What does First B Jackson teach about pharisees?
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 the Pharisees consistently pushes back against the idea that the Pharisees are simply a distant, ancient problem. Whether Pastor Nathan is working through the seven woes of Matthew 23 or Pastor Ray is tracing the hand-washing confrontation in Matthew 15 and Mark 7, the point is the same: the Pharisees are a mirror, and what they reflect is the persistent human tendency to let outward religious performance substitute for an inward reality. The Pharisees were not irreligious people. They were deeply committed to the details of the law, and that is exactly what made their failure so serious. They had the word of God, in Nathan's telling, and Messiah was standing right in front of them, yet they were not only refusing to enter the kingdom themselves but actively blocking others from entering.
The root the teaching keeps returning to is hypocrisy. Pastor Ray traced the Greek word to the theater tradition of actors holding up masks that hid who they actually were, a compound meaning 'judge under a mask.' The outside of the cup was clean; the inside was full of greed and wickedness. Jesus pressed the point that God made the inside too, and it is the inside that needs to be given over. The Pharisees cleaned the outside of the cup and tithed their herbs and spices while neglecting what Jesus called the weightier things: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. They converted people to a theological opinion rather than a transformed heart, and the next generation after them often amplified and distorted the original point until it was unrecognizable.
The teaching does not leave people there. Pastor Nathan closed the Matthew 23 series by noting that the same Jesus who pronounced the woe is the one who absorbed the penalty for it. And the corrective the preaching keeps returning to is hearing the word of God and guarding it, not as a one-time response but as the kind of ongoing, protective, careful attention a shepherd gives to sheep through the night.
Taught from Matthew 23 · Mark 7:1-23 · Matthew 15:1-20 · Luke 11 · Isaiah 29:13
The passage taught · 1 Timothy 1:12
12 And I thank him who enabled me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he counted me faithful, appointing me to service;
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- November 26, 2023 Wonderful Words of Woe Jesus delivers seven warnings to religious leaders in Matthew 23. The pastor unpacks how hypocrisy, hollow zeal, and missed scripture still speak to us today.
- September 4, 2022 More Confrontation with the Pharisees Pastor Ray walks through Matthew and Mark's account of Jesus confronting the Pharisees, tracing how what truly defiles a person comes not from unwashed hands but from the heart.
Mentioned along the way
- March 26, 2023 Blessed Are Those Who Hear and Keep It The pastor walks through Luke 11, where Jesus confronts religious hypocrisy, calls people to hear and guard God's Word, and warns those who shut others out of the kingdom.
- March 26, 2023 Blessed Are Those Who Hear and Guard It Luke 11 sermon from First Baptist Jackson on hearing and guarding God's word, the sign of Jonah, and Jesus confronting hypocrisy with six woes to the Pharisees.