'JESUS, THE FINAL SACRIFICE"

II. Jesus, the Final and Perfect Sacrifice
A. Jesus and Isaac
The New Testament sees Jesus as the Lamb of a new Passover.

But more than that, the New Testament presents His sacrifice on the cross as the final and perfect sacrifice that all the sacrifices of the Bible point to and look forward to.

As we noted in our last lesson, in the story of the "binding" of Isaac, the New Testament writers saw a foreshadowing of God's offering of his only beloved Son on the Cross (see Genesis 22:12,15; John 3:16).

And it's not hard to find parallels in the two events:

A father sacrifices his only beloved son. After Ishmael was banished to the wilderness (see Genesis 21:9-14), Isaac was Abraham's only hope of posterity - "your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love" (see Genesis 22:2).

The Gospel of John uses the same language to describe the offering of Jesus. "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son" (see John 3:16).

The Book of Hebrews says that Abraham was ready "to offer his only son" and that he had faith that God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19).

And it is interesting, isn't it, that "on the third day," Isaac was resuced from death (see Genesis 22:4).

In addition to the parallel of a father offering his only son in the hope of resurrection, there are other parallels to point out.

Abraham took the wood for the holocaust and laid it on his son Isaac's shoulders (Genesis 22:6).

Jesus also is depicted as "carrying the cross himself" (see John 19:17), although, weakened by brutal beatings, he was unable to bear the weight of it the whole way (see Mark 15:21).

The victim goes willingly to his own sacrifice. Although in artwork, Isaac is often portrayed as a young boy, Jewish and Christian commentators pointed out that Isaac could not have been an unwilling victim.

He was a strong young man who could carry enough wood for a large sacrifice, and Abraham was well over a hundred years old. If Isaac had resisted at all, Abraham would not have been able to overcome him.

Like Christ, they believed, Isaac made himself an offering to God, as Jesus freely laid down his own life (see John 10:18) in obedience to His Father's will  (Mark 14:36).

The sacrifice is in the mountains of Moriah. God told Abraham to "go to the land of Moriah" and sacrifice Isaac "on a height that I will point out to you" (Genesis 22:2).

Ancient tradition held that Solomon built the Temple on the spot where Abraham sacrificed Isaac (see 2 Chronicles 3:1).

The place where Abraham was willing to offer his own son became the place where God's people made all their offerings.

Golgatha, outside of Jerusalem, is also associated with the mount of Moriah. And there God himself offered His own Son.

God himself provides the victim for the sacrifice. When Isaac asked his father, "where is the sheep for the holocaust?" Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust" (Genesis 22:7-8).

He turned out to be right: when God's angel had stopped him from sacrificing Isaac, Abraham found a ram ready to be sacrificed instead (see Genesis 22:10-13).

For the final sacrifice, God provided as the new Lamb His only Son. As Paul said: He "did not spare His own Son but handed Him over for us all" (see Romans 8:32).

As we saw in the previous lesson, the binding of Isaac was a kind of pattern for  the later sacrifice of the Passover, where once again a lamb took the place of the beloved firstborn son.

And, as we'll see, the New Testament writers were also careful to point out how closely the death of Jesus paralleled the Passover sacrifice.

B. Jesus the Passover Lamb
"For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7).
From the very beginning, Christians have seen Christ's death on the cross as the final Passover sacrifice. In most of the languages Christians speak, the word for Easter comes from the root pasch-, which comes from the Hebrew word for Passover. (English is the rare exception: our word Easter comes from an old pagan spring festival.)

That's why we continue to call Jesus the "Lamb of God," and that's why Christ appears as a Lamb in the symbolic visions of Revelation.

(salvation history.com)