Genesis 22:14

"And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-j ireh; as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." - Gen. xxii. 14.

My soul! how many Jehovah-jirehs hast thou erected? At least, how many occasions hath thy bountiful Lord afforded thee for erecting them? Oh what cause have I to blush in the recollection! Had I done by my God, as Abraham did by his, what blessed helps would they have afforded me, in the same moment that they became monuments to the Lord's praise! Surely I know all this, in theory, very plainly and fully: but how do I fall short in the practice of it! To set up the Jehovah-jireh for all that is past, is the best help to a soul in exercises for all that is to come. When I can, and do put down, after any sharp trial, any Jehovah-jireh, and say, here it was "the Lord did provide;" will it not, in any future exercise, enable me to say, ‘If the Lord helped me then, may I not hope that he will help me now?' It would be a very sad requital for past mercies, in the moment of receiving them, to say, ‘Alas! the Lord did once help, but he will not. I fear, do it again.' This would be to read the inscription of the Jehovah-jireh backward. Whereas the very sight of our Jehovah-jirehs should teach us to say, "Here the Lord helped me: here he manifested his free unmerited grace to me: and will he not again? Is he less Jehovah than he was? Is he not God all-sufficient, all-gracious still?" O it is blessed to have such stones set up as Abraham's Jehovah-jireh. There was nothing in the patriarch's of his own providing. His was simply an act of faith; and neither the result of his asking by prayer, or providing by his wisdom. And, my soul, do not overlook a most interesting mark which the Holy Ghost hath put upon Abraham's Jehovah-jireh, in adding, "As it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." As if he had said, ‘ all the ages and generations yet to come shall profit by the great father of the faithful's testimony to this place; and they shall see it to the latest day of Jesus's church upon earth? Oh! how blessed, when our personal experience bears an exact correspondence to that of the faithful gone before; when we can and do set up the same. All blessings, all provisions are in Jesus. He is the Lamb, which, from everlasting, Jehovah hath provided, and whom his people shall see in all their wants, temporal, spiritual, and eternal. And let their extremities be what they may, yea, though the exercises of their faith abound, yet let them wait but the Lord's time, which is always the best time, and they shall most assuredly, like Abraham, find cause to call the name of every place of trial, Jehovah-j ireh; concerning which, in proof and in reality it shall be said, every day and to the last day," In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen!"