The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers.
The countenance of the Lord is against them that do evil.
The eye of God
We all know well how much and often the Holy Scriptures speak of the blessed God, attributing to Him, under a figure, various human things, such as bodily members and organs, and mental feelings. It is an obvious caution, to warn people against understanding all these expressions literally; but it is a caution, one would think, not very necessary in these days. The opposite one, however, is needed, for in our excessive fears of corporeal conceptions of God, the thought of Him is becoming altogether vague and unreal. Our simplicity is our best wisdom, and we should think of God as He is vividly and simply and, as far as our powers can conceive of Him, truly set forth to us in Holy Scripture. The eye of God is, then, over the righteous to protect and comfort them, and His ear open to their prayers, to hear and answer them; while His countenance, not less all-seeing, is turned in displeasure and wrath upon those who do evil, so as to punish them with destruction. His eye is turned upon the good in love, and upon the bad in anger. Consider, then, ye who know well what it is to feel and love the sight of a parent’s eye turned on you in approving affection, how God desires, by speaking so, to be regarded by you as looking upon you. Think how, when you have been trying to please your earthly parents, how, perhaps, when you have been trying to overcome some unkind or unworthy temper, some angry or sullen feeling, you have felt their eye turned upon you in tender and loving approbation, and have been encouraged to conquer the evil spirit who was assailing you. And God thus represents Himself to you, and bids you remember that His eye is over the righteous. But His countenance is against them that do evil. He seeth not less the sinners. His eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Let none suppose that he shuns, or can shun, the eye of God by disregarding it. It is the folly of the foolish bird which shuts its own eyes, and then thinks itself unseen. I would I might, by God’s grace, waken up in the hearts of some of you the thought of the eye of God; the thought of the ever-present, ever-wakeful, heart-searching, tender, paternal eye of God, which is over you His own redeemed children! (G. Moberly, D. C. L.)
An encouraging theology
I. that God is specially interested in the existence of man on this earth (Psalms 34:15-16).
1. Man is His offspring.
2. Man is His suffering offspring.
II. that God is mainly concerned with the moral distinctions of men on this earth.
1. Two classes of moral character are represented in the verses, and they are spoken of--
(1) As “wicked,” and “righteous.”
(2) As those that “trust in Him” and those that “hate the righteous.”
(3) As those that “do evil,” and those that are “His servants.” His servants are represented as broken in heart and contrite in spirit.
2. He sees all the other distinctions amongst men, physical, intellectual, social, political, religious. But these moral distinctions interest Him most, they are more affecting to His heart, more vital to the happiness of His creatures, more fundamental to the weal of His universe.
III. that God evermore treats men according to the moral character which they sustain on this earth.
1. Look at His conduct towards the righteous.
(1) He superintends them; His “eyes” and His “ears” are towards them. He keeps a vigilant watch over them.
(2) He hears them. No mother’s ears are half so quick to catch the cries of a suffering child as His ears to catch the cries of His afflicted people.
(3) He is nigh them. Not in a mere local or physical sense, but in the sense of tenderest sympathy and regard.
(4) He saves them. Deep, tender, and constant is His interest in them.
2. Look at His conduct towards the wicked.
(1) He is against them for their ruin (Psalms 34:16).
(2) He allows their sin to destroy them (Psalms 34:21). (Homilist.)
The face of the Lord
Our eye is dimmer than the eye of the men of old time for the vision of the face of God. We have greater thoughts, no doubt, about His name, His nature, His purposes, His methods. But His countenance, flashing with intelligence, clouding with sorrow, beaming with love, as it looks out on us through the Creation, seems to escape us. Nature is very beautiful, very glorious, very terrible; but there is no speculation in the eye wherewith she beholds us. Less cultivated peoples seem to discern a presence, to hear a voice, to feel a touch of some living being in all the play and movement of the Creation. To our wise ones it is but the manifestation of vital force, the constant, pitiless swing of the wheels of a vast vital mechanism. But the face of the Lord, to those whose eye is open to behold it, is not veiled; it looks out on them still through its organs of expression in Nature and in man.
I. the lofty and patient method of god in guiding and ruling mankind. The face of the Lord is against them that do evil; not the weight of His hand as yet. God gives to man a large liberty to do evil. In truth, we hardly realize how large and high is His method. We constantly expect that His hand of force will close upon us in some self-willed, sinful course which we are bent on pursuing; and if He fails to meet us, if the path seems open, if the sun shines, if the birds sing, and the fruits of pleasure hang pendent from the boughs, we are tempted to instruct our own consciences, and to say, God cannot be so sternly set against our self-willed course after all. It is truly fearful to realize the rude limits of our power to corrupt, to torment, to madden His children; to make the world a place of wailing, and life a bitter protest against the goodness and righteousness of His reign. How much are you adding daily to the pain and sorrow of the Creation? Do you never wonder that the iron hand of God’s power does not close firmly round you, and make you feel that there are limits beyond which you shall not use your fearful prerogative of freedom--beyond which you shall not fill God’s seed-field with the seeds of misery and death? But the hand is still open; still dropping, broadcast, blessings on your life.
II. let us study the forms in which the face of God is against man’s evil, and how it bears upon his life.
1. There is the face of God in the daylight of Creation (Genesis 3:8-13). Shame, fear, and a great rout of base and slavish passions enter with sin, and drive out that child’s frank joy and trust with which man was made and meant to look up to God. Nature is, in one sense, impassive. But the evil-doer finds an expression on her countenance, a frown on her brow, which startles and appals him. The flash of the lightning across the murderer’s path reveals to him something more than the splendour of electric fire. The splendour departs--a dull, sad shadow settles over the world. The evil-doer loses all sense of a living presence in Nature. Life gets drained of its interest, the world of its beauty, the future of its hope. The face of God ceases to affright. It ceases even to appear behind the veil of the invisible. What does this mean? Is it that all barriers are withdrawn, and that the evil-doer has the universe and eternity before him in which to work out his malignant will? Nay, it means that the sinner has passed out of the light of God’s countenance, out of the sphere of his freedom, into the grasp of God’s terrible hand. This is what is meant by falling “into the hands of the living God.”
2. The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, in the moral instincts, the moral judgments, of their fellows, and in the whole order of the human world. A man, let us say, walks about burdened with a great, guilty secret. What is it which makes him feel as if every man whom he meets was acquainted with it, and was trying to shame him? What but the face of God looking out on him through the face of man, His image?
3. The face of the Lord looks out on men through the various forms of the discipline of life. There is a striking instance of what I mean in 1 Kings 17:9-18. Day by day you are brought into contact with a mind and a will outside you, not only by what you see, but also by what you endure.
4. The face of the Lord looks out against them that do evil, through the gathering glooms of death. A man hardened in sin may walk at ease through nil the pathways of the world, crying, Where is the Lord? in impious defiance or presumptuous scorn. But to every man in death the face reappears--never to vanish again through eternity. Men who have been recovered from apparent death, and have gone through all the experience of dying, tell strange tales of how in one burning moment the buried past reappears. The whole scroll of life unrolled, clear and orderly, before them; every thought, passion, incident, experience, standing out with startling vividness before the mind’s eyed and all in the clear daylight. No mist or confusion upon them; all risen again before the face of God. And that vision is for over. The “vain show” vanishes; the illusion is for ever ended. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)