There is an evident pattern of remarkable deliverances from a decree of death, whether pronounced by God or the king, taking place on the third day. This theme runs through the entire Old Testament. This section will survey the suffering and glory pattern by such a deliverance as seen in the accounts of Isaac, Joseph’s brothers, the spies of Joshua, the Gibeonites, David, Daniel, and Esther.
Milestone 1: Isaac Delivered from the Knife on the Third Day
“Then on the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place afar off” (Gen 22:4) Genesis 22:1-14
The history of redemption has a remarkable preview of the gospel in the account of the binding of Isaac on Moriah.
Isaac was the chosen seed of Abraham, the heir of the covenant. He represented the hope of the world for a redeemer. His miraculous birth had been announced beforehand by the Angel of the Lord (Gen 18:9). Although he had been rejected and mocked by his brother according to the flesh (Gen 21:9), Isaac was the only begotten and beloved son of his father (Gen 22:2). But one day God required the life of Isaac, commanding Abraham to slay him upon one of the mountains in Moriah and to offer him as a whole burnt offering to God (Gen 22:2). Abraham fully expected to sacrifice his son to a bloody death, trusting that God, who had brought forth a living son from a mother whose womb was dead, was able also to raise Isaac from death (Heb 11:19).
God required the sacrifice of Isaac at Moriah, in the vicinity of what was afterward to become Jerusalem (2 Chron 3:1). It was the hill where Abraham knew by the spirit of prophecy that God would one day provide a lamb for the sacrifice (Gen 22:8, 14). But for the three days of travel after God’s command, Abraham lived with a father’s grief that his beloved son was to suffer death at his hand. So when they came at last to the land of Moriah, Abraham asked the servants to remain behind while he and Isaac went on alone up the hill. Abraham told the servants that they were going on to worship and that they would return. He spoke all this in faith, believing that after Isaac suffered at his hand God would raise him from death and restore him to the love of his father, all on the third day (Heb 11:17-19).
Once they had come to the time and place God appointed, Abraham revealed to Isaac that he was the “lamb” God had chosen to suffer the sacrifice. Isaac was asked to submit to bonds that he might be laid on the altar and slain. As the stronger, Isaac could have resisted, but nonetheless he submitted to the will of his father. He permitted himself to be bound and laid upon the wood of the sacrifice and was willing to be pierced by the knife, all in obedience to his father and submission in faith to God.
As Abraham raised the knife, an angel stopped Abraham from piercing his son. God spared Isaac from death. A ram entangled in a thicket was revealed to be the substitute sacrifice for Isaac (Gen 22:11-12). And so it was said that “in the mount of the Lord it will be provided” (Gen 22:14). And what would be provided? A Lamb would be slain for the sacrifice, who would be restored to his Father on the third day.
In the fullness of time, Jesus, God’s only begotten and beloved son, whose miraculous birth like that of Isaac had been foretold by an angel and who had likewise been rejected and mocked by his brethren according to the flesh, walked up this very same hill of Moriah. Like Isaac he carried the wood of his sacrifice on his own back in obedience to his Father’s will (John 19:17). But God, who spared Isaac, spared not his own son (Rom 8:32), but offered him there as a pierced sacrifice, the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. What a provision the Lord made that day! And what a grief to see such a son perish by so bloody a piercing! But on the third day the Son of Man was restored to his Father through resurrection, and all that had been foreseen in the binding of Isaac was complete, for as it had been said, “in the mountain of the Lord it will be provided” (Gen 22:14).