What does First B Jackson teach about giving what you have?
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 giving what you have starts with a specific moment in Acts 3. Peter and John are heading to the temple when they pass a man who has never walked, begging at the Beautiful Gate. They stop, look directly at him, and Peter tells him plainly that he has no silver or gold. That is not an apology. It is a setup for what comes next: Peter gives what he does have, healing in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, reaches down, takes the man by the hand, and the man's feet and ankles are instantly strengthened. Both Pastor Jonathan and Pastor John drew the congregation's attention to that sequence. The point is not what you lack. The point is what you do have, and whether you are willing to use it.
The same pattern shows up in a Monday night study Pastor Carl led through Mark 6. When Jesus tells the disciples to feed a crowd of thousands and they can only find five loaves and two fish, he does not ask what they are missing. He asks what they have. Those five loaves and two fish, brought forward in obedience, are blessed, broken, and multiplied until twelve baskets of leftovers remain after more than five thousand people have eaten. Pastor Carl was careful to say the miracle points beyond full stomachs, to who Jesus is and the kingdom he is announcing, but the shape of the story is the same: simple obedience with what is at hand is exactly what allows God to move.
What holds these two passages together in the teaching at First B is the conviction that God does not wait for you to have more before he can use you. Peter had no money. The disciples had almost no food. What they had, they gave, and God did the rest. The healing at the Beautiful Gate was also read as a sign that Isaiah's forecast had come true, that the age of grace had begun, which means the same posture is still the right one now.
Taught from Acts 3:1-26 · Isaiah 35 · Mark 6:30-56 · Genesis 12:1-3 · Acts 2:42
The passage taught · Acts 1
1 The first book I wrote, Theophilus, concerned all that Jesus began both to do and to teach,
2 until the day in which he was received up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
3 To these he also showed himself alive after he suffered, by many proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking about God’s Kingdom.
4 Being assembled together with them, he commanded them, “Don’t depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which you heard from me.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 17, 2024 Sunday Nov 17th Sermon from Pastor Ray Peter and John heal a man lame from birth, and Pastor Peter traces what happened, why it mattered, and what it means to receive grace you could never earn.
- November 17, 2024 Silver and Gold Have None Peter and John stop for a lame beggar at the temple gate. A First Baptist Jackson sermon on Acts 3, seeing people who suffer and giving what you have.
- January 24, 2022 Monday Night @ Frirst B Jan 23rd Mark 6 records Jesus feeding 5,000 people and walking on water. See what these miracles reveal about faith, rest, and the compassion of the Good Shepherd.