Names | Provider - Genesis 22:1-19 | April 19

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For today, I want to start out with Psalm 8.

So if you would like to join with your devices or physical Bibles,

you're more than welcome to open up.

We're going to be in Genesis 22 eventually.

So if you want to hold your place there, but I want to start in Psalm 8.

And if you don't have a physical Bible, there are some in the back that you're

welcome to grab and follow along with us.

There's something about, if any of you guys have spent much time meditating

and memorizing the Bible, There is something about reading it in a physical

book that makes it easier because you don't just start.

You're not trying just to remember the words, but you are inadvertently remembering

the place on the page that it occupies.

And so when you spend time doing that and you flip up, you are flip open to those verses.

You already know and expect where that's going to be. And that just solidifies

those passages that we need in our minds so much greater. So that's my plug

for always having a physical Bible, if you can.

Psalm 8 says, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants,

you have established a stronghold against your enemies and to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon,

the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful

of them, human beings that you care for them?

You've made them a little lower than the angels, crowd them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the work of your hands. You put everything under their

feet, all flocks and herds and animals of the wild, the birds and sky and the

fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

Let me say that together. It's a long one, but I think you can remember it.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

This is an incredible thing. I came across several quotes from church fathers

and theologians and these thinkers across the ages.

Augustine of Hippo, a name you might remember. He said that, what is your name?

If I ask, I do not know. And if I say, I know, I lie. And he's talking towards God.

This great man of faith says, if I ask your name, I do not know.

And it's just incredible. It's not saying that he doesn't know God's name and

he hasn't been acquainted with who God is as he reveals himself.

What he's saying is God's name is not this thing that we study and we learn

more about and then we master it and we, we understand it.

It's, it's in a sense, something that we just marvel at.

In some ways, there is not an answer to the question.

In all the ways that this whole series is about looking at the names of God

and how He reveals Himself, there's something about the majesty of His name

that there is no answer for.

And Augustine was marveling at this.

We are continual learners who will never arrive.

Gregory of Nyssa said that every concept concerning God is an idol.

Every concept concerning God is an idol, which sounds strange and intense and

like maybe I don't know how to feel about that.

But essentially what he's saying is the moment that you think that you have

defined God with a name, what you've really done is just shrunken his character down into an idol.

That the moment that you think you figured him out, You've made him smaller

than he is, which is why as we talk about these names of God,

what we're not talking about is defining God, setting limits to God.

What we're talking about is the way that God chooses to reveal himself to us,

to give us glimpses of his majesty, his great, great majesty.

John Chrysostom said that the name of God is not to be grasped, but to be adored.

And that kind of sums up everything that we just heard. And we're talking about this.

We just read in Psalms 8, it says, how majestic is your name in all the earth?

And the New Testament authors, when they hear that, all they're thinking of is, yeah, of course.

That is amazing. His name is too great. His name is full of majesty.

His name is not something that we can understand fully, our harness completely,

our master. It is something that overwhelms us.

Which is interesting as we're in a series about the names of God and actually

the name that we're talking about today isn't a name that is ever given to God in the Bible.

Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Jireh, Yahweh Jireh.

I don't know. Do people say it any other way than that? I think that covers all the bases.

This is a thing that people lump in as this is a name of God.

This is a name that is given to God in the Bible.

And so we say it's one of God's seven names or however many names that people

say there are, but it's not.

It's the name of a place, a place that spurns this proverb that on the mountain

of the Lord, it will be provided.

So Abraham names the mountain. He names,

Not God, but the place that he's at. If I say, if I call Abraham Moses today,

for some other reason, just assume that I meant Abraham.

Because as I, for some reason, as I've been writing and thinking about this,

the first name, maybe it's because I've been reading the end of Genesis,

the beginning of Exodus.

But for some reason, that's the name that keeps popping into my mind.

But Abraham, Abraham names the place the Lord will provide, God will provide.

Because something happened on that mountain that forever changed the way that he saw God.

So he names the place. Keep that in mind.

I'm going to have Julie come and read this passage of scripture in Genesis chapter

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

22. We're going to be there the whole time so you can just keep yourself there.

I'm pretty loud, so I'm not, or can you want me to do it? I'm like, yeah, I'll do it.

Genesis 22, one through 19. After these things, God tested Abraham and said

to him, Abraham, here I am, he answered.

Take your son, he said, your only son Isaac, whom you love.

Go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the

mountains I will tell you about.

So Abraham got up early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took with him

two of his young men and his son Isaac.

He split wood for a burnt offering and set out to go to the place God had told

him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.

Then Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey.

The boy and I will go over there to worship. Then we'll come back to you.

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac.

In his hand, he took the fire and the knife, and the two of them walked on together.

Then Isaac spoke to his father Abraham and said, My father. And he replied, Here I am, my son.

Isaac said, The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering,

my son. Then the two of them walked on together.

When they arrived at the place that God had told him about, Abraham built the

altar there and arranged the wood.

He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar on top of the wood.

Then Abraham reached out and took the night to slaughter his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.

And he replied, Here I am.

Then he said, Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him,

for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.

Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns.

So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son.

And Abraham named that place the Lord will provide.

So today it is said, It will be provided on the Lord's mountain.

Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said,

By myself I have sworn, this is the Lord's declaration.

Because you have done this thing and have not withheld your only son,

I will indeed bless you and make your offspring as numerous as the stars of

the sky and the sand on the seashore.

Your offspring will possess the city gates of their enemies,

and all the nations of the earth

will be blessed by your offspring because you have obeyed my command.

Abraham went back to his young men, and they got up and went together to Beersheba.

And Abraham settled in Bershina.

Thank you, Julie. Let's pray. God, we, I just confess that we bring so much stuff into that name.

We have our own perception of what it means to be provided for.

So I pray that we would be rid of that this morning, to receive what it means

in truth that on the mountain of the Lord, it would be provided that even though

you're not called by this name, that it defines,

or I should say reveals a bit of who you are to us as well, that you are the

God who knows, who sees, who provides, the God who cares, the God who loves,

the God who meets us where we are.

And you are the God who redefines our circumstances.

So I pray that we'll just, will be able to receive your word for us this morning.

And that rather than bringing our baggage into it, God, I pray that you would

reinterpret our understandings, reinterpret our vision, reinterpret all that we have.

I pray that we would trust in your promises and that we would walk faithfully,

trusting in not the God who might provide or the God who can provide,

but the God who has promised that He will provide.

And in some ways has already fulfilled that to its fullest extent in Jesus.

So we thank you for your provision and we praise you and glorify you for who

you are in all the ways that you exceed our categories and are this God whose

name is majestic in all the earth.

Amen.

I had a thought as Julie's reading and completely lost it. So what we're going

to do is just continue as if I didn't have that thought.

And what I want to do is actually start at the end of the story,

sort of the end of the story, not the complete end of what that passage that

was read, but the moment, the pivotal moment that is the end of the story,

right? I think I remember what it was.

There was this video that I saw growing up in the early days of YouTube.

And it was this dance group out of Georgia.

And they did a dance to a song.

And what they did at the beginning was reenact through some sort of choreography,

I don't know, this moment with Isaac and Abraham.

And it was, it's a funny thing, but a beautiful thing. And the song chorus talks

about, I will walk this path that God has led out before me.

That's what we're going to talk about. So it wasn't completely useless that

I remember what I was going to say, but I want to start kind of at the end.

I want to start at this pivotal moments before, with the provision of God,

before Abraham even recognized the need for it.

Before, when God called Abraham to offer his only son, Isaac.

Abraham believed and trusted, but he didn't know the provision that was coming.

And yet, when God called Abraham to set up on that journey up the mountain,

God had already started a ram walking up the other side.

It wasn't that this ram just showed

up at the last minute and that God materialized him out of thin air.

I suppose God could do that. He doesn't usually do stuff like that.

But it's that when Abraham and Isaac were making their journey up,

God's provision was already in motion before they knew that they needed it.

God sets in motion his faithfulness to meet our obedience at that opportune time.

If Abraham, you can think about it this way, if Abraham never started up that

mountain in obedience, he would never have been able to meet God's provision.

He would never encounter God's provision. This is the moment where we see all

of God's fullness overflow.

And we have these stories in our own lives. They certainly might pale in comparison

to what Abraham and Isaac experienced here.

Such a pivotal moment that at least two or three times after this story,

when it's listed the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,

instead of saying the God of Isaac, it says the fear of Isaac.

Like this is a pivotal moment and specifically Abraham, but also Isaac's life.

And so maybe our stories aren't that. Maybe they are just as crazy and important.

I think about the house that we live in now.

And even though, as we probably all know at this point, we're trying to find

a house to buy rather than rent and spend, I don't know, like 8,000 times more

than we currently pay in rent for it.

The house that we live in was a moment of God's provision.

A moment where we had worked out other things that fell through and we had tried

to do it and thought it was happening.

And it really came down to a prayer one night where we said,

God, you want us to be here.

We believe that you want us to be here, but so far we can't continue to live

in Jenny's parents' extra room with two kids.

So if we're going to stay here, you have to provide. And then the next day,

it was revealed to us, told us that this house was potentially available for us to move into.

They never rented it to anybody, but we might be able to be there.

So God's provision meets us, even when we don't expect it, maybe when we're

trying to do it for ourselves.

Jake was supposed to teach today about something completely different.

And yet, there's natural disasters

and things that happen around the world. And so he had to fly out to,

God knows where, Pacific Island somewhere, something like that.

Suriname, something like that, right?

And I don't know, where is that at? What is it? Saipan. It started with an S, I took a shot.

Suriname's in the Caribbean or something. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. As soon as I said that, I was like, that's not even the right part of the world.

But maybe you didn't know that. We got exposed. Yet before he even knew that he had to go,

God was already making provisions to meet us here this morning and to talk about

this wonderful name God is providing.

We see this story in Genesis chapter 2 often through the lens of Hebrews chapter

Genesis 2 · chapter mention Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

11, which talks about the faith is the assurance of things hoped for,

the conviction of things not seen.

And then it talks a lot about Abraham. And finally, it says in verse 17 that

by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac.

And he who had received the promise was in the act of offering up his only son,

of whom it was said, through Isaac, shall your offspring be named.

He considered that God was even able to raise him from the dead,

from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

And so we see in this interpretation of this story that even then,

as Abraham is walking up the mountain.

He's not walking up hoping that God would provide.

There's something about Abraham's faith and something about this situation where

he was already convinced that God had it, that God understood and that God would provide.

He didn't know how, he had his speculations, but he believed the promise that

through Isaac, all his offspring that outnumbered the stars in the sand would be named.

And somewhere in his heart, he settled that if God said that this promise is coming through Isaac,

then Isaac is coming back down the mountain, that we are coming back.

God gave him the spirit of Arnold Schwarzenegger in that moment,

right? That says, I'll be back, but we'll be back.

Let me, I'll appropriate it for our purposes. They said, I'm coming back. We're coming back.

As we continue to talk about this a little bit more, I don't know everybody's

current situation. I know a lot of you very well, but even in our depth of knowledge,

we only ever know what people share.

And I feel like that is God's message to us a lot of times. You're going to

come back. You'll be back.

It might take longer than you expected, and it might take you places that you

never would have imagined, but you're coming back from this.

I'm feeling participatory today, maybe. Why don't we say, I'm coming back.

Thank you for indulging me, because you all know that I, in your place would not have said anything.

He said, we're coming back down. I don't know about you, but when something's

a sacrifice, this is how sacrifices work. Something doesn't come back.

And yet this is faith. This is Abraham's faith that faith is not just wishful thinking.

Faith is not just that God can do something. Faith is the belief and the firm understanding.

We talk about belief it's about putting our full weight on something so it's

not just hopeful wishful thinking it is faith that God will because he said he would,

He trusted the promise and what that did before the provision,

it gave him the confidence in the provision, even before he could see it.

And that's God's invitation to us as well as Yehovah Ere, that we would trust

in the promise, that we would have confidence in the provision,

even when we can't see it, to trust God at his promise, that he has already begun to provide.

Even if you can't see it yet, even if it doesn't make sense yet,

even if you're still on the climb of that mountain.

That God is inviting us to step into his promises and to meet him in our obedience at his provision.

This is not a name, as I said, it's a promise. God sees, God knows, and God provides.

God sees, God knows, God provides. Why don't we say that together?

God sees, God knows, God provides.

This is Yehovah Yira, Adonai Yira. This is the word Yira. It doesn't mean provide.

That's how our language interpretations work. Every time this shows up in the

Bible, Yira, it means to see.

This is the only place that our translators decided and it makes more sense to say, provide.

And people like Charles Spurgeon throughout the ages have thought of it this way.

God will see to it. That the God who sees the faith of this man and his son,

the faith of someone who's willing to give up his best, the faith of someone

who trusts in him, and then he provides.

That God, as it says in Philippians chapter 4, that God will provide all of

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

my needs according to the righteousness in Christ Jesus.

That God sees, that God knows, that God will provide.

That God will see to it. The God who sees it will see to it that it is accomplished.

This is the idea that we're talking about. And we take a step further back in the story.

Isaac turns to his father and he asks that question, where is the lamb?

And Abraham says, God will provide himself the lamb.

Yira, God will see to it. It shall be seen. God will provide himself the lamb.

There's just a couple of thoughts through this story I want to draw our attention to.

It's not unlike God to test us. And I know based on all the amends that happened

in the room, that's a very favorable subject for us to think about,

but it is not like, unlike God to test us.

However, God doesn't test you to determine your substance.

He doesn't test you to find out what you're made of.

God tests us so that we would find out what he's made of, if that makes sense.

There's this difference between testing and tempting. God never tempts us,

the Bible says. God tests us.

What that means is God is not trying to trip us up and provide us opportunity to fail.

What he's doing is providing us opportunity to trust him, to see who he is,

and to step into what he knows we are.

He brings you into the moment where you have to step into a promise,

but it's into the promise of a God who keeps his word.

Abraham doesn't even really, in the grand overall story, in the narrative,

doesn't get to fully realize the promise.

He doesn't get to see what God is fully made of in his story.

And even in this story, Abraham doesn't get to see what God is made of until,

until he steps into that promise, until he steps out on that journey,

until he begins to climb that mountain, until he began walking.

He got up early in the morning, it says.

When God visited him and told him to go do this, he got up early in the morning,

potentially because he didn't want to tell Sarah about what was about to happen,

but also faithfulness, obedience.

The journey took three days.

Abraham had so many opportunities to turn back into doubt, but he got up early

and he endured that journey to encounter God in a new way.

God tests us to see who he is so that we can see who he is. That's one thing.

Another thing is that God is not content with us settling on the last miracle.

So he calls us into something deeper as well, that we wouldn't keep living in

the comfort in the, in, in, in what God has already done.

But he calls us up the mountain. Abraham could have spent the rest of his years.

Recalling the faithfulness of a God who allowed him to have a kid in his old age.

Can you believe this God who is so miraculous that he gave a child to a hundred year old people?

And he could have lived there. He could have been fine there and been comfortable there.

But God calls him up the mountain. He calls him into something beyond that. He calls him higher.

And so Moses could have in that calling settled for what was already done,

but he calls him to something different that he would encounter God in a new way.

So we, we can't keep living in the comfort, in the, in the good life of what

God has already provided when he's calling us to more that we would,

we shouldn't sleep on the last miracle.

As I think Louis Giglio says.

He wants to grow your faith more and he wants to take you to where you've never

been before, to where you've never seen before.

Because there is more of his faithfulness that you haven't seen yet.

God is up to something to reveal in you and to you something that you haven't

previously known about his great name,

but you're never going to find that out if we're just taking comfort in the

last miracle, if we don't start walking up the mountain.

Another thing is that what you name places matter.

Abraham could have called this place rather than calling it Yehovah Yira or

Yahweh Yira. He could have called it the place of almost tragedy.

He could have called it the place of confusion, the place where nothing made sense.

But he didn't do that. He called it Yehovah Yerah.

There's people who interpret this story and their interpretation is that God

was inviting Abraham to argue with him about his character.

I don't necessarily see it that way because there's a lot more important things

that we get to see and we'll talk about just a second.

But Abraham could have named this place the place of confusion because it didn't

make sense. It didn't align with what he knew about God.

Instead, he calls it the Lord will provide.

What you name your circumstances determines your outlook, how you see them.

And how you see your circumstances, if you rehearse the tragedies in your life

or whatever you're going through over and over again, that affects your relationships.

He names it the Lord would provide.

You get to name your circumstances. God has provided you with that authority.

Just like in Genesis, the beginning of Genesis, Adam gets to name the animals.

Abraham names his place. You get to name the place.

And we could always name it something different than the Lord will provide.

There's always that temptation.

I was listening to a story, a guy talking about, I don't know if you've ever

done this, But you go back to the place where you grew up and you're with your

kids or new people that haven't experienced it.

And you point out the different places where things happened in your life.

Wherever we drive by Columbia, we point out to Canaan, that's the hospital you were born in.

And he talks about for him, he was pointing out to his kids,

that's the hospital I was born in.

And he said, that's the hospital that my mom worked in.

But also he realized that's the hospital my mom died in.

And he could have defined that place with that name. Or he could remember,

that's the place where my mom was able, not too long before this,

to marry her husband and to spend that time with him.

This is the place that her two sons got to hold her hand.

How we name our places matter. And a lot of times these places are the same

and we have the opportunity to name them differently.

So what have you named this place that you're in? Place of disappointment.

Where I prayed and it didn't happen the way that I thought it would,

the place where it all fell apart, the place of loss, the place of anxiety,

where I can't turn my mind off and I'm always bracing for what's next.

The place of not enough, the place of comparison, the place of regret,

shame, failure, the place of waiting, confusion,

the place of almost, the place of hopelessness, God wants to rename your places,

but he's given that authority to you.

He wants to rename these places Yehovah Yira. It will be provided.

He wants to rename these places. He wants you to walk up that mountain to worship.

It says that Abraham went up to worship. Even when it didn't make sense,

even when it didn't feel good, even when everything in him probably wanted to

run, he went up that mountain to worship.

How do you worship when you don't understand? How do you worship when you're confused?

When you want to change the scene, the circumstances, when you want to run away,

when you want something new, or when you want to escape from something old,

or to avoid something uncomfortable?

I was just talking to a friend of mine who's recalling the frustrations of the

season of life at work and different things.

And the result of that for us and for him often is the lack of motivation to read the Word of God.

That's the result of my frustration. I get home, I'm frustrated.

I don't feel like reading the Bible.

We are all there, but Abraham's story

is that when you face these unknown circumstances, you worship anyway.

Abraham went up to worship, trusting God when he couldn't make sense of it,

because maybe God is revealing something about himself and his name that you

didn't yet know. So we worship anyway.

Sometimes what we're doing in those places is looking for too many perspective

answers and preferences of how we think things should be and how God should

provide when what we should say is,

I don't know how God is going to take care of this.

I don't know, but he's going to have to do it himself.

From all of this, this proverb was created as it says in Genesis chapter 22

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

that on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.

This proverb sprung out of this saying of this event, which mountain is this Mount Moriah?

Well, it says it is a mountain in the region of Moriah.

The region of Moriah eventually became Jerusalem.

It's very likely that this is the very mountain where years later,

God would provide not a ram, but the lamb of Jesus.

Maybe. Isaac was probably like between 20 and 30, maybe close to 40 when this happened. Yeah.

Some theologians take that to believe that Isaac was 33 years old during this event.

Does anybody else we know that was about 33 years old when something like this

happened on this particular mountain?

Isaac's faith and trust in his father is incredible.

I have no doubt that a 33-year-old man could overpower a 130-year-old man.

A 127-year-old man. It's even worse.

Isaac agreed to this isaac willingly

lays down his life on the altar and allows his

father to bind him is there anybody else that that sounds like reminds you of

it's more of a rhetorical question but thank you for the enthusiasm on the third

day when they arrived at this place of sacrifice is when the lord stayed to

sand and provided the ram anything else we know that happened on the third day?

The answer is, I mean, always be Jesus. It's never going to be squirrel this morning.

Abraham laid the wood on his son. Is there any other story we know about where

the father lays the wood of sacrifice on his son?

Ram that's caught in the thicket with thorns? Do we know anyone else who had

thorns placed as a snare upon his head?

This isn't just Abraham's story.

This isn't just God showing up for one man. This is God showing us who he is

as Yehovah Yerah, the provider.

The God who sees, the God who knows, the God who provides. Because this moment

isn't just about Abraham.

Through Isaac comes a nation, through that nation comes Jesus,

and through Jesus comes salvation.

Because one act of obedience provides everyone with blessing.

And God reiterates that to Abraham at the end of this story.

I will make you a great nation, and through you all nations will be blessed.

God doesn't just test us so that we get to experience him.

He tests us so that through us and through that testing, he can create in us

a conduit of blessing for the rest of the world.

That you are that conduit, that you are that blessing, and that through your

circumstances, through your testing, through your moments to walk into the promise,

God is looking beyond you.

We said this before, that the gospel has come to you because it was headed to someone else.

That doesn't make you less important. That makes you even more important.

Blessing is for everyone. So are we living with open hands or closed hands?

Because God's still wanting to take you to see more, to grow you more,

to take you up that mountain, to experience more of his promise and his faithfulness.

Because it's not about us. It's not about you. It's about everyone.

God has spoken promises over your life. And the question is, will you step into them?

The enemy wants us to forget. He wants us to forget about God's faithfulness.

He wants us to forget about what God has said and what God has done.

That's what faith is. If I add my own definition to Hebrews 11.1, faith walks anyway.

Faith remembers God and his faithfulness.

Sometimes, sometimes God tells you what he's going to do. Sometimes he even tells you when.

But most of the time in my experience, I don't get the when that often.

Sometimes God's provision is waiting on our obedience.

Sometimes we haven't seen that provision because we haven't started walking up the mountain yet.

What is the mountain that God is calling you to? Like Abraham,

God asks him to lay down his best.

What is it that you need to lay down? What places in your life need to be renamed

that you are currently naming disappointment, but you need to rename? The Lord provides.

Yehovah Yira, the God who will see to it.

Let's end with a familiar story.

Jesus feeds the, I think it's 4,000 in this particular one.

Jesus feeds the thousands. Matthew chapter 15, Mark chapter 8.

Matthew 15 · chapter mention Mark 8 · chapter mention

This is where these two stories show up.

Massive group of people, miles away. The disciples are worried that if they

send them away, they're going to faint.

So they're like, what do we need to do? Jesus, you need to send them away now

so that they can go get something to eat.

Let's pause here because the disciples have been here before.

In fact, later on, God even has, Jesus has to remind them of both of these instances.

He feeds the 5,000, he feeds the 4,000. They are nearly identical situations.

And it's, you know, Jesus's ministry is over the course of a couple of years,

year and a half, maybe. So it's not like it's that long ago.

There's only three years they could work with here. So even within three years,

I think they could have remembered this crazy thing that Jesus did when there

were 5,000 people and more.

And yet he used this little boy's lunch to feed them, but they didn't see it.

They couldn't see the miracle about to happen.

So when Jesus asks them what they have or tells them to feed them,

to feed the people, their answer is the shocked. We only have these seven fish

and however many loaves of bread.

Jesus doesn't answer. You're right. You're probably right. That's not going to last.

What was I thinking? Jesus doesn't answer.

Go get some more and come back when you have enough. What Jesus says is bring them to me.

And all of this provision, even with Abraham, him.

It's almost as if God is telling us, it's not really about what you have.

It's about what I have. And it's about whether or not you're going to give me what you have.

God is saying, it's not about what you've got. It's about what he's got,

but you have to give him what you've got.

I encountered this story yesterday that I've been thinking about a lot last

night. But I think sometimes what we ask from God is just what we don't want

to do or are too lazy to do.

When we pray or when we drive past someone, we might pray for them and say,

God, provide somebody for them to take care of them, to give them food.

Or when we think about situations or even practically, we ask God to do these

things for us that are in our power to do.

And sometimes it's almost like God is saying, I'm not trying to do what you

don't want to do. I'm going to do what you can't do.

If they had enough fish and food to feed them, and then they still came to Jesus

and said, hey, let's send them home.

I think Jesus probably would have been like, we have enough to give them, just give it to them.

Sometimes I think we just, all of our prayers settle around that.

This is an unformed idea, but it's kind of been playing, what did the kids say,

rent-free in my head the last couple days.

We don't trust God with enough because he wants to do something that we can't do in us.

And too often we settle for things that we can do, just don't want to.

God is inviting us to so much more than that.

God is inviting us to walk up the mountain of faith, to step into the promise,

to trust beyond what we can see.

God's wanting us and asking us to risk the miracle that we've been standing

on that we might encounter him in a new way.

He wants to do what we can't do in us.

Yeah, he also likes to do the things that we can do because he's a great God

loving and way better than me.

He doesn't begrudge us those provisions often either, but he wants to do so much more.

He wants to do what we can't do.

He wants us to take that journey up the mountain to step into the promise to

bring what we have and to trust him,

even when we don't understand and watch as the God who sees will see to it.

Just stand up together.

God, nothing is missed by you. We don't inform you of things that you don't see.

And we don't bring to light something that you've missed in this world.

You are the God who sees, the God who knows, and the God who will provide.

You are the God who sees to it. don't let us settle in our comfort for the last

provision in the last provision.

When you're calling us to something more, there was a season for 30,

40 years where Abraham got to rest in that last miracle.

But when you called him to something more, he rose up early and he set out on that journey.

Don't let us pray for someone else to take that journey for us in our place,

when you're calling us into it.

Don't let us rest comfortable in your past provision when it's time for us to

walk in faith up that mountain of promise.

Don't let us define the place that we're in in such a way that we get lost in

the hopelessness and the confusion and the uncertainty,

but let us live in faith and trust that he who has promised is faithful.

And let us stand on the fact that you have already fulfilled that promise in

the greatest way possible.

And if this story does nothing else, it points to the blessing of salvation

that you have given to the entire world through Jesus, our lamb who was slain in our place.

Willingly gave up his life, that your provision demonstrates more than anything, your love for us,

and that from the moment you created, you had already set a provision on course

to meet us in our greatest moment of need.

That Jesus is that lamb, that ram that you had moving towards the cross at the

moment that all of your creation started moving away from you.

So we thank you for that, Jesus.

We thank you for your provision.

We thank you that you are the God who sees, the God who knows,

and the God will see to it.