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 the Olah offering of Leviticus 1, a free will burnt offering that a worshiper brought not out of obligation but out of gratitude, celebration, or the fulfillment of a vow. Brian Hunter has walked the congregation through what made this offering distinct: the animal had to be male and without blemish, the very best from the herd, and it had to come from the worshiper's own flock. Nothing could be borrowed or secondhand. The whole animal, head, entrails, legs, everything, was consumed by fire. Nothing came home. That totality is the point. Brian says, "It is a pleasing aroma to God when we hold nothing back and surrender everything to him."
One detail Brian has returned to is the moment the worshiper places his hand on the animal's head before it is killed. That is not a casual gesture. It represents a real transfer, a real act of choosing, and it has to be meant. The head goes on the altar first because it is the seat of will and desire. When that goes up, everything else follows more easily. Brian connects this directly to Paul's call in Romans 12:1 to present our bodies as living sacrifices, and to Jesus himself, who Brian says "held nothing back from you."
The teaching also holds space for the reality that giving your best is hard, and that the hardness is not incidental. Brian has said that "if everything is figured out, if we don't ever have to do anything hard, we don't really need the Lord." The woman with the alabaster jar in John 12 gave something that looked like pure waste to those watching. The ancient worshiper burning his best animal looked the same to a neighboring shepherd who did not follow the Lord. Tribe's teaching on this is that God sees it differently, and that surrender offered freely, at real cost, is exactly what pleases him.
Taught from Leviticus 1:1-9 · Romans 12:1 · John 12 · Leviticus 7:11-16 · 1 Samuel 1
“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.