And God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. God saw that the light was good…..
Genesis 1.3-4
There are many attributes of our great God that are revealed to us in the pages of scripture and each and every one is of vital importance and reveals something of his character and his interaction with the world that he has made.
In passing, an interesting way of assessing our knowledge of the amazing breadth, depth, length and height of our God is to see if we can identify, at least one aspect of his being for each letter of the alphabet. Such an exercise should at the very least cause us to bow before him in wonder love and praise.
Over the next few days I want to focus on one of the two attributes revealed in the verses above, namely that God saw or in other words God is the God who sees.
In Genesis chapter one we read that ‘God said’ eleven times. Our God is a speaking God unlike the idols created by mankind after the fall, blocks of wood or stone. He is a speaking God and has made his words known to us in the pages of our Bibles.
Possibly, slightly less prominent in our thinking, we read, again in chapter one that ‘God saw’ seven times. This again sets him apart from all man-made gods and idols and it is something which should humble, challenge and excite us as we follow just a few of the hundreds of places where we are told that ‘God saw.’ God is the God who sees.
Here in Genesis 1 we note that what God saw was good or very good but the next time, at least in the NIV translation, we find the words ‘God saw’ is in Genesis 6.12 where we read ‘God saw how corrupt the earth had become for all people on earth had corrupted their ways.’
We don’t know the precise timescale of this move from very good to very corrupt but we do know the source, for when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in Eden they hid from the Lord God from the one who sees and the downward spiral began.
As we look at our world it is tragic to see that the corruption noted in Genesis 6 is still rampant today and while Adam and Eve, were ashamed and hid from the all-seeing God, for the majority today there is no sense of shame, no desire to hide from God for the one who sees has been rejected as outmoded and irrelevant in their lives.
We may feel at times that we want to hide as we reflect on the holiness of God and that is initially a right response but we have no need to hide, for at the cross, believers are made righteous, so God sees us as it were through the lens of Jesus and his death for us.
So let us take courage and comfort from the fact that God is a God who sees us in that light.