Jehovah Jireh

What a beautiful afternoon it is to come in the presence of God and to worship Him. It’s so hard to sit there and to not get so emotional in the midst of such beautiful worship and feeling the presence of God so clearly and dearly to our heart. So good to see all of you, especially the servant of God, Pastor, who has been with us for the last couple of days. I know his ministry has been a blessing in the life of the church. We’re looking forward to God using him in a powerful way in our church in the days to come as well.

We are in the midst of our series on the names of God, “I Am”. For the last five weeks we have gone through the fact that our God is Elohim, the Creator and the sustainer of everything. We talk about the fact that our God is Adonai, the Lord over everything who deserves our complete and full Allegiance. We talked about the fact that he’s our El Shaddai, a God who is more than enough. We talked about the fact that he’s our Jehovah Rapha, a God who heals us. And last week we talked about the fact that he is our Jehovah Nissi, the Lord who is the banner over our lives.

To talk about what I’m speaking the name of God today, I want you to come with me on a journey thousands of years ago to a distant far away land. And I want you to speak from my perspective before I tell you how I got to call God this name. See, I was born in a far away land in a town very well known as southern Mesopotamia. You have to understand that southern Mesopotamia was at the pinnacle of civilization at that time. I was born in the place where you wanted to be and needed to be at that time. It was a center of greatness at that time. Historians tell you that we had paved roads, major temples, great furniture, great metal instruments, large cities. We even had hot and cold water flowing through our city. And not only that, the hour being divided into 60 minutes happened in my home city. The minute being divided into 60 seconds happened in my city. The circle being 360 degrees was our invention. A system that you still use today. The court of law first came from southern Mesopotamia. Weights and measures were our invention.

I was in a very wealthy family. I had a beautiful home in the middle of the city. Being from that town, I would have known four different languages fluently: Sumerian, Acadian, Aramaic, and even Egyptian, which we use to trade the language of trade. I was in a very, very comfortable setting. I had everything going for me: wealthy, a well-established family, beautiful city, and everything he could ask for in a modern city. And I got to be almost 70 years old, and the only thing that was lacking in me was this: my wife did not have a child. All the world in the world, yet my wife Sarai did not have a child.

And when I was going on to this comfortable living, I heard a Voice that called me to go to a far away land, a land that I had not seen before. In fact, you read in your Bible in Genesis 12:1 that the Lord said to me, “Go from your country, your people, and your father’s household to the land I will show to you.” This was not an easy decision for me, so you’d understand. I was very, very comfortable living in Mesopotamia. I had everything going for me. There was nothing this land could give to me that I did not have already in my homeland. But God told me, God called me, leave my country that I grew up in, behind my people that I grew up with, my co-workers, the people that I went to school with, all of my family, leave them behind, and even the father’s household who is not willing to make the journey. And a lot of them did not. In fact, they came halfway, they came to Heron and they stopped there. My father passed away, my brother passed away, and the only one that would come with me was my nephew Lot. And it was me, my wife Sarai, and Lot, and we then traveled 800 miles to go to this place that God said he will show it to me.

Finally got there, and it was not easy. A lot of famine in the land. I had to learn a new language, Hebrew, spoken by the people of Canaan. Remember, I already knew four languages when I stepped into the land. I did not speak the language of the Canaanites, which was Hebrew at that time. I had to learn a new language, a language that would become the language of my people. I want you to put yourself in my shoes and understand how difficult it was, this journey that God had asked me to take.

Then I found that when there was famine in the Land, There was a land called Egypt that also had civilization, kind of similar to what I had left behind, so I went there. But that was the wrong choice, and then I had to come back. And God blessed me, and we grew and we multiplied. My Lord, my nephew Lot also increased in number, but it got to a point where the Servants of me and the Servants of Lot started fighting with each other, and we had to make a choice. “If you go to the right, I have to go to the left; you go to the left, I’d go to the right.” And you know what I did? I trusted in God to provide for me. So you know what I did? I asked Lot to pick first. He looked up and he saw another well-watered land, just like Mesopotamia that they had left behind, the land of Sodom, which was like the garden of God before God destroyed it. He chose that. But you know what I did? I just stayed on my knees and I waited on God to provide for me. And you know what God did? In Genesis 13:14-15, you will read in your Bible, the Lord said to me after Lot had left, this is what the Lord said, “Look around from where you are. Lot has already picked the land to the east, but here’s what I’m going to do for you. Look to the north, look to the South, look to the East, and look to the West. All the land that you see I will give to you and you your offspring forever.” My God had taught me that it is better to wait upon the provisions of you than to depend upon the inventions of man. My God was teaching me that it is on my knees waiting upon God to provide for me, that me to provide something for myself, that I truly gain the true blessings of God in my life. My nephew Lot took East and he went in the wrong direction. I did not choose at all. My God came and said, “Because you waited on me, I will give you not only the East, but I will give you the North, the South, and the West as well.” God was providing for me and proving himself to be a faithful provider in my life. God told me something else in verse 17, “Go walk through the length and the breadth of the land for I am giving it to you. You don’t have to do anything. I am giving it to you.”

Then as you come to your Bible in Genesis 14, my nephew Lot was in big trouble. He was captured away by a foreign king. So I took 300 plus men who were trained in my own home, and I went to war with him. And God was with me. I was able to win that war, and there was a lot of spoil and a lot of things I captured in that war. There was a lot of wealth that I came back with, our wealth and all the people I had captured. The king of Sodom was so generous towards me. In Genesis 14:21, the king of Sodom said to me, “Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.” He was being generous. He said, “You know what, you did all the hard work, keep all of these goods for yourself.”

When I suddenly remembered, if I take all of these things from a pagan king, my God will not get the glory that he deserves. My God will not get the recognition that he deserves, that he is the one who made me rich, not a pagan king. So you know what I said to the king of Sodom? It’s very tempting for me to take it, but I did not take it. I said to him with a raised hand, “I have sworn an oath to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of Heaven and Earth, that I will accept nothing belonging to you.” I told him, “I will not even take a thread or the strap of a sandal so that you will never be able to say I made Abram rich.” Why? Because I knew that if I wanted to be rich, my God would make me rich. If I need to be poor, my God will still supply all my needs. See, my hope is in the Lord, not in the king of Sodom. God was teaching me, and God was helping me to make these choices.

Years went by. I remember what I told you at the beginning of the story. My story. I did not have a child. 10 years went by, 20 years went by, and time started flying. I was not getting any younger, and my wife Sarah was not getting any younger either. She had a brilliant idea, or so I thought. She said, “Well, you know what, God has promised that the nations will be blessed through you. Don’t you want to hasten the promises of God? Don’t you want to help God along?” And I kind of listened to her. I thought it was a good idea too. And I went to Hagar, and to her was born Ishmael. But that was not the plan of God. See, God taught me that your God does not need your help. If God wants to do something in your life, all you have to do is wait in obedience and for his timing. Your God does not need the help of any man. Your God does not work based upon the schemes of man. Your God, he does not need your planning. Whatever plan arises in your heart, upon your human intentions, is not the way my God works. My God has something better that was planned for me. And I waited.

I got to be 99 years old, my wife was 89 years old. I stopped talking about having a son and all these promises because it was getting to be so difficult to even walk around my community because my name has now been changed to Abraham. To add insult to injury, everyone was laughing at me because you are not only the father, but you are now an exalted father. Oh my goodness, this is something so embarrassing. But you would take me off and in the middle of the night, you will show me the stars of the heavens, and you will say to me, “If you can count the stars, your children will become like them.” Yet, I did not even have a single one. He asked me a question, “Can you count the dust of the shore of the sea?” No one can do that. And then you tell me, “Your offspring will become just like that.” I had to wait. I had to trust. I had to believe that you are my provider. I had to keep on believing that you were my provider.

And when all hope was lost, when I had completely given up, when I thought that maybe the son was a spiritual son, maybe when I thought that God had some other plan, you visited me in person in my home. I had no idea it was you, but I was used to welcoming guests into my home. So I warmly welcomed you. I fed you, we ate lunch together, and then you told me, “A year from now, your ammachi Sarah, 89 years old, will give birth to your son.” A year later, yes, Isaac was born. And I could believe in my heart fully, my God is my provider. He never fails. Even if he’s delayed, it is only a delay in your eyes. My God is always on time. He is never early, he’s never too late. He does everything perfectly to bring glory to his name.

No one had any doubt as to who was at work. You have never seen this in the history of the world, as you know very well by your history. The oldest woman ever to give birth naturally in the world is 64 years old. But my wife Sarah gave birth to a child at the age of 90. Medical science cannot explain it. Biology cannot explain it away. Man cannot reason it away. Only God can explain it. You know what that answer is? I am the provider. I create life. I can do it at any time. I can do it even in the womb of a woman who is 90 years old. If I can create the stars and the planets and bring everything forth by the power of my word, can I not create a child in the womb of a 90-year-old woman? My God was telling me he is my provider.

Everything was going really well. I was now about 115, maybe close to 118 years old. And then one evening, I heard a voice that I thought I would never hear in my life. Isaac was the joy of my life. Isaac was the pride of my life. And we loved him, remember, we were waiting for him all these years. God has told us that through your son Isaac, the nations would be blessed. So we looked at him with so much hope. He was everything we were hoping for. Then I heard that voice, I wish I’d never heard, but I did. “Take your son, your only son, whom you love.” So that there is no confusion, whether I would take somebody else. Isaac. “And go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

You need to understand what God was asking me that night. I’m to take my son and sacrifice him. God, is that really you? You do not like human sacrifice. That’s what the pagans do. That’s what the Canaanites do. In fact, your law would later on prohibit it, ever from sacrificing a human being. Why would you ask me to sacrifice my son? And if you have any confusion about what a burnt offering is, it is literally taking the animal, laying it on an altar, plunging a knife into it, killing it, draining the blood completely, and then the carcass, the body that is left behind is burned until it’s completely ashes. That’s what a burnt offering is. God, whom I loved, God who loved me so much, who had been my provider and gave me the miracle ever, was now asking me to take my son and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain he will show me.

This mountain was not close by. God told me to go, it was 45 miles away from where I was in Beersheba, all the way to this place. And to put it in perspective, in ways you would understand, it is the distance between Forney and Lewisville, 45 miles long. And if you plug it into your Google Maps today, it will tell you how long it would take if you were to walk that distance. Or from Forney to Lewisville, it will take you 17 hours and 11 minutes of walking to go from Forney to Lewisville, walking. That’s the distance that I walked. It was not because I didn’t have an altar nearby, but God was very specific. “I want you to walk 45 miles when you’re 115 years old, over no paved roads or beautiful highways like we have today, over mountains, over valleys, over rugged terrain, with donkeys, by servants, by the heat of the sun falling on me, but yet I have to walk. I can’t stop.” And all the way, my mind is agonizing. I am going through dreadful fear and a great deal of questions in my mind. “Did I hear the voice of God? Was it really God speaking to me?” I didn’t tell Sarah. Or the Bible doesn’t say that he said anything to Sarah. She has no idea what I’m about to do. I look at that child, so innocent, so full of life. All of my hope is in him. Every waking night, I haven’t slept for three nights. A lot of agony and questions. And the journey of 17 hours, it took us three days to walk. 17 hours, you can do them at six hours a day of walking, is all you can do in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the heat, with not much food and water, and all the things they have to carry, and animals to take care of along the way.

And finally, we reached there, and we make the trek onto the mountain. And we ask the servants to stand bigger because I knew they would get in the way, they would never let me sacrifice Isaac, but God had asked me, and I would make the trip. On the way up, up until now, he hadn’t really asked a lot of questions, but then he asked, “Dad, Father, we have the fire and the wood and everything to build the altar, but the most important thing is missing. Where is a sacrificial animal?” Even then, God gave me the ability to say, “The Lord will provide, the Lord will provide.” See, you and I have gone through so much in our life, sometimes life will show you so many questions, and as you go up that mountain, you have no idea of who is going to provide. Sometimes some of us have come to the 25th day of the month, not knowing how you’re going to pay the rent on the first of the month, so all of us had to pay apartment rent and did not know who was going to provide. A lot of us have lost jobs in our life and did not know how we were going to support our family, we have wrecked our car and did not have cars for transportation, we had gotten sick, and we did not know who was going to heal us, who was going to pay the hospital bills. We are a lot of unanswered questions in our life, but the only thing that would allow us to say is confidence time and time again that the Lord will provide, is because the Lord has always provided. The Lord has always taken care of, the Lord has never let me down. Remember where I came from, remember that he provided for me in Canaan, remember what he did for me time and time again. I had to remember that, so I told him, “The Lord will provide.”

And when I got there, it was a struggle, but I, with mustering all my strength that I had, I tackled him, I put him up on the altar, I tried to console him. I’d rather tell him, “This is what my Heavenly Father wants me to do.” I took the knife with every intention to kill him, and I thought in my heart, as the book of Hebrews would tell you later on, that God will raise the child up from the ashes, because through him all the nations of the earth are supposed to be blessed. So, I was going to kill him, I was going to burn him, then I was going to have hope in the Lord that God will bring my son out of the ashes. But as I raised up that dagger to stab him, suddenly I heard the voice from Heaven, “Abraham, Abraham, do not do anything to your son. I know that you fear me now.” And I said to stop in mid-track.

I stopped. I had been there for a long time, until then I hadn’t seen it. I looked over, and there in the bushes was a ram, caught, unable to run away. Standing there with hands lifted up in the air, the only thing that I could say, “Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who provides, the Lord who provides.” Yes, I had to say that, wouldn’t you say that? Because he is such a faithful God. You know what it means by Jehovah Jireh, one of the other ways of looking at that translation is that you have a God who sees to it that your every need is met. You have a God who sees to it. It’s kind of like almost like someone who is always supervising your life, looking at every need that you have, and he sees to it that you have enough money, that you have enough healing, they have enough peace, they have enough comfort, whatever each situation calls for, my God provides for you.

This story comes out in 1984. The only thing we know is a true story, his name was Mike, and his family belonged to an East Coast Church. One Sunday evening, the sermon was on sacrificial giving to the Lord, and a special offering was taken at the end of the sermon. The only money in Mike’s wallet that evening was a $50 bill, which was supposed to buy a week’s worth of groceries for his wife and five children, and himself. However, in a move of faith, Mike put the fifty dollar bill in the offering. That’s all the money that he had. After the conclusion of the service, the family went out in the parking lot to go home. He had no idea how he’s going to buy groceries for his wife and children for the rest of the week. Within minutes, they joyfully returned to the sanctuary and asked the pastor to come outside to see their miracles, a true story. Somewhat skeptical, the pastor accompanied them outside to their 20-year-old station wagon. Peering through the windows, he saw the interior of the vehicle was completely filled with bags of groceries. Happy for the family, he remarked that someone had given them a huge blessing. Mike replied, “You don’t understand, pastor. Before service, I made sure that all the windows were rolled up and the doors were locked. I have the only key in my hand. The only way these groceries got into my station wagon is because my Lord provided it for me.”

I know that to the 21st century skeptical mind, stories like these are hard to believe, but I want to assure you this afternoon that my God is the same God who provided for Abraham on that mountain. My God is the same God of your fathers, my God is the same God of yesterday, my God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Putting a bag of groceries in the station wagon is nothing for the almighty God of the universe. I am guilty just as much as you are, limiting the power and the ability of God to provide. You know what the testimony of our church always will be, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who provides, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who provides. And when God provides, he doesn’t just provide a little bit, he provides in such a way that people are just kind of amazed, not at any human being, but at the Lord who provides. And you know what people would say when God provides a certain way, “The Lord is in their midst, the Lord is at work, the Lord is with them,” because the Lord gets all the glory, because he is Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides. Yes, he provides, and that’s exactly what God did, exactly what Abraham called that place in Genesis 22:8 and again in Genesis 22:14. God provides.

You know what Psalm 78:25 tells us about the plight of the Israelites in the Wilderness? I don’t know if you ever read this passage, stop for a minute. We talk about the Manna from Heaven, know what the psalmist says to us? What that Manna was, “Human beings ate the bread of angels; he sent them all the food they could eat.” Have you ever had the fruit of angels? You have angel food cake or something like that, but you have never had the food of angels, only God can provide that. So, I’m imagining God in his Heaven. There are like two million people walking through the Wilderness, no McDonald’s, no Taco Bell, some of us like Taco Bell, so no Olive Garden, nothing like that, and they’re walking. God every day is opening up the storehouse of Heaven, taking food from the angels, and just dispersing it into the wilderness. They ate the food of Angels in the wilderness. Oh, I wish I could just get a taste of it, because of that, when you’re reading God’s word, none of them really had any kind of worn thing happen to them. Maybe they were eating the food of Heaven all throughout the wilderness.

And then, when you talk about this God providing on this mountain, remember what I said in the beginning, God made them walk three days. See, now you understand why God made them walk. I did not really fully get it when we made that journey, so many years ago. Look, all the ways in which that is highlighted in God’s word, in Genesis 22:2, God told him, “Go to the region of Moriah.” In verse 3, he set out for the place God had told him about, the place is important. Look at the next words, verse 4, he saw the place in the distance, verse 9, when they reached the place God had told him about, over and over again in this chapter, the word place is repeated, and that place is significant. Why was God particular about the fact that we made that 45 mile journey? See, when you read in your Bible, years later, it was on this very mountain that the temple in Jerusalem would be built by Solomon. And you know what else, fast forward a few thousand years, just maybe a few hundred feet from where Abraham, I, almost killed my son Isaac, there was another person whose son was about to be offered as a sacrifice on that cross.

And in Genesis 22:12, the hand, the voice came from Heaven, “Do not lay a hand on the boy, do not do anything to him, now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” But the word in Romans 8:32 is totally different, in the place of where God said, “Do not do anything to your son,” the Bible says, “God did not spare his own son.” In the place where God says, “Do not do anything for him now, and do not withhold your son from me,” what did God’s word say? “God gave his son graciously to us.” In the place where God said, “Hold your son, do not give him fully to me,” Romans 8 tells us, “God graciously gave his son to us.” And so the question comes, as Paul would ask, “He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

I want every single one of you to ask that question into your heart this afternoon. The God of the ages, on the very mountain, would turn his back, turn his face, and not respond to the cries of his Son, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Just like Isaac took the wood, went up to the mountain, Jesus took the cross and went for us. The only difference was that Isaac probably had to be forced to lay on the altar, Jesus went willingly to the cross. When Isaac cried, Heaven opened, and Heaven stopped. When Jesus cried, Heaven was silent. Heaven did not spare his own Son, gave him with us for all, so that you and I will never doubt that if God already gave us the greatest gift ever, he will graciously give us everything else that we need in our life because the cross was the ultimate example of God being our Jehovah Jireh. The greatest need in your life was not food, the greatest need in your life was not money, the greatest need in your life was not anything material, not anything physical, the greatest need in your life was eternal salvation, and Jehovah Jireh provided that for us on the cross of Calvary, by giving his Son as a sacrifice for us.

So we as a church, we believe that our God is Jehovah Jireh, and he will graciously, lavishly, as much as we need, give us all things that we need in our life. Oh God, we confess our sins before you, of doubt, of not believing in you, of thinking that somehow we have done something for ourselves, but it’s always been you, Jehovah Jireh, who has been the provider and the caretaker of our life. I’ll end with this, and you can all stand in the presence of God. We’re again, during the time of worship, a few weeks ago, we had a great chance to invite some of you to come forward and pray, and a lot of you did, and you know what we heard afterwards, powerful testimonies of God’s healing, people who came here with debilitating back pain, completely healed by the touch of God. It’s not because I have, or Pastor anybody, has any kind of special gift of healing, it is because the god that you serve is a healer, and the god you serve, he’s a provider.

What is so special about the altar of God, the sanctuary of God, or people praying? God, because God delights to move in circumstances like that, it is not any special gift, but it is the presence of God that provides for the needs of people. I don’t know what kind of need you have in your life, but you’ve been hearing for the last 30 plus minutes about a God who is your provider, and even this afternoon, we as a church, we’re going to believe that he is our Jehovah Jireh, he is our provider, no matter what the need of your life are, he understands it better than anybody else, and he delights to provide for you. So as we now worship the Lord, if there’s any kind of special need for which you need a prayer, we invite you to come forward, come to the altar of the Lord, the sanctuary of the Lord, the presence of God, and receive the provision and the giving of Jehovah Jireh at this very hour, and may God richly bless each one of you, praise God.