What does Tribe teach about free will offering?
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 free will offerings starts with what makes them different from every other sacrifice in Leviticus. Unlike offerings tied to sin or ritual obligation, the Olah offering in Leviticus 1 is brought out of the worshiper's own free choice, rooted in celebration, gratitude, or the completion of a vow. Brian Hunter has spent significant time in this text because he believes the distinction matters: this is not an offering you are forced into. It is one you choose.
What the congregation kept returning to is the cost built into that choice. The animal has to come from the worshiper's own flock, not borrowed from someone else. It has to be without defect, meaning the very best available. And unlike the fellowship offering, where most of the meat feeds a celebration, the Olah offering holds nothing back. The entire animal, head included, goes onto the altar and is consumed. Brian connected the detail about the head going on first to the idea that surrendering the hardest thing clears the way for everything else. The laying of hands on the animal's head before it is killed is not a casual gesture either. It is an intimate, deliberate act of transfer, a real moment of choosing. An offering, the congregation was reminded, has to be meant.
Brian drew a line from that ancient practice to Romans 12:1 and Paul's call to present our bodies as living sacrifices. The same logic holds: a free will offering is not reflexive, not coerced, and not partial. As Brian put it, "He held nothing back from you." That is the ground the invitation stands on. The hard question the series keeps pressing is whether the worshiper is willing to do the same.
Taught from Leviticus 1:1-9 · Romans 12:1 · John 12 · Luke 17:17-19
“He held nothing back from you.”
From The Olah Offering
The passage taught · 1 Samuel 1
1 Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.
2 He had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, and the name of other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.
3 This man went up out of his city from year to year to worship and to sacrifice to Yahweh of Armies in Shiloh. The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, priests to Yahweh, were there.
4 When the day came that Elkanah sacrificed, he gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions;
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- March 31, 2025 The Olah Offering A Wyoming church works through Leviticus, exploring what it means to hold nothing back from God and offer your whole life as a living sacrifice.
- March 30, 2025 The Ola Offering A Wyoming pastor walks through Leviticus 1 and the Olah offering, a burnt sacrifice consumed completely, and asks what it looks like to give God everything.
Mentioned along the way
- March 16, 2025 In The Presence of The Lord A pastor and congregation dig into Leviticus 7 to explore why God commanded a feast shared with the whole community as an act of thanksgiving.