What does Tribe teach about pharisees vs disciples?
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 this starts with a simple and uncomfortable observation: the disciples and the Pharisees had nearly everything in common. Brian walked through Matthew 12:1-14 and counted five identical experiences shared by both groups. They were both in the grain field with Jesus. Both heard him speak. Both walked into the synagogue. Both watched the man with the withered hand get healed. Both heard Jesus teach again. Same proximity, same words, same miracle, and yet one group went home free and the other walked out plotting to kill him. The difference, Brian argued, had everything to do with posture, not proximity. The disciples admitted their hunger and their poverty. The Pharisees saw, in the way scripture consistently uses seeing as a tell for flesh-driven desire, and from that moment of seeing they protested, accused, questioned, and finally conspired.
To explain why the same encounter produces such different responses, Brian turned to 2 Corinthians 2:14-16, where Paul describes the knowledge of Christ as a fragrance that smells like life to those being saved and like death to those who are perishing. He used the feedlot smell of Greeley, Colorado to land the point: same smell, completely different reaction depending on who you are and where you stand. A hard heart, he said, is not a passive thing. It actively works against Jesus. Brian was direct about what this means for anyone who treats Jesus as a decent historical figure while withholding surrender: that is not a neutral third option. As Brian put it, "You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus."
Brian then read Matthew 21:44, where Jesus says that anyone who stumbles over the stone will be broken to pieces, and that the stone will crush anyone it falls on. He asked the room to find a third option in that verse and sat with the silence. His answer was that there is none. The only available choice is which direction you fall. You can fall on the rock willingly and be broken and rebuilt, or the rock eventually falls on you. The Pharisee road and the road of simple indifference lead to the same place. The disciple road begins with admitting need.
Taught from Matthew 12:1-14 · 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 · Matthew 21:44 · Hosea 6:6 · Luke 21:1-4
“You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus.”
From Smell Something
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 2:14-16
14 Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and reveals through us the sweet aroma of his knowledge in every place.
15 For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God, in those who are saved, and in those who perish;
16 to the one a stench from death to death; to the other a sweet aroma from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 27, 2025 Smell Something Brian Hunter preaches on Matthew 12, asking why two groups witnessed the same Jesus and walked away so differently, and why there is no neutral response to him.
- January 26, 2025 Shhhh! Smell Something? Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show why two groups can witness the same miracle and walk away with opposite reactions to Jesus, and why neutrality is not an option.