Isaac

Having already sought to weigh the history of Abraham, I desire to consider what Scripture gives us to learn of Isaac. It is true that much less is said of him than of Abraham on the one hand or of Jacob on the other; even less than of Joseph among the many sons of Jacob. Yet there is not a little, in the spiritual account of him who came between the two chief fathers, distinguished by his own equable, retired, and peaceful way, and indicative of great principles in God's Word and ways, not in the Old Testament only but also in the New.
Isaac was the pattern of sonship, the child of promise, and as Abraham was its depository, elect, called out, blessed, and to be a blessing universally for the earth at the end, though himself looking higher by faith. Sovereign grace wrought as to both father and son. "For the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through law, but through the righteousness of faith." Thus only could it be, as it was, according to grace; that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of Abraham's faith, who is father of us all, before the God whom he believed, who quickens the dead and calls the things which are not as though they were.