The Omnipresence of God

Where do you go when you don't want to be found? Everyone has a hiding place, some corner of life where you believe, at least for a moment, that you are unseen and unreachable. Jeremiah 23 is going to tell you that no such place exists. And then, if you have ears to hear it, it is going to tell you why that is the best news you have ever received.

John Wesley wrote a sermon titled "On the Omnipresence of God" taken from this very text. Even Wesley, one of the most prolific preachers in Methodist church history, confessed he felt unworthy to preach on so vast a subject. He apparently never delivered it publicly, though he left behind his notes. I do not often find myself in agreement with Wesley, but I share his sense of the awesomeness of this subject. Preach it we must.

The word omnipresent simply means "present in all places at the same time." Webster's 1828 puts it plainly. But Jeremiah 23 does not give us a definition. It gives us a declaration, and it comes at us from two sides at once: a warning and a comfort, both from the same God, both from the same verse.

I. The Problem: False Prophets and a Distorted Theology

Before Yahweh names His own character, He identifies the problem that makes this doctrine necessary. Look at verse 16:

The false prophets of Jeremiah's day were speaking from their own hearts rather than from the mouth of Yahweh. They claimed His name. They claimed dreams and visions. But they were not standing on His word. And the people who listened to them were being led into vanity, into emptiness.

This is not some distant problem confined to ancient Israel. The New Testament is full of the same warning. Jesus said in Matthew 7:15, "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves." Paul wrote to Corinth that false apostles disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:13–15). He told the Galatians that if anyone proclaims a gospel contrary to the one received, let him be accursed (Galatians 1:6–9). John warned that anyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God (2 John 9).

In our own day the names change but the pattern does not. From prosperity preachers to those who treat God's word as raw material for their own agenda, the landscape is full of voices speaking visions of their own hearts. Families are sitting in the ruins of decisions they made because a preacher told them God said so. They emptied their savings because a man on a stage declared it was a seed. They walked away from a marriage because a prophet said God was releasing them. And when it collapsed, the preacher moved on to the next crowd. The damage is not just financial. It is the kind that makes people say, twenty years later, voices flat: "I used to go to church."

Even in a sound church there can be a version of this distorted theology operating on a smaller, quieter scale. Pornography on Saturday night and church on Sunday. Slander and bitterness in secret, but praise in public. Week after week, as if God does not notice. That assumption is exactly what Jeremiah 23 dismantles.

II. God's Omniscience: Nothing Escapes His Sight

The false prophets did what they did because they had quietly constructed a god who could neither see nor reach them. A god something like a local landlord. Aware of some things, absent from others. Yahweh does not merely refute their message. He dismantles the god behind it.

Look at verses 21 and 22. Yahweh declares that He did not send these prophets, did not speak to them. They ran on their own. If they had truly stood in His council, they would have turned the people from their evil way. But they did not, because they were not there. They had never stood before the God they claimed to represent.

Then comes verse 23, the pivot of the entire passage:

He answers His own question in verse 24:

This is what we mean when we speak of God's omniscience. He knows all things. The same God who is sovereign over all, who is everywhere present, knows everything without exception. Nothing comes as a surprise to Him. Whether near or far, the people and their deeds are known. The false prophets operated as if God's vision were limited. It is not. No secret place, no hidden motive, no concealed deed escapes divine scrutiny. This was true then. It is true now.

III. God's Omnipresence: He Fills Heaven and Earth

To say "I see you" would have been enough. A God who sees everything is already a sobering reality. But Yahweh does not stop at vision. He presses on to presence. The second half of verse 24 moves from what God perceives to what God occupies:

This is no longer a God looking down from a safe distance. This is a God who is already there.

God is not man, limited to time and space. Not a local deity confined to a shrine or a temple. Not the manageable Jesus some men have constructed, bound to a building somewhere and that is it. Our God is both near and far. Yahweh, our Creator, knows all of His creation and oversees every corner of it.

Have you ever stood at the edge of the ocean after dark? Not at the beach on a summer afternoon with children and umbrellas, but alone, at night, when the water has no end and the sky has no ceiling. There is a moment that happens when you stand there long enough where the smallness hits you. Not frightening exactly, but leveling. You feel the weight of something that has no edge.

That is the nearest a human being gets, in the physical world, to what Jeremiah 23:24 is saying. Except that the ocean has a floor and a far shore and a boundary God set. He has none. "Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?" He is not contained by what He made. He overflows it.

Here is what that means for you. You have never been in a place He was not already in. The hospital room: He was there before the diagnosis came. The graveside: He was there before you arrived. The darkest night you have ever lived through: He did not show up late. The God who fills heaven and earth is not a God who responds to emergencies. He is already present to everything that has not happened yet. That is not a small comfort. That is an unshakeable one.

IV. Dual Application: Warning and Comfort

This doctrine is not abstract. Yahweh puts it to work immediately. Look at verse 25:

The God who fills heaven and earth has been in every room where a lying dream was recounted. He has been present to every whispered false prophecy. He was not informed afterward. He was there.

In any courtroom, the most dangerous person to the defendant is not the prosecutor. It is the eyewitness. The prosecutor works from evidence, from inference, from argument. But the eyewitness was there. He saw it. If that witness is credible and unimpeachable, there is no cross-examination that undoes what he saw. You cannot cross-examine omniscience. You cannot cast doubt on a witness who was not only present but who is presence itself.

Look at verse 29:

For those living apart from God's will, this doctrine is all bad news. There is nowhere to hide. The false prophets of Jeremiah's day discovered that. The false prophets of our day will discover it too. And so will every person who has been conducting their life on the assumption that the hidden things stay hidden.

But here is the turn.

The same witness who stands against the unrepentant sinner is the same God who stands with His own people. He saw everything, and He still sent His only begotten Son. He knew the full record before the foundation of the world and He redeemed His people anyway. For those who are in Christ, this unimpeachable witness is not your prosecutor. He your Heavenly Father. And He is not going anywhere.

For those who are in Christ, this is great comfort. God is with you and you are never alone. The God who cannot be escaped is the God who will not leave you. He is present in the hospital room. He is present in the marriage that is breaking. He is present in the dark night when you cannot find Him by feeling. He was there before you woke this morning and He will be there when this day ends. You are never, not once, alone. Walk out today carrying that, because it is true whether you feel it or not.

Conclusion: Too Near to Hide, Too Faithful to Fear

Jeremiah 23 has given us its answer in two halves of one verse.

"Can a man hide himself in hiding places So I do not see him?" declares Yahweh. "Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?" declares Yahweh. Jeremiah 23:24 (LSB)

There is nowhere to go. There is no secret place. There is no Saturday night far enough from Sunday morning. There is no thought entertained in the dark that did not have a Witness. The false prophets of Jeremiah's day built their entire ministry on the assumption that God was manageable, local, limited, containable. They were wrong. The men and women who are living that same lie today are wrong in the same way.

The God of Jeremiah 23 fills heaven and earth. He is too near for the sinner to hide and too faithful for the saint to fear. Which of those truths defines your life today depends entirely on whether you are His.

A Word to Those Who Are Not Yet In Christ

If you are not His, then understand what that means before this God. He who fills heaven and earth was present to every sin you have ever committed. Not from a distance, not with partial knowledge. He was there, in the private moment, in the hidden place, in the thought you have never spoken aloud. He saw it all, and none of it has drifted beyond the reach of His knowledge or His justice.

But this same omnipresent God entered His own creation. The One who fills heaven and earth compressed Himself into a human life, born, tempted, tested, and tried. And on a Roman cross, the God who had witnessed every sin you ever committed laid the full weight of that record upon His own Son and punished Him there. In full.

For all who will repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ, here is what this God now sees when He looks at you: not the hiding, not the shame, not the record He witnessed, but His Son. His righteousness. His blood. The God you could not escape becomes, in Christ, the God you cannot lose.

Turn to Him today. He is not far off.