What does Tribe teach about escape?
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 escape starts with a striking image from the gospel accounts of the crucifixion. Brian Sauvé walked through two cups that appear in the story: the cup of suffering Jesus accepted in Gethsemane, and the cup of wine mixed with myrrh he was offered and refused at Golgotha. The question Brian pressed on was why Jesus turned that second cup down. Drawing on Roman historical sources, he noted that wine mixed with myrrh was a narcotic mixture that dulled pain and helped a person mentally check out from what was happening to them. It looked like mercy. But Brian also noted that Roman sanitation practice used that same mixture in the cleaning sponges at city latrines. The cup of escape, he said, is not what it appears to be. As Brian puts it, "That cup of escape is really poo poo water."
The teaching connects this directly to the lives of people in the room. The cup of suffering, as Brian describes it across this series, is the cup of discipline, of trusting God without knowing the next five steps, of staying in the hard thing rather than looking for a way around it. He brought in James 1 on the testing of faith producing perseverance, and perseverance producing maturity. He quoted Charles Spurgeon to the effect that a high character has rarely been produced by continued prosperity, and that adversity, however it feels like an enemy, is a true friend. The point is not that God is harsh. Brian was clear about that: "He is not sadistic. He is not cruel. He is not vindictive." The suffering God allows is purposeful, and walking through it rather than escaping it is what produces the kind of person who lacks nothing.
The sermon also carried a note of honesty about how natural the pull toward escape is. Brian mentioned his own senior quote, which was that if you ignore a problem long enough it will go away, and admitted, "It's worked out terribly." The teaching at Tribe on this topic is that endurance is not stoic willpower but trust, following Jesus who chose the cup of suffering and refused the cup of escape all the way to the end.
Taught from Matthew 26:36-39 · Matthew 27:32-35 · James 1:2-4 · 1 Peter 5:10 · Proverbs 14:12
“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.