(Gen. 22, 23)
ONCE, when God had called Abraham to leave his country, he had delayed, but in this beautiful chapter we see how obedient he was and how willing to give up Isaac, for “he rose up early in the morning”: and he really had faith, too, that he would not lose his son, for in Heb. 11 we read, “Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead” —i.e., he believed that, if he had to kill him, God could raise him up, because He had promised him this son, and that he should be “a great nation,” which could not happen if Isaac died.
None but a father could fully understand what it must have been to Abraham to give his only son to God in this way, and none of us can tell what it must have been to God to give up His only begotten Son to die for sinners, and yet “God so loved the world that He gave” Him. In this chapter Abraham may be regarded as a type of God, and Isaac of the Lord Jesus Christ. “They went both of them together.” “The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world,” and yet “Christ through the eternal Spirit offered Himself:” They were of one mind concerning the salvation of sinners.
Isaac did not know what was to befall him at first, and asked, “Where is the lamb?” but when he did he was quite submissive: and he cannot have been very young, for he carried the wood, and might have resisted his aged father when he bound him. Do you know who is the Lamb whom God has provided? Though God had called Abraham to give up his son, yet he could look on to the time when Jesus should be the Lamb of God who should take away the sin of the world, and who would rise again in proof that sin was atoned for. God did not suffer His servant to be tried above what he was able to bear, but made a way of escape for him. The ram caught in the thicket by its horns died instead of Isaac, so Isaac came down from that mountain, saved from death—the blood of another had been shed for him Has the “blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” put away your sins and saved you from eternal wrath?