There’s a moment in childhood when something ordinary suddenly becomes sacred—when a simple scene, almost too small to notice, ends up whispering a truth big enough to follow you for a lifetime. For one little boy, it happened in a corner drug store, standing on tiptoe, staring at a glass jar filled with bright candy.
He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about theology; he was thinking about sugar. But God sometimes hides His lessons inside moments so ordinary that only the humble can see them.
The store owner noticed him looking. He leaned down, smiled, and said, “Go ahead, son. Take a handful.”
The boy didn’t move.
“Go on,” the owner said again. “Help yourself.”
Still nothing—he stood there frozen, not in fear but in calculation.
Finally the owner reached his hand inside the jar, scooped out a generous amount, and poured it into the boy’s pockets.
When they stepped outside, his mother asked, “Why didn’t you take some when the man said you could?” The boy grinned the kind of grin that belongs to a child who knows perfectly well he’s been clever.
“Because his hands are bigger than mine.”
In that moment, without knowing it, the boy captured the truth that sits at the heart of this message and at the heart of Genesis 22. If we reach for life with our own hands, our own wisdom, our own strength, our own imagination—we end up with handfuls. When God reaches in, He fills the pockets of the soul.
The message today is not simply that God provides. Most believers accept that. The message is that God provides better, deeper, wiser, and with a love that knows what we need before we know what to ask. His hands are bigger. His heart is larger. His knowledge is fuller. His timing is perfect.
Genesis 22 is the place Abraham learned this—not in a classroom, not during a blessing, not during a miracle of abundance, but during the hardest walk of his life. It wasn’t revelation given in comfort; it was revelation forged in obedience.
When Abraham climbed that mountain with Isaac, he wasn’t climbing to learn a fact about God; he was climbing to discover the character of God. And it strikes me that Abraham had already walked with the Lord for decades. He knew God was powerful. He knew God was holy. He knew God was faithful. But for all that knowledge, Abraham had never used the name Jehovah-Jireh before that day.
---
It took the hardest test of his life to open his eyes to the tenderest truth about God.
And maybe that’s why this story still lives in us. We don’t learn God’s heart on the easiest days. We learn it when we’re walking up hills we never asked to climb. When Abraham lifted the knife, he wasn’t proving something to God—he was learning something about God. He discovered that trust is not the absence of fear but the decision to walk with God even when fear is loud.
When God stopped his hand and showed him the ram, Abraham didn’t simply breathe a sigh of relief. He named the place. He marked it. He said, “This mountain is where God provided. This mountain is where God showed His heart. This mountain is where I learned that God sees ahead.”
That is what “Jehovah-Jireh” means. Not simply “God gives,” but “God sees.” God sees ahead. God sees the need before we climb. God sees the ram before we arrive. God sees the path before we step on it. God sees the fear before it reaches our chest. God sees the ache long before we feel it.
And then He provides.
You and I know this truth, but we learn it the same way Abraham did—by walking into places that stretch us, frighten us, confuse us. Our faith doesn’t grow at the bottom of the mountain. It grows in the climb. It grows where obedience costs us something. It grows where trust asks more of us than we expected to give.
People sometimes think testing is about proving faith, but testing is about shaping faith. It isn’t God checking on us; it is God forming something in us. A soldier isn’t shaped by standing around a base camp; he’s shaped when the training becomes real and the pressure reveals courage he didn’t know he had. A ship isn’t proven when it’s tied to the dock; it’s proven when the wind howls and the hull holds.
And faith isn’t proven by affirmation; it’s proven by surrender. Anyone can believe God exists. The question becomes: What happens when that belief must walk into the unknown? What happens when God calls for your Isaac—not to take it from you, but to give you something deeper, truer, stronger?
Abraham reached that place, and the Scripture tells us he believed that if Isaac died, God would raise him. That’s not poetic; that’s faith standing on its toes, lifting its eyes to possibilities beyond the natural. Abraham didn’t know the details. He didn’t know the timing. He didn’t know how God would do it. But he knew God’s heart, and that was enough.
And that’s the quiet truth that sits under this entire sermon:
When you know God’s heart, you can trust His hands.
I’ve talked with believers who have walked through valleys they never saw coming—diagnoses that stopped their breath, losses that broke their world in half, betrayals that stabbed deep, seasons of silence where heaven seemed closed. And somewhere inside those stories, almost like a hidden thread, you hear a line spoken slowly, quietly, sometimes with a trembling voice: “But God was with me.”
That’s provision. Not always the miracle we want, but always the presence we need. Not always the escape we hope for, but always the strength to walk through. Not always the change in circumstance, but always the change in heart.
Provision is not indulgence. It is not excess. It is God giving you what will grow you, sustain you, transform you, and draw you deeper into His presence. When Abraham named God “Jehovah-Jireh,” he wasn’t saying, “God gives me whatever I ask.” He was saying, “God gives me exactly what I need to become the person He calls me to be.”
And sometimes what we need most is not an answer but a revelation. Not relief but clarity. Not a shortcut but courage. Not a way out but a way through.
A young man in a Dallas courtroom discovered this. His brother had been killed—senselessly, needlessly—and the nation watched as the trial unfolded. And when the moment came for him to speak, he did the unthinkable. He forgave the woman who had killed his brother. Not because his pain vanished, not because the loss was small, not because justice didn’t matter. He forgave because God had placed something in him that he could not have produced on his own.
That was provision. That was God providing the strength he didn’t naturally possess, the grace he wasn’t born with, the mercy he couldn’t have invented. You hear something like that, and you realize God’s provision is not just what He gives you—it’s what He grows in you.
That’s the heart of this sermon. God provides because God loves. God provides because His character is generous. God provides because His nature is faithful. He provided the ram for Abraham, but long before that, He provided the Lamb for the world.
And if God has already given His Son, He has already given His heart.
Abraham’s mountain pointed forward to another mountain—Calvary—where God would do what He did not require Abraham to do. Abraham walked with his son toward sacrifice; God walked through human history toward the cross. Abraham lifted a knife he never used; God gave His Son to death and raised Him again so that every believer would know what Abraham sensed long before the resurrection:
Jehovah-Jireh will provide.
And because of that, no matter where you are on the mountain today—climbing, questioning, trembling, surrendering—there is provision waiting for you.
Not someday.
Not eventually.
Not someday far off.
But already.
God sees ahead.
And God provides.
Abraham’s story reaches a point in the narrative where all the details seem to stand still. Scripture slows the pace so you can almost feel the tension in the air. Father and son walk together, the boy carrying the wood, the father carrying the fire and the knife. Isaac asks the question every parent fears and every believer recognizes: “Where is the lamb?”
Abraham’s answer is quiet, almost more for himself than for the boy: “God will provide.”
Not “I will find something.”
Not “We’ll figure it out.”
Not “We’ll make do with what we have.”
He places the moment in God’s hands. He places the fear there too. He places the unknown there. The uncertainty. The ache of not knowing how this will resolve. His words are not a slogan; they’re a surrender.
“God will provide.”
That phrase is not about confidence in the outcome—it’s about confidence in the One who governs the outcome.
And that matters, because God does not ask us to trust what we can see; He asks us to trust who He is. Abraham walks up that mountain believing in God’s character, not in his own understanding. That’s what faith is. It’s not certainty about the path; it’s certainty about the God who walks it with you.
Some Christians get discouraged because they think real faith means never feeling fear again, never wrestling with doubt, never facing confusion. But faith is not the absence of those things—it is the decision to keep walking with God in the middle of them. If faith were only for the days when everything is clear, it wouldn’t be faith at all; it would just be sight.
Abraham could not see the ram. He could not see the ending. He could not see the mercy waiting on the mountain. But he knew God. And knowing God was enough to take the next step.
Faith always begins with knowing God more deeply than you know your fear.
We sometimes treat the story as if the real miracle is the ram caught in the thicket, but the deeper miracle is what God formed in Abraham on the climb. God often works this way—He provides something external only after He has provided something internal. He gives the ram after He gives the revelation. He answers the need after He deepens the trust.
Provision is often a two-part gift: one part for the hands, one part for the heart.
The “heart part” is what many believers resist. We want God to fix the circumstance without touching the soul, to change the situation without shaping the character, to remove the burden without strengthening the shoulders. But God loves us too much for that. He is not raising spiritual infants; He is forming sons and daughters who look like Christ.
So He brings us to places where reliance becomes real, places where the question “Will God come through?” is not rhetorical. And in those places something grows inside us—courage, depth, surrender, peace—that could not have grown anywhere else.
That is why the mountain matters.
That is why the climb matters.
That is why the crisis becomes a kind of classroom.
And if you look back over your life, you may find that some of the most shaping moments—moments where your faith became more than belief, moments where God’s presence became more than theory—were moments when something in you was stretched. Those are the altars you can name, just as Abraham named his. They become places where you return in your mind and quietly say, “I met God there. I learned His heart there.”
We don’t always talk about it publicly, but every believer has been on that mountain.
Every Christian has walked through a season that didn’t make sense, a command that felt heavy, a prayer that seemed unanswered, a question that refused to go away. And if they stayed with God through it, they discovered something Abraham discovered—that God’s presence can hold you in ways His explanations never could.
God doesn’t primarily reveal Himself through answers; He reveals Himself through nearness.
And that nearness is often clearest in the places you would never choose.
A storm doesn’t make you doubt the strength of a ship; it proves it.
A battle doesn’t make you question the training of a soldier; it sharpens it.
And a mountain doesn’t destroy faith; it defines it.
One of the quiet tragedies of modern religion is that many people want a faith that asks nothing of them. They want inspiration without transformation, comfort without conviction, provision without surrender. But Abraham learned that God’s provision flows strongest on the other side of obedience. Not because obedience earns God’s blessing, but because obedience opens our eyes to it.
When Abraham lifted the knife, something had already died—his insistence on controlling the story. And when God called out his name, something was reborn—trust in a God whose character could carry him further than his understanding ever could.
But now we come to the part of the story where the shadow of a greater truth stretches across the page. The ram in the thicket is a miracle, but it is also a metaphor. It points beyond itself. It is a whisper of Calvary spoken nearly two thousand years before the cross. Genesis 22 is not just a lesson on trust; it is a prophecy of redemption.
Isaac carried the wood up the mountain.
Jesus carried the cross.
Isaac was the beloved son.
Jesus was the Beloved Son.
Isaac climbed the hill to the place of sacrifice.
Jesus climbed to Golgotha.
Abraham’s willingness foreshadows the Father’s.
But the outcome is different in one unbearable and beautiful way.
Abraham was stopped.
The Father was not.
Abraham offered his son on an altar but received him back unharmed.
God offered His Son on the cross and received Him back through resurrection.
Abraham said, “God will provide a lamb.”
God said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
That is the deepest truth behind this message:
God did not merely provide something for us—He provided Himself.
He did not send a philosopher to enlighten us or a teacher to improve us or a prophet to warn us. He sent His Son to redeem us. All other provision flows from that one gift. Everything else God provides in our lives is shaped by the cross. The God who gave His Son for you is not going to abandon you in your trouble. The God who paid the highest price for your salvation is not going to neglect the lesser needs of your journey.
Paul says it plainly: “He who did not spare His own Son… how will He not also, with Him, give us all things?”
All things—meaning everything necessary for the life He calls you to live, the faith He calls you to grow, the path He calls you to walk.
And if we are honest, most of us struggle not with God’s ability but with His timing. Provision sometimes feels late to us. Abraham certainly must have felt that tension. But God’s provision is never late; it simply arrives at the moment when it will increase faith rather than reduce it.
We often pray for God to move quickly; God often moves in a way that makes us grow.
The mountain Abraham climbed didn’t change God’s plan—it changed Abraham’s perspective. And that is what happens in every believer’s journey. Our circumstances shift us. Our trials awaken us. Our limitations humble us. And through all of it, God teaches us how to recognize His hand.
If you listen closely to the story, you can hear something beneath the surface. The ram wasn’t created on the spot. The ram wasn’t rushed into place at the last second. Scripture simply says it was caught. Meaning it was already there. Already waiting. Already prepared.
Provision doesn’t begin when you see it. Provision begins when God sees you.
You may not understand the mountain you’re climbing, the season you’re walking through, the silence you’re enduring—but God sees ahead. And because He sees, He provides. His wisdom places the ram before your foot ever touches the trail. His compassion arranges mercy before your fear even knows what to call itself.
And when the moment comes—when the hand is trembling, when the heart is breaking, when the question is loudest—that’s when God calls your name as clearly as He called Abraham’s. That’s when His presence holds you in ways explanation never could. That’s when the provision you didn’t see becomes the grace you now see everywhere.
That’s where many believers live today—not at the bottom of the mountain, and not yet at the top, but somewhere in the middle. They are climbing, trusting, wondering, hoping. They are taking step after step with a God whose character is stronger than their understanding.
And this is the promise that carries them: God provides not because of what we do, but because of who He is.
There’s a moment near the end of Abraham’s story on the mountain where everything comes sharply into focus. The test is over. The hand is lowered. The ram has taken the place of the son. Isaac is safe. Abraham is still trembling, but it is not with fear anymore—it is with the weight of what he has just seen.
He has learned something about God he did not know at the base of the mountain. He knew God was faithful; now he knows God is near. He knew God was powerful; now he knows God is kind. He knew God made promises; now he knows God keeps them in ways that unfold with a wisdom far greater than human understanding.
And Abraham does something important—something believers still need to do today.
He names the place.
He marks the ground so the memory won’t fade, so the next generation will know, so he himself can return to this truth again and again. He names that mountain not after his fear, not after his test, not after his obedience, but after God’s character. “The Lord will provide.”
Jehovah-Jireh.
And I want to say gently: every believer has a mountain like that. Every believer has a place where faith met fear, where surrender met struggle, where God intervened in a way that reshaped the soul. Those moments are not meant to be forgotten. They are meant to be named. They become anchor points for the future. When Abraham looked back at Moriah, he did not see a trauma—he saw a testimony.
The mountain where God provides becomes the mountain where faith matures.
But the story is not really about Abraham’s faith; it is about God’s heart. Abraham’s trust is admirable, but the whole narrative is tilted toward God’s generosity. God never wanted Isaac’s death—He wanted Abraham’s confidence. God never intended to take from him—He intended to show him that surrender does not diminish a believer; it frees them.
One of the more misunderstood truths in spiritual life is this idea: surrender is not losing. Surrender is trusting. It is shifting the weight of your life from your own strength to God’s character. And there is relief in that—deep, surprising relief. Some people spend their whole lives carrying burdens they were never meant to lift. When Abraham tied Isaac to the altar, something else was tied down with him—the burden of trying to manage life without fully trusting God.
And when Abraham lowered the knife, something else was lowered with it—the fear that God might not come through.
We sometimes imagine faith as a leap, but more often it is a lowering—lowering what we cling to so we can raise our hands in worship instead. Abraham left that mountain with Isaac by his side, but he also left with something invisible: a freedom he did not have on the way up.
A faith that has been tested becomes a faith that can truly rest.
And this is where the sermon turns from Abraham’s mountain to yours.
Because God hasn’t stopped being Jehovah-Jireh.
He has not changed His character.
He has not retired His compassion.
He has not abandoned His people.
He has not grown indifferent to the needs of His children.
God still sees ahead.
God still prepares provision before you arrive at the place of need.
God still works in ways you don’t see until the moment you need them most.
But here is the truth that reaches beyond Abraham’s story: the greatest provision God ever gave was not on Moriah—it was on Calvary. The ram that saved Isaac was a shadow; the Lamb that saved you is the substance. God provided a temporary substitute for Abraham’s son, but He provided the eternal sacrifice in His own Son.
And that brings us to the truth that sits underneath every Christian’s life: If God has already given you His Son, there is nothing in your life He will refuse to walk through with you.
There is no valley He will avoid.
No burden He will ignore.
No fear He will dismiss.
No pain He will minimize.
No prayer He will overlook.
God’s provision is not about distributing blessings; it is about giving Himself.
And if you have Him, you have more than enough.
But let’s be honest. Trusting God’s provision is not always easy. We all have situations where we want God to move faster or clearer or stronger. We all know the ache of prayers that feel suspended in time. We know what it’s like to climb a mountain we didn’t choose, carrying questions we can’t answer.
Sometimes the hardest part of faith is the middle—the climb—when the peak is out of sight and the path is steep and the heart is tired. In those moments, believers across centuries have whispered the same quiet prayer: “Lord, please provide.”
And He does. Sometimes provision comes as strength to take the next step. Sometimes it comes as peace that settles where panic once lived. Sometimes it comes as a surprising word from Scripture or a moment of clarity in prayer. Sometimes it comes as a person—someone God sends at just the right time to lift what you can’t carry alone. Sometimes it comes through patience, through endurance, through a deeper understanding of His presence.
And sometimes—when the moment is right and the heart is ready—God provides the visible answer we hoped for. But the answer is never the whole story. The presence is.
God does not measure His love by the size of the miracle but by the closeness of His companionship.
If Abraham had gone up the mountain alone and come back with Isaac unharmed but with no deeper knowledge of God’s character, the event would have been a disaster. But because he walked that path with God, something transformed inside him. And transformation is always greater than resolution.
Let me speak directly for a moment to the heart that is tired of climbing. You may be in a season where you’ve done everything you know to do. You’ve prayed, waited, hoped, obeyed, served, trusted. And still the mountain stretches ahead of you.
What I want to say is not complicated, but it is holy: God sees you. God has already placed the provision ahead of you. It may not be visible yet, but it is already prepared. Abraham didn’t see the ram until the moment he needed it, but the ram was there long before he was.
God sees ahead. God provides ahead. God prepares ahead. The blessing you need is not in formation—it is in position.
And what He is doing in you along the way is every bit as important as what He will do for you when you arrive.
The real question of this sermon is not “Will God provide?”
The real question is “Will you trust His heart while you climb?”
Because if you trust His heart, you will discover what Abraham discovered:
The mountain you fear may be the mountain where provision waits.
The place of surrender may become the place of revelation.
The hardest obedience may become the deepest encounter.
The moment where everything feels uncertain may become the moment God shows you something about Himself that you would never have learned any other way.
Abraham could not have known this at the bottom of the mountain.
Neither can we.
But once we reach the top, we begin to understand the wisdom of God’s timing and tenderness of God’s care.
There is a point in every believer’s life where the doctrine of God’s provision becomes the experience of God’s provision. And once you have experienced it—deeply, truly, personally—you cannot go back. Abraham couldn’t. You won’t either.
When life brings you to the mountain, remember this: the God who provided for Abraham is the God who provides for you. The God who saw ahead for him sees ahead for you. The God who placed a ram in the thicket has already placed the mercy you need within reach. The God who carried Abraham through uncertainty will carry you through your own. He has not changed. His name has not changed. His heart has not changed.
Jehovah-Jireh will provide.
He always has.
He always will.
And the greatest proof is not in the ram of Genesis 22 but in the Lamb of John 19. The cross is the eternal declaration that God does not abandon His children on the mountain—He joins them there.
And He joins you now.
CLOSING APPEAL
Father,
we bring You our mountains today—some steep, some hidden, some heavy—and we place them in Your hands. We bring You the fears we’ve carried, the questions we’ve whispered, the burdens we’ve tried to shoulder alone. Teach us to trust You the way Abraham trusted You. Help us see Your heart even when we cannot see Your plan. Remind us that You have already prepared the provision we need, and that Your presence is our greatest gift. Let someone today discover, not just that You provide, but that You are the Provider.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
