What does First B Jackson teach about heart condition?
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 heart condition starts with a question Jesus put to the Pharisees: what actually defiles a person? Working through Matthew 15 and Mark 7, Pastor Ray and Pastor Chad both trace the argument the same direction. The Pharisees had made holiness about outward ritual, washing hands and guarding traditions, while using those same traditions to cancel direct commands of God. Jesus called that hypocrisy, a word rooted in the Greek theater image of an actor speaking from behind a mask, presenting a face that is not their own. He quoted Isaiah to show the pattern was not new: people honoring God with their lips while their hearts are somewhere else entirely.
When Jesus told the crowd that it is not what goes into a person that defiles them but what comes out, the Pharisees were offended. Jesus did not soften it. He pressed the point all the way to the source: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander, greed, deceit, pride, and envy all come from the heart. Pastor Chad made the observation that every person in the room could find themselves somewhere in that list, including the religious leaders doing the finger-pointing. Jeremiah's description of the heart as the most deceitful of all things confirmed the diagnosis.
The teaching did not stop at diagnosis. Chad pointed to Ezekiel's promise that God would remove the stony, stubborn heart and replace it with a tender, responsive one, and named that exchange as exactly what Jesus came to do. In both the 2022 Sunday messages and the Monday night study, this passage landed at the communion table, where the list from Jesus served as an honest examination before the bread and the cup.
Taught from Mark 7:1-23 · Matthew 15:1-20 · Isaiah 29:13 · Luke 6:45 · Jeremiah 17
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 11:23-25
23 For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread.
24 When he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me.”
25 In the same way he also took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink, in memory of me.”
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- September 4, 2022 More Confrontation with the Pharisees Jesus confronts the Pharisees on hypocrisy, showing that outward religious rules matter less than what flows from the heart, where all true defilement begins.
- September 4, 2022 More Confrontation with the Pharisees Pastor Ray walks through Matthew and Mark's account of Jesus confronting the Pharisees, tracing how what truly defiles a person comes not from unwashed hands but from the heart.
- January 31, 2022 Monday Night @ Frist B Jan 30th Jesus confronts religious leaders focused on rituals while ignoring the heart. Pastor Mark explores what truly defiles us and how only Christ can transform us from within.