A few weeks ago, I did a study on the sovereignty of God. It actually lasted for a couple of weeks. It ended up being two messages. I did this study because of its importance, I believe, for every Christian. I then followed that up with a message on God's holiness last week. I didn't intend to do a series. a series of messages on the attributes of God, but it seemed that I should from the feedback that I got. So, I don't know how many attributes we will do together, but this morning we'll continue with the attribute of God's omnipresence. But before we begin our study, since I wasn't planning on doing this, I thought I'd just take a moment to introduce us to the attributes of God. A divine attribute is an essential quality or characteristic that God possesses in himself. His attributes are actually embedded in his nature and essence. Or as the theologian William Shedd said, the whole essence is in each attribute and the attribute in the essence. the 17th century theologian Turretin said, God's attributes cannot differ really from the essence or between themselves as one thing differs from another thing. So the word attribute is probably not the best term to use in describing God's qualities because the word implies something added or something added to God, which is not the case at all. God never had anything added to himself, his nature, or his essence. We might say that the word's properties or perfections or virtues might be better terms. But because the word attribute has been used so often throughout at least our lifetime, and even before that, we will retain the word attribute as we go through this study. But God's attributes are so much Him that you cannot distinguish between them and his essence in nature. And that's one of the reasons John said God is love, because you really can't distinguish an attribute or a property of God from who he is. And this is why God can never act contrary to his attributes. His attributes are part of him, cannot be divorced from him. He always has to be sovereign. He always has to be holy. He always has to be just and righteous. He always has to be truthful. He always has to be all-powerful and all-present, as we will see this morning. But theologians have categorized the divine attributes in various ways, depending on which theologies you read or what books you read. The most popular categories are, and there are many more, but I'll give you the popular ones, His natural and moral attributes, usually divided into two categories. So natural and moral. Then we have imminent, which is intransitive, and eminent, which is transitive. One can be transferred, the other one cannot. Positive and negative attributes. Absolute and relative attributes. Active and passive. attributes. And then, of course, incommunicable and communicable attributes. And this seems to be the most popular designation. Incommunicable divine attributes are exactly that. They are those attributes that belong to God exclusively. No other being possesses these attributes. Nor does God communicate those attributes to any other being. They are divine by their very nature. Communicable divine attributes, on the other hand, are those attributes that God communicates to created beings, which would be angels and men. And so they would be both common to created beings and God himself. In God, they do differ in this one point. In God, they are infinite. And of course, in men and angels, they're finite. And particularly in men and angels, they can be imperfect. And this is partially why man is said to be created in the image of God, because he possesses communicable attributes from God. Incommunicable, I'll give you a short list here, incommunicable divine attributes, which are exclusive to God. You would have self-existence. No other creature is self-existent except God. Simplicity. Spirit is simple. We are complex. We're spirit and body, okay? Then you have infinity. again, exclusive to God. Eternality, immutability, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, these are all exclusive to God. No other being has these attributes. Communicable divine attributes are shared. God shares them with men and angels. Wisdom, Although we don't have perfect wisdom, we do have wisdom from God. Goodness, we have the ability to be good as God is good, although in an imperfect way. Loving kindness, the same. Holiness, we are progressively being made more holy day by day in Christ. Righteousness, justice, truth, all of these things have been communicated by God to mankind and to angels to one degree or another. Again, not infinite, but finite. And again, I want to cover a few of these attributes in our study. As I said, we've already done sovereignty and holiness. But as we begin this morning, I hope we recognize that the doctrine of divine omnipresence is a critical doctrine. for believers to understand. I don't think we really understand this doctrine. So let's take a look at this, and we'll look at first a definition of omnipresence, divine omnipresence. In its simplest definition, Omnipresence refers to God being present everywhere all the time. Now that's a simple definition. I'm going to show you it's probably an incomplete definition, but that's a simple definition. God is everywhere all the time. Negatively, we would say there is no place in the universe where God is not present at any time. The doctrine is also related to God's immensity. You may have heard that term thrown alongside the word omnipresence. But immensity is technically different from omnipresence. So I don't want you to get confused here. I want to explain something. God's omnipresence and his immensity differ in this. His omnipresence relates to his being everywhere present all the time in the universe, in time and space. His immensity refers to him being bigger than the universe, not only inhabiting the universe, but even beyond. So there is a slight difference. It refers to his presence in the universe and outside the universe. Now, this does not mean that there is space beyond our universe. It means, however, that God is greater or beyond or outside of it, okay? Immensity, then, refers to our universe not being large enough to contain God, because he is infinite and as large as it is, finite. The universe being finite, God being infinite, being beyond. So divine immensity means God has no limits as to space. This is why Solomon, you may want to look at this, 1 Kings, in 1 Kings 8, you remember when Solomon was building the temple. And he had this long prayer to God. In his introduction to his prayer, he said in verse 27, as he's referring to Solomon building the temple, or as he's referring to himself building the temple, he says, But will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built. So Solomon understood that God was outside the universe, that the universe could not contain God because of his immensity. And he also understood that the temple that God would dwell in as really a token to Israel, was mainly symbolic. God really was in the temple, but he was not only in the temple. And Solomon understood that. And one more important note, we need to get this, and this is why our simple definition of omnipresence doesn't go far enough. I'm not sure we think this way, but I wanted to bring this out. When we say that God is omnipresent or immense, we do not mean that his essence is diluted or thinned to cover the entire universe or even outside of it. He is infinitely beyond his creation, but not in a diluted way or a diffused way. because his substance is spiritual and that physical, and this is the difference between spiritual and physical, we mean that he is 100% present everywhere. He is 100% present in this part. He is 100% present in another part. He is 100% present in every part. So it's not like he's 1% here and 3% there and so forth. And as hard as this is to get our heads around, God is present in every molecule, 100% present in every molecule, and then 100% present in the entire universe and beyond. So we cannot think about this in physical terms where we can only be in one spot at one time or we cut off a hand and 1% or 2% of us is over here and the other 90, that's not how it is with God in his omnipresence. This is because, and I mentioned this in the incommunicable attributes, this is because God is simple. That's not a derogatory term for God. He's simple. He's indivisible. He's undilutable, okay? Wherever he is, he is 100% there. One theologian put it this way, and I love this. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. Now think about that, that's good. So just as a human soul, and think about this, it may be a little bit easier to understand. Just as a human soul is present in all parts of the human body, right? 100%. My soul is present in my big toe, 100%. Just like it's present in my head, 100%. We don't dilute the soul. to inhabit the body because it's spiritual. So it is with God and His creation. Burkoff's definition of God's omnipresence and immensity is probably the most clear and complete, and I want you to get this. I think I put it in the notes for the folks in the AV. He says that God's omnipresence is that perfection of the divine being by which he transcends all spatial limitations and yet is present in every point of space with his whole being. I think that's a good definition. And notice that the definition is both negative in that it denies all limitations of space to God, and it's positive in that it asserts that God is above and outside of space and fills every part of it with His whole being. Men and angels are bound by space. since they can only be holy in one place at one time. God, however, is in space, and this is a theological term, repletively, because he is not absent from any part of space, nor is he more present in one part than in another, but holy and completely in every part at the same time. As I said, you may have not have thought about that, but I think it's an important point. And I know it's hard to get our heads around this. Nevertheless, this is God's nature. If we could easily understand this and God would be understandable, which we know He's not, at least in a complete sense. We have partial understanding, not complete understanding. So God is everywhere all the time in creation, but as we've said before, this does not mean he's a pantheistic God. And here's some other distinctions. He is not the substance of all things, okay? As pantheism or panentheism would suggest or teach. He's not, in other words, God is not everything and everything is not God. This is Eastern mysticism, Eastern religion. Although he is in all things by virtue of his spiritual omnipresent nature, he also transcends all things and is separate from his creation as much as finite is separate from infinity. This also means that God is not deistic. which is really the opposite of pantheism, being far away from his creation and his being, but only near in his knowledge and his power. Okay, let's move on from our definition. I think you get the idea. Secondly, let's look at the denial of God's omnipresence, the denial of it. And there's a reason I'm covering the denial of God's omnipresence because scripture covers it in pretty good detail. Practically speaking, men in general deny God's omnipresence, at least the way we've described it. Although many believe that God exists, they do not believe nor do they live as if God is everywhere all the time. To make this a bit more practical, if God were physically standing next to each one of us 24-7, we would probably act differently than we do. I'm sure I would act differently. But then I thought about it, maybe I wouldn't act differently. Maybe you wouldn't act differently. How many times do we see in the Gospels where the disciples had Jesus in their midst and acted sinfully? They knew He was God. God was actually in their midst and they still argued with each other. They still challenged Him. They still said one thing and then did something else. But the point is, God is closer to us than we even dare to imagine. I mean, He is right next to us at school, at work, at home, in the bedroom, in the bathroom, in the attic, under the car, wherever. And many times, by how we act, because we sin, we deny his omnipresence. I mean, this is the depth of human depravity and the height of unbelief. I mean, even as Christians. And this is why Stephen Charnock called all of us practical atheists. Practically speaking, we act many times like there is no God or that he can't see what we're doing. But throughout the Bible, both pagans and God's people denied his omnipresence. I want you to go to 1 Kings 20. If you're still in 1 Kings, just go to chapter 20. And here we find King Ahab. Ahab was the king of Israel at this time. And Ahab was going to battle against the Assyrians, and he actually won the battle. He killed a great number of Assyrians. And after the slaughter, the servants of the king of Assyria said to the king, speaking of Israel, their gods are gods of the hills. Therefore, they are stronger than we. But if we fight against them in the plain, surely we will be stronger than they. You see what's going on here? Here we get some insight into how the pagan nations thought of the God of Israel compared to their own gods. They thought that God was a local god. He only had control, and he only existed in the hills, where their gods controlled and existed in the valleys. And they thought that he was so localized that if they fought the Israelites, on their own home turf in the valleys, their gods would be stronger than the God of Israel. Stronger in one area than another. Now this is an obvious denial of God's omnipresence. In those days, the pagan nations believed that each nation had a god or plurality of gods, and that those gods had jurisdiction and power over certain areas or over certain things, but not others. So in their minds, every God was a local God. And they drew lines. This God is over here. This God's over there. Nothing remotely close to an omnipresent God. This was typical thinking. But Israel was no better than the pagans when it came to believing in an omnipresent God. They too denied that God was not everywhere all the time. How often do we read in the Old Testament that Israel sacrificed on the high places or on every high hill? It's all over the Old Testament. Why did they do that? They did that because they believed if they sacrificed on the high places, on every high hill, that they would be closer to God, because they believe God was in heaven only, or in certain parts, certain places. They believe that God was localized. And in this case, they thought that God was the most accessible or the most present in heaven. Here in 1 Kings again, let's just go back to chapter 14, I'll show you this. Now Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, more than all of their fathers had done. For they also built for themselves high places, sacred pillars and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree." We have the same thing in 1 Kings 17, 9 and 10. And speaking of Israel's practice of this in Jeremiah 2.20, God says, for of old I have broken your yoke and burst your bonds, and you said I will not transgress when on every high hill and every green tree you lay down playing the harlot. Now, I don't want to go into this. There was syncretism involved in this, but they still believed that they were in some way sacrificing to God. There were also times when the Israelites believed that God was localized in the temple. So he was in heaven and he was in the temple. But in other places, God wasn't there. God rebuked this in Isaiah 66.1, last chapter of Isaiah. He says in verse one, thus says the Lord, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. Where is the house that you will build me? And where is the place of my rest? And here we see God claiming that he is an omnipresent God, not just a God who resides in a man-made temple. The Israelites put so much emphasis on God dwelling in the temple that they got to the point where they believed that was the only place that he dwelt, there and in heaven. And in the ark, we see that in 1 Samuel, when they go get God to bring him out to the battle. He says that he is in both heaven and on earth equally, not just in a building made with hands. But Israel thought they could build a house for God to live in and rest in, imagining that God was confined to a building. There are also passages in Jeremiah telling us again that Israel didn't believe in an omnipresent God. And here, if you go to Jeremiah 23, this is an interesting passage. God says to Israel in Jeremiah 23, 23 and 24. And when you have time, at least read from chapter nine through the end of the chapter, because in the context here, God is rebuking the false prophets. And it says here in verse 20, God says here in verse 23, am I a God near at hand, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Can anyone hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him, says the Lord? Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord? This is probably the strongest rebuke in the Old Testament of God rebuking Israel for their unbelief in His omnipresence. Am I not a God near at hand? What is he talking about here? Or am I a God near at hand and not a God far off? In the context, the false prophets believed that if God, if they hid, if the false prophets hid in secret places, they thought that they could hide from God, and He couldn't see them. That's why God is saying what He's saying here. He says, can anyone hide himself in secret places? That's what the false prophets were doing. They believed he was a local God, like the gods of the other nations, from whom the other nations believed they could hide. But God asks if he is a God who is only near, and not a God who is also far off. In other words, can't God be in more than one place at one time? This is God's argument. Can't He be a God who is everywhere? Not just a God who is in one particular place who you can hide from. And that's why He says, Do I not fill heaven and earth? You can't hide from Me. In other words, God is omnipresent. He is not localized, but one who is both local and distant, and everything in between. A God who sees all and hears all, no matter where a person is or where a person hides. Why? Because he's there to see and hear. And because of this, no one, not even a false prophet, can hide from him so that God cannot see him and prophesy lies in his name. If you look at verse, and obviously, part of the rebuke here, and again, you'd have to read the context, the false prophets were teaching the people what they believed. They were teaching the people that God was a local God, that they could actually hide from God and get away with their sins, which is a major theme in the book of Ezekiel, and God sends Ezekiel to rebuke the people for this belief. If you look at verse 27, It says here that they made the people forget God's name. He says in verse 27, you try to make my people forget my name by their dreams, which everyone tells his neighbor as their fathers forgot my name for Baal. And what he's talking about here, you're trying to make people forget that I'm an omnipresent God. That's the context. God's name being the sum of his attributes, but he's focusing on the attribute of omnipresence here. So God fills heaven and earth and everything in between. He fills every crevice and canyon. He fills every space between the planets and every void between each molecule and atom. And this is why so often we see in the Old Testament that God searches the mind and the heart. He doesn't do it from a distance, although he can. He does it because he's present in the mind and the heart. And that's why we'll look at third, the affirmations of God's omnipresence. We've seen the definition and denial, now let's look at the affirmations. There are many affirmations of God's omnipresence in the Bible. As I said, can be seen with God searching our minds and our hearts. He not only knows everything about us intuitively from a distance, He also knows everything because He's everywhere all the time. Again in Jeremiah, and we're familiar with this verse, Jeremiah 17.9, we also have Jeremiah 17.10, which we usually don't quote when we quote Jeremiah 17.9. And you may want to turn there just a couple of pages back. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Well, the answer is God can know it. The next verse, I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings. Notice it doesn't say that God knows the heart and the mind, it says He searches it. That means He's there present to do it. Again, he told Solomon in 1 Chronicles 28.9, "'As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father and serve him with a loyal heart and a willing mind. For the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts.'" And if we recall Genesis 6, It says God knows the intents and thoughts of every person on earth, which means he's got to be everywhere present all the time. God can see the mind and the heart because he's there. Well, how close is he? Go to Acts 17. Now, here in Acts 17, we're going into the deep end of the pool. Paul is talking to the Athenians here about their ignorance of God. Matter of fact, they had a statute to God called the unknown God. They didn't know anything about Him, and Paul's there to tell them about Him. If you look at verse 26, Paul is saying to these Athenians, and God has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, talking about God's sovereignty, so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us, speaking of his omnipresence. Well, how far away is he? Look at verse 28, for in him we live and move and have our being. As also some of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring. We actually live and move and have our being in God. Now he's not talking to Christians here, he's talking about unbelievers. He's talking about the whole human race because he includes himself in this. We all, every human being lives and moves and has their being in God. And this is a little backwards on how we think about God's omnipresence. Need to get this. If God fills all of heaven and earth, that all things are literally in Him. He is not in them. And that's what Paul's saying here. We live and move and have our being in God. He doesn't live and move and have His being in us or His creation. God existed first. Creation is in Him. So God is not everything or in everything as the pantheists and panentheists believe. No one and nothing can escape his presence because God literally envelops everything and everyone. So here we learn that all men live and move and have their being in God. In other words, God is the sphere in which all of us, every living thing, every created thing exists. As fish live and swim and have their being in the ocean, so we live and move and have our being in God. More than we live and move and have our being in the air that surrounds us. God is closer to us than the air we breathe. He is closer to us than our own flesh and blood. He is nearer to us than our own soul. Paul doesn't say that by Him we live and move and have our being. He says in Him. As large as the sea is, God said this in Job, this far you shall go, but no farther. But of himself, he says, there are no limits or bounds to his being. Again, what we're talking about here vastly differs from the concept of pantheism or panentheism. and New Age philosophy, which asserts that everything is in God or everything is God, including us. But the Bible's clear that even though God's creation literally exists within His immensity, He is not mixed with His creation. And this is where we differ from Eastern philosophy and religion. He doesn't become His creation. as these pagan philosophies assert. Just because we live in God doesn't mean we are God. Any more than a bird flying in the rays of the sun become the sun. That's crazy stuff. We don't believe that God exists in the trees, in the rocks, in the stars, in the sea, and that somehow these things become God. We don't say that God is in these things. Rather, we say that all these things are in him because of his omnipresence. And because they are in God, they continue to exist. This is why everything exists, because everything's in God. If God took everything out of himself, nothing would exist. There'd be no energy, there'd be no power. I mean, this answers the question of the ages for scientists. Where does energy come from? It's all around us, and they admit that. They just don't know where it comes from. It comes from God. Without everything existing in God's essential omnipresence, it would literally cease to exist because He holds all things together by the word of His power. David probably gives us the most comprehensive description of God's omnipresence in Psalm 139. It's a very beautiful psalm, and it's familiar to many of us. But in verses 7 to 16, he talks about God's omnipresence. I'll just read this. Psalm 139.7, where can I go from your spirit? This is David in prayer. talking with God, where can I go from your presence? This is a rhetorical question. The answer is nowhere. Or where can I flee? Or where can I go from your spirit? 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. Here, David satisfies himself with the reason why God knows everything about him. It's because there's not a place in the universe he can go where God is not present. The list that he gives, number one, God is in heaven. And this we would expect. Israel really didn't have a problem believing this. Psalm 103.19 says, the Lord has established His throne in heaven. I mean, everybody knows God is in heaven. Second Chronicles 18.18, Micaiah the prophet says, I saw the Lord sitting on His throne and all the hosts of heaven standing on His right hand and on His left. There's no question that God's in heaven. Psalm 115.3 says, our God is in heaven. So David knows that if he goes to heaven, he can't escape God's presence because that's where God dwells. That's where God makes his abode and manifests his presence. And when we go to heaven, we will see God. But God is not confined to heaven. like the angels are or we are when we get there, the angels that serve God in heaven, we who can only occupy one place at a time, even after we're glorified. Since God is infinite in all his attributes, he's also infinite in his presence, which means even though he is in heaven, he's also everywhere else at the same time. Number two, God is in Sheol in here in verse seven. New King James has hell. Some have other things like the depths or whatever. This is the place of the dead. That's what the Israelites believed. When a person died, they would go to Sheol. If David is in heaven or if he's in the place of the dead, God is in either place. Now, in literature, we call this Amerism. A writer will use two opposites, like day and night, or heaven and hell. You get the idea. And what the writer uses, it's called a merism, what he's doing is he's saying it incorporates everything. In other words, if God is in heaven and he's in Sheol, that means he's everywhere, everywhere in between. The same thing at the beginning of time, when I rise up and I sit down, right? Those are two opposites, that's a merism. That means, what David is saying is, whatever I do, whether I sit, whether I stand, and everything else in between. By this merism, David is describing God's omnipresence. So God is in heaven, and he's in the opposite place of the dead. So he's everywhere, everywhere else in between. But number three, God's in the sky. In verse eight, if I ascend into heaven, you are there to make my bed in hell. Or verse nine, if I take the wings of the morning, David says, if I could fly, you're everywhere in the sky. Which, by the way, would be between heaven and hell, or heaven and Sheol. So there's no place where David cannot go. He even goes beyond that. Number four, he's in the remotest parts of the sea. Verse nine. Anywhere a person could possibly go in space, David says God is there. And then in verses 13 to 16, he talks about God forming him in the womb, which means that God is even inside of us. the innermost parts of us. Amos basically said the same thing, or God said in Amos, if you turn to Amos chapter 9, if you want to look with me there. It's on page 1399 in my Bible. This is what God said. This is what Amos said God said to him in verse one. He says, I saw the Lord standing by the altar. So Amos has a vision of heaven. And he said, God said to Amos, strike the doorposts that the thresholds may shake and break them on all the heads of them all. Speaking of the wicked. He says, I will slay the last of them with the sword. He who flees from them shall not get away, and he who escapes from them shall not be delivered. Though they dig into hell, or Sheol, from there my hand shall take them. Though they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down. And though they hide themselves on the top of Mount Carmel, From there I will search and take them. Though they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea, from there I will command the serpent and it shall bite them. Though they go into captivity before their enemies, from there I will command the sword and it shall slay them. And I will set my eyes on them for harm and not for good." This is exactly what David said in Psalm 139. There's no place you can hide from God. He's everywhere. He's in heaven above, He's in Sheol below, in the sky, in the remotest parts of the sea, in the womb, and even in the nations where they go to captivity. But God is not omnipresent as generally as God. Each person of the Trinity is omnipresent. It's not like the Father's omnipresent and the Son and the Spirit aren't, so let's look at the Trinitarian assertions of God's omnipresence. Number four. Now we know that God is a triune God, and that what is true of one member of the Trinity is true of each member, so that if one is omnipresent, they all are omnipresent. So the Father is omnipresent, Ephesians 4 6 says There is one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in you all God's everywhere the father is everywhere He's above all in his transcendence, and he's through all and in us all in his eminence So he is both near and far and Number two, the Son is omnipresent. In the King James and New King James, John chapter 3, 13, Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus, and Jesus says of himself, no one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of man who is in heaven. Now Jesus was talking to Nicodemus on earth, and Jesus says, I'm in heaven too, as the second person of the Trinity. It's amazing. When He gave the Great Commission, He told the disciples in Matthew 28.20, I will be with you always. He's talking to the church. Jesus is going to be with every church always until the end of the age. That's what He said. How can He do that if He can't be in more than one place at one time? How can He do that if He's not omnipresent? In Matthew 18, 20, when he promised his church that were two or three are gathered together in his name to exercise church discipline, he would be in their midst. Now, how could he do that if he had more than one church doing that at the same time? He's gotta be omnipresent. The Holy Spirit is omnipresent. We just read it in Psalm 139, right? I think it was verse 7. David says, where can I go from your spirit? And then he gives a list. Heaven, Sheol, the sea, the sky, the womb, it doesn't matter. The Spirit's everywhere. Just like the Father and the Son. I wanted to, just for my own information, I wanted to try and do a little research on how big God is from our understanding, in measurement. Now we know that God fills the universe. Solomon said he's outside the universe. So how big is God? I'll give you some statistics. Now these are from secular scientists, so secular scientists are telling us how big God is. We live on the Earth, which is 93 million miles from the sun, in a solar system that is about nine billion miles across. That's just our solar system. Because of God's omnipresence, he inhabits every part of that. Every molecule, 100%. Our solar system is part of the Milky Way, which consists, as far as scientists can tell, of about 200 billion stars. This is just our solar system, or the Milky Way, which our solar system is a part. 200 billion stars, many of which could have similar sized solar systems like ours. God inhabits every part of that. And in the Milky Way, our solar system is about 2 3rds from the center and travels at a speed of about half a million miles an hour. Did you know that you were going half a million miles an hour? That's how fast I'm going right now. I mean, the need for speed, we got plenty of it. At that speed, it would take our solar system, just our solar system. was the Mercury through Pluto. It would take our solar system 200 million years just to make one revolution around the Milky Way. That's at a half a billion miles an hour. The Milky Way is estimated to be 90,000 light years across. To give you an idea of what a light year is, it takes light one second to travel 186,000 miles. That means that one light year is about 6 trillion miles in length. The Milky Way is 90,000 light years. So to calculate that, it would mean that you'd have to have 90,000 times 6 trillion. And that would give you how many miles it was. I don't think we have a computer that big. That's just the Milky Way. I'm just getting started here. Compared to the rest of the universe, the Milky Way is less than a grain of sand on the seashore. It's part of a local group of several dozen galaxies, just like itself, each separated by an average of three million light years. So we have several dozen several dozen galaxies like the Milky Way that are separated by 3 million light years. And they all are in the same group. That's 3 million times 6 trillion miles just between groups. And groups of galaxies like the Milky Way as well as other galaxies are part of what are known as a supercluster. Now, our supercluster is called Virgo. And it consists of approximately 5,000 galaxies, like the Milky Way, about 100 million light years across. And by comparison, the galaxy that we live in, Virgo, or the supercluster we live in, Virgo, is one of the smaller superclusters. Other superclusters, which we have no idea how many there are, can contain thousands of galaxies, just like the Milky Way. So if you can imagine the incalculable size of our universe, which we have no idea how big it really is, God inhabits every single part of that. But as big as the universe is, as we referred to earlier, Solomon said that God is even bigger than that. He's outside of it. and we live and move and have our being in that God. So, what do we do with this information? It's a great doctrine. Well, I came up with a few things, and I actually came up with a lot of things, but I can only give you a few of them. I think this doctrine should cause us to think about our smallness. Don't you think? If God is so immense in His being, if there's no place that can contain Him, if He's everywhere present at every moment in time and eternity, how small are we in comparison? I mean, we're talking trillions times trillions here. That's how big God is compared to me. I'm not even six foot tall. How can we ever compare ourselves to God and how can we ever compare Him to us? Which I think we do quite often. Many in the Bible tried to compare themselves to God and God to them because they didn't understand His omnipresence. They didn't understand His immensity. I'm thinking about Psalm 50. And there the psalmist says that the wicked think that God is like them, small, finite, and impotent. But this is what God says to them in Psalm 50, 21 and 22. You thought I was altogether like you, but I will reprove you and set your sins before your eyes. Now consider this, you who forget God and what I'm really like, lest I tear you in pieces. We get the wrong concept of God, we're gonna end up sinning because of that concept. God says, if you forget who I am, I'll tear you in pieces. This is serious. As the holiness of God reveals our own impurity, And as the wisdom of God reveals our own folly, and the power of God reveals our own weakness, so God's immensity should reveal our own smallness. That's why theology is important, so we can understand who we are in comparison to God. Dr. Charnock said this, I love what he said here. What little, little, little things are we to God? Less than an atom in the beams of the sun, poor drops to a God that fills heaven and earth, if we consider him and the greatness of his presence, there is but little more proportion between him and us than between a drop and the ocean. How should we never think of God without a holy admiration of his greatness and a deep sense of our own littleness? And as the angels cover their faces before him, with what awe should creeping worms come into his sight? And since God fills heaven and earth with his presence, we should fill heaven and earth with his glory. That man understood how big God is and how small we are. It's no wonder Isaiah said that we are grasshoppers in his sight. You know what amazes me? I'm surprised he gave us that big of a status. And isn't it true that if men are so awestruck by their own smallness in light of the immensity of their view of the ocean or the Grand Canyon, how much more should they be awestruck of their own smallness in comparison to God's omnipresence and immensity? Well, number two, we should think about our own sinning, shouldn't we? I mean, have you ever asked yourself why you sin? What is the main reason for it? Like the Israelites, we probably don't believe that God is present with us, at least not all the time. I mean, this is how deceitful sin is. It makes us believe that God can't see what we're doing and that He's ignorant of our sins. I mean, it's right out of Scripture. How many verses did I read about the pagans, about Israel? Why are we any different? We're all cut from the same stock. We all have the same heart. Every one of our hearts is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. How did Cain respond to God when God asked him where his brother was? I don't know. Psalm 94, six and seven says, they slay the widow and the stranger and murder the fatherless, yet they say, the Lord does not see, nor does the God of Jacob understand. They're in their secret place, God was somewhere else, That's what they believed. David said of the wicked in Psalm 1011, he has said in his heart, God has forgotten. He hides his face. He will never see. So why don't we sin? It's because we don't believe that God is really present. Well, number three, we should think about God's comfort as believers, I think. It's comforting me to know that God is closer to me than anything. I mean, if He's closer to us than our own souls, how much should we be comforted by His presence? I mean, when He says, I will never leave you or forsake you, that takes on a whole different meaning if you really understand His omnipresence and His immensity. I mean, it should not only be a fact, but also a reassurance for his care and his kindness toward us. I mean, Paul was intensely aware that God was with him. You remember when he was in prison in 2 Timothy, he was awaiting his execution. He told Timothy in 2 Timothy 4.17, there was no one there with me. But then he says, but the Lord stood with me. He was there. Paul was keenly aware of God's presence in his life and his death, and that was his greatest comfort, his omnipresence. That was his greatest comfort at death. We can't ever go so far away that God is not present with us, so that should be a great comfort to us. It doesn't matter how great our enemies are. When David was surrounded by his enemies, he said in Psalm 118, 5 and 6, I called on the Lord in distress, and the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place. The Lord is on my side, I will not fear. What can man do to me? I mean, if God is with me all the time, what can anyone do to us? I mean, you know, you think about, you know, if you have an older brother, you know, when you were in school and kids were picking on you. you go get your older brother, right? I mean, can you imagine if somebody picks on us, we go get God? I mean, you know, trillions upon trillions of miles wide and long and high and deep. I mean, man can take our possessions, take our strength, take our health, take our eyesight, take our tongues, our hearing, our hope. In this world, even our life, But He can't take away our God, can He? No way. Father, thank You for this time. Thank You for my brothers and sisters and their eagerness to learn Your Word. I pray, Lord, for someone here today that may not know Christ. I didn't really talk about the Gospel, Lord, but it's simple. We have to believe that we're sinners. that we have offended You, and offending this kind of a God is pretty scary. I pray if that person is here this morning, they would see their sin, they would cry out to You to send a Redeemer for them, and that Redeemer is Jesus, who died on the cross for sinners to take away that sin. I pray they would believe in Christ this morning, not put it off. I pray that they would believe that He rose from the dead, to prove that He is who He said He was and is. We pray that they would know the living God, the one we've talked about this morning, and have that God on their side. Thank you, Lord, for this time, and thank you for Jesus. Amen.