Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 13, 2019 | The Names Of God - Yahweh-Yireh

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October 13, 2019 | The Names Of God - Yahweh-Yireh · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The names of God.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know we're in a series about the names of God?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Can you remember any of the names that we have studied so far?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: The next one was Adonai.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then came the personal name of God.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then we had Hagar, an Egyptian maidservant, came up with this one, El El Roe.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And last week we had El Shaddai.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And today we have one that's gonna sound a little weird to you.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh Ira.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Say Yahweh.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now say Ira.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and it means Yahweh will provide.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's used in one of the most famous stories in the Bible, Genesis 22.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: We know it much better as Jehovah Jirah, my provider's because it's efficient for me.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: For me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've been singing it all week.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you guys know this song?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for a little nod.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are really getting into this with me.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Great song.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, this is not God's name.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's never been used by God of Himself.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not used in heaven, never will be, Jehovah.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I talked about that three weeks ago.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry if this offends you, but I've been trying to sing the song differently this week.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've been singing Yahweh.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: My provider, it just sounds weird.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the last time you'll see it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know some of you are going, hold it, then how come in the video, you know, introducing your messages, you have so many of these Jehovahs?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for writing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate your emails.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the reason is that I explained to you that if we had had a video that had all these weird Yahweh years and so forth, people would have gone, I don't want this series.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what are these names anyway?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is crazy.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, we you know, and don't look down on people who use the word Jehovah.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go, no, no, just be nice to them.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: You happen to know something that they don't, they'll learn it really quickly when they get to heaven and say Jehovah, and nobody will turn around.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, um anyway.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So Yahweh, yeah, it's not Jehovah, Jirah, right?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now let's move on.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: This comes from very famous text.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is called the Akita, A-K-E-D-A-H, by Jewish people all over the world.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: That word is comes from the Hebrew word for binding, Abraham bound to Isaac, his son.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this passage has been really common in Jewish circles.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was just in Jewish circles the last three days, Jewish circles, uh, this last two weeks, because these have been the ten high holy days across the world for Jewish people.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Day of Atonement was this last Wednesday, included Rosh Hashanah and so forth.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: This passage is read, this passage is at the center of that, and we get to do this passage this morning.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing passage, and it starts this way.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna walk through the passage, then I'm gonna give you seven lessons or principles about God's providing nature.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: After these things, God tested Abraham.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: After these things, after what things?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, after a lot of things.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham has had quite a life.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's lived the most of his life in a kind of exile.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when he was younger, he and Sarah got the call.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: They left home, they became immigrants to what we call the Promised Land.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: There was a famine in the Promised Land, they went down to Egypt, they came back twice, as John Calvin puts it.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: His wife Sarah was plucked from his bosom before she came back.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: His nephew Lot got kidnapped.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: He risked his life to get his nephew back.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And up through the age of 80, they still had, they were childless, and having a child was absolutely essential.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just so critical if God's promises were ever going to come true.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: So God, you know, made a bold promise when he was 80, but still no child at age 85.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And at age 90, he and Sarah took matters into their own hands.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was legal.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: The baby they came up with, however, was not through Sarah.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Ishmael.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually now he had to kick Ishmael out of the house.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at age 100100, Sarah being 90, they had a baby whose name was Isaac.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: They were so happy, they laughed so hard.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: God called, said, call his name Laughter.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because Sarah had laughed mockingly, like, yeah, right.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then she laughed in joy.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the baby that gave them so much joy.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And now the baby's grown up to be a scrapping teenager, probably 15 years old at this time.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Abraham is, if he had the baby at age 100, how old now?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's legitimately old, yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So he's old no matter how you look at it.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I imagine he likes to sit on his front porch.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: He likes to enjoy his Medicare.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: He thinks that most of the trials in his life are over, and so we are shocked, as he probably is, at the three last words in this first sentence.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: God tested Abraham.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Jews like to say that Abraham had ten tests, and this is the last one and the hardest one.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is it certainly was the hardest, whether he had ten or not, and this certainly is the climax and the close of his life in the Bible.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the center of Isaac's life.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is the climax of Abraham's, and we are shocked that God tested him.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're also surprised that since the word tested, God tests people three dozen times in the Old Testament, almost always it says why.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It says this is what God wanted to find out.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: It says in the book of Job that, well, Satan provoked God to do this.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: We don't hear a thing.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: We are as as ignorant as Abraham is throughout this whole text.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know why God's testing him.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: God just decides to test him.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And God says to him, Abraham, it's the first time in their conversations, they've talked before.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: God has never started with Abraham's name, which maybe made Abraham go, whoops, this is gonna be a biggie.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: So he immediately says, Hinaini, one word in Hebrew, three words, here I am, same words the boy Samuel will use later.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: They are a word that says, I'm ready, I'm here, I'll obey.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things you'll notice about this story is Abraham's breathtaking obedience.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is immediate.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: He is so much of a more godly man than I am.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's so much more of a man of faith than I have ever thought of being.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: You will probably come to the same conclusion, but it starts even in the conversation when God calls his name and he immediately says, Here I am.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then God says, so this is actually, we got a photograph of it happening here.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here I am, Abram replied.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then God said, All right, come in, number one, take your son.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe Abraham was going, which one?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not, but God makes it even more clear when the second sent phrase is your only son, your one and only son.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's kind of true.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Whom you love, first time the word love is used in the Bible.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Can you think of anyone else in the Bible who is a one and only son?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Who is beloved?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Take your son, your only son, whom you love.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's just make clear who I'm talking about here, Isaac, the son you absolutely love, the joy and laughter of your life, and take your son and go to the region of Moriah.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham goes, Yeah, well, we've taken camping trips a lot.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's about 50 miles north.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: I like to hike.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love hiking with my son.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So far, so good.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Command number one, yay.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Command number two, yay.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Command number three, sucks all the air out of his lungs, makes his heart stop.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Ola, the familiar word for a burnt offering that you stick on an altar and burn up.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'll show you.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Frozen.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: We expect Abraham to say something like, God, have you forgotten that you're the God of us, the Hebrews?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, that's what the other nations do.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: They sacrifice their children.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's been anathema to you up till now.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do that.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand this.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've told us, God, that the firstborn child is yours, but we always redeem that firstborn child with a sacrifice.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: We never sacrifice that child.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't hear a word from the obedient Abraham.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the very next words we read are, so Abraham rose early in the morning.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't spend a day waiting for God to change his mind or two or three days arguing with God.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he rose early in the morning not only because of immediate obedience, though I think that's what it was, but maybe he had to just get out of there because maybe he didn't tell Sarah.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what would have happened if he'd told Sarah.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're not told whether he told Sarah or not.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine her.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Just going, well, yeah, God spoke to you and said, burn our son up.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking he probably didn't tell her.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so we read the and all these things happen.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Bang, bang, bang, bang.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: He rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're 115.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: You have hundreds and hundreds of servants.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't saddled a donkey or a horse in decades.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think I know what he's doing.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think when you are in the agony of grief and you've got a command like this, all you can do is just barely walk around in your cocoon.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to have anybody else there asking you questions.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you going?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to do it yourself.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he took two of his servants, calls two of the young men, it says, two of the young men.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: He has loads of them he could have taken.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: He could have taken dozens, but he takes two.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And his son Isaac, I get the picture, he woke him up last, his beloved son.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe Isaac liked to sleep in, you know.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he cut, who cut?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: He cut the wood for the burnt offering.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: He split the firewood at age 115 when he hasn't split firewood perhaps for 30 years.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what I would do.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I would make this last as long as possible.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I would just be, I would be consumed by my own grief, and I would cut the wood myself.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to let anybody else do that.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he arose and he set out for the place, God had told him.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And on the third day, that reminds me of something.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Here's an interesting factoid.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's about 2,019 years before Jesus Christ when this event happens.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's now 2,019 years after Christ.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: We are at about the same amount of years after Christ as this event happened.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't help thinking, as I see the words of this text, that there are so many hints that point 2,019 years after this event happened.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place in the distance.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Usually 860 times in the Old Testament it says, and Abraham looked, or people look and they see.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Only a few times does it ever say they lift their eyes and saw.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so he lifts up his eyes and sees this place God has told him.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe, as we'll see later, maybe this is why in the New Testament, Jesus said, Abraham saw my day and was glad.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he was able, with his faith and obedience, to look thousands of years down into the future as he saw the mountain which would become Mount Zion and Mount Calvary, the very same mountain he's going to, Mount Moriah.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he could see what might happen there one day.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then Abraham said to his servants, okay, stay here with the donkey.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I and the boy, the lad, will go over there and worship and we'll come back to you.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: He said to his servants, stay here.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't he take the donkey with him carrying the wood?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think he just wanted it to be me and my son.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Ten times in this text, we have father and son, as if to tell us it's a beloved son and a beloved father.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You stay here, he said to the two.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I and the boy, we will go over there.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, we will worship.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, and suddenly an electric vault passes through us because we see this word, we will come back to you.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: What does he mean?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is he lying?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Does he just want to avoid the truth?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why say anything?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that Abraham by faith believed that whatever would happen, both of them would come back?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: The writer of Hebrews seems to think so because in Hebrews 11 he said Abraham sacrificed his son by faith, believing that the God of the resurrection could raise his son from the dead again.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is it that Abraham thought, okay, I've been wrestling with this for three days.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: God promised a son, he promised descendants, he promised all this.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now he tells me to kill the son.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: It must be that God can raise the dead because God would have a problem otherwise.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this I am, but I am gobsmacked at this guy right here, at Abraham, and at his faith and at his obedience, and the fact that he would say, We will come back to you.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so now, because the donkey's not there, he takes the wood for the burnt offering and he laid it on Isaac, his son, because his son is a strapping kid, a teenager who can carry the wood.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Which does remind us of someone else, much later, who would bear and carry the wood to his own place of execution, right?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he took in his hand the two things that would cause danger to his beloved son, the fire and the knife.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so they went, the two of them, together.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Isaac spoke up.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: The only time he speaks, otherwise he's silent, and said to Abraham, his father, notice the repetition, the two of them together, his father, my father, here I am, my son, Abraham replied, over and over again.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You are to feel, to sense, to know the love between Daddy and his son here.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the difficulty of this test.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, his son says, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Are we forgetting something?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's clear he has no idea.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps the Hebrew says, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: The word provide is the word of the text, because that's where the text is going to end.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ira.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: God will provide.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the two of them went on together.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: It says again, almost as though you're back with the servants.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're back with a donkey, and the servants were watching them, and they go off together, and we hear Isaac in the distance ask his father a question, and his father responds, and then Isaac falls silent, and they continue to go on together, and we watch as they disappear up the mountain.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when they reach the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Many times, as you read the Old Testament stories, it takes about the same amount of time for the event to happen that you're reading that it takes you to read the event.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then sometimes to sort of speed things up, like here, they have, you know what, must have taken a half an hour or an hour, and then they just blitz right through it.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the details, even including these details, are shocking because in stories in the Old Testament, they don't usually put little details like this.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to see him building the altar, they want you to see him arranging the wood, then they want you to see him binding his son Isaac, who, because he's strong enough to carry the wood, could easily have resisted his 115-year-old father.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: But he, passively and quietly, like someone else 2,000 years later, doesn't open his mouth and allows himself to be bound to the wood.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: On the altar, on top of the wood, he bound his son Isaac and laid him, and then he, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden, everything slows down.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's as though, it's as though Abraham could have stopped any point along the way and said, I've had enough of this, I'm not going any farther.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is ridiculous, God.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I love him, I can't do this.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's as some men have said to me after services one and two this morning, Jim, I've got to tell you, I couldn't have done what he did.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would not have.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just would have refused or I would have argued with God until God got tired.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I could do it either.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I could do this with a son or a grandson.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: But he did it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: He bound his son and he laid him, but it then it slows it down, and all of a sudden it takes longer to read what happens than it actually took for this event to happen.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then he reached out his hand and he took the knife to slay his son.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it may have been that slow for Abraham, hoping against hope that God would stop him and praise God.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: He did, because the angel of Yahweh, who we've known from other passages, his deity himself, in all likelihood, Jesus himself, the preincarnate Christ, but the angel of Yahweh called out to him from heaven, using his name not once but twice.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham, Abraham.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Again, Hinaini, here I am, he replied, but must be so happy for a pause in this horrible movie.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Don't lay a hand on the boy, he said, and then repeats, just to spare Isaac, make sure, don't do anything to him.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your one and only son.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham looked up, and now we have him looking up for the second time.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: It slows it down, and there in a thicket, he saw a ram caught by its horns.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he went over and he took the ram.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, oh yes, oh yes, I'm gonna sacrifice this thing so quickly before God can change his mind.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: He went over and he took the ram and he sacrificed the burnt offering instead of his son.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Really fast.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have the last verse in which the conclusion we might have expected would be about immediate obedience or astounding faith, but this is a lesson about God and what God did in this case, and it's a lesson that has profound implication.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: So Abraham called that place Yahweh year it.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: It says in Hebrew, Yahweh will provide.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: What did God provide there?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: A substitute, a ram for his son.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And to this day it is said, on the mountain of the Lord, Mount Zion, there, it will be provided, or provision will be made.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: What provision was made 2,000 years later on that mountain?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: This doctrine, this word provided, this passage has led to one of the major doctrines, the most important doctrine in early America.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: The providence of God.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: God was often called the providence.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I came across a dozen quotes I could have used this morning from George Washington, from Ben Franklin, from Abraham Lincoln, all referring to the greatness and the constancy of the providence of God, that God provides, literally, that God sees and controls everything.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a huge doctrine.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had a doctoral course taught by a brilliant British scholar that's quite famous on simply on the providence of God.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it was tough.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: He gave us a book by a math physics guy, a brilliant guy in Britain, about how God works.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: He gave us, you know, we had to read books on prayer, books on God's guidance, because everything God does as the ruler of the universe is fit in theology under the doctrine of God's providence.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: What we're talking about this morning, there was just a thin slice, and that is how does God care for and provide for you when you have needs?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So here's an early American poet that summarized this all-important doctrine in early America.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: John Greenleaf Whittier said, I know not where his islands lift their fronded palms in air.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I only know I cannot drift beyond his love and care.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a thin slice, a narrow slice of the doctrine of the providence of God.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to draw seven lessons about providence, some of which you know so well, and some of which may surprise you.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that God provides because, fundamentally because, God sees.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: The first doctrine is the one we learned before, El Roe.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's the God who sees me.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's something you've never heard before and probably will never hear again.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the Hebrew word roi, ra-a is the word see, is exactly the same word as year-a.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that with the year in front of it means he sees, and he to see then is to provide in this text.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: So God provides because he's watching us at all times.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: He sees you, you can't get away from him.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're his child, he sees you, whether it's Psalm 3139 says you go as high as heaven or as deep as hell, wherever you go, he sees you.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: His eye is on us every moment, right?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just summarize this and move on.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I can't, isn't this cool, this eye of God Nebula that they have found?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, it's not God's eye, but it reminds you that Yahweh yeah means Yahweh sees and provides.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh will provide.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the word provide or providence in English was actually developed because they knew Hebrew and they wanted a word that meant both see and provide.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Video, you've heard of video, something you see.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Latin word video, which means to see, and so they chose the word provide because since God sees everything ahead of time, he can provide for you what you need in the moment.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just thought you'd like to know that.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's extra, okay?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh era, Yahweh will provide, God sees, God provides.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why in early 100 years ago, 150 years ago, James Russell Lowell wrote a famous poem.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Looking at the cross, he said, truth seems forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right about that?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wrong seems forever on the throne in our world, doesn't it?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And because he sees us and keeps watch on us, at every moment he's watching you, he can provide for you.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: God watches us, his eye is on us every moment.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love what a former president of Notre Dame said.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: The one thing we really know about tomorrow is that the providence of God will be up before dawn.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that good?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, God has seen and provided for our greatest need, for we like Isaac are under the sentence of certain death, but God provided on that same mountain a substitute lamb to take our death.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why Genesis 22 is perfect for the Day of Atonement, perfect salvation passage.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let me put it this way: Yahweh provided on that very mountain a substitute sacrifice to take your death.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Would you refuse that sacrifice?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Would Abraham have ever said no thanks to the ram?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'll go ahead and kill Isaac?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you ever consider refusing that substitutionary atonement for you, which provides you eternal life and the forgiveness of sin?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Please respond to that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's Genesis chapter 22, right there.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, God's providence in specific matters is a mystery.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: God's providence is a certainty in all of history.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: He tells us it is, but it's a mystery each moment.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: We suspect that some things are God's providence, but we can't say for sure.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember, but 10 years ago there was what's called the miracle on the Hudson, the 155 passengers.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Every passenger survived.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: You remember the story of the U.S.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Air Airways flight that took off from LaGuardia, gets up to a height, and then ran into Canadian geese.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Both engines are lost.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Captain Scully has to put it down somewhere.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: He decides to put it down of all places in the Hudson River because every other place would definitely kill a bunch of bystanders.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: He puts it down there and somehow everyone survives.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: They've done a documentary about it and so forth.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And a wonderful cartoonist at the Sacramento Bee came up with this famous picture now, which is all over the place, of the hands of a God of Providence cradling that plane so that it didn't sink long enough for the 155 passengers to get out.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I am told that when they had their 10-year reunion this year and Captain Scully was there, none of them disagreed with the idea that this was a miracle on the Hudson or that a God of Providence had intervened to save their lives.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, we don't know for sure.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly some of the people who made the documentary, you could tell, believed that this was just a combination of fortuitous circumstances and the skill of Captain Scully.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a mystery.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's as much a mystery to us when God works in his providence, it's as much a mystery to us as it was to Abraham.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, I need to tell you this because it's critical.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry I have to say this, but God is a good provider even when he lets his loved ones die, even when he lets your loved ones die.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Those loved ones that you pray for and you cry about, whether they're little children or they're older folks who have cancer, his providence is still active.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Corey Tinboom put it this way.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard people say how good God is.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: We prayed that it wouldn't rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Reminds me of last week.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: We prayed this prayer oftentimes, right?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, God is good when he sends good weather, said Corey, but God was also good when he allowed my sister Betsy to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: She seems hard-hearted, but she goes on in her book to explain that Betsy would refuse to die until she could get Corey, who had less faith than she did, to agree that God was still good even though Betsy was dying of starvation.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Betsy kept after her sister and told her, God is good even at this moment.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: I get to go home.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: God is a good provider even when he lets his loved ones die.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: The famous George Mueller, who had uh you know a large orphanage in Great Britain 150 years ago, did the funeral for Mary, his wife, whom he desperately loved, been married for 40 years, and he had a three-point sermon.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, God was good, he said, and did good in giving her to me.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, God was good and did good in leaving her with me so long.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: But third, God was good and did good in taking her from me.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a person of faith who understands and loves the God of Providence will realize that the God of Providence provides for us graciously, even when he lets our his loved ones die.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: When he brings them home to be with himself.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Number five of seven, God likes to use people when he provides.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, but um I'm not a super spiritual person, and so I love stories like this of the guy getting drunk at a bar in Alaska and telling everyone that he's lost his faith and that he's no longer gonna go to church and he's long no longer a Christian, and they ask why he says, Well, I was flying my twin engine up here north in Alaska, and I had to crash land on the tundra, and there I was, caught in the fuselage, freezing to death, crying out for God, my God, to save me for hour after hour after hour, and he didn't do it.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the bartender says, But hold it, how come you're here then?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: You seem to be saved, you seem to be fired.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, it wasn't God, it was some gall-darned Eskimo.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sorry, but I laughed at that.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you demand when you cry out to God for deliverance that he not use a doctor or he not use anyone else, then you're forgetting that God loves to use people when he provides.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you help somebody else in need, if you see a need today or this week that you hadn't expected to see, and something moves inside you, and you go, I think I'm gonna fix a meal for them, or I think I'm gonna surprise them in a gracious way, and you go over and do that, you need to realize that you may be an important use of God's providence.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: He may be using this all-important, you may be fitting into this all-important doctrine of providence, though you do not know it.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: You think you're just doing a minor thing, giving a cup of cold water to someone who's thirsty.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: But God loves to use people when He provides.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think also sometimes this affects our lives deeply.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh God used people to affect my life deeply, though I didn't even know this couple.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Their names are Cliff and Billy.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: They were uh this was 1945, and they wanted to get married, they had almost no money, but they figured out a way that they could get married with the little money they had.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: They were Christians, and they could take a train to a city where uh and in a couple of weeks, Cliff had a gig with a tent preacher as part of a revival, and uh and they found this resort by a lake outside the city and they had just enough money so they're gonna stay at the resort.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: So they get married and they take the train to the city and they take the bus out to the resort, but it was 1945, and all the soldiers had just come home from overseas and taken over the hotel, so they had no room and they couldn't go into the hotel.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now they had very little money, so they went out to the highway, started hitchhiking.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: They got picked up, and the driver said, Where are you going?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Well, we really don't know for sure.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what happened.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Listen, I know a grocery store five miles away.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: The woman's really nice, and she doesn't have anybody.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a flat above the store, so I bet she'd rent it to you really cheap.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: So he takes him in the grocery store lady, a very kind lady, probably acted as the providence of God without knowing it.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Sure, for five bucks, I'll let you stay up there.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: They stay up there.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: The next day she hears Cliff playing the trombone, she hears Billy playing the piano, she talks to him, finds out they're Christian, she says, Well, I'm not a Christian, but I know this Christian and has a really nice place.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're on your honeymoon, I'll call her and see if you can stay there.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sure enough, this other kind person, a Christian, invites them into her home, and now they're staying there day after day, and they're playing and they're happy and having a good honeymoon.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then she says to him, Listen, tonight there's another revival.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a revival in another city, a tent meeting, and I was planning to go over.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like to jump in the car?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to take you.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: They said, We'd love to.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: They jump in the car and they go there, and she takes them up to meet the evangelist.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: She says, uh, and they and he says, My name's uh Billy Graham.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he was just getting started.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Man, I'd like you to meet them.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're really good musicians.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Wow, you could really help me because my song leader is not showing up tonight, and I don't know what to do.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Would you help me and be my song leader?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Cliff Barrow said, Yes, I'll be glad to.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the beginning of a 50-year relationship.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Cliff and Billy and Billy Graham going around the world having this ministry for Christ.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Cliff and Billy had five children.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Their second child, their first son, was named Robert.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Robert went down to Dallas Seminary the same year I did, and he and I became tight.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: We became close friends, and we rented a house together for our last two years in seminary, and that's how I met Cliff and Billy.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And Bob Barrows had quite an influence on me, as did his father.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so I say sometimes God works through people in ways that you can't even picture, but down the road, generations later, it has quite an impact.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: So let's move on to number six.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God uses guardian angels to provide.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: My brother Robert has been up here on stage.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Robert and Nancy, their six boys, is a missionary.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think God's providence shows itself sometimes with foreign missionaries, especially in critical situations.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's been in a lot of crisis situations.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he told you the story about when their six boys were young and they were driving, and it turned out they didn't have as much gas as it was going to require.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were in a remote part of Zimbabwe, and so he decided looking at the map to take a shortcut, which would only take a hundred, a hundred and some miles, through a game park, sort of a game park no, but he used in a remote part of Zimbabwe.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so they went into the game park, but the ruts grew deeper, and finally they got caught, and the car broke down, and now they couldn't move, and they were in a place where he knew no one was going to come by perhaps for two months, and all they had was a few sandwiches and a little bit of water.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Started working their way through that, and Rob knew that they would just starve to death or whatever, unless he took off hiking.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: So he took one of the sons and he prayed and they cried as if they might never see each other again.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he started on a 50-70-mile walk over for a couple of days to what he could see on the map was a cabin which was probably abandoned, but which he hoped that God might have somebody in on the other side of the game park, but he knew they'd be sleeping on the ground with wild animals around.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they go underneath these two trees and it's so dark, and their light goes out and they can't see anything.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: He thinks he's seen a pair of eyes, but he's not sure.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so they sleep underneath one of these two great trees, and when they get up in the morning, they see that a leopard was in the other tree all night and God protected them.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they got out of it.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I say that's the providence of God.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure, but I think that's the providence of God.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think of, for instance, when my grandmother, who was a godly woman of prayer, she really got taken with a young Indian evangelist, a tribesman, an Indian tribesman who'd come over to the States to get some education.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: She started praying for him all the time.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: He went back over to India.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: She knew he was in crisis, but she didn't expect one night to be woken up, she felt, by an angel or by God at 3 a.m.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: with a constant message, pray for ro, pray for ro, Rochangapudhydi, India Children's Choir, much later.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: So she prayed for him the rest of the night.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Six months later, he comes over.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's visiting people, he comes to her house, asked to look in her diary.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: She reluctantly says, yes, it's the same day, 12 hours difference in time, 3 p.m.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: in the afternoon, when he was miraculously almost saved, guarded from communists hiding under a bridge who were determined to kill him that day.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And someone dashes out, stops his car, and says, I don't think you should keep going.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: That seems to me like the providence of God.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the providence of God seems to involve people that aren't even necessarily Christians.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Three years ago, it was on CNN, it was all over the networks.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: This story of how a how in Utah a car had overturned a mother and her daughter.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: The gross the gross specs.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Mom and daughter had been driving along and the car had flipped, uh, going over a turn and had crashed down and gone underneath the water.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mom was dead, lying in the car, an upturned car underneath a bridge where nobody could see, freezing cold water, 2015.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Would have never been found, except that a fisherman going by was fishing and he saw the tires and he could see they were a little bit above the water.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: What he didn't know, what he didn't know, is that the 18-month-old Lily was in there in her infant seat, upside down with her head just inches above the rushing icy water.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she had been in there five, six, seven, ten, fourteen hours, somehow staying alive underneath the surface, but alive.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: He calls 911, the fisherman does.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: The three officers come, they're on the road, they start making arrangements, we've got to drag the car out where nobody can be alive in there, and all of a sudden, all three of them say they start hearing a voice inside their head of an adult woman saying, Come help me, I'm in the car, come help me, come help me.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they wade out in the water, they look, and the woman is dead, but there is the baby.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they get Lily out and they save her life.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they become interviewed, and everybody tries to shake their story.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't use the word providence of God, but I say that's God's providence because it was Jesus who said, Their angels, speaking of children, are continually beholding my father's face in heaven.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, of all of us in Psalm 91, he shall give his angels charge over you.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, we can't be sure.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's a mystery, but we know God is doing amazing things and he sometimes uses people.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's his preference, but sometimes we know he uses guardian angels.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I close with this simple when you can put your complete and utter trust in a God who sees and provides for you every moment of every day.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can trust Yahweh Yira.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: The woman who wrote the song, His Eye is on the sparrow, also wrote these great words, which were turned into a hymn, Be not dismayed, whatever betide, God will take care of you.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Beneath his wings of love abide.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: God will take care of you.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: All you may need, here it comes, he will provide.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: God will take care of you, no matter what may be the test.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: God will take care of you.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's Yahweh.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Join me in prayer and let's sing this song.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for this amazing revelation, this doorway that this name provides into something far larger than we considered.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: How you, as the Lord of the universe, deal with your world and with your people, and especially with your beloved.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you that as your children we can count on you to watch us every moment of every day and to care for us, especially when we need you most, to know that you will care for us in Jesus' name.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.