The God Who Sees

Well, thank you to the children's choir. It's always such a treat to have the opportunity to hear them perform and to be able to enjoy the songs that they put together. Those of you that are parents, you're probably having some flashbacks to when your bigger kids were little like that. We're in that age range. It's just incredible, you know, to see the successions of generations that have come through. You know, they grow up and they grow up fast, don't they?

Well, brethren, earlier this year, the Guardian newspaper in England reported on an 85-year-old widower by the name of Trevor Goff. He lives in Australia. Trevor's wife died in 2018 after 54 years of marriage. After his wife's death, Trevor tried to remain as active as possible. He tried to remain as connected as he possibly could socially. And at 85 years old, it's really kind of amazing what this guy does. He volunteers with his local meal on wheels. He cycles 7-8 miles every couple of days, again, 85, and he connects with friends and goes and gets coffee, and he visits with his children. He's very socially connected. Okay, Trevor, in this case, Mr. Goff, is very socially connected. Yet he described in this article his life in this way. He said, and I quote, you come back to an empty house. You go to do your shopping, and basically you're invisible. You go to pubs and things like that, restaurants, and you sit on your own. He says, sometimes reiterates the fact that you're on your own. He said, you get a bit lonely. He said you get a bit lonely. He described being surrounded by people, yet being unseen. Brethren, have you ever felt invisible? You ever felt invisible? Not, like, invisible in the sense of not being able to be seen by people, but invisible in the sense that you feel as though you go through your life unseen or unnoticed. Like we're just lost in the noise, or maybe insignificant enough perhaps that our struggles and our challenges don't matter. You know, as we live a life that becomes more busy, that becomes more chaotic, that becomes just more frenetic, I guess for lack of a better description, do we feel like we get lost in the shuffle? I feel like we get lost in the shuffle. Do we ask questions like, do I really matter? Does anyone actually see me? You know, there's a growing segment of society that feels invisible. There's actually a name for this, I mean, there's a name for everything, but there's a name for this. But it's referred to by researchers as social invisibility. Social invisibility. It often takes place, at least it's been described in the research, is taking place within marginalized communities, communities of individuals, groups of people that have been kind of pushed out to the outer edges, so to speak, of society, and one of those is the elderly. Elderly seem to feel this more acutely than others in society. There was a 2025 survey that found nearly two-thirds of Americans reported feeling lonely, and what was interesting was they described their loneliness in the exact same terms. They told researchers that it is like they are invisible. It's like they're invisible.

Perhaps you too have felt this way at some point, maybe at work or at school, in your family, or maybe even quietly in your walk with God. Maybe you've asked questions. Does God see me? Does He see my pain? Does He see my prayers? Does He see my life? Approximately 4,000 years ago, a woman named Hagar found herself in the wilderness. She was cast out. She was rejected. She was convinced that no one cared. Yet there, in that wilderness, in her lowest moment, God called her by name, gave her hope, and ultimately turned her despair into an incredibly powerful example for all of us today.

She declared God in that moment as, you are the God who sees. In Hebrew, the term is El-Roy, El-Roy in Hebrew. The title for the sermon today is, The God Who Sees. And in it, we're going to explore Hagar's example, the various ways that God sees, truly sees His people, His people, their struggles, their faithfulness, and ultimately how God sees their future.

So we're going to begin today by turning over to Genesis 16. And if you would turn there with me, please, we're going to build a little bit of context so that we understand what is going on in this story of Hagar and Abram and Sarai. Kind of give you some ideas of timelines and some other things to hopefully set the stage as we dig into this. But you can be turning to Genesis 16. We break into, in this section of Genesis, the story of Abram and Sarai and Sarai's Egyptian-made servant, Hagar. When God came to Abram and told him to leave his country, told him to leave his family, told him to leave his father's house to go to a land which God would show him, Abram obeyed.

Abram absolutely submitted himself to God. He left. He departed. He departed his country. He departed his family. He took along his nephew Lot. I don't know if God was intending to say, hey, by the way, leave Lot at home. I don't know. Maybe not. But he departed. He took Lot with him. His nephew went along with him. And when they reached the land of Shechem, in what was then considered to be Canaan, God appeared to Abram and God told Abram, I will give your descendants this land. The soil upon which you stand right now will belong to your descendants.

Well, that must have been quite the shock to Abram, because to that point he had no children. He and Sarai had no children at that point in their lives. Abram was 75 years old. Abram was 75 at this point in time when he left. And it is likely, quite likely, in fact, that he and Sarai had been trying to have children for a number of years.

Genesis 11 actually describes Sarai as barren. That her womb was barren. If you've ever known someone who has experienced infertility, it is an extremely challenging situation. It's an extremely challenging situation. There are feelings of inadequacy that come with this issue. There's the sadness of loss, as there's incredible hope when you find out that you're pregnant. And then if there's a miscarriage or something along those lines, this crushing despair that comes in, you have sadness of loss, you have a near constant reminder of the circumstance you're experiencing when you look around and you see other people with children.

So this is a complex situation that Sarai is experiencing. It's one that's incredibly difficult. And it's one in which you have a lot of emotions wrapped up in it. As you might imagine, there's a lot of emotions wrapped up in this. By the time we get to the account we're going to read here in Genesis 10, approximately 10 years have passed. So approximately 10 years have passed now since they left Huron. Abram is almost 86 years old. Abram's almost 86 years old. And despite the promise of God that he would give Abram descendants to date, that promise had not yet been fulfilled.

So a decade later, Abram's 85, 86-ish years old. Would have been 85, I guess, because he was 86 when Ishmael was born. Genesis 16, verse 1. Just give you the timeline, give you the context. Genesis 16, verse 1. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children.

Please, go into my maid. Perhaps I shall obtain children by her. Now Abram, it says, heeded the voice of Sarai. Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, the maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. After Abram had dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan. So he went into Hagar, and she conceived.

And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. So Sarai, at this point in time in her life, became convinced that as a result of her many years of being barren, and her being barren, since the promise that God gave Abram in Canaan, that the Lord had restrained her womb. So she's coming at it from that perspective.

You can see the human reasoning here, right? I mean, you can kind of see how one could reach the conclusion that they reached. As she's thinking about the situation, she's thinking, you know, God said, descendants. He said that specifically to Abram. That does not necessarily imply that the children would be mine. It's possible that they would be another's, that Abraham would be the father of. Hagar is likely much younger than Sarai. Her womb, likely, not barren. And perhaps this promised son that God has given could come through Hagar as a surrogate for Abram and for Sarai.

So it's not hard to see how human reasoning could get to this point, right? I mean, it's pretty easy to see the steps that got them where they were at that time. So what they resorted to was a common practice in those days. It was fairly common. The taking of a concubine, often it's in the maidservant of the household who would then provide an heir for the husband.

And we see this take place in the stories of Israel. We see it take place in the stories of other patriarchs as we go back through history. And so at Sarai's insistence, Abram took Hagar as a concubine and Hagar became pregnant. Unfortunately, it seems the effect of Hagar's pregnancy created a degree of anger and jealousy in Sarai. It's easy to judge, but Sarai's spot is one that is a difficult and an emotional one.

She probably felt the full weight of her barrenness as soon as Hagar became pregnant. As soon as Hagar became pregnant, it was obvious and clear that she was the problem. That is why they had not yet had a child, at least in her mind. Again, humanly speaking, as we consider these things.

Additionally, we see that Hagar began to despise Sarai.

The word here in Hebrew is to call. It means to make someone small or insignificant. So in some ways to diminish someone in someone's eyes. So bearing Abram's son, perhaps provided her with a standing that she felt she could exert over her mistress. And is it possible that in the shift of this relationship, Hagar's despising of Sarai, Sarah's jealousy and envy, and maybe even a projection of her own perceived inadequacies, are responsible, at least in part, for what comes next. I think sometimes we can judge when someone responds harshly in certain circumstances. There are usually mitigating circumstances. The humanity often gets in the way. Verse 5, what we see here is what happened. Sarai said to Abram, My wrong be upon you!

Abram's like, Whoa, whoa, whoa! You know, you imagine he's having a second of, Wait a second! Hold on! It says, I gave you my maid, or I gave my maid into your embrace. And when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between you and me. And so Abram said to her, or said to Sarai, Indeed, your maid is in your hand, due to her as you please. And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence. You can imagine Abram going, Wait a minute! You told me to do this. You told me to do this. Now you're angry. I get it. She's your maid. Do with her as you please. This is your decision. Basically, leave me out of this. It's the feeling I get from his response, in a sense there. But it's your maid. You deal with her as you please. So what we see is Sarai treats Hagar harshly, and Hagar flees. Hagar runs from the camp. She disappears into the wilderness. And in the process of her running from Sarai's presence into the wilderness, she encounters the angel of the Lord. He asks where she's going, what she's doing. Hagar explains she's fleeing from the presence of her mistress, and specifically identifies Sarai. Verse 9. The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hand. Then the angel of the Lord said to her, I will multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be counted for multitude. Similar promise to what God had given to Abraham, in the sense of multitudes, innumerable uncountable multitudes. But again, Ishmael is Abraham's son. And so those promises would descend in that sense. They counted for multitude, the angel of the Lord said to her the following, he said, Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him. He shall dwell in the presence of all of his brethren. Verse 13. Then she called the name of the Lord, who spoke to her, You are the God who sees. Elroi, in Hebrew.

You are the God who sees. For she said, Have I also seen him who sees me? Therefore the well where she stopped was called Beer L'chai Roy. So Hagar here interacts with the angel of the Lord. In this case, we recognize that as a pre-incarnate Christ. The word, the same being that interacted with Abraham, with Lot, with Moses, with so many others throughout the Old Testament. She recognizes the being as God. She calls him Elroi, the God who sees. In her brokenness and in her pain, she opened up to God. She discovered that God saw her pain, saw her struggle, and he gives her hope in that moment that her son would be cared for. She was instructed to return to submit herself to Sarai's hand. Eventually we see that Ishmael is born and that God fulfills his promise through Sarai, again fulfilling the promises to Abraham. Hagar and Ishmael depart after a second issue in which Ishmael mocks Isaac and they said, Okay, we're done. This isn't going to work. These two families being so close together. And so they depart after a second issue. But the promises of God through Abraham for Isaac were applied. The promises of God through Abraham and Hagar to Ishmael were supplied to Ishmael and his descendants. But God saw Hagar. God saw Hagar, an Egyptian woman, a maidservant in Abram's household. She wasn't insignificant. She wasn't unseen. In the midst of her challenge, in the midst of her trial, he saw her.

And again, even though the promise was to Abram and Sarai through the promise son of Isaac, God followed through on the promise that he provided her and her children as well. Brethren, God sees us too. He sees us in our times of struggle. He sees us in our times of faithfulness. And he sees us in the future that he has planned and is working toward. Let's go to Exodus 3. If you would turn over to Exodus 3.

Early on in God's relationship with his nation Israel and his chosen people Israel, this same being, Roy as Hagar named him, interacted with Moses in the wilderness. Exodus 3. We'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 4. And we'll see that God sees our struggles. God sees our struggles. He sees the challenges and the difficulties that we face. Moses, in this scenario, was out tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro. He'd come across a bush that was burning and was not consumed. You've got to imagine if you're in Moses' sandals in that moment, that's an odd sight to see as you come along and you're standing there watching this bush going, that's not going anywhere. That thing's been on fire for a few minutes and it is not being consumed by the flame. And so, kind of naturally curious, especially because he'd crisscrossed this desert how many dozens of times over the past 40 years, as he was tending sheep for his father-in-law, and he'd never seen anything of this sort. So he draws near. Exodus 3, verse 4, we'll kind of pick it up. He identifies this being as the angel of the Lord here, or at least it does in Exodus 3, in chapter 2, or in verse 2. Says, The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. And so he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn. I imagine he went, WOAH! What's going on? No, I don't know what he said exactly. He said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, and why this bush does not burn. I got to think it was a little more stunned and shocked than that. But, verse 4, So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here I am. Then he said, Do not draw near this place, take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God of your Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So we see God here, tells Moses, I have seen the oppression of my people. I saw these things. God wasn't ambivalent to their sorrow. He heard their cries. He didn't ignore them. God saw them. He was concerned with their plight and made plans to deliver them. God sent Moses, and he sent Aaron to negotiate with Pharaoh. Every time we go through the spring holy days, we understand how that went. But he went to go negotiate with Pharaoh. And then when Pharaoh's refusal did not allow Israel to leave, and his heart hardened, God enacted a series of plagues to deliver them in a miraculous fashion. Part of that process was each plague was designed to send a message to the Egyptians, and ultimately to the people of Israel, that God was more powerful than the gods of Egypt. That he was more powerful than these idols that the Egyptians worshipped. That he would fight their battles, and he would deliver his people from their affliction and their bondage.

When we experience difficult times in our own lives, times in which we experience affliction or bondage, brethren, does God still see us? Does God still see us today? Does he deliver us from the challenges that we experience? Does he hear our cries? Let's go over to Psalm 34. You know, at times, and we'll talk about this in a minute, at times we get the deliverance that we pray for, but not in the way that we prayed for it. There are certainly times in which our deliverance comes in a vastly different manner than what we expected it to come when we prayed the prayer that we prayed. Psalm 34. David writes of God. This is actually, I love this Psalm. It's the Psalm that's written about the time when he feigned madness in Abimelech's presence. So this is when David went like, you know, kind of a little bit of an actor and went feigned madness to try to be put away from Abimelech.

So it's interesting that that's kind of the context, at least, of this particular Psalm. But he writes in verse 15 of Psalm 34. Psalm 34 and verse 15. He says, very specifically, The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. His ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. So God's eyes are on the righteous. He sees their lives. He sees the choices that they make. He sees the heart. There's one thing that God can pierce right through, you know, these sacks of meat that we have on our bones, and see our heart and the intents of our heart and all the aspects of the choices that we make and the heart that we have for Him. God can see the effort that we make to obey Him. He can see the lives of the righteous and how they're characterized by justice and truthfulness and outgoing concern because of their faith in God. And as a result, God sees them. David writes that God sees them. His ears are open to their cries. Verse 17, he says, We may desire it to come in a very specific way, but God views things differently than we do. His ways are higher than our ways, and sometimes the deliverance that we receive is different than the deliverance that we ask for. Anybody ever lose a job after praying that conditions at that same job would change? Did you get what you asked for? Yup. Did you get it in the way that you asked for it? Nope. In that moment, does losing your job feel like deliverance? Of course not. What am I going to do now? Now I don't have a job, right? Rejoice, right? Be thankful in all things, as Carl mentioned, as Mr. Kester mentioned. But the reality is, sometimes the deliverance that we receive is different than the deliverance that we ask for. If you have lost a job in a scenario like that, you find something else and you realize, wow, that actually was a blessing. It was a huge blessing! I don't have to deal with this person anymore that was causing my life to be so stressed out and dealing with this and that and everything else, and now things are so much better. It is exactly what I wanted. But it took the loss of a job to get there.

You ever pray for patience to get through a trial and then find that that prayer nets you more trials? More opportunities to practice patience? More opportunities to learn and to grow spiritually as you exhibit patience in those now multitudinous trials?

You know, at times we get what we pray for, but it doesn't always come in the manner in which in our heads we see it coming. God delivers the righteous from their troubles, and He is near to those who have a broken heart. Don't read over that. God is near to those who have a broken heart. In those moments, God draws even closer to us. When you are dealing with the most difficult circumstances of your life, when you feel like there is no way you can possibly go on, God sees your tears. He sees your burdens. He sees your hidden struggles. What you're fighting against? What you're dealing with?

Which means that whatever you are carrying that no one else can see, God can. God can see those things. And He does.

If you're feeling forgotten, if you're feeling unseen, if you're feeling invisible, and God moves a fellow member to call or to visit, to send a card in the exact moment in which it's needed most, that is not random. That's not a coincidence. That is the God who sees working through His people.

Now, for God to work through His people, we have to hear it. We have to be spurred onto it. We have to recognize that. When people are experiencing challenges to income, when they're experiencing issues in which they're trying to figure out how they're going to get by, and unexpected funds arrive to bridge the gap, that's not a coincidence.

That is the God who sees working, again, through His people. When we experience trials of a hostile work environment, or we experience possibly trials in a hostile family environment, and we hold firm to God's teachings, we hold firm to the Sabbath, we hold firm to the Holy Days, despite that pressure, just when it becomes unbearable.

God provides an opening, either a change of heart, a shift to a different supervisor, or even an unexpected word of encouragement to be able to get us through.

God sees us, and we can take great comfort in that assurance throughout history, from Hagar down to Israel and even down to us today, that God absolutely sees our struggles.

He also sees our faithfulness. How many of you have ever heard of Archibald Macendou? You're thinking, you made that up. Sir Archibald Macendou. No? Maybe? Okay, I did see a hand. Did I? No? Just kidding.

Archibald Macendou. Sir Archibald Macendou was an incredibly talented surgeon from New Zealand. That's why. I don't know anybody from New Zealand.

He studied at the Mayo Clinic here in the United States, eventually became a head of surgery at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He eventually received a fellowship from the American College of Surgeons and opened a very successful plastic surgery practice in England in the late 1930s.

Now, in the late 1930s, plastic surgery was not the aesthetic thing that it is today, in the sense that he was not running around spending his time doing lip fillers and, you know, Botox and whatever else like many plastic surgeons do today.

Plastic surgery at that point in time was done, a lot of skin grafts, a lot of reduction of deformities, disfigurements, things like that.

He became the plastic surgery consultant to the Royal Air Force in 1938.

Now, you might be thinking, what are some stuff going on in Europe in the late 1930s, early 1940s?

When World War II broke out, he closed down his practice, which at that time, at least according to a journalist that wrote about it, was bringing in close to 10,000 pounds a month.

Now, I mean, adjusted for today's dollars, I don't know what that is, but that's significant in those dollars and today's dollars.

And he closed that practice down and instead devoted his time, volunteer, to repair the bodies and the faces of men who had been badly injured, burned or disfigured in the war.

As the consultant to the RAF, one of the problems with the RAF is most of those crashes involved jet fuel.

And so a lot of those guys were burned just horrifically. Just horrifically. In addition to disfigurement from the crash and other things.

So he dedicated his time, he donated his time, he volunteered to be able to kind of take care of these guys.

And the same journalist that wrote about this asked him once, why? Why did you shut down a 10,000 pound a month practice and volunteer your time? He said, what's your ambition, Mac? He simply replied to the journalist, I want to be a good craftsman. I want to be a good craftsman.

Ultimately, he recognized the 10,000 pounds a month was nothing when compared to a selfless job, well done.

He didn't care about being seen. He didn't care about getting rich. He quietly desired to do the best job that he could possibly do to give those boys in the RAF who had gotten torn up.

In World War II, a chance at a better life.

The rewards of a Christian life are only rewards to someone who's spiritually minded.

If we are not spiritually minded, we don't see the rewards. We don't see the satisfaction. We don't see the other things.

Let's turn over to Matthew 6. Matthew 6, during the time of Christ, as he interacted with people of Israel in Judah, or in Judea rather, he rubbed up against the scribes and the Pharisees pretty regularly.

We noticed there's a number of times in which they have some back and forths and they discuss some various things.

And they had a number of things that really frustrated Christ, as you go through this and look at.

He kind of saw their example, and not only did he see the example, he saw how their example impacted the people and how they impacted these believers at that time in Israel. He noted their lack of faith in him as Messiah, ultimately, some of the traditions that would get in the way.

And one of those traditions, which appears to at least have been a practice involving making a show of specific things that were done, looking for opportunities to be seen and to be recognized for their selflessness, he takes them to task for in Matthew 6. Matthew 6 and verse 1, if you would go ahead and turn there, Matthew 6 and verse 1.

It says, Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them.

Otherwise, you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. They have the glory of men in this life. That is their reward.

It seems kind of silly to think about, like, you know, somebody goes up to the donation box and goes, like, hey, look at me! You know, I was trying to think, like, what would be the thing today?

What would be that thing today? Closest thing I could think of was the bell at Panda Express.

Like, when you donate, like, if you round up your... It's like, boing! No thank you! You know, that's the closest thing I could think of to something today. But, you know, there's... this situation is taking place. What Christ says is what follows here. He says, When you do a charitable deed, verse 3, Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret. Your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you himself openly.

When you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, so that they can be seen by men. Assuredly I say to you, again, He says, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, when you shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret, He says, will reward you openly. Brethren, God sees our faithfulness. He sees our faithfulness. He sees the charitable deeds which we do for others.

He hears the prayers that we pray. God sees these things in secret. There's no need for show. There's no need for pretense. There's no need for running around and... You know, every time we do something, there's no need for those things. God sees our faithfulness. If you turn over just a few pages here to Matthew 10.

Matthew 10. Christ providing instructions here to the apostles before they get sent out. So getting ready to send the apostles out. And ultimately He provides them with some instructions that I think are important for us to consider as well. Matthew 10 and verse 29. Again, God sees our faithfulness.

He sees even the little things. Matthew 10 and verse 29. Matthew 10 and verse 29. It says, Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And He says, Not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore. He says, You are of more value than many sparrows. He says, Even the most insignificant birds of the air, they don't fall apart from God's will. He says, The very hairs of your head are numbered, and you are of much more value than many sparrows.

If God sees something as insignificant as sparrows, aren't we of more value than that to God? Scripture records that He has the hair on our heads numbered, which kind of implies that God knows when a hair falls out of our head. Most people have 90 to 150,000 hairs on their heads, some more, some less, depending on a number of factors. What that means for some is that He's just watched that get wider and wider and wider as time has gone on.

But Christ's point is that we're important to God. We're important to God. He sees us. He sees us. He sees what's done in secret. He sees our prayers. He sees our acts of service. He sees the sacrifices that we make for other people. Nothing slips through the cracks of God's attention. He sees even the small things that are done in love and an outgoing concern.

Many of you have experienced the blessing of faithfully keeping God's tithe. Many of you have experienced that. You go through the months, you're looking at the budget, you're looking at the number of dollars you have left, and you go, huh, those numbers don't add up. That and that do not match. You wonder whether you're going to make it. Dave Ramsey says you got more months than money.

You got more months left than money. Sometimes the math does not work, and yet it works. And yet it works. You've probably also experienced times in your life where you realize the blessings which God provides for obedience. The blessings that he provides for obedience. It's not always easy. But God absolutely sees our faithfulness in these little things and rewards that which he sees in secret. We've probably also experienced times in which we've had to stand up for the Sabbath or the Holy Days at our place of employment.

Or perhaps at school. Our kids are going through that process now. Aidan starts school on Monday next week. He'll be gone on atonement, and then he's going to be gone for two weeks after that. So he gets to go meet his teachers and go, hi, I promise I'm in your class. I'm going to be gone for a while, but I'll be back.

So we have these moments we have to deal with these things. There's probably times in your life where you've left for the feast and you weren't sure whether when you got back you'd still have a job. You might have had times in your life where you've left and came back to not have a job. You may have come back to a teacher who said, if you come back, I'm failing you in this course. And sure enough, they fail you. You have to retake the course.

We step out on faith. We trust that God will provide a solution. And again, sometimes that deliverance doesn't come as we expected. We lose the job. We fail the class. Sometimes that does happen. But in that test, in that moment, God saw our faithfulness and our willingness to stand up for His way. Many of us have been on the receiving end of a service, of some variety, a blessing of some variety. Maybe we've had a work party at our home or a kind deed that was done.

We've had help or assistance that's provided to us in some fashion or another. You know, these things strengthen us in times of difficulty. They strengthen us. They help us to know that we're cared for. And ultimately, the faithfulness and the service of that person providing it helps to build up the body. It's something edifying to the body in ways that service is an offering to God. And the body is edified as a result. So God sees our faithfulness. He sees our faithfulness in the big things, and He sees our faithfulness in the small things.

God not only sees the present, we also know from Scripture that He sees the end, or knows the end, rather, from the beginning. God sees our future. God is able to guide us toward a future that He has planned for us. Think back to some of the biggest people that God has worked with over the years as you look back into history. You know, God called Moses. He saw who Moses would become on the other side of Him working with Moses. He saw who Moses would become. He saw who Joshua would become. And ultimately, through His calling, when those men stepped out on faith, when they submitted themselves to God, they placed their trust in Him. God provided what they needed to grow and develop spiritually to become who God needed and planned for them to be in that moment. We want to turn over to Jeremiah 29. You know, contextually, this passage is written to Judah.

It's a part of the prophetic burden that God gave Jeremiah so that the people of Judah would understand that despite the difficulties that they were experiencing in that moment in their immediacy as a result of the sin that they had committed, and ultimately the reason for their captivity, that there was a period coming when God would restore His people. So God wanted Judah to understand, yes, things are really tough now. Really tough now. But you will be restored. There will be a time after this is done in which you will be restored. And He records these things in Jeremiah 29 and verse 10.

And then ultimately a later prophetic fulfillment in that sense as well.

And then ultimately a later prophetic fulfillment in that sense as well.

So God tells Judah, if you will just follow me, if you will just follow me, I know what you're capable of becoming. Now granted, there would require a new covenant for this to take place, laws written on their hearts, the ability for them to be able to follow God in this way. But He told them that when you call on Me and you pray to Me, He says, I will listen to you. He says, I'll listen to you. You will seek Me and you will find Me when you search for Me with all of your heart. God desired a future with His people, and He desired a people who desired the same thing, a future with their God. God watched over His people. He guided their lives. He intervened when needed to teach them, to trust them, to grow and to develop spiritually so that they could become who He called them to become. If you want to turn over to Psalm 121, think of it sometimes. God is considered to be the great shepherd. He's considered to be the great shepherd in Scripture. I think sometimes you see those giant shepherd's hooks that shepherds have, and you see them every now and again. The big round end, and they reach out sometimes, and they give the sheep a little tap on one side or the other when the sheep's running off the trail like, I'm going over here! And the shepherd goes, no, not a good idea. Dink, dink, dink, dink, dink. He guides them back on the trail, and they go over-correct the other way into the left. And, oh, no, no, no, no, come here. Dink, dink, dink, dink, dink. Kind of pop them back on the trail a little bit. I feel like sometimes that guidance that God provides us is exactly that. As we're going through life, it's like nudging us back on the path, ensuring that we are on the path. As He provides us with the knowledge, He provides us with the understanding, etc., that comes in. Psalm 121, one of the songs of ascent, Psalms that were sung on the way up to the feast in Jerusalem, the psalmist would write of the providence of God in these psalms, of the help of those who seek Him, and ultimately the joy that they have in going up to the house of God. A joy that we're all going to be able to experience here in a couple of weeks as we leave for the feast.

Psalm 121, we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 3. Psalm 121 and verse 3. Specifically here, speaking of God, says, He will not allow your foot to be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel shall not slumber or sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve you from all evil.

He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve you from going out, and you're coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.

God is our keeper. He is keeping watch over us. He's watching our going out and our coming in. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't slumber. He protects us now even to forevermore.

You know, that watchfulness, that constant vigilance that God is capable of, makes Him capable of guiding and protecting us.

It makes us something where He is able to do that, and that even though our future may be uncertain in the sense of the specifics, that God knows where He's guiding us to. He's guiding us in a general direction toward the calling that He has brought us to.

We know that even though in the sense of the specifics, we may not know exactly what those are, God still continues to work in our lives. He continues to protect. He continues to keep. And again, He's guiding us toward His will.

For us. In our life.

You know, we all come up to a series of doors in our life. We sometimes talk about choices in life as doors. We come up to a series of doors in our life, and I think sometimes we sit and look at all these, just like the Gong show, door number one, two, and three, and go, Ahhhh, which one do I go in? Which door do I enter into?

And sometimes I think God makes it very clear. There's one door that keeps easing open and kind of allowing us to go in, while the other couple of them may stay slammed shut, despite whatever our efforts might be. I think sometimes we have to knock on the doors, we have to push on the doors. Sometimes we have to expend a great deal of energy to get those doors open. Sometimes, Mr. Miller spoke to that on his message on trumpets.

Sometimes the doors stay shut. Sometimes it does not matter what you try to do on those doors. Regardless of the amount of energy you expend, regardless of the number of times you shoulder that thing and body that thing, it doesn't want to open. It's not budging. And often it's not until much, much later, with the benefit and illumination of hindsight, that we understand why that door remained close to us.

We look at it and we go, wow. I dodged a bullet on that door, and I didn't even know. How many times has God intervened in your life without you even knowing to bring you to the point where you are today? I think, I kind of hope someday there's a little reel-to-reel type movie that will play and God will go, yep, right there, and that one, and that one, that one right there, that one, that one, that one right there.

That was close. You tried to do, nope, you know, and you get a chance to kind of see how often God intervened in our lives in that sense. Sometimes, again, we illuminate with hindsight. We go back, we look, and we realize, boy, there's a reason why that door stayed closed to me. But sometimes, all three of the doors are open in front of us. We could step through any of them. We could step through any of them. And provided we continue to serve God, provided we continue to grow spiritually, the end result of those doors, honestly, might not matter so much at the end of the day. And it comes down to personal preference. It comes down to skill set. It comes down to whatever. But all three of those doors could lead to the person that God desires us to become. And at that point, we just have to make a decision. Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6, if you want to turn over there, is a principle that we need to keep in mind when we're dealing with life, when we're dealing with things. Proverbs 3 and verses 5 through 6 give us a principle to operate from. It gives us the place in which we operate. And if you don't have this underlined in your Bible or boxed or highlighted or something, do it. Do it. Box this, line it, highlight it, exclamation point, circle it, whatever you've got to do. But this is important. This is big stuff. Proverbs 3, verses 5 through 6, trust in the Lord with all of your heart. We might say, with every fiber of your being. Lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Provided we acknowledge God, provided we're acknowledging Him, we're not leaning on our own understanding, provided we are trusting in God to provide, we're acknowledging Him, we're acknowledging His ways, we're not leaning on our own understanding, we can proceed forward with God's guidance and care. God sees who we are to become. He sees the person that He called, and He sees the potential in the person that He called. He sees the end from the beginning, and He knows better than anyone how to guide us from point A to point B. How to get us to be this person that He has called us to become, and what that's going to take. And sometimes it takes things that we maybe didn't expect, or maybe answers to prayers that we didn't ask for. But He brings us to this point of spiritual growth in the only way that God can.

Eventually, we end up at this point A, or from point A to point B, in that process of training, brethren, training, to become kings and priests to serve alongside Him in the Millennium. Brethren, we serve a God who sees. We serve a God who sees. We serve a God who sees our struggles, who sees our faithfulness, and who sees our future.

We serve a God who sees us in the depths of our despair, in our uncertainty, in our pain, and in our hurt. One who sees our faithfulness, even in the little things. We serve a God who knows the future that He has planned for us, and ultimately is continuing to work in our lives to bring it to fruition.

Justice Hagar discovered, in her most vulnerable moment, alone in the wilderness, rejected, sent away from her mistress, uncertain of her future. She discovered a God who not only knew her name, but who cared for her destiny and the destiny of her unborn son. He is El-Roy. He is El-Roy. And as we come into these remaining fall holy days, as we come into atonement and then into the Feast of Tabernacles, brethren, let's never forget that despite the circumstances of the here and now, where we are right now, the challenges of this life, these trials that we've experienced prior to the Feast, that God will complete the work that He is doing in His people, because He is the God who sees.