The God Who Sees

Extracted Verses and Quotes from the Sermon

Biblical Verses

Genesis 12:1-4

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Genesis 15

God reaffirms His promise to Abraham, declaring that it will not be Lot or Eleazar who will be his heir, but that Abraham will have a child of promise.

Genesis 16:1-5

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”

Psalm 127:1

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor build it in vain.

Exodus 34:6-7

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Genesis 16:7-9

The angel of the Lord found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.”

Isaiah 43:1-4

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.”

Genesis 16:10-12

The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be counted for multitude.” And the angel of the Lord said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”

Exodus 3:7-8

The Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Psalm 34:15-16

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Psalm 33:13-15

The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.

Psalm 33:18-19

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine.

Psalm 121:3-4

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

Psalm 9:10

And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.

Memorable Quotes

“Every good story has three basic components: there’s a situation, followed by a complication, then there’s a resolution.”

“Names reflect people’s spiritual growth; the change in their name reflects the change in their spiritual experience.”

“Sarah starts out by blaming God for her problems; she’s hardly starting from a position of faith.”

“When things don’t seem to go as well as we expect them to, we look for answers and solutions within our culture, and if it’s okay within our culture, we think it’s okay for us to do it as followers of God.”

“Polygamy was never part of God’s plan for matrimony, and it’s only succeeded historically in bringing heartache, jealousy and infighting wherever practiced.”

“Sin in one life, sin in one relationship, sin in one family can spread and have ripple effects all around. But the good news of the Gospel is that righteousness also has a positive multiplier effect for generations.”

“God keeps covenant faithfulness for a thousand generations. If sin has a ripple effect for three or four generations, righteousness has a ripple effect for a thousand generations.”

“When sin enters a relationship, it’s like descending a ski slope: hearts are progressively hardened, voices become cruel, and words are spoken that should never be uttered.”

“God has a concern for those who are voiceless, for those who are abused, for those who are trampled on or ignored by society or by their families, and God does not condemn Hagar here.”

“To be listened to, to be heard — to be heard without interruption, to be heard without condemnation — it is a turning point; it is a starting point of the healing process.”

“Truth may be painful, but without truth there can be no healing in your life or in my life.”

“Truthfulness and honesty with God is essential for our own healing as well.”

“Having established a common understanding, both God and Hagar recognize: ‘I am running away from my mistress and she is my mistress.’ Now God moves on to the next stage of Hagar’s healing process which is an invitation to repent.”

“This is the moment of truth for Hagar: will she continue fleeing to Egypt or will she return to Abraham and Sarah?”

“God does not condone Sarah’s treatment of Hagar; God will punish those who misuse their authority and hurt others, but He rarely entrusts this duty to those who are suffering unjust treatment themselves because the chances are you’re not going to get justice, you’re going to get vengeance.”

“If a man misuses his wife, abuses his wife, does not treat her with honor, God is not going to hear his prayers.”

“For a man to remain in an abusive relationship with his wife, to be hurting his wife and not treating her with honor, he’s actually living in a state of lostness even if he goes to church every Sabbath.”

“God’s promise to Hagar was conditional upon her obedience to His command to return to the household of Abraham and Sarah.”

“We cannot ask for God’s blessings if we choose willfully to ignore the light that God has given us.”

“God hears those who cry to Him in their distress. This is a living witness: names do carry a message.”

“Hagar said, ‘You are El-Roi, for I have really seen God and remained alive after seeing Him.’”

“El-Roi means ‘The God who sees me and hears me in my distress.’ He sees, He hears, He knows, He acts, and He will deliver.”

“God is the God who sees and hears, who knows and cares, and who delivers.”

“We are invited to see ourselves the way that God sees us, not the way that we tend to see ourselves or that those around us may look upon us.”

“The eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His steadfast love, to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine.”

“When my father was looking at me, it either inspired love or dread.”

“To know the name of God is to put our trust in Him — the God who watches over His children even when society has turned its back on Him.”

“El-Roi is the God who knows the past, He’s with you today, and we can place our trust in Him because He loves us.”

“He is the God who sees into the midst of tomorrow.”

“Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Other Quotations

Exodus 34:6-7 (quoted as God’s self-revelation to Moses)

“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.”

1 Peter 3:7 (quoted regarding husbands and wives)

“Husbands, in the same way show consideration for your wives and your life together, paying honor to the woman as the weaker sex, since