“God himself will provide the lamb for the burn offering…”

OK, if we believe that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe — facts that are true — then it should be no big surprise that God is also the provider.  Not a biggie, right?  So is it time to move on to whatever’s next?  Not so fast.  There’s more here than meets the eye.

There are some things that God provides that are things we’d just as well forget about.  Like that boss who’s a jerk.  Or that teacher or professor who doesn’t give a rip about you.  Or that spouse who still does those little (or big!) things that drive you nuts.  Or your neighbor’s parties at all hours of the night.  Or, or…or.  Where does it stop?  Life is full of such “provisions”, right?  Did God provide them?  Well, in a word, yes.  You might be thinking, you’ve got to be kidding.  Not at all.  When God makes such provisions, what is he expecting us to do besides get upset or angry, depressed or despondent?  He expects us to turn to him, so he will demonstrate once again (and again and again) that he provides his grace (Hebrews 4:16), in this case, and anything else we need — wisdom, mercy, love, etc. — in other cases.  He does indeed provide everything we need so that we will see he is the first, last and ultimate provider.

What does it mean to be a provider?  What does it take to be a provider?  The answer can be found in responses to the four following questions.

• Does God know what I need? Knowledge of a need is the first condition.  Not only does he know we have needs, he also “knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8, emphasis ours).  God clearly has this covered long before we know about our needs.
• Does God have the means to meet my need? This is the nice way to say it.  The blunt way is, is God broke?  Is he poor or in poverty?  Does he live hand-to-mouth like so many on earth do?  The answer is no.  Going far beyond the fact that he owns “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10), God says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it” (v. 12).  Certainly God is a God of means, much more than we can grasp.
• Can God distribute his resources to meet my need? Or rephrased, can God deliver?  We’ll let Paul answer this one: “And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
• Finally, will God deliver? Ah, this is undoubtedly the stickler for us, where the rubber meets the road.  Will he make good on his promises?

We find he answer in Genesis 22, where God says he will provide.  He tells Abraham to offer his

son Isaac on the mountains of Moriah, a word that means, “God will meet you”, or “God will appear”.  It seems as if God is commanding Abraham to provide his son to him.  Notice that Abraham doesn’t flinch an inch.  He gets up “early the next morning…and saddled his donkey” (v. 3).  He tells his servants that he and the boy “will worship and then…come back” (v. 5).  On the way up the mountain he answers Isaac’s question about the missing animal, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering” (v. 8). Abraham is not the provider this day; God is.  The only thing Abraham “provides” is obedience.  He brought his son, but it is God who does the providing: an innocent ram, caught in the thicket (v. 13).  Isaac goes free, but let’s not permit his release to obscure the greatest point, that being that God did show up, that he did deliver, that he was willing, and that he met Abraham’s greatest need when it counted the most.  And this illustrated a later provision on that same mount (2 Chronicles 3:1) some 2,000 years later when Jesus died on the cross — God’s ultimate provision for our greatest need.

When God doesn’t provide when and where and how we think he should, isn’t it true that we typically question whether he knows of our need, question his resources, his ability to provide, and finally his willingness?  But in this questioning do we really have the same view that God has of our lives?  Can we see all that he sees and understand all that he understands?  No, of course not, yet we still malign his character or ability or power or willingness anyway, thinking that he doesn’t have our best in mind.  This instead of acknowledging our utter need of him.  That’s what our needs and his provisions are all about.  When others know about your needs, do they see and hear in you the provision of God himself?