Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 353 · December 19
Where Is the Lamb
“And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.”
In Copenhagen in 1843, a book called Fear and Trembling appeared under a false name. It begins by telling the story of this journey four times over, each version different and none of them comfortable. Anyone who reads this chapter slowly finds that it does not settle easily.
It was the third day of the journey when Abraham saw the place. He laid the wood on his son's back, and he carried the fire and the knife himself, the two things that could hurt the boy. Isaac speaks at only one moment in the chapter. He asks the obvious question, and he asks it late: "Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham's answer is today's verse, and it is followed by a line the chapter repeats on purpose: "so they went both of them together." We are not told whether Abraham understood all that he had just said. At the top of the mountain there was a ram "caught in a thicket by his horns," and Abraham offered it "in the stead of his son." Yet a ram is not a lamb. God met the need of that day, and Abraham's words about a lamb were left waiting.
Watch how the question travels through the Bible. Abraham named the place Jehovahjireh, which means the LORD will provide, and the saying lived on after him: "In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen." In Egypt, every household took a lamb "without blemish" and put its blood on the doorposts. In Isaiah the lamb is a person: "he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter." At the Jordan, John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." In the last book of the Bible, the Lamb stands in the middle of the throne, still bearing the marks of His death: "a Lamb as it had been slain."
That is five books and roughly two thousand years, and no one of those passages carries the whole answer alone. Isaac asked his question walking uphill with the wood on his back, and that is where people still ask it honestly. If you are asking it tonight, the answer has been given in full. God did provide Himself a lamb, and His name is Jesus. You can bring Him your question, and He will not mind being asked again.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 353 is Father Knows Before You Ask (Matthew 6:8).