The Lord Will Provide

Some time after Isaac was born and had grown into a boy old enough to carry wood, God tested Abraham. He called his name, and Abraham answered, here I am. Then came the command that has troubled readers for three thousand years. Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah, and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.

Genesis records no argument. Abraham, who had bargained with God over Sodom, who had laughed at the promise of a son, says nothing. He rises early the next morning, saddles his donkey, cuts the wood himself, and sets out with Isaac and two servants. The journey takes three days. On the third day he sees the mountain in the distance and tells the servants to wait. He says that he and the boy will go and worship and then come back to them. Both of them, he says. Coming back.

Abraham lays the wood on Isaac's back. He carries the fire and the knife himself. As they walk, Isaac speaks. Father, he says, and Abraham answers, here I am, my son. The fire and wood are here, Isaac says, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham answers with the sentence that holds the whole story: God himself will provide the lamb, my son. The two of them go on together.

At the place God had shown him, Abraham builds the altar, arranges the wood, binds Isaac, and lays him on it. He reaches out his hand and takes the knife. Only then does the voice come from heaven, calling his name twice. Do not lay a hand on the boy. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. Abraham looks up and sees a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. He sacrifices it in place of Isaac and names the place The Lord Will Provide.

The writer of Hebrews tells us what Abraham was thinking as he climbed. He reasoned that God could raise the dead. He had been told that the promise would come through Isaac, and he had been told to offer Isaac, so he concluded that God would somehow keep his word even through death. That is why he told the servants that both of them would return. He was not bluffing. He was trusting a God who had already brought life out of Sarah's dead womb.

What does the story mean? First, it is about the fear of God, which is not terror but a settled conviction that God's word outranks everything, including what we love most. Abraham's love for Isaac was not the problem. Isaac had become the visible form of the promise, and God asked whether Abraham trusted the promiser more than the visible form. He did.

Second, the story is about substitution. Isaac walks up the mountain as the offering and walks down alive because a ram died in his place. Every Israelite who later read this story on the way to the temple would have understood. Someone else dies so that the one under the knife can live.

Third, the story points forward. A father takes his only son, whom he loves, up a hill in the region of Moriah, the very region where Jerusalem would one day stand. The son carries the wood on his back. The father says God will provide the lamb. On Moriah, God stopped Abraham's hand. On Calvary, he did not stop his own. John the Baptist saw Jesus and called him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Abraham's sentence to Isaac was finally, fully answered.

You may never face a test like Moriah. But you will be asked, in smaller ways, whether you love the gift more than the giver. When that day comes, remember the name of the mountain. The Lord will provide. He already has.