When you read that God is hearing or God
is seeing what comes to your mind beyond the obvious? What if I told you God
the Father has no ears nor eyes for He is Spirit, invisible and non-human (Jn
4:24a)? We kind of forget that don’t we in light of the revelation of Jesus
Christ? Anthropomorphic expressions of human form and traits are often employed
under inspiration to help you and me to relate to the indescribable Yahweh, conveying
theological truths about God to man.
Keep in mind that the birth of Jesus,
the express image of God the Father’s person (Heb 1:3), is still over 2,000
years down the road from our springboard text of Genesis 16:13. After a falling
out with Sarai (Gn 16:6), her maid, Hagar, ran into the desert pregnant with Abram’s
son to get away from the harsh treatment of Sarai (Gn 16:8).
The Angel of the
LORD appeared to her and instructed her to “return and submit” (Gn 16:9); the
LORD would give Hagar the child’s name, Ishmael, meaning “God hears” (Gn
16:11). Ishmael would become the ancestor of the Arabs who are still
hostile towards the Jews today (Gn 16:10, 12), but the line of Christ would be
through Isaac, the son of promise (Gn 17:19). The well where God appeared to her was located somewhere between Kadesh and Bered. Hagar named the well, “Beer Lahai Roi” (Gn 16:14), meaning the “well [beer] of the One who lives and sees me” (BBC).
Then she called the name of the LORD
who spoke to her, You-Are- the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, "Have I also
here seen Him who sees me?" Gn 16:13
The incarnation definitively was not a figure
of speech but the real thing when God the Son was literally clothed in the flesh (Jn
1:14), entering into the world through the womb of a virgin by the name of Mary.
Let’s be clear; the anthropomorphisms are God’s doing, not man’s (2 Pet 1:20-21).
So the authors of Scripture are not dragging God down to man’s level as with
humanism, but the Holy Spirit is providing a framework whereby comprehension is
apprehended. When Jesus comes along, we have the supreme manifestation of God (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3),
and God becomes within our grasp like never before, and we are still left
speechless, spellbound, and awestruck in the words and walk of Jesus Christ, what
a God we love and serve (Jn 3:16; Rom 5:8).
Frankly speaking, if the Holy Spirit
didn’t use this figurative device it would be hard to relate to a Spirit being,
right? Just a few examples of anthropomorphic expressions utilized are the hand
of God, the face of God, the mind of the LORD, the arm of the LORD, the finger
of God, the mouth of God, the eyes of the LORD, and so forth. We have to keep
in mind when we read these descriptions that God is definitely not a
human being. But one thing is for sure, with Jesus’ incarnation He became the
God-Man, all God, all man, yet without sin (Heb 4:15)!!
Yesterday early afternoon, I was looking
out my back window at the deck from the great room while on a telephone call. From
out of nowhere, an 8.5x11 piece of paper came floating off the roofed portion
of our back deck and landed on the open deck area. It was a letter to one of my neighbors who
lived up and across the street from me, some 50-plus yards away. My mind went from “what”
in the world to “how” in the world did this letter wind up on my roof two stories high and landed on the deck the very moment I was looking out the window?!
Okay, I am thinking of Ripley’s Believe It or Not here? Believe me, it happened.
Theories started running through my
mind. Did the garbage pickup collect my neighbor’s trash before or after me?
Keep in mind that trash pickup is on Monday; this paper blew off my roof on
Wednesday around 12:35 PM. In its wind-blown migration, it looked as if a
vehicle had run over it, and somehow it took to the air and landed on my roof
with the journey ending on my back deck!
I do not want the recipient of this
letter to think that I am complaining that he needs to do a better job of
containing his trash by returning his formerly “thought it was disposed of” letter.
If you ever watched sanitation workers, they sling those garbage bags quickly.
They are good at making sure that your trash is collected, but if a piece of
paper falls on the road in the process, they normally will leave it, and
perhaps even rationalize that the homeowner should have done a better job
bagging his or her trash. Whatever the reason, trash becomes litter.
What if this letter had sensitive
content? If I thought it did, I probably would just throw it in the trash as
was the original owner’s intent. He thought he had trashed it, but it was
flying around in the neighborhood instead, unbeknownst to him! This is why we make
it a practice in our home to shred all sensitive material to maintain privacy,
a term rapidly disappearing if not gone already.
As we have learned during this
presidential campaign, things done in secret are being made public continually,
not a surprise. Nothing is sacred or secure anymore! If it is not for the
governmental snooping, it is the Hacks R Us. This brings me to where I am going
with God hears and sees.
Let’s not forget a certain attribute of
our Lord – omniscience or all-knowing. God is not evolving; He is not learning;
He is not taken by surprise or blindsided for He is immutable or eternally
unchanging (Mal 3:6; Heb 13:8). All of God’s perfections are eternal in nature.
Ponder this question; has it ever occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to
God? It reveals the disparity between all-knowing and knowing nothing! He is in
the know of everything, unlike us, and He knows even before it ever takes place.
It’s called foreknowledge.
We can’t use reverse psychology on God;
we can’t play gotcha on Him; we cannot win a debate against Him, we can’t
overpower Him with our feeble intellect; nor can we keep a secret from Him. He
is so completely “other than” that it is futile to think we comprehend Him
completely (Rom 11:33-34). The I AM is infinite; we are not! We are full of,
dare I say it, limitations!
What we can understand is the revelation
of God from Scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit, but even that is
challenging at times for our limited capacity (cf. Isa 55:9) and our own sinfulness (Psa 51:5) plague us so. One thing we learn from Scripture is that there are absolutely
no secrets, good or bad, that we can keep from God; nothing is opaque,
obstructed, or obscured (cf. Jer 17:10; Psa 139:12). All the chamber
rooms of our being are open to Him, and there is nothing to prevent Him in the
knowledge of anything. So, why do we sin? It’s a rhetorical question! Have we no
shame? God sees every thought and deed!
Barclay suggested there are three people
we attempt to hide things: ourselves, others, and God. We have a tendency to forget
that God hears and sees; Hagar experienced firsthand that God is all-knowing
and everywhere present (cf. Gn 16:13) though she probably didn’t think in those
terms. We do good to keep this in mind that God hears and sees all and is right
there with us everywhere we go (Heb 13:5); hears and sees suggest proximity;
doesn’t it? God knows what we are thinking and everywhere we travel and knows
if we are hurting or not.
The true motive of every heart will one
day be revealed either in this life or on judgment day. It’s best for us to
take that truth to heart because it is based on the authority of the Word and
not from a heart that is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked like
mine (Jer 17:9; cf. Jer 17:5; Prov 28:26).
Speaking of our heart, “Who can know
it?” Jeremiah asked (Jer 17:9b). No man or woman can plummet the depths of his
or her depraved nature! “Know thyself” is futile. Even the Apostle Paul wrestled
with the wretchedness of his sinful nature (Rom7:24), but rather than turning
inward to an abysmally deep dark hole chasing rabbits, he knew to turn to his
Deliverer (Rom 7:25) ….
Behold, the LORD's hand is not
shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. Isa 59:1
“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. Jer 23:24
Are you in
the desert or weeds of the world running from God? Are you playing secret agent
thinking you have everybody fooled? Are you frustrated and on the verge of
giving up? Are you up against a wall just wanting to run away as fast and as
far as you can even if you don’t have a clue where you are going? Running away
from God has no destination but emptiness and futility, not to mention the
absence of peace, joy, and contentment. Temporal undertakings accomplish nothing
of eternal substance.
What Hagar
experienced at the well of Lahai Roi was a Christophany or a manifestation of
the pre-incarnate Christ, the Angel of the LORD. The very God we love, worship, and serve today paid Hagar a visit at the
well so long ago, and she learned something very incredible about the LORD; He is a God who
hears and sees. Jesus is the God who hears and sees!!
There is not a cry from a broken heart that He does not hear;
there is not a place where we can go that He does not see us. We are not going
to be able to shake Him, and that’s a good thing (Heb 13:5). We are not going
to cause Him to un-love us (Rom 8:38, 39). Secret agents beware; we are not
going to get away with anything! Eventually, the “privacy” we are banking on
lands on someone’s deck, or it is revealed at the judgment when this life is over.
One way or another, the quality of our thinking, speaking, and doing will be
revealed.
If you are faithful, don't quit! If you are
in the weeds or in the middle of between no and where, God hears and sees. If
you are hurting, God hears. In the middle of nowhere, He heard Hagar’s hurting. The
best thing we could do is to return to Him and submit, and life is never the
same. God hears, and God sees; they are not metaphors; they are wonderful,
awesome truths! Return and submit and be set free. <><
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PS: I took the letter over to my neighbor and shared with him the story; we shook our heads and had a hearty laugh. I walked back home and published this article. God was communicating to me via “air mail,” and I am just passing it along to you.
