Kenneth Copeland - The Laying On of Hands
Tonight, we're going to talk about the principle fundamental doctrines of Christ. These are sacred. This is the foundation. This is the principle doctrines, the principle teachings of Jesus. He taught this everywhere he went. Amen. So, the fundamental doctrine of Christ, repentance from dead works. Well, what are dead works? "Having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof". Dead works, things that don't mean anything, majoring on minors all the time, or taking one thing and just do that all the time. Now, in the church that I was raised in, they preached the new birth over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And everybody in the church was born again. And a few, now and then, got saved. Glory to God. There's nothing wrong with that.
Now, the church that Gloria was raised in her grandmother came to me one night after I preached. She said, "Kenneth, you didn't mention water baptism". See, that's one of them. "You didn't mention water baptism one time". I said, "Mom, everybody there had been baptized". "Oh, that's good". Now see, she was expecting something. And in the situation we were in, it was a minor. It's not a minor thing. It is one of the fundamental principles of Christ. Absolutely a fundamental principle. But when that's the only principle, there's five more that need to be dealt with here. Amen? So, you can make a dead work out of any of these. Let's take, for instance, the laying on of hands. That's the centerpiece of all of this. There are people that lay hands on people as a matter of doctrine. And it means very, very little. It's not a sacred thing. It is a religious practice. And if you ask them, "Do you lay hands on the sick"? "Well, in certain cases we would do that. But it's just not a major thing in our church".
I'm telling you, all of these are major things. They are fundamental doctrines of Christ. This is sacred business. Laying on of hands is a sacred thing. And it doesn't need to be done in a flippant way. And just pat somebody on the head. So, all of it should be energized by faith in love. That's the key to all six of these principle doctrines. Every one of them minister to someone else. Now let's take a look at this one, the doctrine of baptisms. Just turn over there to Galatians 3:27. And essentially, the same thing is mentioned in Roman 6:3, but we'll just read it here in Galatians 3:27. Verse 26, "For you all are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither bond nor free. There's neither male nor female. You are all one in Christ Jesus. And, if you be Christ's, or if you be in Christ, then are you Abraham's seed and heir according to the promise".
The moment you were born again, I did not, you did not, just become a Christian unto yourself. You became a member of his Body. You were immersed into his entire Body, a Body of people of many callings, of many kinds, of many different lives in different places on earth, but all one Body with one Head. Hallelujah. And one Father. And his name is God. That's shouting ground, right there. I mean glory to God. Hallelujah. And then after you got baptized into Christ, glory to God, you got baptized in the Holy Ghost and started speaking with other tongues, like millions of the rest of us. Hallelujah. Glory to God. And you should have been baptized in water. That was a wonderful experience. I got baptized as a little boy. But Gloria and I, both kids got baptized all the same Sunday. Glory to God. All of us come out of the water speaking in tongues. We just had such a big time. This is life in the faith lane. Life in the love lane. Praise God.
Now, "and repentance from dead works". We talked about that. "Faith toward God". My goodness. We talk about that all the time. But that's fundamental to this life. Faith towards God. Well, then the doctrine of baptisms. Well now, how would it be for somebody to say, "Well, I just don't think any of those baptisms are all that important. If you'd like to be baptized, well, let us know, and we'll fill the tank, and we'll work you in". Our tank at EMIC is never empty. Amen. The clothes are there. So, let's get at it. Hallelujah. But what would you think about somebody that said, "Oh, no. It's not important". It's a fundamental thing. This is a fundamental thing. "Laying on of hands". Well, all right.
Let's look at Mark 5, Mark Chapter 5. These are so interesting. "Behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jarius by name. When he saw him, he fell at his feet and besought him greatly". Greatly. "My little daughter lieth at the point of death. I pray thee, come lay your hands on her that she may be healed, and she will live". He recognized this in Jesus. And you'll find out that this was a big thing with Jesus, touching people, laying hands on people. And someone to come up and say, "Well, we don't really. That's not all that important, we don't think". Well, that's like saying, "It's not all that important to teach faith towards God". That's that saying, "It's not all that impor..." They are all very sacred and very important.
Now, let's look at Mark 6:5. Now this one just says volumes to me. This is when he preached in Nazareth. "He could, there, do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk". If you looked that up, he laid hands on a few people with minor ailments. No blind people were healed. No. No major healings, nothing. "And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went around teaching in the villages". That's the answer for unbelief. You go around and teach. I don't believe they stayed in unbelief, because he taught in those villages around Nazareth. Glory to God. But here's my point. When nothing else worked, he laid his hands. He got somebody healed one way or another. And when nothing else would work, he laid his hands on them. They didn't believe anything he preached.
So, none of them got healed because of what he said, because he said he was anointed. They didn't believe that. That's the unbelief he was marveling concerning. Do you know? There's no such thing as non-belief. It's believing the wrong thing, or not believing the right thing. Amen. It's like picking up the manual to your car and then you don't believe it. "I don't believe that's the way that heater works. I tried that thing. I pushed every one of those buttons. I pushed every one of those levers. I don't believe that's right". They wrote the book on the car. This is the operator's handbook. And when you don't believe it, you foul things up. There's one particular airplane back. They don't build it, anymore. In a twin engine airplane, the only way you can have a heater, it's going to be gasoline fired.
So, there are certain procedures to turn one of those things on. They don't want you blowing the nose off the airplane. That's a very intelligent thing. And I tried every way I could get that thing to turn on. I pushed and pulled the air knobs and flipped the switches and everything else. You know what my problem was? I didn't read the book. I read the book. My feet got warm. Think of that. When all else fails, read the book. That's why the instructions were in the box. Now, what rattled my cage, and still does, thank you very much, somebody wants me to learn how to use a computer. All I know how to do is read the directions. And I open up the directions and they say, "The operator's handbook is in the computer". You've got to be kidding me. Hey, you laugh. There it was. So what do you do? You get your grandchildren. I mean it. You get your grandkids after it. Praise God. Thank You, Jesus. Oh, yeah. They're all good. Thank You, Jesus.
Okay. But I wanted to point out to you how important that was to Jesus. He loved those people. He'd known them all of his life. He knew Aunt Minnie and Uncle Joe-Joe. He knew them all. And he wanted to do good in his own hometown. "Who does this young upstart think he is, talking about us. But we know him. We've known him ever since he's a little boy. And he says he's anointed of God. Why, he's our kinfolks". Did it ever dawn on your lightning-fast mind that every prophet that ever lived was somebody's kinfolks. Amen. They never did one just float down here from somewhere. The only one of them of them that ever lived didn't have any kinfolks was Adam, and it didn't take long to arrange that. Okay. Amen.
Now, Mark 8:24. This is very interesting. Mark Chapter 8. I love this. "And he came to Bethsaida. They bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him". Don't you love it. They knew where the power was. "Come, please touch him". That means there was a whole lot of touching going on. Amen. And people were getting healed at his touch. And this same Jesus is here tonight by his Spirit. Amen. And we'll talk more about that as we go. There's so many of these. I like this one. In Luke 4:40. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Luke 4. Now, Jesus had talked about the fact that, "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted".
And so much of the time that took the laying on of hands. Heal. He sent me to heal. "And to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind". We just talked about that. So many times that included the laying on of hands, in some form or another. "And set at liberty them that a bruised. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord". Now he just talked about that. And so, he continued to read. And you come down to Verse 38, "He arose out of the synagogue, entered into Simon's house, and Simon's wife's mother was taken with a great fever. And they besought him for her. He stood over her. He rebuked the fever, and it left her. And immediately she arose and ministered to them".
Now Matthew adds the fact that he touched her hand. So, he touched her, and the fever left her. "And when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them". He laid his hands on every one of them. This just gets more exciting to more you go. Now we know what happened when the woman with the issue of blood touched his clothes. her faith made a demand on his anointing and it flowed out of him. He said, "Who touched my clothes? Who touched me"? He was aware that the power left, he just didn't know who did it. She was aware that it went into her. She was healed. And then she felt it in her body. When she felt that power, she'd already believed it before she felt it. She didn't have to feel anything. She had heard of Jesus, and that was enough to bring faith. You just can't get faith by seeing it.
I've had people say, "Well, as soon as I see it, I'll believe it". You wouldn't believe it, then. You would know it, then. That's not believing. That's like walking up to a stove and say, "Give me some heat and I'll put in some wood". No. It doesn't work that way. You put in the faith and the heat will come. You put in the wood and the heat come. You have action to do before the stove works. Amen. And we've gone through that definition of faith. And that is so good. In fact, let's put that up there, again. Hebrews Chapter 11, Verse 1, from the Classic Amplified, please. And this really declares the depth of it.
Now, look at this. "Now, faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed..." That's ownership. That's ownership before you can see it. That's what this whole statement says. "The title deed of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality, faith perceiving as real fact, what is not revealed to the senses". So, you own it before you see it. You own it before you feel it. You own it before you have any other evidence but the Word of the Living God concerning it. And it swore it to you. It promised it to you. Or it's a divine fact, like, "By his stripes, you were healed".
That's not a promise. That's a fact. Glory to God. It was a promise through the prophet, Isaiah, and it came to pass at Peter's house. Fulfilling what was the prophet, Isaiah, saying. "He took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses". You getting anything out of this? Well, I'm sure having a fun time preaching it. Glory to God. I'm learning. And it's helping me. Glory to God. Now, in Luke 13:13. Now, there's some of these that I tell you, I can just sit and read it over, and have, over and over and over and over. And there's some of them that, oh, Jesus. And this is one of them. Look at this. "Behold, there was a woman with a spirit of infirmity 18 years, was bowed together, bowed over, and could in no wise lift up herself. When Jesus saw her..." She didn't say a word to him. She didn't say, "Lord, lay your hands on me". No. "When he saw her, he said, 'Come here,' so she went over there".
God, don't you love it. When he saw her. I said, when he saw her. He called her to him. So, evidently she wasn't standing in the door. She was rolled up in the ball back there somewhere. And he saw her. And he said, "Hey, come here to me". I wonder how she got up there. She just scooted herself up there. What if she had said, "Lord, I can't. Can't you see this? What's the matter with you? I can't come over there. You come here". That wouldn't have worked. But when the Master called, she just came a-scooting. Lord, I love this stuff. Here she was, now. "He called her to him and said unto her..." I see it like this. She's over here, a few steps away, and, and he sees her. And he says, "Come here to me".
So, here she comes. I believe he started talking to her the moment she took a step. I don't believe he watched her struggle all the way up there, trying to get there. I believe, the moment she took that first step, he started talking, because I know him. And I know how he responds to faith. And the minute he said, "Come here". Here, she came. She didn't mention, "I can't do it". She didn't say, "Don't you know I've been this way 18 years. Don't you understand? What's a matter with you. You've been in here before, every time you..." Heck, no. No. She just come a-scooting. And I love it. Now, he laid his hands on her first. He could have just spoken to her. There are others that he did that. But he laid his hands on her first, and then said, now listen to how much faith. Listen to the faith in this statement.
Now, the first thing he did, he laid his hands on her. And then he said, "Woman, you're loosed". You see the action? He didn't say, "Woman you're loosed". He didn't go, "Be healed". The moment he put his hands on her, he released his faith. He put his hands on her and said, "You're loosed". He said it, but the power went through here. There's other times he said it and the power came out here. But this time, the power came out here, and then he said it. So, the power release was in two places in his hand and in his mouth. Ah. Now there's a procedure for you. Release the power in two places, with your hand and in your mouth.