What does Tribe teach about why jesus came?
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 why Jesus came starts not in Bethlehem but on the very first pages of Genesis. Both Colson, one of the leaders in Tribe's young adults ministry, and Pastor Brian have walked through the same arc: God created humanity for relationship, humanity failed, and in that moment of failure God immediately set a rescue in motion. Colson pointed to Genesis 3:15 as the first Christmas promise, that an offspring would come who would bruise the head of the serpent, and argued that everything in the Hebrew Bible from that verse forward is the long, winding road toward the manger. Pastor Brian put it plainly on Christmas Eve: "The story of Christmas begins all the way back in a garden."
What both teachers keep coming back to is how unexpected the rescue looked at every turn. God chose Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and finally Jesus through lines and circumstances nobody would have scripted. The promises kept arriving in the most unlikely packages, through barren women, shepherd boys, and eventually a poor teenage girl in an occupied territory. Colson noted that God's consistent pattern is to choose the person you would not choose, and that the birth in Bethlehem is the fullest expression of that pattern. All of it, he argued, was the fulfillment of promises God had been making for thousands of years, captured in 2 Corinthians 1:20: "For all the promises of God find their yes in him."
The reason behind all of it, Pastor Brian said, is that this condition of sin that has infected all of us is terminal, resulting in death, separation forever from God's family, and no person can escape it on their own. Jesus came to absorb that sentence, living without sin, dying a criminal's death, and rising again so that God and humanity could be reunited as family. As Brian puts it, "God always goes one step further than what you expect," giving the Messiah first to Israel and then to the whole world.
Taught from Genesis 3:15 · Isaiah 9:6-7 · 2 Samuel 7:8-16 · 2 Corinthians 1:20 · Luke 2:1-20
“The same God who was born in a manger in Bethlehem to a poor teenage Jew is the same God who seeks you out and loves you.”
From Christmas： The Whole Story
The passage taught · 1 Samuel 16:6-13
6 When they had come, he looked at Eliab, and said, “Surely Yahweh’s anointed is before him.”
7 But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I don’t see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.”
8 Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Yahweh has not chosen this one, either.”
9 Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. He said, “Yahweh has not chosen this one, either.”
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- December 29, 2025 Christmas： The Whole Story A young adults leader walks Tribe church through the entire biblical story to show why Christmas begins on page one of Genesis, not in a manger.
- December 25, 2025 Tribe Christmas Eve Service - Town Square A Christmas Eve message from Jackson Hole about why the story of Christmas begins not in Bethlehem but in a garden, and what the gift of the Messiah means for everyone.