What does First B Jackson teach about responding to god?
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 responding to God keeps returning to a simple but searching question: when a message comes toward you, what do you do with it? The preacher has worked through this across several Christmas seasons, holding up the shepherds, Mary, and Joseph as people who each received a word from God through an angel and had to decide, in the middle of ordinary or even difficult circumstances, whether to act on it. The shepherds went immediately. Mary was perplexed but not paralyzed, accepting what she did not fully understand. Joseph, described in the text as a righteous man, received correction and obeyed. None of them had the full picture, and none of them waited for one.
The contrast that runs through the teaching is between Mary's posture and Zechariah's. Both asked essentially the same question when Gabriel spoke to them, but the posture behind the question was different. Zechariah's question came from a place of practical skepticism and amounted to a refusal; Mary's came from someone already disposed to trust, and she landed on "May it be to me according to your word." God's plan moved forward in both cases, but one of them moved forward with it and one had to be carried by it.
The distance between receiving a message and doing something about it is where most of the Christian life happens, and the teaching at First B Jackson does not let that go abstract. The shepherds heard the angels and went at once. The wise men traveled for roughly two years after receiving theirs. What matters, the preacher has pressed consistently, is not the speed or the circumstances but whether the word is received and acted on at all. The question the congregation is left with is the same one every person in the Christmas story faced: now that the message has come toward you, what will you do with it?
Taught from Luke 1:26-38 · Luke 2:8-20 · Luke 2:14 · Matthew 1:18 · 2 Peter 3:9
The passage taught · Ephesians 4:11-13
11 He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, shepherds and teachers;
12 for the perfecting of the saints, to the work of serving, to the building up of the body of Christ;
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a full grown man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- December 21, 2025 The Message Came Toward Them Shepherds, Mary, and Joseph each heard a message from God and acted on it. A Christmas sermon on receiving what God says and responding in obedience.
- December 25, 2022 Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men A Christmas Day sermon from Jackson, Wyoming exploring peace on earth, the angels' announcement in Luke 2:14, and what it means to live out Christ's message of love and peace.
- December 6, 2021 May It Be To Me Just As You Have Said A verse-by-verse reading of Luke 1 and 2 explores how different people responded to God's surprising work in the first Christmas story.