If you would, go with me to Genesis chapter 16. Genesis chapter 16. We are actually, I'm going to read the entire chapter, but before that, I'm going to give us a little bit of an introduction for this morning. I mentioned that I had Intentions now, not initially, but I do believe it's something that I have talked to different people about. I've made mention of it several times in conversations, but never really targeted anything from the pulpit. But I'm gonna do it this morning, not trying to attack anybody. It's not a person I'm trying to go after. It is an errant mentality that I am going to, through God's word, seek to correct. that we not fall prey to the trap of the devil, I believe, in religiosity. It's not a word, I know, but I made it up. It'll work for me, okay? There's a lot of religious sayings that people use. By the way, be careful, be careful when a worldly society dictates to the church religious statements. Be careful. Just because it sounds good doesn't mean it's biblically and doctrinally sound. Be careful. There are Christians that are, in a minute, I'm gonna give you a couple of things that you have probably seen going around today. It is the hot sayings, hashtags, of today and I'm going to obliterate them, Lord willing, because they are leading people astray in a mentality that does not fit the Bible. It fits society, it fits what we want, it fits what people would like to hear, and people love it because it makes them feel good, but it's not Bible. It sounds like Bible. That's the danger of it. It's kind of like you do if you're wanting to go trapping, you're not gonna just set a trap out there and put the most disgusting things out there for the animals to come to and wanna be baited into the trap. No, no, what are you gonna do? You're actually gonna put the most enticing, good, what they're looking for, what they think is going to be good for them, you're gonna stick that around the trap. Why? Because you want them to be suckered in. And then when that trap snaps, it's too late. So, lest God's people be suckered in to what sounds spiritual, we're gonna give some warning this morning, all right? So here it is. There are a couple of sayings that are quite popular. And the religious, let me put it that way, the religious crowd, I say it that way because it's really not denominational, it is religious. It spans the idea, whether somebody has placed their faith in Jesus Christ or not, it fits the religiosity of society. As long as we make it sound Bible-ish, then we can draw people to believing what we want them to believe because they think it comes from the Bible. Now, by the way, how do you ward against that? Know your Bible. All right? The only way you know, and this was not in my notes, but it's the best way to explain it. When they are teaching somebody how to tell whether or not money is a forgery, they don't teach them how to know the forgery. They teach them how to know the real thing. They know the feel, they know the look, they know the design, they know the real thing so well that when they see something that seems off, it's because it doesn't match what they have learned to know about the real thing. Same thing is true with the Bible. How do you know for sure that you can detect when something doesn't feel right, when something doesn't sound right, when something doesn't seem right? So I can't put my finger on it, but I'm telling you that something's not quite right. Then you can go to the Bible and you can back that up exactly what it is. Ah, there it is, I knew it wasn't right. Okay, so when you know your Bible, when you read your Bible, and you spend time with the Lord, you can know the real thing. and you can tell when it's just a religiosity kind of statement. Bible-ish does not make it Bible. Just put it that way. I'm using a lot of, like preacher, your grammar and stuff and all your vocabulary is really off. I don't care, all right? I like the way it sounds. So, it is important to be aware of the errors of false doctrine. and not get sucked in with the sounds of good statements. Here they are, you ready? Hashtag, he gets us. Anybody seen that one? Hashtag, he gets us. Hashtag, he gets us. I actually got a Greek word for both of these. Y'all have heard it before. Okay, I'm not trying to be ugly, but I want you to know, I will put down false error, what they call truth, but it's false doctrine. I will stop it every single opportunity I have and not coddle it. I'm not being ugly towards the people because there are many that are getting sucked into this because they honestly just don't know what's trying to be taught through this. Hashtag he gets us. If you see anybody that is actually promoting this openly, you'll find that almost every single time that they say hashtag he gets us or hashtag so glad he gets us, you'll always find that they are promoting the fact that we are not perfect, We are not completely innocent of everything. Oh yes, I've messed up. Oh yes, I've this and that. Now listen, understand, nobody in here is perfect. We get that. We're not perfect yet. We'll be made perfect one day, but it's not in this life. But we are seeking, as the Lord said, be ye holy for I am holy. Therefore, I am to seek to be more like Christ. Christ was perfect. So therefore, I have to be very careful, you have to be very careful promoting our imperfection. And then saying, you know, basically, well, I know I don't live a life that most people agree with, but, hashtag, he gets me. Can y'all see where it goes? That is the element. Now, does Jesus understand you and me? Yes, he does. We're gonna look at that here in just a moment. Okay, I'm gonna show you what the real doctrinal truth is concerning the similarity to this statement. He gets us. But he gets us is used as a way to qualify that he accepts me. Now understand, get this, it's a play on truth. He accepts me as I am. Is that truth? As a whole, yes. In context, you're right. He does accept you don't have to clean yourself up in order for Christ to want to accept you and forgive you. By the way, you don't clean a fish until after it's caught. So God's not, well, as soon as I can get these things out of my life and I have no problem, I feel like I can come to the Lord and I can ask him to forgive me and he'll forgive me. Listen, he'll forgive you where you are. If you will repent and accept the truth and obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, the death, burial, resurrection, accept him alone as the solution for forgiveness and receive with repentance, receive the forgiveness that God offers through Jesus Christ, his son. You don't have to clean yourself up to get to a point where you will be accepted. No, no, no, you just have to come to a realization, I'm a sinner. And I'm condemned because of my sin, not because he condemns me. My sin condemns me. He has no choice but as a righteous judge to let righteousness declare that which has already been declared. That is, I am guilty. And no matter where I am in my life, when I say, Lord, I am guilty, forgive me. Salvation is offered not because somebody can make themselves good enough to be accepted. Does Christ accept sinners? Yes. Does he accept my sinful life and sweep it under the rug because he gets me? No. If that was the case, then the woman we looked at a couple of weeks ago, that was caught in adultery, that was trapped, you might say, in adultery, and brought before him, and the accusers wanting to stone her, and wanting him trying to trap Jesus into agreeing to kill this woman. Basically, they're trying to put him in a no-win situation. And yet he had the wisdom to beat them at their own game. But what did he tell the woman? He said, he said, now watch, he said this. He said, where are that accusers? When he looked up from writing, where are that accusers? She said, there are none. They're not here. And he said, neither do I accuse thee. And that's where some people wanna stop. That's where some just wanna say, you know, that's where, that's the heart of Jesus right there. Neither do I accuse thee. Condemn thee. Neither do I condemn, neither do I. I am not going to put you down because of your failures. And that's where people want to stop. But the condemning is not where he stopped. He said, neither do I condemn thee. By the way, she was already condemned. He didn't have to condemn her. The Bible says that Jesus came not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. So therefore, it's not about the condemnation, but he said this, he didn't stop with, neither do I condemn thee, he stopped with, go and sin no more. So what he's saying is, I do not condemn thee, but I also do not condone thee. You're not condemned by me, I forgive, yet you are to live a life that would be acceptable to God. Now, he's not telling her to earn her salvation. What he's saying is, to whom much is given, much is required. Therefore, to whom much is forgiven, there should be a life that follows that forgiveness. I have been forgiven much. Therefore, I should seek to please and serve and honor the one who has forgiven me. And so, this is still an introduction. So he gets us is a way of whitewashing using a good sounding statement that he accepts us. You are accepted when you ask for whosoever will may come. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. So whoever comes to the Lord in whatever condition they are and repents before him, yes, he accepts the sinner and forgives the one who repents through obedience to the gospel. So there is a sense of truth, but this statement of he gets us is twisted. It's a way to say, doesn't really matter what I do. You may not get me, but God does. You may not accept the way I live, but God does. That is not, unless my life is a resemblance of the God that I serve and the Savior that has forgiven me, unless my life is resembling and reflecting Him, He does not accept the works of this flesh. So therefore, no, He does not just accept me, no matter what I do, no matter what. By the way, that's why He brings conviction in my life. He brings conviction because He doesn't want me living like me, He wants me living like Him. So, I can say this, the Bible says, you have been bought with a price. I owe him everything. We preached that a while back. But then also, here's the second one. You see it on the screen. Y'all probably seen it. I saw the commercial just the other day. Has all this different stuff. I can't even remember all the different things. But basically, here's the gist of it. Jesus didn't condemn people. Jesus washed feet. Now in that, now understand, did Jesus wash feet? Yes, but Jesus didn't wash the feet of every single person he came around. There's only one group of people he actually washed feet. Now in that group of people, there was a whole bunch. Matter of fact, one of them was gonna betray him. He washed the feet of Judas Iscariot. But here's the thing. People that don't know their Bible are taking the Bible and trying to use the Bible to make a statement to get people to accept a religious mentality that Jesus did not condemn people, he washed their feet. And here's what they teach by that. In washing their feet, he was letting them know, I accept you, I accept you, I accept you. The same mentality, two different statements. Both sound religious, both sound like they come from the Bible, but here's the thing, Jesus washed the feet of his apostles, those that were with him in the upper room, those that were with him when they ate, and he, by the way, it's interesting, he first fed them, then he washed their feet. That's backwards compared to, and you can do the study on it, but it's backwards compared to the way it was traditionally. Traditionally, you wash the feet of your guests before they ever came in, as soon as they came in the house, you'd have a servant wash their feet, and then they would sit at the table. Then they would eat. Jesus didn't wash feet until after they were done eating. And there's just some things to keep in mind. But as a whole, what was the purpose of washing feet? That's what we're getting to. The purpose of washing feet was not Jesus saying, I accept you, I accept you, I accept you. The purpose of washing feet was Jesus saying, let me show you what the heart and attitude and actions of a servant would be. You see, the servant's the one that washed the feet, not the master of the home. But Jesus, in that context, in that timeframe, he was the master, they called him master, they called him teacher, and what he said is, the teacher is gonna show you how to be a servant. By the way, he even washed the feet of the one that would have been declared his enemy. He is teaching them what the heart of Christ would be to all those concerned in being a servant, even to those who don't deserve it. It was not a timeframe of Jesus saying, I'm gonna wash your feet and just accept you as you are. No, he's saying, I'm teaching you how you should do others. Be willing to be a servant. Now, You can see where these things kind of intertwine and you can easily be misled to believe that a simple hashtag or a simple statement can be real biblical. But it's not biblical when you understand what they're doing. If you watch the commercial, you'll find the commercial deals in all the political issues and schemes of the day. The commercial they have on Jesus washed feet, and I had never seen it until just the other day, and it came across, and I'm like, oh, that's the one. So I was watching, paying attention to it. Somebody had told me about it. And so I watched that, and I saw, yep, they had people washing the feet of every situation you could possibly think of in today's society. Now, some of them, I get and understand, it's not a problem. Be a servant to those, had somebody on the street side, somebody that didn't have a home, is homeless and washing feet. Okay, I get that. That's not a bad thing. Not a bad thing to wanna be a servant and help somebody in need. They dealt with all ethnic backgrounds and stuff. Okay, I get that. Yeah, we, honestly, the whole idea of being prejudiced towards people because of skin color is not of the Bible. Otherwise, Philip wouldn't have talked to the Ethiopian eunuch. You don't oftentimes, when you're reading your Bible, you don't always see the color. But the Ethiopian eunuch was a black man. Philip, by the way, wasn't even white. Yeah, okay, neither was Jesus. Okay, but let's just get beyond that one. But Philip was Jewish. The Ethiopian eunuch, beyond everything else, he was a Gentile. Philip being a Jew, willing to talk to a Gentile, that could be a problem. And so just understand, I'm not getting very far very fast. Y'all hang with me, okay. I only got two points. It's just taking me forever to get to them. But when you read the Bible, you don't always see it in color. as we should, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is not for a particular group, ethnic, and I don't even wanna say race, because there's only one race, it's called the human race. By the way, the whole racial scenario, that's an evolutionary fault. There was no idea of race until evolution was presented. That was free, but The ethnic, there is a true ethnic diversity. The diversity of your background, where you come from, where you were raised, the country that you're in, all those different aspects. Yes, but here's the thing, God's word in the gospel, the Bible said, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That word creature is not talking about dogs and cats and all that kind of stuff, but it's talking about every individual, every ethnic background of mankind, you're to go and reach everyone with the truth because all men, God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And so we see these things that, do I agree with the idea of, you know, some of those aspects of the washing feet? Yeah, but then they went beyond that. And once they tie in some things that I can look at and say, okay, okay, be a servant, be a servant, okay, be a servant. And then they went into backgrounds of sinful nature. Then they start going into, they went straight to individuals that are clearly dealing in the homosexual lifestyle. And I think they even had, they had like a priest or a preacher. They had somebody of the ministry actually, it's very obvious what they were doing. They had a preacher washing the feet of somebody that's living in a lifestyle, sodomy lifestyle. Now, listen, don't get me wrong. Y'all hold on with me here. I am not of that group that says, bless God, they're unredeemable. That is junk, that is not Bible. That is as much false teaching as anything else. But I do not believe someone can be a child of God and live in direct, open sin that the Bible declares to be blasphemy and to be what God considers abomination. He is not just going to get you. He is not going to just wash your feet and say, I still, I love you, even though you don't want to live like you want to live. Now, does he love? Yes. But his love is not an acceptance of sin. It is a love for the person in spite of sin. However, by the way, that's why he died and said, if they will repent, I will forgive. That is why when Israel turned their back on God and he said, I still love you, I'm not happy with you and you're gonna go into problems right now and I'm gonna chase in you, but I'm gonna love you. And as soon as you turn back to me, I'm gonna accept you back in. I'm gonna pull you back in. And as long as you will look to me and as long as you will live a life focused on me as long as Israel, as long as you will follow me, I will be your God, you will be my people. And by the way, he's still saying the same thing to mankind today. As long as you will follow me, as long as you will obey the truth, I will be your God and you will be my people. I will bless you and there won't be the curse on life. Now, I may not be getting very far with you this morning, but I want you to understand. Y'all ready for the meat of it? We're gonna tie it together and close it out. You ready? So the whole he gets us and Jesus washed feet. Yes, he does get you, but not the way they're trying to present. Yes, Jesus did wash feet, but it was only one specific time, and that was teaching a whole different lesson than what they're trying to present. They're trying to use Jesus. to propagate acceptance of sin. And if that is not an abomination against God's word, more than anything else, I don't know what is. And so how do we correct error? We correct error with the actual truth. Here in Genesis 16, verse one down, and we may not, we should get all the way through. Let me just read this account. This is the account of the most, one of the most egregious things that Abram ever did, which by the way, the Middle East is still paying for today. This is the account of what takes place, by the way, and God decides to do something of a blessing to someone who was, to a degree, treated in a wrong way. but Middle East is paying for it right now. Let me read, you'll see the account. It says in verse number one of Genesis 16. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children. And she had a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. I pray thee, go in unto my handmaid. It may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. Now understand God had promised them a child, but instead of being patient and waiting on God, now they're gonna help him. Verse number three, and Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, her handmaid, the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan and gave her to her husband, Abram, to be his wife. And he went in under her and she conceived. And when he saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. In other words, all of a sudden, the servant now looks at the one that is above her and looks down on her. By the way, doing things man's way never really pays off. Verse number five, and Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee. I have given my handmaid unto thy bosom. And when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes. The Lord judged between me and thee. And Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand. Do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face. Now, as a whole, understand there is one aspect of justification in what Sarai has done in the fact that she is still the head over this individual and there is a misuse of position here. And by the way, of her own doings, she caused it, and yet it's still not, by the way, two wrongs don't make a right. And so Hagar's doing wrong in response to the wrong that Sarai has done. Two wrongs don't make a right. And so as the leader over, as the one over Hagar, Sarai does have a right to put her in a place, but she deals very hardly with her. And I imagine there's a little bit of jealousy and frustration that adds in. By the way, when we do wrong, when we do things the way we want to do them, it does add to the, when the flesh is involved, the flesh doesn't get out of the way. Therefore, it compounds. And typically, when we handle things in the flesh, we handle things with great anger and resentment. And you're just seeing this play out within this situation. And so verse number seven, Hagar has now fled away from her face. Hagar is off in the distance by herself. It says, verse number seven, the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whither camest thou? And whither wilt thou go? Here's what's interesting. Here you have the outsider. that God still cares about. She is complicit in some of this, but at the same time, God hasn't cast her away. She's not the Abraham and Sarah. She's not the main focus of what God is gonna do and what God intended to use to bring about a great nation, and yet God has not forgotten the one that is involved in this issue. And so, It goes on in verse number eight, and she said, I flee from the face of my mistress, Sariah. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, return to thy mistress. Oh, get, now get, ooh, this is good, a whole nother message. Here's how God teaches people to handle being done wrong. The angel of the Lord said unto her, return to thy mistress and submit thyself under her hands. Woo. That goes against everything you hear on Facebook. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, I will. Now here's the thing, he about to say what he's gonna do to bless her and to help her and to assist her. But he says, first, you go do as you ought to. First, you go, you're the servant. You're not in a position to stand up and to rebel. Rebellion is as a sin of witchcraft. I can't help you in that. But if you will obey and you will do right, even if it's not easy, I will help you. So he tells her to go back and submit herself underneath the hand of the one who's just really reamed her out real good over something that really ultimately wasn't her fault, but she reacted wrong to it. Okay, now watch. The Lord says, go back and submit yourself, just do right. And it goes on to say, Verse number 10, and the angel of the Lord said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. By the way, with this and the contingencies of God's promise of blessing, I would venture to say that Hagar actually did as the Lord commanded, because you see the multiplying of the seed today. So the blessing that was promised is actually seen in reality today, which means she had to fulfill what God told her to do, and she went back and submitted herself. Her obedience opened the door to God's blessing. Now watch. Verse number 11, and the angel of the Lord said unto her, behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction, and he will be a wild man. His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. By the way, this right here is prophecy. We see it today. If you don't know who the descendants of Ishmael are, they are called at this time, Palestinians. And they are dwelling amongst their brethren and there is fighting and feuding over who has the right to the land. Why is that? The birthright of the firstborn. God says Ishmael is not the firstborn because he's not the firstborn of promise. Ishmael says I am the firstborn because I'm the firstborn of Abraham. So there's been a fight ever since. This is being declared right here. And the verse number 13 says, and she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her. Now watch, here it is, thou God that seest me. Now here's how you fight error with truth. Thou God that seest me. You never will find in the Bible where it says he gets us. But you do find in the Bible, thou God that seest me. Oh, you also find in the Bible, where God himself declares, I know you. I formed thee. He knows every part of me better than I know myself. And he sees me when I think no one else sees. So you never see he gets us, but you see that he knows us and he sees us. Now let me finish this, and I'm gonna give you the two points, we're finished. It's only 11 o'clock. I figured y'all would like that. Verse number 14, wherefore the well was called, now I'm gonna try to hit this, okay, was called Barah-le-hario. Hario, however you wanna say that. Behold, yeah, that. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bare Abram a son, and Abram called his son's name, which Hagar bare Ishmael. And Abram was fourscore and six years old when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abraham. Now, next you find, as you continue reading, we're not going to, but as you continue reading, you find that the promised seed is about to be revealed. Abraham and Sarah got ahead of God. And by the way, the whole Middle East area over there has been paying the price ever since. Now, as we look at this, let me just give you two simple points concerning this thought, and that is the title of the message. Thou, God, seest me. It feels like, I know it's already felt like it's been forever right now, but just hold on, we're almost there. Two things to think about when you understand, when you hear that statement, thou God seest me. Now here's truth. What should it cause in my life when I hear those words? Well, those words should convict us. when we are daydreaming and pondering about things that maybe we shouldn't, when we fail to pray before making decisions, when we get angry over issues or at other people, when we do a half-hearted job, whether at work or for the Lord, when we disobey God's word in our daily life, knowing, knowing, knowing what He wants us to do and we just do what we want to do. Thou God seest me. Now can you see the gravity of truth versus the error of religiosity? The gravity of truth is there's never a moment that my God does not know what I'm doing. Oh, by the way, there's never a moment that my God, the one that by the way gave His only begotten Son, that died for me, which I have placed my faith and trust in, who is my Savior and God, my Heavenly Father, there is not a day, there is not a moment that goes by that an all-knowing God doesn't know exactly what I just thought. Now does that sound real comfortable? There's a reason why that doesn't get propagated across social media and everybody like it and love it. Woo, yes, this is wonderful! Because it actually makes me feel real small. And if I think about what God knows about me, even from this morning on. Or you could take yesterday. Not just the actions everybody else sees, but the things that no one sees. The thoughts that no one knows. The intents of the heart that no one has heard about yet. And yet God is already aware of it because thou, God, seest me. The truth of that should burn in our hearts and in our life. The conviction should be present. I'm gonna give you a few more just statements, you ready? When we are tempted to speak evil of another person, we should remember thou God seest me. When we are tempted to be critical towards those around us, and by the way, that, guilty. I'll be honest with you, might as well just go ahead and display it, right? I've had my fair share of having plenty of talks about things and people that really irritated me. A critical spirit, by the way, is not a spirit of God. It's a fleshly spirit, and when my words and my heart and my intentions are critical, it does not honor my Heavenly Father, and thou God seest me. When we are tempted to complain, thou God seest me. When we make promises and give our word, oh, this is a lost aspect of life today. Giving your word and keeping it. Nowadays, I'll only keep it if I feel like it. I promise, maybe. But when I give my word, by the way, God's people should be the people that anyone can trust more than anybody else. When I make a promise or a commitment, thou God seest me. When we are tempted to neglect our responsibilities, whether for family or the job or the things that we've taken on as a responsibility for the Lord, when I'm tempted to just neglect it, Thou, God, seest me. And here's the whammy for us when we think no one is looking. When we think no one else is going to see, no one else is going to know. Thou, God, seest me. Here's a bit of a funny example. Not sure if it's true. It's probably just an example given by somebody. I got it from somewhere and I don't know who started it, but there's a story about, a very short story about a man and his son who, for whatever reason, for whatever need, the dad had told his son, son, I'm sure he justified himself, but this place over here has a whole bunch of chickens and we're running low. we're gonna go borrow some chickens permanently. And so they went to go steal the chickens. And I'm sure he convinced his son exactly the reasons why and how justified it would be to do this. It's a huge chicken farm. They got tons of chickens. They're not gonna miss a handful of chickens, but we really need them. So they went over there, they got to the place. And when they got there, the dad looked to his left and he looked to his right and he looked ahead of him, he looked behind him. It's like, all right, I think we're clear, let's go. By the time they went to move in and take the chickens, the son looked at the dad and said, hey, dad, did you look up? Needless to say, they went home without the chickens. It's just a simple question. I mean, he looked all over the place, but he didn't look up. I mean, you think about it, the kid probably just thinking there might be somebody up there watching. He's not thinking God, but somehow, In that story, it struck the father as being, oh, there is one always seeing me. But here's where I want to end it tonight. It'll be tonight if I keep going. This morning, thou God seest me are words that I should be under conviction about. It ought to convict me. But it's also words that ought to comfort me. Let's just not, let's not deal with the whole, oh, preachers nowadays, all they do is preach on condemnation. Boy, I'm condemned, I'm condemned, I'm condemned. Conviction, conviction. Let's balance it out. It ought to comfort me too. Because him seeing me and knowing that he sees me is not always a, oh my goodness, oh. Sometimes it is a, man. Boy, what a comfort. Thou God seest me. In times of struggle, God sees you. Our struggling times, when it seems like every wind is against us, against us in raising our kids right, against family values and family traditions, against morality and against purity, against decency and against holy living, when it seems like everything's against us, hey listen, God still sees his people. especially when we're seeking to please Him. He sees the struggle. He sees the issues. Proverbs 15.3 says, the eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good. I don't know all the things that you are facing. I know the things I face, but I know this much about God that sees us. He is too holy to be unjust. He is too loving to be unkind. He is too pure to be unfair. He is too compassionate to be unconcerned. He's too merciful to be untouched with your struggle. He sees, He knows. If He sees a sparrow fall, you can be guaranteed He sees you in your struggle. Matthew 10, 29 through 31 talks about that. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father? But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. Whether you're struggling financially, struggling in marital difficulties, struggling with binding habits or controlling substances or whatever it might be in life, Thou God seest me, and you see me in my struggle, and Lord, you see how, you see the difficulties I face. He hasn't forgotten me. God sees you when you're suffering, whether suffering in mental issues, suffering emotionally, suffering physically, God sees. Now that is one area I can get behind that honestly would actually propagate throughout social media as being encouraging. People would spread it 24-7 that I could actually stay behind. And that is no matter what you're facing, no matter what you're doing, no matter how hard it gets, don't forget you're not alone. The God in which you've given your life to sees you. You're not invisible to him. He hasn't forgotten you. He sees you in your struggle. He sees you in your suffering. He sees you when you're sorrowing, when you've had loss, when it seems to be an overbearing amount of loss and an issue in your life, and it feels like no one can understand. I can tell you from God's Word, the truth is He does understand. He does know. He fully comprehends loss and suffering. and sorrow. Understand also, God sees you when you're serving him. It feels like everything I do just amounts to nothing for God. Everything I try to do to serve him, it feels like this, I mean, it doesn't matter, it doesn't do anything. Y'all ever heard or felt this? Nobody sees, nobody recognizes. God sees. Proverbs 5.21, for the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. Seven times to the seven churches in Asia, Jesus says, I know thy works. God has not forgotten you. God is not blind to your needs. Paul, we were talking about it in Sunday school, now I can pull it up because we looked it up. I couldn't remember the reference, but Philippians 4, 19. But my God shall supply all your need. Now, I know it goes on, so don't get me wrong, I'm not stopping there just to miss the rest of the verse, but I want you to know this. How does he know all your need if he's not seeing your need? He is aware of where you're at. He's aware of your job situation. He's aware of your home situation. He's aware of your financial situation. He's aware of your physical situation. He's aware of all the struggles and issues and sorrows and problems and needs. He's aware of every single one of them because there's never a moment that thou God fails to see me. because thou, God, seest me. It's convicting and it should help me to understand even if nobody else sees or nobody else hears my thoughts, he does. By the way, I won't answer to you and you won't answer to me, but we will all give answer to God. And the God that sees all knows all. Therefore, even those things which I think men are fooled concerning me, God has not fooled. So that's convicting. But on that flip side, the encouraging side, I serve a God. If you know Christ as your personal Savior, you are a child of God through the blood of Jesus Christ, and that has been settled. You have a heavenly Father. that sees you. He knows your issues. He knows your struggles. He knows, but we are but dust. That's why he said, without me, you can do nothing. But we also are told that I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me. How is it that I can do all things? Because God never fails to see me, to know my need, and to already have the answer. So if I will actually walk with Him, I am in league with the one who sees all, knows all, and knows how to help all. There is no greater strength than knowing that God sees me. Let it be convicting, but also let it be encouraging for the child of God. Heavenly Father, we thank you this morning for this.