What does Tribe teach about surrounded by enemies?
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 being surrounded by enemies starts with Psalm 22, a song David wrote a thousand years before Jesus was born. Brian walked the congregation through that psalm and showed how David, as a warrior poet, was describing the experience of being utterly hemmed in with no way out and no help coming. The image Brian kept returning to was verse 12, the phrase 'fierce bulls of Bashan.' To anyone who knew their Bible, Bashan was not a neutral place. It was the region tied to King Og and the Rephaim, giants with a supernatural origin, and Mount Hermon at its edge carried a name in Hebrew that meant a place set aside for destruction. By the time of Jesus, Caesarea Philippi sat in that same territory, a pagan temple complex with a long history of darkness. Brian said the bulls in Psalm 22 are not only physical pressure. There is something darker behind them, and David, writing prophetically, was seeing more than his own circumstances.
Brian traced how Jesus walked deliberately into that geography, going to Caesarea Philippi to make himself known to the powers of hell on their own ground before heading south to Jerusalem. What happened in Jerusalem looked like total defeat to every human observer. His own people were heartbroken. But Brian argued that 'the cross was not the triumph of darkness, but the judgment of it.' The powers of hell came into the open because they believed they had won, and that moment of apparent victory was actually the moment they locked horns with the one who would break them. The resurrection was the proof that they had lost.
For anyone sitting in that congregation who feels surrounded right now, Brian's point was that Jesus faced those bulls directly so that his victory is available to anyone willing to receive it. If, as Brian said, 'maybe you find yourself surrounded by fierce bulls of Bashan with no way out, no help, no hope, no rescue,' the teaching at Tribe is that you are not in territory Jesus does not know. He went there first, on purpose, and he came out the other side.
Taught from Psalm 22:1-24 · Deuteronomy 3:1-11 · 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 · Colossians 2:14 · Matthew 10
“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.
- April 5, 2026 The Bulls of Bashan Brian Hunter walks through Psalm 22 on Easter Sunday, tracing David's ancient words about bulls of Bashan to the cross and what Jesus's victory means for your life today.