God Will Provide (part 4), Genesis 22:10-19
The last time we discussed this passage, we stopped at verse 10, with Abraham’s knife in the air: Genesis 22:10, “And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” Abraham had gone to the full extent of offering Isaac on the altar and is now only interrupted and stopped by the voice of God.
We read in the gospels the story of the rich young ruler, a man of generally upright life who seems to have wanted Jesus to affirm his standing in the kingdom of God. You recall what Jesus said to him: “Yet lackest thou one thing.” That is not what God says here to Abraham. God is fully pleased with Abraham’s faith and obedience and immediately brings the trial to an end.
Joy in obeying
You can imagine the relief that Abraham and Isaac must feel. They have persevered in their obedience and now the trial is over sooner than they expected. It’s an encouraging scene to keep in mind for the next time you endure a trial. God will not try you beyond what you are able to bear, and there is a coming a moment when it will be ended.
The principle is found throughout scripture. For example, in Psalm 30:5 we read, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
But consider another example, one that might be more comforting to imperfect people like ourselves. In this episode with Abraham, we are looking at his life at the high point of his faith and obedience. That isn’t always the case with us. We often fail in both faith and obedience, as Abraham himself had done from time to time.
For something more attuned to our typical spiritual condition, think about the case of the disciples after their experience in the Garden of Gethsemane. They had all forsaken Christ and fled. There followed afterwards a three-day journey, if you will, of miserable disappointment and introspection. It’s simply coincidental, I believe, that their three days of sorrow corresponds in length to Abraham’s three-day journey from Beersheba to the mountains of Moriah, but it’s instructive in both cases that the relief is not immediate and yet the time is finite.
The disciples were grief-stricken and disillusioned for that time until Christ rose from the dead. But then, he did rise and show himself to them, and we read in John 20:20, “Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.” I’m not sure the English word “glad” quite captures the idea. Perhaps a better picture is given by Jesus when he foretells the event during his discourse at the last supper: John 16:20 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.”
The source of our joy
What is the source of the joy that Abraham and Jesus’ disciples felt in the deliverances they received?
They probably did not grasp the full extent of it immediately. Abraham knew that he was receiving his son back from certain death. That was probably the first wave of relief that washed over him. The disciples’ disappointment in the loss of their teacher and the failure of the cause in which they had joined him was lifted. Their view of the matter, though, is perhaps best expressed by the two on the road to Emmaus: Luke 24:21, “But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” They speak of the Messiah’s work in a collective sense. Their uncertainty in Christ’s person and work in the face of the crucifixion left them confused enough that the full impact of what it would mean for the Messiah to remain in the tomb probably did not occur to them. Of course, it would ultimately have meant that there was no personal salvation, an eternity in Hell, and separation from God. That despair would eventually have come home to them if God had let them sink so low.
Abraham would have been looking at his trial from the standpoint of the promises he had received. How could his seed be multiplied as the number of the grains of sand on the shore, or the stars in heaven, without Isaac, for whom he had waited decades to be born? Of course, there was a certain amount of obscurity to what Abraham and the Old Testament saints were given to understand about the details of the covenant of Grace, but he knew enough about it to recognize that it was bound up in God’s promise. Jesus described Abraham’s faith to the unbelieving Jews this way: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad,” (Jn 8:56). I think we catch a glimmer of that sight of Abraham’s in verse 8 of the passage we’re looking at tonight. Isaac asks about the absence of a sacrifice for the burnt offering. Abraham’s answer was, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.”
God’s provision
Whatever Abraham lacked in knowledge, whatever the disciples lacked in their faith, God was continuing in each case to execute his plan to bring redemption to the world. Indeed, the focus of this passage is not on Abraham’s ignorance of the future, but on his faith and vision. God does provide the lamb, as Abraham had said to Isaac. We read in verse 13, “And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.”
Abraham understands the meaning of this, and he names the place after God’s provision, Jehovah-Jireh.
That name is quite interesting. It is similar to the name that Hagar had called the Lord when he saw her need and rescued her when she was pregnant with Ishmael and fled into the wilderness away from Sarah. She had called him El-Roi, the God who sees. In the case of Abraham’s need for a lamb of sacrifice, though, the word is the same but the emphasis is on a secondary meaning of the word for seeing. Seeing, in the Hebrew idiom, can also mean providing, or taking care of whatever it is that is seen to be out of order.
We have the same idiom in English. A father might say to his son, “See to it that you mow the lawn this afternoon.” Plan on it. Make it happen. Or a wife may come and say to the same father, “We don’t have enough money to buy groceries,” and he will answer, “I will see to it.” I’ll make sure it's done. I’ll provide.
This is the connotation we have here. Some translations make this connotation less clear. The KJV says in verse 14 that the name means “it shall be seen.” That’s the literal wording, but the word for seeing and providing is the same as in verse 8, where Abraham clearly told Isaac that God would provide, not that he would simply see, looking on, as it were, indifferently. God would see to the provision of a lamb for the sacrifice. Most translations simply state the secondary meaning, noting that this name for the place of the sacrifice means that God is providing.
A renewed—or, rather, reinforced—promise
In the final few verses of our passage, we hear God renewing his promise to Abraham. It does not come in the usual way. God has been used to speaking to Abraham in visions or dreams, but this voice comes out of heaven. Isaac would have heard it. The young men waiting for Abraham and Isaac to return after offering the sacrifice may have heard it. God says, “By myself have I sworn,” (v. 16). It comes with an oath.
This is the verse that the New Testament writers remember as God’s promise to Abraham. Luke 1:73, “The oath which he sware to our father Abraham”; Hebrews 6:13, “For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself.”
It is really not a renewed promise as much as it is a reinforced promise, reinforced by God’s oath with a voice out of heaven. We should remember the nature of this promise, especially when we are undergoing trial. Do we sometimes wish for a voice from heaven to confirm us in our faith? God spoke to Abraham out of heaven. That voice and that oath are recorded for us to lay hold on. They belong to us, his children, as much as they did to Abraham.
And, if we have only a record of the voice, and not the voice itself, what we do have to add to it is a knowledge of the finished work of Christ, which Abraham saw only dimly. Together, these things should instill in us the kind of joy that Abraham felt at the deliverance of his son, and that the disciples felt at the resurrection of the Lord. If we were only sensible of it, our joy would be so much the greater, as God provides for our most pressing need, the forgiveness of our sins and the propitiation of his wrath against us. What a blessing it is to have Jehovah-Jireh as our creditor. The full debt is entirely satisfied by our great provider.