The Lamb God Provides

Read it: Genesis 22

Abraham waited twenty-five years for the son God promised. When Isaac was finally born, “Abraham was a hundred years old” (Genesis 21:5), and Sarah laughed for joy. Every promise God had made, the great nation, the blessing to all peoples, now ran through this one boy.

Then comes the hardest chapter in Abraham’s life.

The test

“Some time later God tested Abraham” (Genesis 22:1). God calls his name, and Abraham answers, “Here I am” (Genesis 22:1). Then God says: “Take your son,” and goes on, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you” (Genesis 22:2).

Notice how God piles up the words: your son, your only son, the one you love. God knows exactly what He is asking. This is not a careless demand from a distant god. It is a test aimed at the deepest place in Abraham’s heart. Will he trust the God who gave him Isaac, even with Isaac himself? Three times in this chapter Abraham says “Here I am”: to God, to his son and to the angel. He is present, listening and ready, at every step.

If that makes you feel sick, good. It should. Let’s be honest about it. In the world Abraham lived in, some peoples did sacrifice their children to their gods. Later the Bible condemns that practice in the strongest terms, calling it something “the LORD hates” (Deuteronomy 12:31). So what is going on here?

Three things help. First, the writer tells us at the very start that this is a test. We know something Abraham doesn’t. Second, God never lets it happen. Third, this story is going to show, once and for all, that the God of Abraham is not like the gods of the nations. He doesn’t demand children. He provides.

But Abraham didn’t know the ending. Notice what he does: “Abraham got up early the next morning” (Genesis 22:3). No arguing, no delay. Three days of travel follow. That’s a long time to think.

Walking together

When they see the mountain, Abraham tells his servants, “The boy and I will go over there to worship, and then we will return to you” (Genesis 22:5). We will return. Was Abraham just covering? The New Testament says no: “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead” (Hebrews 11:19). God had promised that the great family would come through Isaac. Somehow, Abraham believed, God would keep that promise, even if it meant bringing Isaac back from death.

Abraham puts the wood on Isaac’s back and carries the fire and the knife himself, “and the two of them walked on together” (Genesis 22:6). Then Isaac asks the question that hangs over the whole chapter: “The fire and the wood are here,” said Isaac, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” (Genesis 22:7).

Abraham’s answer is one of the great sentences of the Bible: “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8).

The Bible doesn’t tell us how old Isaac was or what he was thinking. He was old enough to carry a load of wood up a mountain, which means he was old enough to resist an old man if he’d wanted to. The text tells us only that Abraham built the altar, arranged the wood, “bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar” (Genesis 22:9), and took the knife.

The ram in the thicket

“Just then the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven” (Genesis 22:11): “Abraham, Abraham!” “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him,” said the angel, “for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me” (Genesis 22:12).

Abraham looks up and sees a ram caught by its horns in a bush. He offers it “as a burnt offering in place of his son” (Genesis 22:13). In place of. That phrase is the heart of the chapter, and of much of the Bible. Something dies so that someone else can live.

Abraham names the place “The LORD Will Provide” (Genesis 22:14), and God repeats His great promise: “through your offspring all nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Genesis 22:18).

One more detail. Hundreds of years later, King Solomon built God’s temple “in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah” (2 Chronicles 3:1). The mountain where a substitute died in Isaac’s place became the place where Israel’s sacrifices were offered for centuries.

Where Jesus is in this

Here’s the strange thing. Abraham promised that God would provide a lamb, but on the mountain God provided a ram. The question “Where is the lamb?” hangs in the air for a long time. Then, about two thousand years later, a prophet called John the Baptist sees Jesus walking toward him and cries out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

On the same range of hills around Jerusalem, another Father and another only Son walked toward a place of sacrifice, and another Son carried the wood, His own cross. But this time no voice from heaven stopped it. Paul draws the line from Genesis 22 straight to the cross, using the same words: God is “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). Abraham did not have to give up his son. God did. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son” (John 3:16).

Think about it: Abraham was willing to trust God with the thing he loved most. What would be hardest for you to place in God’s hands, and why?

Go deeper: Selected Sermons of George Whitefield — Whitefield walks verse by verse through Abraham’s three-day journey and then takes his hearers “to mount Calvary”: if you admire Abraham offering up Isaac, he says, how much more should you adore the God who gave His only Son for the world. Start with chapter 3, “Abraham’s Offering Up His Son Isaac”.