What does First B Jackson teach about covetousness?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First Baptist Jackson, the teaching on covetousness starts with what it actually is. When Pastor Mark worked through Ephesians 5:3-16, he placed covetousness alongside sexual immorality and impurity as things that simply do not fit a person who belongs to God. In that context, he read covetousness as a relentless appetite for more and different, a constant desire for what one does not have. It is not a minor quirk of personality but something Paul names as belonging to a pattern of life that has no inheritance in the kingdom of God.
What makes the teaching at First B Jackson on this topic distinctive is the direction of the remedy. Pastor Mark pointed out that commanding someone not to covet simply focuses all their effort on the very thing they are trying to stop. Paul's answer in Ephesians 5 is not a stricter rule or a stronger act of will. It is thanksgiving. Gratitude redirects the heart away from chasing what it lacks and toward genuinely wanting what it already has. That distinction matters because gratification, by its nature, always leaves a person emptier than before.
That same thread runs through Pastor Mark's treatment of Romans 7. Paul admitted that the command against coveting was the one he could not get around, because coveting is entirely internal. Sin used that very commandment to stir up desire, making the forbidden thing more compelling because it was forbidden. The law was not the problem. Sin used something good for its own purposes. The answer Paul points toward, and the answer the teaching here consistently returns to, is not behavior modification done in human strength but a genuine opening of the heart to what God has already given.
Taught from Ephesians 5:3-16 · Romans 7:7-13 · Ephesians 5:1-2 · Romans 7:4-6
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 7
1 Now concerning the things about which you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman.
2 But, because of sexual immoralities, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.
3 Let the husband give his wife the affection owed her, and likewise also the wife her husband.
4 The wife doesn’t have authority over her own body, but the husband. Likewise also the husband doesn’t have authority over his own body, but the wife.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- September 10, 2017 Six Don'ts and One Do Ephesians 5:3-16 examined plainly: six behaviors Paul says have no place among believers, and why gratitude is the one thing set against them all.
- June 19, 2016 Death to the Law Romans 7 asks a hard question: why do we keep doing what we hate? Pastor Mark walks through Paul's struggle with the law, sin, and the grace that sets us free.
Mentioned along the way
- March 19, 2023 Put Off, Put On Pastor Carl preaches from Colossians 3 on putting off anger, pride and immorality, and putting on compassion, humility and love as followers of Christ.