God will provide Himself a lamb, my son.’

 God will provide Himself a lamb, my son.’ He does not know definitely what he expects; he is ready to slay Isaac, but his faith is not quenched, though the end seems so inevitable and near. Faith was never more sharply tested, and never more triumphantly stood the test.


The divine solution of the riddle was kept back till the last moment, as it usually is. The place is slowly reached, the hill slowly climbed, the altar built, the unresisting Isaac bound {with what deep thoughts in each, who can tell?}, the steady hand holding the glittering knife lifted-a moment more and it will be red with heart’s blood, and not till then does God speak. It is ever so. The trial has ‘its perfect work.’ Faith is led to the edge of the precipice, one step farther and all is over. Then God speaks, all but just too late, and yet ‘right early.’ The willingness to make the sacrifice is tested to the utmost, and being proved, the sacrifice is not required.

Abraham had said to Isaac, ‘God will provide a lamb,’ and the word ‘provide’ is that which appears in the name he gave to the place-Jehovah-jireh. The name, then, commemorated, not the servant’s faith but the Lord’s mercy, and the spirit of it was embodied in what became a popular saying, ‘In the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.’ If faith dwells there, its surrenders will be richly rewarded. How much more dear was Isaac to Abraham as they journeyed back to Beersheba! And whatever we lay on God’s altar comes back a ‘hundred-fold more in this life,’ and brings in the world to come life everlasting. Mac laren

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