When God asks for your Isaac.

This isn’t a comfortable story; it feels unpalatable and evil. However, within it lies an essential question from God: Can I have your Isaac?

Isaac was the promised child of Abraham and Sarah, given to them in their old age, against all hope. Isaac was the future destiny for a nation to be born, and now God asks for him back.

“Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. ² Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” ³ Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. ⁴ On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. ⁵ He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” ⁶ Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, ⁷ Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” ⁸ Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.” (Genesis 22 v 1-10)

Have you noticed, as you have read these verses, that there is little conversation from Abraham? He didn’t negotiate with God. He didn’t resist. We don’t know whether he spent the night wrestling with his thoughts. Early the next morning, he just got up and moved ahead with God’s plan. Then there are three days of walking towards Mount Moriah. Three days of talking with his son, presumably. Three days of looking at him. Three days of wondering what would happen.

Isaac thinks he knows what will happen. His father will build an altar and place a lamb on it as an act of worship to God. But where is the lamb? His father’s answer is either confidence or hope. “God will provide the lamb.”

God did (for we know the story), and God will, thousands of years later, in the sending of His Son (again, we see the story).

We have seen Abraham build his first altar at Shechem when he arrived in Canaan; then at Bethel and Ai at Hebron; and at the Mamre tree in Hebron. But this time the stones must have seemed heavier, for this is his Isaac.

This altar is as much a part of Abraham’s worship as the previous three. But more than this. If the altar is a place of worship, it is also a place of death. It is here that we know that everything we have is God’s. He is worthy of our everything.

The location of this altar of death is where King David purchased the ground to build an altar after a plague (2 Chronicles 3 v 1), and where his son, Solomon, would make what is now known as the Temple Mount, the centre of Israelite worship, and where generations have brought sacrifices. Though not the exact location, it is also the religious place that calls out to Golgotha, in the same region, the place where God the Father would see His Son sacrificed.

As with his father, Isaac has little conversation. He is roped down onto the altar, and he doesn’t say a word. Where is the lamb? Perhaps they are thinking the same thing at the same time. They both laid their agendas down. They both approach death. Of course, they are approaching their obedience, and their trust in God is being severely tested.

Whatever Isaac is for you, what do you do when God asks for it?

The knife is raised, and that’s where we stop reading.

We know what comes next, but father and son didn’t have that guarantee; they had faith.

The altar on Moriah stands as a testimony that God meets us in our impossible moments, that obedience paves the way for revelation, and that the willingness to lose everything often leads to discovering God’s provision.