Day 24: The Lord Will Provide

And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!”

And he said, “Here am I, my son.”

He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”

 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”

So they went both of them together.

Genesis 22:7-8

Genesis 22 has got to be one of the most incredible passages. God tests Abraham's faith by asking him to offer up his own son Isaac as a sacrifice. With child-like faith, Abraham takes his son up the mountain, and in verses seven and eight there is this interaction between father and son.

Isaac knows what it is to go and worship through sacrifice. This is obviously something that he and his father had done before on many occasions. How Abraham could even answer his son at this point without breaking down and turning back is beyond me.

God's word doesn't give any details about what happened between father and son once the altar was built, but we do know that Issac was tied and placed on the altar with his father's knife raised above him before God stopped it.

Abraham called the place where this happened, "The Lord will provide."

God provided the sacrifice.

God provided The Sacrifice.

All the lambs, calves, goats, and doves that have been slain as a sacrifice for sin cannot truly cleanse away the sin. But God provided "for himself the lamb for a burnt offering..." when He sent Christ, the perfect Lamb.

God loved us so much that He did not spare himself the grief that he spared Abraham. Abraham held the knife and dropped it, but God let the nails to be pounded, the whip to strike, and the sword to pierce.

...“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea,

and all that is in them, saying,

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might

forever and ever!”  

Revelation 5:12-13

And all God's people said, "Amen."