Genesis 22:14: A name given to a place, and the map is not allowed to say which place

The Lord provided for Abraham's needs and turned his eyes to a substitute for his son (Gen. 22:13). To keep the memory of it, he called that place "The LORD will provide" (v. 14a), which is just one word in Hebrew, "Jehovah-jireh". Abraham used a compound name of the Lord, and it shows that acting this way is one of His glorious attributes: He provides the lamb for a burnt offering Himself. This wonderful name of God is the first of a series of compound names that God reveals in the Old Testament.

God took the name Jehovah to show the relationship He would keep up by faith. It means I AM, and faith can add to that "I am — " whatever is needed. It is like a signed cheque left for the holder to fill in the amount he needs… Here the position is one of extreme need — Where is…? — and so we find JEHOVAH-JIREH, I am your provider.

We are also told that it is "the mount of the LORD." Later, Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb are called "the mount of God" and "the mount of the LORD," because the phrase speaks of the height from which God deals with mankind. But this mountain speaks of the grace of God in the gift of His Son, and it is named first, because it is nearest to God's heart. The law must take a lower place.

Out of that came a saying that people still used when Moses wrote these things about four centuries later: "On the mount of the LORD it shall be seen," or "shall be provided." That was the language of faith. About four centuries after Moses, the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite stood on Moriah. Years later Solomon built his temple there, and so it became the place for Jewish sacrifices. What all those sacrifices pointed to happened "outside the gate," for people rejected the Lord Jesus.

Isaac was Abraham's "only son"; "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son." There was the answer to JEHOVAH-JIREH. But the picture could not show everything. We have One who was the eternal Son, God shown in the flesh, the eternal Word who "became flesh" — God and Man, one blessed Person, bearing all the wrath of God against sin. Nothing like the ram caught in the thicket by its horns was there to save Him from the judgment of death. So God's righteousness was upheld, and His love could flow out to guilty people.

God's purposes could be carried out only at Moriah (2 Chron. 3:1). Without the Father's beloved Son (Mark 12:6), there could be no sacrifice for sin. So this place is named: "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided" (Gen. 22:14)… At Moriah grace met righteousness, and there God found the way (He alone could do it) to make these two attributes of His Being, which seem impossible to reconcile, kiss each other. So triumphant grace reigns through righteousness; so God's purposes are fulfilled!

The victim lay bound on the altar. Nearby was the substitute, the ram caught in the thicket, given to take the place of the human life… In God's sight Abraham had completed the act of worship in the presence of His name. There at the altar he learned the name of Jehovah — on the mount of the LORD it was seen. Jehovah was the great Provider, the One Who was everything to Abraham, and Abraham showed this in his act of surrender, his act of worship.