Belief In Practice 3: The All Seeing God

That God sees and knows all things has a number of major implications for our lives in practice.

No Secret Sins

Job knew this, and therefore, he commented, it was impossible that, e.g., he would lust after a woman, if he really believed (as he claimed he did) that God was omniscient. " Why then should I think upon a young girl [as the friends implied he had done]?...does not he [God] see my ways, and count all my steps?" (Job 31:4). Proverbs 5:20,21 makes the same warning against being “ravished with a strange woman”, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his goings”. Also in the context of sexual sin, David could say that his awareness of his sin was ‘ever before him’ (Ps. 51:3); and also that he sensed God ‘ever before him’ (Ps. 16:8). A sense of the real presence of God leads us to an awareness of our sins. Likewise God had to remind Israel: " Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? ...do not I fill heaven and earth?" (Jer. 23:24). The context is appealing to the people to quit their sins. We should labour to enter the Kingdom, because God knows absolutely every thought and action of ours and will ultimately judge them (Heb. 4:11-13). The Sermon on the Mount is really based around translating the knowledge that God sees and knows all things into practice. Our thoughts are equivalent to our actions; and yet often we think that the fact we are clever enough not to express them in action is somehow a lesser failure. And yet God sees our thought afar off. Realizing this will help us avoid the greatest danger in the religious life: to have an outward form of spirituality, when within we are dead. Note how the Lord Jesus begins each of His letters to the churches with the rubric: " I know…" ; His omniscience of His people ought to motivate to appropriate behaviour. His criticisms of those ecclesias imply that they didn't appreciate the fact that He knew them and their ways. Hannah had reflected upon God's omniscience; and on this basis she tells Peninah not to be proud and not to use hard words against her, exactly because of this: " Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not hardness [AVmg.] come out of your mouth: for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed" here and now, because He sees and knows all things (1 Sam. 2:3).

Fred Barling commented: " What God loves is the man who is genuine through and through; in whom the " without" and the " within" are really one; whose dominant persuasion is, " Thou God seest me" " . The Hebrew language reflects certain realities about the nature of God's ways. The common Hebrew word for 'to see', especially when used about God's 'seeing', means also 'to provide'. Abraham comforted Isaac that " God will see for himself [AV 'provide'] the lamb" (Gen. 22:8 RVmg.); and thus the RVmg. interprets 'Jehovah-Jireh' as meaning 'the Lord will see, or provide' (Gen. 22:14). The same word is used when Saul asks his servants to " provide" him a man (1 Sam. 16:17). When Hagar said " You God see me" (Gen. 16:13), she was expressing her gratitude for His provision for her. What this means in practice is that the fact God sees and knows all things means that He can and will therefore and thereby provide for us in the circumstances of life; for He sees and knows all things.

Openness With God

The fact God sees and knows all means that we might as well open our lives up before Him in prayer and meditation. Jeremiah " revealed my cause" before the Lord because he knew that God " tries the reins and the heart" (Jer. 11:20). This may be why men like Jeremiah were somewhat 'rough' with God; whatever they felt about God, they told Him. They so knew that God knew their thoughts....there was and is no point in saying fine words to God in prayer, whilst feeling harder about Him in ones heart. the Psalmists talk to God in a far 'rougher' way than we do. They pour out their feelings, their anger and frustration with their enemies, their inability to understand how God is working…and they let it all hang down. They seem to have no reserve with God; they talk to Him as if He is their friend and acquaintance.

This openness with God is what must have lead some of the great heroes of faith to apparently openly question God. Jeremiah complains that Zion has no comforter (Lam. 1:9 RV)- in clear reference to the prophecies of Is. 40:1 that when Judah went into captivity, they would have a comforter. When Jeremiah complains that “The comforter that should refresh my soul is far from me” (Lam. 1:16) he is surely saying ‘The prophesied comforter of Isaiah just simply hasn’t come!’. He had his doubts- and he expresses them openly. Elisha likewise has an apparent roughness with the Almighty that could only surely come from his knowing that God fully viewed and knew his inner feelings. “Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” (2 Kings 6:33 RV) expresses his exasperation, in words which are quite shocking to read- until we realize that our own hearts have probably harboured such basic feelings, even though never verbalized.

Our Words

Paul twice assures his readers that he speaks the truth because he is speaking in the sight / presence of God (2 Cor. 2:17; 12:19). The fact God is everywhere present through His Spirit, that He exists, should lead us at the very least to be truthful. In the day of judgment, a condemned Israel will know that God heard their every word; but if we accept that fact now then we will be influenced in our words now. And by our words we will be justified (Ez. 35:12). Reflection upon the omniscience of God leads us to marvel at His sensitivity to human behaviour. He noticed even the body language of the women in Is. 3:16- and condemned them for the way they walked. This is how closely He observes human behaviour. Because God sees and knows absolutely all, we must recognize that He realizes the unspoken implications of our words.

Honesty In Business

In the midst of a section of Proverbs exhorting us to being honest in business, using just weights and not pushing down the price of what you want to purchase, we read: “The hearing eye, and the seeing ear, the Lord hath made even both of them” (Prov. 20:12). Surely the point is that the Lord knows all things, as evidenced by His creation of our senses; and therefore we should be above board in all our dealings.

Humility

The fact that God’s Angelic-eyes “observe us” should make us humble, not only mindful of how we behave. We are naked before Almighty God. Hence the proud should not exalt themselves, exactly because “His eyes observe the nations” (Ps. 66:7 RV).

Faith In Prayer

If God really does see and know all things, then He surely hears prayer. We raise our eyebrows when we read David’s desperate prayer: “Don't be deaf unto me” (Ps. 28:1). He who made the ear shall surely hear. God of course isn’t deaf- and just as surely and obviously, He will likewise hear prayer.