He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering….” Genesis 22:2
We often say that the New Testament is contained in the Old. But the New is also explained by the Old. There is much in the Gospels and Paul’s epistles that we would not understand if we did not know about the bronze serpent in the wilderness, the Passover, the Red Sea, and so-on.
We cal these Old Testament pictures types. Genesis, naturally, is full of them. Certain human beings, like Joseph and Adam, were types of Christ. And Adam lived long before Abraham. But Abraham’s offer of his son Isaac is the first clear-cut type of Christ and His work that we have in Scripture, with many points of similarity between the two.
In the first place, Isaac was Abraham’s dearly beloved son. (God made a special point of that in the text for our meditation.) God did not ask Abraham to burn a billion dollars, but to sacrifice his own boy. There is hardly a clearer picture in Scripture of what God went through on Calvary, when His son actually was killed.
The sacrifice of Isaac took place on Mount Moriah, which was the sacred mountain where Jerusalem and the temple were later erected. But the heart of the whole episode is in that anguished testimony of Abraham when Isaac plaintively asked what the offering was going to be. “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering,” was the amazing answer of faith.
No wonder Paul exclaimed, “God spared not His own Son. How shall He not, with His Son, freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
know who you are 