What does Tribe teach about bondage freedom?
Drawn from the message where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At Tribe, the teaching on bondage and freedom circles around the condition of the wineskin, the inner capacity a person has to receive what God is actually doing. In the message "New Wineskin, New Capacity," Brian worked through John 3 with the congregation and landed on this: before a person receives Jesus, the spirit is dead, and trying to relate to God through religion or law is an old wineskin that simply cannot hold what Jesus is offering. Nicodemus is the picture of someone standing right in front of something new and miraculous and trying to make sense of it through categories that were never built for it. That is its own kind of bondage, not chains, but a container too rigid and used up to receive anything new.
Brian pushed the congregation to take a stretch test, naming the places where an old wineskin cracks: assumptions about where and how church has to happen, whether the Holy Spirit is still moving in power today, whether there is room for the full picture of Jesus. Each of those is a place where old frameworks hold people back from what God is actually doing. The freedom Brian pointed to is not freedom from difficulty but freedom that comes from a soft, supple wineskin, one that can receive the new wine and, as someone in the room noted, is meant to pour it out rather than hoard it.
Underlying all of it is a picture of why God moves toward people in the first place. Brian says, "He loves me not because of who I am or what I've done. He loves me because of who he is." That is the ground freedom stands on. And the cost of staying free is real. As Brian put it plainly, "A new wineskin will cost you."
Taught from John 3:1-21 · Matthew 9:14-17 · Luke 5:33-39 · 2 Corinthians 5:17
“If this is a place where a culture is created that we wear masks and that we can't be real and vulnerable, heaven forbid that this place be a museum of exhibits for saints.”
From New Wineskin, New Capacity
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 18, 2024 New Wineskin, New Capacity Brian Hunter walks through John 3 and the story of Nicodemus to ask one pointed question: what is the condition of your wineskin, and is there room for what God is pouring out?