The All-Seeing Eyes of God

If you have been here at all during the last 2 weeks, you should already have a pretty good idea as to where we will be at this morning, Exodus 2:23-25. In these last 2 weeks, we have talked a lot about suffering, we’ve talked a lot about the God who is there, the God who hears our every cry and does not forget the covenant that He has made. We have truly seen that we serve a loving God and that while suffering may sometimes cloud our ability to see God move, suffering does not prevent God from moving. The greatness of our God can often be best seen in contrast to the rain cloud of affliction that may be in our lives. Let’s go ahead and read Exodus 2:23-25

Exodus 2:23–25 ESV

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

Verse 25 is what we will be zeroing in on today and it’s the shortest verse that we have looked at, only 9 words in the ESV translation but it has so much to say today and I want to look at these 9 words from 2 directions: A positive direction for the People of God and a negative direction for unbelievers and the world. What we see in these 9 words is the all-seeing eye of God. Nothing escapes His notice, from that which is done on the largest stage in the universe to that which is done in the privacy of one’s own bedroom, God sees and knows all things. For believers, this is one of the sweetest comforts that we possess in our heavenly arsenal but for the unbeliever, this should cause you to lose sleep at night! God does more than just see you when you’re sleeping and knowing when you are awake, He knows you to the absolute core of your being. He knows you better than you know yourself! He knew you before time began and He knows the number of hairs on your head and He knows the exact second that you will die. Those 9 words, “God saw the people of Israel- and God knew” should cause us to do a lot of soul searching. When we read those last few words, that God knew, we see really a continuation of what we read last week. For God to see and for God to know means that the time has come for God to act. One commentator said that the culmiation of all that we have read has led to this conclusion: God refuses to sit back as if He has no responsibility for the welfare of His people. It is as if God were to say, this is my People, the People of my covenant and I cannot let the situation that they are in to continue. As I mentioned earlier, I want to look at this reality from 2 perspectives: I want us to first see the positive of this and then I want to look at the negative of it. Let’s first look at how this is a positive for the People of God.

The Positive of God’s Seeing (Examples of Zacchaeus and Nathanael)

What does it mean for God to see and know the People of God? It means that God has seen every little thing that you and I have ever done. He has seen everything we are doing and He sees everything that we are going to do. Now here is the beauty in this: For Christ to have seen me from one end of eternity to the next, for Him to see everything that I have done, to see the things that I would never want anyone to know about, to see the things that I even attempt to hide from myself, and still go to the cross, that’s a love that’s completely alien to worldly love! It blows my mind to know that I can say the things that I’ve said, do the things I do, think the thoughts I think and despite all that, God says, “You know what? I absolutely love you and I know you and you are mine.” Amazing love, how can it be? That you my God would die for me! Indeed, how can it be? Our salvation is possible because God Himself has sought us out. God sees us long before we see Him. God knows us long before we know a single thing about ourselves. And this isn’t just a case by case reality for Christians; no, this is the reality of every single Christian to have ever walked the Earth. God Himself has set His sight on you! Allow me to share 2 examples from the Gospels and the first one comes from the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. I’m sure that many of you are already familiar with the story of Zacchaeus or maybe you’ve heard a song about him that I’m sure drove him crazy as he got older, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.” Notice what Luke writes in Luke 19:5 “And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’” Zacchaeus climbed so that he could see Jesus but it is Jesus who looks up and sees him! See him? How could Christ have missed him? He’s had His eyes on him for all eternity! Luke 19:1 says that Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through but He was passing through because His eyes had already been set on Zacchaeus! Notice the next remarkable thing in verse 15, not only does Christ see Zacchaeus, He already knows Zacchaeus! What does Christ say? He says, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” From what we can see, it’s not like someone was near Jesus and say, “Ugh look at Zacchaeus climbing trees again!” No, Christ already knew the man because He had known him from before time began! His name was written in the book of life so of course the Son of God already knew him! He knew the life that Zacchaeus lived, He knew the reputation that He had, He knew that he was a sinner, but nothing would stop Christ from seeing that which He had His eyes set on before time began. Yet even this isn’t everything! It is one thing for us to be seen by Christ, it is another thing for Christ to come to us where we are, in our dirt, in our mess, in our homes, and in our lives. Jesus says, I must stay at your house today! Nothing would prevent the Sovereign God from accomplishing this! For us to be saved is for God to say, I must! I must come into the heart of this man or this woman and even if the world is to grumble against us, like it grumbled against Christ going to Zaccheaus, it does not matter because salvation has come to us, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost!” The second example that I want us to look at is in John 1:45-49, it is the calling of Nathanael. John writes,

John 1:45–49 (ESV)

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Notice Nathanael’s question to Christ’s statement. “How do you know me?” We may look at Christ’s words and be wondering the same thing, how does that statement from Nathanael come from Jesus saying, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Jesus’ words say far more about Nathanael than we might recognize and for times’ sake, I’ll let John MacArthur answer the question that I first posed. MacArthur writes of Nathanael, “His heart was not poisoned by deceit. He was no hypocrite. His love for God, and his desire to see the Messiah were genuine. Here was an authentic Jew, one of the true spiritual offspring of Abraham. Here was one who worshiped the true and living God without deceit and without hypocrisy. Nathanael was the authentic item.” Christ’s statement to Nathanael recognizes his sincerity of heart and this is what cuased Nathanael to ask Him how He knew him. Notice though that there are 2 seeings in this section. Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards Him but then there is a second sight in verse 48. How does Jesus know these things about Nathanael? Christ gives the answer, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael’s response to that is remarkable, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!” Doesn’t that response seem a bit extreme? To go from, “I saw you under a tree” to “You are the Son of God” may seem like a bit of a stretch, but it is an entirely appropriate response and here’s why, I’ll try to explain it as quickly as I can: In the time of Jesus, houses were not as luxorius as the houses that we see today and they were usually filled with not just your own immediate family but your extended family was usually in the same house or at least on your property, so the house was never a quiet place to be but not only was it loud, it was also fairly smokey. It would take a very long time to cook food in those days so a fire would almost always be burning. Now I don’t know about you, but when I need to work, I usually don’t get as much done at home as I would in my office. I remember fairly recently, Benji saw my iPad and my wireless keyboard and he said to me, “Daddy, sometimes you work at home and sometimes I leave you alone.” Any parent knows how hard it is to have quiet time in their own home, imagine how hard it would be in a 1st century home with not just multiple kids but multiple families! So, what would someone do during this time if they wanted to go and be alone with the Lord or to use the language of our day, have their quiet time? Well, they would usually go out into the country side, find a nice shady spot, sit down, and be alone with God. Do you see now exactly what Christ was saying to Nathanael? He wasn’t just saying, “Nate, I saw you sitting under a tree.” He was saying, “Nathanael, I saw you in the one place you would go where no one else would go, to be with the Lord. The most intimate place that you could go, I have seen you there and now I have come to you.” What does this mean for us? The same thing it meant for Nathanael, God has seen us in the place where we are the absolute most vulnerable. He has seen us in the place where we go to shed our tears, He has seen us in the place that we are most earnest for Him, He has seen you and He has not and will not ever stop seeing you. Salvation always begins with God seeing us first. He sees Peter and Andrew in Matthew 4:18, He saw the paralyzed man in John 5:6, Jesus saw Peter as he denied Him in Luke 22:61, Jesus saw Paul on the rode to Damascus, Jesus sees the crowd and has compassion in Matthew 9:36, Jesus sees and He doesn’t stop seeing. God has seen you where you are and He sees where you are going. We’ll come back to this more in a little bit but I want us to now look at the negative side of God seeing and knowing.

The Negative of God’s Seeing (Genesis 18)

What is the negative side of God’s all-seeing eye? If we look at it from the perspective of Exodus 2:25, we know that not only did God see the Israelites, He saw every wrong that was happening to them. He saw every act of hatred, every act of mockery, He saw every sin and because of this, His wrath is about to be brought down on those that have sinned against Him and have sought to destroy His people. Our God is a God of justice. He will not let a single sin go unaccounted for or have a single sin fail to face judgment. If you are a sinner who has not been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, understand that you have not escaped God’s sight. There is nothing you have done which God has missed, those sins that you hold so tightly to and cling to in private, God already knows. Nothing is ever done in private. Jesus says in Luke 8:17 “For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” We must understand, the wrath of God is coming. He has seen what is happening on the face of the Earth and the moment is coming where He will act in judgment. I get tired of hearing people say that we shouldn’t talk about God’s wrath and should only talk about His love and mercy. I get tired of going to youth events where teenagers are encouraged to just try a little better and not to abhor sin. I’ve been to far too many youth events and youth camps where God’s wrath and judgment are completely and totally ignored. James Montgomery Boice said, “We need to recover a sense of sin. We need to discover how desperate our condition is apart from God. We need to know that God’s wrath is not an outmoded theological construct but a terrible and impending reality. We need to come out of our sad fantasy world and begin to tremble before the awesome holiness of our almighty Judge.” Someone once told me that I was a fire and brimstone preacher and I’ll amen to that because we don’t have enough of that today! People laugh at the idea that God will come in judgment, they assume that they are totally free to live in any way that they want with no consequences but God’s wrath will be poured out on sin. Sin cannot stand in His presence and either Christ will atone for it or you will have to pay for it in full. Look in your Bibles at one of the greatest examples of judgment that can be seen in Scripture: The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 18:20-21 “Then the Lord said, ‘Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.’” We know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. We know that the Lord told Abraham that He would spare the cities if He found 5 righteous people within the walls and this didn’t happen. The only ones that made it out alive were Lot and his 2 daughters. What can we learn from this? God already knew the state of Sodom and Gomorrah. He already knew what He was going to do. Why did He go to see it? He went to see if the sins of these people had reached their highest point. John Calvin said, “The Lord was about to see whether they were altogether desperate, as having precipitated themselves into the lowest depths of evil; or whether they were still in the midst of a course, from which it was possible for them to be recalled to a sound mind.” Basically, he is saying, God was going to see firsthand if there was anything redemable in these people and if the hights of their sinfulness had been reached. In other words, God was seeing to it that Sodom and Gomorrah received a fair trial. No one will ever receive an unjust trial before God’s tribunal. Believers will be judged according to Christ’s righteousness while unbelievers will be judged by their unrighteousness. No one will be able to say to God, “God that isn’t fair.” Unbelievers receive exactly what is just, fair, and right. Non-Christians need to understand that in the words of Jonathan Edwards, they are sinners in the hands of an angry God. Edwards said that the wrath of God was like a raging river that is pressing up a dam and the only thing that is keeping that dam from busting open is the mercy and patience of a forgiving God. Edwards also said, “There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.” What are we to do about this? Unbelievers must understand these 2 things:

1. God’s wrath could be poured on unbelievers at any moment

These things are written down for our instruction. As we saw in Exodus 2, God is about to act. He will not allow His name or His people to be dragged through the mud forever. There will be a time where HIs patience will run out and His wrath could be poured on you at any moment. You are here by divine mercy. You woke up today because God has allowed you to. One of my favorite pastors, Steven Lawson, has said that there are ultimately 2 appointments in life: the first is that by God’s divine will, you are here this day and you are hearing the Gospel message preached. The second appointment is what we read of in Hebrews 9:27 “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” You are here because God has allowed you to be and according to His divine will you are here to hear how you might escape the wrath that is to come because time is running short. Salvation is ultimately closer now than when we first believed as the Apostle Paul said. Every single human being will face judgment one day. No one will escape. We will all stand before the judgment seat and have to answer for what we have done and for some of you, that judgment will arrive sooner than others. For some of you, the hourglass of time that you have left is running out and there is less sand in it than there once was. The time is coming when the last pebble of sand will drop and with it, the last chance to escape the wrath and judgment that is to come. If you have yet to come to Christ, do it while there’s still time, I always assume that no matter when or where I preach, there is someone there who is not a Christian and I implore you to turn to Christ and live. Recognize that you have fallen short of God and your only chance of salvation is through Christ alone! You must be born again! Even if you are a Christian right now, you should never grow tired of hearing this message! I love the story of how a woman once asked George Whitefield, “Mr. Whitefield, why do you keep preaching to us that we must be born again?” And Whitefield simply replied, “Because madam, you must be born again!” We as Christians won’t be judged by our works, we will be judged by the finished work of Christ.

2. Just because there is peace now does not mean that you have escaped judgment.

The second thing that unbelievers must understand is that just because there is peace now does not mean that they have escaped judgment. Jeremiah 8:11-12 “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.” The priests and the false teachers of Jeremiah’s day repeatedly told the people that there was nothing to worry about! They would have peace and God would surely not punish them but even if there was peace in the time of Jeremiah, that peace would not last. God was on the move and He was going moving to judge the wicked. Just because you have a nice house and a nice car and a thick wallet and everything seems to be going for you, do not assume that you have escaped judgment. In fact, we shouldn’t assume that the United States will escape judgment. We are fortunate to live in this country but look at what this country does! What is it that Billy Graham said? If God does not judge America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. This nation does things that would make Sodom blush! Who is to say that God’s wrath is not being poured out on this country now? Who is to say that it won’t be poured on it tomorrow? Psalm 130:3 says, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” The only thing that we can do is trust that God would continue to be patient and continue to be merciful, even to those that do not deserve it. Psalm 130:4-5 “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.” The time is coming where God’s patience with unbelievers will run out. There is a day circled on the calendar of Heaven where God’s wrath will be poured out on unbelievers and man will stand before the judgment seat of God Almighty. Just because there is peace now does not mean that you have escaped the all-seeing, all-knowing eye of God.

Worshipping the All-Seeing God (Ex 4:31)

How are we to respond to this? Really there’s only 2 options. There’s the negative which we see in Exodus 5:2a “But Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice.’” This is the cry of every unbeliever. Who is the Lord that I should obey Him? Who is this God that thinks He can challenge me? Who is this God in comparison to me? Pharaoh may have been the most powerful man in the world but God made an example of him just as He will make an example of all of the wicked. Paul Washer said that the very first thing that unbelievers will hear as they take their first step into hell is all of creation praising God because He has rid the earth of them. Pharaoh would learn very quickly who this God was but just like the demons, that head knowledge does nothing. If all you have is head knowledge of Christ and it hasn’t penetrated you to the core, that knowledge means nothing. You must be born again. The second option is what we see in Exodus 4:31 “And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.” To be seen by this God pushes the People of God to worship. How do we respond to the God who hears? Who remembers? Who sees? Who knows? With belief, praise and worship. With a humble recognition of who we are and the greatness of the God we serve. Has the Lord inclined you heart to recognize who He is and to worship Him? Have you seen Him that has seen you for all eternity and will you turn to Him and live? George Whitefield would often preach with tears in his eyes as he warned unbelievers about the wrath that was to come. He couldn’t bear the thought of even one soul going to hell unwarned or unprayed for but he also preached with tears as he spoke of the unsurpassed grace and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ because that reality was so beautiful to him. Today, that grace and mercy is offered to you. Now is the time to confess sin and embrace the new covenant life in Jesus Christ. If you have not yet done that, don’t let this minute pass you by! Come and embrace the God who has seen you and knows you. Let’s pray.