What does Tribe teach about knowing jesus?
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 knowing Jesus starts with an honest question: is the picture of Jesus you have carried since childhood actually large enough to hold everything the Bible says about him? Brian Walker has pressed that question more than once, and the answer he keeps returning to is that most Christians have built their understanding of Jesus around a handful of familiar verses, John 7:31 being the clearest example, while quietly skipping or softening the passages that do not fit that frame. As Brian puts it, "We all know verse 31. We've all seen it. Few of us have seen the context in which verse 31 plays out." The surrounding context, grumbling, accusations, confusion, leaders plotting an arrest, is not incidental. It is the actual terrain inside which people came to believe, and a faith built only on the belief moment will be blindsided by everything around it.
The other strand running through this teaching is that knowing Jesus is not a static possession but something the Holy Spirit actively sustains and deepens. Brian has walked the congregation through passages from 1 Corinthians 2 and John 14 to show that the Spirit searches out and reveals the deep things of God, teaches, and keeps bringing Jesus back into focus. The practical point he returns to is that if Jesus feels distant or the Bible feels flat, the missing piece is usually a living relationship with the Holy Spirit, because, as Brian has said, the Holy Spirit's favorite subject is Jesus.
Both threads come back to the same place. Knowing Jesus is not a matter of accumulating correct information about him. It is a first-hand acquaintance, the kind that holds when the noise gets loud, when the surface-level events are unsettling, and when the picture has to stretch to include a Jesus bigger than the one on a felt-board flannelgraph. Brian's word to the congregation has been to look past the obvious and ask what God is actually doing, because, as he said, "He is working secretly, unknown to you. You may be looking for him in the midst of whatever it is that you're going through, not being able to see him."
Taught from John 7:31 · John 14:26 · 1 Corinthians 2:10-14 · Habakkuk 3:3-6 · Ephesians 1:17-18
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 2:10-14
10 But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.
11 For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except God’s Spirit.
12 But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- April 19, 2026 Faith Under Pressure Brian Hunter walks through Acts 1:8 to show how the Holy Spirit empowers ordinary people to be faithful witnesses to a risen Jesus, no matter the pressure they face.
- November 4, 2024 Look Beneath the Surface Brian Hunter preaches on looking beneath the surface of Jesus's nature, urging believers to build a faith big enough to hold all of who he is, not just the familiar parts.
- November 3, 2024 Look Beneath the Surface A Wyoming pastor walks through John 7 to challenge Christians to expand their picture of Jesus and stay grounded as national uncertainty grows.