God calls to Abraham and Abraham answers. Abraham is told to offer his only son Isaac as a burnt offering to God. Sacrifices were something that had been done since Adam and Eve. This wasn’t a new thing. The sacrifice came with blood. Something had to die. You aren’t making a sacrifice if nothing dies.

Abraham obeys and takes his adult son and two servants up the mount in Moriah. It’s believed this is where the temple was later built, where future sacrifices to God would be made.

Abraham lays the wood on Isaac’s back, just as Jesus would bear the wood of the cross on His. Abraham tells his servants to stay put, that he and Isaac would go over there to worship.

The offering of the sacrifice was an act of worship. Technically, the word worship means to bow down. It’s an act of humbling yourself. It’s an act of showing your position in relation to someone else, honoring them. But we also see here a deeper meaning to worship, an obedient sacrifice.

In Romans 12, we are told to offer ourselves up as a living sacrifice. We are each told to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” It’s called worship, the offering of a living sacrifice. What comes with sacrifice? Death.

Why do we offer ourselves as a sacrifice? Because to be a Christian means to die to self, to no longer live but to let Christ, the anointed One, live through you.

Abraham had to die that day, not Isaac. He had to let go of his understanding and trust the one who made the promise and who had fulfilled the promise. He had to trust the Promised One Himself.

It shouldn’t be as hard as we make it. After all, His name is faithful and true (Revelation 19:11).