What does Tribe teach about heart vs head knowledge?
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 heart versus head knowledge starts with a simple but uncomfortable observation: proximity to Jesus is not the same as surrender to Him. Brian walked through Matthew 12 and showed that the disciples and the Pharisees shared the same experiences side by side, heard the same words, watched the same miracle, and yet landed in completely opposite places. The difference was not information. It was posture. The disciples came with acknowledged hunger and poverty. The Pharisees came with a posture of seeing, protesting, and protecting what they had already decided. Head knowledge of Jesus, Brian argued, can coexist with a heart that is actively working against Him.
To explain why the same encounter produces such different responses, Brian reached for 2 Corinthians 2:14-16, where Paul describes the knowledge of Christ as a fragrance that smells like life to those being saved and like death to those who are perishing. The same message, the same Jesus, lands entirely differently depending on who you are and what you are oriented toward. That is the gap between heart and head. You can know the facts about Jesus and still have Him register as an intrusion rather than a rescue.
Brian pressed hard on the idea that staying in the middle is not actually an option. Treating Jesus as a respectable historical figure while withholding real surrender is not a neutral position. It is, functionally, the same road the Pharisees were on. He pointed to Matthew 21:44 and asked the room to find a third option in it, and sat with the silence. As Brian put it, "You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus." The only real question is which direction you fall: onto the rock willingly, to be broken and rebuilt, or waiting until the rock falls on you.
Taught from Matthew 12:1-14 · 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 · Matthew 21:44 · Hosea 6:6 · Luke 21:1-4
“You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus.”
From Smell Something
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 2:14-16
14 Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and reveals through us the sweet aroma of his knowledge in every place.
15 For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God, in those who are saved, and in those who perish;
16 to the one a stench from death to death; to the other a sweet aroma from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 27, 2025 Smell Something Brian Hunter preaches on Matthew 12, asking why two groups witnessed the same Jesus and walked away so differently, and why there is no neutral response to him.
- January 26, 2025 Shhhh! Smell Something? Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show why two groups can witness the same miracle and walk away with opposite reactions to Jesus, and why neutrality is not an option.