Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.
2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” (Genesis 22:1-14 NIV)
Those who have had children know the frantic reaction most parents have when their newborn child has a fever. I speak from experience! It was the most helpless feeling in the world to check our baby's temperature and see it was 99.1 degrees. And of course, it was after hours and there was a call center that would take messages which they would relay to the pediatrician and when he finally called after fifteen minutes, he of experience knew how to talk us crazy nervous parents down to reality. "The baby is fine and some Tylenol will bring the fever down." And we were young! Imagine a man, who had been promised a son but who watied years and then had his wife suggest a surrogate son through their servant girl, and when finally God sent him Isaac, he's 100 years old. Now add the age that Isaac is at the time of this story, and the Bible does not give an exact age but add that to 100 and you get the age of Father Abraham. Now again, Christian tradition places Isaac in his teens to his 30s, but some traditions place him 25-37 years old. And the debate becomes why? Why in the first place? Why at that age?
Let's start with the first verse that says that God tested Abraham. And to be honest, it is the sort of test we'll see later at the hands and whim of Satan when old man Job goes through his ordeal; but this is God! God Himself initiates this. And the test could not be more severe — take your son, your only son, the one you love, and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you. This is not a baby's fever; this is the ultimate test! Now, we read this knowing how the story ends, which can make us soften it, rush past the horror of it. But Abraham didn't know how it would end. He rose early the next morning, split the wood, took the fire, and walked for three days with a knife in his hand and his son walking beside him, not knowing whether he would walk back down that mountain alone. How many of us could be doing that? I see no hands raised!
What's almost unbearable is the dialogue along the way. Isaac asks the question that must have lodged like a blade in Abraham's chest: "The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" And Abraham answers with words that are either the bravest or the most agonized in all of Scripture: "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son" (At any age, kids would catch on to what's going on?) He doesn't know how that will be true. He says it anyway. That's faith stripped down to its barest form — not certainty about outcomes, but trust in the character of the one who made the promise, even when every visible fact points the other way.
And then, at the last possible moment, with the knife raised, the angel of the Lord calls out and stops him. A ram appears, caught in a thicket. Abraham names that place Yahweh Yireh — the Lord will provide. The substitute appears exactly where Abraham needed it, exactly when he needed it, not a moment before. This is the pattern Scripture never abandons: God provides what we cannot provide for ourselves, and He provides it through substitution, through something given in the place of what was rightly required.
This ancient mountain in Moriah points forward to another hill, where another Father did not spare His own beloved Son, and where this time there was no angel calling out to stop the blade. Abraham's hand was stayed; the Father's was not. The ram in the thicket was a foretaste of the Lamb who would actually bear what we deserved, once and for all, so that the provision Abraham trusted for by faith became, in Christ, an accomplished fact for the whole world. And it's here that Pentecost enters the story, because the same Spirit who later raised that Lamb from the dead is the Spirit poured out on everyone who places their trust in Him — not leaving us to walk our own mountains alone, but living in us, interceding for us, groaning within us when the way ahead is unclear and the outcome is hidden. Abraham walked three days not knowing the ending. We walk forward carrying the Spirit of the One who already knows it, because the resurrection has already happened and the provision has already been made.
What this story asks of us isn't blind sacrifice for its own sake — it's the kind of trust that keeps walking toward the mountain because it believes the character of God more than it believes the darkness of the moment. Abraham held nothing back, and on the other side of that withholding, he received everything back, multiplied beyond what he could have imagined. The Spirit in us is the proof that we are not asked to provide what only God can provide. We are only asked to walk, to trust, and to let Him be Yahweh Yireh in the place where we cannot see the way through.
PRAYER: Loving God of life and love, increase our faith so that our trust can increase as well. Give us Abraham's kind of trust, the kind that keeps walking even before the way is clear, because we carry Your Spirit and trust Your provision. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Name the mountain you're currently walking toward without knowing the outcome, and tell God today that you trust Him to be Yahweh Yireh in that exact place.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Remember: The Lord will provide!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr/
