What does First B Jackson teach about doubt and belief?
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 B Jackson, the teaching on doubt and belief often begins exactly where the first disciples found themselves: holding a report they could not quite accept. In both Easter messages, the apostles heard the women's account of the empty tomb and dismissed it as an idle tale. Peter did not have certainty either, but he got up and ran to the tomb anyway, acting on what witnesses were saying even when he could barely believe it. That picture of someone moving toward the truth while still working through doubt comes up as a pattern worth paying attention to.
The walk to Emmaus sits at the center of this teaching. Two followers were walking home in grief, carrying everything they had hoped for alongside the wreckage of Friday, when Jesus himself joined them on the road. They did not recognize him. They poured out their confusion honestly, and he listened before responding. Then, beginning with Moses and working through all the prophets, he walked them through the scriptures that pointed to everything that had just happened. Belief came not from a feeling but from understanding what had already been said and what had now been fulfilled. When their eyes were finally opened at the table, their first impulse was to go and tell someone.
What this church returns to is the role of witness and testimony. The resurrection has always been received through people telling what they saw, not through private certainty arrived at alone. Peter moved on the word of the women. The Emmaus disciples turned around and walked seven miles back to Jerusalem because of what they had seen. Pastor Travis and Pastor Carl both treat that chain of testimony as the normal channel through which belief takes root, which means doubt is not a disqualification but the ordinary starting place for anyone who is still on the way.
Taught from Luke 24:13-35 · Luke 24:1-12 · Luke 24:36-49 · Acts 1:1-11 · Romans 6:4-5
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 15
1 Now I declare to you, brothers, the Good News which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand,
2 by which also you are saved, if you hold firmly the word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- April 17, 2022 Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead Easter Sunday sermon tracing Luke 24 and Acts 1: an empty tomb, a road to Emmaus, and a risen Christ who calls ordinary people to be His witnesses.
- April 17, 2022 Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead Easter Sunday sermon tracing Jesus' resurrection through Luke's Gospel: the empty tomb, the road to Emmaus, and the call to be witnesses to the risen Christ.
Mentioned along the way
- October 9, 2022 He Set His Face to Go to Jerusalem Luke 9 shows disciples arguing, doubting, and missing the point, yet Jesus heals, corrects, and sets His face toward Jerusalem. God's power covers our failures.