Comments on the Nearness of God from Acts 17 Sermon

… attested by his hearers’ consciousness, and by many a saying of thinkers and poets, that the failure to find God does not arise from His hiding Himself in some remote obscurity. Men are plunged, as it were, in the ocean of God, encompassed by Him as an atmosphere, and-highest thought of all, and not strange to Greek thought of the nobler sort-kindred with Him as both drawing life from Him and being in His image. Whence, then, but from their own fault, could men have failed to find God? If He is ‘unknown,’ it is not because He has shrouded Himself in darkness, but because they do not love the light.

MacLaren, Alexander. “Commentary on Acts 17”. MacLaren’s Expositions of Holy Scripture. https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/mac/acts-17.html.


The nearness of God to man is a teaching of revelation. Look back to the record of the Garden of Eden, and see an early evidence there of God’s nearness to man. Adam, having transgressed, hid himself among the trees of the garden; but in his hiding-place God sought him, and the voice of the Lord God was heard, walking among the trees of the garden, and saying, “Adam, where art thou?” Man will not seek God, but God seeks man. Though man’s voice is not, “Where is my God?” yet God’s voice is, “Adam, where art thou?” All through history God has been familiar with man. … “he present in the transactions of every day.” (Spurgeon)

Spurgeon, Charles H. “God’s Nearness to Us.” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 33, July 17, 1887, from the Spurgeon Center, https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/gods-nearness-to-us/#flipbook/.