Abraham had waited his entire life, over 100 years for this one son to be born. He had waited more than 25 years even since the Lord first said that He would have this son with Sarah from which a nation would grow and all nations would be blessed. Finally, Isaac was born. 

At the time of our Old Testament text Abraham was probably about one hundred and twenty-five years old. Now God tells him to take his long awaited son of promise out into the wilderness and offer him up as a burnt offering to God. It is difficult to imagine what must have been going on in the mind of Abraham. The Bible only tells us of his faithfulness. When Isaac asks about the lamb for the sacrifice, “The Lord will provide.” Was the answer of Abraham. “The Lord will provide.”

Abraham had to be crushed and frightened as the moment of sacrifice drew nearer. 

Nevertheless, he followed the command of God. We could try with worldly wisdom to answer why Abraham would believe that God would deliver Isaac or raise him from the dead.

We could reason: well, God had granted Abraham wealth, God’s previous promises had been fulfilled, but that isn’t the real reason. Abraham was faithful because Abraham believed in the faithfulness of God.

His faith is demonstrated first in his words to his servants: “I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”, but it becomes even more evident in in his answer to Isaac – “God will provide for Himself the lamb”. Isaac was the miracle child, yet Abraham did not question God’s ability to do more miracles. Abraham thought God would raise Isaac from the dead. That is what the book of Hebrews says chapter 11. “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac… He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.”

Abraham trusted God to provide, and so he was willing to sacrifice his son. And God provided. He provided for Abraham in a way I suspect Abraham had never fully envisioned. He stopped Abraham at the very last moment, and provided the sheep for sacrifice, caught by its horns in the bush nearby. Abraham passed the test and worshiped God, and everyone went home happy.

Hebrews tells us that this was a type. Abraham received Isaac back from the edge of destruction as a type of the resurrection from the dead. Also, Abraham was the father who was sacrificing his only son, just as God did for us. Except God was under no command to do it.

It was His plan and His will to sacrifice His Son for us and for our salvation. 

People should marvel, when they stop to consider that Isaac went along with the whole thing. Isaac was old enough to flee or to fight this hundred and some year old man of a father as he began binding him for the sacrifice, but he didn’t.  Isaac carried the wood for his own sacrifice. He allowed his father to tie him up and lay him on the pile of wood in the altar area for the sacrifice. No matter what may have been going through his mind, he humbly and without complaint did what his father asked him to. In this, Isaac is a type of Christ.

Christ also humbly followed the plan and will of His Father. He knew throughout His life who He was and where He was going to end up. He walked that road and was faithful. He faced the wrenching dread and sorrow of the garden of Gethsemane. He carried the wood of His sacrifice, the cross, willingly obedient to His Father for the purpose of our salvation. He allowed Himself to be tied, pierced, and placed on the altar of the cross for sacrifice. Of course, no voice from heaven stopped the hand of the executioner for Jesus, because His blood is that which we need to make atonement.

In Genesis, God commanded Abraham to stop, and he saw the ram caught by its horns. God told Abraham that he had demonstrated his faith and absolute trust in God, being willing to give up that which was most precious to him for the sake of his God. Similarly, God demonstrated His great love for us, and His desire to rescue us from sin and death and hell by offering up that which was most precious to Him – His only-begotten Son. By faith in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice, because Jesus suffered the torments of hell and died in your place, you are forgiven, and you will never die. Your body will, and it will rest, as did the body of Jesus, in the grave for a time, but like Jesus, you will commend your soul into God’s presence and keeping, and you will live both between the day of your body’s death and the day of resurrection, and, following that day of the resurrection of all flesh, you will live in joy and glory body and soul with the Lord eternally.

This is amazing and truly by God’s grace. For we have not been faithful, but God was and is faithful. God provided the lamb of sacrifice for us sinners. He provided for Abraham in the ram caught in the bushes, and He has provided salvation for you in Jesus Christ. That sheep in the account of Abraham and Isaac was the type, and Jesus the antitype – the anti-type meaning that is He is the reality which fulfills the meaning of the symbolism in the story of Abraham and Isaac. Therefore, “In the mount of the Lord, it will be provided.” For Abraham it was a specific yet unnamed hill in the land of Moriah. In 30 A.D. it was a hill named “Golgotha,” just outside the city walls of Jerusalem: ” for in the mount of the Lord it has been provided”. 

Abraham received Isaac back from the dead, as Hebrews put it. Isaac hadn’t really died, but he was marked for death, and as good as dead at his father’s hand, if God had not intervened. His release from death was a type pointing to the resurrection of Jesus. We, because of our sin were marked for death, but Jesus is the Lamb that intervenes for us. He is also the first-fruits of our resurrection. We shall also rise from the dead as Jesus did, when He returns because we are His body, and we have been joined with Him in His death and resurrection through baptism. Just as Isaac pointed forward as a type to the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus points forward to our own resurrection from the dead.

The Lord will provide. And He has. But this text is not just about history. When God wants us to serve, to do some specific thing, or just to be faithful, the Lord will provide. We will never face any situation where God cannot meet our needs. We will never face any circumstance where God will not provide what we need in order to be faithful to Him. Trust Him because He is faithful.

Trust God and be faithful, therefore. You cannot need more than God can provide, and if you are faithful, and are doing what is faithful, the Lord will surely provide, especially when it comes to spiritual strength and hope for each day. We are living on “the mount of the Lord” today. When the children of Israel left the holy mountain, God went with them. He provided Manna and water and guided them to the holy land, promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Then they built the temple, and God claimed it as His place of His presence on earth among men. But it was all pointing to Christ Jesus. He was Immanuel, “God with us.” When Jesus ascended at the end of His earthly ministry, He did not stop being with us. He is still Immanuel as He leads His church forth by His cross, giving daily bread and as His kingdom comes in His Word, in the Sacrament of the Altar and with His body and blood!

The Lord is gracious and faithful even when we are not. He continues to call us to repent and be restored in Christ so that we may learn to become faithful not just in obedience but in receiving, believing, and rejoicing in His many blessings that He provides for us.

In the Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus said to the Jews who did not believe in Him: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. God is not the God of the dead but of the living.” Abraham trusted in the Lord and Abraham kept the Word of God. Though his body now sleeps, He never truly experienced death. Abraham and all believers, who are dead according to the flesh, are actually alive in spirit and in God’s eternal glory have seen Christ and His day of crucifixion and resurrection and now rejoice. We, likewise, have known and experienced Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. In Holy baptism, we were crucified according to the flesh in Christ’s death, and have been raised into newness of life into the resurrection of Christ by faith. Furthermore, we are able to receive Christ’s very body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar, and in that moment, already see a glimpse into eternity as all the Saints who have gone before are present at the feast of victory given here.

Dear fellow believers, keep the Word of the Lord in your life, in your heart, in the sacraments, and the Lord will provide life forever for you. Life lived here by faith in the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. Those who have died to sin by repentance and the remembrance of their baptism will never truly die. So do not be afraid. Believe in the Lord; trust Him, and rejoice with the living Church in triumphant glory and the living church militant here on earth as we together keep the Word of God in Jesus Christ; celebrating His victory over our sin and death because God has truly kept His own word for us. He has provided the Lamb for the sacrifice, so that we may receive the inheritance of eternal life through His beloved son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Pr. Aaron Kangas