What does Tribe teach about responding to 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 responding to Jesus starts with a simple and uncomfortable observation: the disciples and the Pharisees had nearly everything in common. Brian Sauvé walks through Matthew 12 and points out that both groups were present in the grain field, both heard Jesus speak, both walked into the synagogue, both watched the healing of the man with the withered hand, and both heard Jesus teach again. Same proximity, same words, same miracle, and yet one group left free and the other left plotting to kill him. The difference, Brian argues, was never about access to Jesus. It was about posture toward him.
To explain why the same encounter produces such opposite reactions, Brian reaches for 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. The feedlot smell of Greeley, Colorado becomes his illustration: everyone smells the same thing, but what it means depends entirely on who you are and where you stand. From there the teaching gets direct. Brian says, "You are fooling yourself if you think that you can have a neutral reaction to Jesus." Treating him as a decent historical figure while withholding surrender is not a third option. It is, functionally, the same road the Pharisees were on.
Brian then puts Matthew 21:44 in front of the room, 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, and he simply asks whether anyone can find a third option in that verse. The answer the teaching lands on is that there is none. You either fall on Jesus willingly and are broken and rebuilt on your own terms, or the stone eventually falls on you. A hard heart is not a passive condition. Indifference, Brian says, is just a slow version of what the Pharisees chose.
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.