omniscience. This sermon was first preached on June 15th in the year 1856 by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The text for this evening comes from the book of Genesis chapter 16 verse 13. The God who sees me. There are more eyes fixed on man than he is aware of. He does not see as he is seen. He thinks of himself as being obscure and unobserved, but let him remember that many hold him in full view. Wherever he is, at every instant, there are many whose attention is riveted on everything that he is doing and whose gaze is constantly fixed on his actions. I do not doubt that there are myriads of spirits unseen to us, good spirits and evil spirits, that are watching us tonight. With great attention, the perfect spirits, the good spirits, observe the order of our church service. They listen to our songs. They observe our prayers. It may be that they fly to heaven. to convey to their companions news of any sinners who are born of God. For there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents. Millions of spiritual creatures walk this earth, both when we are awake and when we are sleeping. Midnight is populated with unseen shadows. and daylight has its spirits too. The Prince of the Power of the Air, attended by his squadron of evil spirits, flies through the atmosphere all around us. Evil spirits constantly watch us. They watch for us to stumble or fall, while the Holy Spirits, the Good Spirits, battling for the salvation of God's elect, guard us in all of our ways. and watch over our feet, lest at any time we strike them against a stone. Hosts of invisible angels, elect or fallen, continually watch us and are present with each one of us at different periods of our lives. Remember that each one of us is not ignored. We do not pass through this world in unseen obscurity. In the darkest shades of night, eyes glare on us through the gloom. In the brightness of the day, angels are spectators of our labors. But if we think that the thought of having angels watching us is a thought worth treasuring up, then let us remember, let us remember that there is one other thought which sums that up and drowns it. just like a drop of water is lost in the ocean. It is the thought that God sees me, that God sees me. It is nothing that the holy angels see me. It is nothing that demons watch me when compared with the overwhelming truth that God sees me at all times. Let us dwell on that now. and may God the Holy Spirit make use of it to our spiritual profit. In the first place, I shall present the general doctrine that God observes all men and women. In the second place, I shall state the particular doctrine, God sees me. And in the third place, I shall draw from it some practical and comforting inferences to different types of persons now assembled, each of whom may learn something from this short study. In the first place, the general doctrine that God sees us. This may be easily proved, even from the nature of God. It would be hard to imagine a God who could not see his own creatures. It would be extremely difficult to imagine a divine creator who could not see the actions of the works of his hands. The word which the Greeks applied to God implied that he was a God who could see. They called him theos and they derived that word, if I read it correctly, from the root theistai. which means to see, because they regarded God as being the all-seeing One, whose eye took in the whole universe at one glance, and whose knowledge extended far beyond that of mortals. God Almighty, from His very essence and nature, must be an omniscient God. Strike out the thought that He sees me, and you extinguish deity by a single stroke. There would be no God if that God had no eyes, for a blind God would be no God at all. We could not conceive of such a God. Stupid as idolaters may be, it would be very hard to think that even they had created a blind God. Even they have given eyes to their gods. though their wooden, metal, or stone gods cannot really see. The Hindu false god, Krishna, has eyes that have been stained with blood, and the gods of the ancient Romans had eyes, and some of them were called far-seeing gods. Even the heathen cannot conceive of a god that has no eyes. And certainly we are not so foolish as to imagine for a single second that there can be a deity without the knowledge of everything that is done by man beneath the sun. I say it would be just as impossible to conceive of a God who did not observe everything as to conceive of a round square. When we say God, we do, in fact, comprise in the word God the idea of a God who sees everything. God sees us. Yet further, we are sure that God must see us, for we are taught in the scriptures that God is everywhere, and if God is everywhere, then what hinders him from seeing all that is done in every part of his universe? God is here. I do not simply live near him, but in him I live and move and have my being. There is not a particle of this mighty space which is not filled with God. Go out into the pure air and there is not a particle of it without the presence of God. In every part of this earth where I walk, in the spot where I move, God is there. Within your circling power I stand. On every side I find your hand. Awake, asleep, at home, abroad, I am still surrounded with God. Take the wings of the morning and fly beyond the most distant star, and God is there. God is not a being confined to one place, but he is everywhere. He is there and there and there. In the deepest mineshaft man ever bored, in the deep caverns of the ocean, in the heights, towering and lofty, in the gulfs that are deep, which man can never reach. God is everywhere. I know from His own words that He is a God who fills the immensity of the universe. The heavens are not wide enough for Him. He holds the sun with one hand and the moon with the other. He stretches Himself through the unnavigated space, where the wing of the seraphim has never been flapped. There is God. And where the solemnity of silence has never been broken by the song of the cherub, there is God. God is everywhere. Conceive space, and God and space are equal. Well then, if God is everywhere, how can I refrain from believing that God sees me wherever I am? He does not look upon me from a distance. If he did, I might hide myself beneath the shades of night. But he is here, close by my side, and not only by me, but in me. Within this heart, where these lungs contract and expand, or where my blood gushes through my veins, or where this pulse is beating like a muffled drum, my march to death. God is there. God is there within this mouth, in this tongue, in these eyes. In each of you, God dwells. He is within you and around you. He is beside you and behind and before. Isn't such knowledge too wonderful for you? Isn't it so high that you cannot attain to it? I say, how can you resist the doctrine which comes upon you like a flash of lightning, that if God is everywhere, he must see everything and that therefore it is a truth. God sees us. But lest anyone should suppose that God may be in a place and yet be slumbering, let me remind him that in every place to which he can travel there is, not simply God, but also God's activity. That in every place to which we can travel there is, not simply God, but also God's activity. Wherever I go I shall find not a slumbering God, but a God busy with the affairs of this world. Take me to the green and pleasant pasture. Why, every little blade of grass there has God's hand in it, making it grow, and every tiny daisy, which a child likes to pluck, looks up with its little eye and says, God is in me, circulating my sap and opening my little flower. Go where you will through London, where vegetation is scarcely to be found. Look up and see those rolling stars. God is active there. It is his hand that moves the stars along and moves the moon in her nightly course. But if there are neither stars nor moon to be seen, there are those clouds heavy with darkness. Who steers them across the sea of blue? Doesn't the breath of God blowing upon them drive them along the heavens? God is everywhere, not as a slumbering God, but as an active God. I am on the sea, and there I see God making the everlasting pulse of nature beat in constant ebbs and flows. I am in the pathless desert, and above me screams the nature, and I see God winging the wild bird's flight. I am shut up in absolute seclusion, yet an insect drops down, and I see in that insect life which God preserves and sustains. Yes, shut me out from the animate creation and put me on a barren rock where a moss itself cannot find a footing. And I shall there discern my God holding up the pillars of the universe and sustaining that bare rock as a part of the colossal foundation on which he has built the world. Wherever we turn our gazing eyes, your radiant footsteps shine. 10,000 pleasing wonders rise and speak their source divine. the living tribes of countless forms, in earth and sea and air, the tiniest flies, the smallest worms, Almighty Power declare. You will see God everywhere. If you do not see Him around you, look within you, and is He not there? Isn't your blood now flowing through every portion of your body, to and from your heart? And is not God there active? Don't you know that every pulse your heart beats needs permission from deity, and yet even more needs an exertion of divine power as its cause? Don't you know that every breath you breathe needs deity for its stimulation and termination, and that you must die if God withdraws that power? If we could look within us, there are mighty works going on in this mortal fabric, the garment of the soul, which would astonish you and make you see, indeed, that God is not asleep, but that he is active and busy. There is a working God everywhere, a God with his eyes open everywhere, a God with his hands at work everywhere, a God doing something, not a slumbering God, but a laboring God. Oh, dear friends, doesn't the conviction flash upon your mind with a brightness against which you cannot shut your eyes that since God is everywhere and everywhere active, it naturally follows as a necessary and unavoidable consequence that he must see us and know all of our actions and all of our deeds. I have one more proof, one more proof to offer which I think to be conclusive. God, we can be sure, sees us when we remember that he can see a thing before it happens. God, we can be sure, sees us when we remember that he can see a thing before it happens. If he sees an event before it transpires, surely reason dictates he must see a thing that is happening now. Read those ancient prophecies. Read what God said would be the end of Babylon and of Nineveh. Just turn to the chapter where you read of Edom's doom or where you are told that Tyre shall be desolate. Then walk through the lands of the East and see Nineveh and Babylon thrown to the ground, the cities ruined, and then reply to this question, isn't God a God of foreknowledge? Can he not see the things that are to come? Yes, there is not a thing which shall transpire in the next cycle of a thousand years which is not already seen and known to the infinite mind of God. There is not a deed which shall be transacted tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, throughout eternity, if days can be eternal, that God does not know in its every detail. And if he knows the future, does he not know the present? If his eyes look through the dim haze which veils us from the things of the future, can he not see that which is standing in the brightness of the present? If God can see a great distance, can he not see near at hand? Surely that divine being who discerns the end from the beginning must know, must know the things which occur now. And it must be true then that God sees us, every one of us, the entire race of mankind. Now I come to our second point tonight. I come to that special doctrine. God sees me. God sees me. Come now. There is a disadvantage in having so many listeners, as there always is in speaking to more than one at a time, because persons are apt to think, he is not speaking to me. Jesus Christ preached a very successful sermon once when he had only one listener because he had the complete attention of the woman at the well and she could not say that Christ was preaching to her neighbor. He said to her, go, call your husband and come back. There was something there which struck her heart. She could not evade the confession of her guilt. But in regard to our congregations, the old orator might soon see his prayer answered. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. For when the gospel is preached, we lend our ears to everybody. We are accustomed to hear for our neighbors and not for ourselves. Now, I have no objection to you lending anything else you like but I have a strong objection to you lending your ears. I shall be glad if you will keep them at home for a minute or two, for I want to make you hear for yourselves this truth. God sees me. Note well, my friends, God sees you. Selecting anyone out of this congregation, he sees you. He sees you as much as if there were nobody else in the whole world for him to look at. If I have as many people as there are here tonight to look at, of course my attention must be divided. But the infinite mind of God is able to focus on a million objects at once and yet to set itself as much upon one as if there were nothing else but that one. so that you, tonight, are looked at by God as much as if throughout space there were not another creature but yourself. Can you conceive that? Suppose the stars were all extinguished in the darkness. Suppose the angels were all dead. Imagine the glorified spirits above are all gone and you are left alone. the last man or the last woman, and there is God looking at you. What an idea it would be for you to think of, that there was only you to be looked at. How steadily he could observe you, how well he would discern you.

But note this, God really does look at you this night as much, as entirely, as absolutely, without division of sight, as if you were the only being His hands had ever made. Can you understand that? God sees you with all His eyes, with the whole of His sight. You, you, you, You are the particular object of his attention at this very moment. God's eyes are looking down upon you. Remember that.

In the next place, God sees you completely. God sees you completely. He does not merely note your actions, He does not simply notice your outward appearance. He does not merely take into his eyesight what your posture may be. But remember, God sees what you are thinking of. He looks within. God has a window in every man's heart through which he looks. He does not want you to tell him what you are thinking about. He can see that. He can read right through you. Don't you know that God can read what is written on the rocks at the bottom of the ocean, even though 10,000 fathoms of dark water roll above? And I tell you, He can read every word that is in your heart. He knows every thought, every imagination, every conception, yes, every unformed imagination. The next thought that is about to enter your mind He sees it all, every particle, every atom of it.

My thoughts, scarcely struggling into birth, great God are known to thee. Abroad, at home, still I'm enclosed with thine immensity. Behind I glance, and thou art there. Before me shines thine aim. and tis thy strong almighty hand sustains my tender frame.

Can you comprehend that thought? From the top of your head to the sole of your foot, God is examining you now. His scalpel is in your heart. He is searching your heart and trying your reins. He knows you inside out. God sees me. God sees me completely.

But note also, God sees you constantly. God sees you constantly. You are sometimes watched by man, and then your conversation is tolerably correct. At other times, you seek retirement. and you indulge yourselves in things which you would not dare to do before the gaze of your fellow creatures. But remember, wherever you are, God sees you. You may lay yourselves down by the side of a hidden brook where the willows shelter you, where all is still without a sound. God is there looking at you. You may retire to your bedroom and draw the curtains and throw yourself down for rest in midnight's gloomiest shade. God sees you there.

I remember going into a castle some time ago, down many winding stairs, round and round and round and round, where light never penetrated. Finally, I came to a space, very narrow, about the length of a man. There, said the caretaker, so-and-so was shut up here for so many years, a ray of light never having penetrated. Sometimes they tortured him, but his shrieks never reached through the thickness of these walls and never ascended that winding staircase. Here he died, and there, sir, over there, he was buried, pointing to the ground. But though that man had no one on earth who could see him, God saw him. Yes, you may shut me up forever, where ears shall never hear my prayer, where eyes shall never see my misery, but one eye shall look upon me, and one face will smile upon me, if I suffer for righteousness' sake. If for Christ's sake I am in prison, one hand shall be upon me, and one voice shall say, Fear not, I will help you.

At all times, in all places, in all your thoughts, in all your acts, in all your privacy, in all your public activities, at every season, this is true. God sees me.

Yet once more, my friends, God sees me totally. God sees me totally. I can see myself, but not as well as my friends or foes can. Men can see me better than I can see myself. but man cannot see me as God sees me. A man skilled in the human heart might interpret my deeds and translate their motives, but he could not read my heart as God can read it. No one can tell another as God can tell us all. We do not know ourselves as God knows us. Within your self-knowledge, with all you have been told by others, God knows you more fully than you know yourself. No eye can see you as God sees you.

Oh, you may act a certain way in the daylight. You may not be ashamed of your actions. You may stand up before men and say, I am a public man. I wish to be observed and noticed. You may have all your deeds chronicled, and all men may hear of them, but I know men will never know you as God will know you. And if you could be chained as Paul was, with a soldier at your arm, if he were with you night and day, sleeping with you, rising with you, if he could hear all your thoughts, he still could not know you as God knows you. for God sees you totally.

Let me now apply that to you. God sees me. This is true of each of you. Try and think of it for a moment. Even as my eye rests on you, so in a far, far greater sense does God's eye rest on you. Standing sitting wherever you are, this is true. God sees me.

It is said that when you heard Roland Hill preach, if you were sitting by the window or farther away, standing at the door, you always had the conviction that he was preaching directly at you. Oh, I wish I could preach like that. If I could make you feel that I was preaching at you in particular, that I singled you out and shot every word at you, then I would hope for some effect. Try, try and think then, my friends. God sees me.

Now we come to our last point for tonight, to the different inferences for different persons. to serve different purposes. We come to different inferences for different persons to serve different purposes.

First, to the prayerful. To the prayerful. Prayerful man, prayerful woman, here is a consolation. God sees you. And if he can see you, surely he can hear you. Why, we can often hear people when we cannot see them. If God is so near to us, and if His voice is like the thunder, surely His ears are as good as His eyes, and He will be sure to answer us. Perhaps you cannot say a word when you pray. Never mind. God does not need to hear. He can tell what you mean even by seeing you. There, says the Lord, is a child of mine in prayer. He does not say a word, but do you see that tear rolling down his cheek? Do you hear that sigh? O mighty God, you can see both tears and sighs. You can hear desire when desire has not clothed itself in words. The naked wish God can interpret He does not need us to light the candle of our desires with language. He can see the candle before it is lit. He knows the words we mean to speak when from our lips they cannot break because of the anguish of our spirit. God knows the desire when words stagger under the weight of it. He knows the wish when language fails to express it. God sees me. Oh God, when I cannot pray with words, I will throw myself flat on my face and I will groan my prayer. And if I cannot groan it, I will sigh it. And if I cannot sigh it, I will wish it. And when these eyes closed for the last time, and when death has sealed these lips, I will enter heaven with a prayer. which you will not hear, but which you will see. The prayer of my inmost spirit, when my heart and my flesh fail me, that God may be the strength of my life forever. There is comfort for you, you praying ones. Comfort that God sees you. That is enough. If you cannot speak, he can see you. Now I have given a word for the prayerful, now a word for the careful. There are some here who are very worried and full of doubts and anxieties and fears. Oh, sir, you say, if you could come to my poor little house, you would not wonder that I should feel anxious. I have had to part with much of my little furniture to provide myself with a living. I am brought very low. I do not have a friend in all of London. I am alone, alone in this big world. Stop, stop, I say. Sir, you are not alone in the world. There is at least one loving eye watching you. There is one hand that is ready to help you. Don't give up in despair. No matter how bad your case is, God can see your concern, your troubles, and your anxieties. To a man with a good heart, it is enough for him to see destitution to cause him to relieve it. And for God, it is enough to see the distresses of his family to immediately supply their needs. If you were lying wounded on the battlefield, If you could not speak, you have confidence that your comrades who are coming by with an ambulance will pick you up, if they can only see you, and that is enough hope for you. So if you are lying on the battlefield of life, God sees you. Let that cheer you up. He will help you, for he only needs to look at the anguish of his children and will then immediately help them. Go on then. Continue to hope. In night's darkest hour, hope for a brighter tomorrow. God sees you. Whatever you are doing, God sees you. He knows your cares. He knows your tears and your sighs. He will lift up your head. Oh, my friends, God sees you. And now a word to those who are slandered. A word to those who are slandered. There are some of us who have a very large share of slander. It is very seldom that the amount of slander in the world ever runs low. It usually is available in heaps. There are some who have a super abundance of slander to give out. They are continually hearing rumors of this and that and the other. And there is one fool or another who does not have enough brains to write a letter, nor enough honesty to keep him telling the truth, yet he writes the most notorious slander against some of God's servants. He is nothing when compared to these servants of God, yet out of envy he chooses to belittle them. Well, what does it matter? Suppose you are slandered. Here is the comfort. God sees me. They say that you have an evil motive, but you need not answer them. You can say, God knows my heart. You are charged with a certain thing of which you are innocent. Your heart is right concerning the deed. You have never done it. Well, you have no need to battle for your reputation. You only need to point your finger to the sky and say, there is a witness there who will prove me right in the end. There is a judge of all the earth whose decision I am content to wait for. His answer will be a complete exoneration of me and I shall come out of the furnace like gold that has been purified seven times. Young men, Are you striving to do good, and do others impute wrong motives to you? Do not be concerned about answering them. Just keep doing what you are doing, and your life will be the best refutation of the slander." David's brothers said it was his conceit and the wickedness of his heart that caused him to come down to watch the battle. I will answer you in time. Off he went across the plain to fight Goliath. He cut off his head and then came back to his brothers with a glorious answer in his conquering hand. If any man desires to reply to the false assertions of his enemies, let him go and do good. And he does not need to say a word. That will be his answer. Personally, I am the subject of a great amount of slander and ridicule, but I can point to hundreds of souls that have been saved on earth by my feeble instrumentality, and my reply to all my enemies is this. You may say what you like, but seeing that these lame men are healed, you can say nothing against them. You may find fault with my style or my manner of ministry. But God saves souls, and we will hold up that fact, like the head of that giant Goliath, to show you that although it was nothing but a sling or a stone, so much the better, for God has gotten the victory. Keep moving on, doing what you do, and you will outlive your slanderers. And remember, remember when you are most distressed, remember God. Now, a sentence or two to some of you who are ungodly and who do not know Christ. What shall I say to you but this? How monstrous are your sins when they are put in the light of this doctrine. Remember, sinner, Whenever you sin, you sin in the very face of God. It is bad enough to steal in the darkness, but He is a most wicked thief who steals in the broad daylight. It is vile, it is fearfully vile to commit a sin which I desire to hide. But to commit my sin when man is looking directly at me shows the hardness of my heart O sinner, remember you sin with God's eyes looking at you. Remember you sin with God's eyes looking directly at you. How black must your heart be! How awful must be your sin! For you sin in the very face of justice when God's eyes are fixed on you. I was looking the other day at a glass beehive and it was very remarkable to observe the motions of the creatures inside. Well, now this world is nothing but a huge glass beehive. God looks down on you and he sees all of you. You go into your little cells in the streets of this huge city. You go to your business, your pleasure, your devotions and your sins. But remember, wherever you go, you are like the bees under a great glass. You can never get away from God's observation. When children disobey before the eyes of their parents, it shows that they are hardened. But if they do it behind their parents' back, it proves that there is some shame left. But you, you wicked one, you sin when God is present with you. You sin while God's eyes are searching you through and through. Even now you are thinking hard thoughts of God while God is hearing all those silent utterances of your evil hearts. Doesn't that render your sin extremely wicked? Therefore, I beseech you, think of it and repent of your wickedness that your sins may be blotted out by the blood of Jesus Christ. And one more thought, my friends. If God sees you, oh sinner, how easy it will be for him to condemn you. If God sees you, oh sinner, how easy it will be for him to condemn you. In that recent and well-known horrible case of Mr. Palmer, witnesses were required and a jury was called to try the accused. But if the judge could have mounted the bench and have said, I saw the man myself, I saw him mixed to poison. I stood by and watched him administer it. I read his thoughts. I knew why he did it. I read his heart. I was with him when he first conceived the evil plan and I have tracked him in all his evasions. in all those acts by which he sought to blindfold justice. And I can read in his heart that he knows himself to be guilty right now. The case then would have been over. The trial would have been little more than a form. Now, what will you think, old sinner, when you are brought before God and God shall say to you, you did such and such, and will mention what you did in the darkness of the night when no one saw you. You will stand back amazed and say, oh, how does God know? Does the Most High know everything? He will say, stop, sinner. I have more that will startle you. And he will begin to unfold the records of the past. Leaf after leaf he will read the diary he has kept of your existence. Oh, I can see you now as he reads page after page. Your knees are knocking together. Your hair is standing on end. Your blood is frozen in your veins, congealed due to fright, and you stand like a rock covered with tears. You are shocked to the core to find your thoughts read out loud, while the redeemed and the holy angels listen. You are amazed beyond imagination to hear your thoughts read out loud, to see your deeds in vivid pictures displayed in heaven before the great white throne of judgment, and to hear a voice saying, at this time you were rebellious, At this moment, you were immoral. At this time, you had evil thoughts. Here, you refused to go to church on this day. You committed blasphemy on this day. You committed theft at this hour. You had harsh thoughts about God at this period. Here, you rejected God's grace on this day. You ignored your conscience over and over. And so it goes to the end of the chapter. And then the awful final doom. Sinner, depart from me. You are cursed. I saw you sin. I need no witnesses. I heard your empty words and promises. I heard your blasphemies. I saw your thefts. I read your thoughts. Depart. Depart from me. I am absolutely right when I judge you. I am justified when I condemn you, for you have done all this evil in my sight. Lastly, you ask me now, what must you do to be saved? And I tell you I will never let a congregation go, I hope, till I have told them that. Hear then in a few words the way of salvation. It is this, Christ said to the apostles, preach the gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized will be saved and he that does not believe will be condemned. Or to give you Paul's version, when he spoke to the jailer, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You now ask, what are you to believe? Why this? that Christ died and rose again, that by his death he bore the punishment of all believers, and that by his resurrection he wiped out the faults of all of his children. And if God gives you faith, you will believe that Christ died for you, and you will be washed in his blood, and you will trust his mercy and his love to be your everlasting redemption when the world comes to an end. Amen.