God’s Eyes

The Bible tells us that no one has at any time seen God. It also states that God is a spirit. Since God is a spirit, and therefor does not have a body, in order for us to understand God, His character and attributes, He uses things that you and I can understand. This is why we notice in Scripture the “eyes” of the Lord, the “hand” of God, the “arm” of God, etc. There are many things that we can learn from scripture about the eyes of God.

The first thing we must know about the eyes of the Lord is that they are everywhere at every time. Read 2 Chronicles 16:9 and Proverbs 15:3. Man today with all the technological advances in satellites can observe just about any place on earth and with great accuracy. But only God can see everything, every place ALL AT ONCE. ONLY God can see that which man can never see. Jeremiah 17:10. The thought that God can see everything should strike terror in the heart of the ungodly, but not in the heart of the Child of God. The fact that our Heavenly Father sees every thing should be the most comforting thought. On the one hand God sees all of our heartaches, trials, temptations, needs, etc., etc.. On the other hand He also sees our sins and even our attitudes. We want our Heavenly Father to see only our trials and circumstances and not our sins, but it does not work that way. Actually, what kind of Father would He be if He did not also see our sin and correct us?! Job 34:21 and Psalms 11:4

Our greatest desire should be that expressed by David in 2 Samuel 15:25. Often, in the natural, children are very well behaved when their parent are around but are terrors when they are not watching. They are obedient either out of fear or out of love. Our Heavenly Father wants us to be obedient out of love. We often sing the hymn or chorus “Oh how I love Jesus.” Do you REALLY “love Jesus”?! Jesus states categorically in John 14:15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” The measure of my love for Christ is expressed in my obedience to His Word. You might also say for those who love math, - the measure of my love for Christ is directly proportionate to my obedience to His Word. David expressed his desire to find favor in the eyes of the Lord and in 1 Kings 15:5 we find the testimony that he did indeed “find favor in the eyes of the Lord.” We should be concerned with finding favor in the eyes of the Lord and not in the eyes of man. Some times we worry so much about what our classmates and friends think about us instead of what our Heavenly Father thinks of us.

In the book of Revelation three times we see the Lord Jesus Christ as having “eyes like a flame of fire” (1:14; 2:18 and 19:12) This teaches us two things about our loving Savior. One we mentioned, and that is, that He sees what no other person can see. His eyes are penetrating. Some times we look at our lives and we measure ourselves by ourselves and Paul says that is not good. What do we mean by measuring ourselves against ourselves? We might look at our lives (our actions) and we say; “I am better than I was”. Well, it’s good to know that we are improving, but that is not the correct measurement. But the eyes of Christ PENETRATE inside our hearts and discerns, recognizes our motives or the REASON we do what we do. For example, I might ask my daughter to clean the car for me and she does it. I will look at that and say; “what an obedient daughter,” but suppose she was actually doing it because she wanted to go swimming. There is nothing wrong with that necessarily but God sees the real motive. In our lives we must be like David again and ask “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties” Psalm 139:23. You see, our desire should be to please God and God is not pleased by our ACTIONS necessarily as much as by our ATTITUDE.

The same applies to the way we look at other people. Sometimes we look at other people and we make a judgment that the person is better or worse than before. Notice again the wrong measurement, but also remember that God’s eyes penetrate and He sees the heart. Often we must ask the Lord to see things as He sees things so that we can love and help others.

The other thing that the “eyes of fire” teach us about our Savior is that His eyes not only penetrate but they also purify or cleanse. This is another unique characteristic of the eyes of God. Only God’s eyes can penetrate to the heart and ONLY God’s eyes can purify. This is awesome! We might see something in our brother’s life but we do not have the power or ability to change it. Not so with Christ! He sees the things in your life that need to be corrected and HE will correct them if we allow Him to. Job learned this in his life. “He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” Job 23:10. Notice that he recognizes that the Lord KNOWS, but He also test or purifies. Praise His wonderful name! Remember also that “His eye is on the sparrow and He watches over you”.

RC