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If you would please turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis 22. After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham,’ and he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Mariah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’
So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.’
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘My father.’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’
Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham.’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from him.’
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day. On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.
And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son. I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies.
And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we hear your word and we wonder sometimes at the things that it contains. We wonder about what it says about you and we wonder about what it says concerning us. Help us to understand the truth, to see your eternal consistency, your unchanging nature, and to see how you make your promises that we do not deserve.
You make them by grace, and you keep them out of your love and mercy for us. Help us to hear you speak. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Sacrifice. It is something that people intrinsically know we ought to do. Yet, humanity has never really quite understood why or really know what it is that we should be sacrificing. Ancient peoples were just basically guessing, hoping that they were doing the right thing in order to please their gods.
Meanwhile, today us 21st-century people understand sacrifice even less than the ancients do. And once upon a time, some ancient peoples offered sacrifices as the necessary food for the gods because they believed that humanity was created for the purpose of being the gods’ servants to do all the different kinds of worldly work that they did not want to do so that the gods’ time could be freed up for their own pleasure.
Or once upon a time, some ancient people offered sacrifices as a means of divine bribery to try and influence their capricious gods to gain their favor as a kind of cosmic I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. But then also, once upon a time, some ancient people offered their sacrifices as a form of pure worship.
And this would be Adam’s priestly line told about in Scripture. This was born out of their love and devotion to the Lord. These sacrifices were made in thanksgiving for God’s good providence. So what does it mean to actually sacrifice? Old Webster provides what I think is the most plain and simple definition as to devote with loss.
But the modern Webster’s definition is a bit more greatly expanded and, for once, I think more helpful as the destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else. And so Christians, we interpret sacrifice as specifically being the giving up of or destruction of something of significant personal value for a perceived spiritual benefit.
This idea explains the Roman Catholic practice of giving something up for Lent, where through that personal but temporary intentional sacrifice, they believe a person might draw closer to Christ. But also along with the Jews, we understand that there are proper things and improper things to be sacrificed—clean and unclean animals or things that are close to your heart versus those things that are frivolous or things which you ought not to do or have anyways.
I mean, it would be no sacrifice for me to give up eating mushrooms because I’m allergic to them. I might end up on the floor in the hospital. But it’s a sacrifice my wife is willing to make because she loves to eat mushrooms. It’s something important and meaningful to her. But it would be frivolous for me.
And then there’s also proper and improper ways to sacrifice, such as dealing with the attitude of our heart when we do so. But most emphatically as Christians, we reject and deny the idea or suggestion that our sacrifices are a transactional means to positively influence God or to obligate and compel his favor or blessing.
Rather, it is a rightful kind of obedience to his sovereign commands for holy living. Scripture demonstrates the clear difference between a right and wrong attitude of sacrifice in the example given in the story of Cain and Abel because both men, they brought a sacrifice to the Lord. Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground, while Abel brought an offering of the firstborn of the flock and of their fat portions, the best portions.
But the Lord had a good regard for Abel’s sacrifice, but not for Cain’s. Why? Abel sacrificed the first and the best to God out of thanksgiving for his providence and bounty. Whereas Cain sacrificed the produce of his own choice, whatever it was that he thought God might like, grown out of his own pride’s effort.
What Cain failed to understand or appreciate was that even though he had worked the ground and put in all that effort to till and to plant and to harvest the produce, the Lord was actually the one that gave the increase and had causally given him everything he had. So the Lord provided the sacrifice for both Cain and for Abel, but only Abel acknowledged God’s provision of it.
Abel made his offering as a sacrifice of praise to the glory of God alone as an act of pure worship done in love because it was just the right thing to do. Meanwhile, God provided him both the means and the opportunity to do so.
But simply offering a sacrifice as an act of heartfelt worship was not the only reason for sacrifice commanded in Scripture. The other main and big reason was for the preservation, maintenance, or the restoration of holiness for ritual purification and the atonement of sin. This, that is the principal message of the whole book of Leviticus, to teach and to train God’s people how to be holy because the Lord our God is holy and because of Adam’s sin we are not.
But since we are neither holy nor intrinsically righteous, the Lord provided a way for us to become accounted as righteous through the sacrifice of an appropriate substitute. However, as the author of Hebrews explains, even by following the defined and prescribed process, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Because really, think about it. No mere animal is worth enough to satisfy the moral debt of a person’s sin—a cost which Scripture shows is even greater than just our human life. And through the process prescribed in Leviticus, the repentant sinner’s guilt was transferred to and removed by a scapegoat. Yet the actual sin—the actual debt of sin—was never truly paid.
And so the prescribed rituals of the day of atonement were not actually meant to be effective in themselves, but instead they directed a person towards faith in the Lord God, the one who is merciful and gracious to forgive. And so Christians, we understand this right as a prefigurement of Jesus Christ with Jesus as the true scapegoat who carried away and removed our sin and also paid our entire deserved penalty, satisfying the whole cost to tell us it is finished.
But we can’t reach that conclusion just by reading Leviticus 16. It’s not clear, nor is it reasonably an obvious leap of theological logic. We need something else before we can reach that gospel conclusion. We need the story of Isaac. See, Isaac, he is a critical figure in God’s story of redemption, but he seems almost unfairly ignored by Moses in Genesis.
I mean, Isaac seems to be overlooked and ignored because of the three principal patriarchs, he does not really do much of anything—certainly not as much as Abraham or Jacob. Rather, Scripture suggests that more was done to Isaac rather than was done by him. I mean, although he was not a perfect person, he also sinned; he is rather frequently portrayed like a victim.
I mean, consider all the different things that the Bible tells us was done to him. He was named Isaac, a name which means to laugh in Hebrew, on account of his mother Sarah’s laughter and her doubt of God’s word when she was told that she would have a child. Isaac was used as a pawn by Sarah to justify a power play against her servant Hagar and Abraham’s older and illegitimate child. He was almost sacrificed here as a test of Abraham’s faith.
He had a wife that was chosen and procured for him by his father’s servant. And he was tricked by his younger son Jacob, who stole the blessing intended for his firstborn son, Esau. I mean, each of these were rather unfortunate events, and some were more tragic than others, but really both the worst and the providentially best one is the event recorded by our Scripture text today.
See, God decided to test Abraham. And so the Lord said to him, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Mariah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’ And so Abraham did.
Now, there are three things to particularly note here in this. This is the only time—the only time in Scripture—when God commands or seems to require the sacrificial offering of a person’s life. Human sacrifice is not something that God desires or even accepts. However, although some people have tried to twist this story into something that impugns God’s character, it is more easily and rightly understood when we consider the second point that God commanded Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering.
Which leads us to conclude two things. Knowing the truth about God, a burnt offering was a kind of whole offering where the entire sacrifice was consumed and was not shared with either the priest or the worshipper as many sacrifices were. The burnt sacrifice belonged entirely to God. And so while Abraham was commanded and required to offer his son, he was not actually commanded to sacrifice Isaac.
God was not required to accept Isaac as a burnt offering. Only the act of offering was truly necessary. And Isaac is called Abraham’s only son here, forgetting or ignoring Ishmael perhaps, but really it translates a Hebrew term that is best understood in the sense of being solitary or unique.
And so it is an important distinction that’s further expanded upon by the author of Hebrews in their retelling of this story, saying, ‘By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.’
As Isaac was being Abraham’s menogynes—or his only begotten son, a term used to describe Jesus most famously there in John 3:16. So really, the test was to see whether Abraham was willing to sacrifice his beloved and uniquely born son—the person most important and beloved by Abraham, the person in whom all of his hope for God’s promises rested. Testing whether he would trust God and trust in God’s promises even with what seemed to be the polar opposite.
Testing to see if Abraham’s faith, his past, was consequentially and effectively real. But God knew the answer already. Yet Abraham did not know yet. See, the true test of every person’s faith is when we are called upon to stand firm and risk severe negative consequences—whether that’s our lives, our livelihood, our wealth, our health, or our relationships. Only then may a person know how real their faith is and how strong or how weak it is.
So I urge you to pray that whenever your faith is tested—because it will be—you will always stand fast and hold firm to Christ and God’s promises. Now, Abraham’s faith, his confidence in the Lord, was so strong that not only did he willingly set off to sacrifice his son, but he also handled the preparations personally.
He cut the wood for the burnt offering, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife, except that he laid the wooden burden upon Isaac to carry, making his son carry the intended means of his destruction. But through it all, Isaac was the dutiful and obedient son. He raised no complaint—at least Scripture records no complaint. He just merely asked his father, ‘Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’
And his father confidently answered him, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering.’
Myself fully knowing that since Isaac was his child of promise, his divinely prophesied and provided miracle baby, that he had already been truly provided by God. But when Abraham went to bind his son and place him on the altar, I cannot imagine that Isaac meekly submitted. Surely he must have struggled and tried to resist before Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But we do need to pause here and consider how this story so far relates to our understanding of Jesus Christ. So believing that the whole of Scripture is about Jesus—either as pointing ahead to him, telling his express story, or explaining his completed work—we may observe a similarity here to the crucifixion, with Abraham being analogous to God the Father and Isaac to God the Son, Jesus.
And see, the Lord God the Father prepared the tree that would eventually become the cross through his act of creation and providence, causing it to grow. And the Lord God the Father sovereignly ordained and prophesied the means by which Jesus would unjustly die at the hands of wicked men. And Jesus, God the Son, obediently carried the burden of his own cross, the implement for his execution.
And Jesus, God the Son, went to the cross without objection, without question or complaint, simply praying, ‘My father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’ Very similar indeed. But the greatest difference between Isaac and Jesus in the story is that Isaac was to be an unwilling sacrifice, while Jesus was willingly doing what he had been sent to do.
Isaac had to hope. He had to trust and believe that his father was right and that the Lord would provide an alternative sacrifice. Well, Jesus knew that he was—that he is—the Lord’s provided sacrifice. Now that we’ve identified these similarities, we can return to their narrative.
And so, as Abraham began to thrust the knife into his innocent victim, the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham.’ And Abraham said, ‘Here I am.’ Preventing him from killing or harming Isaac. Then Abraham heard, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’
And looking up, behold, behind him—behind the angel of the Lord—was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Therefore, immediately upon Abraham’s act of offering up Isaac, the Lord stopped him and provided him with a substitute sacrifice.
The Lord accepted Abraham’s devotional offer of Isaac, but he refused to accept the sacrifice of Isaac’s life. But Abraham had made a promise that created a moral debt which he needed to keep. Yet the Lord would not allow him to keep it or to pay the debt himself. God’s intervention and his refusal effectively told Abraham that your money, your sacrifice is no good here.
And so instead, God allowed, maybe God forced Abraham to pay his debt using God’s currency. Regardless, by demonstrating his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, the truth of Abraham’s faith was proven, and his prior gracious receipt of God’s promises was proven justified by the evidence of this work that was done in faith.
And the gracious implication of this evidence is why the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord. Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son. I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies.
And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.’ But these promises were nothing new since God had already promised to bless him and make his name great back in Genesis 12. God had already promised to multiply his offspring like the stars of heaven in Genesis 15.
God had already promised that his offspring would possess the land of Canaan, home of their enemies, back in Genesis 12:15 and 17. And God had already promised that all the nations—everyone—would be blessed through him back in Genesis 12. See, these promises were not anything new to Abraham, but they were reaffirmed and more surely confirmed by the Lord’s unbreakable oath—an oath made because of Abraham’s obedient expression of faith, ‘because you have obeyed my voice.’
And these absolutely sure and certain promises were being made and received on behalf of the true ultimate offspring of Abraham, Jesus Christ. And so while we can now easily see how the first part of the story relates to the crucifixion, explaining what was relationally happening, it’s the latter portion that helps us to interpret the crucifixion in light of the work of the high priest on the day of atonement.
Without going into all the details, when making atonement for the people, the high priest as their mediator would transfer the people’s sin to a goat, imputing their guilt onto an innocent sacrifice who would then be punished as their substitute. However, since the scapegoat was only cast out, was only sent away and exiled from the camp, it figuratively removed their guilt of sin. But the people never actually dealt with their sin.
So no matter the calculus used, this process neither could truly satisfy nor cancel their moral debt of sin. But because God had prescribed this process for their atonement, they could believe. They could trust and have faith that God would truly forgive their sin. So it was not their offerings nor their sacrifices that mattered to affect their atonement, but that through their faith in the Lord alone—in Jesus—they would be forgiven.
The operative means for the atonement was their expression of faith made through the offering of this divinely appointed and provided substitute. Because God is as just as he is merciful, he could not just handwave our sin away and forgive it because sin requires punishment—because a moral crime is committed. Therefore, someone must do the time for justice to be done.
Therefore, for God to grant mercy, to grant his mercy to sinners by grace alone, a willing and perfectly righteous substitute is logically necessary. But since our physical death is not enough to satisfy the divine justice required by our transgressions of God’s law and sin, only God can afford to pay our debt. He alone has enough of the proper currency.
And so like Abraham and the ancient Israelites, we must trust and believe that the Lord will provide and has provided a substitute sacrifice for us in the perfect life and death of Jesus Christ. See, Jesus Christ is the true scapegoat, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the substitute sacrifice provided by the Lord.
He was the perfect sinless and without blemish sacrifice. He had the spiritual burden of our sin guilt laid upon him by the Father as he carried the physical burden of the cross. He thus carried our sins away, removing them from outside the camp and from his people, executed outside of the city walls.
He was made to be accursed so that we might be blessed, receiving the promises of Abraham. He was forsaken so that we might be adopted. And he suffered the whole decreed penalty for sin and satisfied the whole requirements of justice by his death on the cross, ‘to Telisar.’
And so while Jesus is similar to Isaac in this story, he is better identified with the ram that was provided by God as the substitute. The ram was provided by the Lord as an act of divine mercy to Isaac and as an act of divine justice to satisfy Abraham’s offer of Isaac.
Because see, God did not need to provide Abraham with the ram as a substitute for Isaac, but he did so out of love. God did not need to provide the ancient Israelites with a means of hope for the atonement of their sin, but he did so out of love. God did not need to provide us with salvation in Christ Jesus. God did not need to provide us with redemption, adoption, or forgiveness in Christ Jesus.
God did not need to bless us with mercy and grace in this wonderful act of nonjustice, but he did need to impose justice on our sin and wickedness. And yet he did all of this out of love. Therefore, before the foundation of the world, God the Son covenanted with God the Father to redeem a definitely predestined people by personally atoning for their sin on the cross and to apply this redemption to them through God the Holy Spirit as the greatest sovereign act of divine mercy and grace in love.
And the Lord provided all of creation for us, granting us dominion and authority over it. But we soiled it, and we corrupted it with our sin. But God still, in love, provided for our and its redemption and restoration for his glory and honor. The Lord sent his menogynes, his only begotten Son, into the world to live and die as our gracious provision of mercy and forgiveness.
And then the Lord raised his Son from the dead to provide us with the sure and confirmed hope in all of his promises of blessing and of life and an eternal home. So let us all praise and thank God for Jesus Christ, for he is risen. Hallelujah. Amen.