Foreshadowed, Part 2

In Genesis 22 we find another foreshadowing, another picture of the coming of the Lord Jesus. Abraham has been told by God to take his son, Isaac, to Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice to God. God was testing Abraham’s faith to see if he really loved God. Abraham obeyed and set out toward the mountain with the servants, Isaac, wood and fire. Isaac recognised that they were missing one very important ingredient, and asked his father where the lamb for the burnt offering was. In Genesis 22:8 we find his answer. ‘And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.’

I’m not sure Abraham fully understood what he had to say there, but I know what God meant by it. Abraham may have meant, God will somehow provide, and God does eventually provide. But more importantly, God meant that one day God will provide Himself as a sacrifice. He’ll be the sacrifice.  That is literally what happened on the cross of Calvary, where it is God who becomes human flesh to die on the cross for your sins and mine.

Abraham and Isaac went on to Mount Moriah. Abraham laid his son down on the altar and raised the knife to the sky ready to plunge it into his son’s breast and kill him. But then an angel appeared and stopped Abraham. Look again at Genesis 22:13. ‘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.’ God knew that Abraham would not withhold his son but was willing to obey God. Therefore Isaac was spared and the ram that was caught in the brush was caught and offered as a sacrifice in the place of Isaac. That is exactly what happened when Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary. He died in your place to pay for your sin. This is another picture, a foreshadowing of the death of Christ in our place, found in the Old Testament.