What does Tribe teach about hosanna meaning?
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 hosanna begins with the word itself. Pastor Brian Hunter points out that most English translations of the triumphal entry render the crowd's shout as something like 'praise God,' but the actual word in the text is hosanna, an Aramaic cry that means 'save us.' In the April 2025 Passover message he described the desperation behind it by comparing it to someone who has been treading water for hours and finally sees the coast guard, crying out with their last breath. The word is not a song of celebration. It is a plea from people who know they cannot save themselves.
Brian returned to this in depth in the September 2026 message, where he traced what it would take for national Israel to finally shout that word and mean it from the depths of their hearts. He worked through Jeremiah 30 and the coming 'time of Jacob's trouble' to argue that unprecedented tribulation will bring Israel to the end of themselves, producing the surrender that the shout of hosanna requires. Along the way he was careful to say that 'the chastisements of God are always the least severe measures taken to bring about the maximum possible correction,' framing that coming suffering not as abandonment but as the precise pressure needed to open a closed heart.
By the end of the September message, the word had stopped being only about Israel's future and had become a question for everyone present. Brian asked, 'Are you at the end of yourself yet where you would cry out, Hosanna?' His summary of what the word ultimately means was this: 'Hosanna is the cry of the human heart that finally realizes we can't save ourselves.' That, in his teaching, is where the word lives, not in a parade, but in the moment a person stops pretending they can manage without God.
Taught from John 12:12-13 · Jeremiah 30:1-17 · Matthew 23:37-39 · Psalm 118:26
“Hosanna is the cry of the human heart that finally realizes we can't save ourselves.”
From The Cry of the Human Heart
The passage taught · Jeremiah 30:1-17
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying,
2 “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, ‘Write all the words that I have spoken to you in a book.
3 For, behold, the days come,’ says Yahweh, ‘that I will reverse the captivity of my people Israel and Judah,’ says Yahweh. ‘I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they will possess it.’”
4 These are the words that Yahweh spoke concerning Israel and concerning Judah.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- September 20, 2026 The Cry of the Human Heart Pastor Brian Hunter walks through Jeremiah 30 and John 12 to explore what will finally soften Israel's heart, and what the cry of "Hosanna" means for your own life today.
- April 14, 2025 The Feast of Passover Brian Hunter walks through the biblical Passover feast, explaining why a Wyoming church honors the seven feasts of God to remember, recalibrate, and see Jesus in scripture.