What does Tribe teach about dwelling with 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 Tribe, the teaching on dwelling with God starts with the seven annual feasts God established in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Brian has walked the church through these feasts not as relics of a foreign religion but as what the text itself calls 'my feasts,' an open invitation from God to anyone who follows Him. Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, sits at the center of this teaching because it is the feast most directly about dwelling with God. It commemorates the wilderness years when Israel had no house, no stable income, and no savings, and yet God provided everything they needed. Brian argues that the discomfort the feast creates on purpose is exactly the point, because when normal routine is disrupted, that gap is where something divine can slip in. As he put it, 'When we're comfortable, our awareness of our need for God lowers dramatically.'
Brian has also framed dwelling with God as something the feasts are meant to rehearse, not just remember. He turned to the transfiguration in Mark 9, where Peter sees Jesus in glory alongside Moses and Elijah and immediately asks whether they should build three shelters. Brian argued Peter was not rambling. Having rehearsed Sukkot his whole life, Peter's instinct was to ask whether this was the literal fulfillment of the feast, the moment of dwelling with God in His glory. That is what rehearsal is for. The feasts are a practice run for a future day when Jesus returns and His people dwell with Him permanently, which is where Revelation picks the theme back up with force.
Underneath all of this, the teaching at Tribe keeps returning to desire as the heart of the matter. Brian has drawn on Psalm 73 to put the question plainly: 'Whom have I in heaven but You? I desire you more than anything on earth.' Knowing that God provides is not the same as actually living from that place. Brian made the same point with a simple image: 'You can know all day long there's a glass of water that will quench your thirst. But unless you actually drink the water, it does nothing for you.' The feasts, and Sukkot in particular, are structured practices meant to move people from knowing that toward actually drinking.
Taught from Leviticus 23:33-42 · Deuteronomy 16:13-15 · Mark 9:1-13 · Psalm 73:25-26 · Revelation 21:3-4
“You can know all day long there's a glass of water that will quench your thirst. But unless you actually drink the water, it does nothing for you.”
From The World's First Selfie
The passage taught · Deuteronomy 16:9-12
9 You shall count for yourselves seven weeks. From the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain you shall begin to count seven weeks.
10 You shall keep the feast of weeks to Yahweh your God with a tribute of a freewill offering of your hand, which you shall give, according as Yahweh your God blesses you.
11 You shall rejoice before Yahweh your God: you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are among you, in the place which Yahweh your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there.
12 You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. You shall observe and do these statutes.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- October 2, 2023 The World's First Selfie Brian Hunter walks Tribe through the biblical feast of Sukkot, exploring why God invites his people to remember, recalibrate, and rehearse his faithfulness seven times a year.
- October 17, 2022 Whom Have I in Heaven But You Brian Hunter wraps up four weeks on the Feast of Tabernacles, exploring what it means to dwell with God now and to rehearse for his promised return.