Talk about a test! After waiting one hundred years for the son that God had promised, God tells Abraham to sacrifice him.
You’ve got to be kidding! Isaac was Abraham’s only hope of becoming the “father of many nations.”
Some might say that God was testing Abraham’s heart to find out what was most important to him. Not! God already knows our hearts because He can see inside them–duh! So why did God ask Abraham to pull the plug on Isaac?
There was a way bigger purpose in this test than Abraham could imagine right then. It would later give the Israelites a symbolic promise about their future Lamb of sacrifice–Jesus! In this prophetic drama, Abraham represented God, who would inflict the fatal wound to his only Son (see Isaiah 53:4, 10), and Isaac represented Jesus who carried his own wood (cross) for the sacrifice.
Also, for Abraham and for all of us, tests are a way for God to reveal to us our level of faith in Him and where we need to improve. Through failure and success in the smaller tests along the way, God will help us to become ready to pass the big tests.
As you take your tests in life, you’ll discover that God is faithful and He will give back all the hopes and dreams you’re willing to sacrifice to Him. And the new ones He gives you will blow your mind because they will be God-sized dreams!
Genesis 22:12-14 “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.” Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 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.”