However painful circumcision may have been, it wasn’t the hardest thing God asked Abraham to do. Not even close. For after God kept His promise to Abraham and Sarah, after their miracle baby was born when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, God asked Abraham to give Isaac back to Him, to kill Isaac and offer him up as a burnt offering.

Now, it’s easy for us to skip to the happy ending of the story, to recall that God didn’t make Abraham go through with such a terrible request. It’s easy for us to rejoice that God provided a substitute sacrifice in the form of a ram caught in a thicket. And it’s just as easy for us to rejoice in the greater truth to which this story points. For while Abraham’s only son was spared, God’s only Son – the One He loved, Jesus – was not. On the cross of Christ, the Father did offer up His Son so that all who share the faith of Abraham might be saved.

But this story should challenge us to think more deeply about what Abraham’s sort of faith is really like. For Abraham had not only waited for 25 years for Isaac’s birth. No, in his willingness to sacrifice that son of the promise, he showed that he was ready to give up everything he had hoped for, everything he loved in order to serve and please God. So great was his trust in God, he was certain that, even if he killed Isaac, somehow God would still keep His promise. Somehow God would return Isaac alive to him (Hebrews 11:19).

So yes, let us rejoice that Christ was our ram in the thicket, that He died in the place of all who trust in Him. But we also need to ask ourselves: do we trust in God in the same way that Abraham did? After all, Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34).

So, is there anything in our lives – any person, any habit, any ability, any possession that we would refuse if God asked it of us? Even if we don’t eventually have to go through with it, are we willing as Abraham was to sacrifice everything in order to follow Jesus? Do we really share his faith?

Genesis 22:1-18 (NASB)

Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
2 And He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
4 On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance.
5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go yonder; and we will worship and return to you.”
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together.
7 And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 And Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
9 Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there, and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.
10 And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
12 And he said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
13 Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.
14 And Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the LORD it will be provided.”
15 Then the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven,
16 and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son,
17 indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.
18 “And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”