Dr. Richard L. Strauss
January 1, 1992
W. Graham Scroggie, a great Bible teacher, in his commentary on the Psalms, tells the story of an atheist who wanted to instill his philosophy of life into the mind of his young son, who, much to his distress, was getting interested in the Christian faith. So he prepared an attractive plaque and hung it on the wall in a place where his son would be sure to see it every day. And the plaque said, "God is nowhere."
Well, when the boy got home from Sunday school that day and saw the motto, he was excited and he said to his dad, "Why, that's exactly what my Sunday school teacher has been telling us all along. God is now here."
See, he made four words out of three and was far more accurate than his educated father.
God is now here. That's the truth we want to talk about this morning. And great truth it is. God is right here in this room. And when you leave today and get in your car, He'll be right there with you in the car. When you go home and whatever you do this afternoon, He'll be right there with you while you do it. When you go to bed tonight, He'll be there through the night. And when you get up tomorrow morning and go to work or school or whatever it is you do on Monday morning, He'll be right there with you. He is always now here.
1. The Truth of God's Omnipresence (Psalm 139:7)
That's called the doctrine of God's omnipresence: His presence everywhere.
I don't know whether you read that great scholarly journal called Reader's Digest or not, but I do get a lot of little stories from it, and I love this one. It was in the November issue, written by a lady:
While my young son Doug was looking at a full moon one night, he asked, "Mom, is God in the moon?" And I explained that God is everywhere. Evidently, this mom had a little bit of grasp of Bible doctrine. "Is he in my tummy?" Doug wanted to know. "Well, sort of," I responded, not sure where these questions were leading. Then Doug declared, "Mom, God wants a banana!"
Well, I don't know whether God is hungry this morning and wants a banana, but I know He's everywhere. And that's the subject that David wants to discuss next in Psalm 139, this great Psalm about God.
God not only knows us, but He is with us. And that's the message of verses 7 to 12. So let's look at it. We begin with a statement of God's presence. And if you have your outline in front of you, that's already there for you. But there's some things for you to fill in if you'd like as we go along.
"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?" (Psalm 139:7).
I don't know why anybody would want to escape God's presence, but I guess some have tried. When God came into the garden looking for Adam and Eve after their sin, the Scriptures say in Genesis 3:8, "Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." Somehow they thought they could really hide from God's presence. Kind of foolish, but that's what they thought. Sin does that to us, I guess. It makes us want to escape God's presence. His infinitely holy eyes strike fear into our guilty hearts. And we'd like to try to hide from Him.
The hymn writer said it so well. In that hymn we began with this morning, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing: "Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love."
We all have that tendency to just kind of slip away from Him. And our relationship with Him grows cool and little sins begin to attach themselves to our lives, and we begin to feel guilty, and we just like to be able to hide from God.
St. Augustine said it years ago: "The only way to flee from God is to flee to Him." And the idea he was communicating was that in God alone can we find deliverance from the punishment that our sin deserves. We're running from Him because we feel guilty and fear Him. But running to Him for forgiveness is the one thing that relieves that guilt and brings us back into precious and loving fellowship with Him again.
Adam and Eve didn't understand that. They tried to hide from God's presence, as foolhardy as that was. Jonah tried it, too. remember? When God told him to go to Nineveh and preach against its wickedness, Jonah decided that was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do. I mean, that was dangerous and difficult, and a fellow could get himself killed that way. And he didn't have any desire to get himself killed. So he decided he was going to take off in another direction.
It says in Jonah 1:3, "He arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." He thought he could run from God's presence. Somewhere, he developed the ridiculous notion that God didn't live in Tarshish, a city that most Bible scholars believe was in Spain somewhere. He thought he could run from God. I guess maybe if we thought God were sending us on some difficult and dangerous mission, maybe we would try to hide from Him, too. It isn't possible, Jonah discovered, but I guess some of us might be foolish enough to try.
Actually, there is no evidence that David really did want to flee from God's presence. Just asking the question doesn't necessarily mean he wanted to. I think he was finding in God's omnipresence a great deal of comfort and encouragement. He wasn't trying to get away from Him. He couldn't do it if he wanted to. But the point is, he doesn't want to because there is comfort and encouragement in the truth of God's omnipresence.
God is everywhere. He is with us. God is an infinite spirit, free from the limitations of space, wholly present everywhere at the same time, all over His world, all over His universe, filling heaven and earth. God is present everywhere at the same instant.
It's not that just parts of Him are scattered everywhere. He's partly present over here and partly present over here. But not fully present anywhere. No, no. He is fully present in every place. Wherever He is, He is there in the fullness of His being.
The prophet Jeremiah taught us the same truth, by the way. And if you would hold your place in Psalm 139 and skip over to Jeremiah chapter 23, I'd like to show it to you. It's just over a few books.
"'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" (Jeremiah 23:24).
I don't understand that fully. I can't explain it to you. My finite mind doesn't grasp it. But it's true. It's what God says. It's what He teaches us about Himself. And so I believe it. God is fully present everywhere. He fills the heavens and the earth.
Now, that doesn't mean God is to be identified with His creation. That's the false philosophy known as pantheism, that God and His creation are actually one, that God is merely an impersonal force, or the forces or laws of nature. Steven Spielberg tried to brainwash us with that heresy in the Star Wars trilogy. But that is not true. God becomes the trees and the flowers and the rivers and the sky, and He's just this impersonal force. That's a serious error, a grievous heresy that can only lead to eternal death.
God is a personal being, not an impersonal force—a personal being, separate and distinct from His creation, transcendent above His creation, and yet present in every part of His creation. As difficult as that may be for us to understand, that is the truth of God's Word. And that is what leads to a right relationship with this wonderful Person who created us for Himself. And that is what leads to blessed and precious fellowship with this Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth. God is omnipresent.
Maybe you remember the little poem that I've read to you before. It kind of sums up this truth so beautifully. It goes like this:
He was just a little lad and on one fine Sunday
Was wandering home from Sunday school and dawdling on the way.
He scuffed his shoes into the grass and found a caterpillar.
He found a fluffy milkweed pot and blew out all the filler.
A bird's nest in a tree o'erhead so wisely placed and high
Was just another wonder that caught his watchful eye.
A neighbor watched his zigzag course and hailed him from the lawn
Asked where he'd been that day and what was going on.
"Oh, I've been to Sunday school." He carefully turned the sod
and found a snail beneath it. "I've learned a lot about God."
"Hmm. A very fine way, the neighbor said, for a boy to spend his time.
If you'll tell me where God is, though, I'll give you a brand new dime."
Quick as a flash his answer came, nor were his accents faint.
"I'll give you a dollar, mister, if you tell me where God ain't."
"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?"
The answer which David expects to his question is obviously "absolutely nowhere," because God is present everywhere. That's the truth of God's omnipresence.
2. The Extent of God's Omnipresence (Psalm 139:8-12)
Let's talk secondly about the extent of His presence. Verses 8 to 12. The extent of God's presence. Just as David did in the first stanza with God's omniscience. Now, with His omnipresence, he's going to follow up that general statement with specific illustrations of what he just taught us. And he does that with a series of couplets. This is really interesting.
a. Highest and Lowest (Psalm 139:8)
The first couplet is the highest and the lowest. Highest you can go, as low as you can go. God is there.
"If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there" (Psalm 139:8).
Now that's a little bit confusing. I mean, we can all understand God in heaven. That makes sense to us. But what's He doing in hell? I think the psalmist is simply using the highest and lowest extremes to illustrate God's omnipresence. He's saying, if you could scale the utmost heights, God would be there. If you could climb Mount Everest and get to the very peak of that mountain—29,028 ft, the highest peak in the world—if you could get there, you'd find that God is there. Go higher than that if you can. Fly the friendly skies to 35,000 ft. God's there, right there in your plane with you. It's kind of comforting to know when engines fall off that God is there with you. Or get in a spacecraft and rocket to outer space, and as far as you can go, God is there. That's the point, you see.
I know back in the early days of the space program, that Russian cosmonaut insisted there wasn't any God. You remember that? Because he said—and it was plastered all over our newspapers—"I didn't see Him in outer space. So there obviously is no God."
I love what Dr. W. A. Criswell of First Baptist Church in Dallas said when he read that and announced to his congregation. He said, "Well, if he had stepped out of his spacecraft, he'd have met Him in a hurry, because God is there."
God is there. As high as you can go, God is there. And if you could go to the very highest, what Paul calls in 2 Corinthians 12, "the third heaven," God is there because that's where He lives. That's His home. That's where His presence is manifested in a wonderful way, more powerfully than any way or any place else.
But conversely, as low as you can go, God is there as well. The text actually says, "If I make my bed in Sheol," as the new American Standard puts it. Sheol. "Behold, You are there." Now, Sheol is used in a number of different ways in the Old Testament. We immediately assume it means "hell." It doesn't always mean hell. That's only one meaning of the word. It is used that way in Psalm 9:17. It's used of the abode of the wicked dead: hell.
But sometimes it just means "the grave." Jacob used this word when he was talking about Joseph being taken from him. And he said, "My gray head will go down to the grave in sorrow." Same word. Sheol can mean just the grave.
Sometimes it means "the heart of the earth." You remember the story of Korah, who rebelled against Moses authority with some other princes in Israel. And the Scripture says, "The earth opened and swallowed them up into the pit." It's talking about the heart of the earth. Very same word. Sheol can mean simply the heart of the earth. So as deep as you can go. God is there.
I'm not sure which one of these David had in mind. Is God actually in hell? Well, I guess if He's everywhere, He's in hell. As hard as that is for us to conceive of, He's certainly not in hell in the same way He is in heaven, He's manifested in all His love and grace and beauty and glory. In hell, He's manifested in His justice and His awful wrath against sin. And that doesn't sound very comfortable to me. So if I make my bed in hell, it ain't going to be a very comfortable bed. God is there. I mean, I don't know why anybody would choose to spend eternity in hell if they knew they had a choice. But I do know people who have made that choice. I heard them say, "I'm going to spend eternity in hell, and that's just the way it is, and I don't care." But if that's the way they choose, they have to know they aren't going to escape God even there.
Actually, I suspect that David is using Sheol here to refer to the heart of the earth. That's my opinion, anyway. I can't prove that, but it seems to make the most sense. I think he's saying, as high as you go and as low as you go on this earth, God is there. I mean, go down into the deepest mine shaft or to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and God is there. When that little girl a few years ago fell into that well shaft and was there for hours and hours, they feared for her life. God was there with her. He exists in the deepest places on earth.
Some people are afraid of elevators. But whether you take the elevator up to the 57th floor or you take it down to the lowest level of the parking garage, God is there. Because He's everywhere. As high as you can go, as low as you can go, God is right there with you. The highest and the lowest. That's the first couplet.
b. Fastest and Farthest (Psalm 139:9-10))
The second is the fastest and the farthest.
"If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139:9-10).
Now, the first couplet was vertical: high and low. This one is horizontal. As far as you can go, east or west, you can never get away from God's presence—never get beyond God's presence.
I love that phrase, "the wings of the morning." It’s a very descriptive phrase. What does it mean? Well, picture yourself standing on a beach over on the west coast, you know, over by Del Mar. Let's say you're standing on the beach, but you're looking east to the foothills and it's dawn and the sky begins to brighten. And then all of a sudden the first rays of the sun pop suddenly over those hills. And those rays—we know because we've been to school and had a little science class—go speeding out over the ocean at 186,000 miles a second. At that rate of speed, it takes two seconds to get to the moon. Four years to reach the nearest star, just with some idea of the immensity of God's universe.
But now suppose for a moment that you could climb on the first light beam as the sun rises over the hills and race out over the ocean at the speed of light. If you could take the wings of the morning, that's what David is saying, maybe you could outrun God. Maybe. He can't go that fast, right? No, He can go that fast. No matter how fast you go, He's going to be right there with you, directing your sunbeam spaceship and supporting you with His hand. That's what he says. Even there. "Your hand will lead me and Your right hand will hold me." The wings of the morning.
And then there's that next phrase, "the uttermost parts of the sea." In other words, as far west as you can go—just keep on moving west, west, west as far as you can go—God is there. David probably had in mind the Mediterranean Sea. That's the one that he was familiar with. If you keep going west through the Mediterranean Sea and then you get into the Atlantic Ocean and then you have to cross our land body and you get into the Pacific Ocean, it's as far as you go, keep going, keep going to the uttermost parts of the sea. God is there. And even there, His hand will lead us and His right hand will hold us.
His right hand. Now I want you folks to know who are left handed, that the Bible is not prejudiced against left handed people, all right? References to God's right hand are normally references to His power. God is a spirit. He doesn't have a literal hand. But phrases like this are used in order to help us understand God. And since the majority of people are right handed and it's the hand that has the greater strength, that's here to symbolize God's power.
So He's there holding us and His power is being exercised on our behalf. No matter how far we travel from home, even to the uttermost parts of the sea, He has His powerful hand right there upon us, leading us and protecting us and caring for us. What a wonderful truth that is. Particularly people have to travel a great deal.
What a wonderful promise it is for our missionary family and for the loved ones who have sent them off. Think of a few of them this morning. I talk about them every once in a while. Like the Smiths over there in the Philippines. A volatile country that only God knows what will happen to in the days to come. But God is there with them. The Russells in Germany right now. But having spent some time with the Kurds in Iraq and wanting to go back to Iraq and hopefully maybe be able to do that. Incredible thing. Does God live in Iraq? Whoo. I mean, that's a tough question, isn't it? No, not really. Even with Saddam Hussein there, God is there.
I've got two kids in Africa, both in relatively hot spots, but God is there with them, right there, guiding and protecting them. We have to commit them to His care.
You know, some Christian parents resist the possibility of their kids going to the mission field. I hear them say, "Oh, I hope the Lord doesn't take them to Africa. What a terrible thing to happen." Like it would be the worst thing that could possibly ever happen to anybody in the world. Go to Africa. I mean, people get killed over there.
If we really believe what this Scripture says, I mean, we're here today, I assume, because we believe the Word of God and we want to hear it taught. But if we really did believe it, how could we possibly resist sending our children wherever God wants them to be, to share with others the great good news that Jesus died for their sins? How could we resist it for a moment if we believed God's Word and promises like this one?
"If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me."
Well, the highest and the lowest, the fastest and the farthest. There's one more possibility that we haven't yet explored, and that's the darkest and the lightest.
c. Darkest and Lightest (Psalm 139:11-12))
" If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall fall on me,’ even the night shall be light about me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You" (Psalm 139:11-12).
See, maybe God can't see in the dark. Some people seem to think that, especially people who are trying to hide from God. Francie Overstreet prepares a little outline for the children who are too old for children's church and come to the services. Many of you parents know that you have them pick them up at the round tables. And I love the picture she got on today's outline. It's a little guy hiding under the bed, you know, he's got the bed spread all the way down and it's dark under there. You can just see his beady eyes sticking out. That's it, you know. And he's saying to himself, "Maybe God can't see me here."
Some of us think that too—especially people who are up to no good, who have some sin on their minds. They look for dark places. Jesus taught us that.
"Men love darkness rather than light," He said, "because their deeds are evil" (John 3:19b).
They're trying to do something under cover of darkness, thinking—foolish as it is—that God can't see in the dark. Friends, God can see in the dark as well as the light.
In fact, the darkness becomes light with Him. That's what the Scripture says. We all got an education in infrared night vision during the Gulf War. But that's only a small sample of what God sees. Listen to this:
"If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall fall on me,’ even the night shall be light about me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You" (Psalm 139:11-12).
It isn’t any different at all. God sees in the dark as well as the light. The apostle John taught us this:
"God is light and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5b).
So if God is light, His presence guarantees light. He can even lighten the dark places. That's exactly what the psalmist says He does. "The night shines as the day."
But what about those of us, like David, who aren't really trying to hide from God? Maybe you have a genuine fear of the dark. Some people do, even Christian people. Sometimes wives are just deathly afraid when their husbands are away for a night because they just fear the dark and they leave lights on all over, inside and outside the house.
I can remember when I was a little kid, my parents would tuck me into bed and then they would go downstairs. We had a two story house and I would insist that they leave the door open just a crack anyway, so a little bit of light could get in. I didn't like being in that dark room by myself with the door closed. And then I can also remember that periodically, until I dropped off to sleep, I'd call downstairs, "Good night!" You know, just to be sure they were still there and they hadn't run off and left me yet. It was comforting to know that they were there. In that dark room, it was good to know my parents were there, they weren't going to leave me.
If you're afraid of the dark will you remember, please, that God is there? I know it helps to have somebody nearby with skin on. I know that. But skin or no skin, the certainty of God's presence can be a comfort to you. And if nothing else, it assures you that nothing can happen to you that does not first pass through the protective wall of His perfect plan for your life. It cannot touch you unless He wants it to be there, because He knows that there are some good purposes to be accomplished through it. So trust Him.
I read a cute little story about a little girl who was left alone in the house one night because her parents were called out on some kind of an emergency. I don't know what it was, but they just had to go. And they assured her that everything would be all right. The house was locked up and they would get back as quickly as they could. And it took them longer than they really thought it would. When they got home, they figured that she would be very much afraid. So they said, "Were you okay? Were you afraid?"
"Oh," she said, "I wasn't afraid. When you're here, God expects you to take care of me. But when you're gone, He does it all by Himself." And that's the way He does it: all by Himself. He takes care of us.
That's quite a contrast to the little guy who spilled his milk on a kitchen floor before he went to bed one night. And his mother told him to go out and get the mop from the back porch. And he said, "No, I'm not going out there. It's dark out there and I'm scared." She assured him that it was okay. He could go out there, Jesus was there, and Jesus would take care of him. And he really didn't have anything to be afraid of. Finally, he mustered up enough courage to open the door a crack and stick his head out and call out, "Lord, if You're there, will You hand me the mop, please?"
I'm afraid that's the way some of us live our whole lives: just kind of a little bit scared, so often, of so many things. And in some cases, we're paralyzed by fear, fears of various kinds. Take God at His Word. There's nothing to fear. Our God is with us.
That's the truth of the psalm. "And darkness and light are both alike to Him." Doesn't make any difference.
Some early American Indians had a unique practice for training their young braves. On the night of the boy's 13th birthday, on his the threshold of manhood. After learning hunting and fishing and scouting skills, he was put to one final test. He was placed in a dense forest and expected to spend the entire night alone.
Until then, he had never been separated from his family and from his tribe, where there was a great deal of security. But on this night, he was blindfolded and taken several miles away. When he took off the blindfold, there he was, in the middle of this thick woods and usually terrified, couldn't see anything around him. Every time a twig snapped, he had visions of a wild animal ready to pounce on him. After what seemed like an eternity, dawn would finally begin to break. And the first rays of sunlight would break through the dense darkness of that interior forest and he'd begin to look around. He would see the trees, of course, and the flowers, and the outline of a path.
Then, to His utter astonishment, he would see down that path the figure of a man standing there holding a bow and arrow. It was his father. He'd been there all night, watching over his son, protecting him even though the son couldn't see him. What a great illustration of our Father who's there, even though we can't see Him, watching over us, protecting us.
But maybe we feel much like one of those young boys would have felt: very much alone, fearful, confused, uncertain. Maybe you feel this morning like you're in a dark place. You're being surrounded and engulfed by the darkness. There's some difficult trial or problem closing in on you, and you feel like you're lost in a jungle or in one of those deep dark caverns where they turn the lights out. You can't even see your hand in front of your face. And you're thinking to yourself, maybe God isn't here. I know the Bible says He is, but maybe He's not really here. Maybe He can't see in this darkness in my life. Maybe He doesn't really care. Things seem so dark to you today that you just don't know which way to turn or which way to go. You don't know the way out. Maybe you're getting discouraged and depressed.
Would you look at the psalm? The densest darkness is no problem to the all-seeing ever-present eye of God. He is with us even in that darkness, even though we can't see Him. And that confidence can bring the light of comfort and hope and encouragement to our troubled hearts.
One of the men in our church knew where I was going with this psalm and asked if he could share some thoughts with me. So we met together and he just told me the story of a deep trial in His life several years ago. Family problem that had him at the end of himself, didn't know which way to turn, was getting discouraged and depressed, was feeling life wasn't even worth living. And God led him to Psalm139 and these two verses in particular, verses 11 and 12. And just used those verses to give him hope and bring him out of the darkness.
If I say surely the darkness will fall on me, will just overwhelm me and overcome me. Even the night shall be light about me. Indeed, "the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to You."
God brought him out of His depression just through the use of His Word and the wonderful truth of these verses.
Some years ago, a very happily married Christian man with a beautiful wife and a lovely three year old daughter seemed to be sailing through life without a problem. Everything was going well for him. Then tragedy struck. His wife was killed in an automobile accident and all the joy that he had known seemed to vanish immediately. And he was plunged into the darkness of grief and sorrow and fear. Fear of what the future would hold and how he would ever be able to raise his three year old daughter adequately without a mom. And the night after the funeral, he was getting his little girl ready for bed and the lights in his house suddenly went out all over the house. He decided to go down to the basement to investigate, to see whether it was a fuse. He said to his little girl, "I'll be right back, honey, you just lie here and wait for me and I'll come right back." And she was afraid and didn't want to be left alone and begged her daddy to take her with him.
So he scooped her up in his arms and made his way through the darkened hallway and felt his way down the steps. At first the little girl snuggled against him in silence, but then as they entered the basement, she tightened her arms around his neck and said, "You know, it's so dark, Daddy, but I'm not afraid because you're here with me."
Tears came to his eyes and he buried his face in his little girl's hair and reassured her. "Yes dear, it is dark, but I'm not afraid either because my Father is here with me, too." It was her words that reminded him of the great truth of this psalm. God was with him. And encouraged by that thought, the thought of God's abiding presence and loving care, he found light in the darkest hour of his life. The light of God's hope.
Now, I don't know what trial you may be facing this morning, and I know that in a congregation this size, there are probably many, many problems—deep trials—that maybe nobody else knows about. I don't know how dark it may seem to you right now, but I'm sure that some of you are sitting in your pew this morning and it just seems as though there is a dark cloud all around you. You don't know which way to turn. I may not understand what you're going through, but I do know this: If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, God is with you. And with that confidence, even the darkness can be light around you.
Maybe you're facing the darkest, the darkest place of all, what David called in Psalm 23, "the valley of the shadow of death."
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me" (Psalm 23:4a).
Same truth repeated over and over in the Scriptures. There isn't any place you can go to get away from Him. What a comforting truth that is. God is with us.
Will you believe that? Whatever it is you're facing, will you believe it? God is with you. Will you trust Him? Will you enjoy the marvelous light of His presence? God is with you.
Trusting Jesus as Your Savior
You know, Jesus said:
"I am the light of the world. He who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of Life" (John 8:12).
It's one of the greatest promises in the Scripture. There is a light that exceeds all other lights, that has greater blessing attached to it than any other light. It is the light of eternal life. It's not everybody's. It doesn't belong to everyone; it belongs to those who have become His followers.
"The one who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of Life."
What does it mean to follow Jesus? Well, it means to understand that you're a sinner and you need a Savior and to realize He's the only one who's adequate to take your sins away, to bring you forgiveness, to assure you entrance into God's heaven. Put your faith in Him. That makes you His follower: God's child. And if you've never made that decision, you've never put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior from sin and become His follower, we invite you to do that today.
Please don't put it off. Your eternal well being is at stake here. Eternity is a long time, folks, and I wouldn't want to make my bed in hell for eternity, I can assure you. I can't believe anybody would. Will you turn your confidence from your own good deeds and your own religious efforts and put your confidence and trust fully in the person of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice at Calvary for you? Will you receive Him as your Savior from sin?
He said, "The one who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." That life is a gift.
"The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).
Let's bow together prayerfully in His presence right now. With our heads bowed, may I ask you if you have made this decision? If you have put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior from sin? If you're not certain, would you settle it right now, just in the quiet of your own heart, right where you sit? You come to grips with this issue, will you?
It's a matter of faith. Faith takes place in the heart, in the mind, in the soul. So you don't need to move a muscle, really. You just need to acknowledge to God that you're a sinner, that you believe Christ paid for your sin at Calvary, that His death was a sacrifice necessary for your eternal forgiveness. Then ask him to be your Savior. That's it. That's faith. Would you decide that right now if you've not done it before? Just right where you are, would you pray something like this?
Lord, I'm a sinner. I believe Jesus died for me. Come into my heart and save me, Lord Jesus.
Don't put it off another day.
Closing Prayer
Father, we thank You. We praise You for the glory of Your presence and the light that it brings. And I pray, Father, that if there are some who have never made that decision today, they will open their hearts to the Savior and that all of us who know Him will just bask in this sunlight of His love. And I pray for those particularly who are in dark places today. Oh God, I pray that this sense of Your presence will make the darkness light around them. I pray, Father, that they'll put total confidence and trust in the truth of Your Word and in the power and glory of Your person and find hope through their discouragement. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Continue to Psalm 139-3: He Made Us