Hebrews 11:17-19 (HCSB)
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises and he was offering his unique son, the one it had been said about, Your seed will be traced through Isaac. He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead, and as an illustration, he received him back.
Abraham faced the biggest test of his life when God told him that he had to sacrifice his only remaining son, the son of the promise, as a burnt offering. He had sent Hagar and his first-born son, Ishmael, into the wilderness earlier (Genesis 21:14), leaving only Isaac, his supernaturally conceived son, through whom God had promised to give Abraham many descendants. And now God was commanding Abraham to kill him!
The command was not ambiguous (Genesis 22:1-2), nor was it optional. If Abraham was going to live in God’s blessing, he knew that the command had to be completely and instantly obeyed.
Obviously, God had never commanded Abraham to do anything even remotely like this before. Abraham had sacrificed many animals to God over the years, but never a human being. Some of the people in the land where he was living sacrificed children to their gods, but he didn’t realize that this God who had called him into this land could want him to do the same.
But Abraham was still learning God’s character, God’s abilities, and God’s ways. So, he obeyed fully and completely. As the writer of Hebrews notes, Abraham decided that, since God had made many promises concerning Isaac, since He had always kept His promises, and since He had proved conclusively that He could do miracles, that He would be able to raise Isaac from the dead after he had been sacrificed.
Instead, God stopped the sacrifice at the last moment (Genesis 22:9-14) and provided a ram as a substitute for Isaac (providing a preview of Jesus substitutionary sacrifice at the same time). Abraham had proved himself faithful, obedient, and worthy of having God’s every promise fulfilled.
Father, some look upon this event as a dirty trick You played on Abraham, putting him through all kinds of mental anguish when You never really intended to have him kill Isaac at all. But I can see in this event the fact that, before you entrust the future of Your plan to the hands of mere human beings, it is right and fair to put them to the test, to ensure that when times are hard and the difficulties great, they will remain faithful to You and to Your agenda. The Scriptures include many examples of this, so we shouldn’t be surprised when the testing times come to us as a part of Your call to larger things. In passing the test, we learn about Your faithfulness, but we learn about our own faithfulness as well. Lord, help me to be absolutely faithful to You, no matter what You call me to do, so that we both know that Your plans are secure in my hands. Amen.