The Shadow Huggers
About this sermon
Dean Odle calls Old Covenant feasts, Sabbaths, food laws, sacrifices, and priesthood a prophetic shadow fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He argues that Christians who make those observances requirements for righteousness are “hugging the shadow” instead of receiving the substance of Passover, Firstfruits, Pentecost, atonement, rest, and tabernacling in Christ.
Chronological teaching outline
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After worship, Odle distinguishes the biblical timing of Passover and Firstfruits from popular Easter traditions. He then answers repeated questions about feast observance by insisting that Fire and Grace is a New Testament church and that eggs, bunnies, or feast days do not determine salvation.
He argues that the Levitical feasts cannot be kept as written without their prescribed sacrifices and that Jesus completed their meaning. Christ is presented as the Passover sacrifice, sinless unleavened bread, and Firstfruits from the dead, making return to animal offerings a denial of His sufficiency.
Pentecost is connected with the Holy Spirit’s outpouring and a warning against pride in spiritual gifts. Joel 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 frame trumpets as clear prophetic alarms that prepare people for war and the Day of the Lord rather than as a feast Christians must ritually keep.
Odle says Jesus fulfilled the Day of Atonement as the eternal High Priest who entered heaven’s sanctuary with His own blood. From Matthew 11 he identifies Jesus—not a required calendar day—as the believer’s rest, arguing that the old Levitical priesthood and Sabbath system have ended.
Personal memories of partying and a friend’s violent death illustrate the danger from which repentance delivers believers. Galatians 5 shifts attention from partial feast-keeping to abandoning adultery, idolatry, drunkenness, and other habitual works that exclude people from God’s kingdom.
Odle describes a church singer who admitted he was not born again yet died after continued drunkenness, using the story to urge direct gospel witness. He argues that ministry power is demonstrated when preaching produces conviction, repentance, deliverance, and changed lives rather than religious attendance alone.
He rejects Mosaic dietary restrictions for Christians, citing 1 Timothy 4 that every creature may be received with thanksgiving and sanctified by God’s Word and prayer. Family stories about bacon and longevity serve his practical claim that food laws do not establish holiness; Christ makes formerly unclean people clean.
Odle defines grace as God’s empowering influence, not merely a legal idea, and warns that feast-keeping becomes destructive when it produces superiority. Voluntary study of the feasts may point to Christ, but using them to establish righteousness makes Christ of no effect and replaces Spirit-led obedience with self-trust.
Galatians 1 is used to pronounce a curse on any gospel that adds circumcision or Mosaic observance as a condition of salvation. Odle restates the simple gospel: Jesus is God manifested in the flesh, died and rose again, and calls believers to repent, surrender their own plans, and be led by the Spirit.
The closing worship leads to the final feast: tabernacles signifies Jesus dwelling and reigning in believers now and being physically present in the millennial kingdom. Odle urges listeners to seek Christ’s indwelling life and Holy Spirit power rather than reconstructing booths or animal sacrifices.
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- 0:00:08
will you answer him do whatever you want me to do lord i'll go where you want me to go and i cry god almighty who was it this is love no there shall be no end there's a little bit more in here now come on sing it to him now to land i cry and i bow my heart before you because you're holy and worthy and glorious powerful honor you want everybody to help me one more time come on
- 0:03:14
holy holy holy is the lord god almighty who was and he is and is to come the one who is alive forevermore amen somebody praise the lord this place do you you know let me just go and tell you something the bible talks about gives us instructions about praise and worship you know it says clap your hands all you people right shout unto god with the voice of triumph right lift up holy hands without wrath and doubting there's so many commands in there about praise and worship we got to break free of tradition you guys tradition is dead the traditions of man make the word of god none effect christians is supposed to live by the word of god and by being led by the spirit of god not by the traditions and the doctrines of men amen and i'm about to shatter some of them for you this morning all right all right you may be seated hallelujah praise the lord now i know what you've been told but let me just go on and tell you today is not resurrection sunday easter and passover it's two different things all right and easter i mean easter you know it sounds like uh this thing remember called ishtar the fertility goddess remember that why do you think bunnies are involved playboy bunnies you remember that it's all about sexual sin and immorality passover is when jesus was crucified and that week he was resurrected first fruits because he is the first fruits you have the passover unleavened bread first fruits so you know this year i think it falls on april 22nd is when passover is so we're not even close now every now and then they end up in the same time period but easter is not about the resurrection of jesus not about the crucifix and resurrection sorry i know the traditional church word tells you that i know the calendars may tell you that but that's not the way it is jesus was crucified on passover and then unleavened bread and then he was raised on first fruits in that first week now having said that i'm sorry if y'all we're all into that this way i hate to bust some bubbles but let me just go ahead and i want to i want to but i'm going to address something this morning um go ahead and put up the picture this was a comment on last week's sermon and i'm i'm addressing this because i'm just about tired of hearing this stuff okay can somebody say as we get into this we are some oh come on that's pitiful we are
- 0:06:17
a new testament church not old testament all right let's get that straight we're going to address some of that today but here's i get these questions all the time on our social media during services all the time and it sees people obsessed with do you does your church preach about the feast days and how we are supposed to celebrate them okay i'm going to just bust those bubbles right now first of all as a church we do not celebrate easter as in the eggs and the bunnies okay now if you do that i'm not condemning you i'm just telling you that's not from the bible there's nowhere you find eggs and bunnies in the celebration of the death and resurrection of jesus christ it just doesn't exist okay now do i think you're going to hell over it no all right if you if you do that that's your business now there was a neat little tradition within the jewish community that during Passover or as they got there the father of the house would hide pieces of leaven bread all over the house and the children would run around and find all the the leaven and get it out because leaven represented sin it represents false doctrine but i'm going to show you today and i'm gonna deal with this as a new testament church we should not be celebrating halloween or easter there's elements of christmas we shouldn't celebrate but there's others that are fine and i've dealt with that in the past but here what i'm saying the people that get worked up over that and that becomes their issue this is what i notice about them that they focused on wanting to go back and keep the feast keep the sabbath keep the dietary laws basically they want to go back under and try to keep the old covenant here's what i see about them and this is after dealing with this for many years this is what i see number one the focus gets off of jesus the focus gets off of jesus death and atoning sacrifice for our sins his shed blood and the power of his resurrection you don't i can go through torah observant social media pages websites and for the most part the gospel of jesus christ that calls you to repent and believe and walk by faith is not there it's all about keeper the feets keep the sabbath don't eat pork i mean it's just nonsense and again it sounds good because yes do they have old testament scriptures to prove that and push that on you yes but what shows is either they are ignorant of what the new covenant says about those things or they have an agenda and i want to tell you right now they use the problems within
- 0:09:20
the mainstream i was just saying mainstream churches they use the issues like celebrating easter and halloween and some of these they use those things to point out see look they're in error so you need to follow us but they're just in much error okay in fact it's worse and i'm gonna show you their error is worse but we are not required by new covenant christianity to keep the feast in fact you can't keep them according to the way they're written because all of them demanded certain animal sacrifices and burnt offerings y'all gonna start sacrificing lambs and stuff no so don't give me this crap i hear all the time oh the feast were eternal oh really so the way they were mapped out in lividicus 23 you're supposed to keep them like that forever right so where's your sacrificial animals and your burnt offerings see either jesus fulfilled these things or he didn't and i don't know why we have to keep having this conversation when it says he fulfilled these things he didn't come to destroy the law he fulfilled it the word there in greek means he completed it all right let me let me just break it down for you let's break down the seven feet passover jesus first christian five says christ our passover was sacrificed for us why don't we put that up jesus is our passover lamb behold the lamb of god that takes away the sin of the world right so either jesus came and became the once for all eternal sacrifice for our sins or we better keep sacrificing lambs on passover but do the torah observant hebrew roots people who say if you don't keep the feast you're not really right with god you don't really love god do they do it according to the scriptures no they don't because why they don't do sacrifices because jesus is the sacrifice now he fulfilled all of that sacrificial system because he was the perfect sinless man god in the flesh to die for our sins for you to start saying again that we need to go back under the law for righteousness you are really speaking against what he did and completed what he finished right does everybody see that he says purge out the old leaven that she may be a new lump as you're unleavened for even christ our Passover is sacrificed for us first Corinthians five and verse seven right let's look at the the next phase what's the next phase we just dealt with it unleavened bread well unleavened bread leaven was a representative of sin and false doctrine Jesus is the only one who had no sin he never sinned nor did he ever teach anything that
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