What does Tribe teach about temptation?
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 temptation starts with the wilderness. Amanda Lack walked the congregation through Matthew 4:1-11 and built a case that Jesus's forty days of testing were not an interruption in his life and ministry but a deliberate bridge between his baptism and the work God sent him to do. The wilderness was not punishment. It was preparation. The ground rule she set early was this: "Being uncomfortable is not the same thing as being abandoned."
Working through the three temptations, Amanda pointed out that Satan's first move was to attack Jesus's identity with the words "if you are the Son of God," which came almost immediately after the Father had declared exactly that at the baptism. The pattern still holds today. The enemy tends to go after the last thing God spoke over a person by pointing to present circumstances as evidence that it cannot be true. The temptations themselves were not obviously evil on their face, which is what made them dangerous. Satan even quoted scripture on the second attempt, though he quoted it partially and bent what remained toward a reading that treats God more like a genie than a king. Jesus answered every temptation with the word of God, and he did it from a place of genuine physical weakness after forty days without food.
A separate thread on temptation ran through Justin Waters's message on what it means to take sin seriously rather than simply wishing it away. Drawing on Deuteronomy 7 and Galatians 5, Justin argued that the posture God asked of Israel toward foreign nations, total and ruthless removal, is the same posture God asks of believers toward the flesh. He was honest that he had believed the lie that whatever his flesh wanted it deserved, and he had shown up faithfully while living a double life. Jay shared something he had heard from the room that week: God is not going to simply remove a sin you are passively wishing away. You have to partner with him, make the decision that you are done, and put skin in the game. Justin put it plainly from his own experience: "It's cost me way more to coddle and pamper my flesh than it has to crucify it."
Taught from Matthew 4:1-11 · Deuteronomy 8:2-5 · 1 Corinthians 10:13 · Galatians 5:16-17 · James 4:7
“Being uncomfortable is not the same thing as being abandoned.”
From Uncomfortable Is Not the Same as Abandoned
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 10:13
13 No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 19, 2024 Uncomfortable Is Not the Same as Abandoned Amanda Lack opens Matthew 4 with Tribe church in Jackson Hole, walking through Jesus in the wilderness and what his example means for the hard seasons we all face.
- August 18, 2024 Jesus In The Wilderness Amanda Lack walks through Jesus in the wilderness, looking at his three temptations and what they teach us about identity, trust, and how to endure hard seasons.
- April 15, 2024 Devoted to Destruction A guest speaker leads Tribe church through Deuteronomy, Galatians and Romans, calling believers to stop coddling sin and ruthlessly cut out whatever pulls them from God.
- April 14, 2024 Devoted to Destruction A guest speaker at a Wyoming church walks through Scripture on why followers of Jesus must fully destroy sinful patterns rather than make room for them.
- January 30, 2023 Worship and Prayer A Sunday of worship, prayer, and communion at a Wyoming church, where members shared personal struggles, prayed the Lord's Prayer line by line, and sought forgiveness together.