Morning breaks. What a morning it must have been for that father! He doesn’t eat; he tries to pray, but his voice falters. After breakfast they start on their journey again. He has not gone a great way before he lifts up his eyes, and yonder is Mount Moriah. His heart begins to beat quickly. He says to the two young men:
“You stay here, and I will go yonder with my son.”
Then, as father and son went up Mount Moriah, with the wood, and the fire, and the knife, the boy turns suddenly to the father, and says:
“Father, where is the lamb? We haven’t any offering, father.”
It was a common thing for Isaac to see his father offer up a victim, but there is no lamb now.
Did you ever think
HOW PROPHETIC THAT ANSWER WAS
when Abraham turned and said to the son, “God will provide Himself a sacrifice?” I don’t know that Abraham understood the full meaning of it, but a few hundred years after God did provide a sacrifice right there. Mount Moriah and Mount Calvary are close together, and God’s Son was provided as a sacrifice for the world.
On Mount Moriah this father and son begin to roll up the stones, and together they build the altar; then they lay on the wood and everything is ready for the victim. Isaac looks around to see where the lamb is and then the father can keep it from the son no longer, and he says:
“My boy, sit down here close to the altar, and let me tell you something.”