What does Tribe teach about giving your best?
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 giving your best is rooted in Leviticus 1 and the Olah offering, a free will burnt offering that a worshiper brought not because a rule required it, but out of gratitude, celebration, or the completion of a vow. Brian Hunter has walked the congregation through what made that offering costly: the animal had to be the best unblemished male from your own flock, not someone else's, and the whole thing went onto the altar. Nothing came home. Brian points out that the head went on first, the seat of choice and desire and will, and that once the head is given, everything else follows more easily.
The detail that draws the most attention is the laying on of hands. Placing your hand on the head of a large animal before it is killed is not a casual gesture. It is a real moment of choosing, a real transfer. That intimacy is the point. An offering has to be meant. Brian connects this to Romans 12:1 and Paul's call to present our bodies as living sacrifices, and to the woman with the alabaster jar in John 12, whose total gift looked like waste to Judas but was exactly the kind of surrender that pleases God. As Brian puts it, "It is a pleasing aroma to God when we hold nothing back and surrender everything to him."
The teaching is honest about why this is hard. Brian has said plainly, "If everything is figured out, if we don't ever have to do anything hard, we don't really need the Lord." Giving your best is not primarily about a transaction or even a discipline. It is about the posture of a person who has seen what God gave and is responding in kind. The reminder Brian keeps returning to is simple: "He held nothing back from you."
Taught from Leviticus 1:1-9 · Romans 12:1 · John 12 · Leviticus 7:11-16
“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
Messages that go deeper
- 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.
- September 12, 2022 A Pleasing Aroma： Leviticus 1 & 7 Brian Hunter opens Leviticus to show what wholehearted worship costs, tracing burnt offerings and peace feasts to a life poured out for God.