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Jonathan Griffiths: The God who sometimes sees fit to try us is the same God who entered into the drama in the worst of trials in the person of his son, the God who suffered as a man for us, suffered profoundly and in our place as the man Jesus Christ.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. Today we continue a message we began last time, "The Lord Who Provides." Jonathan, as we face the trials and the struggles and the pain of our lives, how does looking to Jesus help us in the midst of that?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, I think it helps us in all kinds of different levels. But there is something fundamentally, deeply encouraging about looking to one who has suffered the worst of trials imaginable at the cross. Looking to one ascended to heaven on high there as our great high priest who knows what it is to suffer as a human being and who has plumbed the depths of that suffering at the cross and who has done so for us. There is a deep understanding in the heart and mind of Jesus Christ when it comes to the experience of human suffering.

Steve Hiller: And so as we suffer, I think there is a great comfort to be able to in a sense take those trials to him, to take them to the cross knowing that he can relate. In fact, he's experienced a suffering far greater than ours.

Jonathan Griffiths: That's right. When we go to him in our suffering and our grief and our pain, he understands as one who became human and entered into human suffering. But more than that, he is also able to help because he is the Lord of heaven above at the same time. And so we come to one who understands, one who cares, and one who is able to help because he is all-powerful as well.

And so there is great comfort in trial in looking to Jesus Christ. And there will be those listening today I know who are in the midst of suffering and trial. Let me encourage you: the one place to go is to Jesus Christ who is more than able and more than willing to meet you in your need if you will but come to him.

Steve Hiller: Well, today we're going to continue to look at this truth from Genesis 22 as we continue a message called "The Lord Who Provides." Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: If you and I belong to Jesus Christ by faith, we have in our hand and in our heart the covenant promises of God. We know the outcome of the story because we have it in God's word written for us. We don't know the details of how our particular trial will end or how our crisis will be resolved, but we know this: God will save his people in the end.

We know that he's going to make us like his Son. We know that death can never be the end of the story for us. We know that God has resurrection power. We know that he's going to take us home. We know that we have a secure future in a new heaven and a new earth. And so we can walk through trial and we can stand up under testing because we know that the promises of God simply cannot fail.

Right there in that, there is powerful fuel for faith in the face of trial. Just think of it. If God will keep all his promises to me, if death is no barrier to him, if my future is secure, then what trial is actually going to be enough to sink my faith? What test can truly unsettle me? That's what Abraham knew, and that's what Abraham believed. That's why he put one foot in front of the other and made his way to that fearful mountain.

I thought better of seeing in Abraham's next words another little skirting of the truth, another little fib. I'm learning my lesson. Just notice with me what happens next. Abraham and Isaac go up the mountain, Isaac carrying the wood of the sacrifice. Abraham carrying the fire and the knife. Isaac rather innocently asks the obvious question in verse seven, second half of the verse. "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"

That's an awkward moment. And Abraham, what does he say? "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." Abraham, how can you trick your son like that? Doesn't he at least deserve the truth at this point? You're planning to tie him and place him upon an altar and plunge a knife into his flesh. How can you live with such a fib on top of everything else that's going on here?

Of course, we don't know what kind of insight the Lord gave Abraham, but the words that he spoke, they were more true than he knew. Now, it's worth remembering at this point that the Lord has just recently declared Abraham to be a prophet. In fact, the very first prophet of the Bible. And I think there is some prophetic insight here, don't you? The Lord has given him some inkling of something, some flash of insight. And faith in God's promises, his power, and his plan, that faith has enabled Abraham to press forward trustingly through this dreadful act of obedience. It's a remarkable kind of faith that enables him to do that.

Abraham's role was special, and his test was unusual. But if we've learned anything from our study of recent chapters in the life of Abraham, it is that Abraham actually was profoundly fallible and he was remarkably weak just like me and just like you. And you and I, we might look at Abraham and say, "Well, you know, he was of course a great hero of the faith. Yes, his trial and his testing, it was unusually tough and his faithful passage through it, it was remarkable by any standard." And we think about that, and so we reason we can't all be like Abraham, and we probably shouldn't try.

It's worth remembering at this point that our privilege in terms of knowledge of the truth is in many respects much greater than Abraham's privilege. He believed that God would provide the lamb somehow. He had prophetic insight to believe that, but he had not met the Savior who would come. He believed that God had life-giving power to overcome the grave, but he had not witnessed the resurrection of the Christ.

You see, unlike him, you and I today, we look back on the fulfillment of these great promises. We look back to Calvary in history and in Scripture, whereas Abraham only looked forward through darkened lenses and in simple hope. We have something actually that Abraham did not have. And so in Abraham, in his faith, I think there is a true model for us, a model for trusting God in trial and enduring through even the hardest test.

Many of you know I've mentioned this before, that I worked for a while as a school teacher in London while I was finishing off my studies. And one of the responsibilities I took on at the school was leading a large outdoor expedition program. And for the trips we planned, the camping trips, one thing we had to do was fill out these very lengthy and quite tedious risk assessments ahead of the trip.

It was a kind of a craze at the time to write risk assessments for every single activity. It became a little bit absurd at points. I don't know if it's changed now, maybe it has. In our age of lawsuits and insurance restrictions and so on, I suppose this kind of thing is a bit inevitable. But as I reflect on the experience of writing those rather dull assessments, I think of Abraham and I think of his test of faith, and it strikes me how very different his outlook was to the risk-averse and cautious outlook of the risk assessment.

God says to Abraham, "Do this," and Abraham says, "Okay, I will do it." Now that is faith. That's simple, radical, uncalculating faith. And friends, as I reflect on it, I think that is the only way to live as a Christian. I think it's the only way to walk through testing and to endure under trial. If we're obsessed with avoiding risk and cost, we are going to have a tough time following the Lord wherever he may lead. And so reflecting on that, I just wonder. I wonder where God may be calling you today to tear up the risk assessment, to take him at his word, and to walk with him through darkness, your hand in his.

In a sense now, the focus moves away from Abraham and the faith lessons that he teaches us. The focus now moves to God and the provision that he makes. In times of testing and trial, we look next to God's marvelous provision. The scene has been set. There is tension in the air. We are anticipating a great tragedy. And there's a big part of us that would turn our eyes away, we would avert our gaze at this moment. Abraham is plotting on obediently by faith, but you and I, we are feeling more and more nervous.

The thought of the death of a child, the thought that the father might himself sink in the blade and light the match, it is too awful actually to contemplate. The story may be familiar, it's a well-known story, but try with me to actually picture the scene and imagine the events unfold. Verse nine: "When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son."

Well, now the tension is at the very highest point. The blade is lifted above the boy. The father grasping the handle with both hands probably, quivering no doubt with this awful sense of expectancy and of grief. And just as Abraham steels himself for the act that would go against every fiber of his humanity and devastate his heart, the angel of the Lord calls out to him from heaven just at that moment. "Abraham, Abraham, don't harm the boy. Don't do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me."

And Abraham looks up and he sees a ram caught in a thicket. And he offers the ram as a burnt offering instead of his son. And in this moment, Abraham sees how the Lord had it all planned out. He sees how the Lord did indeed have an offering prepared. He was proved right in his trust in the Lord, in his prophetic pronouncements of what the Lord would do. And so Abraham marked the provision and he marked the occasion by naming the place. Verse 14: "So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide, as it is said to this day: On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided."

The Lord will provide. In the old King James, "Jehovah-jireh." And evidently it became a saying repeated down through the years: "On the mountain of the Lord it shall be provided." We're told at the beginning of the chapter that God sent Abraham to the land of Moriah for this test. The mount upon which the Lord called him to offer his son, the mount on which the Lord made his provision, it was a mount in a place called Moriah. I understand that the scholars identify this as the region where Jerusalem would ultimately be built.

It is perhaps this very mount on which the temple was built, the temple where all those animal sacrifices would be given down through the years. It's possible too that this mount is another mount just outside the city, perhaps a mount to which another son of another father carried the wood of his altar of sacrifice. The mount upon which another son was called to die, even perishing at the will of his father.

As we consider all that, as we look at the Lord's choreography of all this, his planning, his powerful symbolism, it sends a shiver down the spine. It does for me anyway. I think it's worthwhile just to stand back for a moment and ask what's the bigger significance of this great drama, of this event. Why does God do this? Why does he allow it? As we've seen again and again in the story of Abraham, his own story, the story of his family, it's about so much more than him and it's about so much more than them.

They are part of a grander story of God's plan to redeem a broken world and to bless a lost world ruined through sin. And through his seed, through this line, through the coming of a great descendant to bring salvation blessings to the world. This time of testing, this terrible drama, it is about the bigger story of God's salvation plan. The death of a child is an unspeakable thing for any parent to have to endure. I know some listening have actually had to endure that very thing, and I can only begin to imagine the heart-rending agony of that. It's every parent's worst nightmare. I think it's the cruelest pain that this stricken world can inflict on anyone. I don't think it's possible to imagine worse.

It's quite something that God calls Abraham, the one at the center of his plan to overcome the curse of sin and death in this world, it's quite something that he calls Abraham to face this deepest of trials and this ugliest of agonies, to come very near the actuality of it. In sparing Abraham the experience in the end, in sparing young Isaac's life, in making a saving provision, the Lord is, I think, saying something very, very wonderful here. He is pointing to something very profound.

When the Lord Jesus arrives on the scene all those centuries later, John the Baptist famously says of him, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Here comes the Lamb, the promised Lamb, the sacrifice, the substitute. That's what John is saying. Jesus comes as the Son of the Father, the beloved only Son of the Father. At the transfiguration, the Father declares of his beloved Son, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." But then as the Son nears the place of execution, obedient to the Father's will and not his own, there is no final change of plan. No alternative is introduced. And as the Son hangs upon the cross, he cries out to the Father, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

God called upon Abraham to enter into the worst trial imaginable in this fallen world, to lose his beloved son, even to be then responsible for his death. But at the final moment, God shows that he will provide a substitute, he will provide the lamb. At the cross of Calvary, perhaps even at the same location as Abraham's test, God the Father gives his own Son to die as the substitute for his beloved children. Jesus enters into the agony and suffering of life in this world. He plumbs its depth. He pays its price.

He teaches us with a depth of meaning that Abraham just couldn't see in full detail in his day, but saw from a distance. He teaches us that the Lord will provide. He would provide a substitute to die so that none of Abraham's family, none of the family of faith would ever face ultimate death. He would provide the great sacrifice of sin so that the wreckage of the fall might be undone for those who believe. The Lord would provide. And oh yes, he would show himself to be Jehovah-jireh.

I want to go back to this idea of trial, to this theme of testing. I don't think we've left it behind in any of the narrative. I don't think it's incidental to the story, just setting the scene. No, I think there's a grand lesson here about the Lord's provision. A lesson that speaks to our heart, that touches our heart in times of trial. You see, God called Abraham to face the worst thing anyone could face in this world. He brought him under the most grueling test that anyone could endure.

In the midst of that trial, in the midst of that test, he painted a picture, a prophetic picture, a symbol-laden picture of what the Father would do for Abraham and for Isaac and for the entire family of faith. And what's the point? What's the point for those under trial? It is simply this. The God who sometimes sees fit to try us is the same God who entered into the drama in the worst of trials in the person of his son. The God who suffered as a man for us, suffered profoundly and in our place as the man Jesus Christ.

This God whose ways we will not always understand, he has provided for all that we need at Calvary and he will provide for all that we need today. You see, he has met you in your need. He's met you in your need for rescue, for forgiveness, for salvation. And the God who made provision for you at the cross, he will not abandon you in your need today. As Paul says in Romans chapter eight and verse 32, "He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"

I don't know what trial you're facing today. I don't know what test you may need to endure tomorrow. But I know this: the God who gave his beloved only son for us on the mount of crucifixion, he is not a God who stands far off and unmoved. He is truly the Lord who provides, Jehovah-jireh. If you will trust him in the darkness of testing and of trial, and if you will lean upon his word, you will discover for yourself that he is indeed Jehovah-jireh, the Lord who provides for his children.

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths wrapping up our message, "The Lord Who Provides." If you missed any part of today's broadcast or previous messages in our series, come and listen online at encounterthetruth.org. As we're studying the story of the life of Abraham right now on the radio, Jonathan, you've also written a book about Abraham. It's called Strangers and Exiles: Pursuing Faithfulness as Pilgrims in a Faithless World. As I think about Abraham, I think of a guy who we look back and we see his faithfulness, but we also see a lot of sin. We see a lot of struggle and a lot of failure in Abraham's life. Why do you think God would give us the picture and the story of Abraham in his word?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, I think it's the kindness of God that he shows us Abraham in all his faith and imperfections as well. Because it's easy for us to imagine that we're the only disciples and the only pilgrims of faith who struggle with sin and who let God down and who fail. But the Bible is so realistic and God doesn't hold back from telling us the truth about his saints of old. Abraham was a wonderful model of faith. He was someone who trusted in the promises of God and took steps of faith that were costly, but he was also someone who failed in some catastrophic and dramatic ways as well.

What we see is the persevering faithfulness of God and the persevering grace of God in Abraham's life, that he would stick with him and continue to use him and to use him in powerful and very significant ways in his salvation plan and story. I look at that and I listen to that and I think there's hope for me. If there's hope for Abraham, there's hope for me. Our God is a God of amazing grace.

Steve Hiller: Well, you've written about that in your newest book, Strangers and Exiles, and we'd love to send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. You can find out more or give online at encounterthetruth.org or call 833-99-TRUTH. That's 1-833-998-7884. Again, the website is encounterthetruth.org. You can also write us at Encounter the Truth, 2176 Prince of Wales Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K2E 0A1. Or in the US at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, number 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.