The Mountain Where God Provided

The baby who made Sarah laugh grew into a boy strong enough to carry a bundle of firewood up a mountain. Then God called to his father.

"Abraham!"

"Here I am," said Abraham.

"Take your son," God said, "your only son, Isaac, whom you love. Go to the land of Moriah, and offer him to me there as a burnt offering, on the mountain I will show you."

(A burnt offering was a gift to God, usually a lamb, killed and burned on an altar of stones.) The Bible says God was testing Abraham. God was never going to let Isaac die, but Abraham did not know that.

Early the next morning Abraham chopped the wood, saddled his donkey, and set off with Isaac and two servants. On the third day he saw the mountain.

"Stay here with the donkey," he told the servants. "The boy and I will go up and worship, and then we will come back to you."

He said we. (Much later the Bible tells us what Abraham was thinking: even if Isaac died, God could raise him from the dead.)

Abraham tied the wood onto Isaac's back. He carried the fire and the knife himself, and the two of them climbed together.

"Father?" said Isaac.

"Here I am, my son."

"We have the fire and the wood. But where is the lamb?"

"God will provide the lamb, my son," said Abraham.

At the top Abraham built an altar of stones and laid the wood on it. He tied Isaac up and laid him on the wood. He took the knife.

"Abraham! Abraham!" The angel of the LORD was calling from heaven.

"Here I am!"

"Do not lay a hand on the boy! Do not hurt him. Now I know that you put God first, because you have not held back your son, your only son, from me."

Abraham looked up. Behind him a ram had caught its curly horns in a thornbush and could not get loose. (Curly horns are wonderful for butting heads and no good at all for getting out of bushes.) Abraham untied Isaac. Then he killed the ram and offered it on the altar instead of his son.

Abraham named that place The LORD Will Provide. Then the angel brought God's promise: "Your family will be as many as the stars and the sand on the seashore, and through your family every nation on earth will be blessed."

So they went back down, both of them, just as Abraham had said.

Still, Isaac had asked about a lamb, and God had sent a ram. One ram could stand in for one boy, on one mountain, on one day. Isaac would grow old and die, like everyone. And where was the lamb?

About a thousand years went by. King Solomon built God's temple on Mount Moriah, and lambs were offered there every morning and every evening. People kept saying, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided," as if they were still waiting.

When the time came, another Father did not hold back his only Son, the one he loved. The Son carried a wooden cross out of Jerusalem, the city on that same mountain. No angel shouted from heaven to stop it, and no ram was tangled in the thorns. The Son was the lamb, and he died in our place.

On the third day God raised him from the dead, the very thing Abraham had believed God could do. His name is Jesus, the Lamb God provided.