-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Welcome to the cafe today. Hope you’re doing great.
00:42 It’s a great day here to be in God’s Word, to study His Word. I thank you so much for joining me. I’m so just blessed to be here today.
00:49 I hope you are too. We’re gonna dive right in here. We’re on a series of the characteristics of God, a series focusing on the characteristics of God.
00:56 Who is God? You know, a lot of people look at that very broadly as Him being a deity. Some people may get a little more specific that He is the Father figure there in the Holy Trinity.
01:05 Somebody may get a little more specific and say He is a spirit and desires to be worshiped in spirit and truth.
01:17 And yet some people like us here at KJV Cafe and those that are listening, we get a little more specific and say, well, what’s He like?
01:28 You know, early on when I was called to plan a church, some of the first messages that I preached were kind of on this topic. I remember one, I think I preached it. I know I’ve got notes on it.
01:38 What is God’s favorite color? That’s a good one to research. And I’m not going to give it away. But it’s pretty fascinating when you research things like what His favorite color is, or how big is His heaven and all of these things.
01:49 There’s a lot of great wisdom that can come from just desiring to know God, to say, Who are you, God? You’re alive. And I guess when we do that, we put ourselves out there a little bit, don’t we?’
02:01 Because we feel like, you know what, if we’re going to desire to know Him, we may not love the feedback that comes back, amen. But that’s part of the Christian walk is living for God, repenting before God, amen, and living for Him.
02:14 And He is a wonderful Father. He’s a wonderful God. He’s here today, He’s alive.
02:20 And the characteristic we’re speaking of today, is God being omnipresent, or in all places at all times. Proverbs 15:3, the eyes of the Lord arein every place, beholding the evil and the good. Some people may read that and say, okay, moving on.
02:43 But that’s a very powerful verse of Scripture, that God, He is everywhere. He’s seeing everything. And He’s seeing specifically the evil and the good.
02:53 That’s, that’s really, if you start really thinking about that, you say, wow, you know, people oftentimes, when do they get in trouble?
03:06 When do they get into real deep sin at night, right in the dark, like they’re hiding from God, He sees it all, right? And maybe someone is doing something for somebody today, a sacrificial type of thing that they can’t ever, that person can never repay them for.
03:15 And they’re thinking, I don’t know if God ever knows or sees what I’m doing. He sees it, amen, He sees it.
03:21 And so we see here, in Proverbs 15:3, a very great truth that God is omnipresent in all places at all times. And what we’re looking at here today is the idea of why would someone try to hide from Him, Jeremiah 23:24.
03:37 Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see him, saith the Lord? Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord? Why hide from God?
03:47 What can we keep hidden from an all present God? We have to remember, He created time.
03:53 Isaiah 46:10 tells us that God created time, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.
04:05 My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. You know, as crazy as this world seems, and it seems to get crazier day by day, pandemics, war, rumors of war, shortages, natural disasters, famines, great materialism, falling away from church, there’s all the signs here of the end times.
04:29 And it is, I’m not a prophecy expert by any means, but it certainly seems like it is the very end of the end days. Amen. And I’m looking for that trumpet sound.
04:42 I’m listening for that trumpet sound. I’m looking for the Lord to split the sky and come back any day. Amen.
04:48 And I will be extremely happy about that, though I know until that time it’s my job to preach the gospel. And we see that He will do His pleasure. His will will be done.
04:58 Amen. And that He sees all things. So how can we hide from a God that in the end will have everything done that He wants? In the end, His plan will come to fruition.
05:14 How can we hide from that God that’s so sovereign that He is in complete control? And by the way, in between when He started the world and now, okay, He sees everything. There’s nothing that you can do. So here is this great mystery of life.
05:26 You have free will to do what you want, and yet no matter everyone acting on their free will, God’s will, His counsel will stand. He’ll do all His pleasure. His will will be done.
05:37 That’s the mystery. It’s incredible how God can work all things together for His will to be done. You know, I’ve got a Bible example of God’s eyes proving that God’s eyes are on everyone at all times.
05:46 Job 34:21. The verse reads,For His eyes are upon the ways of man, and He seeth all his goings. Now this is from Elihu.
06:08 If you remember, Job had three friends that were not so friendly, and they were wrong, okay? And then Job was saying, I’ve done nothing wrong, and I don’t have sin.
06:18 And Job was wrong. And Elihu rebukes the three friends, rebukes Job, and starts talking about how mighty and strong God is.
06:25 And then it’s significant that Elihu says this, For His eyes are upon the ways of man, and He seeth all his goings. Because Elihu was the only one not rebuked by God when God starts speaking thereafter.
06:36 And so we see, I think, a truth that even God wouldn’t dispute, that His eyes are upon the ways of all men, and He seeth all his goings.
06:46 And then if you look at Job, you can actually look at the beginning of Job, the first chapter, to see that God is aware of what’s on earth.
Job 1:6-12. Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.
07:05 And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
07:13 And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil?
07:23 Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?
07:32 Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land? Wow. So here we see a lot about what’s happening on heaven and earth.
07:42 We see that God is aware of Job and people on earth, and that Job was righteous above all the others, and that Satan was aware of Job too, but that Satan said, Hey, is he living for you for nothing?
07:53 You’ve done this for him. Wow. It’d be great to have God set a hedge about you, about your house, about all that you have on every side, for God to bless your work of your hands and increase your substance.
08:04 Amen. That’s a prayer to pray. God’s able.
08:09 He’s done it for Job. He can do it for you. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.
08:14 So here is Satan doubting Job’s faith and tempting God. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power, only upon himself, put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.
08:29 And so we see God is in full control over Satan, that there’s nothing Satan can do without God giving permission, that God is sovereign and all-powerful, and that God himself said, Go ahead, take his stuff, but don’t hurt him.
08:38 Take his stuff, his family, everything, but don’t hurt him. And so God gives the instructions.
08:44 And so we see here that God is all-knowing and that here in heaven, we’re given a viewpoint through the book of Job, which as I understand, it’s the oldest book in the Bible of God and Satan communicating directly one to another and giving us kind of a back and forth of what they said, what they know.
08:58 And there’s so much that we can understand this. And again, I think if you want to be blessed like Job, you have to go through the fire like Job.
09:08 Amen. And if you want to be blessed like Job, you have to live righteously. I think those are two lessons that we can take from the scripture beyond what we are looking at with God being all-seeing.
09:20 He’s all-knowing, he’s all-seeing, he sees everything. He knew where Job was at, how Job was living. He knew Job was righteous above all else.
09:28 How would God know that Job was righteous above all others if God didn’t know all others? Amen. He knows what goes on intimately. So what does this mean for us today? We are under God’s sight.
09:42 He is near and he sees all. Amen. We are under his sight.
09:47 You know, the way that often this comes to my mind, if you want to think about it in this light, is that God is like an unseen hand in the lives of believers guiding us while not verbally speaking to us. Amen.
10:03 In the Old Testament there, the Israelites were out in the wilderness, they had the cloud by day, they had the fire by night, they had the glory of God coming up through the temple.
10:12 There was all kinds of visual ideas of God, manifestations of God, if you will. Amen. But in this New Testament time, beyond that, in the Age of Grace, we don’t have all of these physical signs of God.
10:26 In fact, God looks at us and says, you don’t need a sign, you just have faith and believe. And it’s hard to believe, but we’re blessed to believe. That makes you think of Doubting Thomas there when he sees Jesus after he had doubted that Jesus had been resurrected.
10:41 And Jesus had kind of told him, look, you can believe now, but how much more so greater is the faith of those that have not seen and believed. And so we have to believe, but it’s much easier to believe when we see God’s hand at work.
10:53 And just little things, I mean, you could just see, you know, maybe there’s a blip in your schedule, something comes up you hadn’t planned, and then maybe later on you realize that the way that something came up that you didn’t plan was actually a blessing for you.
11:08 Amen. I went camping about a year ago with my family, and we thought we were big stuff, and we packed up our tents and all of our equipment, and we were going to go up there to this little campground right on the Pigeon River in Gatlinburg, I believe it was.
11:21 And it was a pouring rain, and we had driven three, four hours, and what were we going to do? You know, what were we going to do? And they let us have a rent an RV that they had a camper that they had on site.
11:32 And we spent that little few days there in the camper instead of in the tent. And I think the last day was pretty sunny. And I remember thanking God for the rain because that little blip in our schedule allowed us to have a much more comfortable, dry vacation time than if it had been pouring rain and we had been in a tent.
11:53 Even after it had dried, that tent site would have been muddy, and it would have been just really, really nasty. And I deal with allergies of all kinds. Maybe you can relate.
12:03 And so it was just such a blessing. And again, it’s just a little thing, but you look at that and you say, well, that’s God’s unseen hand. Amen.
12:11 Another one would be at the dentist many years ago, had to go to the dentist because my wife made me imagine that. Amen. And I don’t like going to the dentist and I’m sitting in the chair and they got all the tools out.
12:22 And this dental tech lady there, I don’t know if that’s the correct terminology for it, but the assistant to the dentist, she was in there and her scrubs, she was talking to me and just randomly she started talking about church and just calmed me down.
12:33 And it’s just a little way to see God’s unseen hand that God had sent somebody that was a believer to help comfort me in my trial at the dentist. Amen.
12:43 And I know these are simple examples, but maybe in your life, you can look and see God’s unseen hand.
12:53 You can see God’s providence in your life, things that he’s done. And then you can say, wait a minute, that’s God.
12:58 And you can give him that glory. And you can brag on God. You can teach your kids about God in that light, or your family, or your parents, or your relatives, or your brothers and sisters in church, in Christ.
13:06 Amen. Share these stories, give them as testimonies, give God the praise, understanding that he sees all, he knows all, he sees all. And he has this unseen hand and he is working things that we cannot imagine out for us, for our good, despite us oftentimes getting in the way of things.
13:24 Romans 8:28 promises this, that all things work together for the good of those that are called according to his purpose, those that love the Lord. Amen. We should thank him for it.
13:33 We should live for him wholly and fully, understanding that while we can’t physically see him, he is omnipresent. He is all places at all times. I can’t get into this because I don’t have enough time,
13:47 but think about what that means for God being present around your enemies, those that would wish to do you harm, those that would wish to hurt you or steal from you or something like this.
13:57 And then he comes back and protects you from that. Give him praise today. Thank him for being omnipresent.
14:03 He is an awesome God. A great characteristic of God is that he sees all. He is everywhere at all times.
14:11 Thank you so much for joining me. Take care. God bless and amen.