Abraham was given extraordinary insight into the part Jesus would play in the blessings God had promised him – when God told him in Genesis 22:2, “take your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there.”
Because if Abraham went through with sacrificing his son, God promised in verse 18 that “all nations on earth will be blessed because you obeyed me.” The result of this one act, then, would impact the whole world. But why this act of killing his son of all things? And especially since Abraham knew God’s promises were going to be fulfilled through his son Isaac too (Genesis 15:4, 17:19).
So what went through Abraham’s head to make him willing to go through with the sacrifice?
Well, according to Hebrews 11:19, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.” That was the direction of his thinking. It wasn’t questioning God’s promise, because Isaac’s miraculous birth had already proved God stuck to his promises. So God breaking a promise was out of the question. For God to be true to his promise, therefore, he’d have to raise Isaac back from the dead. A staggering proposition, but what other solution was there?
But it still seemed like a strange thing God was asking him to do, unless the death of Isaac would somehow connect to the whole world being blessed as well. But how?
Well, Genesis 22 showed him how. It was God asking Abraham to sacrifice “the son he loved” that clued him in (2). It would help Abraham see that for God to bless the whole world – that by his standards deserved to be dead forever – he, God himself, would be making the ultimate sacrifice of the son he loved too. Which was another staggering proposition, but this was the route God had decided to go, and in asking Abraham to go the same route it would make real the sacrifice that God himself was willing to make to rescue humanity from eternal death.
It would also make real the willingness of Jesus to be the sacrifice. Which is what Abraham saw as he looked down at his son on the altar, already bound and knowing what was coming next, but utterly willing and trusting in what it was for too. It was in his own son, then, that Abraham was being given the chance to see Jesus and the part he was so willing to play as well.
To the next blog, then: “Did Abraham know Jesus would be the Saviour?”
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