Knowing the Servants of God
About this sermon
Dean Odle asks how believers can recognize genuine servants of God amid false prophets and teachers. Using Matthew 7, the pastoral epistles, and other New Testament passages, he argues that a true minister must be evaluated by doctrine, character, manner of life, faithfulness to Christ, and the fruit produced over time—not by charisma, predictions, crowds, or spiritual vocabulary.
Chronological teaching outline
Select a section heading to play the sermon from that moment.
Matthew 7 introduces the problem of teachers who outwardly appear harmless but whose doctrine and fruit reveal danger. The command to know them by their fruits makes evaluation mandatory even when a speaker claims prophetic revelation.
Odle affirms apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers while insisting that every claimed office must remain under Jesus and Scripture. Ephesians 4 places these ministries in Christ’s gift to equip the saints until maturity, which rules out both blanket rejection and uncritical acceptance.
Miraculous language and public claims in Jesus’ name are contrasted with actually knowing and obeying the Lord. Matthew 7’s workers of miracles who are unknown to Christ show that supernatural activity cannot replace obedience and relationship.
Prayerful dependence, humility, and willingness to learn God’s paths are identified as marks of trustworthy service. Psalm language about learning God’s paths is paired with Paul’s ministerial qualifications to stress a life capable of correction.
The pastoral epistles supply tests involving doctrine, conduct, love, faith, purity, and faithful example. First Timothy 4 requires attention to reading, exhortation, doctrine, conversation, charity, spirit, faith, and purity.
Odle rejects teachings that label Paul a false apostle and warns that such claims can unravel the New Testament gospel. The speaker sees rejection of Paul as especially serious because it removes much of the apostolic explanation of justification and church order.
Biblical doctrine is presented as protective truth, not lifeless argument, and ministers must be able to teach it consistently. He urges listeners to ask for chapter-and-verse support and to distinguish sound teaching from claims built on private revelation.
A true servant confesses Jesus Christ and teaches the scriptural truth about His person, saving work, and resurrection. Doctrines concerning Christ’s deity, death, resurrection, and return function as boundary markers that a claimed prophet may not revise.
Odle surveys foundational teachings such as resurrection and judgment and warns that repeating slogans cannot replace biblical grounding. The section warns that churches can repeat errors until they seem traditional; age and popularity still do not make them apostolic.
The conclusion criticizes sensational predictions and instructs the church not to support teachers whose words lack biblical confirmation. Sports predictions and other publicity-oriented prophecies are contrasted with servants who teach Scripture and accept accountability for their words.
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
Yes, Lord, you deserve the glory this morning. We worship you. We praise you, Exalt you, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God of all gods. You are the true and mighty God, the creator of heaven and earth. We are grateful to you this morning that you reveal yourself to us, Lord, by your Holy Spirit, by the scriptures, by your word that you've given us that is true from Genesis to Revelation. We thank you, Lord, for the truth and the truth that sets us free. And, Lord, we ask you today just to be with us as we get into your word. Lord, I ask you to speak to every heart here. Those watching and listening speak to hearts. Lord, draw people out of darkness, out of deception, out of error, away from false prophets and teachers that are leading them astray. Lord, we pray this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. Can you give Jesus another praise this morning? Go ahead. Hallelujah. I thank God He's given us the Word. Amen. And He's given us His Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us into all truth. I said the knowing series is going to continue. It may continue after this week, I think, as well. But we've been covered knowing Jesus and knowing the Holy Spirit, knowing the voice of the Lord, knowing things to come. Last week was knowing the prophets. This week is going to be knowing the servants of God. We're still going to talk a little bit about these false prophets, but it's just I'm in awe because, you know, I preached something like I did last week and I named some names. And, of course, you know, I always have some Christians that are following these people that start coming unglued, right, and losing their minds and wanting to argue with me. And I had somebody come on Facebook and also via email trying to argue with me about this so-called prophetess, Julie Green. So you know what that did? That made me dig a little more into her prophecies. And I actually didn't even know the mountain of false prophecies this woman has given. Okay, I'm blown away that any Christian is still listening to her or that they would come and argue with me about it. You know, Jesus said there will be, you know, in fact, let's turn to Matthew 7 real quick verse. We'll start at verse 15. We're gonna be all over the Bible this morning. I'll tell you one thing they will not be able to accuse me of is not teaching the Bible. We're gonna go all over the Bible. And let me tell you, I'd rather have a good teaching from the Bible than I would 15 of these fluffy, goofy prophecies that these people give about the Super Bowl or whatever they want to talk about. It's all scripted. Y'all Super Bowl is also there to know who's gonna win. It's already planned out. I've what I quit
- 0:03:05
watching the NFL long time ago. And now now they're about to ruin college football as well. Um, but you know, it's all about Vegas and the money, right? Y'all, you do know that, right? If you can predict who's winning, then you can predict who's gonna win the money. Right? That's the way it goes. That's why sports betting is the worst gambling anybody can do. That's the most addictive and you're gonna lose money because it's designed for you to lose money. Lots of men. I know people that's gotten themselves in big, big trouble from sports betting. Uh, because I can assure you they can manipulate it. I mean, even Auburn University, I love my Auburn Tigers, but they got caught years ago trying to fix basketball games. People involved. Let's fix a basketball game so we can win some money. You think this doesn't go on in every sport? Oh yeah, it goes on. But it goes on in the church, too. We'll call it profit lying, not prophesying. All right. There's a lot of profit lying going on. All right. Jesus here said, beware, beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing. But inwardly they are raving wolves. He said you shall know them by their fruits. Now we can just stop right there. You will know them by their fruits by what they produce. Now let me tell you something. If you want to know somebody's a false teacher or a false prophet, the first fruit that you look at is do their prophecies come to your path. If they don't over and over and over again, the fruit is false. Okay. It's real simple. You don't even have to know anything about their personal lives. You don't have to know whether they're living in sin. You don't have to know their attitude about money. All you need to know is, are they false? All right. Secondly, if they're a false teacher, then what do you have to know? You have to know the word of God so you can discern whether they are rightly dividing the word of God and giving you sound doctrine. Anybody can give you some doctrine, but is it sound doctrine? And we're going to look at that. But let me just say this about Julie Green. I don't have time to play all this woman's false prophecies. I have a list of them. I have them document. I have them saved off. Now she prophesied over seven times in 2020 before 2020 election that Trump would be president in 2020. She said, Stop saying 2024. She said 2020 she prophesied that in 2022 that, um, what's her name? Pelosi would be dead before the midterm elections in 2022 didn't happen. She prophesied Trump would be back in power in the White House in 2022 didn't happen. She prophesied Herschel Walker would win
- 0:06:06
his Senate race didn't happen. I mean, we could go down the list over and over again. She has prophesied things that are not true, that have not come to pass. She is not a prophet of God. She is not hearing the voice of God. And I can tell you this much. Her fruit is not just to give false prophecies, but it's actually to teach false doctrine to lead people away from the truth of Scripture and even seeking sound doctrine. And I am gonna play one video of hers. We're gonna start this video at the beginning. I'll tell you all when to stop because I didn't give you a time stamp there, but just started from the beginning and pay attention. This is an interview she's giving and where she starts talking about. I give you a little a little heads up here. Little trailer. She starts talking about we shouldn't judge other Children of God and prophets and teachers completely wrong. I'll show you that in a second. And then she says, Stop with doctrine. This right here gives away that she is a wolf because Jesus said those who do his will will know his doctor. And I'm gonna show you how many times the Bible talks about how important sound doctrine is. Systematic instruction from the Scripture that is correct doctrine, not watered down, not changed, not taken out of its context, not ignoring definitions of words, but correct doctrine. But let's play this clip. Here's Julie. This is for you, Julie Green Lovers out there. I guess I'm kind of firing these out as they come. This was quite an interview that Julie I shouldn't say an interview, but I guess a joint livestream that Dave and Julie did. This is how you can know for certain that these false prophets, these false teachers don't want you to check them. They go against the word of God. Listen to this clip. One of the things that I will say, and I will agree with you on that. Stop saying this is not to you, but to the people watching. Don't say anything negative about people, and especially who are called by God. I don't care your feelings for that person, especially on social media or any type of platform. Don't call out a pastor. Do not call out a child of God who is a prophet or anybody else. God is a judge over all the earth. God will judge those people. Unless he says it, I'm telling you, God does not say, I want my child, this child here, and I want you to call it that child over there. He doesn't do that. Not like that. So be very careful when you are talking against God's people, because I've seen too much of that in this last couple weeks, and it has really burdened my heart. Because we're supposed to be a body together. I don't care what you believe about somebody. I don't care what you think
- 0:09:07
that they believe this about their religion, and they believe this. Who cares? Stop with the doctrines. Stop with all that stuff, and let's just be as one as a body of Christ. Because too many times we're falling for the life of the enemy. And then all of a sudden, okay, did you catch that? And that's good enough. That's good. Now we could go on and on with this. I mean, I could go and show you her prophecies from 2020 and 2022 and we could go on and on and on. But notice that she said we're not supposed to call anybody out. We're not supposed to judge anybody is false. Don't do that. You know why? Because people are busting her, right? I mean, she's got so many false properties, not hard, right? So she's like, Oh, you can't I'm called by God. You can't question me. You can't call me out. You can't say I'm wrong. You can't say I'm an error. I want to read something to you. This is this is why we again, you have to if you know the Bible, you will know immediately when you hear this kind of crap that it's wrong and that it's deceitful and it's leading people away. Does doctrine matter? Yes, it does very much. In fact, it can what you believe about the Bible and about Jesus will determine whether you go to heaven or hell. It's that simple. And if you get away from the Scriptures, if you stray from sound doctrine, you are straying from Jesus. They go together. You cannot know Jesus apart from the Scriptures. All right, let's go to 2nd Timothy. We're going to go to Chapter 2. Like I said, we're going to be in a lot of places, but let me I'm going to read this with the Apostle Paul wrote by the Holy Spirit. He's writing to this young pastor that he that he discipled. He mentored. He trained and he's Timothy's now out in his own and Paul's writing to him and the Holy Spirit is moving upon. Paul giving exactly what he wants to say to Timothy because he knew that this would be for pastors and leaders until Jesus would return to the second coming. All right, we're going to drop down. Oh goodness, I guess all will just read from verse one. Why not? He says thou therefore my son and he was a son in the faith. He said be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and the things that thou has heard of me among any witnesses the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others. Also thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that worth entangled himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him who have chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for masteries yet, he is not crowned except he strive lawfully. The husbandman that labors must first be partaker of the fruits. Consider what I say in the Lord give the understanding in all things. Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel where in I suffer trouble as an evil doer even under bonds, but the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. It is a faithful
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