Abraham is the first, if not the greatest, of the heroes of the Hebrew people. A man dazed by life's illusions, a dreamer of strange dreams and a seer of impossible visions, he has yet a firm hold of solid fact, and is ready, in the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers, to cross the Euphrates and travel to Damascus, that he may separate himself from idolatry. From his many days of trial, take those in which he needs the strength of God the most, and see whether he has it, what he does with it, and what comes of his use of it.
I. Could any day have exceeded in misery the time when Abraham first felt he must offer his son, or be guilty of disobedience to God? It was a day of fearful temptation; but Abraham made it unspeakably worse by misreading God's message and mistaking the significance of the strong impulse that disturbed and tempted him. God said to him, "Offer thy son," not "Slay thy son," but simply surrender him as an offering into God's hands. Abraham fell into the sin of the heathen world around by reading God's command as a commission to murder his own child. It was a grievous fault, and grievously did Abraham answer it.
II. Abraham was not left in this day of trial and mistake to himself. God met him in his difficulty and aided him in his dilemma. Abraham's mistake was on the surface of his life, and not at its heart; in the form of his offering, and not its spirit. God reckoned his calmly persisting faith, his actual and suffering obedience, as righteousness. He followed it with a fuller statement of the Abrahamic gospel, and exalted Abraham to the fatherhood of the faithful all the world over.
J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living,p. 19. (See also Appendix, p. 425.)
The birth of Isaac brought Abraham nearer to God; though he had believed in Him so long, it was as if he now believed in Him for the first time so much is he carried out of himself, such a vision has he of One who orders ages past and to come, and yet is interested for the feeblest of those whom He has made. Out of such feelings comes the craving for the power to make some sacrifice, to find a sacrifice which shall not be nominal but real.
I. The Book of Genesis says, "God did tempt Abraham." The seed did not drop by accident into the patriarch's mind; it was not self-sown; it was not put into him by the suggestion of some of his fellows. It was his Divine Teacher who led him on to the terrible conclusion, "The sacrifice that I must offer is that very gift that has caused me all my joy."
II. Abraham must know what God's meaning is; he is certain that in some way it will be proved that He has not designed His creature to do a wicked and monstrous thing, and yet that there is a purpose in the revelation that has been made to him; that a submission and sacrifice, such as he has never made yet, are called for now. He takes his son; he goes three days' journey to Mount Moriah; he prepares the altar and the wood and the knife; his son is with him, but he has already offered up himself.And now he is taught that this is the offering that God was seeking for; that when the realvictim has been slain, the ram caught in the thicket is all that is needed for the symbolical expression of that inward oblation.
III. When this secret had been learnt, every blessing became an actual vital blessing; every gift was changed into a spiritual treasure. Abraham had found that sacrifice lies at the very root of our being; that our lives depend upon it; that all power to be right and to do right begins with the offering up of ourselves, because it is thus that the righteous Lord makes us like Himself.
F. D. Maurice, The Doctrine of Sacrifice deduced from the Scriptures,p. 33.
References: Genesis 22:1-19. J. J. S. Perowne, Sermons,p. 332 (also Sunday Magazine,1871, p. 345); Expositor,1st series, vol. i., p. 314; 2nd series, vol. i., p. 305; W. Hubbard, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 228; J. B. Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Early Ages,pp. 31, 64.Genesis 22:1-20. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 156. Genesis 22:2. Parker, vol. i., p. 235; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xv., No. 868; Outline Sermons to Children,p. 5; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xvii., p. 148. Genesis 22:6. J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year (Holy Week),p. 454.