Chapter XLVII: A Great Victory (3)

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink, and he revived, and presently got quite well.

And this is the lesson which we may learn from Ishmael's cry, children.

God knows our difficulties; God hears us when we speak to Him; God is nearer than we think; God is more loving than the most loving of earthly friends. He tells us to call upon Him in trouble.

Let us think of Ishmael dying for want of water, and crying to God in his distress, and let us do the same in our troubles!

No matter how small they may seem, God says He cares.

Let us take courage, then; and if God whispers to us when we are sorrowful (like He did to Hagar), "What aileth thee—what is the matter?" Let us listen for another whisper, for He will surely finish the sentence to us, as He did to Hagar, with the cheering words, "Fear not!"

XXXIV. The Offering of Isaac

So Abraham was given his dear little son Isaac, and he was the delight of Abraham's life, and of Sarah's too.

But by and by, God wished to try Abraham's faith more than even in that long waiting time for Isaac. God was going to ask him to do about the hardest thing that a man could be asked to do.

God told Abraham that he was to take his dear son whom he so fondly loved, and to go to a mountain a long way off, in the land of Moriah, and to offer him up to God as a sacrifice.

This was to try Abraham's obedience and faith.

Was he to take Isaac! On whom all his hopes rested, who was the joy of his life, and through whom all the world was to be blessed; was he to lay him upon the altar, and offer him up to God, as he did the lambs from his flock?

But Abraham did not hesitate. If God told him to do a thing, he obeyed. He knew that God could even raise Isaac from the dead, if He thought good. At any rate he had nothing to do, but to obey!

So he got up very early in the morning and saddled his ass, and took two young men with him, and his son, and the wood for the burnt offering, and set out on his journey to the place God had told him of.

The most precious thing Abraham had was that son who was walking beside him. And besides his love for his boy, God had promised that Isaac should live to have a son, and that by and by the Saviour should come into the world as one of Isaac's great-great-great-great-grandchildren!

Isaac was now grown into a strong young man, but he went with his father; and though he asked him on the way, Where was the lamb for the burnt offering? He was satisfied with his father's answer, "My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering."

When they reached the place which God had told him of, Abraham bound Isaac his son, and laid him upon the altar; and then he stretched out his hand with the knife in it, to offer up his son as God had told him.

But as quickly as the knife was raised, so quickly an angel of God called out of heaven, "Abraham, Abraham!"

Oh, how glad Abraham was to draw back that dreadful knife and answer, "Here am I!"

And God said, "Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything to him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from ME."

And when Abraham looked up, he saw a ram caught by his horns in a bush; and he took him and offered him up instead of his son.

So Isaac was given back to his loving father, and God was very pleased with Abraham's obedience, and He told him that in Isaac's children, by and by, all the nations of the world should be blessed.

For in about eighteen hundred years after this, the Lord Jesus Christ was coming to this earth to be "The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world"; and I think that when Abraham said, "God Himself will provide a lamb," he was thinking, not only of the saving of Isaac's life, but of that far-off day when Jesus should bear our sins, instead of us, on the Cross of Calvary, that we may go free!