God Will Provide

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Rev. Dr. David M. Oliver

First United Methodist Church

Massillon, Ohio

June 28, 2026

Genesis 22:1-14

Opening Prayer: Lord may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be found acceptable in your sight and in full accord with your holy gospel, O God our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

If you wish to complete the sermon listening guide in your bulletin, please take it out at this time.

This passage is famous or infamous depending on your perspective.

From a superficial reading it appears that Abraham is complicit in child abuse and uses God as an excuse for attempting to kill his son. This is shocking and repulsive to 21^st Century Christians.

In order to understand what Good News is here, we need to look beneath the surface to what is transpiring.

Abraham grew up in a pagan culture. Child sacrifice was done, particularly the sacrifice of the first-born son as a way of insuring the favor of the gods of the land.

The followers of the pagan god, Molech, a god associated with Canaanite and Phoenician worship, engaged in child sacrifice as a means of gaining favor and power from the deity.

Molech is primarily mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as an abomination that the Israelites were explicitly forbidden to follow. God warned the Israelites against this practice through Moses, who lived 500-600 years after Abraham, declaring that anyone who offered their children to Molech would be put to death by stoning (Leviticus 18:21, Leviticus 20:2-5).

Despite these warnings, apostate kings like Ahaz and Manasseh were condemned in the Books of Kings for allowing children to “pass through the fire” (to be sacrificed) at a shrine called Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom, outside of Jerusalem (2 Kings 23:10).

The Bible frequently attributes the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem as God’s ultimate punishment for the Israelites engaging in or tolerating these sacrifices.

From the perspective of the Bible, God requested animal sacrifices for three primary reasons.

1. Atonement: The sacrifice provided a symbolic covering for sin, acknowledging human sinfulness and the need for a substitute to maintain communion with a holy God.

2. Total Dedication: Burning the entire animal (rather than keeping parts for the priests to eat) symbolized giving one’s entire life, plans, and desires completely to God.

3. Reverent Worship:  Burnt offerings were an act of worship and loyal love, expressing gratitude for God’s mercy and an acknowledgment of God’s supreme majesty. Because the entire animal was consumed by fire rather than eaten, the burnt offering represented a costly, wholehearted dedication of the offeror’s entire life to God.

The story in Genesis 22 of God testing Abraham by commanding him to offer Isaac as a burnt sacrifice is thought to be related to Molech worship. However, God distinguishes himself from all false gods, especially Molech, by stopping Abraham from completing the sacrifice. Instead, God provides the sacrifice: a ram stuck in a thicket, foreshadowing the provision of his only son, Jesus, sacrificed for all humanity’s sins.

Throughout the Old Testament, God contrasts himself with idols in many ways. While people made covenants with idols, God makes covenant with God’s people. While idols had to be carried, our God carries us. While idols were deaf, blind, and mute, we worship a God who hears, sees, and speaks. While idols demanded sacrifices, our God sacrificed his Son, Jesus the Christ, for us.

Turning to this morning’s text, God comes to Abraham and says, “Take  your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering…” (Genesis 22:1-2).

Let’s pause here and think for a moment about what we love most. You don’t have to say it out loud but I want you to get as clearly in mind as possible the face of the person or thing that you love and value the most.

Typically, what people love the most is a person, a spouse, a child, or a close friend.

Some people most love the influence they have.

Others love physical beauty and attractiveness, their own or another person’s.

Some may love most the security that they get from their investments and stock portfolio.

Some love the power they have over the lives of their workers.

Some are deeply in love with a place, a home, or even a lovely church building such as this.

It’s important for us to think about what we love the most.

It is also important to know that whatever we love the most, can become distorted, too important, even an idol for us.

I often say that every good thing, taken to an extreme becomes a weakness, a limit. I also maintain that every good thing can get a snake in it.

I deeply love my wife and family. I cherish the gifts they are in my life. However, Jane and I are committed to be second place in each other’s lives, after the living God.

Does this devalue Jane or me? Not at all!  It elevates our relationship because both of us are safely in the realm of glorifying God first. God is our first love (period).

If Jane made me her first love, she would be disappointed because I cannot live up to the place that God needs to occupy in her life. I cannot and will not be a god to her and I don’t want her to be my god. She makes a wonderful wife but a poor god.

The same is a blessing and a caution for each of us. I say this because human beings have the capacity and tendency to make ultimately important what is only penultimate.

God warned about this when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Do any of you recall the first commandment? Say it with me. “You shall have no other gods before me.”

In the biblical account we read Abraham loved Isaac more than anything or anyone.

God had promised a son and descendants numbering the stars of heaven to Abraham. He and Sarah had prayed to God was 25 years that they would have a son. They had spent 2.5 decades of waiting, longing, despair, and taking matters into their own hands with Hagar and the birth of Ishmael. Finally, after a quarter century God fulfilled God’s promises. Finally, God came through.

Then, about 15-20 years later, God said, sacrifice your son to me. I cannot imagine. What God asked seems unbelievable!

Many, many things must have been going through Abraham’s mind. After all this time, all our waiting, despite our faltering attempts to honor you, God, you are asking me to give back the very gift that you promised me. Surely not!  Why? Why now? This seems to be a case of giving a promise and taking it back in the cruelest of ways.

We are not told what Abraham felt or thought.  We do not know whether he even told Sarah what God was requiring of him. What we do know is that early the next morning, he left with his son and servants to fulfill God’s requirements.

He journeyed three days to Mount Moriah, 50 miles from his home. He had plenty of time to think about what was happening and what was going to happen.

He had plenty of time to back out, to turn away, to refuse obedience, to question God and to even question his own sanity in doing what he felt God required of him.

Knowing seems important to the text; however you choose to interpret it. “What did Abraham know?” is an important question. But we could also ask, “What did God know?” I know that sounds ridiculous, since we hold to the omniscience of God, that God knows everything. But Genesis 22 seems to argue differently. As the voice of God stops Abraham from using the knife on his son, the text gives God’s words as “now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Gen 22:12 NRSV). “Now I know” — as in God didn’t know before? As in, this was a test, and God was being tested as well as Abraham.

Abraham’s track record hadn’t been great, frankly. Yes, when God called Abraham ten chapters earlier, Abraham didn’t waver; he just went. Dragging along extended family and as much wealth as he could gather, he  went. At the beginning of this chapter, Abraham doesn’t argue, doesn’t waver; he just goes. But in the middle, things are a more than a little messy. There is the Hagar incident which we discussed last week. There is the passing off of Sarai as a sister rather than a wife, and we can’t help but wonder who he was trying to protect, himself or her. So, yes, maybe Abraham did need to pass a test to be the launch of a new plan of redemption for all of creation. Nonetheless, this seems harsh.

Even Jewish interpreters approach this harshness with some distance. While in Christian Scriptures, this text is titled “the sacrifice of Isaac,” the rabbis have consistently named it “the binding of Isaac.” They are more accurate, we could argue, because while Isaac was indeed bound, he wasn’t sacrificed. There was that last-minute reprieve, like a pardon from the governor before the switch is thrown (just like what happened this week in Ohio).

If we could set aside questions of blame, as in whose fault is it that we are even here and recognize that horrifying things happen on an all too regular basis, then maybe the message is that God is with us. God’s solutions, even for seemingly impossible situations, can often be found if we take a moment to breathe, to listen, and to look to God. The message we cling to is that God will provide. We cannot always know how or with what, but we can trust that, through means that may seem miraculous or simply the people of God being who they are called and gifted to be, God will provide.

Abraham learned that God could be trusted to be his provider, many generations before Moses. By providing a ram in the thicket for sacrifice instead of taking his son Isaac, Abraham gave God a new name. Abraham began calling God, Yahweh Jireh.

As I was preparing this message I learned that I have been mispronouncing the word Jireh. That Hebrew word is pronounced “Yir-EH” with the emphasis on the second syllable. Please say this with me, “Yahweh Jireh.”

Every generation and every individual needs to learn that God is their Provider. In addition to Provider, Yahweh Jireh can also be translated, “God’s provision shall be seen” (Genesis 22:14).

If you were in worship last week, you may recall the story of Hagar and her son Ishmael who were sent into the desert (Genesis 21:8-21). When their food and water were expended, Hagar cried out to God and God heard her son’s cries. Then her eyes were opened. She saw a well in the distant desert that she had not previously seen. Yahweh Jireh was at work in their predicament and opened Hagar’s eyes. God’s provision was seen by her.

God may have provided but if we do not see it, it doesn’t matter nor does it do us much good because we remain blind to God’s provision.

It is one thing to believe or affirm that God is our Provider. It is another thing to know from experience that God is our Provider.

Jane and I learned that invaluable lesson when we were first married and it has wonderfully shaped our lifestyle and attitude toward money and giving ten percent of our income to the church to glorify God.

Last week I announced to you that we did not receive the grant. I was disappointed, but I am not discouraged. Every person who spoke to me or wrote to me said something like this, “God must have some other way to meet our needs.” In essence they were affirming, “We believe that God is Yahweh Jireh. God’s provision will be seen. We’re just not seeing it clearly at this moment.”

This was very encouraging to me. It is one thing for a pastor or an individual leader to affirm something. It is very different when the church as a whole affirms this same thing without even discussing it together.

This tells me that the living God has been at work in your life and experiences in ways that you are able to trust, to see, and to believe that God is our provider in every way we have need.

God is our provider…

• Even when it doesn’t seem possible or likely

• Even when the reason is unclear

• Even when the way is cloudy

• Even when the path is painful

• Even when there seems to be no way…God is our Provider, our Way-Maker

To see God’s provision, requires something from us.

• Give over what we hold most dear.

• Offer it and ourselves to God.

• Let God reposition that person or thing in your mind and heart.

What you love most must be either given up or given over so that it does not become an idol in our lives. We offer the person, position, power, money, etc. to God and let God decide if and where it fits.

Very simply: Let God have you and what is precious to you. Then you will see God’s provision…

God’s care…

God’s joy…

God’s laughter will be yours…forever.

This is the surrendered life as Andrew Murray so beautifully describes it.

God expects your surrender.

God accomplishes your surrender.

God accepts your surrender.

God maintains your surrender.

God blesses your surrender.

Isaac carries the wood for the sacrifice on his own back. When he asks his father where the lamb is, Abraham’s cryptic response is, “God will provide the lamb.” The pathos of this verse is heavy with the realization that Isaac was indeed provided through miraculous means. But for us Christians, the sentence echoes through the centuries to another mountain, not Moriah but Golgotha, where the son carried the wood of the cross for his own sacrifice and then became the lamb that was slaughtered. We cannot read this text and not see that ‘terrible’ grace, that ‘horrifying’ beauty, opening a door to salvation for all.

Let us pray.

O God, we affirm that you and you alone are our Provider. You have made provision for us in so many ways – mentally, emotionally, physically, relationally, spiritually. Thank you. With joy-filled freedom and holy trust we offer ourselves and our great loves to you. Continue to mold us and make us more like you each day. In the process help us to learn the lessons of walking by faith in absolute trust and holy surrender. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.