“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

So many times we hear so much discussed about Abraham and his willingness and obedience to sacrifice Isaac.  But I want to flip the script and highlight it from Isaac’s perspective as a young child and bring it home.

Isaac recognizes that they are going to make a sacrifice and worship God.  This is not foreign to him being Abraham’s son and the culture he was groomed in. Maybe your parents have made decisions that you have grown up with that you learned to recognize as just apart of your culture and normal.  But what happens when you suddenly feel like you are the sacrifice.

But you didn’t understand them, and you felt like they even compromised you in some capacity.  It takes God to step in and tell Abraham to not do what he told him to do. 

As a young child, children do not have the full understanding of the decisions parents have to make.  Whether it’s to decide on joint custody, to transfer you from the school you grew up in, to move to another state or give you to an uncle who can support you better as a male child.  There will be decisions that are made by parents that don’t seem right to you as Isaac. 

I recently read a story of a young lady that lost her father as a young girl.  Her father left a very nice inheritance and enough to get her through college, grad school and a little more to start her life with a financial advantage.  Her mother remarried and the stepfather now is demanding she split it with both his children for them all to have the same advantage.  To me this is simply unfair. To me this is as unfair as it was for Abraham to require him to carry that wood and tie his son to it, preparing him to be the burnt sacrifice that God told him to do. But God also stopped him from doing it as well.  Sometimes as parents we can demand and make decisions that at that time, we feel are right but later come to understand there is a better way to do things.

Maybe you are facing a situation like this young lady.  You are being asked to do something that doesn’t feel right. Isaac dared to question what was going on but obeyed his father and continued to walk and laid down long enough to be bound with the wood. 

My question to you is will you trust the God of your father? I’m sure Isaac saw God in a different way after he stopped his father from killing him.

There are times your assignment to an Abraham will make you feel like you are the sacrifice and yet just like God was measuring Abraham’s obedience, Isaac was just as much a part of this sacrifice as Abraham was to God. There maybe those around you that are called to support your vision but are questioning where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

Maybe you need to move, maybe you need to go out of your way to carry some of Abraham’s load, maybe you need to lay down your life for a season for Abraham to fulfill his sacrifice to God.

One thing you need to know is you are not the burnt offering.  You have just been called to make a sacrifice along side of Abraham as a joint heir and that you might also know that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

For all the Isaac’s that are called to walk with Abraham…..keep walking it out….God is going to provide.

1.    8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

2.    9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

3.    “Here I am,” he replied.

4.    12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

5.    13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”