What does Tribe teach about feeling abandoned?
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 feeling abandoned starts with Psalm 22, a psalm that opens with the exact words Jesus spoke from the cross. Brian walked through that psalm on Easter Sunday and pointed out that David, writing a thousand years before the crucifixion, was describing an experience of being utterly surrounded with no way out, no help coming, no rescue in sight. That is not a modern problem. It is an ancient one, and it runs straight through the center of the biblical story.
The key image Brian returned to was the fierce bulls of Bashan, a phrase from verse 12 that would have carried heavy weight for any ancient reader. Bashan was not a neutral place. It was a region tied to darkness, judgment, and powers that felt overwhelming and inescapable. Brian said directly that if you find yourself there right now, the psalm is for you: "Maybe you find yourself surrounded by fierce bulls of Bashan with no way out, no help, no hope, no rescue." The point was that Jesus entered that same territory on purpose, went to the darkest ground, and then walked into Jerusalem to face what looked like total defeat.
What looked like defeat was not. Brian's argument was that the cross was the moment the powers of darkness came into the open because they thought they had won, and that moment became their undoing. As he put it, "The cross was not the triumph of darkness, but the judgment of it." The resurrection was the proof. For anyone who feels abandoned right now, Tribe's teaching holds that Jesus did not avoid that feeling. He entered it, and he came out the other side, which means his victory is something that can actually be shared.
Taught from Psalm 22:1-24 · 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 · Colossians 2:14
“The cross was not the triumph of darkness, but the judgment of it.”
From Easter Sunday at Tribe
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 15:55-57
55 “Death, where is your sting? Hades, where is your victory?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- April 6, 2026 Easter Sunday at Tribe Brian Hunter preaches on Psalm 22 at Easter, tracing the "bulls of Bashan" from David's cry to the cross, and what Christ's resurrection means for anyone feeling surrounded and trapped.