What does First B Jackson teach about mary magdalene?
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 Magdalene starts with who she was before Jesus found her. Pastor Carl draws from Luke's account that Jesus cast seven demons out of her, and he pauses on that detail long enough for it to land. He asks people to sit with what that kind of torment must have felt like, and then what the peace that followed must have felt like. That before-and-after, Carl says, is exactly the kind of story that produces deep trust and loyalty. She did not follow Jesus out of habit or obligation. She followed him because he had changed everything for her.
That devotion is what brings her to the tomb while it is still dark on the first day of the week, with no clear plan for how to move the stone. She arrives first, finds it empty, runs to get Peter and John, and then stays behind weeping after they leave. Two angels appear and ask why she is crying, and then Jesus himself stands in front of her, though she does not recognize him at first. Carl is honest that he does not know exactly why, whether it was her grief, her tears, or something different about Jesus' glorified body, and he says that is all right because it is not the most important detail. What matters is that Jesus spoke her name, and she knew him.
Carl connects her story to a broader invitation. Her experience of being pursued, healed, and transformed by Jesus is the pattern he holds up for anyone sitting in the room who is still searching. He points to his own time running from God and the misery that came with it, and says peace only came when he stopped. Mary Magdalene, the first witness to the resurrection, is in these messages a picture of what devoted, personal faith looks like, rooted not in religious duty but in a rescue she had not forgotten.
Taught from John 20:1-18 · Luke 8 · John 14:19
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
The messages that teach on it
- April 20, 2025 He Is Not Here: The Tomb Is Empty A Wyoming pastor walks through John 20 on Easter Sunday, tracing Mary Magdalene's grief and joy at the empty tomb and explaining why the resurrection matters for everyone.
- April 20, 2025 He Is Not Here, He Is Risen Carl walks through John 20:1-18 on Resurrection Sunday, showing what the empty tomb, the grave cloths, and Mary hearing her name meant for those first witnesses and means for us.
Mentioned along the way
- December 13, 2015 The Greatest Love Christmas Play (4) A Christmas and Easter drama retelling the story of Jesus, from the manger to the empty tomb, performed by the congregation of First Baptist Jackson.