What does Tribe teach about falling away?
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 falling away starts with a question about whether the picture of Jesus a person has carried since childhood is large enough to hold the full biblical portrait of who He is. In the message 'Look Beneath the Surface,' Brian worked through John 7 to show that the moment many people believed in Jesus, recorded in verse 31, did not happen in a calm or tidy setting. Around it there is grumbling, fear, accusations of fraud, charges of demon possession, and deep confusion. Brian's point was that Christians who only have eyes for the belief moment, without seeing what surrounds it, will be caught off guard and at risk of checking out when things get hard.
Brian put Habakkuk 3:3-6 alongside that John 7 scene to press the same question from a different angle. That passage describes Jesus returning with pestilence marching before Him and plagues following close behind, and Brian noted that most people either skip those lines or quickly call them metaphorical. He named that instinct, the move to dismiss what does not fit a familiar image of Jesus, as exactly what a too-small picture of Jesus produces. The felt-board Sunday school version of Jesus simply cannot hold everything the Bible says about Him, and when reality does not match that smaller picture, people can lose their footing.
The practical weight Brian put on this was steady-headedness in a season of chaos. He connected a large, biblically grounded picture of Jesus directly to the ability to stay anchored when circumstances become unsettling. The teaching at Tribe is that falling away is not mainly a moral failure but a vision failure, and the remedy is looking more carefully and more honestly at who Jesus actually is across the whole of Scripture, not just the verses most familiar from pulpits and podcasts.
Taught from John 7:31 · Habakkuk 3:3-6 · John 7:14 · Psalm 2 · Romans 10:9
The passage taught · Habakkuk 3:3-6
3 God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and his praise filled the earth.
4 His splendor is like the sunrise. Rays shine from his hand, where his power is hidden.
5 Plague went before him, and pestilence followed his feet.
6 He stood, and shook the earth. He looked, and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains were crumbled. The age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 3, 2024 Look Beneath the Surface A Wyoming pastor walks through John 7 to challenge Christians to expand their picture of Jesus and stay grounded as national uncertainty grows.