The God Who Provides

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Please pray with me, God, of our present trouble and promised triumph. Open our eyes to see you in the midst of our struggles. Open our ears to hear your words of invitation and assurance. Open our minds to recall your wonderful works and miracles. Open our hearts to glory in your name and seek strength in your word through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. A reading from Genesis 22:1 14. After these things, God tested Abraham. He said to him, abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. He cut the wood for the burnt offering and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there, we will worship, and then we will come back to you. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac. And he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father, Abraham, father. And he said, here I am, my son. He said, the fire and the wood are here. But where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So the two of them walked on together. When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you are not withheld your only son from me. And Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place, the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord. It shall be provided the word of the Lord. [00:03:02] Speaker B: Well, one does not simply read a passage like the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 and move straight into some holly, jolly sermon. Introduction it doesn't Feel right to stand up here and tell you a light hearted joke or a clever anecdote to soften the blow. Because this story is deeply unsettling, isn't it? Now, since we've read the whole story, we do know the ending. We know that Isaac lives. And yet it's still hard to move past the sheer weight of God's initial command. God tested Abraham. God said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love. Go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. Notice the surgical precision of the wording. God doesn't cushion the blow. The command itself proves that God understands the exact magnitude of of what he is asking. Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love. Every single descriptor is like a twist of the knife. Before Abraham's knife is even drawn, it forces us to look a troubling question deep in the eye. How could God ask for this? Is this really who God is? After all, this is the same God who back in Genesis 9 explicitly instructed Noah that whoever sheds the blood of a human by a human shall that person's blood be shed. This is the God who would later carve into the stone tablets at Mount Sinai the command, you shall not murder. This is the God who will demand through the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus that his people never imitate the surrounding nations by burning their children as sacrifices, calling it an abhorrent thing that the Lord hates. Throughout Scripture, God seems to consistently reject the practice of human sacrifice. And yet here God seems to contradict his own character by asking Abraham to do the unthinkable, to sacrifice his own son. What? Isaac is Abraham's beloved son. That in and of itself is excruciating. I used to read this passage and think it was uncomfortable. And now I read this passage as a mother and that one hits me like a gut punch. I cannot fathom ever being asked to do such a thing. But that's not all. Because we know that Isaac wasn't just Abraham's beloved son. It's deeper than that. Isaac is the literal living embodiment of God's promises that Abraham gave up his country, his family and his life livelihood for. Abraham had waited decades for those promises to be fulfilled. To understand the weight of this command, we have to look at the blueprint of God's promise that God had been laying out for Abraham for years. See, years earlier, God instructed Abraham to look up at the night sky. He said, count the stars. If you can so so shall your descendants be. Then later, when Abraham was 99 years old, God made his promise even more explicit. I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I will make nations of you. Your wife Sarah shall bear you a son and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. Now they call it a geriatric pregnancy. For me, being over 35 and pregnant, I don't think they quite have a term for being in your 90s and pregnant. But Isaac wasn't even just a biological miracle. He was the entire promised future of Israel. If Isaac dies on that mountain, the covenant dies with him. How then could the promises of God be fulfilled? So when God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, God is asking if Abraham is willing to not only give up his son, but to give up his entire future and the future of a nation that God had promised. And God doesn't give Abraham the privilege of impulsivity. He doesn't tell him just to do it right there on the spot and just make a quick, rash decision. He tells him to take a three day journey to the land of Moriah. Three days. Three days to walk with the gravity of God's command without explanation. Three days to wonder if he had heard God correctly. Three days to recall all the promises that God had made and wonder what he did for God to take them all away. Three days to look at Isaac and remember the joy he felt the day he was born. Three days to give up the future God had promised. Three days to ask can he really trust God? On the way up the mountain, Isaac looks up at Abraham and asks a heartbreaking question. Father, the fire and the wood are here. But where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham replies, God himself will provide the lamb. Now we don't know what was going through Abraham's head. We don't know if he was desperately clinging to hope that there would be a substitute or if he was saying in his own way that Isaac was the lamb. We don't know. But what we do know is that Abraham kept walking. With each step, he was choosing to trust in God's provision, even when what he could see seemed to negate all of God's promises. And that is where this passage crashes violently into our lives trust. Because you and I face the same question Abraham faced the question at the core of Genesis 22. Can we trust God's heart when we cannot see his hand? Can we trust God's provision when our circumstances make his promises look impossible? To fulfill this question of God's provision is so central to this passage that I don't think it's a coincidence that God sent Abraham to the land of Moriah. You see, in Hebrew, that name comes from the root verb ra', ah, which means to see or to provide. But on the way to the land of seeing, all Abraham could see was what was right in front of him. He could see the wood on his son's back. He could see the sharp blade in his hand. He could see the altar before him. But he could not see the ram that God had already prepared hiding in the bushes. And isn't that the place where you and I often live? We live with what we can see right in front of us. We can see the diagnosis, the appointments, the prognosis, but we cannot see the healing. We can see the devastating grief of broken relationships or of life lost too soon. But we cannot see how hope and joy will ever find their way back. We can see the uncertainty and wonder how our bills will be paid, how we will find a new job. But we cannot see a way out or a way forward. We can see the waiting. We can see the darkness and the wilderness. But we cannot see what God is doing. And so we sit in the pews here on a Sunday morning, and we sing that God is good. We sing that God is faithful and God keeps his promises. But come Monday, we are living in the harsh reality of what we see right in front of us. Circumstances that seem to contradict these beautiful songs. Because life seems to tell a different story. And when what we believe and what we sing does not match what we see, we start to wonder if we really can trust God. We are confronted with that same question Abraham faced on Mount Moriah. Can God still be trusted? When I cannot see what he is doing, if anything at all? And I believe that Genesis 22 tells us, yes, a resounding yes. Because I don't think this story is just a test to see if Abraham is faithful, but to show that God is faithful. In the land of Moriah, the land of seeing, it was not about what Abraham could see, but about what God could see. This whole story is part of this larger master class that God had been teaching Abraham and Sarah since the beginning. When God promises, God provides. You see, when God first promised a son, the years dragged on, and Abraham and Sarah couldn't see how God could possibly do it. So they did what we often do, take matters into their own hands. They tried to work their future for themselves by taking Hagar as Abraham's wife and giving Abraham a son that way. Ishmael how often do we too try to engineer our own provision when God's timeline doesn't match our schedule? But God did not abandon them or withhold his promise. God would still provide. Later, God renewed the promise and Abraham and Sarah literally laughed out loud at God. Their bodies were simply too old. What they were told to believe felt like a joke compared to what they could see. But God still did not withhold the promise from them. God would still provide. In Genesis 21, after decades of waiting and being well past their childrearing years, we hear the miraculous words the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised, Isaac was born. So by the time we get to the next chapter, Genesis 22, we arrive at the final test of the Master class. God is asking Abraham, do you finally understand now? Do you trust me to provide for you when what you see says otherwise? Do you trust me to stay true to my promises? And there on Mount Moriah, the test reaches its breaking point. Abraham raises the knife above Isaac and the tension is cut by the angel of God crying out, abraham, Abraham, do not lay your hand on the boy. And then look at what Abraham did next. He looked up. There was a ram caught by its horn in the bushes. For three days, all Abraham could see was what was right in front of him. All he could see was his circumstances. But then, when the time came, God called on him to look up. And he saw God's provision. We read that Abraham then names the mountain, not after his own faithfulness or obedience. He names it Yahweh Yireh, often translated as Jehovah Jireh, meaning the Lord will see or the Lord will provide. Because in Hebrew, we often see God seeing and God's providing go together. God sees what we cannot and God provides. This is the Master class in who God is that God teaches his people throughout Scripture. You see. Centuries later, Abraham's descendants were caught in slavery in Egypt and they could not see a way out. But God called to Moses and said, I have already seen the affliction of my people and and I have come to deliver them. God saw. God provided. After having been rescued from Egypt, the Israelites wandered through the wilderness again. They could not see what God was doing. All they could see was the wilderness and their starvation. So much so that they romanticized life in Egypt because at least they had bread. But God saw their hunger and rained down manna from heaven every morning. God saw. God provided over and over. When what Israel saw did not match what they believed About God. They wondered if they could trust God. In Egypt, in the wilderness, in captivity and in exile. And over and over, God saw his people, saw their need, and God provided. Even when Israel strayed from obedience and trust in God, God stayed faithful to Israel and to God's promises. And all of these stories were just previews of a grander, ultimate provision. For centuries, God's people waited for the Messiah. Enduring oppression, slavery and exile. They longed for deliverance. God saw their need and God provided. But this time, the provision wasn't just for Israel. It was for all the nations of the earth. This provision would be the ultimate fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham. God provided the very sacrifice that he kept Abraham from making. He gave his son, his only son, Jesus, whom he loved. Like Isaac. Jesus carried the wood of his sacrifice up the hill. At Calvary at Mount Moriah, Abraham heard an angel say, do not lay your hand on the boy. But at Calvary, there was no voice to put an end to it. There was no ram in the bushes. There was no substitute for Jesus. Because Jesus was the substitute. Jesus was the lamb. By giving up His Son, God proved once and for all that he will not withhold his love and his provision from us. God saw not just the suffering of his people, but of the world. He saw humanity trapped in sin and death. And God saw and God provided for. We know that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever may believe in him shall not die, but have eternal life. Friends, if God can be trusted with a promise that big, spanning generations of people going out from Abraham to Isaac to Israel to the world, if God has provided for our eternity, can God not also be trusted with our tomorrow? Now I know that when we stand in the sanctuary, staring at this cross right in front of us, it is easy to say with confidence, God will provide. But that truth can feel distant the moment you walk right out those doors. Because we find ourselves right back where we started. Like Abraham on the mountain or Israel in the wilderness, what we believe about God crashes all over again into the harsh realities of what we see. It crashes into the grief, the suffering, the fear, the uncertainty. And in the quiet spaces of our hearts, we ask the same question. Can I really trust God to stay true to his promise? Church, the answer for you is the exact same answer that God gave Abraham. And the exact same answer he gave to Israel. Yes. Over and over. Yes. And look, I know it's hard. I really do. I know that what you see right in front of you can be all encompassing can be so terrifying and so anxiety provoking, so demoralizing, it's hard to see how there will ever be a way out. And that is true. And I also know this to be true. As is written in Hebrews 11. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. That is, when our sight offers us one truth, our faith offers us another. And that truth is that we have the assurance of God's promises and God's commitment to his people. We have the assurance that God has shown up and provided for Abraham and for all of his descendants, for Israel and for all of us when it truly seemed impossible. We have the assurance that God loved us so much, that God did not even spare his own Son, but gave him up for us. Faith offers us the assurance that the promises of God will be fulfilled even when they do not match what we see with our eyes. Because faith is that conviction of things we don't see. It is the conviction that God sees that God is working and God will provide. When we choose faith, when we choose the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen, we can more confidently ask the same question that Paul asked the Church in Rome. If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? And look closely at what Paul means when he says everything else. He isn't promising that God will give us everything we want. He is promising that God will give us everything we need. It's exactly what Jesus taught us to pray. Give us this day our daily bread. God gives us the provision needed for the day right in front of us. And because God provides us daily with everything we need, Paul can look at the hardships of life and boldly ask, who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor demons, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of cry God in Christ Jesus our Lord. If what Paul says is true, if God providing for Abraham is true, if God providing for Israel is true, if God giving up his own Son is true, then we do not walk out those doors as a people defeated by what we see. We leave as a people anchored in what we know. Our God is Yahweh Yireh. The God who sees, the God who provides. I don't know what mountain you are climbing today. I can't see the specific wilderness you are walking through. But Yahweh Yireh sees you. He saw Abraham on the mountain. He saw Israel in the wilderness. He saw his people while on the cross, and he sees you right now. When you step out of this sanctuary and face tomorrow, may you rest in the assurance and the conviction that our God is the God who sees. And our God will provide. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.