The God Who Sees
by John Sheeley
Occasionally, someone will post a meme or cartoon on social media which causes others to think, “I feel seen.” While these humorous social media posts are done in jest, they speak to a need most people have, to be seen by others. The desire to be seen and known is something God built into each one of us because we are not meant to be alone in this life. We were created for community and sharing life with others. More importantly, we are created to have a relationship with God who is transcendent, over and above all things and all people, yet immanent, near to us. This greatness of God is most beautifully seen through the person of Jesus Christ.
Does He See Me?
There is a connecting point within us that desires intimacy with the One who created us. We read in the beginning how the Lord would walk with the first couple, Adam and Eve, before their sin caused their banishment from the garden of Eden the Lord created for them. I cannot fathom the depths of despair they felt when the Lord drove them out of Eden to the land where Adam had been formed and placed cherubim to prevent their return.
It was devastating to think their relationship with the Lord could be severed. Did their thoughts ponder that the Lord would never look upon them again? Their rebellion against the Lord surely brought despair, even with the promises given to care for them. Maybe you have had this fear of losing connection with God. Man’s sin in the Fall has had a long-lasting impact on our psyche. Maybe your fear is never being able to connect with God and have him see you in this vast creation of his. Regardless of the reason, all of us are susceptible to these thoughts.
However, we are given promises by our Creator that he has not given up on his creation. This is one of the great hopes we have from his Word. We can look back at the Scriptures which followed after Adam and Eve were banished from the garden and see that the Lord never did give up on his creation. He has never taken his eye off what he made for his purposes. As his eye is ever on the sparrow, it is on mankind.
When We Try to Hide
Our sin might even drive us to try and hide from the Lord. In our foolish hearts, we might think like a child and say, “If I am not looking at God, he can’t see me either!” But we must be reminded that even in the darkness, the Lord sees all (Psalm 11:4). One of the names of the Lord found in Scripture is Jehovah-Jireh, “Yahweh sees.” When we don’t fear God, we flatter ourselves, and that flattery gives us more confidence to sin. We don’t really see ourselves as the Lord sees us, and we are blind to our own sins and what they can do to us.
Generations later, when Abraham passed away, his son Isaac settled at a place called Beer-lahai-roi which means "the well of the Living One who sees me." This was the same place where a messenger of God came to Hagar, the slave who had given birth to Abraham’s son Ishmael. In this place, God let an Egyptian woman know he saw her and her trials and gave her hope. She called the place Beer-lahai-roi, saying, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”
There are many other passages throughout Scripture reminding us that, indeed, God sees us in our affliction. Even in this post-Genesis 3 world of sin and destruction, the Lord sees us always. We can be sure that “The Lord sees everything we do and he knows all our ways.” (Proverbs 5:21) As our Pastor reminded us this weekend, God is omnipresent - He is everywhere at once. David recognized this in Psalm 139 when he wrote, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!”
Seeing and Redeeming
God’s continual watching over his creation is part of the redemption story of the gospel message. He would have been perfectly justified in abandoning us to our rightful punishment, but he is love, and since he loved us, even when we were enemies to him, his plan was always to redeem us through the sacrifice of the Son, Christ Jesus. More evidence that the Lord sees us and is looking after what is his.
This flows over into another arena of the gospel, restoration. We praise God for his redeeming us from our sinful hearts and wickedness, but his watchful eye does not end there. When he redeems us, the Spirit of God comes to restore us to be more like him. That is one of the great promises of the gospel as well, we are not alone in our journey through faith.
When Jesus promised his disciples that he would be with us “always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20), it was a promise that we can call whatever place we are “Beer-lahai-roi” because, as Hagar and Isaac believed, the living God does see us and look after us. There is not a moment the Lord doesn’t know everything about you and all that you are experiencing. Jesus even reminded the disciples that if the Lord could care about the flowers and the birds, he would care no less about his children.
As one author put it, there is one basic plotline of the Bible, “God’s story of redemption, … climaxing in Jesus Christ.” When we look at it from this perspective, we can see how the gospel is a story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, culminating in a new creation. We can also see that as this scarlet thread runs through Scripture, God is seeing you and me through the lens of grace and love desiring us to know him and live in the light of his gospel. We can rest in the assurance that because God is great, we do not have to be.
We are not alone in this world. You can turn to him today and trust in the one who saw you even before you were made in the womb. This gospel changes everything for us, trust in him today.