We come this morning to one of the most solemn and sacred texts in all of Scripture—Genesis 22. For centuries, both believers and skeptics alike have stood in awe before this passage, recognizing its literary power and emotional gravity. It is perhaps the most climactic episode in the life of Abraham. But more than that, it is one of the most mysterious and profound revelations of God’s redemptive purposes in the entire Old Testament.
What we find here is not merely a story about a father and a son. It is not merely a test of obedience, nor is it simply a moral lesson about faith. This is a passage that opens up the very heart of the gospel—long before the cross, long before the temple, long before Israel had become a nation. Here, on a lonely mountain in the land of Moriah, God reveals something of the terrible weight of justice and the astonishing wonder of grace.
The Puritans used to say that the Old Testament is the gospel concealed, and the New Testament is the gospel revealed. That’s certainly true here. Genesis 22 is thick with gospel shadow. The wood, the altar, the knife, the fire, the son—the entire scene is pregnant with meaning. And yet, at the heart of the story is this: a question that Isaac asks his father as they walk together toward the place of sacrifice.
Genesis 22:7 ESV
And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
“Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
That is the question not only of Genesis 22, but of the entire Old Testament: Where is the Lamb? How can sinful man be made right with a holy God? How can God forgive sinners without compromising His justice? How can the God who promised life also demand death?
This passage brings us face to face with the tension that reverberates throughout the entire Bible: How can God be both just and merciful? And the answer to that question does not come immediately. It will not come fully until centuries later, when another Son will walk up another hill, carrying the wood of His own execution, and there He will become the Lamb.
But to truly grasp that wonder, we must first feel the weight of this moment. Genesis 22 is not merely a theological treatise—it is a lived experience of covenant faith. It is the story of a man who trusts the voice of the God who gave him a son… and who now asks for that son back.
What do we do with this? How should we respond to such a story?
Well, we do not rush past it. We do not flatten it. We do not moralize it. Instead, we listen. We walk with Abraham. We feel the weight of the wood. We hear the boy’s question. We see the altar. We listen for the voice. And above all, we look for the Lamb.
If we do, we will find not only the essence of faith, but the glory of the gospel. Because this story, strange as it may seem, was given to lead us to Jesus Christ.
This morning, I want us to meditate on this passage by reflecting on three themes that arise from the narrative—three themes that, together, will take us into the heart of God’s redemptive love:
The Essence of the Call – What does it mean to live a life wholly surrendered to God?
The Horror of the Test – What is at stake in Abraham’s trial, and what does it teach us about God’s justice?
The Wonder of the Lamb – How does God resolve the tension between holiness and mercy, and where does the true Lamb finally appear?
Let us draw near to this holy ground with humility and reverence. Because this story is not ultimately about Abraham. It’s not even ultimately about Isaac. It is about the God who provides.
The
of the Call
“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love… and offer him.” (Genesis 22:2)
At the heart of Genesis 22 is a summons. Before it’s a test, before it’s a story of sacrifice, it is a call—a divine summons that echoes the call that first came to Abraham in Genesis 12. In many ways, Genesis 22 is not a new calling, but a deepening of the original. God is peeling back the layers of Abraham’s faith, calling him into a deeper surrender, a fuller trust, and a more God-centered identity.
To understand the force of this call, we need to explore its shape, its substance, and its sanctifying power.
The Call Begins with
God says simply, “Take your son.” There is no negotiation. No discussion. No explanation. The call of God comes with divine authority. It is not a suggestion—it is a command. And yet it is not a command without purpose. It is a command from the covenant Lord, the One who had promised Abraham both a son and a blessing to the nations through that son. This is the same God who called creation out of nothing, who called Abraham out of Ur, and who now calls him to walk even more deeply by faith.
We cannot understand the call of God apart from God’s sovereignty. He has the right to call, and His call reorders everything. The Bible is clear: we are not our own. As the Heidelberg Catechism so beautifully opens,
“I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
The call of God lays claim to every part of our lives.
The Call Demands
Notice how deliberate and intense the language is in verse 2:
Genesis 22:2 ESV
He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love…”
It’s as though God is cutting Abraham to the heart—naming not just the person, but the emotional weight, the covenantal significance, and the personal affection Abraham has for Isaac. God is not asking Abraham to surrender something marginal. He is asking him to surrender what is most precious. Why?
Because the call of God demands that nothing—not even God’s good gifts—can take His place in our hearts. Isaac is not just Abraham’s son. He is the embodiment of the promise. He represents Abraham’s future, his hope, his identity. And yet God says: “Give him to Me.”
The call of God always involves a displacement of our idols. Even good things—gifts from God—can become ultimate things in our hearts. When they do, they must be surrendered. As Calvin said,
“That to which the heart is so wholly given that it forsakes God may be called an idol.”
For Abraham, the call required relinquishing Isaac. For us, it might be success, approval, control, security, or even family. Whatever we cling to for meaning, God will, in love, ask us to place it on the altar.
The Call Renews the
We also see in this passage that the call follows the same pattern as the original in Genesis 12:
“Go” — The Hebrew is identical: lech lecha—“Go yourself,” or “Go to yourself.” It’s a deeply personal command. Leave. Surrender. Obey.
To a place I will show you — Once again, God calls Abraham to walk by faith, not by sight. There are no details, no map, no clear outcome. The call requires trusting the One who sees when we cannot.
Offer up — In Genesis 12, Abraham left behind his country and family. Now he is asked to offer up the very fruit of God’s promise. The call of God deepens over time, not because God changes, but because our faith must grow to see Him more clearly.
We tend to think that the Christian life gets easier as we mature. In fact, it gets deeper. God calls us to greater surrender, not less. As He gives us more of Himself, He requires more of us. Not as a burden, but as a grace—because He will not allow us to be satisfied with anything less than Himself.
The Call __Awakens __True Security
The irony is this: God is asking Abraham to surrender the one thing that seems to secure his future. But in doing so, God is teaching Abraham where his true security lies. The essence of the call is this:
There is no true foundation, no lasting identity, no real security apart from God.
Isaac may have seemed like Abraham’s future, but God alone is the author of life and the keeper of promises. Until Abraham relinquished Isaac, he couldn’t see that fully. But once he did—once he entrusted Isaac to God—he was set free. Free from fear. Free from idol-worship. Free to trust the Giver above the gift.
This is the paradox of faith: you only truly receive when you are willing to surrender. As Jesus would later say,
Matthew 16:25 ESV For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
The Call
The call of God is not simply about salvation. It is also about sanctification. The God who called Abraham out of Ur now calls him out of idolatry. And he does the same with us. Sanctification is the Spirit’s ongoing work of conforming us to Christ, and He does it, in part, by repeatedly bringing us back to the altar, asking us to lay down what we’ve begun to love more than Him.
Why? Because God is forming a people whose hope is not in this life, whose treasure is not in this world, whose rest is not in their accomplishments, but in Him alone. He is making saints—people who can walk by faith even when the way is dark, who can obey even when the command is costly, who can say with Paul,
Philippians 3:8 ESV
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
The Call Prefigures
And don’t miss this: in calling Abraham to offer up his only son, God is foreshadowing what He Himself would one day do. Abraham carries the wood. Isaac is bound. The knife is raised. But at the last moment, God intervenes. Why?
Because this is not the mountain where the son will die, that mountain will come later. This story is not ultimately about Abraham’s obedience, but about God’s provision. The call of God is not a demand without grace. It is always wrapped in the covenant, rooted in God’s promises, grounded in His mercy.
To summarize:
The call of God is sovereign—He initiates.
The call of God is costly—He demands our whole lives.
The call of God is formative—He uses it to sanctify and mature us.
The call of God is redemptive—He always provides what He requires.
The call of God is Christ-centered—He calls us to Himself by pointing us to His Son.
You cannot answer this call unless you’ve seen the greater Son, Jesus Christ, who was not spared, who was offered up for us all. But once you see Him—once you see that the Father gave His beloved Son—you will say as Abraham surely said in his heart: “Now I know that You love me.”
The
of the Test
“Take your son… and offer him as a burnt offering.” (Genesis 22:2)
Genesis 22:2 ESV
He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
We’ve considered the call of God—His sovereign summons that demands full surrender. Now we turn to the test itself, and we must not sanitize it. This is one of the most emotionally and theologically disturbing episodes in all Scripture. If you don’t find it troubling initially, you’re probably not reading it carefully enough.
Yet the test is not meant to horrify us arbitrarily. It is meant to awaken us to the deeper tension at the heart of redemptive history: How can a just God forgive sinners and still be just? That is the true horror beneath this test, which we will now explore in four movements.
This Test Is Not About
Many readers mistakenly approach Genesis 22 as if the lesson is: “Do whatever God says, no matter how irrational it seems.” Certainly, God’s authority is absolute, and He is worthy of our full obedience. But if we reduce this text to moralism—“Obey, even if it’s crazy”—we miss the theological depth of what is happening.
The modern reader is right to recoil at a superficial reading of this story. This is not a tale of blind obedience to a cruel deity. The command is not irrational. It is not senseless. It is not capricious. Abraham does not simply hear a voice commanding murder and obey without question. He hears the covenant Lord, the God who had walked with him, spoken promises to him, given him Isaac—and he knows this is no hallucination. This is a summons from the same God who had promised salvation through Isaac.
The point is not, “Obey even when God seems unethical.” The point is, “Can you trust the God whose justice demands everything, and yet whose mercy promises everything?”
The Test Makes Sense in
To modern ears, God’s command to sacrifice Isaac sounds like child sacrifice. But that is not how Abraham would have understood it. In the ancient Near Eastern world, the firstborn son held representative status for the whole family. The firstborn bore the family’s hope, identity, and inheritance.
More importantly, under God’s covenantal dealings, the firstborn belonged to Him:
Exodus 13:2 ESV
“Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.”
Later, in Exodus and Numbers, God instituted the practice of redeeming the firstborn, symbolizing that the firstborn’s life was forfeit unless a substitutionary offering was made. Why? Because the family stood under judgment for sin. The firstborn was a visible reminder that a price had to be paid.
So when God says, “Offer up Isaac,” Abraham doesn’t hear a random command. He hears God calling in a debt. A debt of sin. A covenantal debt. Abraham understands what we often forget: No one is righteous. No one deserves life. All stand under the sentence of death.
This makes the test so excruciating—not because God is acting out of character, but because He is acting with terrifying consistency.
The Test Exposes the Tension Between
Hebrews 11:17–18 draws out the theological agony:
Hebrews 11:17–18 ESV
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.”
This is the deepest horror: The command seems to destroy the very promise God had made.
God had said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” But now He says, “Offer up Isaac.” Which is it? Justice or promise? Sacrifice or salvation? Holiness or mercy?
This is the tension that echoes throughout all of Scripture. If God is just, then He must deal with sin. But if God is merciful, how can He forgive sinners? Abraham is not just walking up a mountain—he is walking into a theological paradox. He is being asked to trust that somehow God can be both just and the justifier of the ungodly (Rom. 3:26).
Romans 3:26 ESV
It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
And this is where Abraham’s faith is revealed. Not in cold obedience, but in hopeful surrender. Hebrews 11:19 tells us:
Hebrews 11:19 ESV
He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
He doesn’t know how God will resolve this. But he believes that God will. He believes that God cannot lie. He believes that somehow, beyond his ability to understand, God will provide a way.
The Horror Points Forward to a
The agony Abraham feels as he raises the knife is not just paternal anguish—it is covenantal anguish. It is the anguish of one who knows that the debt must be paid, but who has no power to redeem himself. And yet, just as the knife is about to fall, God intervenes.
Genesis 22:12 ESV
He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
“Do not lay your hand on the boy… for now I know that you fear God.” (Gen. 22:12) God provides a ram in Isaac’s place. And Abraham names the place: “The LORD will provide.” But what was the point?
This test was not ultimately about Abraham proving his faith. It was about God revealing His plan. God is showing Abraham—and us—that a Substitute must die. But this ram is not the final Lamb. The mountain is not yet satisfied. The covenant justice of God still demands a perfect sacrifice.
To summarize:
The test is not senseless. It is covenantal. It is about justice and grace colliding.
The test exposes the impossibility of salvation without substitution.
The test reveals the depth of Abraham’s faith—not in himself, but in the God who raises the dead.
The test prepares us for the gospel—for the day when God would not spare His own Son.
In this test, Abraham saw the shadow. But we now see the substance. The knife did not fall on Isaac—but it did fall. And it fell on Christ. He is the true Firstborn. The true Isaac. The true Substitute.
The horror of the test is resolved only in the wonder of the Lamb—and that’s what we’ll explore in Point 3.
The
of the Lamb
Genesis 22:14 ESV
So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
After the horror of the test comes the wonder of the provision. The narrative builds to this precise moment. Just as Abraham raises the knife over Isaac, the angel of the Lord calls out:
Genesis 22:12 ESV
He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
And then, suddenly, a ram appears—caught in the thicket. A substitute. A sacrifice. A life in place of Isaac’s life.
This is no accident. This is the interpretive key to the entire passage—and the entire gospel. Genesis 22 is not ultimately about Abraham’s obedience. It is about God’s provision of a Substitute—not just for Isaac, but for sinners. This is where redemptive history moves from shadow to substance, from symbol to fulfillment, from Mount Moriah to Mount Calvary.
Let’s consider the wonder of the Lamb in four gospel-rich truths.
God Will Provide for
the Lamb
In verse 7, Isaac asks the haunting question:
Genesis 22:7 ESV
And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
“Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham replies:
Genesis 22:8 ESV
Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.
The Hebrew here is profoundly meaningful. Literally, it says, “God will see for Himself the lamb,” or better, “God will see to the lamb.” Abraham doesn’t claim to understand. He doesn’t explain the plan. But he clings to what he knows of God’s character: God will provide.
That is the essence of gospel faith. Not knowing how God will do it, but trusting that He will. Abraham couldn’t see the lamb, but he believed God would see to it. And he was right. God did provide.
Yet we know more than Abraham. We see what he could only hope for.
John the Baptist, standing centuries later on the banks of the Jordan, sees Jesus approaching and cries out:
John 1:29 ESV
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
God did not merely provide a ram in the thicket—He provided His own Son as the true and final Lamb.
The Son
Verse 6 slows the narrative dramatically:
Genesis 22:6 ESV
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together.
Here we have the father and the son ascending the mountain together. The son, carrying the wood on his back. The father, carrying the instrument of death. And they walk on together.
This is more than dramatic detail. This is typology—a divinely orchestrated preview of Calvary.
Centuries later, another beloved Son would carry the wood of His own sacrifice on His back. He too would walk up a mountain, not with a ram awaiting rescue, but as the Lamb who would not be spared.
Isaac asked, “Where is the lamb?” On Calvary, the answer was given: “Here is the Lamb.”
The Father Did Not Spare His Son
In Romans 8:32, Paul deliberately echoes Genesis 22:
Romans 8:32 ESV
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
At Moriah, God said to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear Me, because you have not withheld your son, your only son, whom you love”. But at Calvary, we say to God, “Now we know that You love us, because You have not withheld Your Son, Your only Son, whom You love.”
This is the most astonishing reversal in all of Scripture. Abraham’s son was spared. God’s Son was not. Why? So that we who deserve judgment might receive mercy.
Jesus Christ is the true Isaac—yet He is also the true Ram, the true Lamb, the true Substitute. He is both the beloved Son and the atoning sacrifice. The knife fell—not on the sinner, not on the son of Abraham, but on the Son of God.
That’s the wonder: God provided the Lamb. And He was the Lamb.
On the Mount of the LORD It Shall Be
Abraham names the place “Jehovah Jireh”—“The LORD will provide.” And then Moses adds this theological footnote:
Genesis 22:14 ESV
So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
This is prophetic. Moriah would later become the site of the Temple Mount. The place of sacrifice. And just outside those same walls, on another mountain—Golgotha—the Lamb of God would be provided for sinners.
What began as a story of terror ends as a promise of grace. What began as a question—“Where is the lamb?”—ends in the gospel declaration: “Behold the Lamb of God!”
This is the heart of Christianity: salvation is of the Lord. We do not provide the sacrifice. God does. We do not ascend the mountain with our obedience. Christ does. We do not satisfy divine justice. Christ does. Sola gratia. Sola fide. Solus Christus.
Let’s gather the threads together.
The Lamb is God’s provision for our greatest need.
The Lamb is our substitute, taking our place under the justice of God.
The Lamb is God’s own Son, given in love for sinners who could never earn or repay such grace.
The Lamb is our assurance—if God has given us Christ, how will He not also give us all things?
Abraham heard God say, “Now I know that you love Me, because you did not withhold your son.”
But now we say, through faith in the gospel: “Now I know that You love me, because You did not withhold Your Son.”
Do you want to be free from fear? Free from the tyranny of approval? Free from guilt? Free from chasing your worth in the things of this world? Then look to the Lamb.
Don’t look inward to your performance. Don’t look outward to the world. Look upward to the cross. See the Lamb—lifted up, pierced, bleeding, bearing the wrath, and declaring over your life: “It is finished.”
And then, in the strength of that grace, go forward in obedience. Go up the mountains God calls you to climb—not in fear, not in despair, but in confidence. Because on the mount of the LORD, it has been provided.
Let us pray.