main homiletics of verse 3.
Divine Intelligence.
I. The Eternal has a perfect knowledge of all places. The sun, in its meridian height, can only penetrate half the globe at the same time, and even then there are deep valleys and caves of the earth, and ocean beds where its rays never come; but God’s eye rests at once not only on all places of His dominion in this planet, which is but as a grain of sand amongst the worlds, but upon every spot in His boundless universe.
II. He has a perfect knowledge of the spirits of His creatures. The human soul has power to hide its secrets from the gaze of every fellow creature. “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him?” (1 Cor. ii. 11). But God’s omniscient eye pierces into the hidden mazes of the soul and reads the silent thoughts and intents of the heart. In this most secret region He walks at large. “O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me, Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off” (Psa. cxxxix. 1, 2). God is the one potentate and judge who can claim a perfect knowledge of all His subjects from a personal acquaintance with each individual. Not one is lost in the crowd; each one stands before Him as distinctly as if he were the only creature in the universe.
III. God’s perfect knowledge of His creatures leads Him to contemplate both what is congenial and what is repugnant. He “beholds the evil and the good.” Men, when by Divine grace they become partakers of the Divine Nature, are much moved to gladness by the sight of that which is morally good, and turn with loathing from the evil which they must also contemplate. Yet their happiness springs from that which is within them and not from that which is around, or the preponderance of evil would make life unbearable. So the ever-blessed God, conscious of His perfect rectitude, has within Him a source of eternal satisfaction notwithstanding the “evil” that He beholds with Divine indignation and sorrow.
outlines and suggestive comments.
He mentions the “evil” first because they avowedly, or else practically, deny God’s providence (Jer. xvi. 17).—Fausset.
When we perceive that a vast number of objects enter in at our eye by a very small passage, and yet are so little jumbled in the crowd that they open themselves regularly, though there is no great space for that either, and that they give us a distinct apprehension of many objects that lie before us, both of their nature, colour, and size, and by a secret geometry, from the angles that they make in our eye, we judge of the distance of all objects, both from us and from one another—if to this we add the vast number of figures that we receive and retain long, and with great order, in our brains, which we easily fetch up either in our thoughts or in our discourse, we shall find it less difficult to apprehend how an Infinite Mind should have the universal view of all things ever present before it.—Burnet.
The darkness of the air may hide thee from men, and the darkness of thine understanding may hide thee from thyself, but there is no darkness can hide from God. . . . It was a pretty fancy of one that would have his chamber painted full of eyes, that which way soever he looked he might still have some eye upon him. And it was a wise answer of Livius Drusus, when an artist offered so to contrive his house that he might do what he would and none would see him. “No,” saith Drusus, “contrive it so, rather, that all may see me, for I am not ashamed to be seen.” If the eyes of men make even the vilest forbear their beloved lusts for awhile, and they that are drunk are drunken in the night, how powerful will the eye and presence of God be with those that fear His anger and know the sweetness of His favour. The thoughts of this omnipresence of God will quicken thee to holiness. The soldiers of Israel and Judah were prodigal of their blood in the presence of their two generals (2 Sam. ii. 14). Servants will generally work hard while their master looks on. The eye of God, as of the sun, will call the Christian to his work. Those countries that are governed by viceroys seldom flourish or thrive so well as those kingdoms where the prince is present in person. Conscience, God’s viceroy, may much quicken a Christian to holiness, but God, the Prince, much more. “I have kept Thy precepts,” saith David, “for all my ways are before Thee.”—Swinnock.
He is all-eye, and His providence like a well-drawn picture, that vieweth all that come into the room. I know Thy works and Thy labour (Rev. ii); not Thy works only, but Thy labour in doing them. And as for the offender, though he think to hide himself from God by hiding God from himself, yet God is nearer to him than the bark is to the tree, “for in Him all things subsist” (Col. i. 17) and move (Acts xvii. 28); understand it of the mind’s motions also. And this the very heathen saw by nature’s rush candle. For Thales Milesius being asked whether the gods know not when a man doth aught amiss, “Yea,” saith he, “if he do but think amiss.” “God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves,” saith another. Repletively He is everywhere, though inclusively nowhere. As for the world, it is to Him as “a sea of glass,” a clear, transparent body; He sees through it. No man needs a window in his breast (as the heathen Monus wished) for God to look in at: every man before God is all window (Job xxxiv. 22).—Trapp.