What does First B Jackson teach about hearing god's word?
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 hearing God's word starts with a simple but demanding image. In messages on the parable of the sower and on Luke 11, the preacher returned again and again to the same underlying question: what is the condition of your heart toward what God is actually saying? The seed in Jesus' parable is the word of God, and the four soils are not four types of people out there somewhere. They are four postures the heart can take, postures that harden or soften through repeated choices.
The word Jesus used in Luke 11 for keeping or following God's word pointed to something more than a one-time response. The only other place that form of the word appears in the New Testament is the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. Hearing the word of God and keeping it looks like that: ongoing, protective, careful, habitual attention. The six woes Jesus pronounced on the Pharisees and lawyers were held up not as ancient history but as a mirror. The Pharisees had access to everything that mattered and still missed it, because they had shaped their hearts against receiving anything that did not confirm what they already wanted.
The sign of Jonah, the queen of the South, the men of Nineveh: the preacher pressed on each of these as a rebuke to anyone who keeps waiting for better evidence before responding. The men of Nineveh responded to the most reluctant sermon ever preached. The crowd around Jesus had just watched a man who could not speak be healed. A hard heart, the teaching at First B Jackson holds, is not simply a failure that happens to a person. It is built, slowly, by repeated refusals to hear and keep what God has already said.
Taught from Luke 11:27-28 · Matthew 13 · Mark 4 · Luke 8 · Luke 11:29-32
The passage taught · Colossians 3
1 If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.
2 Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth.
3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, our life, is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- March 26, 2023 Blessed Are Those Who Hear and Keep It The pastor walks through Luke 11, where Jesus confronts religious hypocrisy, calls people to hear and guard God's Word, and warns those who shut others out of the kingdom.
- May 2, 2022 The Four Soils - Matthew 13:1-9 A look at the Parable of the Sower from Matthew 13, exploring what kind of soil our hearts offer when God's word is planted in us.
- May 1, 2022 The Sower Sows the Word Pastor Ray walks through the Parable of the Sower, showing how the condition of our hearts determines whether God's word takes root and bears lasting fruit.