by Rev. A. Murray
Our Missionaries in Zimbabwe have incorporated in the heading of their official notepaper the words, “Jehovah Jireh”, as appropriate to their situation and experience, and it is on that basis that I would wish now to make some brief remarks.
As you will be aware, “Jehovah-jireh” is the name given by Abraham to that place where on Mount Moriah he had built the altar upon which at the command of God he had proceeded to offer up his own son Isaac. At once relevant to the situation here is the study commonly designated, “Biblical theology”, by which we understand that the revelation of the Divine Will in the redemption of man was progressively unfolded in time. The event under review in the life of Abraham is a most significant development in this process of progressive revelation. From the words of the Saviour in John 8:56 — “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad”, we may gather that there was with the patriarch first of all, an intense desire to see God. This he had in common with, for example, Moses, — “I beseech thee, shew me thy glory” and with the living membership of the Church in every age.
What was involved in that desire, could not very well have been foreseen by Abraham, — “By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation” (Ps. 65:5a). For it must mean the offering up of Isaac as a sacrifice. That is to say that if God is to be seen by man, then He must first exact vengeance in respect of man’s sin. Redemption means, however, that judgment is executed with a view to the exercise of Divine mercy, and the fuller vision that emerges, contains within it this wonder of the grace of God. A ram was available for a burnt offering, but, even more than that, it was permissible for Abraham that he might substitute the ram for his son Isaac. Also, the eventual substitution was, of course, that it was God’s own Son who was to take the place of Abraham’s son. So the relief and deliverance is total, but only where in the fullness of time God takes the place of Abraham here in the history, and proceeds not to spare His Son but to offer Him up in the death of the cross.
This is the situation in which the patriarch is privileged to see God, and see (as we may say) into the very heart of God in terms of the matchless beauty of His grace in the face of Jesus Christ. As has been observed by others, Isaac was one who typified the coming Saviour in these respects; the intimation of his birth to the mother, his miraculous conception, his name given by the angel, in the 3 days journey, his carrying of the wood, but particularly so in respect of the necessity of that sacrifice from which would issue forth the resurrection from death. Confirming all this and the certainty of the type-Antitype relationship as between Isaac and Christ, was this place at Moriah where the temple would be reared at Jerusalem outside whose walls the Messiah must suffer.
God in this way is appearing to man in order to the salvation of the creature. And as Jehovah-jireh was a place on this earth, and especially so in the spiritual and literal history of Abraham, so it is in these circumstances of life on earth that his wondrous sight may be beholden by man. The God of grace continues to appear in His ordinances of the preaching of the Word, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
Again, I certainly believe, that it is our duty to see God in the special Providence that He exercises relative to the Church. “In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen”, as we may record with deep gratitude in respect of the Rhodesian Mission, when it has survived a time of great upheaval in that land and, by God’s grace, has emerged virtually unscathed. For many of our dear friends in that land — some of whom are with us today — it has been a time of severe test for their faith. Also, however, as we may believe, a time and experience of much strengthening of their faith, so that they may well feel constrained to say of it, “Jehovah-jireh”, i.e. God’s grace is ever sufficient! With humility we may admit to having witnessed the glory of God in this place.
Material assistance, rendered timeously, by yourselves in Holland is also to be acknowledged of the Lord’s doing, and of no little consequence in the providing for the outcome of events which we now witness. And may we then, one and all, be found of the number who obtain the portion of eternal life as beholders in our own experience of the vision of God’s glory in His redemptive provision in the New Testament Isaac, Jesus.