degree that, even though this was the promised son, seed that he’d waited throughout his lifetime to receive, if he obeyed God and sacrificed him God would raise him from the dead.  It was a miracle when Isaac came the first time; it’d be a miracle if He raised him from the dead.  Abraham didn’t even have a doubt—he and Isaac would come back down that hill.  And in that scenario comes the name “The Lord will provide.” 

In an impossible situation Faith grabbed hold of it and Abraham stated it: “The Lord will provide.”  He will, one day at a time.  Now I don’t know who’s in that darkness, and you don’t need to tell me about it, but before you start trying to light your own matches out of that financial darkness this verse is saying “Cast yourself on the name of the Lord.”  And it happens to be “Cast thyself—trust in the name of the Lord.”  Isn’t it in capital letters in your King James?  Jehovah—Jehovah-jireh. 

“Well, that isn’t my problem.”  Maybe yours is sickness.  I’m just gonna play a keyboard for a few minutes this morning.  Maybe yours is sickness, either you or loved ones, and you’re desperately trying to find a way out of that darkness.  You have no idea the number of times that I’ve dealt with situations where doctors say it’s terminal, there’s nothing that can be done.  Well our extremity is God’s beginning.

Or maybe your problem somewhere across this audience is sickness—I mean you’ve battled it, there’s no way out it seems, there is no light.  Stop whatever fire-building you’re doing at least long enough to exercise the Faith act of casting yourself on the name of the Lord—Jehovah-raphah.  Some of these carnival hucksters surfboarding on God’s healing nature periodically in the history of the Church have turned people off on this side of God’s nature.  But it was



 

to a disobedient people who were murmuring at their first test in the Wilderness to whom God said “I am Jehovah-raphah.”

Now let me tell you something about the names of God.  Sometimes God would just lead these people that were His Oracle in a series of experiences until they would come to a conclusion, having watched and seen the way God acted.  They then, quite accurately—because of a consistent set of happenings by God—they would project onto Him a name.  “Well, God is this way.”  Isaiah did that as he watched and went over in his mind the long history of God dealing with his people.  Isaiah said it; God didn’t.  Isaiah said, “Thou art a God that hidest thyself.”  But once in a while these names come straight out of the mouth of God.  It’s as though He doesn’t want to wait until our experience teaches it to us.  He flings a window open and says of Himself “This is the way I am; this is what I wanna be.”  And He picks an occasion where it’s a disobedient people and He says, “I am”—existential state of being, quality of person; the person cannot be there without this distinguishing mark—“I am Jehovah-raphah.”

I remember the leading scientist at the University of Minnesota who for so many years had been used by Billy Graham in his meetings as a testimony of a life of a scientist that had a Faith in God.  I got a call from George Otis saying, “Gene, Fred is in the hospital.  He has a total blockage in his stomach; he’s facing death unless they can operate and solve the problem, and I think the person to fly in and talk to him, because of your mutual academic background, is you.”  I didn’t hesitate.  I flew to Minnesota into Minneapolis.  I went in to see Fred and I must’ve spent an hour with him, with Fred, trying to find reasons why that we could then pray together and God might heal him.  Finally, in exasperation, I said “Fred, God doesn’t need a reason other