Our Omnipresent God

July 29th, 2025
by Lance Waldie

Psalm 139:7-12 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. 9 If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, 10 even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.

Now if David felt that God’s omniscience in vv. 1-6 was too wonderful to comprehend, vv. 7-12 reveal David’s realization that he could never escape God omnipresence, even if he tried. For there is absolutely no place anyone can go where God’s presence is lacking. Jeremiah would later say as much, quoting God as saying, “Can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him?” declares the Lord. “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?” declares the Lord (Jer 23:24; cf. Amos 9:2). There is simply no escape God’s presence!

It is the “Spirit” of God that David knows he cannot elude. John Calvin says, “By the Spirit of God we are not here…to conceive of His power merely but His understanding and knowledge. In man the spirit is the seat of intelligence, and so it is here in reference to God…” Therefore, God’s “Spirit” is akin to His “presence” (cf. 51:11; Isa. 63:9-10; Ezek. 39:29). This presence of God cannot be eluded, for God is always there to protect His own (cf. vv. 5-6). This of course stands in stark contrast to the pagan deities who, because they are not omnipresent, were confined to one place at a time and had only one place of authority in the minds of those who created them. Why someone would fashion a god of wood, stone, or metal and then bow down to such inanimate objects is absurd in light of Yahweh’s clear eternal existence and concern for His creation. For God is He who exists in “Heaven” while at the same time in “Sheol” (the dead), even “the remotest part of the sea” (vv. 8-9). Since He is the Creator of these extremities, His presence is found to reach from one end of them to the other, even into eternity.

“Heaven” in v. 8 is not a reference to the blissful eternity for believers but rather a word used to speak of upward endlessness. Yet in all its vastness, and as tiny as man is in the midst of the heavens, he is still the pinnacle of God’s creation, always seen by God. Likewise “Sheol” is a metaphor for downward endlessness where no one can hide from God. Now if Sheol is indeed seen as either the place of the dead or even hell itself, God is still there, for even in hell the wrath of God is still present in the fires against all who reject Him (cf. 2 Thess. 1:9; Rev. 14:10).

Contrasting the “the wings of the dawn” with the “remotest part of the sea” as opposing places where God’s “hand” continues to sustain life, David uses stark imagery. Calvin says, “For when the sun rises on the earth, it transmits its radiance suddenly to all regions of the world, as with the swiftness of flight… The idea is that though one should fly with the speed of light, he could find no recess where he would be beyond the reach of divine power. For by hand we are to understand power, and the assertion is to the effect that should man attempt to withdraw from the observation of God, it were easy for Him to arrest and draw back the fugitive.”

Food For Thought
Even in our overwhelming darkness, when the trials of life take us down, we can know that God’s light shines on us continually. After all, our darkness is not dark to God! Recall that it was God who broke through the darkness and gleamed His light (Gen. 1:3-4). In Him, there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:3, 5, 7). We can thus never hide from God, for even when we run from Him, we run to Him! This should give us great comfort in our darkest moments, as it did for David. Let us therefore, like him, count on God’s full presence in every trial we face.