What does Tribe teach about sabbath rules?
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 Sabbath rules starts with two scenes from Matthew 12: Jesus' disciples picking grain on the Sabbath and Jesus healing a man's withered hand in the synagogue on that same day. Brian walked the congregation through both stories and pressed a single point, that the Pharisees had built a religious system so rigid it had no room left to receive what Jesus was doing. Their wineskin could not stretch. The disciples, good Jewish men who had grown up thinking exactly the way the Pharisees thought, walked freely through that same grain field because they were with Jesus and trusted him. Brian also noted that the Old Testament law actually required farmers to leave the edges of their fields unharvested so the poor could glean, meaning the disciples were not outside what the law permitted at all.
Brian drew attention to what Jesus does after correcting the Pharisees. He does not leave town or wait for a better moment. He walks straight into their synagogue, finds a man with a withered hand, and heals him in the middle of his own argument with the religious leaders. The common picture of Jesus as gentle and mild, Brian said, misses something real. The Jesus in Matthew 12 stepped directly into the trap that had been set for him. The Pharisees responded by plotting to kill him, and Brian was clear about why: their entire constructed identity, their authority, their social standing, was being confronted by what Jesus said and did, and rather than receive that as an invitation they experienced it as a threat to everything they had built.
By the third week in this passage, Brian had pressed to the sharpest edge of the question. Using Paul's language from 2 Corinthians about the fragrance of Christ, he made the case that there is no neutral posture toward Jesus. Investigating, considering, staying on the fence is still a posture of resistance, and resistance puts a person on the death side of that fork. He put it plainly: "Two men enter, one man leave, because somebody will die. Either you will die, or you will put him on the cross and he will die." Either a person dies to themselves, as Paul describes it in Galatians, crucified with Christ and no longer the boss of their own life, or they remain in charge and push Jesus to the margins. That, Brian said, is what the Pharisees' Sabbath rules were ultimately protecting.
Taught from Matthew 12:1-14 · 2 Corinthians 2:14-15 · Galatians 2:20 · Revelation 12:10-11 · James 4:2-7
“Two men enter, one man leave, because somebody will die. Either you will die, or you will put him on the cross and he will die.”
From Two Men Enter, One Man Leave
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 2:14-15
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;
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 3, 2025 Two Men Enter, One Man Leave A Wyoming congregation wrestles with why the Pharisees wanted Jesus dead, what that reveals about pride and surrender, and what it means to taste rather than just see God's goodness.
- January 20, 2025 Breaking the Law Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show how time with Jesus stretches our capacity for freedom and breaks the grip of religious rules that have no life in them.
- January 19, 2025 Breaking The Law Brian Hunter walks through Matthew 12 to show how time with Jesus breaks the grip of religious legalism and leads to real, transformed freedom.