His Righteousness
About this sermon
Dean Odle celebrates the new covenant and teaches that believers are justified through the blood of Jesus Christ, not by ethnic identity, Torah observance, or personal achievement. Beginning with worship and the language of overcoming through Christ’s blood, he describes the Christian life as an active pursuit of Jesus. Psalm 37’s picture of a righteous person whose steps are ordered by the Lord supports his assurance that stumbling does not have to end the race. Through personal testimony, he urges believers who fall to repent, receive God’s help, rise again, and resist accusations that turn failure into permanent defeat.
Chronological teaching outline
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The opening worship and exhortation center on overcoming through Jesus’ blood and testimony and on gratitude for the new covenant. Revelation’s language about overcoming establishes the message’s confidence in Christ’s finished work rather than religious performance.
Odle connects Christ’s atoning blood with God’s guidance, emphasizing that the Lord orders the steps of those who seek Him. Psalm 37’s statement that a good person’s steps are ordered also includes stumbling without final abandonment, which supports his theme of perseverance.
He portrays discipleship as a determined pursuit in which God delights in believers who keep running toward Him. He rejects the idea that confidence in God’s calling means claiming divine status; a warrior still depends entirely on the Lord.
Personal testimony illustrates that failure need not end the race; the proper response is repentance, renewed help from God, and continued obedience. His own failures and recovery are offered to listeners who are tempted to let accusation turn a stumble into permanent defeat.
Odle recounts pursuing truth through difficult doctrinal disputes while insisting that the cross of Christ remains the essential center. He says creation debates or other controversies must never replace the question Jesus asks of a life: whether it trusted and followed Him.
The sermon states its thesis plainly: saving righteousness comes through faith in Christ Jesus and His shed blood. Repeated thanksgiving for the cross leads directly into the doctrinal distinction between received righteousness and self-produced righteousness.
Turning to Romans, Odle explains peace with God and justification as gifts grounded in Christ’s sacrifice rather than human merit. Romans 5 is read to connect justification, peace with God, access by faith, and Christ’s death for sinners.
He leads hearers to ask God for forgiveness, washing, and inward change instead of defending their present condition. The prayer asks God not only to pardon outward acts but to speak to the heart and redirect the whole life.
The message rejects confidence in genealogy or religious identity and stresses the unity of those who belong to Christ. He explicitly dismisses reliance on supposed Hebrew ancestry and uses unity in Christ to oppose spiritual boasting.
Odle closes by inviting listeners to give Jesus their lives and believe what He accomplished for them. The final invitation asks unbelievers and struggling believers alike to trust Jesus’ blood and yield themselves to His rule.
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Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:00:00
You are the Everlasting Father, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor. Lord, You are our everything. We thank You for the blood You shed on the cross. We thank You that You rose from the dead on the third day. You conquered hell and death. Lord, for those of us that would believe that would take up our cross and follow You, Lord, through the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony and loving not our lives unto death, we can overcome Satan in this world and sin and this whole system that is antichrist. Lord, we thank You today for all that You've done. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Hallelujah. You may be seated this morning. We welcome everyone. Fire and Grace Church. Well, I had a couple of things I thought I was going to do. I'm not going to do either one of those things this morning. You know, as we were singing that last song there, Running After You, Thirsty For You, Hungry For You, I just thought about a verse that came to my mind. And, brother, I want to tell you this verse, this passage is for you. Because when the Lord spoke it to me over there and gave it to me over there, He said, you just tell Saul that this is for him. Let's everybody turn to Psalm 37 this morning. Psalm 37. So everybody had two messages, different messages planned this morning. Didn't know which one. This is the third that I didn't know about. Let me get there myself. I'm thinking before jumping ahead. Psalm 37. Everybody there? And let's go to verses 23 and 24 this morning. I want to tell you this morning that I'm glad that I live in the new covenant. I'm glad that Jesus, when he came at that last supper, that Passover meal, took that cup and said, this is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for many. I'm glad that he took that bread and he said, this is my body that is broken free. I am grateful that we are not under the system anymore of the blood of bulls and goats that were a shadow of things to come. They were just to teach us, as Leviticus 17 says,
- 0:03:03
that the life of the flesh is in the blood. The Lord said, I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls. All things are cleansed, all sin, all uncleanness. It takes blood to cleanse it away. And I'm thankful that the blood of bulls and goats was only a shadow of things to come. Because God, in eternity past, decided that he would take on the form of human flesh at a certain time in history so that he could live as us, live a sinless life, and then willingly lay down his life and shed his holy, spotless, sinless blood to wash our sins away, to make a way that all sin could not just be covered, but it could be washed away. And I'm thankful today that because of this new covenant, because of the blood of God, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, that I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to be sinless. Now, I should strive for it. I should press toward that mark. I should want to be because I want to be close to Him and I want to please Him. But I'm thankful today that even if I fall, He's not ready to throw me aside. And He knows the difference between someone falling and someone going to live in sin. He knows the difference between someone struggling and someone playing games. God is not deceived. But I am grateful today for the blood of Jesus Christ. I am grateful today as what Paul called in Romans, the gift of righteousness that comes through His blood, through faith in His blood, that I don't have to go to a high priest, a Levitical high priest and bring a bull or a goat or a lamb. I'm grateful for that today. I love the new covenant. And I'm not going to try to mix it with the old because it's new. And Hebrews 8 says we have a better covenant with better promises. We have a new covenant and it is through the shed blood of Jesus. And it is by faith, not by the works of the law. And people call this heresy now. They want to go back and try to keep 613 Old Testament laws they can't keep.
- 0:06:03
But I'm grateful today for the blood of Jesus. Now I want to read this verse right here, these two verses. And remember, we may look at it in a minute, but Revelation 12, 11 says we overcame Him. We overcome Satan. He's talking to me the verse before that old serpent, the devil, Satan, the one that deceives the whole world. Says we overcome Him by the blood of the lamb, the blood of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, by the word of our testimony because we love not our lives unto death. We're willing to lay down our lives for that truth and for that faith and for that relationship with Him. And we overcome Him. I want to show you this right here. This is absolutely one of my most favorite passages right here, this verse in the south, this is for you. Here's what it says. Psalm 37, verse 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and He delighteth in His way. Though He fall, He shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord upholdeth Him with His hand. I want you to understand that right there. The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord. Now let me just tell you, I looked this up in Hebrew yesterday and when it says here the steps of a good man, if you notice maybe in your King James that the word good is in italics, meaning it's not in the original text, but they're just putting it in there to try to help give some understanding, some context, some description. But when you look this word up, it's not just man here. It means valiant man. It means warrior. It means one who is gonna fight for the Lord, the one that loves the Lord enough to be a warrior, a soldier, a fighter who's gonna fight to run after Him, to fight to stay true to Him, to fight to stay with Him. And guess what the good news of the gospel is? The good news of our Creator is this, is that if you love Him, if you run after Him, if you believe Him, if you're willing to change your ways, if you're willing to repent, if you're willing to take up your cross and follow Him, and you're running after Him, even if you fall down, even if you make a big mistake, even if you blow it, it doesn't mean it's over. It doesn't mean it's over. We serve a supernatural God, a miracle God, a God of mercy and compassion and patience. And He knows if you love Him with all your heart and if you're running after Him with all your heart. And I wanna tell you, there's nothing more that He will honor and bless and forgive and help the man or the woman that's a warrior, that's valiant, that's ready to run after Him.
- 0:09:03
Man, let me tell you, the steps, the steps of a warrior, the steps of a valiant man or a woman are ordered by the Lord. Now listen to this part. He delights in your way. We don't think about that too often, do we? That God delights over us. He looks down just like we look down. You know what? Just a minute ago, when you told your little baby, she went over to touch the guitar over here, and Sal told a little baby, no. And she's little, how old is she? One year or so, one year old. He said, no. And she took her hand back and turned around and obeyed her dad. And I thought, boy, that just delighted you, didn't it? It delights you to see that. Now I know she's not a perfect little child, is she? But it delights you when you see that. You see the little joy in her. She didn't have a problem with that. She didn't fuss, she didn't cry. She went and ran back. She ran over her dad smiling and laughing. You see, God delights over us. And he knows the difference between the people who love him and are running after him, and running after the truth. And I'm talking about keeping things in context. And he knows the difference between those kind of people and the people that are trying to say, you know what? Grace covers my sin, I can do what I want. This shouldn't be hard to figure out. And yet, we got constant insanity, constant deception, constant, you know, either the devil trying to tell us, you know what? Even the devil trying to tell us. And I'm talking to people right now, I'm not talking to people playing games. I'm talking to people that are serious about walking in New Covenant, New Testament, relationship with Jesus Christ. You need to understand something. God's not looking to banish you because you fall down. He's not looking to punish you. He's not looking to beat you up. He's not looking, in fact, he knows if you're running after him, he delights over you. And even if you fall, he promises this. Think about this, he will uphold you. He says, though he falls, this valiant warrior Christian, though he falls, he shall not be utterly cast out.
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