The teaching behind The Thicket. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (KJV).
Genesis 22:1–14
1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.
5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.
7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.
The test
To understand this chapter, you have to understand what Isaac meant to Abraham.
When Abraham was seventy-five years old, God called him to leave his home and go to a land He would show him. God made him a promise: "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing" (Genesis 12:2). Later God took him outside at night and told him that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the sky (15:5). But Abraham and his wife Sarah had no children, and the years went by.
Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was finally born (21:5). Isaac was the son God had promised, and God made it clear that every promise He had made to Abraham would be kept through this boy: "in Isaac shall thy seed be called" (21:12). The great nation, the descendants like the stars, the blessing for the whole world: all of it was going to come through Isaac.
Then chapter 22 opens: "And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham."
That word "tempt" can be confusing, because today it usually means luring someone into sin. That's not what it means here. In the English of the King James Bible, "tempt" could also mean to test or to prove, and that is what God was doing. God was not trying to make Abraham sin; James tells us plainly that God "cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man" (James 1:13). This was a test, and a test shows what is really there.
Then God gives the command in verse 2: "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering." A burnt offering was a sacrifice that was killed and then burned completely on an altar. God was asking Abraham to give up the son he had waited twenty-five years for, the son every promise depended on. Notice how God describes Isaac: "thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest." God isn't unaware of what He is asking. He names every part of what it will cost.
Abraham obeys. He gets up early the next morning, cuts the wood, and sets out with Isaac and two servants (verse 3). After three days of travel he sees the mountain in the distance (verse 4). He leaves the servants behind, puts the wood on Isaac's back, and carries the fire and the knife himself. As they climb, Isaac asks the question that must have been hard to hear: "Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" (verse 7).
Abraham answers, "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering" (verse 8).
That answer is the heart of this chapter, and it teaches us three things about God.
1. God keeps His promises, even when we can't see how
Here is why this test was so hard. God had promised that Abraham's descendants would come through Isaac. Now God was commanding Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. If Isaac died, how could the promise come true? From where Abraham stood, the command and the promise seemed to contradict each other.
Abraham did not know how God would work it out. But look at what he told his servants at the bottom of the mountain: "Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you" (verse 5). Abraham said that both of them would come back down.
The book of Hebrews tells us what Abraham was thinking:
"By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure." (Hebrews 11:17–19)
"Accounting" means reasoning something through and coming to a conclusion. Abraham reasoned like this: God promised that my descendants will come through Isaac. God has never broken His word. So if Isaac dies on this mountain, God will raise him from the dead to keep His promise. Abraham couldn't see how God would do it, but he was certain that God would. And Hebrews says that, in a way, he did receive Isaac back from the dead: Isaac was as good as gone, and God gave him back.
This is what faith looks like. Faith doesn't mean understanding everything God is doing. It means trusting that God will do what He said, even when you can't see how. When what God has said and what you can see don't seem to fit together, you can hold on to what He has said, because He has never failed to keep His word.
2. The LORD sees what we need, and He provides it
There is a word in this passage that English translations hide. When Abraham says "God will provide" in verse 8, the Hebrew word is a form of ra'ah, which means "to see." What Abraham literally said was, "God will see for himself the lamb." To provide is to see a need ahead of time and take care of it.
Watch how that same word keeps coming back:
- In verse 13, "Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked." "Looked" is the same verb, ra'ah.
- In verse 14, Abraham names the place Jehovahjireh, which means "the LORD will see," or "the LORD will provide."
- And the saying that came from it, "In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen," uses the same verb again.
Abraham said God would see to it. Then Abraham looked, and he saw what God had provided: "behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns."
Notice the words "behind him." The ram didn't arrive at the last second. It was already there, caught in the bushes, while Abraham was building the altar. God had provided the sacrifice before Abraham knew where to look. Charles Spurgeon put it this way in an 1884 sermon on this verse: "the Lord's provision is near at hand—the ram in the thicket is behind you though you see it not as yet."
There is one more detail worth knowing. The only other time the Bible mentions Moriah is in 2 Chronicles 3:1: "Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah." The temple, where Israel would offer its sacrifices to God for centuries, was built on Mount Moriah. The mountain where God provided a sacrifice for Abraham became the place where His people came to worship Him.
3. God provides a substitute
Read the end of verse 13 slowly: Abraham "offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son." "In the stead of" means "in place of." The ram died in Isaac's place. Isaac walked down that mountain alive because something else took his place on the altar. That is what a substitute is.
Now remember what Abraham told Isaac on the way up: "God will provide himself a lamb." But on the mountain, God provided a ram, not a lamb. The lamb Abraham spoke of was still to come.
Many centuries later, John the Baptist saw Jesus walking toward him and said:
"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." (John 1:29)
John was saying that Jesus is the sacrifice God provides. Just as the ram died in Isaac's place, Jesus would die in our place, to take away our sin.
And look at the difference between the two stories. On Mount Moriah, God stopped Abraham before he harmed his son. God did not let Abraham go through with it. But when it came to His own Son, God did not hold back. Paul writes:
"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)
Paul's point is simple. If God gave His own Son for you, the greatest gift He could ever give, then you can trust Him to give you everything else you truly need.
That is the God of Mount Moriah. He keeps His promises when we can't see how. He sees what we need before we do. And He has provided the one sacrifice that we could never provide for ourselves. Whatever you are facing today, you can trust Him with it. The ram was behind Abraham the whole time, and the God who provided it is still the same.
Jehovahjireh. The LORD will provide.
Keep reading
- Genesis 21:1–12 and 22:15–19
- Hebrews 11:8–19
- John 1:29–36 and John 8:56
- Romans 8:31–39
- 1 Peter 1:18–20
- Charles Spurgeon, "Jehovah-Jireh," Sermon 1803 (October 12, 1884), at Spurgeon Gems and The Spurgeon Library