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 the free will offering starts with what makes it different from every other sacrifice: nothing compels it. Brian Hunter has walked the congregation through Leviticus over several weeks, and the Olah offering in Leviticus 1 sits near the center of that series precisely because it is brought out of the worshiper's own choice, tied to gratitude, celebration, or the completion of a vow. The earlier teaching on the peace offering in Leviticus 7 covers similar ground: that free will thanksgiving offering is also entirely voluntary, brought when the doctor gives a good report or when a child is born, the overflow of a heart that wants to mark what God has done.
What the congregation kept returning to in the Olah teaching is the detail about the worshiper placing a hand on the animal's head before it is killed. That is not a casual gesture. It is an intimate, even frightening act of choosing, and it stands in contrast to the kind of reflexive or coerced offering that costs a person nothing. Brian connected it to the order of the sacrifice itself: the head goes on the altar first, the seat of will and desire, and when that goes up, everything else follows. The entire animal is consumed, nothing comes home, which is what sets the Olah apart from a fellowship offering where most of the meat feeds a celebration. Laying the whole thing on the fire is the point. Brian says, "He held nothing back from you," and that reality is what the free will offering is meant to answer.
The series lands on Romans 12:1, Paul's call to present our bodies as living sacrifices, as the New Testament form of the same movement. The free will offering, whether the Olah or the thanksgiving feast of Leviticus 7, is not a transaction meant to satisfy an angry God. It is a response to a God who has already given everything. Pastor Brian has also taught that the peace offering's design, requiring the worshiper to share the feast with sons, daughters, servants, and the Levites in town, means this kind of gratitude was never meant to be hoarded in private. The goodness being celebrated belongs inside a community.
Taught from Leviticus 1:1-9 · Romans 12:1 · Leviticus 7:11-17 · Deuteronomy 12:7 · John 12
“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.
- 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.
- 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.