Pursuit of God Part 5 - The Universal Presence Psalms 139:7-10 07/14/2013

Sermon pursuit of god chpt 5-- the universal presence  Ps 139:7-10

Where can I go from your Spirit?    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,   if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,    your right hand will hold me fast.

The series.  Chapter 5

What are we talking about

The universal presence

I loved this book before we got here, but when I came upon this chapter I was ecstatic. 

This is One of my favorite topics.  Why?

How I was raised.  Duty vs celebration

Church Camp - Celebrate life

Took years to retrain my brain

There is a challenge with this kind of thinking

Although it is taught over and over again in scripture

for some reason it has not sunk into the the average Christians heart so as to become a part of his believing self.

The simple notion that God right here.  Revealed in everything around us.

It is difficult for people for several reasons

1.   My issue.  What I was taught [I’m not alone in this]

2.   Rational American xity - left brain rational or right brain creative Christianity

East vs west.

3.   Teachers shy away from this…..Maybe because of fear of being charged with pantheism...that God is the sum (equates to) all created things. Tozer discounts this.....

Not that God is all things, or all things are God, but that God is revealed in these things

He makes him self known

The results of not being aware of this are tragic

We live joyless,  shallow lives, filled with hollow religious philosophies

Difference between nominal and amazing life 58

Scriptural evidence

Adam sinned and tried to do the impossible, hide from God....

Genesis 3⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”¹⁰ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

Psalm 139:7  There is no way to escape You, no place to hide.

Where can I go from your Spirit?    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there

Psalm 19 ¹ The heavens declare the glory of God;  the skies proclaim the work of his hands.² Day after day they pour forth speech;    night after night they reveal knowledge. ³ They have no speech, they use no words;   no sound is heard from them.⁴ Yet their voice^[b] goes out into all the earth,    their words to the ends of the world.

Solomon’s prayer of dedication over the new temple......1 Kings 8:27

²⁷ “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!

Romans 1:20²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Man healed in Lystra Acts 14- they want to declare them Gods

14when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: ¹⁵ “Friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human, like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. ¹⁶ In the past, he let all nations go their own way. ¹⁷ Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”

Acts 17:27-28  god is near Paul at areopogas                                   picture

²⁴ “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. ²⁵ And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. ²⁶ From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. ²⁷ God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’^[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’^[c]

God is with us.  By our side.  Revealing himself

One of the glories of coming to understand this is

We are free from doctrinal arguments

God will not try to catch us on a technicality if we don’t have baptism or communion or predestination just right.

Churches are wasting their time arguing over such things

When we should be looking and seeing the glory grandeur and joy of God

Okay Jeff, I suspect that in your job you are often reminded that you are accountable for holding to Methodist beliefs, and "doing what Methodists do."

From a layperson's perspective, although I'm a member at WCC, I rarely if never spend any time thinking about or defending the fact the I'm a Methodist.

I continually identify with being a Christian in a world where other believers live out their faith in Jesus Christ in various Christian denominations. If someone takes the Jesus factor out and who He is and wants to be in our lives, that's where I would begin to find issues.

I don't even feel like a Methodist, if there's supposed to be something unique about being one. In fact, I cannot find the word Methodist, Presbyterian, Assembly of God, Baptist, or whatever, in the Bible.

Denominations argue, Christians fight over silly things, when God is with us by our side, wanting to know and be known..

Conclusion

Gen 28:16 surely the lord is in theis place and I knew it not – Jacobs ladder

¹⁶ When Jacob awoke from his sleep,^(AQ) he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

This is the problem. I was not aware of it.  We just are not aware of where God is at or what God is doing.

The fish looks for water

The raft in the ocean

Some people are on a raft off the coast of Brazil. They were perishing from thirst--for as you know, ocean water is undrinkable. What they did not know, however, was that the water they were floating on was fresh water. A nearby river was coming out into the sea with such force that it went out for a couple of miles, so they had fresh water right there where they were. But they had no idea.

"In the same way," "we're surrounded with joy, with happiness, with love. Most people," he concludes, "have no idea."

We are blind because:

1.   We are not receptive

The old “rabbit ears” on a t.v., the broadcast is being sent out, but we aren’t tuned-in

Saints thru history have been revered for their SPIRITUAL RECEPTIVITY! .....

Something  in them was open to heaven, which urged them Godward....they had spiritual awareness AND that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives.

they differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it.   

We are blind because:

2.   We are passive

God’s power and work; His pursuit of us, is not an excuse to do nothing to cultivate our receptivity.  To return to the broadcast metaphor, we do not wait for the satellites to adjust the broadcast to our position.

Awareness - Receptivity..... it may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect BUT it is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other gift is we are to realize the purpose for which it was given.

Pray for increasing awareness

We are blind because:

3.   We are impatient

Remember this is written in 1948… How much more so in 2013?!?

“A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals.”

We are not willing to take the time or do the work to learn to see him

This is the Difference between nominal and amazing life 58

In the 2002 movie signs - See.  SEE.  Look.  See it. –

Mel Gibson is a minister who quits

His wife is killed .  hit by a car and pinned to a tree.

He cant believe that God is good

There is a scene late in the movie where he flashed back to Tell the kids this, tell your brother that.

I will.

Colleen: And tell Graham...

Graham Hess: I'm here.

Colleen: Tell Graham... see. Tell him to see.

See?  See what.?  That God is good.  That life is good.  That he is right here

Last scene of the movie, he is putting his clergy collar back on.

-The universal Presence is a fact!

-The whole universe is alive with His life.

-Always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us.

- we just have to look and see

Chapter 5 Prayer

Oh Father, We know that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see; yet we are preoccupied with what we see all around us.  Forgive us for being blind to your presence.  Open our eyes that we may see you are always with us and that nothing we do will separate us from you.

For Christ's sake, Amen