The God Who Sees Me: Finding Peace in the Gaze of El Roi
Edited directly from the sermon transcript of Steve Grubbs’s message at Highland Hills Church of Christ on April 19, 2026. Adapted for length and readability while preserving his voice and message.
Years ago, when my parents were still living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I told my wife, “I need to go home. I want to see my parents.” I got up at five the next morning and began my usual routine: shaving before getting on the road. I was in a hurry, and I nicked myself. So I took a little piece of toilet paper, wet it, and put it on my face to stop the bleeding.
About that time, my wife woke up and said goodbye. “Whatever you do today, please don’t forget that you’ve got a piece of toilet paper on your face.”
By the time I reached the Decatur exit on I-65, I was hungry. I stopped at McDonald’s, and as I came through the door, everybody seemed unusually friendly. People looked at me and smiled. The attendants were cheerful. I thought, “I have never been in such a happy place as this McDonald’s this morning. Why is everybody so happy?”
Then I got back into the car, looked in the rearview mirror, and realized I’d had that piece of toilet paper on my face the whole time. I thought, “Lord, I am so glad I will probably never see any of these people again.”
Sometimes we’re embarrassed. And when you read Genesis 16, you may wonder, “What is this story about?” It’s a story that can make us uncomfortable. To understand it, we need to go back to Abram and his family.
In Genesis 11, we learn that Sarai is unable to have children. In Genesis 12, Abram receives a calling from God. God makes an incredible promise: look up at the stars, which you cannot count, and so shall your descendants be. God will bless him and bring him to a land he has promised.
In Genesis 15, God again promises that Abram will have a son. But when we reach chapter 16, there is still no child. Sarai decides to bring her servant, Hagar, to Abram so that they can raise a family through her. That sounds strange to us, but it reflects an ancient custom. Later we see similar arrangements in the stories of Leah and Rachel, who give their servants to Jacob to bear children.
One of the great themes of the Bible is that even when God allows something, it does not mean he approves of it. He can still work in spite of a situation to bring about his glory. Hagar is a slave. She is owned. That does not mean God endorses slavery, but he can work in her life even within those circumstances.
In that ancient world, a woman’s worth was often measured by her ability to have children. That helps us understand the tension in this story. Abram and Sarai are struggling to trust God’s timing.
Does that ever happen to you? You know the promises God has made, but you wait in anticipation and nothing seems to happen. Sarai finally decides to give Hagar to her husband, and Hagar becomes pregnant. Then she begins to despise Sarai. Sarai turns to Abram: “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me.”
Abram responds that her servant is in her hands and she may do what she thinks best. Sarai mistreats Hagar, and Hagar flees toward Egypt.
Then something incredible happens. This slave woman encounters the angel of the Lord. This is the first time we read of the angel of the Lord in Scripture—a divine encounter. Later, when Moses comes to a bush that burns without being consumed, Exodus 3 speaks of the angel of the Lord. God makes himself known.
Many understand these appearances as a manifestation of Christ before his incarnation. The theologians have a word for that: a Christophany. The point here is that God comes to Hagar. The angel of the Lord addresses her, and she gives the Lord who speaks to her a name: “You are the God who sees me.”
Consider who she is: a woman, a slave, someone who has fled into the wilderness. Yet she encounters God.
Have you ever felt completely invisible? In your struggles, heartache, or brokenness, have you wondered whether you have been cast aside? Have you felt invisible to God? “Does God care about me?”
Hagar says, “You are the God who sees me.” Think of Mary Magdalene, who encounters the risen Jesus and announces, “I have seen the Lord.” Hagar recognizes that she has seen the one who sees her.
Don’t let your story be written by the failures of your past. Hagar has not responded perfectly in this situation, but she is not limited to her failures or to circumstances over which she has no control. Neither are you.
God loves you so much that he can never take his eyes off you. Hagar comes to understand that this is who God is: the God who sees her. She is not invisible. And neither are you. You are not alone. God sees what you are going through.
The same God who sees Hagar in the wilderness sees you. He sees people who are alone and mistreated. Hagar wasn’t seeking God, but God shows up in the desert. Sometimes that’s how it is for us. We’re fleeing. We’re running away. And in the desert, God shows up.
God tells Hagar that she will have a son and name him Ishmael because the Lord has heard her misery. Ishmael means “God has heard.” His name will be a continuing reminder that God heard Hagar.
Jesus says in Matthew 18:10, “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones,” and speaks of their angels always seeing the face of his Father in heaven. Do you believe that God watches over you? We cannot see everything that surrounds us, but Jesus tells us that his Father sees and cares.
David speaks of God discerning his going out and lying down, being familiar with all his ways. Our lives are known to him.
When I watch astronauts lift off and think about the Earth from their perspective, it moves me. I remember the Apollo 8 astronauts circling the moon and reading the creation story from Genesis on Christmas Eve. They saw the world in which we live suspended in the vastness of the universe.
What do astronauts so often call this Earth when they look back toward it? Home. And more than anything, they want to come back home.
Yet on this Earth, amid all that vastness, Hagar can say, “You are the God who sees me.” Does God care about me? Does he love me? Is he so in love with me that he could never take his eyes off me?
I wonder whether you have had a moment when you just knew: God sees me. We all need those moments. We all need to know, like Hagar, “You are the God who sees me.”
From a human point of view, Hagar could be dismissed as a nobody: a slave woman fleeing from Sarai and Abram. But God finds her. He comes to her, and Hagar realizes that she is seen.
Don’t forget her story. All of us need to know, in some particular moment of our lives, that the Lord sees us.
