What does Tribe teach about california wildfires?
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 the California wildfires starts not with explanation but with a promise and a question. Brian Hunter opened both messages by reading Isaiah 43 verses 1 through 4 against the backdrop of tens of thousands of structures burned, neighborhoods leveled, and people returning to find nothing. The promise is that when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned up. The question is that single word: when, not if. Followers of Jesus are not offered a fire-free life. They are offered company in the fire and the assurance of coming through it. Brian says, "It is in the fire of tribulation that there is an opportunity to encounter Jesus." That was the point of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They went into the furnace, and it was only inside the fire that a fourth man appeared with them.
The word that kept surfacing in both messages was "walk." Amanda noticed in the room that nobody walks through fire by instinct. You sprint or you stop-drop-and-roll. That it says walk suggests surrender and trust rather than panic. Joy connected it to Psalm 23, the valley of the shadow of death, also walked through at a deliberate pace, not camped in and not sprinted out of. Brian drew from this that the refinement requires the full walk-through. Getting pulled out early cuts the process short.
From there, Brian moved to 1 Corinthians 3, where Paul pictures every person's life as a building on a foundation that is already set. The materials a person uses, gold, silver, and jewels on one side, wood, hay, and straw on the other, look similar enough in the moment of construction. The difference only becomes clear when fire passes through. He told a story about Cowboy Greg, a teenager from the church, welding a broken part back together one winter while feeding cattle. The old ranch foreman took the finished piece, held it as high as he could, and slammed it on the ground ten times. That was not cruelty. It was the only honest test of whether the weld would hold. Brian said that is what fire does to a life, and that the same Jesus described in Revelation 3 as having eyes like fire can be invited to examine what is being built right now, before the final accounting.
Taught from Isaiah 43:1-4 · 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 · Revelation 3:15-18 · Psalm 23:4 · James 4:7
“It is in the fire of tribulation that there is an opportunity to encounter Jesus.”
From Tested by Fire
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 3:1-15
1 Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ.
2 I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, not even now are you ready,
3 for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?
4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly?
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 13, 2025 Tested by Fire A sermon on walking through fire without being consumed, drawing on Isaiah 43, 1 Corinthians 3, and the California wildfires to ask what we are building our lives with.
- January 12, 2025 The Fourth Man in the Fire A Wyoming pastor and congregation explore what it means to walk through fire, drawing on Isaiah 43 and 1 Corinthians 3 to ask what we are truly building our lives out of.