God Will Provide Himself a Lamb

And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:8).

Abraham’s walk before God reached its peak with these words spoken to Isaac his son as they climbed up Mount Moriah. With heavy heart, yet full of faith, he believed he was soon to give up his son as a burnt offering to God, as God had directed him. His victories and failures had fluctuated but his steps always ascended upwards, until now his obedience and submission to God’s will was complete. A strong strapping lad, all Isaac asked, seeing the fire and the wood, was “Where is the lamb?” (Genesis 22:7). Abraham answered, “God will provide for Himself the lamb.” Clearly, Isaac too was totally yielded to God.

Father and son prepared for the inevitable, both fully trusting God. The Angel of the Lord stopped Abraham as he was about to plunge his knife into his son, telling him that He was fully satisfied with Abraham’s total obedience and supreme faith, and pointed to Isaac’s substitute, the ram caught in the thicket. So Isaac was spared.

Having passed all tests, Abraham became the progenitor of the Redeemer, the Lamb of God.

This Lamb that God would provide for Himself is the central theme running through the whole of scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

Abel pictures the Lord Jesus as the Lamb who was slain. Isaac, 2000 years later, typifies Him as the Lamb raised from the dead.

Two thousand years after Isaac, John the Baptist answered Isaac’s question by proclaiming the Lord as the Lamb sacrificed for the world’s sin, the One who takes away the sin of the world, (John 1:29). The apostle John saw the Lamb in heaven as the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Sovereign.

The Lamb who had been foreordained before the foundation of the world, was slain from the foundation of the world. This was pictured in God’s provision of the coats of skin in the Garden of Eden. Before He was finally manifested at Calvary, the Lord was also typified by the Passover and the Levitical offerings which were shadows, while He Himself was the Substance of the supreme work of redemption.

Adapted and modified excerpts from Day by Day: Bible Promises
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.