What does First B Jackson teach about moral inventory?
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 moral inventory centers on Step Four of the 12 steps: making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Both Pastor Ray and Pastor Carl have taught that this step is where most people stall, because looking honestly inward and naming real defects of character is painful. It is far easier, as both of them noted, to catalog other people's faults. The roadside breakdown illustration that runs through both messages makes the point plainly: you can have the right tools and a reasonable diagnosis and still be working on the wrong problem. Honest identification of what is actually wrong has to come before anything else can happen.
The story of David and Bathsheba is the central biblical example both pastors returned to. David did not arrive at honest self-examination on his own. Sin had compounded sin, and persistent sin had dulled his conscience to the point that he could not see clearly what he had done. It took Nathan's parable about the sheep to force David to name it. Pastor Carl pointed out that David's response, recorded across several Psalms, moves from recognition to confession to trust, and that this movement is exactly the shape step four is meant to produce.
Pastor Ray and Pastor Carl both used the vice list from Galatians 5 as a practical grid for the inventory, and both emphasized that church people who are confident they avoid the obvious sins can easily miss the relational ones: enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalry, dissension, division, envy. The inventory is pointed inward, not outward, and the Holy Spirit, described in John 16 as the one who convicts of sin and illuminates God's word, is the one who makes honest self-examination possible at all.
Taught from Psalm 139:23-24 · Galatians 5:19-23 · Psalm 51 · James 4:17 · John 16:7-13
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 6:9-10
9 Or don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s Kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals,
10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortionists, will inherit God’s Kingdom.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- July 21, 2024 Searching and Fearless A Wyoming pastor walks through Step 4 of the 12 Steps, a searching moral inventory, showing how Scripture's vice lists point us toward honest self-examination and God's grace.
- July 21, 2024 Search Me and Know My Heart A Wyoming pastor walks through Step 4 of the 12 Steps, showing how a fearless moral inventory of ourselves is deeply rooted in Scripture and leads to healing.
Mentioned along the way
- August 18, 2024 Admitting It to God, Yourself, and One Other Person The pastor returns from dropping his daughter at college to walk First B Jackson through Step 5 of the 12 steps, grounded in James 5 and the power of honest confession.