sermon: The Absence-Presence Dichotomy and God's Spirit

Charles Whitaker (1944-2021)
Given 08-Jun-19; Sermon #1491A; 32 minutes

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One of the widespread dichotomies running throughout God’s Word is that of presence and absence. Let us dwell on that dichotomy today, focusing on the presence of the Holy Spirit in us.

By way of brief review, remember that dichotomies are pairings of two elements, like day and night. More than that, the two elements make up a dichotomy only when they are opposites, polar opposites in fact, like hot-cold, light-dark, heaven-earth, male-female. Hence, shirt and pants do not make up a true dichotomy any more than faith and works do, for the elements must be mutually exclusive. Something cannot be hot and cold at the same time. A room cannot be light and dark simultaneously. A pupil cannot be absent and present from a classroom at once.

In the Scriptures, the presence-absence dichotomy is more than simply fuel for economic word plays, as where the apostle Paul avers, as recorded at II Corinthians 5:8, “to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” There, Paul is making use of a pairing whose roots go back long before his day. God established the presence-absence dichotomy at Creation. From there, it flows through the Scriptures. God is either absent or present. In environs below the sun, whether He is around or not conditions a whole lot of really important things.

Be warned, however: The presence-absence dichotomy is more complex than vanilla physical dichotomies like black-white, day-night, or even male-female. Rather, it is highly complex, its many facets touching other important dichotomies. For example, it interfaces with the visible-invisible dichotomy, which is perhaps one of the most elusive dichotomies in God’s Word. It also links to another foundational Scriptural dichotomy, that of life versus death. Where God is, there is light and life. Where He is not around, there is darkness and ultimately death.

As an example of this complexity, consider Psalm 16, where absence-presence blends with any number of other dichotomies, such as that of revealed versus hidden. Here, God links His presence with His revelatory work. As I read, notice the interplay between the polar concepts of life and death, joy and sorrow, revelation and ignorance, presence and absence. They are all bound up in this psalm.

Psalm 16:7-11 (CEV) I praise you, Lord,
for being my guide.
Even in the darkest night,
your teachings fill my mind.
I will always look to you,
as you stand beside me
and protect me from fear.
With all my heart,
I will celebrate,
and I can safely rest.

I am your chosen one.
You won’t leave me in the grave
or let my body decay.
You have shown me
the path to life,
and you make me glad
by being near to me.
Sitting at your right side,
I will always be joyful.

When we are at peace with God, His presence brings revelation as well as joy, both of which are missing in His absence.

All that said by way of introduction, we are ready to dig in. Just how foundational is the presence-absence dichotomy?

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

There is a dichotomy in itself: the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:2-3 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

We have correctly taught over the years that, sometime after God created the heavens and earth, He became absent from the earth. In that absence, and as a result of the lack of responsible care and tending on the part of Satan, the earth degenerated into random chaos, confusion, disorder—the infamous tohu and bohu. In process of time, God took corrective action; His Spirit, which Paul at II Corinthians 3:17 identifies as Christ Himself, came to hover over the earth’s churning, dark surface. At His command, there was light. The apostle John comments on that event. I will read this from The Disciples Literal New Testament.

John 1:1-5 (DLNT) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This One was in the beginning with God. All things came-into-being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being which has come-into-being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. And the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

The forces of tohu and bohu were no match for the Logos. In short, then, it is clear that the first three verses of Genesis 1 sublimely demonstrate the power of God’s presence. Whether tohu and bohu reigned for a day or a year or a thousand years, whatever, it ended immediately when the Spirit of God worked. Darkness became light. In short order, Christ—the same Being who gives everyone “life, breath, and all things” (as Paul avers at Acts 17:25)—that same Being converted what had unwillingly grown to become lawless and chaotic into an orderly, purposeful creation, teeming with life. That is how God’s Word begins to reveal the presence-absence dichotomy.

We have already looked at how John links the light Christ continues to spread spiritually to those called of the Father with the light of Genesis 1. II Corinthians 4:6 deals with this same topic. As I read it, keep in mind Genesis 1:3, where the Logos spoke and the deep lit up.

II Corinthians 4:6 (GNT) The God who said, “Out of darkness the light shall shine!” is the same God who made His light shine in our hearts, to bring us the knowledge of God's glory shining in the face of Christ.

Hold on to that noun face—we shall come back to it.

It is important to grasp that the Logos did not say the light was to shine on the surface of the deep, characterized by tohu and bohu, but that it was to emanate from the deep itself. From, or out of, darkness, the light would shine. The light does not just illuminate the surface, but emanates from below, perhaps from the very heart of darkness (if I can crib from Joseph Conrad). Shining from the depths of chaos, the light itself bespeaks the enormous transformative power of God’s Spirit as it worked, perhaps at a molecular level, to accomplish God’s purposes. Like our own minds before God called us, what was innately dark became authentically light.

In this passage, Paul is saying that the same God who caused light to shine amid chaos illuminates our minds, revealing to us the things of God. This illumination, though, is of course spiritual, not physical, as at the Creation.

Acts 3:19-21 also deals with this same topic. It is almost impossible to find an adequate translation of this passage. The Voice comes pretty close. Peter, issuing a call for repentance, makes some remarkable statements here.

Acts 3:19-21 (The Voice) So now you need to rethink everything and turn to God so your sins will be forgiven and a new day can dawn, days of refreshing times flowing from the Lord. Then God may send Jesus the Anointed, whom God has chosen for you. He is in heaven now and must remain there until the day of universal restoration comes—the restoration which in ancient times God announced through the holy prophets.

Peter indirectly mentions the heavens and earth here, that same dichotomy of Genesis 1:1. Christ is in heaven now, from where He refreshes us over and over again with a spiritual presence, being at peace with us through the covenant of peace, the New Covenant. The repentant now live on earth, not heaven, awaiting a time of “universal restoration”—the creation of new heavens and earth. Christ will ultimately restore to the earth what the spiritually dead, following in Satan’s footsteps and wallowing in his lies, have taken from it.

Both II Corinthians 4:6 and Acts 3:19-21 refer to the restorative and regenerative powers of God’s presence, as He works through His Spirit. Both passages correspond closely to the narrative of Genesis 1, where the Logos, bringing light, transforms physical chaos into order. God’s Spirit—whether working at a physical level as at Creation or a spiritual level with us today—is transformative and healing.

These two passages also tell us something about how the Greeks perceived the concept of presence. The word face in II Corinthians 4:6 (. . . [God] “bring[s] us the knowledge of God's glory shining in the face of Christ”) is the same Greek noun translated presence in Acts 3:19 (“. . . that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”) The Greeks often expressed the concept of presence with the noun face. When you stand face-to-face with a person, you are in his presence. It is this link between face and presence that gives rise to the idioms, “in the sight of” to mean in the presence of and “from the sight of” to mean away from. There are too many examples to mention here.

You may want to jot down II Corinthians 2:17, where Paul says he speaks about Christ “in the sight of God,” that is, in the presence of God. Paul had God’s Spirit in him; hence, what he said and what he wrote he did in the presence of God.

Further, the same is true among the Hebrews. The principal Hebrew word for presence is the noun meaning face. That Hebrew word appears over 2,000 in the Old Testament. The translators of the King James Version render the Hebrew noun for face as “before” over 1,100 times—I mean “before” in a spatial sense (standing before someone). The King James Version renders that word literally (as “face”) 390 times and as “presence” 76 times. There are lots and lots of references to God’s presence—His face—in the Old Testament.

You probably guessed the first use of that word for face in the Scriptures. Sure enough, “the face of the deep,” Genesis 1:2, where we were earlier. Darkness reigned; the earth was tohu and bohu. God’s Spirit confronted chaos, eyeball-to-eyeball, we might say. In the presence of God, chaos could not overcome God’s Spirit. Darkness gave way to light.

Incidentally, one of the meanings of tohu is “nothing.” Paired with the noun bohu, it is plain that there was nothing good about it at all. It was worthless, useless. Yet, when Christ finished His transformative and restorative work, He judged the Creation to be “very good,” as we read at Genesis 1:31. God’s Spirit is powerful, beneficial, and lifegiving.

Let us look at a couple well-known uses of the Hebrew word meaning face which clearly connect God’s presence with His Holy Spirit. They are especially common in the Wisdom Books.

1. Psalm 51:11: “Cast me not away from Your presence, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me.” Through parallelism, this scripture unambiguously links God’s presence with His Spirit.

2. Psalm 139:7: “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? or where shall I flee from Your presence?” Again, the parallelism is clear: When you are away from God’s Spirit, you are away from God, out of His presence. When God’s Spirit is near you, you are in His presence.

We will not change horses midstream, but we will change saddles, as I focus on dichotomy resolution. I mentioned it in an earlier sermon, but I need to review the concept here briefly.

The Scriptures teach that God is in the process of resolving the polar opposites He built at Creation. You may want to think of it more blatantly as removing or even destroying these dichotomies. So, in Revelation 21:1, at the end of the book, we learn that there will be no sea on the new earth. The land-sea dichotomy, established on the third day of Creation, bites the dust with the creation of the new earth. Likewise, a few verses down, in Revelation 21:25, we learn there will be no night there; that finishes off the day-night dichotomy which God created on the first day.

As a third example, in Romans 10:12, Paul notifies us that there is, for those under the New Covenant, no “distinction” between Jew and Gentile. In the church, we are not to think of the brethren in those terms, though, of course, in the world, the distinction still exists. Likewise, in Galatians 3:28, the same apostle avers that God makes no distinction between male and female as far as His Kingdom is concerned. We know that, in the physical world, the distinction is still in place—much to the chagrin of the feminists. But, in the realm of spirit, we know that angelic beings are neither gendered nor engendered. Women and men have the same spiritual potential.

That, in a nutshell, is what I mean by “dichotomy resolution.” Well, we can learn a whole lot about the presence-absence dichotomy by understanding how it operates in God’s church today.

Please, turn to I Corinthians 5. The apostle Paul explicitly mentions the presence-absence dichotomy no less than seven times in his writings; we shall look at five of them briefly. My purpose is not to go into detail about the context of these passages. Rather, as I read them, try to get the “big picture” about what the apostle is saying about presence and absence.

1. I Corinthians 5:3 For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed.

2. II Corinthians 5:9 Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.

3. II Corinthians 10:11 Let such a person consider this, that what we are in word by letters when we are absent, such we will also be in deed when we are present.

4. II Corinthians 13:10 Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the authority which the Lord has given me for edification and not for destruction.

5. Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

In all these examples, Paul suggests that the presence-absence dichotomy is largely irrelevant to him in the performance of God’s work. Of course, he, who had trekked over much of the Roman Empire by foot, understood the reality of presence and absence in the physical world. He had witnessed false ministers messing up his work in his absence. He certainly knew he could not be everywhere at once. Physically, presence and absence remained a reality for him.

But he also appreciated that presence and absence were not factors in his God-given authority. He retained the same authority among the truly converted whether He was present with a congregation or absent from it. The truly converted obeyed him whether he was present or absent. His message and his personality were the same in letter and in deed, whether present or absent. In short, the physical realities of presence and absence played no significant role in his ministry to God’s people. He recognized that God is not a slave-master who must be around at all times, either He or His delegate, with a whip in hand to keep His people in line. That is how it works in the world; in His severity, God deals with the reprobate with a whip hand. But, with the converted, He offers the hand of fellowship. A totally different approach.

How does God—Father and Son—maintain Their presence with us?

John 15:19 “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me.”

Skipping down a few verses:

John 14:22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?”

That is, how can You be present with us, but not be present in the world? He did not understand. Christ answers in the next verse:

John 14:23 “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”

That promised indwelling is the result of obedience to God’s law, which of course means previous repentance. Among God’s people, absence makes no operational difference because the same Beings, the Father and Son, are present in each individual member. Their presence becomes in fact an overarching presence—if I can use that image. Or, a glue, actively, yes, dynamically, unifying God’s people.

Along this line, notice John 16, just a page over. Here, Christ tells His disciples that His physical absence will actually be an advantage to them, because—

John 16:7 “[I]f I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.”

Christ and His Father will come to us, making Their home in us, if Christ returns to the Father. In this way, He will be able to be with all His children at once, all of them scattered over the face of the earth, no matter how spread out they may be geographically.

We have all been discomforted at times, reading a prayer request about a person we do not know. We are ignorant of the exact nature of the difficulty, maybe even of where the individual resides. Our knowledge might be spotty; it might be vague. But, we know, through faith, that we can boldly, and effectively, approach the Father about the matter, carrying it to His very throne. We know that God will hear our prayers, even when they are perforce inexplicit and general. This is what I mean when I say that absence—in this case, the absence of information—makes no operational difference. We can still effectively carry on God’s work.

Importantly, the presence of God, through His Holy Spirit, is not only overarching, covering all His people at once. It is also unfailing. Unless we overtly turn away from God, He is always present.

Hebrews 13:5 Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Another place God touches upon this concept of the reliable presence of His Spirit is at Leviticus 26:11-12. You do not need to turn there: I quote this passage because I shall be mentioning the concepts therein later on.

Leviticus 26:11-12 “I will set My tabernacle among you, and My soul shall not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people.”

A clear statement of God’s reliable presence also appears at I Corinthians 10. The thrust of Paul’s comment here is that we can rely on His presence, through thick and thin, because He is faithful. His presence is always there.

I Corinthians 10:13 (The Voice) Any temptation you face will be nothing new. But God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can handle. But He always provides a way of escape so that you will be able to endure.

David noted that God was able to care for him even in the presence of—that is, in the face of—his enemies, as he says in Psalm 23:5.

That is how God assures His presence for all of us: By being present in all of us, never leaving us. He lives within us. Now, that is about as “present” as you can get.

We started out by looking at the presence-absence dichotomy in the first chapter of God’s Word. As I wind down, let us take a look at the end of God’s revelation to us, specifically at Revelation 21. The topic of the chapter is the new heavens and earth—and, at the end, the New Jerusalem.

Revelation 21:3-4 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.”

That resolves a bunch of dichotomies: Those involving death, sorrow, crying.

Revelation 21:4 “There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

As the risk of being pedestrian, I shall mention again that, when God comes on the scene after an absence, things change. When He heard the cry of the children of Israel and set His hand to take their part against the Egyptians, their lives changed quickly and dramatically. You can all think of example after example, not the least being the change God’s presence has made in our individual lives.

The clause “[T]he former things have passed away” signals a major change in things. Verse 3 links that change to the fact that God—and by that term we understand the Father here—the fact that God will be present with mankind. So important is this fact—the fact of God’s presence—that He repeats Himself in verse 3, as if to provide a second witness in the same verse: The Father will dwell with men on the earth.

Drop down to verse 24. The topic is the New Jerusalem.

Revelation 21:24-27 (DLNT) And the nations will walk by its light. And the kings of the earth bring their glory into it. And its gates will never be shut by day—for night will not exist there. And they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. And every defiled thing, and the one doing abomination and falsehood, will never enter into it, but only the ones having been written in the Lamb’s book of life.

The kings of the earth—that is us—will have access to the city. Absent from it, however, will be anything which is defiled. Anything is an extremely inclusive pronoun. Absent as well will be anyone—any spiritual or physical being—who does evil or falsehood.

Please, turn over a page to the last chapter.

Revelation 22:14-15 (DLNT) Blessed are the ones washing their robes so that their right over the tree of life will exist, and they may enter into the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers, and the sexually-immoral ones, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone loving and doing falsehood.

They are all outside—all absent from the city. Over and over again, the Scriptures say that the wicked will come to nothing, while the righteous shall enjoy everything. That is another Scriptural dichotomy, incidentally: everything and nothing. It is as subtle as it is sublime. To see it in its barest outline, compare Revelation 21:7, “He who overcomes shall inherit all things” with Isaiah 41:12. There, God, speaking of Israel, says that those who war against her “shall be as nothing, as a nonexistent thing.”

The unrepentant face annihilation; they face nonexistence; they face nothingness. You cannot be much more “absent” than that. But, as David concluded in Psalm 23:6, the righteous will “dwell in the house of the Lord forever”—forever present with God.