What does First B Jackson teach about john the baptist?
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 John the Baptist keeps returning to the same honest starting point: John did everything right, and it did not protect him from confusion, imprisonment, or death. Pastor Carl, Pastor Jonathan, and Pastor Ray have all spent time in Matthew 11 and Luke 7, where John sits in Herod's prison and sends his disciples to ask Jesus directly whether He is truly the one they have been waiting for. The teachers here refuse to soften that moment. This is the man who baptized Jesus, who heard God's voice from heaven, who had been filled with the Holy Spirit before he was born, and he is genuinely asking whether he got it wrong. The consistent word from this pulpit is that struggling with faith from inside a hard circumstance is not a sign that someone has lost it.
Jesus did not rebuke John. He told John's disciples to go back and report what they were seeing and hearing, listing healings that mapped directly onto Isaiah 61, the same passage Jesus had read at the beginning of His ministry. The teachers here have noted that John's preaching had emphasized the winnowing fork, the burning of chaff, and the day of vengeance, and Jesus was doing none of that. He was healing people, raising the dead, and preaching good news to the poor. The confusion was understandable. Jesus was fulfilling Isaiah 61, but He had stopped reading before the line about vengeance, because that part was not yet. Anyone without a fixed preconception of what the Messiah had to look like would have recognized exactly who Jesus was from what He was doing.
The birth narrative in Luke 1 has also received careful attention here, particularly through the lens of the four hundred years of silence that preceded it. Pastor Brian has traced how the angel Gabriel's announcement to Zechariah was drawn almost word for word from Malachi, the promise of a forerunner in the spirit and power of Elijah who would turn hearts and prepare a people. When Gabriel appeared to the elderly priest at the altar of incense, it was the first authoritative word from God in four centuries. And the Mark 6 study pressed the teaching into harder territory: John prepared the way, decreased so that Jesus would increase, and it cost him his life. Pastor Mark was honest that this is difficult. But the teachers here point to what Jesus said about John afterward, calling him the greatest born among women, and to the promise that God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right.
Taught from Matthew 11:2-19 · Luke 7:18-35 · Luke 1:5-25 · Luke 1:57-80 · Mark 6:1-29
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
Messages that go deeper
- December 14, 2025 Messianic Messages - Advent Advent's third Sunday traces messianic prophecy from the minor prophets into Luke 1, where four hundred years of silence finally breaks with Gabriel's announcements to Zechariah and Mary.
- December 14, 2025 Four Hundred Years of Silence Advent sermon on the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Luke 1, and how God broke through with the births of John the Baptist and Jesus.
- October 24, 2023 Moonday Night @ First B Oct 24 Pastor Ray opens the Gospel of Mark at a Monday night study, exploring who Jesus is, why John prepared His way, and what it means to be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
- February 27, 2022 Come to Me and I Will Give You Rest John the Baptist doubted from prison. Jesus answered with evidence, not argument. A sermon on finding rest in Christ when faith feels heavy and burdens pile up.
- January 17, 2022 Pay Close Attention to What You Hear In Mark 6, Pastor Ray walks through Jesus rejected at home, the sending of the Twelve, and John's death, tracing how faith shapes what we see God do.
- February 22, 2021 The Coming One John the Baptist doubts from prison, Jesus proclaims rest for the weary, and a Wyoming congregation hears what it means to walk yoked to Christ.
- May 31, 2015 Go and Tell John the Things Which You Hear and See Pastor Ray returns from a mission trip to Guatemala and ties what the team witnessed there to John the Baptist's question from prison: "Are you the coming one?"