Genesis 22

Through all the challenges of his new life, God has been with Abraham, showing him the way of faith, and helping him to stand in a day of trouble. The Lord has blessed His servant. But now, after the gift of the promised son has been given, the voice of the Lord instructs Abraham to do the unthinkable: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

The mountain chosen by God for this sacrifice would have a great future significance for the people of God, since at a later moment of crisis God would reveal this place as the site of His temple in Jerusalem. Centuries later it would be on the outskirts of this same city that the Son of God would die for our sins. The story of the sacrifice of a beloved Son begins here, with this heart-breaking instruction to Abraham.

Abraham obeyed the voice of God as an outworking of his faith in God. What was he thinking as he moved ahead to obey the awful Word of the Lord? God had made promises concerning Isaac, promises that required that the boy would live. Now the Lord was commanding that the boy be put to death. God would provide somehow. The Lord's servant reasoned that God could raise the dead. See Hebrews 11:17-19.

So Abraham rose early in the morning. He took steps of trust in God. When he left his young men behind on the last leg of his journey to the appointed spot, he and and Isaac went on alone. But he spoke these words of faith to his servants: “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” I and the boy will come back to you. Abraham knew that this was the way it had to be. God would not abandon His promises.

When young Isaac questioned his father about the absence of the animal for a sacrifice, Abraham replied, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” This is what the Lord did at the very last moment, when it was clear that Abraham was ready to obey in full the Lord's instruction. The Lord provided a substitute.

Everything that we believe about the way of salvation finds its center in this horrific episode. That ram in the thicket that was given through the voice of the Lord, stands for the one Substitute provided by God to take the death that was coming against us according to His Word.

“Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” We hear those words and see the provision of a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. But at the decisive moment when Jesus was on display on the cross before the watching world, there was no ram in the thicket to take His place. He is the Lamb of God. No one stopped the hand of God that day, and the Son of God willingly and knowingly took our place, completing what Abraham and Isaac never had to do.

As with Isaac, the promises of God required that Jesus live. Abraham's reasoning concerning resurrection, revealed in Hebrews 11, found its perfect fulfillment in the Savior who died and rose again from the dead.

The Lord has provided for us in the death of Christ, and yet Jesus lives. Two thousand years before, Abraham was commended as a great man of faith, showing the reality of his living trust by the fruit of obedience that flows from a heart that believes the Word of the Lord. God will bless Abraham in this walk of living faith. As He has promised before, He repeats again, the Lord will bring a great host forth from Abraham. All the people groups of the earth will somehow be blessed in the gift of Abraham's son.

We now see in the brilliance of resurrection light what Abraham saw so long ago in the day of shadows. Jesus is the promised Savior. He is the true Isaac, but He must actually die. He is the ram in the thicket, but He is really a Man. He is also the beloved Son of God. The Father will suffer too in the death of His Son. According to the Lord's great plan for mercy, the Father must face what Abraham was finally spared, and the Son will, with full knowledge, take a penalty that Isaac could never have begun to fathom.

Meanwhile, life must go on now with Abraham and Isaac. And life continues in the world around them. Generations will come into being, with all of the people whom God creates playing the parts designed by the Lord who loves us. If they see anything at all of His great purposes, they only see in part. He knows it all, and His purposes will surely be accomplished. The death of His own Son assures us of the seriousness of His intention to accomplish all His holy will.