What does First B Jackson teach about prejudice?
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 prejudice starts with an honest look at how deep and ordinary it really is. When Pastor Toby walked through Philip's ministry in Acts 8, he helped the congregation see that the hostility between Jews and Samaritans was not a quirk of a distant culture. It ran about a thousand years deep, built from intermarriage, political betrayal, a rival temple, and what Toby called the ordinary human habit of deciding that the people nearby are the problem. Samaria was not a natural next stop for Philip. It was a confronting one. And yet that is exactly where the gospel went.
Pastor Carl brought the same reality into focus through Jesus' own ministry beyond Galilee, up into Phoenicia and across to the Decapolis. The disciples carried their cultural assumptions with them, and their instinct when a Canaanite woman came begging was to send her away. Carl read that exchange carefully, arguing that when Jesus surfaced the attitude behind their silence, the lesson was aimed at the disciples far more than at the woman. Her daughter was healed, and a Gentile crowd that witnessed what followed said of Jesus, "He has done all things well." These were not people with the full weight of Old Testament history behind them. They looked at what they saw and drew their own conclusion, and they glorified the God of Israel.
What both messages land on is that God's compassion has never been limited by the lines people draw, and that the gospel has always moved toward the people we are least inclined to move toward ourselves. The scattering of the early church by persecution pushed believers directly into Samaria, the very place prejudice would have kept them away from, and the result was one church, not a Hebrew church and a Gentile church running separately. First B Jackson teaches that confronting prejudice is not optional territory for the follower of Jesus. It is baked into the story of how the gospel travels.
Taught from Acts 8:1 · Acts 1:8 · Mark 7:24 · Matthew 15:22-28 · Romans 2:10-11
The passage taught · Acts 1:8
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.”
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- January 12, 2025 Elevation of Self vs. Elevation of Jesus Acts 8 traces the gospel spreading into Samaria through Philip, and warns against seeking God's gifts for personal gain through the story of Simon Magus.
- September 11, 2022 He Does All Things Well Jesus crosses cultural lines to heal a Gentile woman's daughter and feed 4,000 strangers, showing his disciples that God's grace reaches every tribe and nation.
Mentioned along the way
- November 13, 2022 Never Has a Man Spoken in This Way Jesus teaches at the Feast of Tabernacles, sparking debate over who He is, while proclaiming Himself the source of living water the prophet Isaiah foretold.