We have a very limited ability to understand the mind of God. Words like omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence are easily defined but completely outside of our experience and in the case of many people, stumbling blocks. What we can’t grasp, we often deny. But listen to what God’s Word says about God.
Job 26:5-14 (NKJ)
5 “The dead tremble, those under the waters and those inhabiting them.
6 Sheol is naked before Him, and Destruction has no covering.
7 He stretches out the north over empty space; he hangs the earth on nothing.
8 He binds up the water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it.
9 He covers the face of His throne, and spreads His cloud over it.
10 He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness.
11 The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at His rebuke.
12 He stirs up the sea with His power, and by His understanding He breaks up the storm.
13 By His Spirit He adorned the heavens; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent.
14 Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways, and how small a whisper we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?”
Indeed, what Job says about our God are the “mere edges of His ways.” Read on.
Isaiah 55:8-11 (NKJ)
8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
10 “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
Do you sense what God is teaching you? We can’t get our mind around the breadth of God’s reality. “…so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” When we try to reduce the ways of God to man’s understanding, we mistakenly “limit God,” something we should not do.
God’s Omniscience is well defined throughout the Holy Scriptures, but focus on the wonderful truth of the following verses:
Psalm 139:1-10 (NKJ)
1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know my sitting down and my rising up; you understand my thought afar off.
3 You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.
5 You have hedged me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.
Do you fully understand that God is Omnipresent? Your every thought is before Him, constantly.
Jeremiah 23:23-24 (NKJ)
23 “Am I a God near at hand,” says the LORD, “And not a God afar off?
24 Can anyone hide himself in secret places, so I shall not see him?” says the LORD; “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the LORD.
In the following verses, it says, God will dwell with you if you have a humble and contrite heart. God’s Omnipresence is the foundation of your personal reality, either to your comfort or to your pain. Over and over again, personal pride is held up as the stumbling block and humility and contrition as the path to righteousness. One path leads to eternal life, the other to eternal judgment. God is present. Listen:
Isaiah 57:15-21 (NKJ)
15 For thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.
16 For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would fail before Me, and the souls which I have made.
17 For the iniquity of his covetousness I was angry and struck him; I hid and was angry, and he went on backsliding in the way of his heart.
18 I have seen his ways, and will heal him; I will also lead him, and restore comforts to him and to his mourners.
19 “I create the fruit of the lips: peace, peace to him who is far off and to him who is near,” says the LORD, “And I will heal him.”
20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
21 “There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”
Now focus on:
Isaiah 55:11 (NKJ)
11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
God’s word went forth from His mouth and it shall not return void. The Bible is God’s word. If you fail in believing that, you fail to have any ability to discern His message. Seek His Word as one dying of thirst, for in fact, at some point His Word will be taken from you. If you have stored His Word in your heart you will have followed one of His admonitions and will be able to draw upon that strength, forever.
Listen:
Psalm 119:11 (NKJ)
11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You!
The Bible says that His word shall prosper “in the thing for which I sent it.” In other words, He knows this minute if you are a “chosen vessel,” because He knows if you have chosen to believe. If you believe then His word will enlighten you. If not, you will consider it foolishness.
1 Corinthians 2:13-14 (NKJ)
13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
To “receive the things of the Spirit of God” is to have Him and His Word dwell in you. That is Omnipresence in its most personal sense. How can you have His Word dwell in you if you do not read it? Again, go to the Word!
Listen to this parable and see if the truth of it is immediately is clear to you.
Matthew 13:31-32 (NKJ)
31 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field,
32 “which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”
I would not suggest that the meaning is singular, because interpretation of prophecy and parables is not a personal matter, but a matter between you and the Holy Spirit. But I would say that absent the Holy Spirit this parable and many like it makes little difference in the thinking of the reader.
Allow me to offer you one possible understanding. The magnificence of heaven can not be grasped this side of experiencing it. My understanding, and I believe yours, is so minuscule as to be “as tiny as a mustard seed.” What heaven is really like makes any definition we might attach to it, completely insufficient. It is greater than we can envision.
So are the words, Omniscient, Omnipresent and Omnipotent. They exceed our experience and even though we can define them, our Lord is greater than our conceptual images and prognostications. We simply believe and in doing so, use words like “awesome” in an attempt to attribute magnificence beyond description.
Romans 11:33-36 (NKJ)
33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?”
35 “Or who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to him?”
36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
Then, in an effort to properly position ourselves in relation to our Lord and Savior, we beg for mercy, while maintaining our faith in Jesus, our only means of salvation. Even though my sins are as separate from me as the east is from the west, I know I deserve judgment and so does King David in the following verses. The fact that God loves me and you, even though our sins were as scarlet when He called us, is a miracle that man can not understand.
Psalm 51:1-19 (NKJ)
1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
4 Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight– that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.
6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice.
9 Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You.
14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise.
16 For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; you do not delight in burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart– these, O God, You will not despise.
18 Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.
There is no other god, but The God of the universe, the One who says through His prophet;
Proverbs 30:4-5 (NKJ)
4 Who has ascended into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if you know?
5 Every word of God is pure; he is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.
Listen to God’s question and answer it. “and what is His Son’s name, if you know?