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“God’s Omnipresence and Immanence”

Sunday evening, November 9, 1958

Message #8 of #10 in Attributes of God Series

I want to read again some verses. There’s so many of them but I’ll just read these. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain Thee, how much less this house that I have builded. Then Acts 17, that was 1 Kings, Acts 17, that they should seek the Lord if happily they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of them. For in Him, we live and move and have our being. And then of course, that Psalm 139, 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 hell, 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 laid me and thy right hand shall hold me. I read these, I just copied them out on a card there to save turning, flipping pages. There are here and are many, many more like them.

And I begin tonight with the restatement of two tenets of the Christian belief. This is not my idea. And if you haven’t heard it emphasized before, it’s because we preachers are falling down in the preaching of the Word. These two tenets are simply these, that God is omnipresent. That is, that God is everywhere. That God is immanent. That is, that God penetrates everything. They’re standard Christian doctrines and they have been believed back until to the days, even of the Jew.

Now by this all, we mean that God is omnipresent and immanent and is penetrating everything even while He contains all things as I explained last week. The bucket that is sunk in the depths of the ocean, it is full of the ocean and the ocean is in the bucket. But also the bucket is in the ocean surrounded by it. And this is the best illustration I can think of how God dwells in His universe, and yet the universe dwells in God.

Now, I’ve dealt with the fact of remoteness, that distance is unlikeness. And I pointed out that hell is for those unlike God. The moral dissimilarity creates hell, moral dissimilarity. Those moral beings that are morally dissimilar to God, hell is their final place. And those creatures, those beings, moral beings that are morally similar to God, this likeness to God, heaven is their place because they have a nature that belongs there.

I have shown that reconciliation with God is secured, or affected by three divine acts. They’re all divine acts: atonement, justification and regeneration. Atonement of course, is the objective work of Christ. It is the thing that He did on a cross. It is the thing He did before any of us now living we’re living. It is something that He did alone in the dark. It’s objective, that is, it’s outside of us. It did not take place inside of anybody. It took place objectively, externally out there on a cross. He did it. The spear went into His side alone, and He suffered. The nails were in His hands and feet. That’s atonement. And that is objective and external to us. And it could have been done without affecting anybody. And it was done, and still there are millions that have died unaffected by it. Because it’s an external act. It’s something that was done outside, an objective act, something done beyond, outside of and not inside of us.

But here is the beauty of it, that this act which He did in the darkness there, makes justification possible. And justification is the second act which God does to bring reconciliation, men and God together, to reconcile man to God. Justification is that which declares the sinner righteous, and that also is external to the man. That is, it doesn’t reach the man. The justified man may be no better off for his justification if that’s all that happened to him. Because justification is a judicial thing. It’s legal, just as a man may stand before a court and be declared innocent of a crime, not guilty of a crime, and yet it doesn’t change the man any. He weighs exactly the same as he weighed before. He is the same height as he was before, the same color of hair and eyes. He has the same relationships. He’s in every way the same man that he was before, but he’s judicially free. He’s declared not guilty before the law. It might have a subjective effect in that when he found it out, he’d rejoice to know that he was declared not guilty. But the work is not done in him, the work is done in the minds of the jurors and before the law, it’s a judicial thing. So, justification is the second act that God performs to get us reconciled with Him. He first gives atonement to make justification possible, then He gives justification, and then the third act, regeneration.

Regeneration of course takes place at the same time justification takes place. When God justifies a man, I said that a man could be justified and not be any better off. That is technically possible to be so, but not actually so. Because, when God justifies a man, He also regenerates the man. So that, nobody ever was justified and not regenerated. But you can think them apart, though actually of course, you cannot separate them. Justification and regeneration are not the same. And again, I’m only giving you the most ordinary, basic Christian theology that everybody ought to know, that justification is not a subjective thing. It’s a judicial thing. But that regeneration takes place within the life of the man, within the heart of the man, it’s a subjective thing. It deals with the man’s nature. It gets inside the man, because Jesus died in the darkness and because God accepted that as atonement for that man’s sin. If that man believes in Christ, God can justify him and declare him righteous, and then regenerate him by imparting to him the nature of God. For it tells us that it is through this, through these promises, that we are partakers of the divine nature. A regenerated man is a man who has partaken of the divine nature, who has a new relation to God which gives him eternal life.

Now, this reunites God and man and it restores some degree of moral likeness to the man. The newest convert, the newest convert that was born again; today, for born again and regenerate are the same expression. The newest convert has a degree of moral likeness to God which gives a measure of compatibility. You see, heaven is a place of complete compatibility. And sin introduces incompatibilities between God and the sinner. There cannot be any compatibility. There cannot be any communion, because sin introduces that quality which throws man and God out of accord with each other. There’s no accord there, no congruity. But when that sinner believes in the blood of atonement, puts his trust in Christ, and is justified in heaven and regenerated on earth, for that’s the only place you get regenerated.

Don’t wait until you die. There’s no place to regenerate after you’re dead. But you’re regenerated, you’re given a measure of the character of God, so that, there is enough of the image restored to the man in regeneration that there can be quite a full measure of compatibility. And that compatibility allows God to draw feelingly near to the man and it makes communion morally consistent.

You see, as I explained at great length last Sunday night, you can’t have communion where there is complete unlikeness. You can’t have it. You go to a creature that has a nature other than yours and you can’t have communion there. You may pet the head of a dog, but you can’t commune with the dog. The dog can’t commune with you, because there’s too great a dissimilarity of nature. So, God cannot commune with a sinner, because there is a violent unlikeness, a dissimilarity making communion impossible.

But it says here in Colossians 3, that ye have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created him. That new man within you is the regenerated man, the new man, if you started on your way toward God-likeness. And there was enough of it there even in the new convert, that God, I repeat, can commune without incongruity because He finds some of His image in the man. God can only commune with His own image, remember that. God, being the God He is, can never commune with anything except His own likeness. And where there is no likeness, there can be no fellowship between God and that unlike thing. But where there is restored to that person, a similarity, something of the nature of God, a compatibility, then God begins a communion. And of course, He can commune depending upon the fullness and completeness of that, of that compatibility.

Now, it says, ye have put on the new man, you Christians at Colossi. You have put on the new man, you have, you Christians. These Colossian Christians were not perfect by a long way, but they had put on the new man. The seed was in them. The root of the matter was in their hearts. They were regenerated. So God could commune with His own image in them and see a little bit of His own face there and hold communion with His people. That’s why we can say, Abba, Father.

If I might use a rather grotesque illustration, I might say that the young father who goes to the hospital to see his newborn heir, looks into the glass and there never was a father yet who wasn’t excited, and frightened and bewildered. But there never was a father yet who wasn’t disappointed, because when he looks at that little fellow, his eyes are on over all twenty-five or thirty or fifty in there, and he picks on a pretty one and hopes that’s his.  Then when they turn the thing around and he sees that it isn’t, he’s disappointed. I think little Becky was about the only one who didn’t disappoint; well Stanley was pretty too. But mostly, you know, they’re a mess. And, but there is enough. And when you say, he’s just the image of you, and you’ll never be dead as long as he lives. A father beams you know, but actually it isn’t much of a compliment, the little blob of squirm and suck and giggle and red skin and hair that isn’t there. Well, yet there is a little bit of likeness there. There’s something, there’s a similarity now in a deeper way. A new convert, that fellow that just been born again there, he certainly may not be much like God, but he has something of the resemblance to the Deity. And so God can own him as His and the angels can recognize a family resemblance. Now that’s all settled.

Now my Brother, why then, and this is really the reason the sermon is being preached. Why then, this serious problem among real Christians. This feeling that God is far away, or vice versa, that we are far away from God. It’s hard to rejoice, you know, no matter what, you know, it’s hard to rejoice if you don’t feel, for feeling is rejoicing. And it’s hard to rejoice when you’re suffering from that sense of remoteness. And I’d like to say to you that I believe that most Christians do suffer from a sense of divine remoteness. They know God is with them and they’re sure they’re God’s children, and they can take you to their marked New Testament and prove to you seriously and soberly that they’re justified and regenerated and they belong to God and heaven is going to be their home and Christ is their advocate above. They’ve got the theology they know in their head, but they’re mostly suffering from a sense of remoteness.

To know a thing in your head is one thing, to feel it in your heart is another. And I think that most Christians are trying to be happy without having a sense of the Presence. It’s like having a bright, trying to have a bright day without having the sun. You could say, well now it is 12:15 noon, therefore, the sun is up. Let us rejoice in the sun. Isn’t it beautiful and bright? Let us take it by faith and rejoice that the sun is up, that all is well. The sun is up according to the calendar, the sun should be about there. You can point upward and say the sun is up, but brother, that’s kidding yourself. As long as it’s gloomy and rainy and wet, soggy leaves keep dribbling down and it’s dark, you’re not having a bright day. But when the sun comes out, then you can you can rejoice in the presence of the sun.

Now, most Christians are theological Christians, they know they’re saved, somebody is given them a marked New Testament and it’s proper. We should so they get their theology straight, but they’re trying to be happy without a sense of the Presence. The sense of the Presence is absent, and so that yearning, that yearning, you see is a desire, that yearning to be nearer to God, to have God near to us. It’s found everywhere among God’s people. You will find it in two places; prayers and songs and hymns; you will find it there. If you think that I’m merely spinning this like a spider spins a web out of his stomach. If you think that I am merely spinning this out of my head, go to the next prayer meeting and kneel down with the brethren and listen to them pray. They all pray alike. It’s, O Lord come, O Lord drawn near. O Lord show thyself. Be near to me Lord. And then, if that isn’t enough, sing along with us. And hear us sing come, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing and other such songs. Draw Me Nearer, nearer blessed Lord. Near the Cross my heart can say I am coming near. The yearning to be nearer to God and have God come nearer to us is universal among born-again Christians.

And yet we think of God as coming from across distance to us, when my text declares and Christian theology back to David declares that God is already here now. That God doesn’t dwell in space, and therefore God doesn’t have to do like a rocket or like a ray of light, come from some remote place or start toward some remote place. There is no remote place in God. God contains all remoteness and all distances in His own great Heart. And why then do we feel Him in distance? It’s this dissimilarity in our natures. It’s the unlikeness. We’ve got enough likeness that God can commune with us and call us His children and we can say Abba, Father, but in practical working out of it, the average one of us senses our dissimilarity. And that is why God seems remote.

Now, what I am trying to get across is simply this, that nearness to God is not a geographical or an astronomical thing. It is not a spatial thing having to do with space. It is a spiritual thing having to do with nature. And so, when we pray, God draw me nearer or when we pray, come near. When we pray, come Thou Fount of every blessing. We’re not praying if we’re good theologians for God to come down from some remote distance. We know God’s here now. Jesus said, lo, I am with you alway. And they said, surely God’s in this place. The Lord is here. Jacob said, God’s in this place and I didn’t know it. He didn’t say God came to this place, God is in this place.

Well then you say, then what are we praying for? What we’re praying for is a manifestation of the presence of God, not the Presence, but the manifestation of the Presence. Why don’t we have the manifestation? Because we, we allow, unlikenesses. We allow moral dissimilarity and that sense of absence. Now notice I say, sense of absence is the result of the remaining unlikeness within us. This desire, this yearning to be nearer to God is in fact a yearning to be like Him. It’s the yearning of the ransomed heart to be like God. So there can be perfect communion; so the heart and God can come together in a fellowship that is Divine.

Now, I want to point out some of the points of dissimilarity between God and the Christian. There I have said there is a similarity which makes it compatible for God and proper for God to commune with His children, even the poorest, weakest of His born children, these bairns as the Scots say. But there are dissimilarities and those dissimilarities are such that there isn’t a degree of fellowship that there ought to be. There isn’t that perfection of the sense of God’s presence that we want and yearn for, and pray for, and sing about.

Now, how are we going to know what God is like so that we may know whether we’re like God? The answer is, God is like Christ, for Christ is God. Christ is God manifest to mankind. And so let us look at Jesus. And by looking at our Lord Jesus, we will know what God is like, and then we will know what we have to be like if we’re going to experience the unbroken and continuous Presence of God, a sense of the Presence.

Now, the Presence is here. I can’t say it too often. But it’s the sense of the Presence that’s absent. Just as the man knows the sun is there, even though the clouds are hanging so low you can reach up and touch them. And even though it’s so dark they have to put the lights on. I’ve seen that and you’ve seen that. Even when we know the sun was there in midheaven, they had turned their automobile lights on for safety. I’ve seen that happen and you have because there are, were clouds between. They know the sun’s there, but they don’t feel it nor see it. And so we Christians know God is here. But there is a sense of His absence. As the man feels the sun is gone, never to return and he knows better, and yet he can’t be happy because he can’t see the sun. So, we feel that God is away even when we know that He’s present, and He can’t manifest Himself as He wants to for certain reasons.

Now let’s notice some of the qualities of Jesus. The first one of course is holiness. Our God is holy and our Lord is holy, and we call the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Now, notice how stained and how spotted and how carnal the average Christian is. We allow stains. Months go by without repentance. Years go by without asking for cleansing or taking it. Spots on our garments, and carnality, and unlikenesses within our heart. Then we pray, draw me nearer, nearer blessed Lord. Or we sing, or we pray, come Lord, come to this meeting. Well, the Lord is there. What we’re praying is, O Lord, show thyself, but the Lord cannot, a Holy Lord cannot show Himself in full communion to an unholy Christian. Do you say is it possible to be a Christian and be unholy. It’s possible to be a carnal Christian, to have the seed of God in you, to be regenerated and justified and still be unholy in some of your inner, inner feelings and desires and willingness.

The second is unselfishness. Do you notice that Jesus Christ was completely unselfish and gave Himself, but how self-centered and self-indulgent most Christians are? Even when they’re reading books on revival, they’re still self-centered. Even when they’re praying for revival, they’re still self-indulgent. A revival is, among other things, a sudden manifestation; it’s the breaking of the Son through the clouds. It’s not the coming of the Son. It’s the breaking of the Son through the clouds, and so our selfishness. How much selfishness there is.

I am sick in my own heart, sick about myself and sick about my friends and sick about the preachers in the ministry. How utterly self-centered we can become; live for self, talk loudly about glorifying God, and boast and say this is the glory of God, and yet be self-centered. And how you know you’re self-centered is, if anybody crosses you, your hackles go up. Now, don’t smile about it. It is not funny. It’s serious. That as soon as you’re crossed your hackles go up because you’re self-centered and self-indulgent. How much self-indulgence there is.

Do you know something friends, there is enough money potentially in this audience tonight, not only to keep this church going hilariously, but to double the missionary offering that we make. There’s enough, potentially, if we weren’t so self-indulgent, but we’re self-indulgent. And of course, a perfectly selfless Christ who gave Himself and poured Himself out and had no selfishness, can’t warm up for the Christian heart who’s self-indulgent and self-centered. He loves us. He’s our Shepherd. He’s our advocate above. He pleads our cause there. We are His bethren in Christ and His God, His Father is our Father. But I’m talking about the fellowship, the sweetness that changes some people into saints while they walk on earth in more than a technical sense, then love.

Now, He so loved that He gave all, but how calculating so many of us are, how calculating. I can say, now I can go to this meeting, but I can’t go to this one because the doctor has told me that I’m to do thus and thus, and I must obey doctor’s orders. And we let doctors push us around and tell us what to do. And we’re calculating. We figure it out. We put our spiritual life on a budget and we won’t spend anything for God unless we can justify it in the columns of our budget. What a cheap, carnal way of living. And yet it’s true. We do it. How narrow God’s people are.

The love of the Lord Jesus Christ was a great, passionate, outpoured thing, among other things that caused Him to give Himself completely. It said He please not Himself. Do you remember that beautiful passage? Jesus, even our Lord, pleased not Himself. But, do you know what’s wrong with us. We’re self-pleasers. We live for ourselves. There are people that would have a new car if this church went to pot and we had to close the doors. There are women that would dress in style and with the very best if the mission cause died and every missionary had to be sent home. Yet, we’re saints, we’re born again. We’re believers. We have our marked New Testament, but and maybe we are Christians, but the love we have is a calculating love and narrow love, a love that doesn’t give itself. And so how can He who gave Himself; how can He ever fellowship with us?

Do you want a Bible illustration of this? Let me give it to you. Back in the Song of Solomon, that delicate, gentle, wondrous, beautiful book that Dr. Schofield said, sin has almost deprived us of the ability to kneel before that burning bush. Well, back there you remember, that the Bridegroom who represents Jesus, had given gifts to the Bride, the bride to be. And he was out gathering lilies, taking care of his sheep, out among the lilies, and the dew was falling. And his locks were wet with the dews of the night. He was out there doing what his interest required him to do; what his heart wanted to do. And he came and knocked on her door as much as to say, won’t you come and join me? And she said, How can I? How can I come? I am not dressed for it. I’m dressed for the couch and the home, and even my hand drip with the ointments you’ve given me. I can’t come.

And so, he disappeared. He was still her lover. And he was still wanting and going to marry her. And he did finally, thank God. And it came out all right, but he was out there pouring himself out, and she was in her house admiring herself. And taking long whiffs of the fragrance of the perfumes that he had given her; standing before the mirror and admiring the robes and the jewelry that he had given her. He wanted her and she wanted his jewelry and his perfume. Then finally, she got under conviction about it. And she quickly, hastily dressed, not really for street dress, but she got some clothes on and threw a robe about her and started out looking for her beloved. And she says, where is he? Where is he? And I asked the watchman, where is he? And the watchman beat me He said, “A harlot out on the street on a night like this, go on home,” and he slapped her down. She went on staggering under the blows and couldn’t find him and said, where is he? Where is he? And while she was hunting him, her friend said, what is thy beloved more than another beloved? What’s the matter? Why don’t you go home? What is thy beloved more than another beloved? And then, she burst out into a beautiful song saying my beloved is white and ruddy. Do you remember that passage? She described him from head to foot. He is fairer than 10,000.

Well, you see, he wanted her fellowship. And she was too selfish and self-centered and she stayed in while he was out. And of course, there could be no fellowship while he’s out there doing one thing and she’s selfishly staying in house doing another.

And then there’s kindness. Think how utterly kind our Lord Jesus is. For the love of God is kinder than the measure of man’s mind. The kindness of Jesus and the harshness of us, and the severity and the sharpness, the acerbity, the bitterness, the acidity in so many people’s lives. How can a kind Savior feel perfectly at home with a harsh Christian?

Then there’s forgiveness. He was a forgiving Lord. He is a forgiving Lord and He forgave them while they beat Him. He forgave them while they put Him on a cross. But how hard and vengeful so many of the Lord’s children, how vengeful. You remember things that happened twenty years ago, some of you and you just can’t get over. You can’t. Oh, I have forgiven it all right, but you haven’t. You’re vengeful and He was forgiving. And He proved He was forgiving by dying in blood. You prove that you’re vengeful and hard by many, many proofs, many demonstrations.

Then, think of the zeal of Jesus. The zeal for thine house has eaten me up. Think of the zeal of God. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this. Zeal is a burning fire. Do you know, the most zealous thing I know is fire, O brother. Wherever fire burns, it burns with hot zeal. And the heart of Jesus was like that. But think of the lukewarm Christian, Christians that haven’t been to a prayer meeting for years. And the careless Christian, and the torpid Christian. The torpor that lies over the church of God.

Then the humility of Jesus. Though He was the highest, He came down and acted like the lowest. And though we are the lowest, we are sometimes like the proudest and the most arrogant. How completely unlike Jesus. How unlike God.

Now, you say then, am I justified by being like God? I hope I’ve made it clear. You’re justified by being declared righteous by Almighty God basing His sentence upon the cross of Jesus and the dying of the Savior in the darkness there on the hill. Then, because He made atonement, God justifies. And when He justifies, He regenerates. And you’re saved by justification and regeneration, but regeneration does not perfect the image of God in you. The image of God must continue to grow and come forth and come out. As an artist works on his pictures, at first it’s only an outline and the general confuse, but he knows what’s there and slowly it comes out.

And so, God seems far from us because we’re so unlike God. It isn’t distance. And Horace Bushnell and his friend went out on the hill to pray, talked first and went out and sat and talked about God until slowly, sunset and the stars came out in the darkness settled around while they sat on the grass and talked about God. Then before they left, Bushnell said, Brother, Let us pray before we go. So there in the darkness Bushnell lifted up his heart to God and his friend said afterwards, I pulled my arms in tight around me. I was afraid to reach them out lest I touch God.

I once knelt under an apple tree in a field, several other preachers and a Salvation Army man, Captain Ireland of the Salvation Army. Captain Ireland, we all prayed and then Captain Ireland began to pray. And as he prayed, I suddenly sensed a nearness. There was another One there that hadn’t come out. He’d been there all the time. Am I a God far off? Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD?

So, this sense of the Presence, how can He continually manifest His presence to the proud and arrogant when He was so humble and low? To the lukewarm and the careless when He was so zealous? To the hard and the vengeful when He is so forgiving? To the harsh and the severe, when He is so kind? To the calculating, when His love led Him to die? To the Holy, when we are so stained? How can we have fellowship?

And then the heavenly mindedness of Jesus. Oh, think of that. He was with the Father in the bosom of the Father while He was on earth. He said, the Son of Man who is, not was, in the bosom of the Father. He never left the bosom of the Father while He was on Earth. The only time He left it was in that awful, wrenching agony when God turned away from Him on a cross that He might die for mankind, but never at any other time He was in the bosom of the Father, the other world. He talked about, I came from above, I came down from above, I am from above. I tell you things from above. He lived in the heart of God. And the other world and the world above was the world in which He inhabited, the world in which inhabited. And think how earthly His people are, and how worldly: furniture, TV sets, baseball, football, automobiles, picture windows, split level houses, politics, anything but Heaven and God. And then we want, draw me nearer, nearer.  You’re as near as you can get as far as distance is concerned, but He can’t manifest Himself because there’s a dissimilarity of nature. You’ll have enough of His nature that you’re justified and regenerated, but you haven’t enough to perfect the fellowship. Do you see what I mean? The perfection of the fellowship. Oh, brethren, this is what we need so desperately bad.

Well, there was a man once who followed the Lord afar off. But you know he couldn’t live with it. Some of you have learned to live with it. You’ve gotten older and you’ve learned to live in the twilight and not mind it. You’ve learned to live in the chill and not mind. What can I do for you? How can I help you? I know no way. Peter followed a far off, but he couldn’t stand it. When the Lord turned and looked at him, he went outside and wept bitterly. He wept bitterly. Have you any tears for your unlikeness? Have you any tears for that distance between you and God that you know isn’t there and yet feel is there? You’re not, you’re not in any wise diminishing anything God has already done. You’re grateful and thankful for every blessing and for the goodness, for justification, for the good grace of God on your life, but you can’t escape that sense of remoteness. And many a day is a heavy day because God seems far from him. You know He isn’t, but you feel He is. The reason you feel He is, is that He can’t show His face. You’ve allowed self-indulgence, harshness, vengeful spirit, lukewarmness, pride, worldliness, earthliness to put a cloud over the Face of God.

What are you going to do about it? Would you be willing to do something about it tonight? Maybe I haven’t preached to anybody. I don’t know. Maybe nobody’s heard me tonight. Because I know it’s one thing to talk and it’s quite another thing to be heard, even in the same room. Only the Holy Ghost can give you the illumination that will make the words heard by you. You know the english, you know the grammar, you know the logic, that’s one thing, but it’s another thing to hear in your heart. Then opened He their hearts. Has He opened anybody’s heart here? If He’s opened anybody’s heart, I think that you ought to do something about it. Let us stand please. Let us stand.

Do you know what I think? I think that repentance is called for. Repentance of what? A deed done? No. Repentance of the unlikeness? Repentance of the unholiness in the presence of the Holy? Of the self-indulgence in the presence of the selfless Christ? Of the presence of harshness in the presence of the kind Christ? Of hardness in the presence of the Forgiving Christ? Lukewarmness in the presence of the zealous Christ burning like a fiery flame? The worldliness and earthliness in the presence of the heavenly Christ. I think we ought to repent.

Now I don’t know I say whether I’ve reached you or not. I only know this, there’s a prayer room in here. And while we sing very softly, some number, our brother, would you start. Don’t announce it, just sing something very gently and we’ll join. Just come in here and we’ll have a little prayer meeting. If your heart, has God spoken to your heart? Come on into the place of prayer.

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“The Omnipresence of God”

Sunday evening, November 2, 1958

Message #7 of #10 in Attributes of God Series

Let me read some passages from various parts of the Bible. I am going to speak tonight on God’s omnipresence, but with a particular reason for it which I’ll explain as I go along. 1 Kings, but will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain Thee, how much less this house that I have built. Jeremiah 23, Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off? Acts 17, that they should seek the Lord if happily they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from any one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being. Psalm 16, I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Psalm 139, 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 hell, 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 on, Thy right hand shall hold me.

Now, those are a few texts that certainly don’t exhaust the great wealth of texts dealing with this same topic. But those of you who have been listening to these sermons will know, because you will have noticed that my method of treating scriptural doctrines is a little bit different from the average man, in as much as I go back of everything to God Himself and show that the teachings of the Holy Scriptures have their origin in the nature of God. They are what they are because God is what He is. That these teachings rest upon the character of God and are guaranteed by the changeless attributes of the Lord God Almighty, the Ancient of Days. I have before some years ago preached on the omnipresence of God and I shall only sketch it here to get started.

And I want to explain briefly what omnipresence is and then show what it means in the human experience. And to say that God is omnipresent, and this of course is believed by all churches. I am not introducing anything; this is believed by every church that believes the Bible. It means that God is all present; that God is close to, for that’s what the word means, close to, near to, here. It means that He is close to everywhere. It means that He is near to everything and everyone. It means that He is here, that is, that He is next to you wherever you may be. And if you send up the querulous question, O God, where art Thou? The answer comes back. I am where you are. I am here. I am next to you. I am close to everywhere. That’s what the Bible says.

Now, there’s reason on the side of this as well as Scripture. If we had only reason and not Scripture it would be dubious. If we had Scripture and no reason, we would still believe it. But since we have Scripture to declare it and reason to shout it’s true, I know it’s true, then we may be sure that God is omnipresent. That is, that He’s everywhere. You see, if there were any borders to God; if there was any place where God is not, then that place would mark the confines, the limits of God. And if God had limits, God could not be the infinite God.

Some theologians call the infinitude of God His immensity. But immensity is not quite a big enough word. Immensity simply means that whatever you’re talking about is hugely, vastly, large. But infinitude means not only that it’s hugely, vastly, large, in fact, it doesn’t mean that at all. It means that there isn’t any way to say that God is large. It means that there are no limits to God anywhere, and that if there were limits to God and God were very hugely, vastly large, then we could say that He was immense. But since He is infinite, then we can only say that God has not size at all, and you can’t move or measure God in any direction, that God is infinite and perfect. If there was any place that God was not in any line, we could say God comes to here, but doesn’t go beyond that. Then of course, we would not have an infinite God, but a finite God. And whatever is finite, wherever you have finitude, you have creaturehood. You wouldn’t have God; you’d have something else.

Now, actually, God is equally near to all parts of His universe. You see, we think rightly about God and spiritual things only when we rule out space all together; when we rule out the space concept. I listen every Saturday night at 9:30 to this Professor Posen who lectures on space. And it’s been quite interesting. He was going last night to give the great theory, the latest theory by Einstein. And I eagerly turned it on. I was lying down, eagerly turned it on, and woke up just when he was finished. I fell right off to sleep. That’s the first time I’ve done that. I must have been unusually tired. But he talks a lot about space and about all it having to do with the worlds out yonder. But you know, when we think about God in spiritual things, we think correctly only when we rule out the space concept all together. Because God being infinite, does not dwell in space. He swallows up all space.

Now, the Scripture says, do not I feel heaven and earth, and that sounds as if God was contained in heaven and earth. But actually, God fills heaven and earth just as the ocean fills a bucket which has been submerged in it a mile down. The bucket is full of the ocean, but the ocean surrounds the bucket in all directions. So, when God says, I fill heaven and earth, He does. Are not the heaven and earth submerged in God and all space is. And He says, the heaven of heavens cannot contain me. You see, God is not contained–God contains. And there is the difference. God is not contained, God contains. In Him, we live and move and have our being.

Now, we talk about God being close to us or far from us. And the problem that I’ll speak about tonight, and tomorrow night is the problem of distance, the problem of God being far away. And you see, we don’t think right, because we think geographically or astronomically. We think in light years, or we think in meters or inches or miles or leagues or something else, when actually we’re thinking about God as being spatial. that is, as dwelling in space, which He does not, but contains space, so that space is in God, and we never have any problem about God being anywhere. For the fact is, as the text say, that God is everywhere.

I believe what God says, and leave those who do not believe with the problems. It says if I ascend up to heaven, Thou art there. If I make my bed in Hell, behold Thou art there. Now, don’t ask me to explain it. But let’s remember, John Wesley said, don’t reject it because you can’t understand it. If a man made his bed in hell, the omnipresence of God requires that wherever there is anything, the presence of God must be. But why is it that the world thinks of God as being infinitely remote far beyond the farthest star?

We used to sing a little song when I was a boy, “far away beyond the starlit sky,” and we have placed God somewhere far out beyond the starlit sky. Now why? And when the world prays as a rule, they pray without any sense of God’s nearness at all. Always, God is somewhere else, always God is far away. Why is this? Well, this is the reason: that in spiritual things, closeness and likeness are the same thing. Remoteness means dissimilarity. Now, please get that, for if you don’t get that you’ll have missed most everything that I want to say tonight; that when it comes to personality, when it comes to spirits, when it comes to that which is not material, then distance doesn’t mean one lonely thing in all the wide world. That is why Jesus could go to the right hand of God the Father and still say to people on earth, I am with you always, because Jesus Christ as God, and God being Spirit, can be instantaneously everywhere at the same time, and there is no problem there. But, where men are shut off from God, not because God is spatially far from them, not because He is remote like a far galaxy or star, but because there’s a dissimilarity in nature. And when you see, when we think, we project our own human concepts up into spiritual things. And one of the problems of a Bible teacher is to break that down though I haven’t heard very many Bible teachers try to do it.

And one of the problems of the Holy Ghost, if He has any problems, is to get His people so spiritualized that they no longer think in material concepts. We project our human concepts upward or outward. For instance, your friends are the ones who are the nearest to you. And the closer a friend it is, the nearer that person’s likely to be. But your enemy wants to put as much space between you and him as possible. And so everything else being equal, that enemy gets as far away as he can. So we tend to think of our friends as being near to us and our enemies as being far from us. My friend comes to me and I to him and we chat in intimate conversation, we’re friends. But the enemy stays away, and stays away as far as he can.

Now, that’s a human concept and it has to do with material things. Everybody’s glad his enemy is a mile away and he’d be more comfortable if he was two miles away, or three or ten, or on some other continent. As the world sees it, the farther away our enemy is, why the better off you are. Because you think in spatial terms, that is s-p-a-t-i-a-l terms. He’s way off there and your friend close.

Now, that isn’t the way we think when we think about God. It isn’t the way we should think, because there isn’t any place you could go and not find God. You take that 139th Psalm from which I read tonight. Why, that Psalm tells us plainly enough that there isn’t any place where you can go that God isn’t. He says, I say surely the darkness shall cover me, why even the night shall be light about me. Yea, darkness hidest not from Thee, but the night shineth as the day. And the darkness and the light are both the light to Thee. There isn’t anywhere that we can go because God knoweth our down sitting and uprising and understands our thoughts are far off. We do not have the problem of distance or remoteness when we come to God. For what makes this a Christian assembly is that God is here. What makes this a Christian assembly? God is here.

So, two creatures may be in the same room and yet be millions of miles apart. For instance, an ape and an angel; if it were possible to get an angel and an ape in the same room, the same room size of this choir room here, where half of the choir assembles. If you could get an ape and an angel in there, there would be no compatibility. There would be no communion. There would be no understanding. There would be no friendship. There would be only distance, because the shining angel and the slobbering, chippering ape would be infinitely, to use the word infinitely carelessly, infinitely removed from each other, even though they were in the same room. They’re far, far distant. For you see, when we come to human or when it comes to spirit, when we come to anything that is intellectual or spiritual or of the soul, space and matter and weight and time have no meaning it all. That is why I can stand and smile at all the space boys and all those who tell us that if you took a foot rule and started and shooting it like an arrow, and speed it up to 186,000 miles a second, it would lose its length and would not have any length at all, it would be length-less. Did you know that? Well, he knows it now, that is, that’s what they tell us that’s what would happen.

Well, that’s supposed to stun you and knock you for a loop. And you’re supposed to walk around dizzy and quit praying. I don’t brother, because I don’t think in spatial terms, and I don’t think in material terms, nor in speed or distance, because God being spirit is right here. And He’ll never be any farther away and He can’t get any nearer than He is right now. But you see, the reason that there’s that sense of faraway-ness, that sense that God is remote, is the dissimilarity between moral characters. God and man are dissimilar now. God made man in His image, but man sinned and so became unlike God in his moral nature. And because he’s unlike God, communion is broken. Just as two men, enemies, hate each other. They’re enemies and they’re separated and apart even though they’re for the moment forced to be together. Two brothers who hate each other may come to the funeral of their father and yet they will stand at that coffin and be miles apart, because there is dissimilarity within them; there’s alienation there.

And that is exactly what the Bible calls it. That moral incompatibility between God and man. That’s remoteness. That’s what gives that sense of distance. God is not far away, as I have explained, but He seems to be far away spatially, because He is far away in character. He’s unlike men because man had sinned and God is holy. And the Bible has for this moral incompatibility, this spiritual unlikeness between man and God, the Bible has a word. It’s the word alienation.

Now, let me read to you what it is that gives to the world that sense of God being far away beyond the starlit sky. You who were dead in trespasses and sins wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And were by nature the children of wrath even as others. Then in the fourth chapter, we read, I say therefore and testify that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness.

Now, let’s take our Lord Jesus Christ who is God incarnated and is in character all that God is perfectly all together, exactly what God is. Could this describe Jesus, walking in the vanity of his mind? No, that describes the sinner, the alienated sinner. Having his understanding darkened, did that describe, does that describe the glorious Son of God? The ignorant with ignorance in him, blind in his heart, past feeling, given over to lasciviousness, walking in uncleanness and greediness. Does that describe Jesus? It describes exactly the opposite of Jesus. It shows that this sinner, this sinner, wherever he is, Roman, Greek, whatever he is, this sinner is so dissimilar to God that the distance is a distance of character. It is not a spatial distance, it’s not a distance of space. God is not, say, 186,000 miles or light years away from a sinner. He is not one inch away from the sinner. He is yet far from the sinner.

Am I contradicting myself? No, not at all. Since God contains all space, and being omnipresent according to all theologians of every denomination, anywhere. Since God is omnipresent, close to, next to, here, anywhere, everywhere here, then the distance is that of character and not that of space. So that when the sinner prays, O God save me and forgive me for Jesus’ sake, he does not call God down from his high Imperium. But God is there, there, there! And he knows in that moment he can know that God is there.

But you say it’s dissimilarity of character that makes the difference. Suppose there was a very, very godly man and a very licensious, abandoned, evil man and they were forced, they were forced, neither one of them would bend an inch. The holy man would not bend an inch toward sin and the sinner would not even allow the holy man to talk to him. But they were forced to sit together on a journey, what could they talk about? They’d have to find some common ground, and it might be the landscape or the pretty tree there or something. But they could never have fellowship. They might if the sinner would be listening to the urge and appeal of the good man. But as long as the sinner shut himself off and said, you can’t talk to me about God, now keep still, there’d be no communion. They would be miles apart even though they were the same nationality, approximately the same age and traveling in the same vehicle. They would still be miles apart.

So it is with God and man. God is away from man and man is away from God. And that’s why the world searches after God, if happily they might find Him, but don’t find Him because God and man are dissimilar in their moral natures. God is one thing in perfect holiness, man is another in perfect iniquity, and the two can never meet. And that’s why God seems so far away. Look at that man, Adam. When Adam sinned, he ran and hid himself from the presence of God.

And I heard a Jewish rabbi talking the other night on the radio while he was introducing some Jewish hymns which I like to hear, some of the old Jewish hymns. And he said that once a Jewish rabbi had been in jail. He was a very godly man and he was in jail. And he said that his jailer had been interested in the old man who prayed a lot and read his Bible a lot. And he said he went to the rabbi and said, Rabbi, I’ve got a question I’d like to ask you, a theological question out of your own Bible. It said about God knowing everything. Do you believe God knows everything? Oh, certainly said the rabbi. Well, how is it then that it says that God said, Adam, where art thou? If God knew where he was, why did he ask? Well, the rabbi said, Son, that’s not hard. He said, God said, Adam, where art thou, not that He didn’t know where Adam was, but Adam didn’t know where he was and he said, the question was asked of Adam, Adam, you don’t know where you are. Adam, where are you, He said, because Adam was lost, not God. And God knew well where Adam was, but Adam didn’t know where he was, yet His Adam didn’t know where Adam was.

Adam was alienated from God and I think the old Rabbi had the explanation alright. God knew where he was. God said, I will go down now and see. That didn’t mean that God was coming down to get information like a newspaper man. The great God knows everything in one instant perfect act. And yet He comes down among us and acts like us and said, I’ll go down and see. And there was Jonah. When Jonah refused to obey God and broke off and alienated his heart, he got in his ship and went out from the presence of God. Why? He thought he could get away from God; how foolish of a Jew. How foolish of a Jew who’d been reading the Old Testament to think that he could get away from God.

Then there was Peter. When Peter sinned, you know, Peter knelt down and said, depart from me, get away from me, I’m a sinful man, O Lord. It is the heart that puts distance between us and God. It is not stars and satellites and moons. We must not think of God as being thus far away, for the reason that God does not dwell in space. And the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, but He contains the heaven of heavens. And therefore, God is just as near to you now, nearer than you are to yourself, nearer than your thoughts, but the sinner yet is far from God. He isn’t far from God, and yet he’s far from God.

What do I mean? I mean that God is not away like a Roman god upon on a holy mountain, as far away two miles, ten miles, 100 miles, 1000 miles away. No, God is not away that way, but God is far away in another way. He’s far away in his holy unlikeness to everything sinful. He’s far away in the sense of alienation and enmity. And the natural man is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be and it cannot please God. He cannot please God, and God and man are alienated. This is the terrible woe of the world. This terrible word, alienation. Not alienation or distance in space, but moral dissimilarity. And that’s why there’s got to be a place to put those who refuse to be like God or become like God, because God, God cannot in His holy heaven, for heaven is a place as well as a state. God cannot in His holy heaven have beings that are morally dissimilar to Himself. We must be must be like Him to enter there and then we shall see Him and shall be like Him, says the Holy Ghost, according to 1 John 1:3.

Now, the bliss of all moral creatures is the presence of God. Our fathers called it the vision beatific. The presence of God is the bliss of all moral creatures. Just as the shining of the sun is the bliss of all creatures that love the sun. All the creatures that love the sun come out and come to the surface and fly or crawl or swim when the sun returns. So, the presence of that Holy God is the bliss of all moral creatures. And it is the absence of it is, the terror and the grief and the sorrow of all fallen creatures. But you know, I am not talking about God’s presence, but God’s manifest presence. You see, there’s a vast difference between God’s presence and God’s manifest presence.

The presence of God is even in hell, the Holy Ghost says in the 139th Psalm, but the manifest presence of God is only in heaven and where good souls are. So therefore, a man can walk around on the earth and be so close to God that he could whisper and God will hear his whisper and yet have such a sense of alienation and remoteness that he’ll go to the river and commit suicide thinking there’s no God in the universe anywhere.

This accounts for man’s busy activities, you see; that it counts for practically all of the entertainment there is in the world, that accounts for it, people. People do all sorts of things because they invent every sort of instrument and every sort of entertainment, because they can’t live with themselves knowing they’re alienated from God. And knowing that there is a moral dissimilarity, knowing that there is a moral dissimilarity that shall forever and forever keep a sense of all but infinite remoteness between their soul and the God who is their life and their sunshine. And hell, if there were no fire in hell and no worm that never dieth, hell would be hell enough, because moral creatures are cut-off forever from the sunshine of God’s face.

And if there were no golden streets and no jasper walls and no angels and no harps and no living creatures and no elders and no sea of glass, heaven would be heaven enough, because we shall see His face and His name shall be on our foreheads. It is the presence of God, the manifest, conscious presence of God that makes heaven heaven. And it is the refusal of God ever to manifest His presence in hell or on earth or anywhere where men are not good men, or not wanting to be good men, that makes hell what it is and makes the world what it is.

If God could only manifest Himself to men on the earth, all over the earth, every night club would be empty or would turn into a happy prayer meeting. And every house of ill fame would be emptied in five minutes. And everyone with deep repentance and sorrow of heart would be down on their knees before God asking for forgiveness and weeping tears of happiness, because it is the presence of God that gives bliss to moral creatures and the absence of God that brings everlasting woe to moral creatures.

Well, you see, men want a bright day without the Son. They deny the Son and still want a bright day. So they invent every kind of light imaginable and whirl all kinds of roman candles over their heads to get a little light. And we call that entertainment. And we call that the theater and all the rest. Well, that helps people to forget that they are without God. But now somebody says, but Mr. Tozer, if man’s nature is dissimilar to God’s and that’s the remoteness, that’s the gulf fixed, that’s the everlasting, unbridgeable gulf, and the Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots. And the man born in sin can’t get out of it, and that God will never change and man can’t change himself, how then can God and the human race ever come together?

Oh, the answer is my friend, that the dissimilarities can be reconciled only by One who is both God and man; the dissimilarity can be reconciled. The man cannot educate himself into a likeness of God and he cannot cultivate himself into a likeness of God. He can begin to go to art galleries and read Shakespeare and visit the opening nights at the opera and begin to drop his “r”s and open his “a”s and sound very, very, very cultured. And when it’s all over, he’s still inwardly what he was before, walking in the vanity of his mind, blinded by the ignorance that is within him, cut off from the life of God without hope and without God in the world. Man can’t right himself. Religions have tried it. Philosophies have tried it. School systems have tried it. Police try it. And we try everywhere to bring a similarity that God will recognize so that instead of our having that far sense of infinite remoteness, we can say, surely God’s in this place. But we can’t get it. We can’t, we can’t. Religions can’t. How can it be done?

Oh, my brother, it says in 2 Corinthians 5, God was in Christ reconciling. God was in Christ reconciling. Now, how can God reconcile the dissimilar nature of man to His own? You see, reconciliation can be done in two ways. Reconciliation can be accomplished by the two parties who are alienated, compromising and thus getting together. If this man and I had four propositions that were keeping us apart, we might get together and pray and say, now brother, I’d say, Brother Knight, I don’t want to be out of friendship with you and therefore, I’ll make a concession on this. And he’d say, well, alright then, I’ll make a concession on this. Well, I’d say, all right, then I’ll make one on this. And he’d say, I’ll make one on this. And so, by his moving over this way, halfway, and my moving this way, halfway, we’d be reconciled.

But how can God say to the sinner, I’ll move over halfway? You’re blind and I’ll move over and be half blind. And you move over and be half blind. You’re dead and I’ll move over and be half dead and you move over and be half dead and thus by God coming halfway and compromising Himself, He and man could be reconciled. To do that God would have to void his Godhead and cease to be God. And I’d rather go to hell than go to a heaven presided over by a God who would compromise with sin. And I believe every true man and woman would, for we want God to be the Holy God that He is, and remain the Holy God that He is.

So, God can never say I’ll go halfway. You come halfway over and I’ll come halfway over. It didn’t work that way and it doesn’t work that way. The Father stayed at home and the Prodigal came all the way back. The Prodigal and his Father did not meet halfway to the far country. The boy came clear back where he belonged. And so, the sinner, in his repentance, comes all the way back to God and God doesn’t move from His holy position of infinite holiness, righteousness, and loveliness, world without end.

God never compromises and comes halfway down. God stays the God that He is. This is the God we adore, our faithful, unchangeable Friend, who’s love is as great as His power and knows neither limit nor end. And we don’t want God to compromise. We don’t want God to wink at our iniquity. We want God to do something about it. What did He do about it? He came down and became flesh and became both God and man, sin accepted, in order that by His death He might remove everything out of the way so that now, man can come back. Before, he couldn’t come back or he couldn’t come back if Christ had not come and died. But now because He came and died, He removed every moral obstacle out of the way so man can come home.

And now Peter, approaching it from another direction, says in 2 Peter 1:4, that God has left us the promises of the Gospel, that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature. What does that mean? It means that when the sinner comes home, repents and believes on Christ savingly, that God implants in the heart of that previous sinner, some of His own nature and then, the nature of God in God and the nature of God in the sinner are no longer dissimilar, but now they are one. And the sinner’s home and the dissimilarities are gone and the unlikeness removed. And the nature of God in man makes it morally proper that man and God should have fellowship. God without compromising Himself in any way, now receives the returning sinner. He puts a deposit of His own nature and life in that sinner. My friend, don’t you see, that’s what the new birth is! Don’t you see it’s not joining. Don’t you see it’s not being baptized? Don’t you see, it’s not quitting this or that bad habit, though everybody will quit their bad habits, but it’s an implantation of divine life.

Now, let me go back to my own rather awkward illustration, grotesque illustration I will admit, but if it gets an idea across, I don’t want to apologize. Let’s go back to this ape and this angel that are out in the side room. They’re staring at each other, the ape and the angel. There’s no getting them together. How could you do it? If the great God Almighty could take from the angel, that glorious, celestial nature that is his, and deposit it in the ape, the ape would leap to his feet and shake hands with the angel and call him by name, because similarity would instantly be there. But, as long as one has the nature of an ape and the other of an angel, there can be nothing but everlasting dissimilarity.

And so, the world with all of its money and all of its culture and all of its education and all of its science and all of its philosophy, is still a moral ape! And the Bible has said so and the Holy God cannot compromise Himself to fellowship and neither can that man understand God for the natural man cannot understand God and there can be no fellowship. But God moved in Christ and died on a cross and so, took the obstacles away, I repeat, and now by the New Birth He gives some of His own delightful divine nature to the sinner. And the sinner looks up and says, Abba, Father for the first time in his life. Now, he’s converted.

Do you know, that’s what happened to Jacob. Everybody will admit the Jacob was converted there at the ladder and was filled with the Holy Ghost, or whatever you want to call it there at Jabbok, two works of grace there for Jacob. And you that don’t believe in it, will have a hard time explaining Jacob. But anyway, here was Jacob. Well, he was an old sinner who was crooked and he had a name Jacob which meant he was a planner, he was crooked. And Jacob was there, oh, how does it go. And Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Heron. And he lighted upon a certain place and tarried there all night because the sun did set. And he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows and lay down in that place to sleep. And while he slept, he saw a ladder set up on the earth. And God was above it and the angels ascending or descending upon it, and God and Jacob met. And Jacob believed in his God, and he woke and you know what he said? He said, this is the gate of heaven and I didn’t know it. It was the gate of heaven when he lay down. And it wasn’t any more the gate of heaven when you awoke. But he said, I didn’t know it. The presence of God had been there all the time. But now, by a work of God, he got the conscious presence of God.

And that’s why a sinner who is soundly converted, soundly born anew, who has a conscious transplantation of the divine nature into his heart in faith in Jesus Christ, why, he’s likely to be explosively happy. He says with Jacob, why this is the gate of heaven. God’s in this place and I didn’t know it. What’s been restored to him? Not the presence of God, but the conscious presence of God.

What makes heaven heaven? The unhindered, unsullied presence of God. What makes hell hell? The absence of a consciousness of the presence of God. That’s the difference between a prayer meeting and a dance hall. The omnipresent God fills heaven and earth, contains heaven and earth and is present everywhere. But in the prayer meeting, some little old lady kneels and says, O Jesus, were two or three are gathered, I am there in the midst–God is there. In the dance hall, they would be embarrassed if the presence of God were to be manifest. That’s why conversions are such milk and water things these days; such poor, shoddy, ragged things these days. How we pick them out of their shell. How we try by rubbing their nose in red letter texts to make them think they’re converted. They have not had an implantation of the Divine Life. There’s no similarity, and therefore God and man do not meet in the bush. But wherever God and man meet, there’s the joyous rebound of the human spirit. Similarity is restored and instead of God being a million light years away, the man can hardly believe his own heart when he cries, oh, God’s in this place and I didn’t know it.

Ah, for some of the old conversions again. I’ve not seen too many of that kind, but I’ve seen a few conversions where a man would kneel and burst of tears and agony, confess his sins to God, believe on Jesus Christ and get to his feet with a light on his face and walk around shaking hands with everybody keeping back the tears the best he could, and smiling through the tears, he couldn’t keep back. What, what did that? What did that was not only the conscious taking away of sin, but the conscious presence of God revealed to the heart inside. That’s the joy of conversion, my brethren, not bringing God from some distant star, but knowing God by a change of nature.