What does First B Jackson teach about mary?
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 Baptist Jackson, the teaching on Mary begins with language. Ray has pointed out across multiple messages that when Gabriel greeted Mary, the Greek word behind that greeting carries the root word for grace. Before the angel said anything else, he was already saying grace to her. The word translated 'favored one' means something like 'ingraced one,' and the angel used a form of that same word three times in just a few verses. The repetition is not accidental. The message, as Ray has put it, screams grace out of the text, because none of what was happening depended on anything Mary had done to earn it. Her confusion and disturbance at the greeting made sense for exactly that reason.
Mary's response, when it came, was simple and costly at the same time. After the angel explained that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, that she would conceive a son whose kingdom would never end, and that nothing is impossible with God, she said, 'I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me just as you have said.' Pastor Ray has returned to that response in more than one Christmas season because it is the clearest picture in Scripture of what it looks like to receive a word from God and hold it with an open hand. It was not the arms or the achievement that mattered. It was the willingness.
Ray has also connected Mary's posture at the beginning of the story to a quiet moment near the end of it. When the shepherds came and told everyone what the angel had said about the child, the whole crowd was amazed. Mary did something different. She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. That same attentiveness, Ray has noted, is what Jesus pointed to in Luke 11 when he said blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Mary heard, received, and kept. The teaching at First Baptist Jackson holds her up not as someone who earned a unique honor, but as someone who showed what grace received actually looks like.
Taught from Luke 1:26-38 · Luke 1:46-49 · Luke 11:28 · Luke 2:8-20 · John 3:16
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 8:9
9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- December 17, 2017 Good News of Great Joy A Christmas sermon from Luke's Gospel on the shepherds, Mary, and what it means to receive God's message of good news and keep it faithfully.
- December 17, 2017 Good News of Great Joy Ray walks through the Christmas story, the shepherds' response, Mary's response, and what it means for anyone who receives the good news of a Savior born in Bethlehem.
- December 15, 2013 A Willing Body Mary said yes to God's grace before she understood it all. The pastor traces the word "grace" through Luke 1 to ask what willing surrender looks like for us today.