ABRAHAM ON MOUNT MORIAH

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Jire, as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. God will provide the sacrifice. A father climbs a mountain with wood on his son's back, and a knife in his own hand, and every step is a small death. Abraham had waited twenty five years for his son Isaac. This was the son of laughter, the child of the promise, the one through whom God had sworn to make a great nation. And now the voice that had given the promise seemed to be taking it back. Take your son, your only son Isaac whom you love, and offer him as a burnt offering. Genesis chapter twenty two verse two. The Hebrew piles up the tender words deliberately Your son, your only son whom you love, as if to press on the wound with every syllable. Child sacrifice was a real and horrifying practice among the surrounding Canaanite peoples. So the command, however abhorrent, was not unimaginable to Abraham's ears. That is part of what makes it so agonizing. The journey lasted three days, three days of walking beside the boy, sharing meals, watching him sleep, saying nothing. The land of Moriah lay in the hill country, a rocky ascent under a wide sky. Then comes the detail that has broken readers' hearts for millennia. Isaac carries the wood, looks at his father, and asks, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Genesis twenty two verse seven. Every parent who has ever felt powerless to protect a child, who has sat in a hospital corridor or watched a son walk into danger knows something of that unbearable silence on the mountain path. Robert Alta notes the extraordinary literary economy of this passage. Its dark, unadorned Hebrew forces the reader to feel the weight of what is unsaid. Abraham answers Isaac's question with a line that hovers between faith and evasion. God will provide for himself the lamb. Genesis twenty two verse eight. The verb is Ra. Literally God will see to it. Gordon Wenham observes that the whole narrative turns on this theme of divine seeing and providing, culminating when Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram caught in a tick in a thicket. He names the place Yahweh Yar Yah Yahweh Yare. The Lord will provide or the Lord will see. Victor Hamilton emphasizes that the ram is a substitute. It dies in the place of Isaac, offered instead of his son. Genesis twenty two verse thirteen. The provision is not merely a rescue, but a replacement, a life given so another can live. A pattern Christians have long read, as pointing forward to the ultimate son carrying wood up a hill, where no ram appeared because he was the lamb. Derek Kidna notice notes that Abraham's faith is vindicated not because the test was a mere formality, but because he genuinely trusted that God's promise and God's command could not finally contradict each other. God stops the knife at the last possible moment, and in that moment reveals his deepest name for the desperate, the God who provides. You may be climbing a mountain right now, carrying something you cannot bear to lose, and God has not yet shown you the ram. The lesson of Moriah is not that the climb is easy, but that provision often appears only at the summit, not at the base, not halfway, but at the very place where you thought you would have to let go. Abraham did not see the ram until he had walked all the way up and lifted his eyes. God's provision is real, but it is frequently last minute by our reckoning, arriving after the obedience, not before it. If you are facing a loss you cannot control, a failing body, a shrinking bank account, a child slipping away, hold to the name Abraham discovered. The Lord will see to it. He may not spare you the climb, but on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. Our great Jehovah Jire, the God who provides. We are climbing a mountain that we never chose for ourselves, carrying what we cannot bear to lose. Please give us the faith of Abraham to trust you that you will see to it and help us to lift our eyes and find your provision waiting there. We give you thanks in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters.