15 Only two went up on the mountain hlh “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promise offered up his only begotten Son, of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called. Accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure,” Heb. 11:19.
Abraham was convinced that if it went that far, God was able to raise Isaac from the ashes, and he was sure he would do just that.
“And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son….” (Vs. 6).
The load Isaac carried up the mountain was a figure of the load the Lord carried to Calvary on our behalf. The wood did not represent the cross itself; a man named Simon helped to carry the cross, (Luke 23:26). The wood represented the load of my sins and yours. Abraham laid this load of wood on his son. God laid our iniquity on his son.
“And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all,” Isa. 53:6.
“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye are healed,” 1 Pet. 2:24.
The Lord carried our sins to Calvary, and there on Calvary he put our sins away.
“And he took the fire in his hand and the knife, and they went both of them together,” (vs. 6).
Abraham carried a fire up on the mountain. The Bible says, “For our God is a consuming fire,” Heb. 12:29. This fire, obviously, is a figure of the wrath of God against sin. The religious world has much to say about the love, and mercy, and grace of God. It does not have nearly so much to say about the justice and righteousness of God. They are not nearly so interested in the wrath of God against sin.
God is, indeed, loving, and merciful, and gracious; but he is also righteous and just in all he does.
God will save every heir of promise, every subject of his mercy and grace; but he will also be righteous and just in their salvation. He will not sacrifice his own justice in order to satisfy his love. Every attribute of God will be satisfied in the salvation of his people.
The fire will completely consume the wood; after the work is done, the wood will no longer exist. The wrath of God against sin did its work on Calvary. The wrath of God against sin was poured out on the person of his Son. He suffered the full penalty of the law against sin. The law can require no more; it is as though our sins had never been.
“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us,” Psa. 103:12.
He carried the fire in his hand, and a knife. I do not believe it takes the most brilliant person to recognize that this knife is the sacrificial blade of the Old Testament Law Service.
That same knife is found all through the Old Testament. That blade could kill, but it could not give life. No matter how much you sharpened it, it could never give life. The sharper you made it, the more effective it was at killing, but it could never give life.
And that describes the Law Service. The Law was always an instrument of death; it was never intended to give life. That is one thing the denominational world has never figured out. They seem to think the Law of Moses was one of the ways God used in an effort to save people from everlasting ruin.
We said it a moment ago. The various systems of doctrine seem to think God has a variety of ways of saving people. One system of doctrine teaches that God has tried six different methods.
They tell us we are presently in the sixth dispensation, and in this dispensation he is trying to save people with the gospel. They are sure he is largely going to be a failure in this effort too, but they tell us he has one more dispensation to go, and that dispensation is going to last a thousand years, and at that time, he will try just one more method of saving people.
God never has tried to do anything. God never has had more than one way of saving people for heaven, and the law is not it—it never was. No matter how sharp you make the sacrificial blade of the law, it can never give life.
There is another aspect to the symbolism of this knife. There is a scarlet ribbon that reaches from the morning of time all the way to the cross of Calvary. All through the Old Testament the priest would take the animal, often a lamb, and he would drive the sacrificial blade home into the heart of that little animal, and that rich, warm, red blood would flow out of the wound, over the blade, and perhaps, over the hand of the priest in charge.
Every time that service was performed it would extend that scarlet ribbon that reached all the way to Calvary. There at Calvary the Lord, the great antitype, poured out his own blood on behalf of his people. And there, at the end of the way, God stationed John the Baptist, pointing to the Lord, and saying, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” John 1:29.
“….and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together” (vs. 6)
They went both of them together. Abraham and Isaac were in agreement. Abraham could never have done what he did, if Isaac had not been agreeable to it. Abraham was way over a hundred years old at this time. Isaac was a young man in the very prime of life. Do you think Abraham could have bound Isaac on the altar, if Isaac had refused to be bound.
God the Father, and God the Son, are in agreement with regard to the matter of our salvation. The Lord Jesus Christ was perfectly willing to do all he did, and to suffer all he did on our behalf.
“Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God,” Heb. 10:7.
“And Isaac spake unto Abraham and said, My father, and he said, Here am I, my son, and he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together.”
There are three different ways you can read the expression, “God will provide himself a lamb.”
And no matter which way you read it, it is still right. I like texts you cannot read wrong. You can read this word himself to be what our English teachers call an appositive. God will himself provide a lamb. That is right, isn’t it? God will do the work himself. If you read it that way, it is right.
Or you can read the word himself to be a direct object. God will provide himself to be the lamb. The Lord Jesus Christ was and is God. He is as much God as the Father is God. He was God, when he went to Calvary. He always continued to be God. He continued to be what he had always been, and he took upon him what he had not previously had. He continued to be God, and he took on him a human nature. It was in his human nature that he suffered and died.
He was “put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit,” 1 Pet. 3:18. So if you read it to say that God will provide himself as a lamb, it is still right.
Or you can read the word himself to be an indirect object. You can read it to say that God will provide a lamb for himself. In other words, he will provide the lamb to satisfy the demands of his own righteous judgment against sin. You can read it that way, and it is right that way as well.
One thing I think people forget is that the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished something with regard to God himself. It satisfied the righteousness of God in the salvation of his people.
“To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,” Rom. 3:26.
The suffering and death of Jesus was for the purpose of satisfying the righteous demands of God in the salvation of his people. Without doing any damage to the verse, you can paraphrase it to say, “God himself, will provide himself, as a lamb for himself.” I like verses you cannot read wrong.