What does Tribe teach about cup of suffering?
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 the cup of suffering starts with a close reading of two moments in the gospel accounts of the crucifixion. Brian Sauvé placed them side by side: Jesus praying in Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might pass from him, and then at Golgotha being offered wine mixed with myrrh and refusing it. The point is that Jesus did not simply endure suffering by accident. He chose it in the garden, and when a way out was handed to him at the cross, he turned it down.
To understand what that refusal means, Brian spent time on what the cup of escape actually was. Myrrh mixed with wine produced a narcotic effect, something that dulled the pain and let a person mentally check out from what was happening. But Roman historical sources describe this same mixture as the solution used in the sanitation sponges at city latrines. The offer looked like mercy. Brian says, "that cup of escape is really poo poo water." It is not what it appears to be, and Jesus, who could see it clearly, chose to stay fully present in the suffering rather than drink from it.
The broader teaching is that God is not asking his people to suffer because He is cruel or indifferent. Brian was direct about that: "He is not sadistic. He is not cruel. He is not vindictive." The cup of suffering, as Brian has described it across this series, is the cup of discipline and trust, the road of not giving up when the next five steps are invisible. Drawing on James 1 and a quote from Charles Spurgeon, the teaching holds that the testing of faith produces perseverance, and perseverance produces the kind of maturity that lacks nothing. Escape looks like relief, but endurance is where real formation happens.
Taught from Matthew 26:36-39 · Matthew 27:32-35 · James 1:2-4 · 1 Peter 5:10 · Mark 15:21-24
“That cup of escape is really poo poo water.”
From Choosing Endurance Over Escape
The passage taught · 1 Peter 5:10
10 But may the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- September 30, 2024 Choosing Endurance Over Escape Brian Hunter looks at two cups in the crucifixion story and asks which one we keep reaching for when life gets hard, and why it matters.