The God Who Sees Me // The Amazing Names of God, Part 3

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

With life so cluttered with stuff and stuff and stuff these days – it’s easy to get the impression that not only are we too busy, but that God’s too busy to notice what’s going on in our lives. That somehow, He doesn’t see, He doesn’t care.

One of the most dangerous sports on the planet is rock fishing. You know these keen enthusiasts climb down to a rock ledge with the waves crashing all around them and throw their line in hoping to catch a fish.

Me, I just go down to the local fish and chip shop for my fish and I always catch one. Anyway, there they stand hour after hour, the tide comes in inch by inch – and then all of a sudden a massive wave comes from nowhere and sweeps the fisherman off the ledge into an angry ocean. Many drown each year.

Now I want to put you into that rock fisherman’s shoes for just a moment. Imagine that you’re swept off the rock into the ocean. It’s vast. Night’s falling and the current drags you out further and further and further away from land until the shore is just a distant speck. There you are, bobbing around in those dark waters. Planes and helicopters with search lights are flying around, often at a distance but they’re looking in the wrong place. They can’t see you bobbing up and down on the ocean.

A storm comes in, the waves pick up, further and further the lands disappeared by now. Eventually the lights of the aircraft, well they’ve given up for the night. There you are all alone, bobbing up and down in the rough seas. Let me ask you something, how do you feel? What’s going on in your mind?

Pretty scary isn’t it. So near and yet so far. The search planes were out there, they were shining their lights but they just couldn’t see you, and what a tragedy. I can imagine many a person’s drowned in the oceans of this world, not because the rescuer didn’t come looking for them but because the rescuers just couldn’t see them.

This week and next week on the program as well we’re going on a journey of discovery looking at the different names of God throughout the Bible. Why? Because those different names tell us a lot about who God is. And not only who God is in an objective, dispassionate kind of way, but in a practical way – who God is today, here and now in my life, in your life.

Here’s my thinking. If we can discover who God really is, what He tells us about Himself through these different names that we’re going to be looking at, then all of a sudden that’s going to lift our faith to believe not in the God that we’ve constructed in our own imagination; not in who we kind of think God might be, but to trust our lives to the God who actually is.

And today we’re going to unpack the single most encouraging name that I’ve stumbled across in His Word, the Bible. It’s the name God uses for Himself, El-Roi – and that name means literally "The God who sees me".

And over the last two days we’ve been looking at the might, power and creativity of God. On Monday we explored the name Adonai – The Lord God Almighty – the power of God; and then yesterday Elohim – God the Creator – the God who created this massive and yet intricately woven cosmos in which we live.

And the power, rule and authority of God, those are the things that make such a difference in our lives. When the obstacles seem bigger than our God we so need to remember that He is the God above all. He is the God who created it all.

But sometimes, sometimes in our lives we’re like that fisherman bobbing around in the ocean. We can have this sense that we’re out there on our own at the complete mercy of the wind and the storm and the waves and the sharks. God doesn’t feel like He’s anywhere near us, almost like those search planes who gave up looking for us in the middle of the night because they couldn’t see us.

Ever felt like that? See this is why we need to know God. I don’t mean about Him, I mean know Him – in our hearts, in our minds, in our experience. And this is where El-Roi – the God who sees me – is the God you and I need to know.

Hagar was the slave of Abraham and Sarah. Now if you recall God had promised Abraham a son even though he and his wife were well and truly "over the hill" when it came to child bearing. And when this child didn’t come they tried all sorts of things to help God. And one of the schemes they came up with is that Abraham sleeps with Hagar – and so that happens and Hagar has a son. But the moment he’s born, Sarah, Abraham’s wife, becomes jealous and treats Hagar terribly. Have a listen. Genesis chapter 16 beginning at verse 6:

Sarah dealt harshly with her and she ran away from her. The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai."

The angel of the Lord said, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” And the angel of the Lord said to her, “Now you have conceived and shall bear a son. You shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be an wild ass of a man with his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him and he shall live at odds with all his kin.” So she named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-Roi” for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing Him?”

Now, whatever we may think about the morality of what Abraham and Sarah did with Hagar, remember she’s a slave girl, she does as she’s told and then when she falls pregnant she’s abused. This girl is in an incredibly tough spot isn’t she? The pain of the rejection, no unemployment benefits out there in the wilderness where she’s run away.

And out there in this wilderness, in her deep pain the aloneness and the misery, she has an encounter with the angel of the Lord. She wasn’t even one of God’s chosen people. If she had been, she wouldn’t have been a slave. And yet still God, God comes to her in the desert to comfort her and to guide her and to be with her in the midst of her afflictions. And so she names Him El-Roi – You are the God who saw me, You are the God who heard my cry and felt my pain and saw me in the wilderness.

When we’re in that place that Hagar found herself, the last thing, the very last thing we expect is that God should show up there out in our wilderness. And to be sure, sometimes He delays in showing up, and that doesn’t always make sense to us. But here’s the thing. He always sees. There are no circumstances in our lives that escape His fatherly awareness and care. God knows us, God knows our troubles.

When we’re in that wilderness, when we’re bobbing around in the dark ocean, we need to believe in El-Roi – the God who sees us – the God who knows even the number of hairs on our head. This mighty powerful God who on the one hand is above all; on the other hand, he hears our cries and sees our afflictions. And He is there, right there, right here in that place with us.

Not some distant God; not some theoretical God; not some religion; not some disinterested God; not some God who’s too busy with other things, bigger things; not some God who doesn’t care … BUT Elrain – the God who sees us. This is the "God" that God wants to be to you and me, even in the middle of that wilderness experience. In fact, let me say this, especially in the middle of that wilderness experience.