Defending the Gospel
About this sermon
In “Defending the Gospel,” Pastor Dean Odle presents a Scripture-centered message about faith, the authority of Scripture, Bible prophecy. Drawing especially from Philippians 1, Genesis 6, Zechariah 5, Jude 22, the teaching emphasizes that biblical faith trusts God’s character and acts upon His promises. Odle connects that foundation with the conviction that Scripture is presented as the standard for doctrine, discernment, and daily obedience.
Chronological teaching outline
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Odle focuses on the gospel while working through Philippians 1. The message argues that the gospel announces Christ’s saving work and calls every hearer to repent, believe, and obey. It connects this with the conviction that biblical faith trusts God’s character and acts upon His promises. The practical emphasis is to trust God’s promises and refuse decisions governed by fear.
Odle focuses on the authority of Scripture while working through Genesis 6, Zechariah 5. The message argues that Scripture is presented as the standard for doctrine, discernment, and daily obedience. It connects this with the conviction that biblical faith trusts God’s character and acts upon His promises. The practical emphasis is to remain watchful, grounded in Scripture, and ready to obey Christ.
Odle focuses on Bible prophecy while working through Jude 22, Matthew 16, Luke 19. The message argues that prophecy should produce discernment, readiness, and faithfulness rather than speculation alone. It connects this with the conviction that Scripture is presented as the standard for doctrine, discernment, and daily obedience. The practical emphasis is to remain watchful, grounded in Scripture, and ready to obey Christ.
Odle focuses on faith while working through Luke 10. The message argues that biblical faith trusts God’s character and acts upon His promises. It connects this with the conviction that the church is called to recover biblical faithfulness instead of accommodating compromise. The practical emphasis is to trust God’s promises and refuse decisions governed by fear.
Odle focuses on faith. The message argues that biblical faith trusts God’s character and acts upon His promises. It connects this with the conviction that Scripture is presented as the standard for doctrine, discernment, and daily obedience. The practical emphasis is to trust God’s promises and refuse decisions governed by fear.
Odle focuses on faith while working through Revelation 13. The message argues that biblical faith trusts God’s character and acts upon His promises. It connects this with the conviction that believers are urged to remain sober, alert, prayerful, and ready amid spiritual danger. The practical emphasis is to remain watchful, grounded in Scripture, and ready to obey Christ.
Odle focuses on faith while working through Revelation 14, Revelation 17, Revelation 16. The message argues that biblical faith trusts God’s character and acts upon His promises. It connects this with the conviction that the message examines biblical descriptions of the final adversary and the deception surrounding his rise. The practical emphasis is to remain watchful, grounded in Scripture, and ready to obey Christ.
Odle focuses on Bible prophecy while working through Isaiah 24. The message argues that prophecy should produce discernment, readiness, and faithfulness rather than speculation alone. It connects this with the conviction that material stewardship reveals priorities and should be governed by generosity, integrity, and obedience to God. The practical emphasis is to remain watchful, grounded in Scripture, and ready to obey Christ.
Odle focuses on faith while working through Ezekiel 38, John 14. The message argues that biblical faith trusts God’s character and acts upon His promises. It connects this with the conviction that prophecy should produce discernment, readiness, and faithfulness rather than speculation alone. The practical emphasis is to remain watchful, grounded in Scripture, and ready to obey Christ.
Odle focuses on prayer. The message argues that prayer expresses dependence on God and prepares believers to hear and obey Him. It connects this with the conviction that biblical love is demonstrated through truth, patience, sacrifice, and conduct toward others. The practical emphasis is to seek God in prayer and act on what Scripture requires.
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- 0:00:00
lord we ask for your presence and your glory god to touch and and to fill our lives lord we pray that the anointing of the holy spirit god will fill us and then flow through us to people that are lost that are deceived lord god i thank you that the gospel is still the power of god unto salvation i thank you lord that your words are still powerful and that they're alive and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword i thank you lord god that the holy spirit god touches hearts even of hardened unbelievers lord you can penetrate and save people from the uttermost lord from the furthest away in the darkest night in the darkest deception in the deepest sin lord you can touch people's lives through your word through the power of the holy spirit and lord today i pray that you touch people listening by radio that you'll touch people who hear this message that you'll touch everyone here lord and use us to win somebody to jesus well we pray that today in jesus name amen amen hallelujah you may be seated praise god we welcome you to fire in grace church this morning those of you listening by blog talk radio we welcome you to our service we've got a lot to get into this morning there's a lot going on but i want you to turn first of all to the book of philippians and we're going to look at philippians chapter 1 first and then we're going to go quite a few places i believe i was reading philippians last night and a few things really stood out to me not to mention a lot has happened this week a lot um philippians everybody there chapter 1 now of course this is paul speaking here writing to the church at philippi when he was in prison in rome his first imprisonment in rome anyway and he's talking about what's going on in the church while he's in prison and what's going on with some brethren while he's in prison and he says a few things that and matter of fact this one phrase really jumped out at me and i'll share it with you here as we read but we're going to start reading at verse 12. he said philippians 1 12 but i would you should understand brethren that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel so he's saying
- 0:03:01
even the bad things that happened to me god has used them to push the gospel even further so that my bonds in christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places now let me just say this as we read through this that at the end of the book he talks about the brethren saluting them and he's talking about even the brethren who are who are in caesar's household so even in paul's captivity even in his bondage even in his suffering even in his imprisonment he's winning caesar's household to jesus so he's saying even the bad thing that's happened to me being thrown in prison the gospel is being spread i think a lot of christians would lose their religion if they were thrown in prison right but not paul and of course he doesn't want us to right so let's keep reading verse 13 again so that my bonds in christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places and many of the brethren in the lord waxing confident by my bonds are much more bold to speak the word without fear some indeed preach christ even of envy and strife and some also of good will the one preached christ of contention not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my bonds but the other of love knowing that i am set for the defense of the gospel now i want to just stop right there on that phrase this morning as we get into this and just let you understand what paul is saying here he said i am set for the defense of the gospel now if you look this up in the greek it's interesting because the word set here means that basically that he had laid out his whole life to defend the gospel now i've heard preachers say and i've heard christians say well you don't have to defend the truth or you don't have to defend god or you don't have to defend the gospel but that's not what paul said here under the inspiration of the holy spirit he said i am set and the word if you look it up in the greek lexicon it doesn't just mean that he had laid himself out to defend the gospel it literally meant that he had become a foundation to defend the gospel now what is the gospel i've defined the gospel before for you and i did in my book the gospel is simply this it's everything that jesus taught his apostles taught and all the prophets of the old testament talk basically the gospel is the word of god from genesis to malachi from matthew to revelation or like we used to say from genesis to the maps right that is the gospel whenever you pick
- 0:06:01
parts out of it you take it apart it's not the gospel anymore you can't take this part out and take this part and not take this part and he said i am set for the defense of the gospel now the word defense there is the word in the greek apologia now it's where we we our modern term is apologetics where basically we give people the reasons why we believe not just blind faith but the reasons why we believe now i bring this up because i want you to understand that i believe it's not just the job of apostles and prophets and pastors and evangelists and and sunday school teachers or whatever it's not just the job of ministers to set themselves to defend the gospel um to give you an example this happened this week there's a a guy that's on facebook i won't name his name kevin and i worked with him some way back about 2009 he lived here he's moved back up north where he's from and uh but we got to witness to him on the job and so we became friends a little bit i went to his his daughter's birthday party one time and god gave me some prophetic words for this young man and he didn't get saved yet but i think god was touching his heart but since we've kind of lost track with each other i mean we just see each other you know facebook post here and there um but and normally i just kind of bypass some of the stupid things that he says on facebook but then he had to go and say something about the bible something negative about the bible basically some internet lie that shakespeare wrote the bible i'm like wow beware of the internet folks you can find anything you want right you can find any lie you can find any absurdity that exists if you want to and that's another thing if you don't want the truth you always find somebody to tell you what you want to hear they're out there right there's a lot of that going on but we started talking and of course i just began to give him facts because one of the things he said why in the world are there 40 authors to the bible and i said well i said if you think about it that god through these men who wrote the bible did it over thousands of years so he couldn't use the same guy kind of stands to reason that he might pick up somewhere else with somebody else right
- 0:09:01
but then i said you know the 40 authors thing i said you know that is also testimony of god's divine inspiration i said because you have 40 men over a period of almost 2 000 years who wrote the bible and yet they all agree on very complex theological issues i said get 10 guys in a room and tell me if they can agree on 10 theological issues it usually not going to happen you're not going to have agreement and yet over centuries of god inspiring men to write down his words they all agree on the major issues of sin how we are saved who god is that he is the creator that his messiah is jesus christ of nazareth that he is the way the truth and the life and that only by the blood of jesus washing your sins away through repentance and faith can you be saved that it's all about god wanting to restore us back to himself what we lost after creation i mean how could men of different ages of different even of theological backgrounds of different occupations of different education how could they all agree and write a book that is consistent well he didn't have much to say about that right because his very argument proves my point but then another guy chimes in and says oh a fairy tale lives forever i said well i said that may be true a fairy tale lives forever but i said you know a fairy tale is not supported by historians archaeology science and fulfilled prophecy so it kind of makes it a little different than a fairy tale right i said we even have remains and dna evidence that the giants existed so that's not even a fairy tale anymore we have the evidence we have the scientists who don't even believe the bible saying i've tested the dna of these giant skeletons and these huge skull people and it's part human and part not human we don't know what it is well guess what genesis 6 told us what it was thousands of years ago right and that's what i told him i said if it's in the bible it's a little different than a fairy tale and we got into this debate this discussion and several other people chimed in and it went on i didn't think i don't think that that my friend believed it would go for about 50 or 60 comments as it did right
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