Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3523
“And Abraham said, My son, God willprovide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” Genesis 22:8.
How stern the trial! How striking the triumph! How sublime, both in action and passion, was the faith of Abraham in that terrible crisis. It pleased God to try him on a very tender point. Abraham had received a great promise, on the fulfillment of which he greatly relied. Year after year elapsed, but no sign of the long-looked-for child appeared. At length old age crept over the Patriarch and his wife. Still he looked steadfastly for the promise because he believed implicitly in the Promiser. He considered not the infirmities of his own body, nor the deadness of Sarah’s womb—he waited patiently, not doubting that God would, in due time, according to His promise, give him a son. What marvel, then, that this son, when born, should be the object of Abraham’s fondest affection? Moreover, a strange halo of hope gathers round the lad’s head, for God has made him the heir of a Covenant. It is in Isaac and in Isaac’s seed that God will fulfill His Covenant which He has made with Abraham. No, something still more mysterious is linked with that youth’s life. It is in him that all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And now, when the Lord says, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love,” there is a cut in every word at the most tender part of Abraham’s soul. To slay his own son, to cut off his hope of posterity, to sacrifice for a burnt-offering that son who was a special gift of God’s bounty, to kill him in whom he looked for a further fulfillment of God’s promise—to stop that golden pipe through which mercy is to flow to the whole world, to dam up that silver stream which is to enrich nations yet unborn—that were to blast Abraham’s brightest hopes as well as to wound his most tender affections! God has cherished in him high anticipations. He has been pleased to give him strength of mind and faith of heart enough to see these expectations realized in a vision. And must that vision, after all, flit from before his eyes? Must his faith become a delusion and all his hopes a mockery? So it would seem! And yet mark the faith of Abraham—he not only submits to the loss of his choicest jewel, and to tear away one who was bound to his heart by ties stronger than flesh and blood—but in doing it, he staggers not, for he still believes that God will be true to His promise!
It strikes me that this was the master work of Abraham’s faith. To sacrifice Isaac was a wonder of patient submission and devout resignation, but the faith which was at the root of it all challenges our highest admiration! Still, to believe that God is able to raise Isaac from the dead, or to turn the stones which were wet with Isaac’s blood into a new offspring, or, (for I know not which theory Abraham may have adopted), to believe that the whole Covenant was spiritual and that he must wait to see the seed of Isaac in another world, and not in this—in any case to believe that God must be true, that though Isaac died, God would keep His word and that He is able to do so notwithstanding all apparent impossibilities—that He will transmute stones to men, or raise that body after it has been slain, into newness of life—here was the climax of a faith that realized the grandeur and the goodness of the Divine Attributes and perfections, for he simply and sincerely believed and relied upon God!
Ah, Brothers and Sisters, there are some men who can make great sacrifices for God—they have done so and herein they have emulated the example of Abraham. But the Patriarch showed a clear understanding, an unwavering calmness, a full assurance of hope to which few have attained. When in the very fact of presenting to God your sacrifice, can you account that you are losing nothing, but committing your treasure to His custody? Can you believe that the promise of God is not compromised by your parting with the earnest that gladdened your eyes? Has God given you a son, such an one as you can say of, “For this child I prayed”? Is he the pride of your life and the joy of your life? Do you think of him as the solace of your age and the perpetuator of your name in the world? What, now, if God shall call you to devote him
as a missionary? Could you readily comply? Would you count it all gain? Could you interpret it as a blighting of your own prospect, or as a blooming of God’s purpose? Have you Abraham’s faith? Then let God be true if Heaven should reel and earth should rock! Though the sons of men pass away like shadows and death entombs us all, the counsel of God’s heart shall stand and His Word shall endure forever!
Stagger not, my Friends, at the promise of God through unbelief! Be assured that whatever He has promised, He is able to perform!
Such reflections, though prolific of instruction, I must not tarry to pursue. I rather want to impress the scene and interpret the sentence brought before us in our text.
The scene itself suggests to us three pictures. The first picture will naturally rise up in your imagination without my attempting any graphic description of it. The old man, a kind and doting father, bears in his hands a sharp knife, and hot blazing coals of fire. The younger man, perhaps twenty-five—so Josephus thinks—possibly 33 years of age and, if so, very manifestly the type of Christ, who was about that age when He came to die. The young man comes toiling up the side of the hill, bearing a load of wood upon his back. He knows that that wood is destined to burn some victim, for his father carries the fire and the knife. He understands that they are about to worship God yonder in the most solemn manner by a sacrifice of blood. On the way he puts but one question, marveling where the victim can be. He sees the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb? he asks. Abraham tells him with a bursting heart, that—