Whilst, in regard to his nativity and heritage, Isaac represents the children of the covenant of grace, yet in his character and history be is a type of Christ in that aspect comprehended in the words “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross;” and also in some of the results flowing there from in resurrection. Isaac seems characterized by a quietness, yieldingness, and submission of life, which typifies the Lamb of God—the meekness, patience, and suffering of our Lord; just as David on the other hand, signifies a leonine and warlike set of features. Both are, of course, consistent; and the character of Christ is so large that it comprehends all, and much more than all that is set forth by these, and so many other varied types.
Now it is to be expected that the Isaac-character would meet, in this world, with a great deal of contempt; and so we find that that is its running accompaniment. The very promise of his birth excites a contemptuous laughter in her who was to be his mother: when he is an unconscious child he is mocked at and “persecuted” by “the flesh” (Ishmael): in fact the meaning of his name seemed to indicate not only the laughter of happiness, on the side of faith; but ever the laughter of contempt on the side of unbelief. In his closing days his own wife and son conspire to befool him: and, to the end, make him a laughing stock.
The leading characteristics, then, are submission and meditation—a placid contemplative life. There was a “submission unto death” and following there from were the two most important actions of unstopping the wells, and, in the close of his earthly life, the act of benediction. So Christ, having passed through death, in a voluntary submission, unstops the sources of divine grace in resurrection, and then departs out of the world in the act of blessing His disciples. Subordinate to these are: (1) God insists on attaching the covenant to Isaac; (2) Ishmael (or any one else) should “not be heir” with him; (3) the death of his mother, and the calling of his bride; (4) his father gives him all that he had; (5) the especial blessing of God rests on Isaac; (6) he intercedes for his wife (church). These are all typical features of more or less interest, but the great course of his life is necessarily unheroic and obscure; a “life exempt from public haunt,” finding “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks.”
Seneca said, “He who has never had a calamity befall him, is unacquainted with true happiness.” There seem to have been none of the eminent servants of God, of whom we know much, who have not been thus qualified for happiness by disaster. A heavy cloud lowers over Abraham and his son in Gen. 22 They, in common with millions of the race, must reach light through darkness, and obtain blessing through sorrow. “The good are better made by ill, As odors crushed are sweeter still."
“Every one can master a grief but he that has it.” It is remarkable how we can philosophize about the necessity for resignation, and the value of trials—in the cases of others; we are not generally so ready to exercise this resignation and recognize this value if our own nests are threatened. “I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian." Nevertheless some time or another sorrow knocks—loudly or gently—at everyone's door: good will it be if we can rise to meet it with the placid dignity and strength that characterizes both Abraham and his son. It is important to remember that Isaac was at this time a young man and Abraham a very aged one; and unless Isaac were willing to be bound and slain, the thing would have been impossible. This is the pre-eminent feature wherein he was a type of Christ: he was not only an innocent victim, but a submissive one—obedient unto death.
There are some beautiful and suggestive shades too—he was an only son, yet his father, when love and wisdom seem to require it, spares him not; the son carries the wood to Moriah, as the great Antitype carried the cross to Calvary (on or near the same spot); the father and son “went on both of them together” and, so far as the few words uttered during the “grief that does not speak,” that “whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break,” indicate, they went on together to the place of suffering in the perfection of mutual love and confidence, and then (outwardly) their relations undergo a terrible change. “The third day” Isaac is seen in resurrection life “in a figure.”
I knew of a man who, during the progress of an eclipse, finding he could not look at it because the sun's light was too strong, took a piece of looking glass, and standing with his back to the sun, was able to see in the mirror all that took place. The corona of light from the eclipsed sun at Calvary is too blinding for us to have much perception of what took place there; and sometimes we can better apprehend it by seeing its reflection in a “glass darkly.” We see on Moriah the dim and feeble reflection of Calvary, a father and a beloved and only son deliberately preparing for the sacrifice of that son's life. But there the type breaks down, as every other type does; God mercifully interposes that Abraham's son may be spared, but He “spared not His own.”