and God's omniscience for a long time. Most people would say Job was the first book of the Bible after Genesis 11. So if you read a chronology of the Bible, you get to Genesis 11, and then you have Job in your chronology usually. but in chapter 22 I'm focusing on the omniscience and omnipresence aspect here Eliphaz the Temanite is speaking to Job let me just skip down to verse 12 he says is not God in the height of heaven he's saying God's far away which there's a truth to the fact that that's where God makes his home.

There's some language we have to deal with sometimes to try to explain that even though God's in the height of heaven, he is everywhere. He says, look also at the distant stars. He says how high they are. So he's creating this picture of look how far away God is, right? Everything is so big. And we know God's in heaven.

Everybody agrees God's in heaven. So he's painting this picture. He's trying to make an argument and he says, you say, what does God know? Can he judge through the dense gloom? He says clouds are a hiding place for him so that he cannot see. And he walks on the vault of heaven.

The picture being made here is the pagan picture of gods that are up far away above the clouds. And they look down and if there's clouds in the way, they can't see you. all scripture is God breathed and profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction and righteousness so that the man of God may be equipped for every good work but not necessarily everything that came out of everyone's mouth in scripture was a true statement and so one of the things with Job's friends is they say a lot of really good things and they say a couple of things that probably we should watch out for just look at verse 13 he says how can God know or what does God know? If your answer to that is anything but God knows everything, you don't have the same God that the scripture teaches about.

There is nothing hidden from God. Jonah we already talked about him Jonah had the same issue Jonah was told to go to Nineveh He was given a specific task. Some of us wish we had more specific tasks sometimes. That we were more certain of some of them. And Jonah went down to Joppa to take a ship to Tarshish to flee the presence of Yahweh. In fact, fleeing the presence of Yahweh was such an understanding of what was going on that the men on the ship, we'll see later if you read the whole chapter, they knew that's what Jonah was doing because he told them.

This isn't like God doing heart reading, which he's perfectly allowed to do with anybody he wants and write about it in the scripture. Jonah's like, yeah, I'm fleeing the presence of Yahweh. And these other guys are like, we don't care. and then when the storm comes, now they care. Right? We'll go over that soon enough. Turn to Psalm 94.

I think that we have a sin problem and our sin problem causes us to say things about God that are not true. And sometimes the arguments that actually tear down our irrationality are so simplistic that it's embarrassing. Psalm 94, I'll just read the first 11 verses. O Yahweh, God of vengeance, God of vengeance, shine forth. Be lifted up, O judge of the earth.

Render recompense to the proud. He says, how long shall the wicked, O Yahweh, how long shall the wicked exult? This saint is unhappy that God hasn't performed vengeance on evildoers yet. Alright? Bad things are happening. God says he's good.

This guy's saying, you're not fast enough for me, God. it's basically kind of the idea and it's okay to call out to God for things but we have to be patient for them but then he says they pour forth words they speak arrogantly and now their sin is being shown, they're arrogant in their sinfulness he says all workers of iniquity vaunt themselves, they crush your people oh Yahweh and afflict your inheritance, they slay the widow and the sojourner and murder the orphans and now here's the key they have said YAH does not see nor does the God of Jacob discern one of the most wonderful praiseworthy I shouldn't say most because everything about God is praiseworthy but one of the things that's most striking to us about our God is His patience God's patience is the reason every one of us wasn't consumed the moment you were first guilty of sin, which is technically at your conception, but we'll just say even at your first sin. But God's patience, His forbearance, especially with evil, to those who hate Him is evidence that He doesn't even exist or doesn't see. And I'll argue that if somebody says your God doesn't see something, that's the same as saying your God isn't real.

Alright? he says, discern you senseless among the people, and when will you have insight, you fools? Remember last week I called it foolishness to think of fleeing the presence of Yahweh. It's silliness. Now here's the argument. It's kind of simple. You don't need a theological degree to get this.

You don't need a master's degree. You don't have to have gone to a Christian school. In some sense, you only need the smallest bit of rationality and a little bit of powers of observation. Listen, he says, he who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? The argument is simple.

The being that created the things we used to see and hear, sees and hears. There's nothing outside of his seeing and hearing. You don't have to have doctor or PhD after your name to figure this stuff out. In fact, I would guess that most of the children in this room understand this better than a lot of adults walking around right now denying it. You don't have to be born again to get this.

This is just straight up logic. whoever invented something he does it way better than the invention or created I should say he didn't invent it he created the year he who disciplines the nations will he not rebuke even he who teaches man knowledge Yahweh knows the thoughts of man that they are vanity so if for a moment evildoers or, we'll just say any of us in this room, think that God doesn't see or doesn't hear the actual things that we're doing, Yahweh knows the thoughts of man. The moment that the evil deed that any one of us has ever committed came into our mind before we actually had the power to execute it, we were already guilty before God for it, and He already knew. This is why one of the things we tell people when we're on the streets is that you'll be held accountable for your wrong heart attitude even when you are doing a right thing.

Praise God. We have a culture where a lot of people still do right things outwardly or it would be time for another flood, which we know there's not going to be a flood. So it's foolishness to think you can escape the eyes of God. God is omnipresent turn to 1 Kings 8 1 Kings 8, some of you are already thinking, well, this is Samuel, or this is Solomon.

He's making a speech. I want us to consider God's omnipresence. Turn into verse 27, and His omniscience. I want to consider them together. I'll be honest, I debated making this, you know, multiple different sermons about different things. and I think we can kind of combine these concepts and if anybody wants more, lots of ink has been spilled on these topics.

In verse 27, Solomon says, but will God truly dwell on the earth? So he made him a building, right? He wouldn't let David build the building because David was a man of bloodshed, right? A man of violence. And Solomon made a temple. It's exciting stuff.

He says, but will God truly dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. How much less this house which I have built. So Solomon, in his prayer, proclaims a truth, which we probably should do more of. Most of our prayers are, just a quick side note, most of our prayers are, God, do this for me, and do that for me, and oh I'm starting to think about something and then oh yeah I was praying yeah God make me feel better help me to have more comfort most of the stuff we pray about comes back to that some of it's good stuff heal Aunt Betsy, I get it, I want Aunt Betsy healed too but sometimes I think we need to pray for more spiritual things but also one of the reasons why the Valley of Vision is such a good book to pray with And the new book I got from Matthew Henry is part of your prayer to God is exalting him by repeating truth back to him that he's given you.

You have no greater knowledge than the scripture he's given you. Pray it to him. But Solomon proclaims truth. Heaven and the highest heavens cannot contain God. So God is immense. This is in our confession. he's infinite he's all these things we can't imagine like the Atlantic Ocean is immense you can't compare these things you know what I mean these words cannot grasp the true eternality and infiniteness of God he cannot be contained so Solomon asked the question how could you truly dwell on the earth how much less this house which I have built well what's the answer to 99.9% of questions at church most of the kids should know how could God dwell on earth now this is the easy one starts with a J ends with a sus somebody there you go good how could God dwell on earth The heavens of heavens can contain him Nothing could contain him John 1.14 says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

How could God dwell on earth? Well, Jesus dwelt on earth. In fact, in the Greek of this, and I just tell you this because I hear it from other guys that have studied it. I'm not a Greek expert. The word is that he tented among us or that he tabernacled among us. The idea is that when Jesus came, the temple was here, the true temple of God.

That's how God dwelt among us. When Jesus came, he dwelt among us. And John tells us, we beheld his glory. Glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. So although it's true that God's omnipresent, we also understand from scripture that there are sometimes specific we'll say visitations from God where he makes his glory and power a little bit more known God was omnipresent everywhere Jesus was while he was on earth and God was also on the other end of the earth at the same time and the other end of the universe, he's everywhere but there's a special presence of God in Jesus Christ he was the tent in which all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell so turn to Colossians 1 and we're just going to finish we're going to finish there so if your pages are starting to rip or something from turning too much I'll try not to make you turn too much more couple verses to wet your whistle about who this Jesus is where God was pleased to dwell verse 15 oh we'll go back to well I'll just say verse 15 says who is the image but it's not a question it's referring back to Jesus who is already referred to who is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation for in him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things have been created through Him and for Him. He's God. But if you didn't believe He was God, listen to verse 17. And He is before all things. And in Him all things hold together. I'll argue with you that that's actually at least tangentially a statement of His omnipresence.

Certainly means more than that, I think, too. Jesus is God and he is the head of the body the church who is the beginning the first born from the dead so that he himself will come to have first place in everything now listen for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell Solomon asked the question where would you dwell on earth now God made special visitations on earth to the temple, to the tabernacle to the tent of meeting we trust that God visits us especially when we celebrate a Sabbath worship When we here celebrating one of our 52 holidays a year that we get So everybody else has to go out and spend a bunch of money to get flags. I don't have any problem if you like flags and you want to celebrate the 4th of July.

I think it's fine if you want to. But on Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And you know what? It's a holiday. It's a holy day. If you were ever Roman Catholic, I'll say it's a holy day of obligation.

And we don't create more of them. And we don't take away any of the ones God's given us. I had a guy, a quick funny story. A guy at work said something about how in Europe they get more holidays than we get here in the United States. Because where they live, they get more holidays. And I said, well, I get 52. and he's like what I get a lot but 52 seemed like a lot I said yeah I said every Sunday the Sabbath I get off and he's like ah he knew what I meant you know but it's a pleasure it's a pleasure to get all these holidays oh if you find delight in my Sabbath Isaiah says right we should delight in it so skip down to verse 28 still speaking of Jesus him we proclaim admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ.

Down to chapter 2. Skip a couple. He kind of has some side notes here. Verse 2. So that their hearts may be encouraged having been held together in love. He says, Even unto all the wealth of the full assurance of understanding, unto the full knowledge of God's mystery, that is Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. Down to verse 8. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception. according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and in him you have been filled, who is the head over all rule and authority.

What Paul wants you to understand, and what I think dovetails nicely with a sermon on omnipresence and omniscience is that Christ himself is God and because he's God in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and so do not be deceived and do not let people take you captive through empty philosophy and deceit we don't think of the word captive very often. It basically saying don let someone else enslave you Being a captive is a pretty serious concept Do not be taken captive through philosophy and empty deception. God is omnipresent.

God is omniscient. He's everywhere. He fills all in all. He knows everything at all times. In fact, He doesn't exist in time. God actually has always known everything.

Again, impossible for us to even start to fathom that. We can only speak in words like time and place. But He is your wisdom is what I want to draw you to now. Jesus Christ is wisdom from God. He's your all in all. His word is your only sufficient and ultimate authority.

You cannot escape his presence, nor can you evade his vision. You must acknowledge this by living a life of obedience, even when you're in secret, because he is always present and he knows all. Your obedience must come from your heart, since he even knows your thoughts before you do. who can discern his errors the psalmist asked well god can you can't is the implication but god can discern your errors even the ones you don't know about the ones that are so under the surface you didn't know they were there pray that he will relieve you of every speck of corruption that you cling to which blocks you from knowledge of him god can see through the clouds, okay?

But you can't see through the speck in your eye to understand Him. So you'll warp your view of Him by your own sinful eyesight. Ask Him to remove these things so that you might have spiritual eyes to see. You need to live as though you truly believe He is the source of all true wisdom and knowledge. This is very easy to say in church. It's very easy when we're just hanging out to talk about, yeah, God's our source of wisdom and knowledge.

This is like so easy. People say it all over the place. People who don't go to church will say it. But you need to live as though you truly believe it. Live as though you truly believe He is the source of all true wisdom and knowledge. No more playing games with worthless idols.

No more toying with horoscopes or seeking wisdom and man-centered psychology. Abandon the vanity of the Enneagram and the devilishness of Myers-Briggs profiles and some of that kind of stuff they do. at churches. Forget self-help guides and 12-step programs. Drop your magic eight balls and things like that and quit seeking signs or searching out anything other than the purity of scripture as your source of godliness and wisdom.

Christ is sufficient. Submit yourself to the one true God who is all-knowing and ever-present and whose word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path. study Christ study Christ like your life and every decision you make depends upon you knowing Him