Read: Genesis 22
THEME: There are some incidents in Abraham’s life that are hard to explain unless we see how God’s grace towards us can make us gracious towards others.
There is no more challenging incident in Abraham’s extremely eventful life than the offering of Isaac. Abraham was not an isolated man. His household was established in the midst of Canaanite tribes, all of which embraced a catalogue of disturbing practices, with sacrificing children to gain their gods’ favour high on their lists.
As Abraham set out with a knife in his hand, and Isaac walked beside him with firewood on his back, neither had any idea what God was about to do. That great phrase ‘God Himself will provide’ was yet to reverberate in their hearts. But Abraham knew the grace of God and that Isaac alongside him was the child of promise, so he spoke boldly to the young men accompanying them saying, ‘the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you’.
The ram that took Isaac’s place on the altar was a testimony to us all, not just to Abraham and the tribes that surrounded him. And somehow Isaac must have seen an expectation of God’s intervening grace in his father’s caring eyes as he endured the whole symbolic ordeal.
We should be grateful that we do not live in the Canaan of Abraham’s day but we still live in a needy world and must be grateful for the grace of God, which in Christ has made the ultimate provision for us.
May we constantly respond to the grace that God has shown us in giving us His Son.