The Fruit of the Spirit
About this sermon
In “The Fruit of the Spirit,” Pastor Dean Odle opens by grading his own conduct against the fruit of the Spirit and admits that bold preaching has sometimes carried arrogance, harshness, and too much of his personality. He distinguishes this confession from tolerating sin or false doctrine and asks God to make him less easily provoked. The message develops its case chronologically from the biblical texts, examples, and applications heard in the sermon.
Chronological teaching outline
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Odle opens by grading his own conduct against the fruit of the Spirit and admits that bold preaching has sometimes carried arrogance, harshness, and too much of his personality. He distinguishes this confession from tolerating sin or false doctrine and asks God to make him less easily provoked.
Jesus is presented as strong without being uncontrolled: He confronted evil when necessary yet remained silent under mocking, scourging, and false accusation. Reading Galatians 5, Odle contrasts the works of the flesh with learning when to speak boldly and when to respond with patience, gentleness, and meekness.
The Pharisee and publican in Luke 18 illustrate the danger of trusting religious performance while looking down on sinners. Odle urges empathy for addicts and other broken people, remembering that believers stand only by Christ’s blood, grace, and mercy.
James 5:16 leads Odle to confess faults publicly and to question the reluctance of Christians to admit intentional or unintentional wrongs to one another. He recalls James and John wanting fire called down on opponents and applies Jesus’ rebuke to his own hostile thoughts toward enemies.
The sermon insists that love rejoices in truth and may require speaking difficult biblical correction, but love also covers many offenses rather than exposing every failure. Odle asks believers to be patient with people carrying wounds, rejection, abuse, and inherited patterns, as God remains patient during their own healing.
Faith is treated as a fruit that continues trusting God when healing, marriage, family, or ministry does not unfold as hoped. Using Romans 7 and a personal example of snapping at his wife, Odle admits the conflict between desired conduct and fleshly reactions and calls for dependence on Christ.
First Corinthians 13 confronts the possibility of speaking in tongues, prophesying, understanding mysteries, or exercising faith while lacking love. Preparing to speak at a conference before skeptical media and non-Christian attendees, Odle prays that his gifts will reveal Jesus rather than make him a noisy obstacle.
After recounting an impulsive social-media response, Odle describes apologizing and being forgiven as a practical example of repair. He explains that love does not assume evil, rejoice in sin, or abandon biblical truth, but responds with patience, humility, and willingness to say, “I was wrong.”
Because perfection comes only when believers see Christ, present relationships require deliberate love amid betrayal, envy, and pain. Jesus’ command to pray for and do good to enemies is applied even to alleged infiltrators or opponents, with the aim of responding truthfully but without hatred.
Jesus’ fellowship with sinners shows that Christian love seeks the lost without surrendering the exclusive gospel of repentance and salvation through Christ. Odle closes by asking hearers to cultivate the Spirit’s fruit while remembering that love can still rebuke wolves and protect the flock when confrontation is necessary.
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Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:00:01
Getting some things this morning that I don't give myself a very good grade on The fruits of the spirit Some of them I might make a see Others I'm barely passing with a D and some of them I believe I'm failing at so I want everybody to know I know that a lot of people out there I get I get a lot of good emails a lot of positive and encouraging comments and messages. I get a lot of Negativity a lot of attacks. I you know, I got one lady who loves Harry Potter and and Committed though to every day just about attacking everything that I say and do But I tell you the truth I have to admit that Just in the last few days study and pray and I you know, I know I have a lot of people out there that think you know that I think I think they Think probably more of me than they ought to think because I do have a gift from God I don't deny that I have a gift from God a call from God to preach to teach To minister the gospel of Jesus Christ and so that gift comes through sometimes though I have to admit that it comes through with Probably a little too much of me a little too much Arrogance a little too much sometimes too much harshness and not enough gentleness and kindness And a lot of times it just comes across wrong and and you know what what really hit me is yesterday I was in my office there praying and preparing For this message and my wife and daughter they were in there listening to one of my sermons from about two years ago and I'm hearing myself preaching and I'm listening to that and even though there's a lot of positive reviews on that message. I could barely listen to it I could barely stand to hear it and I thought, you know, I Have to find I know for me I have to see God and I need to find more balance in my life Now when I say all this I'm not talking about there's nothing wrong with being bold There's nothing wrong with being confident or even being strong We're called to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might Proverbs 28 says the righteous are bold as a lion I'm not talking about being weak. I'm not talking about tolerating evil or sin or False teaching false doctrine deception or tolerating demonic stuff. I mean, we've got to be strong We've got to be warriors. We've got to be sometimes we've got to be loud and we've got to be You know clear and I think a lot of people out there do appreciate the fact that I don't mince words and That I tell it like it is and I'm pretty straightforward and blunt and sometimes But again, sometimes I think too much and I think the Lord's trying to deal with me about particularly
- 0:03:09
not responding to attacks and responding to people so quickly So this morning I just want to talk about the fruit of the Spirit really talking about loving our enemies Blessing those who curse us those who were approached us those who do us wrong You know what we really got to focus on is Jesus said love your enemies think about that He would just say love each other as Christians. You should we should love one another I mean we get that admonition all the time in the scriptures, but he says love your enemies Bless those who curse you I mean think about that that is completely opposite of the world and for the most part it's completely opposite of How we respond when we are attacked blight about misrepresented Or even sometimes we may even be Being corrected by someone and we just don't like the fact that they're correcting us And so we respond out of Defensiveness and a lot of times I'm just going to be honest. I'm too defensive in Some of my approach I guess because I deal constantly with attacks all the time criticism attacks spiritual warfare It gets to be a bit overwhelming sometime But that still doesn't give us an excuse and all I can say this morning is that I'm gonna be praying that God will help me change That God will help me be more loving patient kind gentle Not easily provoked. I think a lot of us we're too easily provoked somebody just pokes us a little bit and whoa boy We back at it, and that's not what the way God wants us to be. I mean we're either going to be respond By letting the Holy Spirit work through us or we're going to respond in the flesh and You know just because you're called to be a pastor or a five-fold minister of the gospel Doesn't mean that you have it all together or that you're going to always respond in the spirit, and I don't I admit it And I'm gonna say this I admit that I got a long way to go I got a long long way to go trying to mature and operate in More like Jesus would and and don't get me wrong Jesus was strong sometimes wasn't he I mean Jesus looked at the Pharisees and the scribes and Called them hypocrites and snakes and vipers and you know whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones and he threw tables over sometimes and He called a woman a dog and I mean he he was he was a man. He never sinned
- 0:06:09
God in the flesh fully God fully man Never sinned, but yet we see he was not weak He was not effeminate. He was not a sissy. He was strong but he knew how to be how to take that strength and Let it flow at the right time and he knew how to control it in other time You think about Jesus being spit upon and beaten and they're telling him. You know they're saying you know They're just mocking him and even Pilate asking him. Who are you? Jesus won't even say a word. He's just letting it happen How many of us would do that I mean he didn't he didn't deserve it. He didn't he didn't do any sin He didn't break the law. He didn't do anything wrong He didn't deserve to be beaten and scourged and spit upon and a crown of thorns put on his head and mocked and let me tell you something beaten by Roman soldiers was no picnic and yet He didn't defend himself. He didn't speak a word To the point it just drove Pilate crazy We have got to learn to be led by the Spirit to know when it's okay to be strong and bold and confront an issue And when we need to wait when we need to be patient When we need to be gentle when we need to be meek humble and I can tell admit I fall horribly short in these areas Horribly you would think after all these years of walking with Jesus. I'd have it better, but I don't Let's read this Galatians 5 He says this We'll just read from verse 19 now the works of the flesh are manifest which are these adultery fornication uncleanness lasciviousness idolatry witchcraft hatred variants emulations wrath strife sedition heresies envies murder drunkenness revelings and Such like of which I tell you before as I have also told you in times past that they which do Such things or practice praso means the word do here is praso and it's a present tense Greek verbs What means to practice habitually ongoing continuous behavior? So he says they that do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God But the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace long-suffering gentleness goodness faith meekness temperance
- 0:09:09
against such There is no law and they that are Christ or those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh With the affections in lust if we live in the spirit let us also walk in the spirit Let us not be desirous of vain glory provoking one another envying one another Now again as I read this I need to put it in the context. This doesn't mean that we will never have to reprove or rebuke or exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine this doesn't mean that we let doctrinal error run rampant or we Ignore demonic and you know activity or we let stuff creep into our homes or our lives or the church And we don't confront it. I mean there's there's there's two extremes here I mean there's there's the love and the gentleness and the meekness that just lets anything go as I said in my introduction to the To the message this morning for the radio aspect. I said, you know We don't have to become Joel Osteen where any you know We're not going to speak out about say anything that's wrong or immoral We're not you know, we're gonna make homosexuality is okay, and everything's okay. We didn't we know we're not gonna do that It doesn't mean we become weak. It doesn't mean we accept lies deception error immorality But we do need to make sure that we're tempering and checking ourselves To make sure are we are we? Being patient with people because remember this and I want to say this out there is that You know, we need to always remember as Christians No matter how long you've been saved and walking with Jesus no matter how much you pray how much you fast how much? Good you do for the kingdom of God? No matter how good you think you are Or how much you've grown or matured and how many things you've overcome and you know And you're you're happy maybe that you're not you used to be an adulterer. You're not an adulterer anymore used to be a drunkard You're not a drunkard anymore. You're used to be a drug addict and you're not a drug addict anymore And all of that is wonderful in Jesus, but you know again, we we we we tend to a lot of times start thinking we do We're doing pretty good. We're doing pretty good. We're not like those other people out there but we need to remember we were and pride and arrogance and self righteousness and self-trust Can get us we can get us within a breath of being right back there Pride goes before a fall haughty spirit before destruction. We start thinking you know what I'm better than other people I got it together more than other people now. That doesn't mean hey, I'm not an adulterer There are people who are adulterers. There are Christians who are adults. That's not good. I'm not just if I'm not saying hey
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