IN BOTH TESTAMENTS in the canon of scripture, a significant aspect of the God of the bible is that he is Jehovah Jireh—the one who provides. We encounter this in an overwhelming way in the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Book of Genesis. (cf. Gen. 22:1-14) “God tested Abraham. ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love. Sacrifice him.’” (Gen. 22:1-2) Abraham is faithful to this emotionally-charged and faith-straining demand. There was ample precedent of child sacrifice in the surrounding Canaanite cultures of the A.N.E. of the time; Moloch, one of their agricultural deities, demanded child sacrifice by fire as a means of blessing the growth of crops and preventing famine.
But Yahweh, the God of the family of Abraham and the nascent Israelite tribes, is not like the other gods—he is the one true God, and Abraham’s story—and Isaac’s—will have a different ending. “Abraham built an altar, bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called out to him, ‘Abraham, do not lay a hand on the boy.’ Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide.” (Gen. 22:11-14)
In our mind’s eye we see Abraham, his arm frozen in a high position, his fist wrapped around a flint knife with sunlight reflecting off the hand-chipped edges. Every muscle in his body is tensed, and his gaze is fixed on the helpless Isaac, only one swift strike away from death. But at the word of the Lord, Abraham’s arm collapses to his side, and he “looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide.” (Gen. 22:13-14) And so the seed of Abraham would grow to be like the countless stars in the night sky: “So shall your offspring be.” (Gen. 15:5)
A dictionary defines *providence as, “God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny.” And there are two entities that engage in the transaction of providence. The first is God, the one who provides; the second is you or me, the one who becomes **provident.
Paul speaks precisely to this relationship when he says of God, “God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Cor. 9:8) And he continues, “God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:19) And he adds that God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” (Eph. 3:20)
It is our part in the covenant relationship of providence to both ask and receive. God makes this clear in both biblical testaments. Through Jeremiah he says, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” (Jer. 33:3) But he is far more direct speaking through Jesus. “Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” (John 16:23) More expansively, he says “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matt. 7:7-8) And it is Jesus who secures our relationship to God as our provider. “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13)
To receive God’s providence requires both faith and obedience, and these operate within the boundaries of motivation of heart. Jesus tells us that “whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24) But asking and receiving are limited by the forces that drive us to the portal of prayer. James, the brother of the Lord, warns “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:3)
And so Paul says “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Rom. 12:1-2) Jesus’ beloved disciple John adds, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” (1 John 5:14–15) And so we ask, believe, and receive.
On our pilgrimage from sinner to saint—developing obedience through faith—there are many times in life where our desperate need in the midst of crises circumstances seeks a response from the God of all Providence. So it was for Abraham on Mt. Moriah, so it is for us, each and every one. Abrahams’ obedience became the foundation for a life of faithfulness that God could bless. A principled lesson arises from the transactions between the giver and the receiver, and that is that the reliability of the provident one leads us onward to becoming
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