What does First B Jackson teach about mercy?
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 mercy starts with a clear distinction between grace and mercy. Deborah Buckingham, speaking at the women's community Bible study, explained that grace is God giving us what we do not deserve, while mercy is an action word with two parts: you see that someone has a need and you do something about it, and you choose to forgive. She traced the root of mercy back to the way Jesus moved toward people everyone else had written off, telling them through His actions that they had value and they mattered. Withholding mercy, she said, sends the opposite message.
The teaching from the book of Jonah pressed this further. The guest preacher walked through how Jonah quotes God's own character accurately in Exodus 34, describing God as gracious and merciful, but applies it selectively, leaving out the part about God by no means clearing the guilty. The cross, he said, is where mercy and judgment finally meet and are both satisfied. Pastor Brian, opening the year with the Beatitudes, put it plainly: grace is receiving a blessing you did not earn, mercy is not receiving the punishment you did deserve. Because followers of Jesus have already received mercy they did not deserve, holding offenses against others becomes very hard to justify.
Several messages return to the same pattern in Luke's gospel: people who cry out for mercy, from blind Bartimaeus to ten lepers to a tax collector at a distance in the temple, are never turned away. Pastor Josh, working through the parable in Luke 18, showed that the tax collector who said 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner' went home justified, while the Pharisee who cataloged his own achievements did not. Deborah Buckingham anchored all of this in knowing God personally, saying that mercy in us is not produced by accumulating doctrine or performing rituals, but by knowing the God who is Himself merciful.
Taught from Jonah 4:2 · Exodus 34:6-7 · Luke 18:9-14 · Matthew 5:7 · Luke 17:11-19
The passage taught · Exodus 34:6-7
6 Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth,
7 keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.”
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- August 17, 2025 The Book of Jonah - Guest Speaker Van Jones Jonah ran from God's call to love his enemies. A sermon from First Baptist Jackson on obedience, repentance, and the mercy we resist giving others.
- January 7, 2024 His Mercy Is More Pastor Peter walks through 1 Peter 1, calling believers to hope fully, live holy, fear God, love deeply, renounce sin, and grow in God's Word.
- August 27, 2023 God Be Merciful to Me, the Sinner A Wyoming pastor unpacks Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and tax collector, showing why humility before God matters more than religious confidence or personal merit.
- July 9, 2023 Have Mercy on Us Ten lepers cry out to Jesus for mercy and are healed, but only one returns to give thanks. Pastor Ray explores what it means to truly receive salvation.
- July 9, 2023 Ten Were Cleansed, One Received Jesus Ten lepers cry out for mercy and Jesus heals them all, but only one returns to give thanks. A look at Luke 17 and what it means to truly receive Jesus.
- September 14, 2016 Fall Afresh - Women's Ministry Kick Off (2) Deborah Buckingham teaches on mercy as both action and forgiveness, showing how knowing God's love for us shapes the way we value and serve one another.
Mentioned along the way
- September 18, 2024 Women's Bible Study - September 18th, 2024 - Let Go and Trust God Deborah walks through the Beatitudes from Matthew 5, showing how Jesus invites us into a life of blessing when we humbly bring our needs, grief, and weakness to Him.
- October 1, 2023 Come to Me Unhindered Two people seek Jesus near Jericho: a blind beggar who cries out and a tax collector who climbs a tree. Both find mercy. Neither lets anything stop them.
- June 26, 2022 Power Over the Supernatural A Wyoming pastor walks through three Gospel accounts of Jesus freeing a demon-possessed man, asking why people who witness God's power sometimes beg Him to leave.
- May 23, 2022 Monday Night @ Frist B May 22nd Jesus hears blind Bartimaeus cry out in faith and stops to heal him. A study of Mark 10:46-52 on mercy, faith, and what it means to follow Jesus.
- February 20, 2022 God Has Visited His People Jesus heals a widow's son in Nain, echoing Elijah and Elisha's miracles, showing God's compassion reaches everyone who turns to Him in faith.
- January 2, 2022 Blessed Are You The pastor opens 2022 with Jesus's Beatitudes from Matthew 5, showing how the upside-down values of God's kingdom stand against everything the world calls strength or success.