[Abraham] 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.
Genesis 22:5 (Read Genesis 22:1-14)
The word is silent about the emotional reaction of Abraham here, but we have only to put ourselves in his place to sense what he felt, how his heart was torn, how he avoids telling Isaac the fearful truth until the very last possible moment, how he perhaps trembles within when Isaac asks the question, Where is the lamb?
We know there is no real answer to Isaac’s question until we run through intervening centuries and listen in the New Testament to John the Baptist standing before the people of Israel saying, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world
(John 1:29).
Where did this stricken father find the strength to carry through this fearsome task? The answer is found here in one brief phrase in verse 5, Abraham 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.’
Abraham is not trying to deceive these men, but somewhere in the quiet meditations of that awful night when this word first came to him, there came the consciousness that God could do something to raise this boy from the dead, and Abraham believed in resurrection. That is where he found the peace to follow God’s command. In the struggles of that night, he began to reason and to reckon on God.