What does Tribe teach about christmas prophecy?
Drawn from the message 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 Christmas prophecy starts with the conviction that Isaiah 9:1-7 is not just a warm seasonal sentiment but a text with past, present, and future weight all at once. Brian Hunter walked the congregation through the passage verse by verse on the Sunday before Christmas 2024, asking people to hold three questions at the same time for each line: has this already been fulfilled, is it being fulfilled right now, or does it point to something still coming? That threefold lens, Brian argued, is the most honest way to read prophetic writing, and flattening Isaiah 9 into a Christmas card is what causes people to miss what it is actually saying.
One of the clearest examples Brian drew out was the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali named in verse one. Those were territories Jesus' own contemporaries dismissed as backwaters, and the Pharisees in John 7:52 said flatly that no prophet ever comes from Galilee. Brian pointed out the painful irony: they had Isaiah 9:1 available to them and still missed it. Verse two, the image of people walking in darkness seeing a great light, opened into a longer reflection on what it actually means to encounter Jesus rather than simply know about him intellectually. Brian says, "For anyone that has not surrendered their life to Jesus, the most compassionate thing I can tell you is that you are blind, and you don't even know it." Paul's blinding on the Damascus road was held up as the sharpest illustration: the sharpest religious mind of his era, confronted with how much he could not see. The point was not condemnation but remedy.
On verse three and the references to enlarging the nation, Brian held multiple readings in tension without forcing them to collapse into one another: an ongoing harvest of people coming to faith, the physical expansion of the modern state of Israel since 1948, and a future fulfillment still ahead. That same forward orientation carried through the rest of the passage, where Jesus is described not only as the one who came and the one who is active now, but as the one coming back to establish a literal government on earth. The thread running through all of it was that Christmas marks one moment in a longer arc, not the whole story.
Taught from Isaiah 9:1-7 · John 7:52 · Philippians 4:19
“For anyone that has not surrendered their life to Jesus, the most compassionate thing I can tell you is that you are blind, and you don't even know it.”
From A Government That Will Never End
The passage taught · Isaiah 9:1-7
1 But there shall be no more gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; but in the latter time he has made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in the land of the shadow of death, on them the light has shined.
3 You have multiplied the nation. You have increased their joy. They rejoice before you according to the joy in harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the plunder.
4 For the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as in the day of Midian.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- December 23, 2024 A Government That Will Never End Brian Hunter walks through Isaiah 9 verse by verse, asking whether each prophecy is past, present, or still coming, and why it matters this Christmas.