The Lord Jesus' sacrifice was a deliberate act by Him to fulfill His anointing as God's Lamb. The Lamb was sent as a substitute for poor sinners in the judgment, that our crimes might be judged in Jesus' body at Calvary, and our guilt be expunged by His blood!
The reason that Christ did not come down from the cross, as the mockers demanded, was that He is God's Anointed One.
Had He not been anointed, He would have come down from the cross. His death proved the rulers were wrong when they condemned Him to death for claiming to be the Anointed One.
There is a haunting parallel, as well as a contrast, between Jesus and little Isaac, whose father Abraham was instructed by God to sacrifice on an alter.
Abraham knew that God's promises could not be broken, that through Isaac all the blessings of God would come. Abraham believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead after he, in obedience to God, offered Isaac up as an offering.
But Abraham was thinking too small! God had a far more glorious plan to save Isaac - the provision of a lamb as a substitute in Isaac's place!
As they went to the place God had designated for the sacrifice, Isaac had asked his father, where is the lamb for a sacrifice?
Abraham had spoken by the Holy Ghost, not understanding the meaning, when he replied to the question, "God will provide Himself a lamb for a sacrifice."
Just as Abraham was about to plunge the knife into little Isaac's heart, God stopped the sacrifice, and directed Abraham's gaze upon a lamb caught in a thicket.
God had provided a lamb to save Isaac, but Abraham grasped God's wider meaning: one day, God would provide His Lamb as a substitute for poor sinners!
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...
