Dear fellow-redeemed sinners, ransomed by the shed blood of Christ Jesus, our Savior. Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Abraham Tested

1 Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 Then He said, “Take now 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.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. 5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.” 6 So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together. 7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together. 9 Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. 10 And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” So he said, “Here I am.” 12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” 13 Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” 15 Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, 16 and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— 17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” 19 So Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba. Genesis 22:1-19

Why would God tell Abraham to take Isaac, his only son, whom he loved, and take him to a mountain in the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt sacrifice? How could God tell Abraham to give up his only-begotten Son of promise?

The first and often overlooked answer is that sin demands it. The Bible tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23) and “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:20). What Abraham deserved as a sinner, and what Isaac also deserved, was to die for his sin. And that is also what we deserve for our sins.

We remember the words God spoke to Adam in Genesis 3 after Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command and ate of the forbidden fruit: “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (v. 19).

And Moses wrote in Psalm 90:3-10: “You turn man to destruction, and say, ‘Return, O children of men.’ For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night. You carry them away like a flood; they are like a sleep. In the morning they are like grass which grows up: In the morning it flourishes and grows up; in the evening it is cut down and withers. For we have been consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath we are terrified. You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance. For all our days have passed away in Your wrath; we finish our years like a sigh. The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

One thing is certain in the recent coronavirus outbreak: ultimately, the disease and the death suffered by many is a part of God’s curse upon sin and the sinner. Death is the result of sin — not that those who die are somehow worse sinners than those who live, but death is the result of sin and all of us have sinned and deserve to die — and not only temporal death but eternal death and condemnation in hell!

Again, the Bible tells us in Galatians 3:10: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.” If we have not kept every commandment in God’s law perfectly in our desires, words and actions, we are condemned and cursed by the law, and the just punishment is death, temporal and eternal!

Secondly, God’s test points ahead to what God would do for the sins of the world.

God had promised in the Garden, in the words to the serpent: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Gen. 3:15). And to Abraham God promised: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (22:18).

And God fulfilled His ancient promises when He sent Christ Jesus into the world, “born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power” (Rom. 1:3,4). “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

God sent His only-begotten Son, born of the Virgin Mary and a descendant of Abraham, to be the perfect and holy sacrifice for the sins of the world (cf. Luke 3:23ff.)

The Bible clearly tells us in Psalm 49:7-9 that none of us “can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him — for the redemption of their souls is costly, and it shall cease forever — that he should continue to live eternally, and not see the Pit.” Therefore, God Himself had to provide the Lamb — a perfect and sinless Lamb, His only-begotten Son — to be sacrificed in our stead and to suffer and die upon the cross to make atonement for our sins.

And Jesus is called “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” in John 1:29. He is described as “a lamb without blemish and without spot” in 1 Peter 1:19.

Hebrews 9, in verses 11-15, compares the priesthood in the Old Covenant to that in the New. As the Old Testament priests entered into the Most Holy Place once each year, on the Day of Atonement, with the blood of a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people, so Christ, our high priest under the New Covenant, has entered into the very presence of God with His own blood, shed upon the cross, to atone for the sins of the entire world.

But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason, He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

And it is certainly significant that God commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac on a specific mountain in the land of Moriah and there provided a substitute ram, caught in a thicket, to be offered up in the stead of Isaac.

First of all, the location is the later site of Jerusalem, where Christ Jesus was offered up for our sins. Consider 2 Chronicles 3:1: “Now Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.”

And, as God provided a substitute ram to be offered up in the place of Isaac, so God provided a Substitute for you and for me – He gave His own Son to die in our stead and make atonement for our sins and the sins of the whole world (cf. 1 John 2:1,2). “…The-Lord-Will-Provide [Jehovah-jireh]; as it is said to this day, ‘In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided’” (Gen. 22:14).

In faith, Abraham took his son Isaac and was ready to offer him up as a sacrifice, trusting that God could indeed raise him up again and fulfill His promises to Abraham to bless all nations through the Seed of Abraham and Isaac (cf. Gen. 22:18). And, in a figure, Abraham received his son back again alive from the dead.

So also Christ Jesus, who suffered and died the just punishment for the sins of the world, was raised up again on the third day. As the Bible tells us, Jesus Christ “was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (Rom. 4:25). His resurrection is proof that God accepted His sacrifice as full payment for the sins of the world, and that through faith in Jesus Christ we are justified and counted righteous and acceptable in God’s eyes. Because Christ died for our sins, in our stead, and rose again, we who trust in Him have the assurance that our sins are paid for in full and forgiven and that we too will be raised up on the last day to life eternal!

O Gracious and merciful God, we thank You for giving up Your only-begotten Son to suffer and die in our stead that we might have forgiveness and life eternal through faith in His name. Amen.

[Scripture is taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.]

The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.