510 The figure changed on Mount Moriah hlh “And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son,” (vs. 10).
At that moment, Isaac was as good as dead. Abraham had gone far enough. And, then an angel speaks from heaven.
“And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy Son, thine only son from me.”
At this point the figure changes. Up to this point, Isaac has been a symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ. When Abraham stretches forth his hand and takes the knife to slay Isaac, Isaac is as good as dead. Isaac represents the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, at that point, that part of the figure is complete.
Now the figure shifts to the “ram caught in a thicket by his horns” (vs. 12). The ram then becomes a figure of the Christ, and Isaac becomes a symbol of every heir of promise. There is a substitution that takes place. Substitution is at the very heart of the gospel.
“Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son” (vs 13).
The very heart of the gospel is that the Lord Jesus Christ took our place. “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all,” Isa. 53:5,6.
First, Isaac was bound on the altar. Then the ram was caught in a thicket by his horns. It is the same figure.
Isaac was bound; the ram was caught. They both represent the Lord binding himself to do all he promised to do. I love the way the Spirit goes through the Bible, providing figures, to illustrate the most profound of all truths, and scattering clear and simple clues all along the way. Then, lest we might have still missed the point, God sent John the Baptist to identify the Lord—to point him out as the Lamb of God, the great antitype of that sacrificial ram.
“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” John 1:29.
“And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son” (vss 12,13).
That is substitutionary atonement as clear as language can make it. Abraham “offered him up—in the stead of his son.”