I Don't Hate Torah Observers
About this sermon
Dean Odle responds to claims that his criticism of Torah-observance teaching reflects hatred toward its adherents. Drawing on his own time in Messianic fellowship, he says his concern is doctrinal and pastoral: requiring Mosaic observance for salvation or covenant standing obscures the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and the change of priesthood and covenant described in Hebrews.
Chronological teaching outline
Select a section heading to play the sermon from that moment.
Odle clarifies that he does not hate Torah observers; he opposes doctrines he believes place believers under Mosaic covenant obligations. He says his criticism comes partly from firsthand involvement, not ignorance of Sabbath, feast, dietary, and Messianic arguments.
Using his Messianic-fellowship experience, he questions claims of Torah observance that retain selected commands while setting aside others. Questions about penalties and the whole law expose what he sees as inconsistency in claiming covenant obedience without accepting the covenant’s full terms.
He reviews Jesus’ ministry before the cross, including sacrifice and the woman taken in adultery, to distinguish that setting from the inaugurated new covenant. The woman taken in adultery illustrates both the law’s judgment and Jesus’ merciful command to leave sin, before His death completed the sacrificial work.
Hebrews’ treatment of Abraham and Melchizedek introduces a priesthood that precedes and surpasses the Levitical order. Abraham’s tithe and Melchizedek’s identity as king of righteousness and peace show that God’s saving purpose is larger than Levitical descent.
Odle emphasizes Hebrews’ statement that a change of priesthood entails a change of law, with Jesus serving from Judah as the enduring High Priest. Hebrews 7 is central here: Moses said nothing about priests from Judah, yet Jesus’ indestructible life establishes a different order.
Illustrations involving wineskins, food, and ceremonial observance support his argument that Christians should read the whole Bible without placing themselves under Sinai’s covenant. His new-wine illustration addresses the attempt to attach covenant forms to the gospel; reading Torah remains valuable, but covenant jurisdiction matters.
He points to revival and devotion among Christians outside Torah-observant circles as evidence that the Holy Spirit’s work is not confined to those practices. Examples of churches that celebrate Christmas yet preach Christ are used to dispute the claim that such customs automatically nullify salvation or revival.
The sermon defends Paul’s apostleship and argues from Acts and early Christianity that Gentile believers were not required to become Torah observant. Acts 15 and the historical Gentile mission support his claim that the apostles imposed a limited decision, not the entire Mosaic code.
Odle warns that some streams progress from Torah observance to rejection of Paul, the New Testament, or Jesus’ full deity. He names the denial of Jesus as Yahweh in the flesh as the decisive boundary beyond which the movement ceases to be Christian.
He closes by reaffirming love for individuals while opposing any system that makes Torah keeping a salvation issue. His pastoral distinction is between voluntary practice and compulsion: personal observance is not the same as making observance necessary for justification.
Open each passage and read it in its complete biblical context.
Read and follow along
Read representative excerpts here, or open the complete indexable transcript to search every timestamped section.
Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:00:00
Hallelujah, we worship you, Jesus. We worship you, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God Almighty in the flesh. We worship you, we give you the praise. It is your blood that is sinless and holy and eternal and powerful. It is your blood that cleanses us from sin when we confess our sins and turn from them. It is your blood that can bring healing, deliverance, power against all the power of Satan. We thank you that we overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ, by the word of our testimony, because we love Him on our lives even unto the death. I am just grateful today, Lord. I'm grateful today for the new covenant. We praise you for it today in Jesus' name. Amen, amen. You may be seated this morning. We welcome everyone to Fire and Grace Church. I'm Pastor Dean Odle. We welcome those of you watching and listening by YouTube, Facebook, Blog Talk Radio, our websites. Lot going on today, a lot going on out here in the world. This is actually today, we're gonna get into a message that I prepared a few weeks ago. But I always see God on the time and I study things out and prepare things sometimes and the Lord says, wait, or I want you to do a different thing before that. And so I've had this kind of sitting on the shelf for a few weeks, but again, we're gonna address today the Torah observance stuff, the law, what is required of Christians because it continues to be an issue. It continues to be a questions and not just a questions, but a tax. It just continues to be really a divisive topic among Christians today. And some of it's getting really mean. And so also I want to address because it's been brought to my attention through various sources that there are a lot of Torah people, I say Torah observing people out there who think that I, Pastor Dean and Fire and Grace Church that we hate Torah people, that we hate people who want to try to keep the Sabbath or try to go back to the law and all that and do what they feel their conscience is telling them or they feel they should do. It has nothing to do with that. I don't hate Torah people, even though I have brought some strong rebuke, some strong corrections because there are some extremes and some error in that movement. But I have also, listen, I've written two books, published two books.
- 0:03:00
One is entitled Grace Abuse that is a complete rebuke and correction of the error of Calvinism. And then in two, that was in 1997, 98, then in 2010, 11, I wrote the book, The Polluted Church from Rome to Kansas City where I addressed the errors that had crept into the Pentecostal and Charismatic Church from counterfeit supernatural to contemplative mysticism. I've confronted the errors in that book of Roman Catholicism. So again, what I'm saying here is I'm not trying to pick on any particular group about anything. I think every segment of Christianity, I don't care what I'm saying, every segment of Protestant Christianity has its different errors that it clings to or its doctrines of men or traditions of men. And the Torah movement, the Torah observance movement has, is no exception to that. That it has some very serious errors and some very serious dangers involved in it. But so again, there are many independent, non-denominational, Charismatic, Pentecostal churches. Even though I'm Pentecostal, Charismatic, I would not send you to because they're dangerous, okay? There's a lot of Baptist churches I wouldn't send you to. There's a lot of mega churches I wouldn't send you to. It's not about any particular group. It's just about being aware of what the scripture actually teaches. Now I'm gonna say this, and I wanna make this clear this morning. Again, I do not hate Torah observant people or what we used to call in the 80s, the Messianic movement, okay? There's been different names of it. The Hebrew roots, they call it. They call it the Messianic movement, the Torah observant movement. I wanna share something that maybe not a lot of you. I shared this a few years ago when I started addressing this again. But for those of you out there, I want you to know something. In the 1980s and early 90s, I used to attend a Messianic Torah observing fellowship in Birmingham, Alabama on a regular basis. I went to the Shabbat service. I was there when they would like the candles and have the bread, the, what was it called? I can't remember the, what? I don't remember now, what? It's just, I don't know, I can't remember the bread. And, but I wanna tell you, and one of my best friends, one of my very best friends that I would get up in the morning and meet for early morning prayer at various churches that actually introduced me and took me with him into Maxwell Federal Prison to preach every Monday night in Montgomery, Alabama to the Cuban drug smugglers that were there. I mean, this guy that I hung out with, he kept the feast.
- 0:06:04
I mean, in the sense of the Torah observance trying to keep the feast. I mean, of course, even the people try to keep the feast, you don't keep it according to what the scriptures say because on Passover, you're supposed to be sacrificing a lamb and eating all of it, right? But that doesn't happen anymore. But what I'm getting at is I was around the Torah observant people, messianic Jewish people, going to Shabbat services, I participated in Passover, Seder's, Rosh Hashanah celebrations. I actually own a shofar, a ram's horn from Israel. I mean, I have participated in the Feast of Tabernacles. I have done all that, okay? And I wanna say something, in those years of hanging out with my friend, being around Torah-observing people, people that felt they should keep the Sabbath starting on Friday night and Saturday, I never once had any of them. And we're talking about over years. We're talking about in the 80s and early 90s when a lot of you Torah observers weren't even born yet. Okay? I mean, it's amazing. Some of you weren't even born yet and you've maybe been saved three or five years and you think you're experts on this thing because you've watched a lot of YouTube videos and have your favorite Torah teacher, all right? But I've been around the blocker time or two. In fact, my friend that I just mentioned, he used to work for chosen people ministries, okay? He used to work for some of the big names in the Torah observance, messianic, Hebrew roots, whatever name you wanna put on it, movement. So I've been around it. I was around it a lot, all right? And all that time of being around it in the 80s and the early 90s, not one time, not one time, did I ever hear any rabbi in a messianic ministry or messianic fellowship? Not one time did I ever have any speaker that came in and I've heard them all just about. Not one time from my friend who kept the feast and the Sabbath and all that, not one time did I ever hear, Dean, you have to do this. You have to keep the Sabbath. You have to keep the feast. You have to be like us if you really wanna please God. Never one time. If you really love God, Dean, you would keep the Sabbath like us. Never received any type of condemnation or pressure or pushing as if you have to do this to be right with God, to have righteousness, to be in fellowship with God. Never was that an issue. And so what I'm saying is is that I saw a lot of Christians in the 80s
- 0:09:04
and the early 90s who went to normal, I would say Protestant churches, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostal, Assembly of God, different denominations that would go to Sabbath, Shabbat services, that would go to fellowship. And they went, the purpose for doing those things, they wanted to enhance their understanding of the scriptures concerning the feast, concerning Jewish culture and the culture in which the Bible came from. And all of that is good. I mean, some of the first books that I studied outside of the scriptures is a guy by the name of Kevin J. Connor. Maybe some of you heard of him. We're gonna use his stuff in the school. But he wrote a book, really a series of books. One on the Tabernacle of Moses, the Tabernacle of David, the Tabernacle of Solomon, or Solomon's Temple rather. I mean, I studied those books in depth. He has a book, The Seven Feasts of the Lord. I studied those in depth. I guess I'm saying all this because I get a little irritated. Pastor Dean, you just need a little more, your eyes open a little more. And I'm like, how long have you been saved? I'm like, again, I was studying this and involved in this and studying this in the scriptures and studying this. I used to watch Zola Levitt. I bet a lot of the Torah observers don't even know who he is because he's dead and passed away now. But he was on TV. He was a Messianic Jewish, born again Christian that taught about the feast and about the Sabbath and all the Jewish culture and all the rituals and the old covenant and all that and the types and the shadows and bringing it over in hell. And bringing, again, the Old Testament brings, is the shadow, the types and shadows of things that are now fulfilled, that are now literal, that are now done in the new covenant. And so what I'm saying is any Torah observer out there, and I wanna say this, most people that are in the Torah movement and the Torah observance movement, they get in that out of a genuine, sincere desire because they wanna make sure they're doing what they need to be doing to please God, to obey God, to live according to the scriptures, all right? And the motive is right a lot of time. But just because your motive is right doesn't mean you're always doctrinally right. It doesn't mean you're biblical. And again, these people will throw out stuff. Just like right before, I posted the title of the message today, which really has two titles. I posted the title on the Facebook and it's more, I don't hate Torah observers,
The complete timestamped transcript is published as a crawlable reading page so every sermon topic remains searchable without making this video page unnecessarily heavy.
Read and search the complete transcript