The Eyes Of The Lord

Please open your Bibles to 2 Chronicles 16:1-9 which we will read in a few minutes.

In 2 Chronicles 14 we see King Asa come to power as the king of Judah, the southern kingdom. In the 10th year of his reign a vast army came out against Judah and King Asa prayed the LORD the God of Israel for deliverance and the LORD delivered the opposing army into the hands of the army of Judah.

It was a great victory brought about by a great trust in the One and only true God.

King Asa spent the next five years removing all of the idols and places of pagan worship from the land and after that there were 20 years of peace.

2 Chronicles 15:19 says, “There was no more war until the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign.”

With that in mind let’s go ahead and read: 2 Chronicles 16:1-9

Now, King Asa was one of the few good kings after the reign of King David but it is a great warning to us as individuals and as a nation to trust in anyone other than the God of the Bible. But, that’s not what we’re looking at today. Today, let’s take a look at the first part of :

2 Chronicles 16:9 NIV

“For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.”

What does that mean, “the eyes of the LORD”? Jesus Himself said in John 4:24 God is Spirit …” Does God who is a Spirit have eyes?

Yet, the phrase “the eyes of the LORD” and “in the sight of the LORD” occurs 92 times in the Bible.

Of course we know that Jesus came to earth and took on a human body. He was and is incarnate. Incarnate simply means “in the flesh”.

God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, took on flesh and became God the Man, in the flesh, incarnate.

Now, we know that Jesus has actual eyes but many references to the Lord “seeing” are in the Bible and were written long before Jesus came to earth incarnate.

So, before we get into this thing about the Lord seeing but not having eyes there is this long winded word called

Anthropomorphism: God relates to us in human terms.

And it’s a good thing He does relate to us in human terms.

I mean even if God the Spirit did have actual, physical eyes how did David declare that the Lord saw his unformed body while he was still in his mother’s womb?

The fact is that God is so much higher than us that He must explain things in a way that we can grasp. We live in a physical, three dimension world. The Lord created us as physical beings with certain senses and we use those senses to learn and to make determinations.

So, when God wants to indicate that He knows what is happening in our physical world He uses “the eyes of the LORD” as one way to explain it to us.

All through the Bible we know that the Lord sees us, exactly how that happens we don’t know.

For instance, the Bible says that, “God saw that the earth was corrupt and filled with violence.”

Daniel was delivered from death in the lion’s den because the Lord found him to be innocent in His sight.

In the New Testament the Lord saw when Ananias and Sapphria lied to the Holy Spirit.

And, this may be a warning or a blessing but the Lord saw what I did this week and He saw what you did this week.

He sees me now and He sees you now and He knows our spiritual condition.

If He has seen sin in my life He has graciously brought conviction to my heart and made a way for repentance and reconciliation.

If He has seen righteousness in my life He has given me peace.

We often talk about keeping our eyes on the Lord, but we also know that the Lord keeps His “eyes” on us!

Let me ask you a question, when you think about the Lord keeping His eyes on you every moment of every day, is that a comfort to your heart or is it a conviction to your heart?

What got me thinking about all of this is that I heard someone years ago taking about one of our memory Scriptures and that Scripture is:

2 Timothy 3:16-17

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

“God-breathed”. Does God who is a Spirit have lungs?