Sermon Title: "Jehovah Jireh: Our God is Our Provider" Part 1 or 8
Author's Name: Rev. Alex M. Knight
(Isa 6:1-8 NRSV) "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. {2} Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. {3} And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." {4} The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. {5} And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" {6} Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. {7} The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." {8} Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!""
Within this very short, very brief passage from Isaiah, we have a model for worship. It begins as Isaiah comes into the sanctuary and he has a vision, an awareness of God. The vision leads Isaiah to adoration as he tries to give expression to his vision of God: . . . holy and high and lifted up . . . so magnificent that the hem, the hem of his garment, fills the entire sanctuary. You can feel that Isaiah is so filled with the wonder and the majesty and the awe of God that he doesn't know how to express it. So he expresses it in such terms, such exaggerated terms to say that God's hem fills the whole sanctuary. As he leads into this adoration of the majesty of God, Isaiah becomes aware of his own shortcomings, of his failures. Here he is in the presence of the most high God, creator of heaven and earth and Isaiah is aware of his own sinfulness. This awareness of his sinfulness and the light of the glory of God, leaves Isaiah to confession. He confesses his sin before God. Isaiah finds God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Isaiah expresses his forgiveness by saying he was touched on the lips by one of the angels in attendance and told that his guilt has departed and his sin is blotted out. Now that Isaiah has experienced this forgiveness, this cleansing, he hears God. God is looking out at His creation and wondering, who will go and proclaim the good news of God? Isaiah's response is "here I am God, send me. " Isaiah is saying that "I will celebrate the goodness of God. You have been so good to me God, how can I not go for you?" There is within Isaiah's heart a desire to be used by God to share the goodness of God. The goodness of God is contagious. When you have experienced the grace of God, you want to share that with others. God has forgiven us of our sins and God wants us to share with other people this goodness of God.
And so in Isaiah, we have this movement from adoration and worship, to confession to forgiveness, to hearing God call us responding to that call. I am convinced that we cannot begin to worship God in truth and in spirit until we first understand the nature of God and we experience that nature for ourselves. For many people, when you think about God, you think about God as the law giver. If I ask you to tell me about God in the Old Testament, you would probably think about Moses and the law giver. A lot of people look at the New Testament as Jesus just being another Moses, another law giver. We do not want to diminish the value of the law, the standards that God has given to us. But we also want to include with our understanding of God, His loving, redemptive nature. We need to be thankful to God for all that He has done for us in His nature. And I think that's where true worship begins. True adoration and true praise. The choruses that we sang at the beginning of this service are some of the most beautiful choruses that are in the contemporary worship services today. At the heart of those choruses is the question, "Why do you as an individual want to exalt God?" Why do you want to glorify the name of Jesus? What have you experienced yourself about the nature of this magnificent God that causes you to come up to your feet and maybe even lift your hands and say, "God, I exalt you." "I exalt your name, I glorify your name." Is it because of what this God has done in your own life?. This morning I want to focus on God as our provider.
Abraham was called by God to leave his family and go into this new land where God's going to establish for Himself a people. He tells Abraham, He says, "Abraham, you are going to be the father of all my people. Abraham is an old man and Sarah, his wife, is old and they've never had any children. Abraham is trying to figure out how God is going to fulfill this promise. God is faithful. He provides a way and we always want to remember that. When God calls us as individuals or He calls us as a church to do something for Him, He provides the way. He provides all that we need to fulfill his promise. If you remember the story, there was a time when Abraham didn't trust in God. He tried to provide his own children. God said, "No Abraham, there is going to be a child come from you and Sarah." God was faithful. In their old age, Sarah became pregnant. The only thing they could say about this pregnancy was that it was a gift from God. God had provided. God wanted it to be a miraculous birth and it was. And now they have a son, Isaac.
As Isaac grows up to become a young man, God speaks to Abraham and says, "Abraham, you and I have walked together many years. I have shown you a lot of things. The relationship that you and I have had Abraham, has been very precious, it has been very intimate. I want to know though Abraham, now that you have this son you longed for all of your life, is this son more important to you than to your relationship with me? Abraham, if it was necessary, would you even sacrifice your own son so that there would be nothing between you and me. Abraham said to God, "God you are my God, you are my all in all. There is nothing before me except you, you are the top priority in my life. And even if it meant sacrificing my son Isaac, I would do that to maintain this relationship between you and me.".
As evidence of this Abraham went up on a mountain and there he built an altar and he prepared to sacrifice Isaac to show there was nothing between him and God. Nothing more important in his life than his relationship with God. And God said Abraham, "I know your heart and I know you love me and I'm not going to require this sacrifice from you,. . . but let's make this a holy place. I do want a sacrifice to be made here, but I'll provide the sacrifice." You remember the end of the story, don't you? There was a ram caught in a thicket that Abraham could get and it became the sacrifice. Do you remember what Abraham did after that sacrifice, . . . he built an altar there, didn't he? And he gave a name to that altar. In the Hebrew text it's called Jehovah Jireh, . . . "the Lord will provide." Abraham said this is a holy place because God provides for me, He provides for me always.
Can you just sense the worship that flowed out of Abraham. How full his heart was because God had provided for him. As the seeds of Abraham, the descendants of Abraham, as the children of God, our story can be the same. We come to worship, to offer God adoration and praise for all that He has done for us. We sing about it in our doxology, do we not? We say praise God from whom all blessings flow. I ask this morning, "How are you in your praise for God?"
Are you trusting God to provide for your life? It's hard to do, is it not? Because we're so capable. It seems as if it's only when we get to our end, when all else fails, that we want to trust God. You know how it is when kids get toys at Christmas and you are trying to put them together. When you cannot get them together, when all else fails, what do you do? You read the instructions. So often our life is like that in our relationship with God. We trust in our own ingenuity, our own strength, our own wisdom, our own ideas of how things ought to be . But God wants us to trust in Him and Him alone. When we do, when we do trust in God, we find that He provides for us. Sometimes in miraculous ways.
I have a friend that is a minister in the AME Church. He was sharing with me what led to his commitment at middle age to go to seminary. He said that he had felt that God had called him to ministry but he became discouraged because he just could not see any evidence that God really had a call on him. He felt it inside his heart, but on the outward appearance, he just couldn't see anything happening. And so he got discouraged and he was ready to quit. He had gone to a church service at the request of a friend. It was a very big church, he said there must have been 2500 or maybe 3000 people in this huge sanctuary. The preacher was speaking and all of a sudden as he looked out over this one section of the congregation, the preacher said, "I hear the Lord telling me that there is somebody here that knows they've been called to ministry, but they are very discouraged and they are ready to quit." The preacher went on and said, "I have a word from God for you and if you will come down, I will give you that word." Well, my friend Bobby said "I did not want to stand up in that place," but he said but about 25 or 30 others did and they all went up front. But, the preacher told them, "Your not the one". He looked out in the crowd again and he said, "I'm telling you that there is somebody here and you know that God is speaking to you. God called you to ministry and you are ready to quit and I've got a word for you if you'll come and get it". Nobody else got up. So the minister said, "I want everybody in this section to get up and line up against the wall because I'm going to go down one by one and pray for everyone of you. I'm not going to let this person get out of this church without receiving the blessing that God has for them." My friend was real scared at this point, but he got up and he lined the wall with the rest of them and one by one the minister started going down the line, praying for each one, until he got to Bobby. And when he got to Bobby, he said, "You are the one, aren't you?" Bobby said, I can't run anymore."
Several weeks ago, I was going through a period where I was feeling a little bit discouraged about how things were going. We were going through some kind of doldrums here where we were shrinking. People were staying away by the droves and I was reducing each week the number of bulletins I was printing. I was really struggling with that. and saying, "Lord, I know you called me to the ministry, but I wonder why, I just don't see how I'm effecting anybody's life." When I was really dry, the mail came and I got a card from somebody who had come to see me last summer. It's been that long ago. They came because they needed some information about a program they were working on. I provided that information to them and in the course of doing that, we began to share a little bit and I began to feel that this person was really struggling with some issues in their life. So I shared some of the things that I have walked through and what the Lord has done for me and I provided some resources for this person and we had prayer together. Then, the first of June, I received this note, which said in part, "... the time I spent with you, changed my life forever and has allowed God to heal some great gaping wounds. Thank you."
God provides. Sometimes when we least expect it, from areas in our life that we least expect it, but God provides. Over and over again it's been my experience as I have gone through life that God provides for our every need. He will bring somebody that has a word for us to encourage us when we need it. Often, I have experienced the truth of Psalm 23 where it says that God prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. All of us have experienced a time of death in our families where we have lost a loved one close to us. We have been touched and overwhelmed with the generosity of friends that come and provide comfort and food and companionship to help us through that difficult time. That's God preparing the table before us in the presence of our enemy, death. God provides. As I speak this morning, I can look in your faces and see that your memory is fanning back and you are remembering that time God provided for you in a special way. Maybe you were about to give up and you lost a sense of hope. Then the right person, the right word came into your life. Maybe you were struggling with a real financial need, then out of no where, that need was met. You find that our God is an awesome God and He is limitless in the ways that He can come and can touch our lives and make us whole again.
When we are thinking about God and God providing for our need, it tends to take our thoughts off ourselves as we focus on the holiness of our God. I'd like to ask you over the next week or so, as we begin this journey together into the nature of God... to let the holy spirit quicken your heart and your mind with how often God has provided for your needs. Resolve, once again, in your spirit that you will trust God to provide a way even when there is no way that you can see.
The result of our looking to God to provide for all of our needs will be our coming together as a community of believers, giving praise and adoration to God who provides for us. When our hearts are full with all that God has done for us we are prepared to worship. There is a willingness within us to confess our sins because we want our life to be so full of God, who loves us, and provides for our every need according to His riches and His glory in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are then ready to hear God call us to ministry.. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, you are so good to us. We confess that often times we walk through life with an arrogance that we have provided for ourselves and we lose sight of the reality of that marvelous doxology that we sing every week, "...Praise God, from whom all blessings flow." Forgive us Father for being so quick to take credit for our successes. Open the eyes of our understanding, Father, that as we go forth from this place today, we may be ever more mindful of all that you are doing in our life to provide with our every need and we'll give you the glory and the honor and the praise and the thanksgiving in Jesus name. Amen.