Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah
“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,” Gen. 22:1,2.
I enjoy the figurative, symbolic, lessons of the Bible. Most of us understand word pictures, and illustrations, better than we do abstract explanations, and the Bible provides us with an abundance of types, shadows, and figures, especially in the stories of the Old Testament. Sometimes those lessons can be hard to understand, but when we once recognize what is under consideration, the lesson usually becomes very clear, and very simple.
I hear people complain about how hard the Bible is to understand, but usually the people who talk that way are people who rarely ever pick up the Bible in the first place. They have no idea what it teaches, because they have no idea what it says.
God intends for the Bible to be read and understood. Simplicity is the very hallmark of the Bible. Paul said, “For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward,” 2 Cor. 1:12.
In the types, and shadows, and figures of the Bible, God used people, and events, to act out some of the most profound Bible truths. And they acted out those truths in a way that, once we recognize the lesson, it sticks in our mind much better than bare words and arguments ever could.
The passage before us provides one of the clearest Old Testament figures of the substitutionary death, and sacrificial atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The various elements of this figure are clear symbols of what Christ accomplished in his death, burial, and resurrection.
We are told that God did tempt Abraham. The word tempt has more than one meaning.
It does not always mean to entice to do evil. God never did entice anybody to do evil.
James said, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man,” James 1:13.
God did not entice Abraham to do evil; but he did test him; he proved him. God did not test Abraham for his own benefit; God already knew exactly what Abraham would do. There is nothing God does not know, and you can be sure he knew what Abraham would do, better than Abraham did. God understands us better than we understand ourselves.
But God tested Abraham, tried him, proved him for my benefit and yours. In this scene between Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah God used those two men to act out a clear and detailed preview of the grandest transaction of all time. Two thousand years later—if not on this very spot, at least in sight of this spot—the grandest transaction of time and eternity was going to take place.
“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.”
We know this is a figure, because the Bible says it is. Not every event, and not every character in the Old Testament, is a symbol or a figure of something. Preachers can wear themselves out, trying to find a figurative lesson, when there is no figure, no shadow, no type, involved. One of the percs that goes with the territory, if you have been preaching for a while, is that sometimes a young preacher will ask you, “What does this passage mean?” I read the passage, and I tell him, “This is what they did, and this is what they said, and these were the consequences; that is all I see in the text.”
“But don’t these things represent something?”
“No, not that I can tell. This is what they did, and this is what they said, and these were the consequences.”
“But, isn’t there another lesson in addition to that.”
“No, this is what they did, and this is what they said, and these were the consequences.”
But, sometimes he will just wear himself out, trying to find some deep, dark lesson that is not there in the first place. I believe that one reason so many people are sure they cannot understand the Bible is that they have been taught to look for something that is not there to be found. I believe that if there is a figurative lesson in any passage, it will be fairly clear there is a figure involved.
One way you can know that something is a figure is that the Bible calls it a figure. That should be simple enough. Baptism is a figure of death, burial, and resurrection. The Bible calls it a figure in so many words. Peter said, “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God.” Human ingenuity cannot design a clearer figure—a clearer illustration—of death, burial, and resurrection than baptism by immersion in water.
The sacrifices of the Law Service, the lambs, the turtle doves, the bullocks, were figures of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible makes that plain enough. But lest we might have missed the point, Isaiah explains it for us.
“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. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth,” Isa. 53:6,7.
When the Lord finally did appear on the scene, God had John the Baptist, standing in the river of Jordan, with a huge crowd standing there, waiting to be baptized. And, with that crowd of people looking on, he pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” John 1:29.
The type was finally giving way to the antitype, and God would not allow us to miss the point.
God intended for his people to see those Old Testament sacrifices as illustrations of the various aspects of the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he intended that, for centuries to come, preachers would use those figures to explain what he accomplished on behalf of his people. He provided this fairly simple, and easy to understand way, for preachers to explain the gospel.
Paul shows that the Tabernacle was itself “a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect,” Heb. 9:9.
It prefigured, or illustrated, what the Lord would be to his people, and what he would do for them.
Another way to know that a person is a figure is that the Bible calls the figure, and the object of the figure, by the exact same name. Joshua was a figure of the Lord. Joshua, or Jehoshua, in the Old Testament, and Jesus in the New Testament are the same name in two different languages.
Joshua in the Hebrew, and Jesus in the Greek, both mean deliverer, or savior. It was as Joshua went around with a sign on his back, saying “My name is Joshua; I am a figure of the Savior.”
David was one of the clearest Old Testament figures of the Lord. He was such a clear figure of the Lord that, in some Old Testament passages—Psalms 89 for instance—it is not always easy to tell if the writer is talking about David the son of Jesse, or the Greater David, the Son of God.
I am convinced that if there is a figurative lesson in any passage, the figure is usually fairly easy to recognize. And if the figure is not fairly clear, I think it is a good idea to just leave it alone.
Preachers would get in a lot less trouble if we never did explain anything we do not understand.
In this text Abraham the father of Isaac, is a figure of the God the Father. Isaac, the son of Abraham is a figure of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure that out. God calls Isaac thy son, thine only son in order to let us know he is a figure of God’s only Son.
But the Bible makes it clearer than that. Paul says, “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten Son,” Heb. 11:17. We have heard that expression before, haven’t we?
“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,” John 3:16. God saw to it that the translators used the exact same expression in referring both to Isaac and the Lord Jesus Christ. They are both called his only begotten son. He will not let us miss the point.
That expression is the way the words appear in the King James Version of the Bible. I am not going to wax so bold as to say the King James translators were inspired in the same way the apostles and prophets were inspired. That is not true. The apostles and prophets were inspired in a manner that no other group of men ever has been. When they were writing the things they wrote in the Bible, God would not allow them to make a mistake. But, on the other hand, I do not have the slightest doubt that those honorable and godly men who translated the King James Version of the Bible were mightily influenced and assisted by the Lord’s Spirit.
Their work was very much like the preaching of a minister who is preaching under the power and demonstration of God’s Spirit. No minister of today is infallible. No matter how powerfully he may be preaching, he can still make mistakes, even when he feels to be the closest to the Lord.
But while that is true, when he is preaching under the influence of the Spirit, he is able to preach with an ability which is not his own. While I would not claim infallibility for the King James translators, I have no doubt that we can see the immediate influence of God’s Spirit evident in their work, and I become very impatient when I hear others, who are much less informed, and probably much less spiritual, challenging their conclusions. I have no doubt that it was the Spirit of God that prompted them to use the exact same words in referring both to Isaac and to the Lord. God will not allow us to miss the point.
By the way, if I might digress for a moment. John 3:16 is not an Arminian text. There is not an Arminian text in the Bible. Those who teach the Arminian system manage to come up with their proof texts by taking those verses, which either identify the children of God, or make conditional promises to the children of God, and applying them to the wicked.
On the basis of those texts—which are the property of the children of God—they tell the wicked, “If you will do thus and so you will become a child of God.” But those promises were never intended for the wicked. Those verses were intended for heaven-born souls. Without exception, those texts are either conditional promises to those who are already born of the Spirit of God, or they are texts which identify the heaven-born soul by describing his conduct. No one has the right to take those texts and pretend they are propositions directed toward the wicked.
But, back to our subject.
God’s Spirit went all through the Bible putting little clues all along the way. He provided passages, and expressions, that are intended to shine the light on each other. I love to find those things that connect up. They just snap together. Those verses are made just like they were intended to fit together.
Some of you who are my age might remember a fad that came along about fifty years ago. Do you remember snap beads? They were made out of plastic, and they were about as tacky as anything can get, but they illustrate my point. Those little beads were made so you could snap them together to form gaudy little bracelets and necklaces. They were about the tackiest things I ever saw, but they lasted for a little while, and then, like all fads, they disappeared. But the point is that they were made to pop together.
A lot of these passages are like that. They are intended to just pop together. They connect to each other, and explain each other. I believe that is an indication of the way we are to study the Bible. We are to look for these simple connections. It did not take a rocket scientist to put snap beads together. A little two or three year old could do it. And I tell you, any heaven born soul, with just normal understanding can go through the Bible, and understand all he needs to understand about what he is reading.
Abraham was a symbol of God the Father; Isaac, his only begotten son, was a symbol of God’s only begotten son. God says to Abraham, “Take now thy son, thine only son 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.”
It was not enough that Isaac should be offered on just any mountain. God would lead Abraham to the mountain, but, it had to be a particular mountain—one mountain—in the land of Moriah. He would have to walk for three days to get to that mountain. Later on that mountain was called Mount Moriah.
It was on that same mountain, a thousand years later, that David offered a sacrifice, and Jerusalem was spared (2 Sam. 24:18-25). The destroying angel was going through the land. Seventy thousand people had already died. The angel had his hand stretched out over the city of Jerusalem, which was itself a symbol of the people of God. They were under the sentence of death.
David, the son of Jesse was here a clear symbol of the Greater David, the Son of God. He offered a sacrifice, and because those sacrificial animals died, the people of Jerusalem lived. The entire matter was a clear figure of the sacrificial death of Christ on behalf of his people. All the elements of the figure fit in place.
Because Christ died in our room and stead we were delivered from the sentence of death. David would not accept the offer of Araunah (Ornan) to give him the animals to sacrifice; he insisted on paying for the full price (vs. 24). The purchase price that was paid for our redemption was the most expensive transaction the world has ever known; the Lord Jesus paid that price, by the offering of himself. The city was delivered by the offering of that sacrifice, but God had already determined to deliver the city before the offering was made (vs 16).
That is a figure of God’s determining before the foundation of the world that he would save his people by the offering of his son. All the different parts of the figure fit; it all took place on the same mountain on which Isaac was offered; and it is all a figure of what God would do on behalf of his people—on this very mountain.
Bear in mind that Solomon’s Temple was built at Jerusalem (on Mount Moriah at the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite, 2 Chr. 3:1) . The Lord was crucified at Jerusalem, on a little hill called Calvary, just outside the wall of the city of Jerusalem. The offering of Isaac, and David’s sacrifice at the threshing floor of Ornan, were both figures of the offering of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary, and Abraham walked for three days in order to arrive at the very place where, two thousand years later, the Lord would suffer and die.
The Bible does not say that Abraham set up his altar on the very spot where the cross was set up, but it is hard for me to imagine that God required Abraham to walk three days to arrive at this place, and only had him to build the altar somewhere on the mountain. I believe he built the altar on the very spot where—two thousand years later —the cross would be set up.
The offering of Isaac was a figure of the greatest transaction of time and eternity, and God caused Abraham to walk for three days in order to act out this figure at the very place where the transaction would take place. The solemnity of all that took place there—over a period of two thousand years—is awesome beyond expression.
“And Abraham rose up early in the morning….” (vs. 3).
The salvation of his people was not an afterthought with God. He began very early— before the foundation of the world. “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in him before the world began,” 2 Tim. 1:9.
God does not have a Plan B. He has known from the very beginning what he was going to do with regard to the salvation his people, and he has never wavered from it. There are those who believe God has tried any number of ways of saving people, and for the most part, failed in the effort.
There is one false religion called Dispensationalism that teaches he has tried five different ways to save people; the gospel is his sixth effort, and he has one more thousand year effort (his seventh attempt) yet to go.
Others believe the Mosaic Law was one effort of saving people, and he abandoned that effort, because he imagined the gospel would be a more efficient way of saving people. But none of that is right; God only has one way of saving people for heaven. There is only one way of saving people that would have been consistent both with his justice and his mercy.
He will save his people, but he will save them in a just and righteous manner. He will save them by fully atoning for their sins— fully removing their guilt—and imputing his own righteousness to them.
“Known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world,” Acts 15:18.
“But he is in one mind, and who can turn him, and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth,” Job 23:13.
I like the expression somebody used in describing an Old Baptist preacher. The old brother said, “That Old Baptist preacher, he like an old ram.” He said, “When that Old Baptist preacher start to preach, he just back up, and he back up, and he back, until he back up all the way before the foundation of the world, and here he come.”
The old brother had a quaint way of telling it, but he was right. We like to go all the way back to the beginning. God has never changed his way of saving sinners, and it is the very way he determined on from the foundation of the world.
For those three days Isaac was under the sentence of death. I believe those three days are a figure of the three years of the public ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. During all that time the Lord Jesus Christ was under the sentence of death.
“And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled the ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad man will go yonder and worship, and come again to you” (vss 3-5).
These young men followed Abraham and Isaac to the foot of the mountain. But that was as far as they could go. There were young men, twelve of them, who followed the Lord as far as they could go. Abraham told these men, Abide ye here…. The Lord told the disciples, Tarry ye here…. (Matt. 26:38).
The figure is clear enough; these young men were figures of those disciples who followed the Lord, but who could only follow him so far. They could not go the rest of the way with him.
The Lord said, “I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the people, there was none with me,” Isa. 63:3.
There was a transaction that was going to take place on that mountain, and these young men had no part in that transaction. And there was a transaction that took place on Calvary, and the twelve disciples had no part in that transaction. The one is a figure of the other.
The apostles were witnesses for the Lord. They walked with him and talked with him for three years. They were witnesses of the message he preached. They were witnesses of his suffering and death.
They were witnesses of his resurrection. But they had no part in what took place on Calvary.
What took place that day on that little mountain called Calvary was the most momentous transaction in all of time and eternity, and no one had any part in that transaction except the Lord Jesus Christ and his Father.
“And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you,” (vs. 5).
I do not believe Abraham entirely understood all that would take place on the mountain. He had no idea how far this would go. But he was convinced that no matter how far it went, he and Isaac were going up on the mountain, and he and Isaac were going to come back down again.
Paul explained it for us. Let me go back to the text we read a moment ago.
“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.
“And they came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order” (vs. 9).
Abraham laid the wood in order. Every aspect of our salvation is in order. There are no contradictions, nothing that does not fit. Sixty two years ago, I began preaching in denominational churches. That was all I knew, and for several years I did the best I could to preach their doctrine; but I just could not make it all add up. One part of their doctrine would contradict another part of their doctrine. I was convinced there ought to be some kind of order, some kind arrangement. I thought the doctrine should all fit together, and I just could not make it fit. After awhile the doctrine did all begin to come together, but by the time I began to find some kind of order in the doctrines of the Bible, I found myself preaching principles that were very different to what I had been taught.
For about two years, I found myself preaching the doctrine of salvation by God’s sovereign grace in denominational churches. That was an interesting situation. I finally learned about the Primitive Baptists and found a home among them. I was convinced all along that there was an order to the doctrine of the Bible, that it should all come together in some kind of system.
It was the delight of my life to discover a people who knew something about what that order was and appreciated it as much as I did.
Our people don’t have seminaries. We are not interested in having seminaries. But Primitive Baptist preachers are the most systematic preachers on earth with regard to the system of Bible doctrine. There is a system—an order if you will—about the doctrine of the Bible, and if any Bible student will study the Bible, and just let it say what it says, that system, that order, will become abundantly apparent.
“Abraham….laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood” (vs 9). Isaac submitted to be bound. There is no question about that; but he was bound, nonetheless. When the Lord was crucified, there were people milling around at the foot of the cross, challenging him to come down from the cross.
“And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross….He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God,” Matt. 27:39,40,42,43.
Ever since I was a little boy, I have heard the question asked, “Was it possible; for the Lord to come down from the cross?” I have heard some people argue that he could have come down from the cross, if he chose to. And I have heard others argue, just as vehemently, that he could not come down.
Let me tell you. There was no way the Lord could come down from the cross. But, somebody protests, “Now, hold on just a minute; my Lord can do anything he chooses to do.” That is right; God can do anything he chooses to do; but he could not come down from the cross. Why could he not come down from the cross? He was bound there, and there was no way to break that bond. Those nails could not hold him on the cross. He created every atom and every molecule in those nails. He could have vaporized those nails into oblivion any time he wanted to.
That was not what held him there.
What did hold the Lord on the cross? He was bound there by his own word. He had promised that he would do what he was doing, and he was bound by his own word to do it. There is an expression I used to hear a lot. I don’t hear it much anymore. But I used to hear people say, “Let your word be your bond.” I don’t hear that expression as much as I used to.
Sometimes people promise to do something, and they do not have any intention of doing what they say they will do. But I can tell you this. If God says he will do something, you can put it in the bank.
“The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand,” Isa. 14:24.
God swore to it. God cannot even think a lie, much less tell a lie. But, more than that, God swore he would do all he purposed to do. The Bible does not mention many things God cannot do. He cannot deny himself (2 Tim. 2:13). He cannot swear by one greater than himself (Heb. 6:13). And he cannot lie. (Heb. 6:18).
In other words, he cannot do anything that is contrary to his own nature and attributes.
If God had failed to do all he purposed to do—all he swore he would do—you would not think very much of him, would you?
Sinful man routinely goes back on his promises, but we should never imagine that God would do any such thing. Could he come down from the cross? No, he could not come down from the cross. He was bound there by his own word. He was bound there by his own nature and attributes. That is the tightest of all bonds.
“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.”
“And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord, it shall be seen. 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 heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies” (vss 14-17).
THE END