What does Tribe teach about blood sacrifice?
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 blood sacrifice begins by clearing away a frame most people carry without realizing it. Brian Hunter points out that the ancient pagan world sacrificed out of fear, trying to appease gods who might otherwise destroy crops or kill children, and that frame is easy to import straight into reading the Bible. The result is a picture of an angry God barely tolerating people as long as the killing continues, with Jesus stepping in at the last second. Brian says that picture is wrong. Blood sacrifice in Leviticus is not something God demanded for his own appeasement. It is something God himself designed so that people could draw near to him. As Brian puts it, "God has provided an incredible, beautiful way for us to have intimate relationship with God."
The hinge of the teaching is what the laying on of hands actually means in Leviticus 3. Brian argues it is not primarily about transferring sin to the animal. It is about appointing a representative. The worshiper's essence is bound up in the animal, and because the animal is without defect, it is the one who qualifies to enter God's presence, as Psalm 15 asks. The blood, which now carries the person's life, is then sprinkled on the altar. Leviticus 17:11 grounds this: the blood is the life, and it is the blood that makes atonement. The sacrifice is not about satisfying an angry deity. It is the mechanism God provided for a person's life to reach across the gap to him.
This is where the series title comes into focus. Brian frames every act of surrender as a Thunderdome, two wills entering, one leaving. "For a life giving relationship with God, something has to die." The blood sacrifice in Leviticus is the ancient form of that same reality, and the cross is where it lands finally and completely. Either the worshiper's old self dies through identification with the offering, or nothing changes. The teaching holds those two things together: the sacrifice is an act of intimacy, not punishment, and it costs everything.
Taught from Leviticus 3:1-17 · Leviticus 17:11 · 1 John 4:9-10 · Psalm 15 · Numbers 27:18-20
“God has provided an incredible, beautiful way for us to have intimate relationship with God.”
From The Sin Offering
The passage taught · 1 John 4:9-10
9 By this God’s love was revealed in us, that God has sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- March 3, 2025 The Sin Offering Leviticus 3 shows that God designed blood sacrifice not to satisfy his anger but to draw us into intimate relationship with him.
- March 2, 2025 The Blood Bridges the Gap Brian Hunter walks through Leviticus 3 to show that God designed blood sacrifice not to manage his anger, but to draw people into genuine closeness with him.