God Is Everywhere. In Particular?
The general subject of this chapter is, The God of the Bible as distinguished from the god of ‘‘Theosophy” and the god of “Christian Science” and the god of “Spiritualism” and the god of “New Thought” and the God of “Unitarianism” and the God of the “New Theology” and the god of “Modern Philosophy” and the god of “Modernism” in general. We have already seen in the three preceding chapters that the God of the Bible is a Personal God; and that the God of the Bible is essentially Spirit, invisible and incorporeal, but that He has manifested Himself to men in a visible form, and that He has a form now in which He manifests Himself in the celestial world; and that, according to the teaching of the Bible, there is but one God, but that in this one God there are three persons, God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit.
Our particular subject is. The God of the Bible: God is Everywhere. Is He Anywhere in Particular? I have three texts, one taken from the Psalms, one from the Prophets, and one from a New Testament Apostle. You will find the first text in Ps. 139:7-12:
“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in Sheol (the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Hades), behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say. Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me; and the light about me shall be night; even the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.’^
You will find the second text in Jer. 23:23, 24:
“Am I a God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? saith Jehovah. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith Jehovah.’^
You will find the third text in Acts 17: 24-28:
“The God that made the world and all things therein. He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is He served by men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He Himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things: and He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being.”
It would be difficult to find outside of the Bible in all the literature of all nations, ancient or modern, anything comparable in profundity, beauty and sublimity of thought and expression with these utterances of Paul, Jeremiah, and David, all written so many centuries ago, the latest of them written over eighteen hundred years ago, and one of them written twenty-five hundred and twenty or so years ago, and one over twenty-nine hundred years ago. How did the Apostle and the Prophet and the Psalmist attain to such lofty conceptions of God so many, many centuries before modern philosophy was even dreamed of? There is but one rational answer to that question, and that is the answer of the Bible itself, that is, these “men spake from God, being moved (more literally, “being borne along”) by the Holy Spirit.” They were “inspired of God” and this inspiration extended not only to their “concept” (or, thought) but to the very words in which they voiced their “concept” (or, thought) (II Tim. 3:16; I Cor. 2: 13).
/. God Is Everywhere
The first thing that we see plainly and unmistakably taught by all these “God-breathed” (II Tim. 3:16 Greek) passages is that, God is everywhere. There is no place that we can go in Heaven or in Hades where God is not: “If we ascend up into heaven” God is there; “if we descend into Sheol (or Hades),” “the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40), the abode of the
8o spirits of the departed up to the time of the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, God is there. Go East or West, North or South, to the uttermost part of land or sea, God is there with us, His own hand leads us, and His right hand holds and protects us. When I was born sixty-six years ago on the Atlantic coast God was there by my cradle; and now that I live more than three thousand miles away on the Pacific coast, He is with me in the lecture room or in my study every day, and watches by my bed during the hours of the night. He stands beside me unseen, but really personally present on this platform as I speak to you now. It is wonderful that as I speak to you here this morning my voice is carried by the Radio hundreds of miles away and people are listening to me there, but that is not so wonderful as that God is here and God is there beside them just as He is here be¬ side me. When I was on the other side of the earth, in the heart of Hunan in China last summer, and there seemed to be peril of robbery and violence from the bandits and disorganized soldiers, with whom the country was swarming, God was personally right be¬ side me there, and He was as personally beside you here as you listened to the voice of Dr. Courtland Myers or Dr. Frank Norris or Dr. A. C. Dixon. I have been from oE the shores of Labrador on the North to Invercargill and Bluffs, the nearest to the South pole of inhabited towns, on the South, and God was not only with me while I was there, but He is there and everywhere all the time.
Jeremiah tells us that God is always right hand’’ wherever we may be, but that He is at the same time ‘afar ojf” in the remotest spot not only in all the earth but in all the universe, even in those stars so far away that the light, travelling from them to us with the incredible and inconceivable rapidity with which light travels, takes six thousand years to get tO’ us, so that the light you will see in those stars to-night will be not the light with which they shine to-day but the light that started away from them six thousand years ago. There is not one smallest spot in all the universe where God is not. There is no spot in all the universe where a man can hide himself from God. He fills the heaven and He fills the earth; so “Jehovah saith’’ (Jer. 23:24), and Jehovah always speaks the truth (Tit. 1:2).
Do you ask me how that can be? I confess I do not know. But neither do I know how the air for five hundred miles around Los Angeles in every direction is filled at this moment with my voice and my words, and at the same time is full of the jazz music from Mr. Anthony’s broadcasting station and full of other voices as well, all unheard until we put up our radio receiver and then tune it to one broadcasting station instrument or another and then hear one or the other just as plainly as the man sitting down there in the front row of chairs hears me at this moment. If my finite and feeble voice is everywhere for five hundred miles around at this moment, unheard it may be, but perfectly hearable at any moment, and it is, is it hard to believe that an Infinite God can be present at any moment and every moment everywhere in the universe He Himself created? It is not hard at all for me to believe it, but the Radio and its wonders have helped me to believe it. But remember the Psalmist wrote about it twenty-nine hundred years before the Radio was dreamed of. Thus does the most modern real ‘science” confirm the truth and inspiration of very ancient Scripture. And yet men who call themselves “scientists” and “philosophers,” deny the Inspiration of those “holy men of old,” and fancy themselves to be the only real “scientists” and “philosophers” that there are in the whole world, be¬ cause their minds have been bedeviled by an extreme doctrine of Devilution that they term “Evolution.” It would be most fitting to change the first o in the word into an i and call it Evilniion.
II. Some Inferences from the Great Truth That God Is Everywhere.
Before we go any further let us consider some help¬ ful, practical inferences from the great truth revealed in the Bible (and never dreamed of by man until the Bible did reveal it), the truth that God is everywhere.
I. The first inference from the great truth that God is everywhere is that God is not confined to temples or church buildings or buildings of any kind, but can be found and worshiped anywhere and everywhere beneath the shining sun by day or the glittering stars by night. The whole universe is a holy temple of God; and we can enjoy His fellowship on some mountain peak, as I have done, or down in a mine one thou¬ sand feet beneath the earth and beneath the level of the sea, as I have also done. I believe in setting buildings apart for the service and worship of God, and I believe that it is the solemn duty of men and women to attend services there and take their children there, if they can; and I believe the man or woman who does not go to the house set apart for the worship of God every Lord’s Day, when they are able, and take all their children with them, if they can, is not a good citizen. Nevertheless, I meet God out on the bosom of the vasty deep, and upon the mountain peak alone, on Sunday and on other days, just as truly as I meet him here in this beautiful building set apart by loving hands and grateful hearts for His worship and His glory. God is everywhere and the whole universe is His Temple. That thought is not original with me, nor is it original with the modern poets; Paul declared it nearly two thousand years ago. Listen again to what he said to that gathering of Stoic and Epicurean philosophers on the Areopagus in Athens in that olden time. We find it in Acts 17: 24-28:
‘‘The God that made the world and all things therein, He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is He served by men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He Himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being/^
Where did poor old Paul, whom some of our “very learned” and “very brilliant” and still more self-sufficient modern theological professors and preachers are trying so hard to criticize and discredit, learn it? I will tell you where he learned it. He learned it direct “from God” (H Pet. i :2i). The man who, in face of the clear facts in The case, doubts it is not in any proper usage of the word “rational,” as he dreams he is and boasts that he is; he is utterly irrational, a determined, stubborn, willful blockhead. That is plain language, but it is also plain sense and undeniable fact.
But let us go back further still than Paul, more than seven hundred years before Paul, to Isaiah. Isaiah 57: 15-22. Listen carefully as I read:
“For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to re¬ vive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite. For I will not contend forever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit would fail before me, and the souls that I have made. For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid my face and was wroth, and he went on back¬ sliding in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners. I create the fruit of the lips;
Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith Jehovah; and I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea; for it cannot rest and its waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”
Where did old Isaiah learn it, living so long, long ago, twenty-five hundred years or more before Chicago University or Union Theological Seminary, New York, were ever dreamed of? There is but one answer that even approaches reasonableness, that answer is. He was really inspired, undoubtedly inspired, he was ‘’inspired of God,” his words were “God-breathed” (II Tim. 3: 16, Greek). And yet these learned gentle¬ men, these exponents of ‘‘the consensus of modern scholarship,” blandly tell us that there is no such thing as supernatural inspiration and that Isaiah 57 was not written by Isaiah anyhow! Well, then by whom was it written? “Why... why... why ... by Mr. Deutero-Isaiah, ‘the Great Unknown.’” Ah! it was not written by “the Great Unknown” but by one who was well known — to God, so well known to God that God chose to speak through him, written by one who will be well known also when these shallow and self-sufficient, “Higher Critics,” “Modernists” and “New Theology” men are forgotten forever, written by “Isaiah, the son of Amoz” (Isa. 1:1), to whom God visibly appeared and whom He chose to be His mouth¬ piece not only to the Jews of his own day, but to all nations for all coming centuries and to us to-day among the rest (Isa. 6: 1-8).
2. The second inference from the great truth that God is everywhere is that God can always help and deliver those who trust Him. As there is no place where God is not, so there is no place where God can¬ not come to the help and deliverance of his people. I may live here in this sober and orderly city of Los Angeles where law is so perfectly enforced, or I may be in continually war-ridden China, or in the heart of Africa, what difference does it make? God is there as well as here. I watched a boat last summer with armed men in it who looked like bandits, of whom the surrounding country was thought to be full, as it drew near our unarmed boat, way up on the Siang River in Hunan, just after sunset. It looked bad. Only two or three days before, I had seen just such looking men fire upon and capture a Chinese junk. It certainly did look scary, and one who knew China far better than I whispered to me, “It looks like a holdup.” But my heart was quiet. God was there, and I was silently talking to Him while I watched the boat approach. Oh! I rejoice that I know the God of the Bible and not the god of “Modern Religious Liberalism,” and that my God too is everywhere, and that He is not only everywhere but that He is at the same time a real God, a Personal God, an Almighty and infinitely loving Father, and not the mere cold, unreal, philosophical, impersonal, dead, “Absolute.”
3. The third inference from the great Bible truth that God is everywhere is, you cannot hide anything you do or think or feel from God. The policy of concealment governs the actions of all evil doers. We witness it to-day in politics, in international affairs, in the mal-administration of justice, in business, in the home, everywhere. The deputy sheriff .takes a bribe that he thinks no one sees and the prisoner does not go to San Quentin but escapes to the woods; the policeman takes a bribe on the sly and the offender is not arrested; murders are committed and clews that lead nowhere are paraded in the papers as being followed up, but clews that would lead to the guilty party are ignored. Nobody knows. Don’t they? God is every¬ where. He saw the murder and knows the guilty party, even if the officers of the law do not or do not want to. The adulterer goes on his damnable way under cover of the night and his wife and children do not know, they fancy that he is the best of fathers and the prince of husbands. Nobody knows. Don’t they? God knows. Yes, and remembers too, until just the right time comes and then He will strike. Yes, God is everywhere, you cannot hide anything from Him. As the Psalmist puts it:
“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou are there:
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
A’nd dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there thy hand shall lead me.
And thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say. Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me;
And the light about me shall be night.
Even the darkness hideth not from thee;
But the night shineth as the day:
The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.’’
Not one of you has ever committed a single sin that the Holy God of the Bible, Who is everywhere, does not know. So you must pay the penalty of every sin of act or word or thought that you commit. You cannot escape. We may escape human avengers and human courts; we cannot escape God. Wearing the long white robes and hoods of the Ku Klux Klan when we go out to do our deviltry and using all sorts of foolish names of hobgoblins and what not, will not hide us from God. I am mighty glad of it. God is every¬ where, unseen by all but seeing all. So no sin no matter how secret will ever go unpunished; if not here, then over yonder. With an everywhere present God every sin that man commits is a huge mistake.
4. The fourth inference, and a glorious one it is, from the great Bible truth that God is everywhere is that. It does not matter one particle if every earthly friend deserts us and every man on earth is against us, if we are true to God and conscience, God is not only near us but He will also protect us, and “if God be for us who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31). Some thirty years ago, I incurred the deep enmity of some powerful and unscrupulous men. A man came to me with a warning. He named the men and spoke of their power and their unscrupulousness and how they had it in for me. I was not in the least disturbed. I knew God was everywhere and what availed the plots and conspiracies of men? And here I am still.
III, Is God Anywhere in Particular?
We have seen that God is everywhere, and now arises another question, Is God Anywhere in Particular? Is God in certain places in a sense and in a full¬ ness that He is not in other places? The Bible answers that question also with unmistakable clearness.
1. Turn in your Bibles to Jno. 14:28. Jesus is speaking, listen to His words:
‘‘Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the Father is greater than I.”
Here our Lord distinctly says that on leaving His disciples and going up into heaven He was going unto the Father; so it is clear that God the Father is in heaven in a sense and in a fullness in which He is not on earth.
2. Turn now to the twentieth chapter of the same book, Jno. 20: 17:
“Jesus saith to her. Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto my brethren, and say to them, / ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.’’
Here Jesus distinctly teaches us that the Father is in heaven in a sense in which He is not here on earth, that, in leaving the earth and ascending into Heaven, He was ascending to God the Father, to a place where God the Father was in a sense that He was not here.
, 3. Turn now to Eph. i: 20. Paul is here speaking about God and ‘’the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward.” He says:
“Which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places.”
The meaning of these words is plain. They teach us that God has a local habitation and that the Lord Jesus was exalted to a place at His right hand.
4. Turn now to Rev. 21:2, 3, 10, 22, 23:
“And I saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. (This clearly tells us that God is in heaven and that the new Jerusalem was coming down out of heaven from him.) And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. ... (10) And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and shewed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.... (22, 23.) And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof. And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb.”
5. Turn once more, this time to Rev. 22:1, 3, 4:
“And he shewed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, coming out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. ... (3, 4.) And there shall be no night any more: and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall he therein: and His servants shall serve him: and they shall see his face; and his name shall be on their foreheads.”
All these passages make it as clear as day that, while God is everywhere as we have already seen, that at the same time it is true that God is in one particular place, in Heaven, in a way in which He is not in any other place. We find this same truth way back in the Old Testament in Isaiah 66:1:
“Thus saith Jehovah, Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: what manner of house will ye build unto me? What place shall be my rest?”
Here heaven is said to be the throne of God, the place where He is peculiarly and fully present, and it is also said that “the earth is (His) footstool.” Clearly then, there is a fullness and manifestation of God’s presence in some place that there is not in other places. Heaven is the place where at the present time the presence and glory of God are especially and visibly manifested.
This great truth about God comes out in a very striking and impressive way at the Baptism of our Lord Jesus. Let me read you Mark’s account, Mark I; 9-1 1:
“And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptised of John in the Jordan. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him: and a voice came out of the heavens, Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased/^
Here we are distinctly told that the voice of God speaking to His beloved Son came ‘‘out of the heavens,” In the marvelous prayer which our Lord taught us He tells us to address God as “Our Father who art in heaven” (more literally “in the heavens’’) (Matt. 6:9). It is clear then that though God is everywhere He must be “in the heavens” in a sense that He is not here.
God the Father is especially manifested in heaven at the present time; God the Son, during the days of our Lord’s life and ministry here on earth, was especially manifested on earth (though He Himself tells us in Jno. 3:13 that even while on earth He was in heaven. His words are: “And no one hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven.”); God the Son is now in heaven, having ascended there from Mt. Olivet forty days after His resurrection from the dead (see Acts 1:3-11; Cf. Acts 7:56; Eph. i: 20, and many other passages); God the Holy Spirit is manifested everywhere: (i) In nature (Gen. 1:2; Ps. 104:30); (2) In all believers (Jno. 14:16, 17; Rom. 8:9); (3) With unbelievers (Jno. 16:7-11).
Through the Spirit, the Father and the Son dwell to-day in the believer in Jesus Christ (Jno. 14: 17, 19, 20, 23), dwell personally in him, and our Lord Jesus is with us (if we go out to do His work) until the end of this present dispensation. He says in Matt. 28: 18-20, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, / am with you always, even unto the consummation of the age” But God the Father is peculiarly and personally present “in Heaven” to¬ day in a sense that He is not with us here. God the Son in a glorified human form is at present in heaven, waiting until that glad day when He shall come back to this earth to receive us and take us up with Him into glory.
I meet God face to face now. Though I do not see Him, yet I have real, intimate, personal communion with Him now; but when my earthly pilgrimage and warfare are over, I shall meet Him and see Him in heaven in a sense and in a fullness that I do not meet Him and see Him now. And then, in that wonderful day, as David put it so many centuries ago, “I shall be satisfied when I awake, with beholding Thy form (Ps. 17: 15).