• Read Genesis 22

MORNING— Trust at the Breaking Point

• Focal Passage: Genesis 22:2

“Take now your son, your only son, whom you love… and offer him there as a burnt offering.”

Have you ever had to take a test you weren’t prepared for?  Maybe you got your calendar marked wrong and you walked into a college exam with no clue it was exam day.

Imagine Abram’s shock on his examination day.  Genesis 22 opens with:  “After these things, God tested Abraham.”

This was not a pop quiz. This was not a test of intellect. It was the ultimate examination of trust.  God called Abraham by name, and Abraham responded with three words that define faith: “Here I am.”  Then came the command—layered like a blade pressing deeper with every phrase:

• Take your son.
• Your only son.
• Whom you love.
• Isaac

This is the first time the word “love” appears in Scripture, and it is a love for a father for a son.  Isaac was not just Abraham’s child. He was the fulfillment of decades of waiting. He was laughter after barrenness. He was the future God Himself had promised. And now God asked Abraham to place that promise back into His hands.

The journey to Moriah took three days. Three long days to walk, think, pray, and wrestle. Three days where Abraham had nothing to lean on except what he knew of God’s character.

When Isaac finally asked the question that must have torn at Abraham’s heart—
“Where is the lamb?”—
Abraham answered with remarkable restraint:

“God will provide.”

Abraham did not know how God would act.
He did not know when God would intervene.
But he knew who God was.

Hebrews reflects on this moment and tells us what anchored Abraham’s faith:

“He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead…” (Hebrews 11:19)

Abraham trusted the character of God more than the clarity of his circumstances. He believed that whatever God asked, God would still be faithful to His promises—even if the path forward seemed impossible.

That is the heart of the test.

Not whether Abraham loved his son.
But whether Abraham trusted his God.

• Reflection:
  Where is God asking you to trust His character when you cannot yet see His plan?

EVENING— The Lord Will Provide

• Focal Passage: Genesis 22:14

🪵 “So Abraham called the name of that place, The Lord Will Provide; as it is said to this day, ‘In the mount of the Lord it will be provided”

The scene on Mount Moriah is one of the most arresting moments in all of Scripture.  Abraham built the altar. He arranged the wood. He bound his son.

There is no recorded protest from Isaac. Whether he was a young boy or a grown man—as some Jewish tradition suggests—he allowed himself to be placed on the altar. Father and son walked together in obedience, both trusting God in ways that defy easy explanation.

When Abraham lifted the knife, God stopped him.  “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad.”

And then—almost as if it had been waiting there all along—Abraham lifted his eyes and saw a ram caught in a thicket by its horns.

The sacrifice God required was not Isaac.
The sacrifice God required was provided.

Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh—“The Lord Will Provide.” Not the Lord did provide, but the Lord will provide. Abraham understood that this moment was bigger than himself, bigger than Isaac, bigger than even this mountain.

The ram died in the place of the son.

Scripture later tells us that Abraham “received Isaac back as a type”—a living picture, a shadow of something yet to come (Hebrews 11:19). What Abraham experienced figuratively, God would one day accomplish literally.

On another hill, centuries later, a Father would also offer His Son.  That Son would carry the wood of His own sacrifice. 🪵There would be no last-minute reprieve.
No substitute found in the thicket.

John the Baptist would look at Jesus and say, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

The gospel is not that God demands our sacrifice. The gospel is that God provides His own.

Isaac was spared by a ram. We are spared by a Savior.

The wood of the altar on Moriah points forward to the wood of the cross, where mercy and justice met without compromise. And like Abraham, we name the place where God meets us in our greatest fear and deepest surrender:

The Lord Will Provide.

• Reflection:  What are you still trying to place on the altar that God has already provided a substitute for? Contemplate John 3:16.
• Closing Prayer:  Lord God, Thank You for being the God who provides what we cannot.  When obedience feels costly and trust feels dangerous, remind us that You have already given Your Son for us.  Teach us to rest—not in our sacrifice—but in Yours.  Tonight, we worship the Lamb who was provided in our place.
  Amen.