Jehovah-Jireh: The Lord Will Provide

Do you know your answer could be sitting right next to you, but you'll never know it until God is ready to reveal it? Dr. Tony Evans says that delay can help us focus more on God than on the things he gives us.

We can fall so in love with the blessing that it trumps the blessing. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. God gives to us out of love, hoping we'll respond the same way, but that's not always how it works. Let's join Dr. Evans as he talks about how we ought to relate with our God who provides. There probably isn't a name more celebrated, a compound name more known, more referenced than Jehovah-jireh. The Lord will provide.

The Lord will provide. When God uses a compound name, it is normally because he's addressing a situation in life. When he used Elohim, there wasn't even any life. And God, Elohim, created.

There was no life. He just had the power to make life. But when he uses this phrase Jehovah-jireh, or the other compound names that we will look at, something is going on in somebody's life and circumstance that God wants to use to unveil himself. In the book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, I talk about this story, not so much focusing on the name of God, but focusing on being caught in a Catch-22. But let's review it in terms of the name of God, and let's see how it relates to you getting to know God by his name in the situations of life.

Please notice the problem, because remember, God reveals his name personally in life's circumstances. Verse 1 of chapter 22 of Genesis says, Now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham, and Abraham said, Here I am. He said, Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you. It says the Lord tested Abraham.

This is a test. He tested Abraham in the most devastating way. He says, I want you to go up on the mountain, and I want you to worship me, and as is the custom of the day, I want a sacrifice. And today, the sacrifice will be your son, your only begotten son whom you love to death.

Let me put it another way. I'm going to test you, Abraham. I want you to give me the thing you love most, the thing you're most excited about, the thing that was a dream come true for you. I want it.

I want you to give it back to me. Abraham, this is a test. Let's look at this test for a moment, because remember, God's name comes in the Sitzenleben. That's German for situation in life.

In other words, you're going through something. This was a theological test, because God had told Abraham, I'm going to make of your son Isaac a great nation. Isaac is a teenager when this takes place. Isaac's not married.

Isaac has no children. God says, kill him. But you said you were going to make a great nation.

You can't make a great nation out of him if he's dead, because he doesn't have any children, so my line doesn't go on. So God doesn't make sense in what he's asking him to do in light of what his word had already promised. Anybody in here in a theological contradiction? You know God said one thing, but what he's asking you to do now contradicts what you know he said.

It doesn't make sense. He's got a familial contradiction. It's a family contradiction. There's no record in the text of him ever telling Sarah what God said, because I can tell you now, Sarah would have lost her mind. You're going to take my boy, my baby boy that I waited 90 years to have, and you're going to kill him?

No mention of Sarah. This is a family crisis. This is a social crisis. What is everybody going to think about me killing my own son and me talking about God said?

That will make me look like I done lost my mind. It doesn't make sense. It's a crisis. And then the worst crisis of all perhaps is an emotional crisis.

How you feel, how you going to feel about giving up the thing you love most and have waited the longest for and who is the basis for your tomorrow? In other words, he's facing a test of epic proportion that has in it a major contradiction. In other words, this is a test that doesn't make sense and seems unfair.

Anybody ever been in one of those? Well, let me give you the good news in advance. When God allows you to go through things and it doesn't make sense, why me? Why this?

Why now? It doesn't make sense. That's because he's getting ready to tell you his name. He's getting ready to let you see something about him that you had never seen before. To experience something from him that you've never experienced before. Because this is not only a problem, this is a problem with a contradiction.

You're between a rock and a hard place. God doesn't make sense. Little did I know that one of the defining moments in my life would be a broken leg on a football field. That simple cross-body block that snapped my leg into on a football field and still got the steel plate in my leg right now from the surgery that had to be performed would be a defining moment that God would use to reveal himself to me about another direction he wanted me to take in life. It was painful. I was hurt. I couldn't get up and walk. I had to drive the ambulance onto the field to pick me up and rush me to the hospital. Emergency surgery right there on the spot. Little would I know that God would use that painful moment to redirect me.

For everybody watching, it was a broken leg. For me, it was unveiling of the name of God for my next direction in life. God tested Abraham. Please don't miss the test because you're so fixated on the circumstances and how stressful, painful, anguishing it is that you missed the test. Abraham is going through a crisis. What is the heart of the test?

Here it is. When faced with a choice between the blessing and the blessor, what will you choose? See, Isaac was the blessing. He waited a long time for God to finally open the door. God opened the door through a miracle, allowed a pregnancy. He's 100. She's 90 years old.

Ain't supposed to be. But through a miraculous intervention, they got the blessing. God test him. What means more to you, the blessing or the blessor? Because you can, I can, we can fall so in love with the blessing that it trumps the blessor.

How do I know that's the heart of the test? Because he tells them to sacrifice Isaac in church. He says, offer him up to me. That's worship. I want you to offer the blessing back up to me. That's the blessor. At the heart of the test of God revealing his person to you in the contradictions of life is always a choice between the blessing and the blessor. It was a matter of worship. The question is, we've all faced it. How do you worship when it hurts? I mean, when you're being asked to let go of the blessing and choose the blessor and it's killing you.

The most valued possession of his life. This had to be a tough time to go to church. This is the time to stay home and get psychological and social and think of all the things of why I didn't hear what I just heard, to talk to all my friends and say, what you think, what you think, what you think, what you think, what y'all think. This is the time to get a whole bunch of other opinions because what I'm going through doesn't make sense. Anybody ever been through anything that doesn't make sense? Did you ever think about the thing that you're going through that doesn't make sense? God bought it?

Or did you just look at the thing? He goes up to the mountain. His son wants to know. He says, I see the torch with the fire, verse seven, and I see the wood, but I don't see the lamb, Dad. Every time we came to church, you would have a lamb.

I don't see a lamb. He says, verse eight, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. God put Abraham in a situation that only he could fix. Abraham couldn't fix this. He couldn't solve this. This was not something within his human—he said, God got to do this himself.

He looked. Behold, there was a ram caught in the thicket, verse 13, by the horns. Now, that's a mighty quiet ram that only makes noise at the right time.

Do you know your answer could be sitting right next to you, but you'll never know it? Until God is ready to reveal it, your solution may be right here next to you. That ram was caught in the thicket, right there next to him. He never saw it or heard it, because God was not ready to reveal it yet.

Not because God didn't have it. While he was going up the trial mountain on one side, God had a solution called a ram coming up on the other side, and he was going to create a match when it was the right time. Abraham called the name of the place, verse 14, Jehovah-jireh. He names the place the Lord will provide.

Verse three, so Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He obeyed immediately. Delayed obedience becomes immediate disobedience.

If God says, do A, and you thinking about it, meditating on it, considering it, you know, getting around to it, there's nothing for God to see. You have not acted on what he has said. He rises immediately, even though he doesn't understand, even though it doesn't make sense.

He arises immediately. Delayed obedience is immediate disobedience, and partial obedience is complete disobedience. In other words, if he would have gone halfway to the trip, he wouldn't have finished the journey. He would have said, like many of us, Lord, at least give me credit for getting up. At least give me credit for getting dressed. At least give me credit for saddling my donkeys. But I didn't ask you to get up, saddle your donkeys. I told you go to the mountain and sacrifice. See, what we want is delayed obedience and partial obedience, max of manifestation.

No, no, no. When he saw that he would not withhold his son, if you are trusting God for your eternity, you ought to be able to trust Him for time, because eternity is a lot longer than time. Dr. Evans will come back with a look at the connection between Abraham's son and God's son, when he returns in a moment to continue this message from his brand new audio collection, The Best of Tony Evans 2021. It contains 20 of his most hard-hitting, life-changing lessons of the past year, including messages on drawing closer to God, what to do when it feels like he's holding out on you, how to make your Christianity count, and finding freedom from anxiety. It makes the kind of Christmas gift that can literally change a life, and we're offering the collection right now as our gift to anyone who comes alongside Tony's ministry with a year-end contribution. And as a special bonus, when you make that donation, we'll also include an additional popular resource. There's three to choose from, and you can make your selection and receive them with our thanks when you visit tonyevans.org.

But this is a limited-time, end-of-the-year offer, so make the arrangements right away. Again, that's tonyevans.org, or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that contact information for you after part two of today's lesson.

Here's Dr. Evans. Are you willing to trust God with your Isaac, with your Isaac, the thing that you want to release the least, the thing that means the most, the thing that you're holding tight and don't want to let go, and everybody has an Isaac. Everybody has that thing that you want more than life itself. He saw that God mattered more to him than Isaac, and he loved Isaac. He didn't stop loving Isaac to love God. He just decided to love God more. And loving God in faith doesn't mean simply having an emotional attachment.

Loving God means acting out what God said, not just singing songs, praying prayers, and hearing sermons. One of the reasons that some of us do not know the name Jehovah-Jireh is God is still waiting for you to act on what he said, even though you may not understand how it's going to work out. Isaac had to be placed on the altar.

When God said, now I know that, you feel me, then, and only then did the solution show up, even though it was right next to him. Could it be that you've been waiting five years for something God would have given you in five minutes if he still wasn't waiting for you to complete your sacrifice? This means, single Christian, that you must give your singlehood over to God. That may be the Isaac in your life.

The desire for a mate may be so strong that it's caused you to not follow God completely as a single, and he could literally have the person he wants for you sitting next to you year after year, and you never see it. It could be money. God, I will give the part I'm supposed to give to you after you give me more, to which God says you're going to be waiting a long time. I want to know that you trust me enough to go to worship and honor me with the firstfruits of what I give you, not what you happen to have left over.

I want you to put it on the altar, my career on the altar, whatever it is that God commands. I don't understand how I'm going to make it. I don't understand how it's going to work out. I don't know what you're going to do, but this is what you said.

This is what I'm going to do. Now you're going to have to supernaturally intervene because I can't fix this. You can't hold on to Isaac and get Jehovah Jireh. See, you can't hold on to Isaac. See, we want Isaac and Jehovah Jireh.

You can't have it. It's when he sees that he provides. So if you give him nothing to experience or to see, then he withholds the provision because he responds to faith. But boy, when you see Jireh show up, when you have this encounter, what happens? Well, remember what we read in Hebrews 11? He got back Isaac, it says, as a type.

So he got him back physically, because he's alive now. A type is something that foreshadows something else. A type is something that, kind of like the sacrifices in the Old Testament, were a type of Jesus.

They were sacrifices to foreshadow the coming of the one who would die on the cross for the sins of the whole world. A type foreshadows something greater than the type. So whatever the type is foreshadowing, what it is foreshadowing is bigger, greater, larger, more...

It's huge compared to what the type is. So watch this now. He gives him back Isaac, plus. Because all Isaac gives is a little something something.

He's a type. What does he give him? It says, then the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord Jehovah, because you have done this thing, because I saw you do it, and have not withheld your son, your only son. Indeed, I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore, and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies, and your seed, all the nations of the earth, shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.

Watch this now. I'm gonna give you back Isaac. But that ain't nothing for what I'm getting ready to do now. Because I'm now getting ready to open up the windows of heaven, and I'm gonna shower you with stuff that will have generational repercussions.

You ain't seen nothing yet. In saving Isaac, you could keep Isaac and lose everything else. But because you were willing to put Isaac on the altar, you get Isaac back and everything else. See, a lot of us are trading Isaac for Isaac and everything else, just so we can keep Isaac.

But if all you have is Isaac, that's limited. Isaac is a type of God unleashing all that he has planned for you, all that he has in store for you, but he wants to know before he unleashes this that he has you. He's not gonna unleash this when he, when the blesser is not more important than the blessing. Everybody's showing up in church today.

Everybody is looking for their blessing, and the blessing trumps the blesser. I love this phrase in chapter 22, and it's in verse 14 again. Abraham called the name of the place the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, in the mount of Jehovah, in the mount of the Lord, it will be provided. He calls the name of the place Jehovah-jireh, the Lord will provide. But then he tells you where he provides. He says it is provided in the mount of the Lord. In other words, he just doesn't provide anywhere.

He doesn't provide any old place, any old time. He provides when there was immediate obedience and a specific location. The location was in the mount of the Lord. Well, what's the mount? The mount is Mount Moriah.

That's where he told him to go. The Mount Moriah was the place where the sacrifice was going to be made. So Mount Moriah was the place of worship.

What's my point? You must look at Isaac as an opportunity to worship. When you worship over your Isaac, when you say, God, I'm going to bless your name in spite of my pain. I'm going to exalt you. I'm going to worship God.

I'm not doing this because I feel like it. I'm doing this to exalt the blesser. You make it a matter of worship. When God sees your worship, he makes your provision.

It's in the mountain. It's part of your worship. It's not just doing something for God or being a good Christian. It is my celebration of God because that's the mountain. It's the place of the altar. He says, making it your worship is what I provide. Making it your worship. When our bosses want us to do something, they may ask us to sacrifice time. Stay overtime or work long or come in on Saturday. They want you to sacrifice for the company.

When evaluation time comes, they notice your sacrifice. In John chapter 8, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. And the Pharisees are condemning Jesus. And then Jesus makes this statement to the unbelieving Jews. Abraham saw my day and was glad.

Oh, I wish I had some time. He said, Abraham, Jesus Christ is claiming to be God. He says, let me tell you how long I've been around Jews. You think I showed up in Bethlehem.

Let me tell you how long this thing been working. Abraham saw my day and was glad. Abraham saw me and was tickled pink.

Watch this. We are told that Abraham was walking and as Abraham was walking, he lifted up his eyes. Remember that verse?

He lifted up his eyes. Mount Moriah is just a couple of hundred feet from Golgotha. Mount Moriah is just a couple of hundred feet from the mount on which Jesus was crucified, Mount Calvary.

Just a couple of hundred feet away from Mount Moriah. Abraham looked up and saw Mount Moriah, but John 856 says Abraham saw something else. He saw my day. God was going to enter into human history in the person of Jesus Christ and make provision for the sins of the world and become our Jehovah Jireh. So what God says the angel of the Lord did, which is Jesus in the Old Testament for Abraham, he is still doing today because Isaac was a type through those who come through Jesus to demonstrate faith in Jesus Christ, God becomes your Jehovah Jireh. Dr. Tony Evans with a message on how the Lord can provide everything we need in any situation.

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