What does Tribe teach about living 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 living sacrifice is rooted in the Olah offering of Leviticus 1, the free-will burnt offering in which the worshiper brings the very best animal from their own flock and gives the whole thing to the fire. Nothing comes home. Brian Hunter has walked the congregation through this in detail, noting that the offering is not triggered by sin or obligation but by gratitude, celebration, or the completion of a vow. It is something a person chooses. That distinction matters, because the cost of it is the point.
One detail the congregation kept returning to is the laying of the hand on the animal's head before it is killed. Brian and others noted that this is not a casual gesture. It is an intimate act, a real moment of transfer, and it requires the worshiper to mean what they are doing. The text also specifies that the head goes onto the altar first, and Brian connected that to the idea that the head is the seat of will and desire. If a person surrenders that first, everything else follows. He drew a line from this to Paul's call in Romans 12:1 to present our bodies as living sacrifices, and to the woman with the alabaster jar in John 12, whose gift looked like waste to Judas but was total surrender to Jesus. Brian says, "He held nothing back from you," and that reality is what makes the Olah the pattern for how we are meant to respond.
Tribe's teaching here pushes back against the idea that faith becomes easier when circumstances are easier. 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." The living sacrifice is not a one-time transaction but a posture of ongoing, chosen surrender, starting with the hardest thing first.
Taught from Leviticus 1:1-9 · Romans 12:1 · John 12 · Luke 17:17-19 · 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.
- 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.