“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah.
There you shall offer him up as a holocaust
on a height that I will point out to you.”
Not long before, God had said to Abraham, "through Isaac shall your offspring be named" (see Genesis 21:12). But Isaac wouldn't meet Rebekah for another few chapters of Genesis. On the surface it would seem that what God was asking of Abraham in offering Isaac would nullify his previous promise. Something analogous can happen to us. We may believe God is going to fulfill his promises in one way in our lives, and there may be what appears to be an open path to blessings before us, and yet God may ask us sacrifice that option at of trust in him. Make no mistake, the path we are called to sacrifice often seems like the only way. That path itself may already be the fruit of prayer and of miracles, just as was the birth of Isaac himself. But the risk for us is that we become comfortable in the path before us and forget to rely on God. It is vital for God to prevent this from happening because what he has planned for us is more than we can ask or even think (see Ephesians 3:20). We risk beginning to live as though we know the path and the destination and can now go the rest of the way on our own.
When they came to the place of which God had told him,
Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.
Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.
Abraham was not finally being called to offer his son in sacrifice. But he was, in a sense, sacrificing his hope in the merely physical fulfillment of the promises of God, his hope in the promised blessings on his own terms. By faith he was opening himself up to some greater and yet unknown answer to the promises he had received.
He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back (see Hebrews 11:19).
It would not have been enough for Abraham to offer Isaac. What God wanted to provide could ultimately be given only through his only Son, whom he loved from all eternity, Jesus Christ. Only with this lamb that God himself would provide could the purpose of sacrifice be realized and the new life of the resurrection attained. But by faith Abraham was able to welcome and, in a sense, to participate in this offering and even in its fruit. So too for us and our sacrifices. God has no need of them, but he desires the condition of heart that results when we offer them, the profound faith that does not need to see the path ahead as long as God is there to guide us.
If Abraham's offering of faith unleashed such blessings upon Israel then it makes sense that the blessings unleashed by the fulfillment of that offering would be limitless.
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son
but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with him?
Abraham learned in a profound way that God was for him and would bless him when he offered his son as a shadow and type of Jesus. Our offerings can participate even more than his in the one offering of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even more than him we are able to share now in the resurrection blessings Christ unleashed.
It is nevertheless true that we are only human and that our ability to trust and to follow is still imperfect. Jesus knows that on this side of the Paschal mystery the promise is impossible to fully understand.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.
Knowing our weakness, our readiness to scatter and be put to flight when times get tough, he wants to reveal himself to us. He wants to give us a glimpse of the resurrection, the promises, and the blessings, that await us.
And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Let us behold Jesus, blazing with the glory that he had with the Father before the foundation of the world and become convinced and convicted that whatever he asks of us is worth offering. Even if he seems to be leading us down a dead end or asking the impossible we can be assured that, as Abraham learned, and as the resurrection finally proved, "nothing will be impossible with God" (see Luke 1:37).
I believed, even when I said,
“I am greatly afflicted.”
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