the Fourth Week after Easter
Click here to join the effort!
Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Genesis 22:14
‘Jehovah-Jireh...’
Read Genesis 22:1-14
This name, by which God revealed himself to Abraham, may be translated by a number of expressions. But however you translate it, Jehovah-Jireh expresses the idea of the Lord seeing and being seen. In this place we are taught that our heavenly Father sees our need; and, with the foresight of divine love, he provides us with what we need in Christ, and in that provision God himself is seen. The ram which God provided as a substitute for Isaac was typical of God’s own great provision of his Son as the Substitute for sinners.
Jehovah-Jireh means, ‘The Lord will see. ’ God graciously saw our need as sinners. Seeing the ruin of our race by the fall of Adam, and our great need because of that fall, God pitied us. He saw our need as transgressors of his holy law. By nature we are all sinners, children of wrath, perishing under the sentence of divine justice, and God saw our great need. In this fact there is a ray of hope. Since God sees our need, we have hope that he will provide.
Jehovah-Jireh means, ‘The Lord will provide. ’ Our God provided his own Son to be a Substitute for us, graciously and freely, simply because he loved us. And the provision was gloriously effective. The ram was slain in Isaac’s place, so Isaac must go free. Even so, the Son of God was slain in the place of his people, and the very justice of God demands that they go free! At the very time when we were ready to perish, God said in his law, ‘Lay not thy hand upon the lad!’ A Substitute was provided to satisfy our need as guilty men.
Jehovah-Jireh means, ‘The Lord will be seen’. Go to Mt Calvary. There you see Abraham’s prophecy fulfilled. There is God’s glorious display of himself in justice and grace, in holiness and mercy, in wrath and love. Behold the revelation of God. Christ crucified is Jehovah-Jireh!
