John 8:56 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

You glory much in this, that you have Abraham to your father. This father of yours foresaw my coming into the world, and my dying upon the cross. He saw it by the eye of faith, in the promise which was made to him, That in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. He saw it in the type of Isaac's being offered, then receiving him in a figure, Hebrews 11:19. He saw it in the light of Divine revelation. He saw my coming in the flesh; my dying upon the cross for sinners; the publication of my gospel to the whole world, by which means all the nations of the earth became blessed in his seed. And he was glad, with the joy of faith, which gives the soul a union with an absent object by faith made certain to it, Hebrews 11:1.