A Paradigm Shift of Expectations

Jo Black June 28, 2026 2 0

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Genesis 22: 1-14 (NIV-UK)

1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’

‘Here I am,’ he replied.

2 Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love – Isaac – and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will show you.’

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.’

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, ‘Father?’

‘Yes, my son?’ Abraham replied.

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

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

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!’

‘Here I am,’ he replied.

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.’

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram 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.’

In the Ancient Near East, gods were fickle, cruel creatures. Concerned with only their own pleasures, as unspeaking and unknowable beings, their legends were shaped around human understanding of how those in power would behave – mercilessly. Since the world around them was so cruel, of course the perceived demands of the gods were also. There would be no expectation of them being any different.

But there is only one true God, and He is in the business of circumventing expectations. He is the one who enhances life rather than dulling it. He is the one who brings true light to show a way where we perceive no way.

While Abraham acted in obedience to the word of God that had led him so faithfully, the fact that this call to give his son back to God ended in the sacrifice of a substitute doesn’t just shift the world’s broken paradigms, it shatters them. When the literal stakes are raised he doesn’t demand the despicable, he offers grace.

Just as God loved Abraham and Isaac enough to provide the lamb, when the once and for all sacrifice for sin was needing to be made, He provided the Lamb.

While the world and all its false gods ask us to give heedlessly and pointlessly of our peace of mind, state of our souls and the well-being of our most vulnerable to satisfy its insatiable thirsts, Yahweh rules out purposeless sacrifice.

He instead says the price has been paid. It is finished. Follow him and find life in all its fullness at the foot of the cross. He calls us to be witnesses to resurrection rather than hands of destruction. And he points to life with Jesus forever, rather than life lived alone with an expiration date.

Pray:

Thank you God that you are who you say who you are. The Father, the provider, the One who loves the world so much that He sent his only Son. May my astonishment never fade and my worship never falter.