Nearly two thousand years before Jesus was born, God spoke to His servant Abraham in one of the most perplexing passages in all of scripture. He said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on the mountains I will tell you about,” (Genesis 22:2).
This was the same son that was promised to Abraham and his wife Sarah in their old age (Genesis 17:16–19, Genesis 18:10–14). Abraham was a man of faith and God tested his faith by waiting until he was nearly one hundred years old and his wife Sarah was nearly ninety to make them parents. Isaac’s conception was extraordinary, considering that Sarah was past the age of childbearing (Genesis 18:11). It wasn’t until she was visited by the Lord that she miraculously conceived.
Similarly, God visited Mary and she conceived of the Holy Spirit before Jesus was born. In the fullness of time, the Lord gave His one and only Son to the world (John 3:16). The language used in Genesis describing Isaac as Abraham’s only son provides a grammatical connection to Jesus long before His birth. Abraham already had a son, born of Hagar, but Isaac was his only son from his wife Sarah, and it was Isaac who was the legitimate recipient of God’s covenant promise to Abraham.
In contrast to Ishmael, Isaac is referred to as the son “whom you love” in Genesis 22:2. Two millennia later, a voice from heaven spoke when Jesus was baptized. “You are My Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” (Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22, Matthew 3:17), and is an intentional allusion to Genesis 2:22.
GOD TESTED ABRAHAM’S FAITH
Then God tested Abraham’s faith again by asking him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering.
The Scripture says Abraham took Isaac and two servants, firewood for the burnt offering and his donkey, and set out for the region of Moriah. Their journey took them three days (Genesis 22:3–4). When they arrived, Abraham placed the wood on his son Isaac and He carried the fire and the knife himself. They then proceeded up the mountain.
When Isaac asked his father where the lamb for the burnt offering was, “Abraham answered, ‘God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ And the two of them went on together. God provided the lamb for Abraham and He also provided the Lamb for our atonement. Jesus is the Lamb of God (https://www.partneredwithchrist.com/the-lamb-of-god/).
“When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son,” (Genesis 22:8–10). Then the Lord stopped him and provided a ram for the sacrifice in place of Isaac.
“So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided,” (Genesis 22:14). This proclamation by Abraham served as a prediction that the Lord would provide a very special Lamb on that very mountain one day. We see Christ typified in the ram caught in the thicket. We see both atonement and substitution pointing to something greater. Abraham may have not understood it but God preordained it.
Because Abraham did not withhold his one and only son from God, the Lord promised that all nations on earth would be blessed through his descendants (Genesis 22:15 –18). The significance of this event cannot be overstated. It was the foreshadowing of Passover nearly two millennia later, when Jesus sent two of His disciples ahead before arriving in Jerusalem on a donkey.
Both Isaac and Jesus carried the wood up the hill (at least until Jesus could no longer manage to). It took about sixty pounds of wood to fuel a fire that would consume a burnt offering indicating Isaac was a young man and not a boy. This also indicates that Isaac would have had the strength to resist his elderly father if he chose, but he did not.
JESUS WENT WILLINGLY TO GOLGOTHA
Jesus went willingly to Golgotha. In John 10:17–18a, Jesus declares, “The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life–only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.” And Matthew 26:53 records that when Jesus was arrested by the Roman soldiers in Gethsemane, He proclaimed, “Do you think I cannot call on My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels”?
While hanging on the cross, Jesus was ridiculed. “Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘So! You are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!
“In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked Him among themselves. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘But He can’t save Himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe,’” (Mark 15:27–32). Jesus was the obedient Son, even to death (Philippians 2:8).
The hills at Jerusalem are the very same hills that Isaac ascended with Abraham. In 2 Chronicles 3:1 we are informed that Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah. A place where countless lambs would be sacrificed to the Lord and where the Lamb of God Himself would atone for all sin.
And in the same manner that Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife, a Roman soldier raised his hand and took the spear that pierced the side of Jesus Christ.
The three days that it took Isaac to reach Moriah are symbolic of the three days Jesus was in the tomb. And the words of Abraham to the two servants, “We will worship and we will come back to you,” (Genesis 22:5b) signify the return to life that Isaac metaphorically experienced and that Jesus would validate by resurrecting from the grave. The writer of Hebrews tells us, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, He did receive Isaac back from death,” (Hebrews 11:19).
The one and only Son of God was not withheld as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. These were not unrelated random events–they were orchestrated by God and serve to illustrate that God is in control. In the two thousand years that have passed since Jesus was resurrected, the Lord has not forgotten us nor forsaken us.
NOT A PREMONITION
God’s instructions to Abraham were not a premonition but an intentional illustration of the precision with which He operates. Abraham did not live to see the day when all nations would be blessed through his descendants and many Christians will not see the return of Jesus in their lifetimes.
Peter teaches in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” There is methodology in having to wait. Patience teaches perseverance which builds character (Romans 5:4).
We seldom understand God’s purpose while we are suffering, but perceive His purpose in hindsight. After He resurrected, Jesus walked with Cleopas and another follower along the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35). They were trying to piece together all that had happened in the days after Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey and was crucified.
After Jesus listened to their story, “He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter His glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself.”
John 3:16 ties Abraham’s experience to God’s grander plan. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And the apostle Paul goes to great lengths explaining how we are saved by grace, through faith (Romans 10:4–13, Ephesians 2:8–9) and children of God through faith (Galatians 3:26–29).
In Galatians 3:6–9 he writes, “Consider Abraham: ‘He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”
Beginning in Genesis, all Scripture points to Jesus. Paul informs us, “That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). The correspondence between Isaac’s Moriah experience and Jesus’s crucifixion is both strong and striking. Typological transcripts reveal biblical patterns and the interconnectedness of Scripture that enhances our understanding of God’s redemptive plan.
