Abraham and Isaac: The Sacrifice
God wants us to be faithful even when we don’t understand.  

Backstory on Abraham and Issac

To have a better understanding of the topic at hand, it would be helpful to go back in time and explain some of Abraham’s backstory.

When we are first introduced to Abraham, his name is actually Abram. Abram means “exalted father” while Abraham means “father of many nations”. This is a big shift. God took away Abram’s individual status and instead shifted the focus to Abraham’s collective blessing. In Abraham’s beginning he is told by God to leave the land of Ur to pursue God’s “promised land”. This was not the only promise given to Abraham. God also promised him that his descendants would be as numerous as the grains of sand on the sea shore or as numerous as the stars in the heavens. Think about this for a moment. Abraham at the time of the promise was married but had no son (no children for that matter) and was getting to be an older man. I bet he had a hard time fathoming that he would be the “Father” of such a great nation but God can and does do the impossible. The other promises given from God to Abraham was that his name would be great, kings would come from his line, and everyone on earth would be blessed through him. These are some huge promises but God can and always will deliver on his promises no matter how big or small!

When God promised Abraham that he was going to have a son, he and his wife Sarah were very old. Old enough in fact that when Sarah overheard God promise them a son she actually laughed to herself. Do you blame her? To humans this feat would seem impossible. It was so outrageous that Abraham and Sarah sinned by trying to help God fulfil his promise. They “helped” by deciding that Abraham would sleep with her servant Hagar because she was younger. This act opened a can of worms because this offspring named Ishmael is the father of the Islamic people who have been a thorn in the side of the Gods people ever since. When Abraham and Sarah ended up having the son of “promise” they were about 100 and 90 which would seem impossible. They named him Isaac, which means laughter, because of Sarah laughing when she heard the news. All of the promises that God had made would be realized through this son of promise, Isaac. No pressure Isaac!

This story is a great example, that God gives us grace and mercy even when we have doubts. When we try to help God in our own strength and make mistakes we still will have consequences to deal with that might stay with us for a long time.

God will test our faith
(Genesis 22:1-3)

Now to the account that we will be talking about. In the text it says that God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son. Remember all those promises that God had made? Abraham’s descendants will be as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore, kings will come from his lineage, and he would be the father of a great nation? Well those things can only be possible if he had at least one son. Now we hear God telling Abraham, “Remember that one son that is going to fulfil all the promises that I have made to you? Go and sacrifice that one son to me.” What?! I'm sure that Abraham had many thoughts running through his mind but according to the text Abraham did not question God out loud. How could this be? Abraham had already been through many hard trials and God had proved trustworthy time and time again. Even if he did not understand, he knew that God’s character was perfect and He would take care of him.

Hebrews 11:17-19 suggests that Abraham thought that if he actually went through with the sacrifice, God would be faithful and raise Isaac from the dead or maybe he did just trust that God would provide, in the way that he did? Whatever Abraham thought, it was clear that he had absolute trust that God would keep his promises.

I would hope that I would have the same type of faith if I was asked to do something like that, but I am not sure what I would have chosen to do? Remember when Abraham tried to “help” God out by saying that his wife was his sister when they entered into Egypt and he thought he would be killed on account of Sara being so pretty? I think things like this had been getting Abraham ready to act in faith in this instance.    

Isaac as a “Christ Type”
(Genesis 22:4-8)

On the third day of the Journey in our text, Abraham and Isaac set out alone. I want to point out that this account is a picture of what Jesus would eventually do for us. Isaac is called a “type of Christ”, which basically is saying the events in his life are foreshadowing what would eventually happen to Jesus Christ. Here are some similarities: Isaac was carrying the wood that he was to be sacrificed on, he was also completely obedient to his father in their mission, he did ask some clarifying questions about what they would sacrifice but never thought twice about following his dads directives, and maybe the biggest similarity is he would be given up by his own father.

It is not known what age Isaac was but there are some thoughts that he was not as young as he has been portrayed in pop culture. Maybe he was even 33 like Jesus was when he was crucified (Just a thought. No evidence on this front.) My point in mentioning this is that, regardless of his age, Isaac was smart enough to know that something weird was going on and I suspect he even knew at some point that he might be the sacrifice. In the same way that Abraham was trusting in God's plan, Isaac was also trusting in his fathers plan as well. If Abraham can trust God enough to go through with something so grave, I would hope that we might have the faith to trust God with our lives as well.

Not withholding anything
(Genesis 22:9-14)

Like I mentioned before, I am not sure what Abraham thought God would do to remedy what he was asked to do? Maybe he thought God would resurrect Isaac or maybe he really did expect God to provide the replacement in the way that he did? Regardless of what he thought, the text tells us that he “reached out his hand to take the knife”! He really was going to go through with it. He was willing to give up one of the things in his life that meant the most to him because God held a higher place in his heart.

God asks the same thing of us. He may never ask you to go out and sacrifice your child (lets hope not!) but he does command that we hold him above everything else. If he wants us to give up our job, give it. If he asks us to give up our comforts, give them. Even if he asks you to put him above your own flesh and blood, do it. Hear me when I am saying that it is ok to have good things in your life that God has blessed you with. Those are blessings and great gifts from God but he still requires first place in our hearts even over our most prized possessions and loved people. If we have the same willing heart that Abraham did, we will not be disappointed!

Godly confirmation
(Genesis 22:15-19)

While studying this account and looking back at Abraham's backstory I found myself wondering why God seemed to make an unconditional promise into a transactional one. What I mean is that God promised Abraham lots of things earlier in Genesis but now we see God saying that because he was willing to sacrifice his one and only son he was going to follow through with those promises. This was confusing to me because God typically only makes transactional or un-transactional promises but he doesn’t change his mind part way through. What I forget about God is that he is outside of our “timeline”. He can make a conditional promise, but he also knows whether or not we will meet the condition or not before the world was even created. We work in the construct of time… Our God doesn’t. He is not constrained even by time!

Finally I want to talk about how God fulfilled his promise to bless everyone in the world through Abraham. Jesus was born through Abraham's lineage and he is the only way to true life. So through Abraham everyone is blessed in the biggest and best way possible. I for one am so thankful to even have the opportunity at a relationship with the God who made me and loves me more than anybody ever has or even can. My joy is found in him!  

Just a Couple Pebbles
"The weight of sin and how it takes from our abundant life"


God’s Creation is a Spirit Filled Experience
(Psalm 19:1, Psalm 96:11-12, Psalm 104:24, Job 12:7-8, Romans 1:20)

I love to fish! It is one of the things that I like to do most to relax and I often am able to get into God’s presence while I do it. I love that it is peaceful, I love that it gets me out into God’s creation, not to mention I really like to cook fish and eat it as well!

Depending on where I go it is always different. If I am fishing a mountain stream I am usually in a place where it's only me, listening to the running of the stream and birds chirping, smelling things like evergreen trees and other earthy smells. If I am fishing in the surf I might be listening to the crashing waves, smelling saltwater, while feeling a breeze on my face. If I am fishing a lake, it is usually on a warm spring or summer day, feeling the sun on my skin, a slight breeze while trolling in a boat, and seeing fish rise to the surface to eat their morning meal. I almost always find myself talking to God in prayer. (1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18) because getting into God’s creation has a way of becoming a spirit filled experience, at least for me.

Pebbles = Sin
(Colossians 3:1-3, 3:4-6, and 3:7-11)

I am not just telling you that I love fishing for no reason. I had an experience fishing a this last year and God put a word into my heart that I think is a great analogy for how sin (even seemingly small) can take away from our abundant life.

I drove out to the Ocean City beach approach for some surf perch fishing. My routine for fishing for perch is I have a rod and reel combo, set up with a bait rig, and I bring waders to keep me warm and dry while I am fishing. Unbeknownst to me, I had a couple of small pebbles that had found their way into my waders because I had stored my waders outside on top of some gravel. I didn’t realize this was the case until I had already put my waders on and was heading out to the surf.

I was in a hurry to get out and start fishing because the tide was at the optimal point and I just decided that I wouldn’t take my waders off to get the rocks out because they were so small and insignificant that they would not hurt me too bad. Pretty soon after I got out into the waves I started to have success catching fish. My waders were doing their job keeping me dry and warm but those couple of little rocks kept feeling to me as if they were growing bigger and bigger. I understood that this could not be the case, rocks don’t have the ability to grow like that, but no matter how I tried to adjust my feet and kick my boots around to adjust the rocks my feet were progressively getting more and more sore. I was having success and, for all intents and purposes, I should have been feeling joy and peace. Instead all I was feeling was pain and I was too distracted to stay joyous in the moment.

It got to the point where I simply could not stand the pain anymore and I finally broke down and decided to take the short walk to my car to take them off and remove the rocks. It was hard for me to take that break because like I said I was having so much success, but it only took me about five minutes to walk to my car, take off my waders, shake out the rocks, put them back on, and walk back out to the surf. The instant relief that I felt was immense and I was finally able to enjoy what I was out doing.

 Small Sins have a Huge Impact
 (Galatians 5:9, Song of Solomon 2:15, James 3:5)

This experience brought me to a deeper understanding of a biblical truth. When we make the decision to follow Jesus (if it is genuine) we have blessed assurance of the salvation that Jesus offers us. This is called our positional salvation and nobody or nothing can take that away. (John 10:28-30) We are placed inside of Jesus and when God looks at us he sees Jesus. I once heard an analogy from a pastor and it has really helped me understand this. When we are without Christ we can be represented by a piece of paper and when we decide to follow Jesus our piece of paper is slid into an envelope that is Jesus. When God looks at us he doesn’t see our depravity and unworthy nature but rather he sees his Son and his perfection. (Colossians 3:3)

This, however, does not mean that if we have unresolved sin in our lives that it won’t hurt our abundant life. Anytime that we sin we are separated from God until we confess our sins and repent. (Isaiah 59:2, 20) Repenting literally means to “ turn and run the other way” so when we confess our sins we need to turn and run the opposite way of the sin that we have been living in. We all carry baggage into our relationships with Jesus. Whatever baggage we have struggled with going into our relationship with Jesus does not magically go away but the only difference is now we don’t have to carry that baggage but instead we can lay it at the foot of the cross and give it away. (Psalm 55:22) We are no longer bound to it but sometimes we still hold tight to it. Think about it like this, before we ask Christ into our hearts we are locked in a jail cell with a ball and chain attached to our arms. When we become Christians, Jesus unlocks the prison door and frees us from our chains. Often we see this as magical. We think that we won’t ever be tempted by sin again and we let our guard down. When this is the case we often walk back into that same unlocked jail cell and pick our ball and chain back up even though we are not bound at all.

This is called our practical salvation. Like I said we cannot lose our positional salvation but our practical salvation is affected by the choices we make and has a direct impact on our abundant life. I want to be very clear that when I say “abundant” life I do not mean a life without hardship. God does not promise us an easy road, he actually promises us just the opposite. (John 15:18-21) He also promises that blessing is not only things that feel good but blessing also comes in heart ache and hardship. (Matthew 5:3-4, 10-12) A life lived with God can still be thankful, joyous, peaceful, and fulfilled even in those times that the world would think we should be miserable in. (1 Thessalonians 5:18) If our life is too easy it should actually be an indicator for us to be introspective of whether or not we are truly living a set apart life. (Leviticus 20:26)

Freedom to Choose Spirit or Flesh
(Galatians 5:1, 13, 19-24, Romans 8:5-8)

God wants us to love him but forced love is not love. He did not create robots. It is always our choice each day whether we will choose to put to death our flesh and choose the spirit or if we will choose the flesh and break relationship with God until we ask for forgiveness and choose to repent to be brought back into a right relationship with him. (1 John 1:9)

Satan is rightly described as the deceiver and if he is not able to deceive us before we give our lives to christ he will do all he can to get you to fall into sin and become an ineffective christian. (2 Corinthians 11:3, Revelation 12:9) Like I described in my illustration, he will set a couple of sins in our life that seem small and innocuous at the time, like small pebbles. He doesn’t usually set egregious sins in front of us to start, because those we could see as actual detriments to our life but just like the small pebbles seemed to grow in size so will the sin over time. He might even set something in front of us that has a good portion of God's truth in it and twist it just a little bit and if we aren’t careful we will duped. (1 Corinthians 5:6) Eventually we will be addicted and trapped in sins and won't even realize how we got there. (James 1:14-15) 

Choosing to follow the Holy Spirit gets easier the more that we do it. This is because the more we follow the spirits guiding the more we can see that God comes through.  I like to think about the Holy Spirit as a muscle. When muscles are worked out they grow and become more effective at what we are training them to do and if we don’t use our muscles then they will atrophy and become weak. In the same way the more we choose to walk with the Holy Spirit the stronger he becomes in us and the less we walk with the spirit the weaker his effect in our lives is. (Colossians 2:6-7)

Gods Grace is Sufficient
 (2 Corinthians 12:9, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 5:20, James 4:6)

In a world that is ready to cancel you at your first mistake and trust me they will, God is ready to give his grace and mercy to those who are humble and ask for it sincerely. (Hebrews 4:16) Even in our christian walk we will have many times when we need to approach the throne of grace and ask for forgiveness and God is faithful to restore us and bring us back into a right relationship. He allows us to come back to the car, take off our waders, and he will remove those rocks that have been taking our peace and joy away and we will once again be able to be an effective part of the body of Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:27)

Let us keep running back to Christ constantly, no sin is too big and he will always be ready to receive us back into his arms.

His love is from everlasting to everlasting!

Hey all!

My name is Jordan Fry. I am the new Youth Director at Faith Community Church, and I have held that title since December 10th, 2025. Some of you may already know me and some of you may not, so I thought it would be appropriate to introduce myself, tell you about my history, and share the vision that I have for my future blog posts.

I was born and raised about 20 minutes from Ocean Shores, Washington in a little town (stretch of road really) called Aloah, Washington. I attended school in the North Beach School District during my childhood and graduated from North Beach High School in 2008. My dad's name is Dennis Fry (71), and my mother's name is Karleen Fry (66). I have 1 sister and 5 brothers (Lindsi (42), Peter (40), Erik (37), Myself (35), Jason (32), Steven (29), and Kyle (22). With so many kids in the family we have always been a very competitive family and most of us grew up playing sports at least through high school. I was no exception and I played football, basketball, baseball, and also ran track for a few years. Other interests of mine include hiking, music (I love to sing), watching professional sports (Especially hometown teams like the Seahawks and the Mariners), and probably my biggest passion (outside of my relationship with Christ) is fishing. I love the adventure but also the tranquil vibes of a day out fishing. I am happily married to the love of my life Emily. We started dating on June 27, 2016, we were engaged exactly one year later, (at Disneyland during the world of color show) and were married exactly one year after that! (If you want to know more about our story you will have to ask!) She is my biggest supporter and the one I always want by my side in the many adventures this life brings!

I grew up in a Christian home and was a regular attender of church. My home church growing up was Pacific Beach Community Church and my Grandpa Ron Roberts was the pastor of that church for 50 years before his passing. I didn't have a smooth transition from my adolescent walk with Christ to my mature walk with Christ today. There was a bunch of bumps in the road along the way. I am grateful that God will always leave the 99 sheep to go after the 1 that has wandered away because that is my story as well. He has always been faithful to me even when I am faithless. 

In my current position as the FCC Youth Director, I have many different responsibilities to serve the youth. One of them is to prepare messages to be given at Oasis. (Our youth group) My hope for this blog is that I can take those messages and share them here. In that way our youth, their parents, or anyone else who is perusing our website might be blessed by the messages. This may not be something that I post every week. It may be more like a post every month and it will give me an avenue to reach more people. I want to make the ability to respond to the blog posts available, but I ask that you keep comments or questions positive to keep the platform an edifying place to be. If you have anything further to discuss I would rather you call or text me directly at 360-589-8565 and I would be happy to talk or set up a time to meet.

Well nice to meet you! Thank you for allowing me to introduce myself and be on the lookout for my first blogged message on Friday, January 9.

To God be the glory,
Jordan Fry (FCC Youth Director)