What does Tribe teach about finishing the race?
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 finishing the race starts with an honest look at what the Apostle Paul actually says in 1 Corinthians 9 and 10. Brian used the image of a marathon, which a group of Tribe young adults had run that very morning, to press into a question most people would rather avoid: does starting the race guarantee you finish it? Paul's answer, Brian pointed out, is uncomfortable. He counts off five times that all of Israel had the same miraculous access to the same God, the same provision, the same supernatural care, and then the count changes. God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Getting a bib number, as Brian put it, does not mean you cross the finish line.
That leads into one of the harder things Tribe teaches on this subject: the love of God is unshakeable and nothing can separate us from it, but that is a different question from whether we ourselves stay committed to Him. A congregation member brought in 2 Peter 2:21, which says it would have been better never to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and turned away. Brian pressed on the idea that a prayer said at some point in the past does not automatically settle the matter of endurance. Hebrews 12 frames it plainly, calling people to strip off every weight and run with endurance the race God has set before them.
The teaching does not leave people there without hope. Brian named weariness, distraction, and the temptation to simply sit down and stop as real and common. But the comfort God offers, he said, is not a shorter distance or a finish line moved closer. It is God supernaturally infusing tired people with enough strength to run one more mile. And Proverbs says the righteous person falls seven times and gets back up. That strength, Brian said, becomes available the moment someone stops running on their own and asks for it.
Taught from 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 · 1 Corinthians 10:1-5 · Hebrews 12:1 · 2 Peter 2:21 · Proverbs (unspecified verse)
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 10:1-5
1 Now I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
2 and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
3 and all ate the same spiritual food;
4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 11, 2024 Training The Faith A sermon from a Jackson Hole church on what it truly means to run the Christian life with endurance, drawing from 1 Corinthians 9-10 and Hebrews 12.