Abraham’s sacrificial offering of Isaac

Genesis 22: 1 – 2: And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

God gave Abraham a test in which was a mystery of what God would do for us. In Abraham’s passing of the test, God sealed His covenant with Abraham as recorded in Genesis 22: 15 – 18: And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

In this great test upon Abraham, God was also willing to do what He had required of Abraham to do, for we read that Abraham willingly offered up his son Isaac, bringing him on a donkey to the place of sacrifice with the wood of sacrifice placed on Isaac’s shoulder. Upon arriving at the mountain, Isaac then carried the wood up the mountain to the place of sacrifice where he was then laid upon the wood and bound to it by his father.

This was a shadow of what God would do to His Son. Jesus was brought on a donkey (on Palm Sunday) to Jerusalem, from which He would carry the wood of the cross on His shoulder to the place of His sacrifice at Calvary, where He was then laid upon it and nailed. As Abraham was stayed from killing his son Isaac, God did not stop the killing of His own Son, but instead let Jesus give His life for the sake of those whom He loved.

The first time the word “love” appears in the Bible is in this account of Abraham offering up his son (“Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest…”). So timely is the use of the word in this account, for it reveals to us that the first love in existence was that of the Heavenly Father for the Son, and yet the Heavenly Father was willing to offer up the Son of His love that we might receive salvation. God offered up the Son whom He so loved for our sakes because He loved us with the same love with which He loved the Son (John 3: 16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.).