He Carried The Wood For The Sacrifice - The One Year Book of Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament

He Carried the Wood for the Sacrifice

As startling as it is to hear and process God’s instructions to Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice, it is perhaps just as startling to witness Abraham’s immediate obedience. “The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about” (Genesis 22:3). As he chopped the wood, was Abraham thinking that those logs would consume his son, his hope? Did he imagine that the sticks he was picking up would fuel the fire in which his boy would be burned?

The ascent up Mount Moriah, the place of sacrifice, was too steep for the donkey, so “Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife” (Genesis 22:6). Here we see a prophetic image of Jesus, who, “carrying the cross by himself . . . went to the place called Place of the Skull (in Hebrew, Golgotha)” (John 19:17).

Two times in the story of Abraham we read that the two of them “walked on together” (Genesis 22:6, 8). Abraham could not have offered Isaac without Isaac’s consent and cooperation. If Isaac, as the bearer of the wood, was strong enough to carry the wood, surely he could have overpowered his father. But evidently he decided to obey his father whatever the cost, just as his father had decided to obey God whatever the cost.

Here, too, we see a prophetic picture of the Son’s obedience to his Father. “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Both the planning and the execution of our salvation were the work of the Father and the Son. “No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily,” Jesus said. “For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded” (John 10:18).

Like Isaac, Jesus went willingly, putting his trust in his Father. In order to save Isaac, God provided a ram. In order to save us, God provided himself.

I hear you inviting me to take up my cross and follow you. I know that the reason you suffered isn’t so I would never have to suffer. You bore the cross, not so I could escape suffering altogether, but so I can endure it. I hear you inviting me into the fellowship of sharing in your suffering. May my obedience be as immediate as Abraham’s and my trust in my Father be as complete as Isaac’s.