What does Tribe teach about christmas story?
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 Tribe, the teaching on the Christmas story starts not in Bethlehem but on the first page of Genesis. Both Colson and Pastor Brian Hunter have made the same case from different angles: the birth of Jesus is the destination of a storyline God set in motion at creation, and every major figure in the Hebrew Bible, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, is a waypoint on that journey. Brian puts it plainly: "The story of Christmas doesn't begin in a barn in the little Judean village of Bethlehem. The story of Christmas actually begins all the way back in a garden." From that garden, God made his first promise in Genesis 3:15 that an offspring would come to bruise the head of the serpent, and everything from the prophets to the Psalms to the Davidic covenant is God keeping that promise alive across centuries.
Colson's teaching zooms in on a pattern that repeats across the Old Testament: an Eden-like beginning, a failure, a chosen person who intercedes, and a covenant God makes with his people. What marks each of those chosen people, from the basket-borne Moses to the youngest shepherd boy David, is that they are the ones nobody would have picked. God's habit, Colson kept returning to, is to choose the person you would not choose. That pattern reaches its sharpest point in 2 Samuel 7, where God promises David that from his line a king will come whose throne is established forever, a promise the New Testament reads as landing in the manger in Bethlehem.
Both teachers close in the same place: the arrival of Jesus is not the end of the story but the hinge of it. Brian says, "God always goes one step further than what you expected," and in the Christmas story that means the Messiah given first to Israel was given to the whole world. Jesus lived without sin, died in the place of sinners, and rose again so that the separation sin caused could be undone. As Colson put it, drawing on 2 Corinthians 1:20, every promise God made across all those centuries finds its yes in Jesus.
Taught from Genesis 3:15 · 2 Samuel 7:8-16 · Luke 2:1-20 · Isaiah 9:6-7 · 2 Corinthians 1:20
“The same God who was born in a manger in Bethlehem to a poor teenage Jew is the same God who seeks you out and loves you.”
From Christmas： The Whole Story
The passage taught · 1 Samuel 16:6-13
6 When they had come, he looked at Eliab, and said, “Surely Yahweh’s anointed is before him.”
7 But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I don’t see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.”
8 Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Yahweh has not chosen this one, either.”
9 Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. He said, “Yahweh has not chosen this one, either.”
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- December 29, 2025 Christmas： The Whole Story A young adults leader walks Tribe church through the entire biblical story to show why Christmas begins on page one of Genesis, not in a manger.
- December 28, 2025 The Christmas Story A young adults leader walks through the whole Bible to show why Christmas begins on page one and why the story of Jesus was the most unexpected rescue imaginable.
- December 25, 2025 Tribe Christmas Eve Service - Town Square A Christmas Eve message from Jackson Hole about why the story of Christmas begins not in Bethlehem but in a garden, and what the gift of the Messiah means for everyone.
- December 25, 2024 The Story of Christmas Begins in a Garden Brian Hunter traces the story of Christmas from a garden to a manger, explaining why he believes Jesus came, what he accomplished, and why it still matters.