Proverbs 15:3, Dare To Be Alone With God!
September 9, Proverbs 15:3
Psalm 139 “The ways of man are before the Lord, and he ponders all his goings” (Ps. 5:21).
Dare To Be Alone With God!
The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding… (15:3). “Secret sins, services and sorrows, are under His eye. This speaks comfort to saints, but terror to sinners” (Henry). God will judge men by the sight of His eyes (Ps.1:6; 11:4).
1. This Figure Defined: The Almighty Observer is one way of describing the true God. The Bible uses anthropomorphic language to describe some of the attributes of God. In order that we can relate to this Infinite God, the Holy Spirit ascribes bodily parts to God. They are merely figures of speech, and are never to be taken literally. In 15:3 the Spirit speaks of the eyes of the Lord to indicate God’s infinite capacity to know and see everything everywhere. This doctrine goes with another big word, the Omniscience of God (Ps. 147:5). The Bible’s God is a Personal as well as an Infinite Being. He is both in and above His creation (1 Kgs. 8:27). He is the God of truth who yet draws near and communes with us that we might know Him truly, if never fully. It is a mark of God’s condescending grace that He communicates with us as if He were a Man. Otherwise we too would know nothing for sure about God. This also has a very practical effect. It has been, and continues to be, the great spur to morality on the part of God’s people.
2. This Feature Deformed: Cults and false religions pervert the Bible’s God. Mormonism, for instance, teaches, “God the Father is simply a man who achieved godhood.” They justify this by reference to the human language used to describe God. If hands and feet, etc., make God a man, what do Mormons say about God having wings? Does that make God a Big Bird? Buddhism has no absolute god, and is still searching for something or nothing. It teaches the utter and hopeless misery of all conscious existence. Brahman is the supreme god of Hinduism, but is impersonal and completely above all creation and uninvolved with life on earth. This led to the creation of countless other lesser gods with whom the worshippers could relate in some fashion. The same is true in all pagan religions. How often the OT prophets have to rebuke both Israel and Judah for falling into the most horrible practices of idolatry from the neighbouring nations (Isa. 2; Ps. 96:5).
3. This Fact Deflected: Earnest men confess belief in God’s omniscience with their lips, yet no doctrine is more resisted in life. Why are men always trying to put out the eyes of God? Is it not because they prefer “an absentee God, sitting outside the universe, seeing it just go by?” Like the South American Indians, modern man does not want “a God so sharp-eyed. We choose,” said they, “to live in freedom in our woods, without having a perpetual observer over our heads.” Impurity shrinks from conscious purity! Men argue about depravity, but our impulse to hide from God is certain proof of the “fact of the moral lapse of the universe.” Is it not because the idols are blind that men worship them?
Thought: “God not only sees men; he sees through them” (Henry)
Prayer: Thank-you, Lord, for loving me, seeing me through and through as You do.