As Abraham came in sight of Mount Moriah, the place where Abraham was to sacrifice his son, Isaac spoke up: “Father?”

 “Yes, my son?”

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

What was Abraham to say? What would you have said, if you were him? Notice how he answered – these next words are prophetic. “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

You know the story. Abraham binds his son – something that he could not have done had Isaac not been willing. Isaac was too strong and Abraham too old to have done it had Isaac resisted. Then Abraham laid him on the pyre and raised the terrible blade and was about to bring it down when…

Very rarely in the Bible does God repeat a person’s name. But when Abraham was about to sacrifice his own son Isaac, God called out to him, “Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a hand on the boy … now I know that you fear God…”

Abraham untied his boy and, as he was doing so, he heard a noise in a nearby thicket. There was a ram there, caught by its horns, a ready sacrifice provided by the Lord. So, verse 14, “Abraham called the place, ‘The Lord will provide’” or in Hebrew, Yahweh Jireh. “And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.’”

It is on the mountain of the Lord, the place where we come to God in obedience, that our needs are provided. It is not in the valley of self-indulgence. It is not in the place of personal ambition. It is where we sacrifice whatever keeps us from loving God most – the mountain of the Lord – that we will find him to be Jehovah Jireh, the LORD our Provider. In fact, many people who complain that God didn’t come through for them have never even begun the journey to the mountain of the Lord, which is begun, as we saw earlier, by faith-reasoning, by trusting the LORD to provide.