Easter Sunday at Tribe

In one paragraph

Easter Sunday, Brian walked us through Psalm 22, a song David wrote a thousand years before Jesus was born, and showed how the suffering it describes maps onto what happened on the cross. The throughline was a single image from verse 12: fierce bulls of Bashan, and what that phrase would have meant to anyone reading it in the ancient world. The message was that Jesus faced those bulls so we don't...

Read together

1. Psalm 22:1-24 Read aloud in full as the primary text; Brian traced David's prophetic picture of Christ's suffering
2. Deuteronomy 3:1-11 Cited to introduce King Og and the race of giants who inhabited Bashan
3. Colossians 2:14 Quoted to show that Jesus canceled the record of charges against us by nailing it to the cross
4. 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 Quoted to declare death swallowed up in victory and the victory given to us through Jesus Christ
5. Romans 9:9-10 Quoted during the invitation: confess with your mouth and believe in your heart and you will be saved
6. Matthew 10 Referenced for the principle that everyone who acknowledges Jesus publicly on earth he will acknowledge before the Father

What was said

• Read Psalm 22 this week and notice how David moves from feeling surrounded and abandoned to declaring that God has not ignored the suffering of the needy.
• If you made a decision to follow Jesus on Easter Sunday but have not told anyone yet, tell one person this week what you did.
• Fill out a prayer request card and drop it at the church so the staff can pray over your situation at their Monday meeting.
• Come to the young adult gathering on Tuesday evening for a meal and time of worship with others who are figuring out what following Jesus looks like.
• When you feel hemmed in by circumstances this week, remind yourself that the bulls of Bashan already locked horns with Jesus and lost.

Talk about it

1. Brian read Psalm 22, written by David a thousand years before Jesus was born, and pointed out details that lined up with the crucifixion. What stood out to you most about those connections, and did anything surprise you?
2. Brian described the bulls of Bashan as representing not just physical enemies but a supernatural component to the pressure David was facing. Have you ever sensed that what you were up against was bigger than just a circumstance or situation? What was that like?
3. Brian said the cross was not the triumph of darkness but the judgment of it, and that what looked like the enemy's greatest victory was actually their undoing. How does that change the way you think about moments in your own life when things seem to be going completely wrong?
4. Brian talked about the exchange offer, that receiving Jesus's victory requires laying down your own life, dying to pride, rebellion, sin, and pain. What does that kind of surrender actually look like in day to day life, in your experience?
5. Brian shared that when he was a sophomore in high school he stopped pretending the bulls weren't there and gave his life to Jesus. Is there an area of your life right now where you are still drawing a cartoon mustache on something and calling it something it isn't, rather than bringing it to God?