The name Jehovah is frequently used in the place of the most holy name of God, transliterated as “Yahweh.” It means Lord or something along the lines of “the Supreme One.” It was a name so holy that the Jews did not dare properly state the name lest they in their sin commit blasphemy. Jehovah had numerous particular descriptors to give Him “definition” or description that man could understand. Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Rohi, Jehovah Tsikednu, Jehovah Macceddeshum, Jehovah Shammah, Jehovah Rapha, Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah Shalom, Jehovah Sabbaoth, and Jehovah Ghmola will be the ones I will address in this series.
Jehovah Jireh is one of the most well-known of these names. While the original Hebrew would best be transliterated as 'yireh,' most commonly we see this word as 'Jireh,' so that's what I'll be using in this post. Jehovah Jireh means God is my provider. The first place this idea or concept is brought up is in Genesis 22. This is the account of when Abraham’s faith was put to the final test: he was to surrender, to sacrifice, the very son whom was promised to him years earlier. Abraham obeyed without question and even in his obedience, he believed Isaac would return with him. God stopped Abraham right at the moment he was about to strike him and instead God provided a ram in Isaac’s place. But God’s provision extends far beyond that.
God is the source of my being, my sustenance, my food, my life, my finances, my hope, and everything I need. I don’t always recognize it, but if any of us were truly honest about it, there is absolutely NOTHING we have that God did not provide. I truly mean that. You can do absolutely nothing apart from God. You cannot even breathe without God giving you that breath.
Some of you may be thinking, “What about my work? Don’t I earn my paycheck?” To which I reply, “Yes, you did work and you did provide for your needs, but who gave you that job? Where did the talent for that job come from? Where did the ability to study and learn to get that job come from?” It all goes back to God. The sooner man realizes this, the better off he is. God literally has given us absolutely everything for what we do. He gave us the physical bodies we have. He gave us the mental capacity to do what we do. He gave us the raw natural talent to do what we do. He gave us the food and supplies we need to survive. He gave us the air we breathe. He gave us the provisions for our clothes. He gave us the raw materials for our scientific and technological developments.
There is the classic joke of the scientists who goes to God and says, “God, we have advanced so high in society that we no longer need you. We can even create life.” So God says, “Ah, interesting. Let’s have a contest, shall we? Let’s take some dirt and make a man. I did it before. Surely you can it too.” The scientist agreed and bent down to scoop up some dirt. God stopped him and said, “Hey! No, no, no. You get your own dirt.”
In man’s defiance of God in proclaiming his knowledge and expertise, he fails to grasp that anything he ever could do was a gift from God to start with. They seek to use all sorts of laws of science to try to explain the origins of the universe without God, and yet in doing so, they invoke procedures and processes that make absolutely no sense for their existence unless God upheld them. Why does gravity work? Why do forces work? How did they come about? We never invented the laws of science. We only discovered them and gave them mathematical formulas. It is God who upholds them. God is the Creator who provides for everything we use to live.
But God does much more than merely provide the raw material for us and life to exist. He also cares about our intimate “small” needs as well. I can testify to God’s provision in more ways than I can count. In 1995, my dad quit his well-paying job to go full-time in ministry. He went from a good job at a government plant (we were not wealthy, but we weren’t poor either) to having zero income. Yet, we never went hungry. For six months we got donated day-old bagels and bought flats of expired yogurt and eggs for a buck a piece. We had bagels in more ways than you can image. Bagel sandwiches, bagel chips, bagel this, bagel that. We understood why Israel complained about the manna, yet we even had an advantage over them. We had different flavors. But God provided.
He got creative with his provision as well. When I lived on the mission base where we housed and facilitated mission teams, we would get some very interesting donations. Some came from people getting rid of their Y2K stock. (For those that don’t remember, Y2K was a panic that swept the country because when the computers turned from 1999 to 2000 on the calendar, everything would shut down. Nothing ever panned out.) We got all kinds of canned goods which not only supplied us as a ministry staff but also supplied a food bank we ran. We got to try out emu and ostrich meat from one of the most famous steakhouse restaurants in Texas that was only 8 miles away. On one occasion, the freezers to the local grocery store (where I worked at the time) went out so they had to get rid of it all. We got two 4x4x7 foot pallets of ice cream, ice cream bars, Haagen Dazs pints, Ben and Jerry’s pints, fruit popsicles, and the like. We not only ate it, we got to give it away with our food bank ministry which at that time served 80-100 families a week… for three months.
A couple years ago, I got into a wreck that totaled my car (we were all fine; it was ultimately just a fender bender, but it messed up the engine of my car). We thought about taking out a loan to get a new car for me, but decided we better wait and let God provide. About 6-9 months later, He did. A friend of mine gave me a car for free other than the cost of switching ownership. That car has been great and exactly what I have needed. God provides. And as I shared five weeks ago, God called me to teaching and after 6 ½ years of preparation, He gave me the job. Not only does he provide, His timing is perfect.
God is Jehovah Jireh. He is my provider. He is my source and my true sustenance. I sadly do not give Him the credit He deserves. I do not thank Him as I should nor as frequently as I should. There is nothing about me or that I do to deserve all God gives me. It is only because God loves me. God’s provision is a display of His Grace. He offers it freely, but it is up to us to take what He has offered and use it as He desires us to. Let us not usurp God’s provision and claim it for our own. That is called stealing because all our talents, all our skills, and all our resources, were never ours to begin with. And we will be held responsible for how we handled His provision. God is our Provider. If we have a need, all we need to do is ask. If He can give my family ostrich meat, ice cream, and a car, would he not also provide for you if you trusted him? Next week, I will look at Jehovah Rohi, my shepherd.
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