What does Tribe teach about who is israel?
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 who Israel is starts with the honest admission that a single answer drawn from one category will fall apart under pressure. Brian Hunter has built a working definition across the Unbreakable series using three overlapping circles: sovereign election, genealogical descent, and covenantal faithfulness. He argues that any definition leaning on only one of those will either tie a person in knots in conversation or leave them vulnerable to narratives designed to dehumanize Jewish people and ultimately do violence to them. The remnant, in his reading, sits at the center where all three circles meet.
Brian has been careful to say the diagram is not a chart of salvation and not a checklist for earning right standing with God. It is a working definition of who Israel is across the whole Bible. He draws on Paul in Romans and Galatians to show that believers are grafted in, which puts Christians inside the diagram as people adopted into God's family and drawn into relationship by God's initiative rather than their own. He acknowledged that the claim that God's definition of Israel includes Christians is a statement that will twist a person into pretzels, but he held that the biblical witness requires sitting with that tension rather than flattening it.
The definition also has room for the modern nation-state of Israel without being limited to it. Brian illustrated the sovereign election circle using Deuteronomy 14:2 and Ezekiel 16, showing that God's choosing of this people was not based on anything they had done. He used King David's family tree, which runs through Ruth the Moabite, to show that genealogical descent alone cannot carry the full weight of the definition either. The series has consistently returned to this layered picture because, as the teaching puts it, getting it right is not an academic exercise. How a person defines Israel shapes how they see Jewish people, and that has consequences that run from theology straight into history.
Taught from Galatians 3 · Romans 11:17 · Deuteronomy 14:2 · Genesis 17:7-8 · Ezekiel 16:4-6
“A vandal is a weak person. They expend energy but not to create of their own, not to make something beautiful of their own, not to innovate of their own, not to improve, but just to tear down.”
From Unbreakable Week 5： Surrounded by Vandals, Part 2
The passage taught · Galatians 3
1 Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed among you as crucified?
2 I just want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?
3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh?
4 Did you suffer so many things in vain, if it is indeed in vain?
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- February 23, 2026 Unbreakable Week 5： Surrounded by Vandals, Part 2 Brian Hunter walks through Israel's history of persecution, asks why antisemitism persists, and connects God's faithfulness to a chosen people with his faithfulness to every broken life.
- February 22, 2026 Surrounded By Vandals Part II A Wyoming pastor walks through the Bible's portrayal of Israel, asking why antisemitism persists across history and what God's unbreakable commitment to his people means for us today.
- February 8, 2026 Surrounded By Vandals Pastor Brian Hunter explores who Israel is, what antisemitism looks like today, and how Joseph's story connects to God's unbreakable commitment to his people.
- February 1, 2026 Who Is Israel? Brian Hunter explores what the Bible means by "Israel," examining sovereign election, genealogical descent, and covenantal faithfulness to show why Israel's story matters to all believers.
Mentioned along the way
- January 25, 2026 Distinct Among the Nations A Jackson Hole church works through Jeremiah 31 to explore what the Bible actually says about Israel, why it matters, and what it costs to think clearly about it.