JEHOVAH-JIREH

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 11, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 50.

SO ABRAHAM called the name of the place where God provided the sacrifice, “Jehovah-jireh,”—“The Lord will provide.”

It is all expressed in the great name Jehovah, the eternal, self-existent One; but man in his blindness can see it only as God reveals His wonderful goodness in special providences. God had told Abraham that his seed should bless and inherit the earth, but Abraham thought this could only be, as lawyers would term it, constructively. He himself must provide a faithful servant to be his heir, or his wife a handmaid to be the mother of the seed. He could not see that God could provide all that He had promised. Even after Isaac, the child of promise, was born, his faith must be tested. He must be willing to yield even Isaac, with the assurance that God could provide without human planning. He does so. He is willing to give Isaac back to God as a sacrifice, if God desires it. It was enough. He believed God, and God answered his faith by providing a lamb, the type of His own Son. Abraham sees it and acknowledges all in naming the place Jehovah-jireh, the Lord will provide.

So, dear soul, the test must come to every child of Abraham. Every one must learn that the great Jehovah is the ample, all-sufficient Provider of all that He has promised. He needs no human circumvention of His plans, no constructive interpretation put upon them, no human aid of civil law, nothing whatever, except the co-operation He Himself commands. And every soul can furnish that—simple submission to God’s will.

Then yield it all, dear soul, and rest. Wait upon Jehovah; He will provide. Nay, more, He has provided it all in the gift of His Son. So fully has God provided it that the apostle can only express it by thanksgiving: “I thank my God always concerning ‘you, for the grace of God which was given you in ‘Christ Jesus; that in everything ye were enriched in ‘Him.’” I Cor. 1: 4, 5, R.V. He has opened to us “the exceeding riches of His grace.” Eph. 1: 7; 2: 7. He has given us constant “access by faith” into this great storehouse. Rom. 5: 2. All we need is found in Christ Jesus. When Heaven gave Him, the pledge of all was given. For “He that spared ‘not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, ‘how shall He not with Him also freely give us all ‘things?” Rom. 8: 32.

“The Lord will provide;” the Lord has provided. Go and ask; by faith receive, in thankfulness acknowledge the great Provider of all your needs. Thus every place shall bear His name; every place shall be fragrant with His presence, and every place shall be filled with His praise.